My Front Page Scandal (10 page)

“Yes.” Brooke was amazed her voice sounded so normal. “It’s easy for me to remember because I was born the same year they married.”

Joey nodded. An acknowledgment.

Katie caught the look they’d shared. “What am I missing?”

Brooke shook her head, unable to speak.

Joey stepped in. “It’s the timing, Katie-did. Brooke was born in September.

Which means, if the date is accurate, Daisy was already several months’ pregnant in that photo.”

“And involved—” Brooke’s voice broke. She licked her lips. “And involved with another man.”

Maybe, said a voice in her head. The word echoed. Maybe, maybe, maybeee not…

“No,” Katie said stoutly. She gave Brooke a squeeze. “You’re jumping to conclusions.”

“Also,” Joey added, thinking hard, “I’m not positive, but it seems like back in those days they stamped photos with the date they were developed, not when they were shot. These pictures could have been taken at any time.”

A wave of relief hit Brooke so hard her knees buckled. She dropped onto the bed.

“Of course! You must be right. Mom wouldn’t have jumped into a marriage to Dad straight from a relationship with this guy—” She stabbed the photo, her lip curling. “Steve. He looks…disreputable.” A Great Aunt Josephine word, but it gave her courage.

They said nothing for a minute. Joey picked through the keepsake box, sorting the birthday cards and baby shoes. Brooke glanced back and forth between the photos. Daisy didn’t look pregnant, but at less than three months gone, she wouldn’t.

Katie cleared her throat. “I didn’t know, Brooke.”

“Know what?” She couldn’t stop looking at “Steve”. It had been so easy to assume he was Lindsay’s father. But now that he might be hers…well, her brain couldn’t seem to hold the idea without tipping sideways.

“That you were born early, as they say.”

“I knew. Joey, too. We figured out the dates once, on their anniversary, then gleefully announced it at the family dinner like we’d get a prize for being such smarty-pants.”

“They hushed us up pretty fast,” Joey said with a shake of her head. “You know how the Winfields are.”

“Expecting before the ‘I dos’? Don’t ever talk about it again.” Brooke tossed both photos into the chest and slammed the lid. “Keep it a shameful little secret buried in your dresser drawer.”

Concern filled Joey’s voice. “Not shameful, Brooke.”

“I never dared ask Dad again. Mom and I talked about it a couple of times when I was older, but she never gave a hint there might have been a man other than Dad in the picture.” Brooke groaned. “Gaaawd. She even used her ‘slip-up’ as a cautionary tale when I went to the senior prom with Marcus.”

“How come I missed that talk?” Joey asked with a grin.

“You and Katie were eavesdropping on Dad. He’d taken Marcus into the study for a lecture about the proper way to treat a Winfield girl.”

“I remember that.” Katie tittered. “He kept pounding the desk and saying, ‘It’s about respect!’”

“Uh-huh. Dad put such a scare into Marcus, he respected me all the way through our freshman year of college.”

Brooke looked up at her sisters and found them both wearing big, encouraging smiles. They didn’t want her to feel bad, but what she needed right now were the facts—good or bad—with no reputation-saving embellishments.

Thinking about the unvarnished truth brought only one name to mind: Reba Koldowski. A woman who offered no apologies for being herself. Her bold, brassy, unvarnished self.

Although she returned her sisters’ smiles as if everything was all right, Brooke had made up her mind.

She’d ask Reba.

David left his helmet with the motorcycle, a Honda Shadow VLX. No one was stealing either in this neighborhood of old-growth trees and stately manor homes. “Of course I came.”

Brooke stood on the brick steps of a large white colonial with a charcoal roof and black shutters. Two coach light lanterns illuminated the pots of fall flowers lining the walk. She bit her lip then blurted, “I’ve never made a booty call before.”

“Is that what this is?” He’d known it wasn’t a social call, not at quarter past midnight. He’d been damn surprised to hear from her at all.

“I don’t know. Maybe.” With both arms braced on the jamb, her body swayed in the doorway’s square of light. She was dressed down tonight, in a pair of loose flannel pants with a drawstring tied so loosely the waistband dipped below her navel. A skinny sweater clung to her breasts. No discernible bra, but very discernible nipples.

She wet her lips. “I’m feeling reckless again.”

He stopped to gaze at her. Hawthorn Lane was so quiet he could hear the cooling tick of his bike’s engine. And, just possibly, the rev of his own.

“Very reckless,” she said.

He stepped up. “Then I’m your man.”

She reached for him. “Hurry. Let’s get indoors.”

“Your neighbor already saw me.”

After a millisecond’s hesitation, she shrugged. “Never mind. That’s my Great Aunt Josephine. She sees everything.” Brooke unzipped his bomber jacket, peeled it off him like a banana skin and let it drop to the floor. A frank and darkly exciting purpose shone in her eyes. “We could give her something to talk about.”

He caught her hands, not sure why he delayed. “You’re different tonight than you were at the picnic.” Other than the steamy kiss in the window, she’d been more subdued that night. He’d put that down to feeling constrained at her workplace.

Or maybe being embarrassed by their previous encounter.

Her mouth curved into a wicked smile. “I sure am.”

He told himself he liked this side of Brooke just as much. It was definitely a boon to his libido. “How come?”

She directed his hands beneath her sweater. “Does there have to be a reason?”

Rev, rev. The lack of a bra was no longer conjecture. Her breasts were small and firm, sized perfectly to fill his palms. He tested them anyway, rubbing her smooth, silky skin, rolling the hard nubs of her nipples.

Naked desire bloomed across her features. Even on their first night when she’d worn the stripped-down dress, she had held back. But now the caution was gone, just as it had vanished when she’d come to his hotel room.

He realized how intensely arousing it was to be wanted by a woman who dared to show her need so openly, without reservation. If there was also an edge of desperation to the way she dug her fingers into his shoulders and drew him nearer, her slender body bending like a willow as he pressed her backward, that was easy to discount as sexual urgency.

With a long mmmmm of throaty pleasure, she shut her eyes. The skeins of her golden-brown hair swung free as her head tilted back, exposing her throat. He put his open mouth against it, nibbling lightly until he’d worked his way past her chin and up to her mouth. Her tongue flicked out. He captured it between his teeth and sucked.

They kissed with abandon, moving almost blindly into an adjacent room, fumbling and stumbling amid laughter and gasps and caresses. “I’ve been wanting to do this again so bad,” David said as they tipped over onto a couch. He held himself up, taking a quick look around the room. It was dark, except for the blue-green glow of a bubbling fish tank. “I’ve wanted you since the first moment I saw you.”

Her body curved around his, a seductive embrace drawing him inexorably to the warm center of her. “But you had blood in your eyes.”

“And a knock on my skull. That didn’t matter. It was you who knocked me out.”

She nibbled at his mouth. “Not me. The dress.”

“First your voice. Then your face. Then the dress.” He put his hand on her naked belly. “It was a damn good dress.”

“Wait’ll you see me in a suit and pearls.”

He grunted. “I want you naked.”

She became still, except for the rise of her ribs beneath the hem of her sweater. Her eyes were large and dark. Wisps of hair stuck to her temples and flushed cheeks.

Sexual hunger pounded in his bloodstream. He was engorged with it, driven by it, beholden to it. But he waited for her to speak.

She took a breath, held it for a moment filled by the burble of the fish tank, then whispered, “You can have me.”

He reached for the knotted drawstring of her pants and was alarmed to see that his hands shook. He clenched them until they went numb.

Brooke moved restlessly beneath him, twisting her hips and digging into the plush sofa cushions. She shoved at the pants, forcing them down her thighs. Her bikini panties were sprigged with rosebuds and trimmed with a small pink bow.

“Go easy.” Sensation returned as he rubbed his knuckles across her hip bones. “I don’t want to rush this time.”

“I do.” Her laughter was quick and nervous. “I want to gallop, and race, and jump off the edge of a cliff into your arms.”

“Anytime. I’ll catch you.” He scooped his hands under her butt. The flannel pants came off with a tug and a pull, revealing her long bare legs. In the darkness, they were ivory stems, slim and pliable. She wrapped them around his waist. Their bodies wormed closer, tighter. His cock thickened and lengthened as it pressed against the heat between her legs. “Jeez.” He panted. “You’re hot.”

She ran her fingers through his hair. “I’m a volcano, baby. And I’ve been dormant for too long.” She made an embarrassed face as soon as the words were out of her mouth. “See what ridiculous things you’ve made me say? I’m no good at, um, dirty talk. Maybe you could just kiss me instead.”

“Be glad to.” Moving atop her, he gave her body one long, gliding stroke, homing in on her breasts again. Her sweater flipped up. “But about that dirty talk…”

“Ahhh.” Her breath caught as his mouth found her nipple. “Later, okay?”

He lashed her with his tongue. His fingers felt thick and slow as he wrenched at the slim silver zipper on the front of her sweater. It wouldn’t open, so he shoved the garment higher, letting out a groan at the pink and ivory perfection of her breasts. His hands framed them. His kisses adored them.

A sharp corner poked into his nose. “What’s this?”

“Oh. Just some old photos.” She wrestled them away. “They were in my sweater pocket.”

She made a motion to toss the snapshots, but something in her tone made him stop her. “Let me see.”

“No, really.” She squirmed away. “You don’t want to.”

The way she’d turned prickly with tension made him even more curious. “What are they? You naked on a bearskin rug?” She gave in to his determined hands and let him pry the photos from her grip. “Old boyfriends?”

“Family photos.” She covered her breasts with her hands. “That’s my mother.”

David sat up and looked at the photos by the moonlight flooding through the uncovered window. “Pretty lady. Nineteen-seventy-seven, huh? I was born that year.” He flapped the second print. “This your dad?”

Brooke’s voice came out tight and rough. “I hope not.”

He set the pictures aside on the coffee table and resettled over her with his weight on his elbows and her legs loosely wound around his thighs. “What does that mean?”

She closed her eyes and turned her head, pressing her cheek against the squashy chenille cushions. “It means I have a few questions for my mother and she’ll never be able to answer them.”

Ah. Beginning to understand the strange mood that had confounded him from the start, he traced his fingertip around her hairline. Her reddened mouth had drawn into a pout, as if she had a mouthful of ripe strawberries. Much as he wanted to, he wouldn’t let himself kiss her. “Something happened today?”

Silence.

She reached between them to tease his erection. “Let’s not talk.”

“You want to run blind, wasn’t that what you said?” Suddenly, he didn’t care for that idea. He’d been with too many women who used him as a stud so they could brag about their celebrity conquest. His feelings for Brooke were different, deeper. She might even be someone he could fall in love with. Too bad they were from such different worlds.

It would never work.

“Something like that.” Her eyes speared his as she whipped her head around.

There was that edge again. Not lust alone. She was a little crazed. “Why not? I’ve played it safe long enough.”

“And I’m your walk on the wild side, huh?” Nope, he really didn’t want to go there. It was part and parcel of the same bad reputation that would lead the public to believe the worst of him, if the truth ever came out. Yet he couldn’t blame Brooke for thinking that way. He’d done enough to earn the reputation on his own, even without his father’s crimes being known.

“But you like being a rebel,” she said, as if they’d been arguing. They’d known each other for less than a week and already she could read his thoughts. “I’m not asking you for anything you haven’t already provided to lots of women.

Right?”

He’d thought she was different, someone sweet who would want him whether he was a ballplayer or a beet farmer, a success or a disgrace.

Discouraged, he pushed away before her nearly nude body made that impossible.

“Yeah. No problem. I’m here to give you a good time.”

She crossed her arms over her breasts. Her face crumpled. “I’ve ruined it, haven’t I? Typical. I can’t even be bad when I try.”

Brooke probably wasn’t expecting him to kiss her then, but kiss her he did. He kept it tame, fitting his lips to her lips, finding them ripe, warm and slightly moist from his previous ravaging. He kissed her until she softened against him, but stopped when he began to harden.

He pulled back, shook his hair out of his eyes and licked her taste from his lips. “Do you have any food in the house? I’m starving.”

AS BROOKE POURED rice into a measuring cup, she watched David choose among her mother’s cookware, and was astounded. She’d thought she’d blown it with him, big time, but here he was, humming tunelessly and cooking—cooking!—as if all of his midnight booty calls ended in tearful family confessions instead of screaming orgasms.

He selected a heavy-bottomed pot and set it on a gas burner beside a pot of simmering chicken stock. He lopped off a chunk of butter and started sautéing pancetta and shallots. Luckily, she liked quality food and had kept the cupboards stocked even though it was only her in the house these days.

“I never thought that when I looked back at my time with David Carerra, the memories would mainly be about eating.” Her laugh was thready, uncertain. “You do realize that’s all we’ve done together—eat?”

He looked up and grinned. His curly mop of hair had fallen into his eyes again.

“Not all.”

She fidgeted. “Mostly.”

“Food is life. Life is food. Enjoy them while you can.”

“It’s a nice philosophy, but…” She shrugged. Because of her commitment to staying a size six, food was as much about discipline as enjoyment. Her father had extolled the benefits of exercise, so she was a regular at spinning class and tried to fit a run around the park into her lunch hour several times a week.

“We were raised differently, I think.”

“For sure. This is a long way from a Georgia beet farm.” David looked around the spacious kitchen, taking in the milk-paint cabinets, the white marble surfaces, the gleam of stainless-steel fixtures. Her mother’s hand was evident in the cheerful tulip-print curtains, red dish towels and the girls’ childhood growth chart marked on the wall beside the doorway.

He added the rice to the pot and asked her to pour two cups of white wine.

“What’s your philosophy, then?”

She dropped her shoulders, feeling dejected again as the day’s discovery once more seeped past the defenses she’d erected to stop herself from thinking about it. Why had she stuck the photos in her pocket? If not for them, she’d be in the throes of the aforementioned screaming orgasm, her head blasted clean of any other thought.

“My philosophy?” She recorked the wine and put it in the fridge to chill. “I don’t know. If I had one, it got lost in the shuffle when my entire life turned upside down.”

He ladled the hot stock into the rice and started stirring while she tossed in the seasonings. “Okay, so your mother kept a few secrets from you, probably because she thought it was for your own good. Listen, my father was no prize, either. You can’t let your parentage define your future.” A deep frown carved his forehead and he rubbed it with the back of his wrist, catching at the edge of the bandage on his right temple. “Hell. I’m hardly one to talk.”

“You mean your real father, not the adoptive one?”

“Uh-huh.” David glanced up. “Just between us, he was a rat bastard. An ex-and future con, and an abusive drunk, good for nothing but collecting a welfare check and petty crime. A real piece of work.”

Brooke took a look around the kitchen, tracing the path of David’s earlier perusal. So quit sniveling, you pampered princess. Yeah, maybe your dad wasn’t really your dad. He still raised you as if you were his own. What’s the big deal?