Their gaze stayed locked a little too long and she felt a wave of heat singe her cheeks. How much did he remember? That she’d admitted a lifelong crush on her big brother’s best friend and biggest rival?
Did he remember that she’d never once used the word no during their passionate night together? That she’d whispered “I love you” when her body had melted into his and a childhood of fantasizing about one boy finally came true?
Sophie hustled toward the hostess stand, holding out a manila envelope, and blessedly breaking the silence.
“The kid from Kinko’s dropped this off,” she said, giving Deuce a quick glance as though to apologize for the interruption. Or to steal another look.
Kendra took the envelope. “Are you sure they sent over everything, Soph?”
The young woman nodded. “And the disk is in there, too. For backup.”
Kendra gripped the package a little tighter. This was it. Seamus and Diana Lynn were on their way to Boston, New York and San Francisco to nail down the financing that would allow her to finish the transformation of Monroe’s into the premier Internet café and artists’ space in all of Cape Cod. Two years of research and planning—and what seemed like a lifetime of agonizingly slow higher education—all came down to this presentation.
“Seamus just called,” Sophie added. “He’s anxious to see it today, so he has time to go over any fine points with you before they leave.”
She glanced at Deuce, who managed to take up too much space and breathe too much air just by being there. He’d always be larger than life in her wretched, idolizing eyes, regardless of the fact that he was responsible for putting an end to all of her dreams.
Then a sickening thought seized her. Everyone knew that Deuce’s baseball career was over. Was he back for good? If so, then he had the ability to wreck her plans once again. Not because she would fall into his bed like a lovesick schoolgirl—she’d never make that mistake again—but because he had the power to change his father’s mind.
If he wanted Monroe’s, Seamus would give it to him. If Deuce wanted the moon and stars and a couple of meteors for good measure, Seamus would surely book a seat on the next rocket launch to go get them.
The prodigal son had returned, and the surrogate daughter might just be left out in the cold.
Kendra squared her shoulders and studied the face she’d once loved so much it hurt her heart just to look at him. Deuce Monroe could not waltz back into Rockingham and wreck her life…again.
But she’d never give him the satisfaction of knowing he had any power—then or now.
“You can follow me over there,” she said with such believable indifference that she had to mentally pat herself on the back.
“You can ride with me,” he replied.
“No thanks.” How far could she push indifference? Didn’t he remember what had happened the last time they’d been in a car together?
“You can trust me.” He winked at her. “I’ve only been banned from race tracks, not the street.”
Of course, he was referring to his well-publicized car crash, not their past.
“I just meant that I saw your father yesterday. You haven’t seen him in years. No doubt you’ll want to stay longer than I do.”
“Depends on how I’m received.” He turned toward the door, but shot her a cocky grin. “It’s been a while.”
“No kidding.”
The grin widened as he added another one of those endless full-body eye exams that tested her ability to stand without sinking into the knees that had turned to water. “Is that your way of saying you missed me, Kendra?”
If any cells in her body had remained at rest, they woke up now and went to work making her flush and ache and tingle.
She managed to clear her throat. “I’m sure this is impossible for you to comprehend, Deuce, but somehow, some way, without formal therapy or controlled substances, every single resident in the town of Rockingham, Massachusetts, has managed to survive your long absence. Every. Single. One.”
He just laughed softly and gave her a non-verbal touché with those delicious brown eyes. “Come on, Ken-doll. I’ll drive. Do you have everything you need?”
No. She needed blinders to keep from staring at him, and a box of tissue to wipe the drool. Throw in some steel armor for her heart and a fail-safe chastity belt, and then she’d be good to go.
But he didn’t need to know that. Any more than he needed to know why she’d dropped out of Harvard in the middle of her junior year.
“I have everything I need.” She held the envelope in front of her chest and gave him her brightest smile. “This is all that matters.”
She couldn’t forget that.
“SO WHAT THE HELL happened to this place?” Deuce threw a glance to his right, ostensibly at the cutesy antique stores and art galleries that lined High Castle Boulevard, but he couldn’t resist a quick glimpse at the passenger in his rented Mustang.
Because she looked a lot better than the changes in his hometown. Her jeans-clad legs were crossed and she leaned her elbow out the open window, her head casually tipped against her knuckles as the spring breeze lifted strands of her shoulder-length blond hair.
“What happened? Diana Lynn Turner happened,” she answered.
The famous Diana Lynn again. “Don’t tell me she erected the long pink walls and endless acres of housing developments I saw on the way into town. Everything’s got a name. Rocky Shores. Point Place. Shoreline Estates. Since when did we have estates in Rockingham?”
“Since Diana Lynn arrived,” she said, with a note of impatience at the fact that he didn’t quite get the Power Of Diana thing.
“What is she? A one-man construction company?”
Kendra laughed softly, a sound so damn girly that it caused an unexpected twist in his gut. “She didn’t build the walls or houses, but she brought in the builders, convinced the Board of Selectmen to influence the Planning Commission, then started her own real estate company and marketed the daylights out of Rockingham, Mass.”
“Why?”
“For a number of reasons.” She held up her index finger. “One, because Cape Cod is booming as a Hamptons-type destination and we want Rockingham to get a piece of the action instead of just being a stop en route to more interesting places.” She raised a second finger. “Two, because the town coffers were almost empty and the schools were using outdated books and the stoplights needed to be computerized and the one policeman in town was about to retire and we had no money to attract a new force.” Before point number three, he closed his fist around her fingers and gently pushed her hand down.
“I get the idea. Progress.” He reluctantly let go of her silky-smooth skin. “So Diana Lynn isn’t a gold digger.”
She let out a quick laugh. “She’s a gold digger all right. She’s dug the gold right out of Rockingham and put it back in those empty coffers.”
He was silent for a minute as he turned onto Beachline Road and caught the reflection of April sunshine on the deep, blue waters of Nantucket Sound. Instead of the unbroken vista he remembered, the waterfront now featured an enclave of shops, which had to be brand-new even though they sported that salt-weathered look of New England. Fake salt-weathered, he realized. Like when they banged nicks into perfectly good furniture and called it “distressed.”
He didn’t like Diana Lynn Turner. Period. “So, just how far into him are her claws?”
“Her claws?” Kendra’s voice rose in an amused question. “She doesn’t have claws, Deuce. And if you’d bothered to come home once in a while to see your father in the past few years, you’d know that.”
He tapped the brakes at a light he could have sworn was not on the road when he was learning to drive. “That didn’t take long.”
“What?”
“The guilt trip.”
She blew out a little breath. “You’ll get no guilt from me, Deuce.”
Not even for not calling after a marathon of unforgettable sex? He didn’t believe her. “
No guilt? What would you call that last comment?”
As she shifted in her seat, he noticed her back had straightened and the body language of detachment she was trying so hard to project was rapidly disappearing. “Just a fact, Deuce. You haven’t seen your dad for a long, long—”
“Correction. I haven’t been in Rockingham for a long, long time. Dad came to every game the Snakes played in Boston. And he came out to Vegas a few times, too.”
“And you barely had time to have dinner with him.”
This time he exhaled, long and slow. He didn’t expect her to understand. He didn’t expect anyone to understand. Especially the man he was about to go see. Dinner with Dad was about all the motivational speaking he could stand. The endless coaching, the pushing, the drive. Deuce liked to do things his way. And that was rarely the way his father wanted them done.
Staying away was just easier.
“I talk to your brother Jack every once in a while,” he said, as though that connection to Rockingham showed he wasn’t quite the Missing Person she was making him out to be.
“Really?” She seemed surprised. “He never mentions that.”
“He seems to like his job.” It was the first thing he could think of to prove he really did talk to Jack.
She nodded. “He was born to be in advertising, that’s for sure. He’s married to that company, I swear.”
How could he resist that opening? Besides, he was dying to know. “What about you?” He remembered the hostess calling her Ms. Locke. But these days, that didn’t mean anything. “Got a husband, house and two-point-five kids yet, Ken-doll?”
Her silence was just a beat too long. Did she still hate the nickname he’d bestowed on her when she was a skinny little ten-year-old spying on the big boys in the basement?
“No, I don’t, Seamus.”
He grinned at the comeback. “So why aren’t you in New York or Boston? Don’t tell me that Hahvahd education landed you right back in the old Rockeroo.”
He saw her swallow. “Actually, I never graduated from Harvard.”
He glanced at her, noticing the firm set of her jaw. “No kidding? You were halfway through last time…” He let his voice drift a little. “When my mother passed away.”
A whisper of color darkened her cheeks as she was no doubt wondering what else he recalled about his last visit to Rockingham. Surprisingly, everything. Every little detail remained sharp in his memory.
“I got very involved in business here,” she said curtly.
Something in her voice said “don’t go there” so he sucked in the salty air through the open windows of his rental car, immediately punched with memories.
“Smells like baseball,” he said, almost to himself.
“Excuse me?”
“April in New England. It smells like spring, and spring means baseball.” At least, it had for the past twenty-seven years of his life. Since he’d first picked up a bat and his father had started Rockingham’s Little League just so Deuce could play T-ball, spring had meant “hit the field.”
“You miss it?” she asked, her gentle tone actually more painful than the question.
“Nah,” he said quickly. “I was about to retire anyway.” A total lie. He was thirty-three and threw knuckleballs half the time. His elbow might be aching, but he could still pitch. But his taste for fast cars had lured him to a race track just for fun.
Fun that was most definitely not welcomed by the owners of the Nevada Snake Eyes, or the lawyers who wrote the fine print in his contract. He rubbed his right elbow, a move that he’d made so many times in his life, it was like breathing.
“You had a good year last year,” she noted.
He couldn’t help smiling, thinking of her little speech back at the bar. “You think anybody in Rockingham slowed down from all that surviving long enough to notice?”
Her return smile revealed a hint of dimples against creamy skin. “Yeah. We noticed.”
The Swain mansion was around the corner. Instinctively, he slowed the car, unwilling to face his father, and wanting to extend the encounter with Kendra a little longer.
“I see my great season didn’t stop someone from redecorating the walls of Monroe’s.” With mountains, instead of…memories.
Her smile grew wistful. “Things change, Deuce.”
Evidently, they did. But if he had his way, he could change things right back again. Maybe not the pink houses and antique shops. But he sure as hell could make Monroe’s a happening bar and recapture some of his celebrated youth in the meantime.
And while he was at it, maybe he could recapture some of those vivid memories of one night with Kendra. “Then I’ll need someone to help me get reacquainted with the new Rockingham,” he said, his voice rich with invitation.
She folded her hands on top of the envelope she’d been clinging to and stared straight ahead. “I’m sure you’ll find someone.”
His gaze drifted over her again. He’d found someone. “I’m sure I will.”
CHAPTER TWO
DEUCE DID A CLASSIC double take as they rounded the last corner to where a rambling, dilapidated mansion built by the heir to a sausage-casing fortune once stood.
“Whoa.” He blew out a surprised breath. “I bet old Elizabeth Swain would roll over in her grave.”
Kendra tried to see the place through his eyes. Instead of the missing shingles, broken windows and overgrown foliage he must remember, there stood a rambling three-story New England cape home with gray shake siding and a black roof, trimmed with decks and columns and walls of glass that overlooked Nantucket Sound. The driveway was lined with stately maples sprouting spring-green leaves. The carpet of grass in the front looked ready for one of Diana’s lively games of croquet.
“Dad lives here?” Before she could, he corrected himself. “I mean, his…his friend does?”
Kendra laughed softly. “He almost lives here. But he’s old-fashioned, you know. He won’t officially move in until they get married.”
Deuce tore his gaze from the house to give her a look of horror. “Which will be…?”
As soon as the expansion of Monroe’s was financed and finalized. “They’re not in a hurry, really. They’re both busy with their careers and—”
“Careers?” He sounded as though he didn’t think owning Monroe’s was a career. Well too bad for that misconception. It was her career. “Not that I think they should rush into anything,” he added.
He pulled into the driveway that no longer kicked up gravel since Diana had repaved it in gray-and-white brick. As he stopped the car, he rubbed his elbow again and peered up at the impressive structure.
“I can’t believe this is the old Swain place. We used to break in and have keg parties in there.”
Oh, yes. She remembered hearing about those. At three years younger than Jack and his Rock High friends, Kendra had never participated in a “Swain Brain Drain,” but she’d certainly heard the details the next day.
Her information had come courtesy of the heating duct between her bedroom and the basement in the Locke home. When the heat was off, Kendra could lie on her bedroom floor, her ear pressed against the metal grate, and listen to boy talk, punctuated by much laughter and the crack of billiard balls.
It was her special secret. She knew more about Deuce than all the girls who adored him at Rock High. Jackson Locke’s little sister knew everything. At least, as long as the heat wasn’t turned on.
“You won’t recognize the inside of this house,” she told him. “Diana’s got a magical touch with decor. And she’s an amazing photographer. All the art in Monroe’s is her work. And look at this place. She’s never met a fixer-upper she couldn’t—”
He jerked the car door open. “Let’s go.”
She sat still for a moment, the rest of her sentence still in her mouth. What did he have against this woman he’d never even bothered to meet? It was almost ten years since his mother had died. Didn’t he think Seamus deserved some happiness?
She
hustled out of the car to catch up with him as he walked toward the front door. “We can just go in through the kitchen,” she told him.
He paused in mid step, then redirected himself to where she pointed. “You’re a regular here, huh?”
A regular? She lived in the unattached guest house a hundred yards away on the beach. “I come over with the sales reports every day.” She jiggled the handle of a sliding glass door and opened it. “Diana! Seamus? Anybody home?”
In the distance a dog barked.
“I have a surprise for you,” she called. Did she ever.
“We’re upstairs, Kennie!” A woman’s voice called. “Get some coffee, hon. We’ll be down as soon as we get dressed.”
She felt Deuce stiffen next to her.
A smile tugged at the corners of her lips. “They’re always…well, they’re in love.” She didn’t have to look at him to get his reaction. She could feel the distaste rolling off him. As if he’d never spent the night at a woman’s house.
“Have a seat.” She touched one of the high-back chairs at the table under a bay window. “Want a cup of coffee?”
“No, thanks.” He folded his long frame into a chair, his gaze moving around the large country kitchen, to the cozy Wedgewood-blue family room on the other side of a long granite counter, and the formal dining room across the hall. “You’re right. I can’t believe this is the same old wreck.”
She decided not to sing Diana’s praises again. Taking a seat across from him, she set a mug of steaming coffee on the table, and carefully placed the envelope in front of her.
With one long look at Deuce, she took a deep breath. Before Diana swooped in here and charmed him, before Seamus barreled in and coached him, before the rest of Rockingham discovered him, she had to know. She just had to know for herself.
“Why did you come back?”
He leaned the chair on two legs and folded his arms across the breadth of his powerful chest, the sleeves of his polo shirt tightening over his muscular arms. She willed her gaze to stay on his face and not devour every heart-stopping ripple and cut.