My Front Page Scandal (2 page)

“So we’ll go find a doctor.” He looked dazedly at the idling cab. “This’ll do.”

“But—”

A man with a camera jumped out of one of the passing cars and pushed through the small crowd that had gathered. The biker lurched toward the cab, taking Brooke with him as he collapsed into the back seat. She was in an ignominious position, sprawled halfway on top of him by virtue of their tangled arms. A shock of cool air between her legs reminded her that she wore absolutely nothing beneath the dress. Horrified, she unwound herself and managed to shimmy the leather down over her clamped thighs while also shoving the man’s legs into the cab.

He hung his head off the edge of the seat, his face deathly pale beneath the streaks and spatters of blood. With a groan, he closed his eyes.

The driver climbed behind the wheel, passing the motorcyclist’s helmet and keys over the seat. “Where to? Mass General?”

Brooke hesitated in the open door of the cab with her arms wrapped around the helmet. She shouldn’t leave the store, not in the purloined dress. But the man needed help. Another blinding flash from the camera settled her decision, especially when the photographer began cursing and shoving to make his way toward the cab for a better angle.

She slithered into the backseat and yanked the door shut. “Emergency room. Step on it.”

COLOR AND LIGHT SWIRLED through the darkness inside David Carerra’s closed lids.

He floated. The psychedelic pond catapulted him through time to the old swimming hole back home in Georgia. He’d learned to hold his breath until he could stay submerged in the green murk of a silent underwater world for minutes at a time, where there was nothing to hurt him except the snapping turtles that glided away at his approach. When he’d surface, the live oaks would waver against the shock of a blinding sky, distorted by the droplets spangling his lashes. He’d flip over onto his back and float for what seemed like hours, until Maribeth, his father’s common-law wife, would realize the boy was gone and start screeching his name.

Jaden. Jay-aaay-den, you come home now.

Bile rose in his throat. He pushed through the thick water, spitting out the poison as he reentered a harsh, cold world.

“Christ,” said a distant voice. “I’ll never get the smell out.”

“How does a twenty-dollar tip sound?” asked a second voice. Female, nearby.

“Fifty’d be better.”

“Fifty,” she agreed, without conviction.

David moved his tongue in his mouth, checking for loosened teeth. The taste was as foul as biting into an old raw beet. “Ackkk.”

The woman’s face appeared near his. “You’re conscious.”

“Urgh.”

“What’s your name?”

Jaden. Jaden David Jackson.

She gave him a pat. Had he spoken? “Never mind,” she said in a voice as gentle as a breeze whispering through the loblolly pines. “We’re almost at the hospital. They’ll take care of you.”

“Hospital?”

She leaned over him again. “Your motorcycle went out of control on Newbury Street. You’re in a cab, on the way to Mass General.”

David struggled to line up the sequence of events in his muddled brain. “So who are you?”

“Brooke Winfield. I work at Worthington. I saw your crash from the window.”

He didn’t know what Worthington was, but he figured the name of a street corner sounded about right, given her style of dress. If she leaned over him one more time, a nipple would pop out.

He gave an especially pained groan, but she didn’t lean any closer. Shucks.

“I’m feeling better,” he lied.

“Can you sit up?”

“If you help me.” Her bare arms encircled him and he put his face in the nook of her shoulder and neck, inhaling the intoxicating scent of female flesh. His mind cleared another few degrees.

Maybe not a street corner. She was too…clean.

She put the flat of her hand against his skull and pushed his lolling head upright. He caught a glimpse of black night and neon city lights before closing his eyes again. The rhythm of the cab’s wheels thrummed beneath him. Comforting, except for the acrid whiff of fuel. His stomach churned.

“Better?” Brooke cooed.

“Sure.” He squinted, focusing on her face instead of the pounding in his head.

He’d been in an accident. He remembered it now: Leaving the hotel for the bar where he and Rick raised a few in lament of a broken marriage. Word of their presence buzzing, spreading. Paparazzi arriving, chasing him down. He’d opened the throttle of his bike, not caring about the danger, as long as he got away.

Killing himself was one way to do it.

He looked at Brooke’s long bare legs and swallowed the grit on his tongue. “Did they get pictures?”

“One or two.” She tugged at the hem of her dress, which was hovering at indecent-exposure level. “Are you famous?”

“Notorious.” He tried to grin at her, but the effort felt sickly rather than cocksure, so he let his face drop into the nook again. She was soft and silken against the abraded skin on his cheek.

“We’re here,” the cabbie said, slowing to make the turn toward the emergency entrance. A siren blasted a two-second warning nearby.

Brooke pushed his head back up and smiled with encouragement. “Can you walk, or should I ask for a wheelchair?”

With fuzzy eyes, he studied his rescuer. She seemed beatific. A heart-shaped face held shining eyes and pink lips that stretched wide when she smiled and puckered when she frowned with concern. Strands of caramel-brown hair curved against her cheeks and the long, graceful neck that smelled like powder and sunny meadows.

Above the neck, an angel of mercy. Below…

Born to sin.

“You don’t look good,” she said, putting a palm to her chest as she moved away.

“I’ll get help.”

“No, no, I can walk.” He followed her out the car door—hell, he’d have followed her anywhere—wobbling only a little as he stepped onto the pavement and got his feet under him. The lights were too bright and the sounds too loud. He winced and clutched at Brooke for support.

She was as tall as him in her high heels. Maybe taller. She had to bend slightly to fit her shoulder solidly beneath his outstretched arm. Behind them, the driver had gotten out to circle the cab and shut the door. He cleared his throat as he handed over the helmet.

“Oh, yes,” Brooke said, taking it. “I’m afraid I don’t have any money with me, but if you’ll give me your name—”

“My wallet.” His voice sounded as raspy as his face felt. “Back pocket.”

The helmet pressed against his ribs as she reached around. Her fingers felt along his backside until they found the wallet. He grunted, enjoying the groping just a little despite his pain.

She got him straightened out again before flipping the billfold open. The thick wad of cash made her hesitate. “Umm…”

“Give him a hundred.” David waved at the cabbie. “Sorry, pal. Thanks for your help.”

An emergency room attendant wheeled a chair toward them. Brooke was still staring into the wallet. “David Carerra,” she read off his license. “I’ll be damned. You’re David Carerra, the baseball player?”

The attendant pried David loose and guided him into a wheelchair. He raked back his tangled hair. When his hand pulled away, blood glistened on his fingertips.

Brooke’s mouth was agape. He winced, knowing he was losing her. “That’s right, David Carerra. Like I told you—I’m notorious.”

“IS IT TRUE?”

Brooke gave her head a shake. She’d dozed off, huddled inside the injured man’s denim jacket, his helmet nestled in her lap as she sat up in one of the hard plastic chairs of the emergency room. She pulled back the sleeve to check her watch. Ninety minutes, it’d been, and still no sign of him. A nurse had told her to wait, but for how long?

“Yo, there. Is it true?” asked the man across from her. He was grizzled with several days’ growth of a beard. The ice pack applied to his left wrist leaked onto his Patriots jersey and moth-eaten gray sweatpants.

“Is what true?” Brooke tightened her knees, then lifted her hand to brush away the hair hanging in her face. What do you know—she had tendrils.

“You came in with David Carerra.”

She grimaced at the splotches of blood on the jacket cuff. “I guess so.”

“That turncoat son of a bitch.”

Brooke’s gut knotted. “What?”

The man tightened the wrap on his wrist. “Weren’t no Series for the Sox this year, y’know?”

“And you blame Mr. Carerra?” Brooke followed baseball at a once-removed distance. Her late father had gone to the games, occasionally with Joey or Katie, but he’d left Brooke out of the invitation after she’d taken along a sketchpad once too often.

Even so, she knew David Carerra. He was the pinch hitter whose home run had won the previous season’s World Series for the Red Sox. For a time, Carerra had been the toast of the town, a shaggy-haired rebel who’d stepped off the bench and become the city’s unlikeliest of heroes. Opinion had turned against him the past season. Even though he’d been elevated to a starting position and had been performing well, he’d suddenly quit the team at a midpoint losing streak. After that, the Sox had sunk even lower in the standings, a galling comedown after the championship year. Speculation about Carerra’s defection had run rampant the columns of the city’s sportswriters. Rumors had run wild among the stunned fans.

“He sure didn’t help,” the stranger said. “What’s with the guy, quitting like that? Steroids? Drink?” He looked her up and down. “Sexual addiction?”

Brooke’s thigh muscles squeezed even tighter. She pulled the jacket closed over her chest and gave the man a lofty look down her nose, using an expression and tone borrowed from her Great Aunt Josephine, who could drop the temperature of a Sub-Zero with one glance. “I couldn’t possibly say.”

“Yeah, well, you tell him he turned his back on a town that don’t forget.”

If I ever see him again. Brooke looked away. She had his wallet, jacket, helmet and keys. She had to see him again.

Feeling decidedly displaced from the ninety-to-ten ratio of her normal appearance, she rose up on the unstable spike heels and set her sights on the nurses’ station. Maybe Carerra had been admitted for overnight treatment and they’d forgotten to tell her.

She arrived at the desk without turning an ankle or splitting a seam just as the attending nurse hurried off to take care of a scuffle that had broken out in the curtained examining rooms. First a drunken lout bellowed, then came a shout and a crash. A knot of white coats hustled a patient from the area.

David Carerra. Over his shoulder, he gave the drunk a rude gesture, Southie style. Someone shoved a clipboard at him. He scrawled a signature, looked up and saw Brooke. A doctor was reeling off instructions, but Carerra brushed her off.

He walked over and stood before Brooke, his hands riding low on his hips.

“Whaddaya know? It’s my angel of mercy.” His voice was thick and slow and sweet.

She wondered what kind of medication he was on. “Hey, there, beautifulll.”

“I’m Brooke.” He’d pinned her with his eyes. They were bright green and hugely dilated. She felt her own widening. Even battered, disheveled and disgraced, David Carerra was too much man for her to take in. “Brooke Winfield.”

He smiled with only one side of his mouth—crooked and cocky. Sticky spikes of hair had flopped over the wide bandage wrapped around his head. “I remember.”

His gaze dropped. “Especially the dress.”

She shuffled her feet together, clutched the jacket collar. “I don’t usually wear—” She stopped. He doesn’t need to know that. “This is yours.”

“The jacket? Keep it.”

“You’ll be cold.”

“They gave me painkillers. I’m comfortably numb.”

“Mr. Carerra,” the doctor interrupted. She handed him a prescription form. “You may have a headache for a few days, and you’ll need to clean your wounds properly.” She glanced at Brooke. “I’ll discharge him to your care. Our tests showed no sign of concussion, but it’s best if you keep an eye on him for the next twenty-four hours.”

Brooke blinked. “Me?”

David spread his hands. “Angel?”

“I couldn’t possibly—” Brooke’s voice halted again at the shock of hearing herself sound exactly like Great Aunt Josephine, even when she hadn’t meant to.

While she wasn’t sure where to take the rest of her life, she knew that emulating her prim-and-proper aunt was not the way to go. And dressed as she was, with the city’s most rebellious bad boy in tow, there was no telling where the night might lead.

“Thank you.” She removed the prescription from the doctor’s hand. “I’ll look after him.”

“Carerra!” called one of the circling vultures. He recognized Bobby Cook, a wannabe sports writer who slummed for the Insider, a tabloid that preferred flash and trash to legit reporting. Cook had been raking through David’s past since his retirement, looking for the buried muck. Little did Cook know that he’d need more than a rake. Maybe a back hoe.

“What happened tonight?” shouted a reporter. “Were you drunk?”

“Where’ve you been?”

“Why’d you come back?”

“Who’s the chick?”

The questions came in quick succession. David made no reaction.

“Hey, ya lousy quittah,” shouted someone at the back of the group. Probably a photographer, hoping to provoke a response. David was much too familiar with their tactics. “Look this way, jerk-off.”

David grabbed Brooke’s hand and shoved through the gathering of journalists. He pushed her inside the waiting cab, following so closely he almost landed in her lap. Without bothering to disentangle their limbs, he slammed the door shut, clipping a protruding lens. The photographer went reeling.

David met the driver’s flat glare in the rearview mirror. “Floor it.” The man grunted, but the cab took off with a jerk.

“What was that about?” Brooke was flush with outrage.

“Read tomorrow’s paper and you’ll find out.”

She put her hands on his chest as if to push herself away. “Will it be the truth?”

“Who cares?”

She gave him a slow blink. “Bitter much?”

His face was stiff and bruised, and it hurt when it moved. He laughed anyway.

“You’re supposed to be my angel. Don’t I get any sympathy?”

They were still entwined. He was aware of every detail about her—the thick lashes, the shallowness of her breathing, the jut of her sharp chin and slight quiver of her bottom lip, the press of her thighs and the shadowed crevice between them where her dress had slipped too high. She was an interesting mix of innocence and provocation.

He curved a hand around her thigh—taking his time—and lifted it from his. She yanked it away as if he’d tried to molest her and scooted across the seat, giving her skirt a violent jerk that must have come close to snapping a few of the leather bands. With her legs clamped together, she smoothed back her hair. “I didn’t realize that Boston had that many paparazzi.” Even though she was obviously trying to sound unflustered, there was a tremor in her voice.

He shrugged. “Just enough to be annoying.”

“Was that why you were speeding on your motorcycle in the first place, to get away from them?”

“Yeah. They were way back, but closing in. I thought if I banged a U-ey, as you locals say, I might lose them.”

She rubbed a knuckle across her mouth. “I watched from the window. You bounced off a lamppost and scraped the curb.”

“What window?”

“Worthington’s. I’m a display artist—a window dresser.” She looked down at herself and sucked in a gasp. “I have to go back. I—uh…” She put one hand on her thighs, crossed the other arm over her breasts. “I left the window in a mess.”

“Where is this place, exactly—Worthington? I can pick up my bike, if it’s still there.”

She gave the driver a Newbury Street address on the ritzy northern end. “You don’t know O.M. Worthington? It’s a venerable department store. A Boston institution.”

“Sounds vaguely familiar.” With a tired sigh, he relaxed his aching body against the seat. The last time he’d been this sore, he’d run into a two-hundred pound catcher at home plate. “They sell designer dresses and stuff, right? I’m not a big shopper.”

She pinkened at his lazy perusal. Very little of her was visible under the oversize jacket, but if the leather SM dress was any example, he should shop more often.

“We sell everything,” she said quietly.

“Shoes?” He knew what women called her kind of shoes. Come do me. The throbbing desire to take her up on the unspoken invitation rivaled all his aches and pains added up together.

He closed his eyes. You’re in enough trouble. Don’t ask for more. “Do you sell good reputations? I seem to have lost mine.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. I’m sure you had your reasons for quitting the team.” She didn’t ask what they were. A proper Bostonian to the core, even if the outside told another tale.

“Then you know who I am.” What he meant was, you know what I did.

The decision to get out of baseball had been rash and stupid, born out of his shame over his past. He’d regretted it ever since, but didn’t know how to repair the damage without giving himself away. After all his hard work the loss of his career stung, sure, but what he really disliked was having an entire city thinking the worst of him.

He’d quit baseball so that wouldn’t happen.

But karma was a bitch. And, as his redneck dad always said, blood will tell.

“I saw last year’s World Series, along with the rest of the city,” she said. “I went to the parade, too. You rode a fire truck with some, um, girls.” Brooke sounded less accepting than he’d expect of a woman dressed the way she was. “You know. Bimbos.”

The cab hit a pot hole and David cringed. A hundred little pain demons were beating the inside of his skull like a bass drum. “Not bimbos. Groupies.”

His memories of the parade were vague, but he knew that a whole squadron of groupies had climbed aboard the fire truck mid-route to smother him with champagne and kisses. The firefighters driving hadn’t minded. They’d gotten the leftovers.

“Groupies?” Brooke sniffed. “Same difference.”

By his standards, it wasn’t that late, but David had already had a long night.

He wasn’t very alert, and certainly not thinking straight. Still, he knew something wasn’t kosher with the Brooke that he saw and the one who spoke and reacted like a far more conservative woman.

He lifted his head and squinted at her. “You work in that outfit?”

Her lips pressed together. “Not usually.”

“Were you planning a night out?”

“No. No plans.” She blinked. “I mean, I was supposed to meet friends, but I called while you were being examined and said I’d been delayed and might not make it. So, um, no definite plans.”

“You have them now. My doctor’s counting on you.”

Her head pulled back a fraction. “I know I promised to look after you, but please don’t expect me to go home with you.”

“Fine. I don’t have a home. I have a hotel room.”

She widened her eyes. “Then I really can’t stay with you.”

“Why not? You’re single.” He could tell.

“The problem’s not me.”

It’s you. David winced.

“It’s my family. They’re…old-fashioned.”

Dodged that one. His usual cockiness was no match for the gratefulness he felt.

Bad rep, be damned. His angel didn’t despise him the way the rest of the city’s population seemed bent on doing.

He touched his tongue to his dry lips. Post-Series, in the heady days of fame and adulation, his life had changed. He’d partied with team sponsors and city bigwigs instead of the working-class guys he’d normally gravitated toward. Along the way, he’d been introduced to plenty of high-society women like Brooke, women who oozed culture and refinement. He’d felt awkward around them until he’d realized they expected the same out of him as any other female—a rough-and-tumble, good old Georgia boy who could charm them out of their satin underdrawers.

David would bet his Series ring that Brooke came from one of Boston’s conservative Brahmin families, which meant that her upbringing was miles away from his own, in every way possible.

But there was also the revealing dress and the do-me shoes to consider….

“So don’t tell them,” he said. “Your old-fashioned family.”

“You have paparazzi. They’ve already taken photos of us. I can’t be a part of—”

He waved her off and closed his leaden lids against the glare of streaming headlights. “No explanation needed. I get it.”

An extended silence made him crack an eye. She’d dropped her chin to her chest and laced her fingers around her knees, deep in thought. Finally she looked at him with appealing doe eyes, big and velvet brown. “I’m sorry.”

David said nothing. She was sorry, huh? Well, so was he. Although his label as a quitter had accustomed him to the scowls, profane insults and pitying stares, he was not prepared for his angel of mercy to give him the bum’s rush.

At the same time, the shameful, niggardly part of him that had prompted his current state of disgrace said that he deserved no more.

THE CAB DROPPED them off at the scene of the accident. David’s motorcycle remained at the curb, although a bystander had stood it up. “Small miracle,” he said to himself, rubbing at the scratches that marred the shiny metal of the sleek, expensive Honda. The only major damage was a large dent in the front fender.

Unsure of what to do or say, Brooke studied the facade of the department store as if she hadn’t been working there ever since college. Stone steps led to the stately four-story stone building. Above a thick, carved lintel were the pitted letters that had spelled out O.M. Worthington since the store had opened as a haberdashery at the turn of the twentieth century. On either side of the double doors were her babies—the display windows. Not large, not ostentatious, but her own private gallery of sorts. She hadn’t had the guts to go as far creatively as she might like, but with Alyce Simmons’s support, she believed that her time was coming. The Gaultier display was only the beginning.

“Where are you headed?” she asked David, without looking at him. “Back to the hotel?”

“Maybe.”

“Remember what the doctor said about watching for signs of concussion.” He’d be all right on his own, she reassured herself. She had her own mess to clean up inside the store.

And out. Her fingers spread over the butter-soft leather of the minidress in an involuntary caress. Despite the scolding conscience that said she must return it as soon as possible, she was reluctant. The dress was outrageous, far beyond what she’d normally wear, which made it more freeing than anything she’d ever put on.

Maybe too freeing, considering her lack of underpants. She’d been on edge about that all night. Particularly when the paparazzi had reappeared and she’d feared they’d snap a Britney-crotch shot of her, and even more particularly when David had caressed her thigh. She’d shocked herself when her impulse was to let him continue.

Yet another impulse ignored. She’d slammed her thighs shut so fast she’d almost snapped his hand off at the wrist.

“What’d the doc say?” David pinched the bridge of his nose. “I forget. My memory’s spotty.”

“Are you…?” She took a quick glance. Of course he’s teasing. He had an impish quality, although nothing in his broad, muscled body or square-jawed face was the least bit elfin. The long, tousled hair, maybe—but mostly it was about attitude.

That, and his dancing, roguish eyes. They seemed to look right into her and know that there was a Brooke, a long-hidden Brooke, who wanted to come out and play.

“Nice try.” She slipped off the jacket and held it out to him.

He came closer to snag it. “Please.” This time, sincerity underwrote every word.

“Don’t go back to work.”

“I have to. I left things in a state. The window’s half undone.”

He tried the charming, off-center grin. “You promised to look after me.”

True.

He gave her a head bob. “C’mon.”

She was leaning that way. Literally—her body swaying toward his as if he were the magnetic north pole. “Something tells me you don’t have health care on your mind.” Neither did she.

“Spend the night with me, Brooke. I’ll take you to all my favorite places in the city. We’ll stay up ‘til dawn. It’ll be an unforgettable experience.”

More than he knew.

Her heart raced. The need to say yes bubbled inside her like an underground brook. But she couldn’t do it, not this way—the window a mess, him dizzy with pain and high on medication, her gone completely out of her mind, lacking inhibitions or panties.

She wasn’t there. Not yet.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just can’t.”

His battered face fell. The genuine disappointment touched off her sympathy and underlined her longing. Her throat ached, for both of them.

“I have to return to work.” She gestured. “I’m responsible for changing the window and it must be done tonight.” Brooke took a couple of steps away from him, her feet heavy in the strappy shoes. “I’m sorry. I really am. Some other time, maybe…”

She thought he was going to let her go without another word, but before she’d reached the corner, she heard his footsteps pounding up behind her. Her heart leaped as she spun to face him.

But he didn’t try to stop her. Instead, he dropped his jacket around her shoulders. “Here, you’ll need this.” He wrapped the heavy, faded denim tightly around her body. His arms were bars of steel, hugging her. “It’s chilly out here.”