“Well, I’m retired now, as you know.”
The whole world knew he wasn’t retired. His contract had been terminated after he blatantly disregarded the fine print and took to a race track—and wrecked a car—with a couple of famous NASCAR drivers. But, she let it go.
“Are you planning to…” Oh, God. Ask it. “…live here?” Please say no. Please say no. Could her heart and head take it if he said yes?
“Yes.”
She sipped her coffee with remarkable nonchalance.
“I’m sick of living in Vegas,” he added, coming down hard on the front two legs of the delicate chair.
“I thought you lived outside of Las Vegas.”
He lifted one shoulder. “Same difference. I have no reason to stay there if I’m not playing ball for the Snake Eyes.”
“What about coaching? Don’t a lot of major leaguers do that after they…after they quit?”
He massaged his right arm again, a gesture she knew so well she could close her eyes and see it. But this time, his features tightened with a grimace.
“I don’t know. We’ll see. I’ll need to find a good PT. You know any?”
A physical therapist who worked on professional athletes? On Cape Cod? “You’ll have to go to Boston.”
“That’s over an hour from here.”
Then go live there. “Two, now, with traffic.” She sipped the coffee again and tried for the most noncommittal voice she could find. “So, what are you going to do here?”
Instead of answering, he snagged the envelope. She lunged for it, but he was too fast. “What is this?”
She wasn’t ready to reveal her plans to Deuce. His dad would probably tell him all about their grandiose scheme, but she didn’t want to. She’d shared her dreams with him a long time ago, and here she was, nine years later, and she still hadn’t realized them. And he was the reason why.
“Just some paperwork on the café.”
“It’s a bar,” he corrected, dropping the packet back on the table. “Not a café.”
“Not anymore.”
“Oh my God.” Diana Lynn’s gravelly tone seized their attention.
They both turned to where she stood in the kitchen doorway, a vision in white from head to toe, her precious Newman in her arms. “I recognize you from your pictures, Deuce.” At the sight of a stranger, Newman yelped and squiggled for freedom.
Deuce stared at Diana for a moment, then stood. “That’s what they call me,” he said.
Diana breezed in, releasing the jittery little spaniel who leaped on Kendra’s lap and barked at Deuce.
“I’m Diana Lynn Turner.” She held out her hand to him. “And thank God for that pacemaker, because otherwise your father would have a heart attack when he comes downstairs.”
Diana beamed at him as they shook hands, sweeping him up and down with the look of keen appraisal she was known to give a smart investment property. Her mouth widened into an appreciative smile that she directed to Kendra.
“No wonder you’ve had a crush on him your whole life. He is simply delicious.”
Diana was nothing if not blunt. Kendra willed her color not to rise as she conjured up a look of utter disinterest and a shrug. “Guess that depends on how you define delicious.”
DEUCE FILED THE lifelong crush comment for later, and turned his attention back to the most unlikely maternal replacement he could imagine.
Her smile was as blinding as the sun in his eyes when he squinted for a pop fly. Jet-black hair pulled straight back offset wide, copper-brown eyes, and she had so few wrinkles she’d either been born with magnificent genes or had her own personal plastic surgeon. While she was certainly not his father’s age of seventy-one, something about her bearing told him she’d passed through her fifties already. And enjoyed every minute of the journey.
He released her power grip. “You’ve done quite a number on this house.”
She arched one shapely eyebrow and toyed with a strand of pearls that hung around her neck. “That’s what I do. Numbers. What on earth made you decide to finally come home?”
No bush-beating for this one, he noted. “I retired.”
She choked out a quick laugh. “Hardly. But your father will be over the moon to see you. How long are you staying?”
He casually scratched his face. He’d already admitted his plans. “A while.”
“How long is a while?” Diana asked.
“For good.”
“Good?” Her bronze eyes widened. “You’re staying here in Rockingham for good?”
“Who is staying for good?” The booming voice of Seamus Monroe accompanied his heavy footsteps on a staircase. He came around the corner and stopped dead in his tracks.
“Good God in Heaven,” he muttered, putting one of his mighty hands over his chest. For a moment Deuce’s gut tightened, thinking he had given his father a heart attack. He barely had time to take in the fact that Dad’s classic black-Irish dark hair had now fully transformed to a distinguished gray, but his eyebrows hadn’t seemed to catch up yet. Then the older man lunged toward him with both arms open and squeezed until neither man could breathe.
Deuce thought his own chest would explode with relief as they embraced. Although his father had been the most demanding human who ever raised a son, he’d also loved that son to distraction. Deuce was counting on that. That and the fact that age might have mellowed the old man.
They slapped each other’s backs and Dad pulled back and took Deuce’s face in his hands, shaking it with only slightly more force than the hug. “What the hell were you thinking getting in that race car, son?”
Maybe mellowed would be pushing it.
Deuce laughed as he pulled away. “I was thinking I wouldn’t get caught.”
“You could have been killed!” his father said, his eyes glinting with a fury Deuce had seen a million times. And those words. How many times had Seamus Monroe uttered “you could have been killed” after Deuce had “gotten caught”?
There was only one answer. Deuce had used it a few times, too. “I wasn’t killed, Dad.”
“But your career was.”
Deuce extended his right arm and shook it out. “Hey, I’m thirty-three. Time to let the young dudes take the mound.”
Seamus made a harumphing noise that usually translated into “baloney” or something harder if ladies weren’t present. Then he brightened and reached out for one of the ladies who was present. “And you’ve met the love of—Diana.”
His life.
Mom couldn’t be the love of his life forever, and the mature man in Deuce knew that. It was that temperamental little boy in him who wanted to punch a wall at the thought.
“Sure did. And I’m impressed with this house. Doesn’t look anything like the old Swain place.”
“Have you seen Monroe’s?” Dad said, throwing a proud look at Kendra.
She still sat at the kitchen table, the brown-and-white dog sizing him up from her lap. The almost-blush that Diana had caused had faded, but Kendra’s eyes were still unnaturally bright.
“Yep,” Deuce said, his gaze still on her. “I saw the bar. Big changes there, too.” He dug his hands into his pockets and leaned against one of the high-gloss countertops. “In fact this whole town looks completely different.”
Dad squeezed Diana a little closer to his side. “This is the reason, Deuce. This lady right here has done it all. She’s a one-woman growth curve.” He slid his hand over her waist and patted her hip, then glanced back at Kendra. “And so’s our little firestorm, Kennie.”
“So what’s going on down there, Dad? Kendra tells me you’re sticking your toes into the Internet waters.”
“We’ve been testing the waters for over a year and we haven’t drowned yet.” Dad laughed softly. “And if everything goes like we think it might, we’re going in deeper. Right, Kennie?”
She leaned forward and slid her mysterious envelope across the table. “And here’s the boat we’re taking out.”
“Oh!” D
iana squealed and grabbed the envelope hungrily. “Let me see! How wonderful that Deuce is here for the final unveiling. Have some coffee, everyone. We’ll go into the family room and have a look at Kennie’s masterpiece.”
Kennie’s masterpiece? Not exactly just some paperwork. Deuce gave her another hard look, but she gathered up the dog and her mug and turned her back to him.
As the women moved to the other room, Deuce sidled up to his dad. “So, how you feeling? That, uh, thing working okay?”
The older man gave him a sly smile. “My thing works fine. I don’t even take that little blue pill.”
Deuce closed his eyes for a moment. “I meant the pacemaker.”
Dad laughed. “I know what you meant. It’s fine. I’ve never been healthier in my life.” He looked to the family room at Diana, his classic Irish eyes softening to a clear blue. “And I haven’t been happier in a long time, either.”
Things had changed, all right. And some things weren’t meant to change back.
“I can tell,” Deuce responded. He purposely kept the note of resignation out of his voice.
He couldn’t argue. Dad looked as vibrant as Deuce could remember him in the past nine years. Not that he’d seen him very often.
In the family room, Kendra had spread computer printouts of bar charts and graphs over a large coffee table. Alongside were architectural blueprints, and hand-drawn sketches of tables and computers. He took a deep breath and let his attention fall on an architect’s drawing of some kind of stage and auditorium. What the hell was a stage doing in Monroe’s?
He could try to deal with Dad’s romance, but messing with the bar he grew up in might be too much.
“So what’s this all about?” he asked.
“This, son, is the future of Monroe’s.” Dad squeezed into a loveseat next to Diana and curled his arm around her shoulder, beaming as he continued. “We’ve tested the concept, made it work profitably and now we’re ready to expand it.”
Deuce dropped onto the sofa across from them, close to where Kendra knelt on the floor organizing the papers. “It already looked pretty expanded to me,” he said.
“Well, we did buy out the card shop next door and added some space,” Diana said. “But Kennie’s plans are much, much bigger than that.”
“Is that so?” He looked at her and waited for an explanation. “How big?”
She met his gaze, and held it, a challenge in her wide blue eyes. “We’re hoping to buy the rest of the block, so we can eventually add a small theater for performance art, a gallery for local artists and a full DVD rental business.”
He worked to keep his jaw from hitting his chest.
“Tell him about the learning center,” his father coaxed.
“Well,” she said, shifting on her hips, “We’re going to add an area just for people who are not technically savvy. They can make appointments with our employees for hands-on Internet training.”
He just stared at her. All he wanted to do was run a sports bar with TVs playing ESPN and beer flowing freely. It sure as hell didn’t take place on the information highway and karaoke night was as close to performance art as he wanted his customers to get.
But Deuce stayed quiet. He’d figure out a strategy. As soon as Dad found out that Deuce planned to buy the place, surely he’d change his mind. And Deuce would buy out Kendra’s fifty percent if he had to. She could open her theater and gallery and learning center somewhere else in Rockingham.
He’d make his father understand that he had a plan for the future and it made sense. It didn’t include baseball for the first time in his life, but that was okay.
His only option was coaching and with his track record for breaking rules, he doubted too many teams would be lined up to have him as a role model for younger players. He had no interest in television, or working an insurance company, or being the spokesperson for allergy medicine, like the rest of the has-been ballplayers of the world.
He just wanted to be home. Maybe he couldn’t be the King of the Rock anymore, but this is where he grew up. And where he wanted to grow old.
But not in a flippin’ Internet café.
That was one compromise he couldn’t make.
IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE to concentrate with Deuce’s long, hard, masculine body taking up half the sofa, his unspoken distaste for her plans hanging in the air. Not to mention the fact that his father now sought his opinion on everything.
Kendra hadn’t counted on this kind of distraction.
“This chart emphasizes the growth of the Internet café business,” she said, but for a moment, she lost her place.
The bar graphs and colored circles swam in front of her. And Deuce’s long, khaki-clad legs were just inches away from her. Her gaze slid to the muscle of his thigh. Newman, the little brat, had actually taken up residence next to him and was staring at him like some kind of star-struck baseball fan. Even dogs were in awe of Deuce.
“You showed us that one, honey,” Diana said quietly, leaning forward to pull another chart. “I think you wanted the research about how Internet cafés are the social centers of this century. How people don’t want to be isolated while they are in cyber-space. Remember? The findings are here.”
Oh, cripes. Of course she remembered. She’d written the analysis of the research. She’d used it to convince Seamus to launch the overhaul of Monroe’s. She’d based her whole future on that trend.
And all she could think about was…thigh muscles.
“What do you think, Deuce?” Seamus asked for the twentieth time. “You see these cafés out in Vegas?”
“Never saw one in my life.”
Kendra gave him an incredulous look, then remembered what his life was like. On the road, in hotels. “But surely you have a computer, a laptop or a PDA, and an email address.”
He nodded. “I told you I got an email from Jack. And some of my friends’ kids taught me a cool game called Backyard Baseball.” He ignored her eye-roll and looked at his father. “Frankly, I don’t know what’s going on here in Cape Cod, but the rest of the world still expects to go into a bar and drink. They can’t smoke, thank God, but I haven’t been in a bar where keyboards replaced cocktails. At least not until today.”
Seamus leaned back and regarded his son. “Well, our bar profits were sinking fast, son. Two years ago, we were as close to the red as I’ve been in many years. Big-name chains have come into this place in droves, squeezing our business with national advertising.”
“Monroe’s has been through tough times before, Dad,” Deuce argued. “It always survives.”
“The demographics of Rockingham have changed,” Diana interjected. “This isn’t the sleepy vacation town it used to be. Our population has skyrocketed, and the town is full of young, savvy, hip residents.”
“And young, hip residents don’t go to bars anymore?” Deuce asked. “They do in every other city I’ve ever been in.”
An uncomfortable silence was his only answer.
Finally, Seamus asked, “What don’t you like about this, Deuce?”
Deuce leaned forward, flexing the thigh muscle Kendra shouldn’t have been watching. “I came home so I could take over Monroe’s and run it as a first-rate sports bar.”
Kendra closed her eyes and took the punch in her stomach. She knew it. She’d known this the minute he’d walked in the door.
Was Deuce Monroe put on this earth for the sole reason of ruining her life? He didn’t know what he’d done last time—the result of their recklessness was her burden, and, ultimately, her loss. But this time, he could see what it meant to her.
And so could Seamus. She looked up at the man who’d been like a father to her ever since her own parents had distanced themselves physically and emotionally. But Seamus’s gaze remained locked on his son, an expression of astonishment, joy and worry mixed in the lines on his face.
How could she let herself forget for one moment that Seamus loved Deuce above all and everything? No matter how many times Deuce had gone against
his wishes, his love for his only child was constant.
“I had no idea, son.”
Kendra just knew what was coming next. There was no way to avoid what was about to be said.
“Dad, the bar’s been in the family for more than seventy years.”
Bingo. There was the bomb she’d been waiting for him to drop. Monroe’s belonged to Monroes. Always had…always will.
Diana leaned forward and snagged Deuce with one of those riveting stares that withered opponents at the negotiating table. “When, exactly, were you planning to tell your father that you intended to carry on that tradition?”
“Today,” he replied without missing a beat. “I wanted to talk in person, not over the phone. My house in Vegas is on the market. I’m planning to move here as soon as we…settle things.”
Seamus took a long, slow breath and pulled Diana back into his side with a gentle tug. “I wish you had told me sooner,” he said to Deuce.
Why? Would that have changed things? Kendra had to bite her lip from shouting out her question. If Seamus had known Deuce wanted to take over the bar, would he have stopped her expansion plans from the beginning? Even when profits were so low they almost had to sell?
“I think Kendra has a say on all this,” Diana finally commented. “She owns forty-nine percent of the business.”
She felt Deuce’s gaze and had no doubt he remembered she’d told him “fifty” percent. Lies. They always come back to bite you.
Kendra shifted again, wishing she weren’t the only one sitting on the floor. “I’m sure you all know how I feel. The expansion is the business I’ve always dreamed of owning.”
“But Monroe’s,” Seamus said quietly, “is my blood.”
And so was Deuce.
Deuce, who hadn’t come home from a road trip when his father had a pacemaker put in. Deuce, who’d refused to go to college on a baseball scholarship as his father had begged him, instead going straight into the minor leagues. Deuce, who had never called her after they’d made love, so therefore had never even found out that she’d gotten pregnant…and lost that child.
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