My Front Page Scandal (9 page)

“Two nices?”

She bumped his shoulder in a teasing way and said in a hushed voice, “Uh-oh, you’ve found me out. I’m a vamp masquerading as a nice girl.”

The other woman was waiting. “This is Margaret Song,” Brooke said. “My assistant.”

“Call me Meg.”

“David Carerra.” His feet shuffled. He hadn’t counted on an assistant.

Brooke gestured. “This is what I do.”

They crowded into the small window, three people and an elegant mannequin posed in a cashmere drape. Discreet spotlights lit a backdrop painted in shades of misty blue and gray. Bare branches, sprayed white, stood among an artful arrangement of sweaters, scarves, hats and gloves. The scene was too pretty for David.

Brooke tweaked one of the branches. “It’s our fall cashmere sale.”

Meg scooped up a hammer and staple gun. “Are we finished?”

“There’s just the sweeping and a few minor adjustments. Let’s get the ladder out of here.”

David volunteered. “I’ll do it.” But there was no room to maneuver. He snapped a twig in one direction and set the garlands swinging in the other. Finally he climbed out and let the women pass the ladder to him through the opening.

Meg followed. With a glance at the hamper, she took the stepladder from him.

“You can stay,” he said, awkward again. In spite of his notoriety as a ladies’ man, he didn’t do this kind of thing often enough to be smooth about it.

“Not me.” She smiled. “I don’t cut in.”

“Meg’s gone?” Brooke said when he returned to the window display.

He put down the hamper and slipped in behind her. “She knew I wanted to be alone with you.”

Brooke continued sweeping. Industriously.

“Did I make a mistake?”

“No. It’s me.” Her shoulders shrugged. “I’m feeling sort of shy.”

His hands went to her swaying hips. A quiet groan escaped his lips. “I thought you’re a vamp.”

“That might have been an exaggeration.” She dropped the broom and turned to face him, so close that he could count her eyelashes. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

“You’re the one who walked out.”

“I know. I’m sorry. It’s just that I woke up in the middle of the night and I felt so…so unlike myself that I had to go home.” She lowered her face. “I’m not really like that, you know. I don’t have sex with men I barely know.”

The implication that she hadn’t been feeling as strongly about him as he had about her was a sucker punch to the gut. He inhaled through the clenching pain.

Don’t give up. Not this time.

“We had some good talks,” he said. “I thought so, anyway.” She’d shared intimate details of her life. He hadn’t been as forthcoming, but maybe it was time to try. He couldn’t go around trailing a ghost behind him for the rest of his life.

She nodded. “No, you’re right. We did. It was my fault for panicking. I just wasn’t myself.”

Talking was all well and good, but there were other methods of communication he was better at. He nudged her with his chin until he could capture her lips in a soft kiss. Her breath sighed into his mouth as he licked and tugged at her bottom lip, making small, wet, suckling sounds. “Mm,” she said. “Mmm.”

Her hair tickled his cheek and he smoothed it back. Refracted light danced across her face, thrown by the curtain of idly spinning crystals. Desire had hallowed out a space inside him and refilled it with a rushing surf. “Are you sure you weren’t yourself? I can’t tell a difference.”

“You’re the second person who’s said that to me lately.”

They separated to retrieve the broom and the hamper, then met again, hesitant.

“What do we do now?” David asked. “Spread out a picnic among your fancy knickknacks?” He looked at the small space, the lacy branches, the careful arrangement of the items. He was the proverbial bull in a china shop. “I didn’t think this through.”

“We can go to my office downstairs. Let me just finish up here.”

He removed the broom and dust pan while she fussed with the display. When he returned, she was opening the curtains to the street. He froze. It was literally his nightmare—to be on display before the world.

The lighted window caught the attention of a few pedestrians, especially when two of the “mannequins” moved. Brooke gave a casual wave before resuming her task of tucking the curtains out of sight.

David clenched his hands. Okay. It wasn’t so bad. This time, there were no photogs or cameramen to capture his transgressions. “You’re used to this, huh?”

“What? Being in the window?” Brooke laughed and struck a Vogue cover pose. “Not really. Some stores make a production of their display artists’ craft, and keep the window on view at all times, but Old Man Worthington is old school. I must keep the curtain closed until the window is complete, and I can’t do a change during store hours, so I have to work late every time a new display goes up.”

“Old Man Worthington?”

She covered her mouth. “Oops. That’s an employee nickname. It just slipped out.”

David stepped closer to the glass and surveyed the street, so dark in contrast to the bright display space. They might have been onstage. “Have you ever done anything crazy in the window?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Pantomime. A chorus of ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers.’” He flexed his knees and swung his arms a little. “A monkey dance.”

She giggled. “Never.”

“Try it.” He went toward her, walking bowlegged, making chimpanzee sounds. A passing car tooted its horn.

“I couldn’t.” But she let out a screech like a rusty screen door, then reached up and scratched the top of her head before breaking into embarrassed laughter.

He linked his arms around her. “How about hot monkey loving? You ever tried that?” He worked his lips into a chimp’s exaggerated kiss-me request.

Her face screwed in distaste, but she was still laughing. “That’s not…very…sexy.”

He forgot about the window as she squirmed against him, giggling, trying to avoid his kisses. Their lips met…and she stilled in his arms, the color of her eyes deepening.

Then she kissed him, with her whole heart, openly, even lustily. Her lips parted at his first request, her tongue played against his. She tasted of spearmint and coffee. Heat surged into him where she pressed her hands against his chest, blazing hotter as her body bowed to his urgency. Exploratory pettings became bold caresses. Her racing heart kept pace with his as they quenched their thirst and hunger, only to have their appetites instantly renewed. He was hard as a rock. She moved fluidly against him—

A car horn blared, breaking the spell and reminding them where they were.

Startled, they stumbled into one of the branches, which broke off with a crack.

Brooke yanked away. “I think we’d better step out of here before the entire display is in shambles.”

David took a deep breath, doing his best to match her suddenly cool demeanor.

But as he picked up the hamper and followed her out, he barely resisted an urge to pound his chest and let out a jungle roar.

THEY UNROLLED A LENGTH of brown butcher paper fetched from the workroom and spread the picnic items across her desk. David frowned over opening the champagne bottle while Brooke set out the food. There was prosciutto, bread and cheese. A curry-chicken salad and shrimp pasta served as the main course. Shiny black olives and a spicy sausage completed the feast, with a box of cocoa-dusted truffles for dessert.

“Quite a spread,” she commented. The hotel had even supplied real silverware and glasses for the champagne.

He made a face with one squinted eye, holding the bottle at arm’s length and pushing with his thumbs. The cork shot free and bounced off the wall.

“Call me Mr. Smooth,” he said as the bottle foamed over. “I should have asked for beer, but a beer picnic doesn’t have the same panache.”

“On a hot summer day, maybe.” A crystal ping sounded as they touched their glasses. “I do prefer champagne.” While the sparkling liquid fizzled in her nose, she didn’t need it to feel intoxicated. Kissing David was enough to keep her aloft for days.

She tore off the heel of the baguette and slathered it with a pat of butter.

Keep a steady hand on the reins. “How was your meeting?”

“Postponed.” He frowned. “They’re testing my resolve. I’ll have to stay in the city for a while longer.”

“Who are ‘they’?” She wanted to know who’d earned her thanks.

“Red Sox management. My agent came to town and set up a meeting. We’ll try again.” David’s jaw worked steadily on a thick slice of the sausage. “I’m looking into rejoining the team.”

Brooke glanced up with a sharp intake of breath, forgetting to be indifferent.

“But that’s huge news!”

“Not yet.” Tension tightened the hollows of his cheeks. “I haven’t made up my mind, and I don’t know if they’ll have me back, even so. None of this is public knowledge, you understand.”

She nodded. He was trusting her.

“I see you’ve been keeping up with the papers.” He glanced at her wastebasket, where she’d tossed the Insider with the picture of them entering the hotel.

She’d been lucky again. With her head down, nobody could tell it was her.

“Someone told me you were in it,” she said.

He shook back the hair that flopped across his forehead and raised a brow at her. “You were afraid that they’d captured you, right?”

“Um, yes.” No use evading. The paper had run a brief item that implied David and a teammate had exchanged heated words in a pub before the motorcycle crackup.

She was part of the caption only, as a “local stunner” who’d accompanied the Lothario to his hotel.

“I’m sorry about that.”

“You don’t need to keep apologizing. They didn’t follow you tonight, did they?”

“No. I’m not that big a story. But there is one guy who’s determined to catch me up to no good.”

“Then you’d better be careful.” Her thoughts turned into bumper cars, spinning and crashing as she remembered the reckless way they’d kissed in the window display, forgetting that they were in public.

Concentrate. “Do you really want to go back to baseball?”

He slunk lower in his chair. “I’m not good for anything else.”

She grinned inwardly because she could think of at least one other skill he possessed. “I hope that it works out.”

Now that they had moved beyond a one-night stand, would he actually want to continue seeing her if he came back to Boston? Perhaps not. He might fall back into his old ways, playing the bachelor-about-town.

He stretched lazily, tilted his chair onto two legs and considered her through half-closed eyes. “You’re a restful person to be with.”

She wrinkled her nose, fearing that he meant boring. Except his tone was complimentary. And the small glint of his eyes said that when he took her to bed, he wasn’t worried about losing sleep.

“Brooke,” he murmured. “The name fits you. You’re a cool forest stream, bubbling across hidden stones.”

“That sounds pretty, though not very exciting.”

“Do you think I’m looking for excitement?”

“Not especially, but I am.”

He cocked his chin. “You are?”

“In a manner of speaking.” She was too bashful to tell him about the Martinis and Bikinis club.

“Why do I think you have something specific in mind?”

She replied with a bit of the previous night’s flare. “Maybe because I do.” That had to be the champagne talking. “An old friend used to tell me that a person has to move forward through life, and I’ve recently realized that I’ve been stalled.” She reached for an olive, even though she wasn’t partial to them. “I’m ready to try new things. Take big risks. Be adventurous.”

David smiled. “Let me know if I can be of service.”

She bit. The sharp tang exploded on her tongue. “You already have.”

Joey stepped inside and stripped off her long knit scarf. Her golden hair was ruffled and her cheeks pink, as if she’d jogged the miles from her carriage-house apartment on their grandparents’ estate. “What, do visitors have to make an appointment first? Have we become the Queen of England?”

“Give her some slack,” said Katie from the wide front walk of the stately white Colonial. “She’s under Aunt Josephine’s influence and you know how powerful that can be.”

Joey made the sign of the cross as if she were warding off vampires.

“Never mind. Aunt Josephine means well. Just like my sisters.” Brooke hugged them. “It’s good to see you both. Now shut up and go away.”

Katie kept her arm draped around Brooke’s waist as they walked into the spacious entrance hall. She was short and slim, with their mother’s fair coloring and upbeat, energetic attitude. “We thought you could use the moral support.”

After the picnic, David had said he’d call, but already one day had gone by without word. She’d scoured the morning paper, but he hadn’t appeared in the gossip columns either, so all was not lost. Rather than hanging around the house doing nothing, waiting for the phone to ring, she’d informed her sisters that she’d be sorting through their mother’s belongings.

A sniff twitched Brooke’s nose. “Okay, you can stay.”

“Did you start?” Joey dropped her scarf and jacket on a chair before crossing the oak floor. She peeked into the front parlor. “Hi, fishies.”

Katie handed Brooke her suede jacket before also going to look at the burbling tank, where colorful tropical fish wove among the plantings and rock. “I don’t recognize the green and orange one. Did you get a new fish?”

“Uh-huh. It’s a parrot cichlid.”

Joey looked at the painting on the easel, an unfinished watercolor study of the backyard in its autumn colors. She moved on to the small stack of canvases that leaned in the corner. “What else have you got? Grandmother told me to remind you to choose a painting for the auction. She wants it ASAP.”

Brooke tucked the jacket under her arm and went to shoo Joey away. “You don’t need to look. There’s nothing special there.” She sneezed.

“Gesundheit.”

“Thanks.” Brooke searched her pockets for a tissue. “I hope I’m not getting a cold.”

“It’s not a cold.” Katie came and grabbed her jacket. She brushed her fingers across the suede and held up a golden tuft. “It’s puppy hair.”

Brooke’s nasal passages tingled. Another sneeze was building. She was highly allergic to pet dander, hence the fish. “I have to wash my hands.”

“Sorry,” Katie called after her. “I was brushing Duke’s coat. I should have cleaned up before I came.”

“That’s all right.” Brooke wasn’t going to complain. For a long time, Katie had held a grudge about having to give up the puppy she’d longed for, due to her sister’s allergy. “Come upstairs with me. We can get started.”

The sisters reconvened in the master bedroom. Every wall, and even the ceiling, was papered in a Chinese floral, a busy pattern of yellow lilies on a blue background. The furnishings were more masculine—a dark wood, traditional set.

“Welcome to the bower,” Joey said as they entered. She wasn’t a froufrou girl.

“When I’m gone, I somehow manage to forget how flowery it is in here.”

“Dad didn’t care, as long as Mom was happy.” Katie slung herself into their father’s wing chair by the bay window, where he’d sit every morning to go over his schedule for the day. He’d read his daughters bedtime stories there, too, with little Katie in his lap, Joey bouncing off the furniture and Brooke in their mother’s chair, trying to remember to keep her knees together and her hands properly folded so he’d be impressed by her comportment. Great Aunt Josephine was big on comportment. More than once, much to her daughters’ amusement, Daisy had stuck out her tongue at the woman’s retreating back and whispered, “Comport this.”

Clothing from the closet was mounded on the bed. “I thought we could go through these,” Brooke said, “and see if there’s anything we want to keep. The rest I’ll box up for the Ladies’ League clothing drive.”

Joey fingered up a black lace cocktail dress. “Reba might like a few of mom’s things.”

“Good idea. I’ll ask.” Brooke sorted through an assortment of old cardigans and twin sets. “She’s been coming by every couple of weeks, same way she did when Mom was alive. She says it’s to check up on me, but I think she’s lonely.”

“I’m sure she is, if Darwin’s still riding the couch.”

“Reba says he’s worse than ever now that he’s retired. He won’t even lift his feet so she can vacuum under them.” As teens, they’d thought it was funny to refer to Darwin, Reba’s unfortunately named lunk of a husband, as the missing link on the evolutionary scale.

Katie joined them on the bed, flipping through their mother’s dresses. “I don’t want any of these. Seeing them in my closet would be too creepy.” She held up a conservative Lord Taylor dress Daisy had frequently worn to the monthly dinners at the Winfield estate. She’d called it her armor. “What would you do with something like this?”

“It’d be a memento.” Joey’s face went sad as she pulled out a well-worn cardigan from the pile of discards. She picked at the fuzz clinging to the rows of cable knit. “Mom wore this every winter. I remember snuggling with her.”

“I keep wondering where the clothes will end up. What strangers will wear them.”

Brooke’s eyes stung. She pinched the bridge of her nose for distraction. “But it would be worse to throw them away.”

“Mom would be mortified to see bag ladies and crack hos wearing her Halstons.”

Joey scoffed. “No, Great Aunt Josephine would be mortified. Mom would have thought it was funny.”

“Do you remember the time Grandmother told Mom her skirt was too short?” Brooke asked.

“Both Dad and Grandpa Henry said they approved.”

“She wore an even shorter skirt to the next family dinner. I thought Uncle Richard’s eyeballs were going to pop out of his head.”

Katie folded her arms with a frown. “How come I don’t remember Mom causing trouble? I mean, she was spunky, but she also seemed ashamed of her working-class background. You know how she never really liked to talk about the Breckenridges.”

“The influence of the great white aunt,” Joey muttered darkly.

Brooke counted back. “That would have been, what? When we were about nine and ten?”

“The mid-eighties,” Joey said. “You were still little, Katie.”

“Mom was more rebellious in those days. I didn’t realize it then, but looking back…” Brooke mused. “She must have had a few struggles, trying to fit in with the Winfields, especially coming from an undistinguished family like the Breckenridges.”

“Undistinguished? Please. That’s Aunt Jo talking.”

Katie shuddered. “And can you imagine having your husband’s disapproving aunt living right next door, watching every move and listening in on every fight?”

“No wonder Mom kept secrets,” said Brooke.

They looked at each other in silence, their thoughts turning to Lindsay.

“Well. This isn’t getting the closet and bureau cleared out.” Brooke got busy, opening drawers. “There must be something you want, Katie. How about a scarf? There’s an entire drawer of them.” She scooped out an armful of silk and cashmere and tossed it onto the bed.

Katie reached for a large silk square with a vivid pink and orange pattern.

“Vintage Pucci,” she said in a tone of awe. “Mom must have been mod when she was young.”

Joey’s practical nature kicked in. “A lot of these things should go to a good vintage shop. Or we could make a small fortune selling them one Bay.”

“Who has the time?” Brooke removed the few remaining scarves and several pairs of hose. A creased piece of thin, yellowed cardboard dropped to the carpet. She picked it up, intending to toss it along with the nylons.

But it wasn’t a card. She held a photo, a faded Kodak print with a white border.

Brooke gaped. A man stared back at her. He was a smoothie—stand-up collar framing a handsome face, full sideburns, thick brown hair in a wave across his forehead, a cigarette held negligently in one rather elegant hand.

Heaviness settled in her chest, making it hard to breathe. She sucked at air that seemed drained of oxygen.

“Take a look at this.” She handed the photo to Joey.

“Who is he?”

“I have no idea. The picture was in the bottom of the drawer.”

“An old boyfriend, I’ll bet. Mom, you naughty girl.” Joey chortled. “He’s not bad for a seventies dude. Looks like a wannabe Steve McQueen. Or maybe Starsky and Hutch was more his era.”

Katie leaned in to scrutinize the photo. When she sat back, her features had pulled into a troubled knot. “I don’t recognize him, but something about the picture seems familiar.”

“Maybe there’s a reason for that.” Brooke’s mind was spinning through the possibilities. “Do you think…could he be…Lindsay’s father?”

Her sisters gasped in unison. They bent their heads over the photo. “I suppose anything’s possible,” Joey said. “There’s a bit of a resemblance.”

Brooke resisted the idea, even though she thought so, too. “No, we’re probably imagining that. Seeing what we want to.”

“Whoever he is, he had to be someone significant if Mom saved his picture all these years.” Joey pursed her lips, appraising the discovery. “Not just saved it. She hid it.”

“Not very well.” Brooke was still uncomfortable about delving into their mother’s private life. Even now, or especially now, the speculation seemed too intrusive.

“Dad would have never looked in her dresser drawers.” Katie always stuck up for their father.

Joey flipped her hair. “But we might have.”

“Did you?”

“I remember sneaking in here when a girlfriend told me she’d discovered a stash of Jugs magazine in her dad’s closet.” Joey grinned with a wicked insouciance.

“But Dad only had Navy memorabilia. As far as I know, the closest he got to a secret stash of porn was the old pinup girl calendar in the garage.”

“Mom caught me going through her keepsake box once. She gave me a hard swat on the behind. I was only six, but I was so insulted that I wouldn’t let her kiss me goodnight for a week.” Brooke’s mouth quivered at the memory. “I’d turn my cheek. What a little brat.”

Only half listening while she studied the photo, Joey mumbled, “You were always sensitive to scolding.”

Scolding, criticism, a B in math, a rare review at work that wasn’t glowing.

Anything that had made her feel less than perfect. Even as a little girl, she’d been set on fulfilling the Winfield expectations for their oldest daughter.

Katie shot to her feet. “The keepsake box! Where is it?”

Brooke gestured toward the dresser. “Right where it’s always been.”

“Uh, hey, guys…” Joey said.

Brooke was focused on Katie. “What are you looking for?”

“I suddenly remembered. There was a similar photo in here.” She stirred the contents of their mother’s keepsake box, Daisy’s most precious possession even though it was only a simple wooden chest that held a collection of sentimental cards, finger paintings, baby teeth and ribbon-tied locks of hair.

“Aha.” Katie pulled a photo from the stash and waved it triumphantly. “This one’s a picture of Mom, but they’re almost exactly the same. See the background?”

Brooke recognized the photo as a shot of their mother in her seventies glam.

Bridget Bardot hair, plaid miniskirt and white go-go boots, pale lipstick and blue eye shadow.

“Compare them side by side,” Katie urged.

“She told me once that this pic was taken in the apartment she shared with Reba and some other girls, before she married Dad.” The portion of the interior captured on the film was sparse. There weren’t many details to be seen, other than an orange coffeepot on a kitchen counter and a wallpaper sporting a distinctive teal butterfly pattern. The colors of the photo had yellowed and faded over time.

Katie tapped the second photo. “See here, over Steve McQueen’s shoulder? The same wallpaper.”

Brooke shrugged. “Okay. He was an old boyfriend. No big deal.” Then why was her heart thumping so hard?

“Hey, guys?” Joey said again. “You might want to check the dates.” She gazed steadily at Brooke, and there was a wariness in her expression, as if she expected a bomb to go off at any second.

“There’s a date?” Brooke felt stupid and slow. And reluctant.

“Stamped on the border.”

“March 15, 1977,” Katie read. “Both of them.”

“Mom and Dad were married in April.” Joey hesitated. “Same year.”

“That doesn’t prove anything.” Katie’s voice spiked. “He could have been a friend, a neighbor, even her cousin or some other relative we never got to meet.”

“Sure.” Joey’s eyes were still on Brooke. She knew the numbers that were flying through her older sister’s head. “Except, why did Mom keep the photo hidden? And what was so significant about the other shot that it went into her keepsake box?”

Katie’s shoulders met her ears. “Are you positive they were married in seventy-seven? I always forget.”