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Brooke’s knees went out. She sank into her desk chair, compulsively checking the screen on the cell. No, she hadn’t imagined it. Yes, the message was clear.
Get ready. I’m coming for you.
But that didn’t mean she had to go.
THIRTY MINUTES LATER, Brooke was ready, but still unsure, when the knock came at the security entrance in the back of the store. Alyce had returned with a dress and boots she’d snatched off the racks and had listened to none of Brooke’s protests as she affected a quick makeover.
In truth, Brooke’s objections had been mild. The experience of wearing the leather minidress had taught her a few lessons about the power of fashion. Looking good translated to feeling confident. Looking sexy meant her inhibitions were much easier to ignore. Looking really, really sexy was…well, she would soon find out.
If she dared.
DAVID HADN’T KNOWN what to expect. Maybe Brooke, smiling with welcome or frowning with regrets. Maybe even a security guard. For all he knew, his message might have rubbed her the wrong way.
What he hadn’t expected was a woman who oozed so much sex appeal he could taste it. And feel it, too, from the standing-room-only roar in his head to the thickening below his belt.
“Brooke?”
She nodded. Yes, it was her.
He exhaled and said, “You’re beautiful,” because he couldn’t say that she’d given him wood as hard as a baseball bat.
“Too dressy?” Her hands smoothed the champagne garment over her hips. It covered more of her than the leather one, yet she appeared almost nude. He couldn’t figure that out, except that the shimmering fabric really clung to her curves. When she moved, the light hit the dress and it seemed semi-sheer. Her breasts, her thighs, the suggestion of a shadow between them—he could see almost everything, and his imagination filled in the rest. Just when he thought he was going to have a heart attack, she turned and the dress went back to being just a dress.
“You’ll be on the back of my bike,” he said. Damn, he should have hired a limo. She deserved the best.
Yeah, then what’s she doing with you?
“That’s what the boots are for.” She wore knee-high boots, white ones with steep heels. “And I have a jacket.”
“Then let’s go.” Real suave. No wonder she seemed hesitant. “I promised you a night you wouldn’t forget.”
“Yes, you did.” She looked down and her loose, tousled hair fell forward around her face, the glossy brown waves brushing her pinkened cheeks. Her lashes were thick and dark, her eyelids painted platinum to match the dress. She was more put together than last time—and more restrained.
Maybe she’d had second thoughts. Anyone would, reading the newspaper accounts that made him sound like a shiftless drunk. Just like his old man.
“I didn’t know if you’d really come back,” Brooke said softly.
“Why wouldn’t I?” He held out his hand, suddenly more confident. She was shy, not reluctant.
“Come with me,” he coaxed. “Please.”
Go with him, said the voice inside Brooke’s head.
Growing up, wanting for nothing, yet always living her life within the bounds of the family’s expectations, there’d never been a voice. Not one peep of objection from an inner wild child. But ever since the truth about her mother had started coming out, and Brooke had learned that Lindsay Beckham, the intimidatingly self-possessed president of the Martinis and Bikinis club, was actually her half-sister, a new voice had taken hold inside.
The voice contained many shades—Alyce, who’d encouraged Brooke to break out at work; her sisters, who’d shared the same experiences but had somehow managed to avoid suffocating under their weight; even her mother, whom Brooke now realized had practiced subversive rebellions in her own small ways. Primarily, though, Brooke believed that the voice sounded a lot like Lindsay.
Fierce, independent Lindsay, who dared everything, while Brooke dared nothing.
Go with him.
And so she did.
BROOKE’S STOMACH swooped as David sped around a rotary, one of Boston’s traffic circles, at top speed. She’d grown up in Brookline, gone to Wellesley for her MFA, lived and worked in Boston proper for six years before returning to the suburbs to care for her mother for the past year. The city’s maniac drivers didn’t scare her. She’d even been known to fling curse words and bang a few U-eys herself, in her nifty silver Toyota Prius.
But she’d never risked her life on the back of a motorcycle, at the whims and reflexes of a daredevil. By the time they’d negotiated their way through a quicksilver tour of the city, her heart was stuck permanently in her mouth and she’d begun to wonder if David Carerra had a death wish.
The bike slowed, but she didn’t look up. She felt much safer with her head tucked against David’s back and her fingernails slicing through his clothing to the bare skin beneath.
They turned, then stopped, idling. He put a booted foot on the ground and the bike tilted, just enough to make a squeak fly out of her mouth.
He chuckled. “You can open your eyes now.”
“Are we here?”
“Yep.” He cut off the motor. She continued vibrating. “Trattoria Vicenzi. My favorite North End Italian restaurant. Take a look.”
She unclenched her hands and lifted her head. The steamy visor obscured her vision. Apparently she’d been breathing after all.
David twisted around to lift off her unwieldy helmet. She swiped a palm over her sweaty forehead and took bearings. They were in an alleyway. A narrow, shadowy, stinking alleyway, complete with an overflowing Dumpster and a wraith of a cat that disappeared behind a heap of produce containers.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, regretting her promise to kiss the ground if they arrived safely.
David swung a leg over the front of the bike and stood with a groan that told her he was still feeling the effects of his accident. “Don’t go by looks, darlin’.”
Brooke nodded without taking her eyes off him. He was not smoothly handsome or sophisticated like most of the men she’d dated. But it was that very difference that had engaged her. His earthiness, his lack of pretension was refreshing. With every minute they were together, she felt herself easing away from the uptight Brooke and inching toward the freedom she craved.
Her job was all about visuals. She was an aesthetic creature, raised with money and privilege, accustomed to the finer things in life. But she’d also learned to look for beauty in unconventional places, thanks to Elway Sinclair, a window dresser as revered as Worthington itself. Elway had taken Brooke under his wing when she’d first been hired at the store. He’d sent her out onto to the streets of Boston with a camera, sketchpad and the instruction that she must find inspiration from every nook and cranny of the city, before she became an uptight Beacon Hill Brahmin.
David was a good reminder that she had become complacent in recent years, forgetting to stretch her boundaries beyond Newbury Street and Hawthorn Lane.
Brooke traced a finger across the fogged visor. Not tonight. Tonight, she was alight with sensation. Her body was cold and trembling on the surface, but ridden with rivers of molten fire underneath.
David extended a hand.
She gave him hers, sliding off the bike as discreetly as she could in a dress that was slit up to mid-thigh. His hand felt like a baseball glove—big, warm, leathery, enveloping. She glanced sidelong at him as they ducked beneath a low brick arch and descended a short flight of steps to an underground back entrance. Even stiff and bruised, he moved like a well-oiled athlete. The fire inside her bubbled another millimeter closer to the surface.
A short, dank hall gave way to bright lights and stainless steel, steam and heat and noise. Cleavers swung, water sprayed, pans sizzled. Shouts went up when David appeared. Brooke lost his hand as he was surrounded by cooks in dirty aprons, who clapped him on the back and called out, “Paisano!”
“Can we get a table—something out of the way?” David broke free and put his arm around her. “This is Brooke.”
Gestures of approval punctuated the calls of “Ciao, bella,” and “Caldo.”
Brooke’s bare skin prickled despite the heat in the kitchen. Overwhelmed by the lively greeting that was so different from the murmuring maître d’ she’d expected, she could only lift a hand and give a tiny wave. She wanted new experiences and this certainly qualified.
They were led from the kitchen by one of the cooks. The dining room was dark and labyrinthine, with several private nooks. They were given a nice corner spot, with a round table so small they knocked knees when they sat. David asked for the night’s special and a bottle of expensive wine.
“Pio Cesare Barolo?” Brooke opened the napkin, a big one that covered her lap. “Do good old southern boys know about wine?”
“They do when they were adopted by Italian sugar beet farmers.”
“Italian sugar beet farmers?” She was delighted. “Is there such a thing?”
“Sure. Mama and Papa Carerra. But I was thirteen when I went to live with them, so I call them Marie and Geno.”
She chafed her thighs beneath the napkin. “Isn’t it unusual to be adopted when you’re thirteen?”
His gaze held steady. “Sixteen, actually. They were my foster parents before the adoption.”
“I’m sorry you lost your parents.”
“I didn’t lose them. They lost me.”
“Oh.” She wasn’t sure what he meant. They were alive? She wanted to ask, and the hard, bright jewels that were his eyes practically dared her to ask, but her Bostonian reserve wouldn’t allow it. “I lost both of mine,” she said instead. “My dad of a heart attack. My mother passed on only a few months ago. Pancreatic cancer.”
David touched her arm. “That’s rough.”
Brooke nodded, having to swallow the wave of grief that rose unexpectedly. When she was certain she could speak without a tremor, she unclenched her teeth. “It’s been complicated, too.” She found herself speaking in a rush, telling him—a virtual stranger—about the events that loomed so large in her mind. She didn’t know why, except that she was comfortable with him. And she wanted to make a connection beyond wearing a sexy dress and flirting. “My sisters and I recently learned that my mother had been hiding a secret past during her entire marriage. We have a half-sister we never knew about.”
His eyebrows went up.
A brief chuckle rasped her throat. “Turns out that our family history isn’t as stodgy as we’d always believed.”
His gaze dropped to her plunging V-neckline. “You don’t seem stodgy to me.”
“My ancestors.” On impulse, she sat taller, letting her lightweight coverup slip off her shoulders. David scanned the dress—her body—with an appreciation so intense his gaze was like a green laser beam passing over her. A scorching green laser beam. “I’m not stodgy,” she said, which would have usually been a lie, but not tonight. “Not in the least.”
“Absolutely not,” he echoed in a lazy, singsong voice so warm and welcoming it felt like lounging in a hammock on a summer day.
She wanted to bask in it, even though she suspected that he’d seen through her charade and was teasing her again. “I like your accent, Georgia.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “I like yours, too, Boston.”
“Brookline,” she said. “I live in Brookline now. Again, that is. I grew up there, and moved back home when my mother became ill. We had a nurse, too, but she wanted—I wanted—we all wanted a family member there with her.”
“And they chose you, the artsy rebel of the bunch?”
Ah, the power of a sexy dress. He really had the wrong idea about her. She loved it.
“I’m also the oldest,” she explained. And the most responsible. But both Joey and Katie had been there to help, visiting often, spelling Brooke whenever they saw she was overwhelmed, especially in those final months when her mother had been in and out of the hospital.
“You’re not anymore,” David said.
“What?” She pressed her fingertips to the corners of her eyes and gave her head a shake. “Oh. You mean being the oldest. I keep forgetting about that. It’s strange.”
“Like getting a new identity. One you didn’t ask for.”
“Yes!” She looked at him, struck by his insight. Her sisters had been shocked by the revelation about Lindsay, of course, but their positions in the family hadn’t changed significantly. Joey was still a middle sibling, straddling the line between proper behavior and improper sass. Katie remained the free-spirited baby sister.
Only Brooke, who’d always taken her role as the big sister very seriously, had been completely displaced.
But maybe that’s good for you, she told herself. Maybethat’s part of why you feel so different tonight.
“It’s like I’m not me anymore,” she said. Worse, her identity had been altered without her consent. “Especially with my mother gone, too.”
Her father, John Winfield, had been the rock of the family, and Daisy Winfield had been the heart. While her grandparents remained on their estate and there was Great Aunt Josephine next door, keeping a stern eye on her nieces, the family she’d always counted on would never be the same.
“I know what that’s like,” David said in a wry tone.
Before she could ask why, a waiter in black pants and a crisp white shirt arrived with the bottle of wine. “On the house,” he said while pouring their glasses. “Courtesy of Mr. Vicenzi.”
The waiter departed. “Freebies,” Brooke said, heartened at the further evidence that David wasn’t as friendless as it had first appeared. “So it seems you aren’t despised everywhere.”
He shrugged, absently swirling the wine.
She remembered that he was on pain medication. “You shouldn’t be drinking with a head injury.”
She’d asked earlier how he was feeling. He’d been cavalier in brushing off the severity of the accident, claiming he had only a few bumps and bruises. The wide bandage that had wrapped his head was now a large patch over his temple.
“I never follow the rules.” He lifted the glass. “I’ll have a couple of sips, to be polite.”
“All right.” She touched their glasses. “Cheers to those who wish us well.”
“All the rest can go to hell.” He tipped his glass and drank with gusto, one long pull that drew her eyes to his strong neck. He had muscles there, too. He probably even had muscles in his pinkie toes.
“Let’s not consign them to hell.” She put a hand on his, urging him to put the glass down. “Maybe a few hours in a sauna cranked high.”
He looked at her through narrowed eyes. “I suspect that you don’t have enemies.”
After a moment’s thought about the old guard at work, who couldn’t really be called enemies, Brooke conceded. “I guess not.” She’d led a remarkably inoffensive life. “How did you know?”
“I can’t imagine anyone hating you.”
“Aww.” She patted his hand. “I don’t really believe that you’re hated, either.”
He laughed without humor. “Maybe you haven’t been reading the papers this past summer.”
“That’s not you. Not the real you. I’ve only known you for a few hours and already I can tell that. The cooks didn’t seem to think so either. Or Mr. Vicenzi.”
“So all I have to do to repair my rep is go around introducing myself to strangers on the street.”
“Do you care that much?” She thought he did. His flippant sarcasm didn’t cover the wounds.
He shook shaggy bangs out of his eyes. “Nah.”
“Are you sure? Maybe that’s why you returned to Boston.”
“To be chased down and cornered like a coon? If I had my druthers, I’d leave that particular pleasure to someone else.”
