Rules of the Game

by Nora Roberts

  Angeles school system that morning, not to mention a deficit in the workforce. After the twelve-inning victory, Brooke thought the players deserved a bit of adulation. She also wondered if she’d ever be able to fight her way through so that Parks would see her. The impulse to surprise him, she realized, had not been practical. A truant father hoisted a truant second-grader onto his shoulders. Brooke grinned. Maybe not practical, but it was going to be fun.

  Pushing her sunglasses atop her head, Brooke narrowed her eyes against the sun and waited for the plane to touch down. As it stopped being a dot in the sky and took on form, she began to experience the first flicker of nerves. She fidgeted nervously with her bag while she stood, crushed shoulder to shoulder, with excited fans.

  He’ll be tired, she thought as dozens of conversations buzzed around her. He’s probably looking forward to going home and sleeping for twenty-four hours. Brooke ran a hand through her hair. I should have told him I was coming. She shifted her weight to the other foot, curled her fingers around the chain link in front of her and watched the plane glide to a stop.

  The moment the door opened, the cheering started, building, rising as the first men began to deplane. They waved back, looking tired and somehow vulnerable without their uniforms. Men, she thought. Simply men suffering from jet lag and perhaps a few hangovers. Then she smiled, deciding that the gladiators might have looked precisely the same the day after a bout.

  As soon as she saw him, she felt warm. Beside Brooke, a teenager grabbed her companion and squealed.

  “Oh, there’s Parks Jones! He’s bee-utiful.”

  Brooke swallowed a laugh as she thought of how Parks would react to the adjective.

  “Every time I watch him, my knees get weak.” The teenager pressed her lithe young body against the fence. “Did you see him in the commercial? When he smiled, it was like he was looking right at me. I nearly died.”

  Though she didn’t take her eyes off Parks, Brooke smiled inwardly. My plan exactly, she thought, pleased with herself. Why do I feel like a woman watching her man come home from the wars?

  Though her sharp director’s eye had seen a group of tense and tired men, the fans saw heroes. They cheered them. Some of the players merely waved and moved on, but most came up to the fence to exchange words, jokes, a touch of hands. Brooke watched Parks walk toward the barrier with a man she recognized as Snyder, the first baseman. She wondered, by the intensity of their discussion, if they were outlining infield strategy.

  “It would only take twenty-five or thirty cans of shaving cream to fill his locker,” Snyder insisted.

  “Takes too long and evaporates too fast,” Parks commented. “You’ve got to be practical, George.”

  Snyder swore mildly and lifted his hand in acknowledgment to a shout in the crowd. “Got a better idea?”

  “Carbon dioxide.” Parks scanned the crowd as they neared it. “Quick and efficient.”

  “Hey, yeah!” Pleased, Snyder gave him a slap on the back. “Knew your brains were good for something, Einstein.”

  “And as long as I help you work out the mechanics,” Parks added, “my locker doesn’t get filled with the thinking man’s shaving cream.”

  “There’s that, too,” Snyder agreed. “Would you look at these people?” His grin widened. “Fantastic.”

  Parks started to agree, then spotted a mass of red hair touched with gold in the sunlight. The fatigue drained as though someone had pulled a cork. “Fantastic,” he murmured and walked straight toward Brooke.

  The teenager beside her made a moaning, melting sound and took a death grip on her friend’s arm. “He’s coming over here,” she managed in a choked whisper. “Right over here. I know I’m going to die.”

  Brooke tilted her chin up so that her eyes would stay level with his as he stopped on the other side of the fence. “Hi.” Parks’s hand closed over hers on the metal wire. The simple contact was as intimate as anything she had ever known.

  “Hi.” Brooke smiled slowly, accepting the flare of desire and the sense of closeness without question.

  “Can I get a lift?”

  “Anytime.”

  He pressed his lips to the fingers still curled around the wire. “Meet me inside? I have to get my baggage.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Brooke saw the two teenage girls gawking. “Great catch last night.”

  He grinned before he stepped away. “Thanks.”

  Snyder caught him by the arm as Brooke melted back into the crowd. “Hey, I like that catch better.”

  “Off-limits,” Parks said simply, making his way down the line of fans and outstretched hands.

  “Aw, come on, Parks, we’re teammates. All for one and one for all.”

  “Forget it.”

  “The trouble with Parks,” Snyder began to tell a grandfatherly type behind the fence, “is he’s selfish. I make his throws look good. I bite the bullet when he lines a hospital pitch at me. And what thanks do I get?” He sent Parks a hopeful smile. “You could at least introduce me.”

  Parks grinned as he signed a snatch of paper a fan thrust through a hole in the fence. “Nope.”

  It took him nearly thirty minutes to get away from the crowd and through the terminal. Impatience was growing in him. The simple touch of fingers outside had whetted his appetite for a great deal more. He’d never been lonely on the road before. Even if there was a rainout or an off day away from home, you were surrounded by people you knew. You became as close as a family—close enough to spend endless evenings together or opt to spend one alone without bruising feelings. No, he’d never been lonely. Until this time.

  Parks couldn’t count the times he had thought of her over the last four days, but he knew that everything had suddenly slipped back into focus the moment he had seen her standing there. Now he saw her again.

  Brooke leaned back against a pillar near the baggage belt, Parks’s suitcase at her feet. She smiled but didn’t straighten as she saw him. She’d hate to have him know just how crazily her pulse was racing. “You travel light,” she commented.

  He cupped her face in his hand and, oblivious to the people milling around them, brought her close for a long, hard kiss.

  “I missed you,” he murmured against her mouth, then kissed her again.

  There were enough of his teammates still loitering around to start up a chorus of approval.

  “Excuse me.” Snyder tapped Parks on the shoulder and grinned engagingly at Brooke. “I believe you’ve made a mistake. I’m George Snyder. This is our aging batboy.” He gave Parks an affectionate pat.

  “How do you do.” Brooke extended her hand and had it enveloped in a huge, hard palm. “Too bad about those two strikeouts last night.”

  There were several jeers as Snyder winced. “Actually, I’m luring the Valiants into complacency.”

  “Oh.” Amused, Brooke gave him a big smile. “You did very well.”

  “Sorry, Snyder, time for your shot.” Parks signaled to two teammates, who agreeably hooked their arms through Snyder’s to haul him away.

  “Aw, come on, Jones, give me a break!” Good-naturedly, Snyder let himself be dragged away. “I just want to discuss my strategy with her.”

  “Goodbye, George.” Brooke waved as Parks bent to retrieve his bag.

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  With her fingers laced through his, Brooke had no choice but to follow. “Parks, you might have introduced me to your friends.”

  “Dangerous men,” he stated. “All dangerous men.”

  With a chuckle, she matched her pace to his. “Yes, I could see that. Especially the one holding a toddler on each hip.”

  “There are a few exceptions.”

  “Are you one?”

  Parks caught her around the waist and drew her close against him. “Uh-uh.”

  “Oh, good. Want to come home with me and tell me your strategy?”

  “That’s the best offer I’ve had today.” After tossing his bag in the rear of her car, Parks s
prawled in the passenger seat. Accustomed to her driving pattern now, he relaxed and began to unwind by rambling about the previous day’s game. Brooke said little, pleased to listen, glad that she had arranged to take the day off so that they could have a few hours together, alone.

  “The commercial aired during each play-off game, you know,” she commented as they headed out of town.

  “How’d it look?” Parks laid his head back against the seat. God, it was good to know he didn’t have to go anywhere or do anything for twenty-four hours.

  “Fantastic.” As the road opened up, so did the Datsun’s throttle. “And I have it from the source that it plays very well.”

  “Hmm?”

  “A teenager girl in that mob today.” With near perfect mimicry, Brooke related the girl’s comments. She caught Parks’s automatic grimace at the term bee-utiful but swallowed a chuckle as she continued.

  “Nice to know I devastate sixteen-year-old girls,” he said dryly.

  “You’d be surprised at the buying power of sixteen-year-old girls.” With experienced ease, Brooke negotiated the curves on the narrowing road. “Not so much directly, certainly, but indirectly through their parents. And since they’d like their teenage boyfriends to make their knees weaken, too, they’ll push them toward de Marco jeans, shirts, belts, ad infinitum.” Tossing her hair back, she slid her eyes to his. “And you do have a great smile.”

  “Yeah.” He gave a modest sigh. “I do.”

  Brooke stopped in her driveway with a deliberate jerk that had him swearing. Wisely slipping from the car before he could retaliate, she headed up the path.

  “Just for that,” Parks began as he dragged his bag out of the back, “I’m not going to give you the present I bought you.”

  At the door, Brooke turned, her grin changing to a look of bewilderment. “You bought me a present?”

  Because she looked like a child who expected to be handed a brightly wrapped empty box, Parks treated it lightly. “I did. But I’m seriously considering keeping it myself now.”

  “What is it?”

  “Are you going to open the door?”

  Brooke shrugged, trying to pretend indifference as she turned the key. “There’s a fire laid,” she said as she breezed inside. “Why don’t you light it while I get us some coffee?”

  “Okay.” Setting his bag down, Parks stretched travel-cramped muscles. With a wince, he pressed his fingers to the ribs still sore from their contact with Astroturf.

  She’d brought some of her garden inside, he noted, spotting the bowl of vibrant mums and zinnias on the side table across the room. The table, he observed, was Queen Anne; the bowl, dimestore special. Grinning, he went to the hearth. The combination suited her—the exquisite and the practical.

  Parks struck a match and set it to the carefully rolled paper beneath the kindling. Dry wood caught with a crackle and a whoosh. He inhaled the smell that brought back flickering images of the past; evenings in the cozy parlor of his family home, camping trips with his uncle and cousins, weekends in England at the home of a college friend. He wanted to add to the pictures now with the memory of Brooke lying in his arms in front of the simmering fire while they made slow, endless love.

  When he heard her returning, Parks stood, turning to face her as she entered with a tray holding a bottle and two glasses. “I thought you might want wine instead.”

  Smiling, Parks took the tray from her. “Yes.” After setting the tray on the hassock, Parks lifted the bottle, examining the label with a lifted brow. “Is this a celebration?”

  “A precelebration,” Brooke countered. “I expect you to win tomorrow.” She picked up both glasses, holding them out. “And if you don’t, we’ll have had the wine in any case.”

  “Seems fair.” Parks poured pale gold liquid into the stemmed glasses. Taking one from her, he clinked the rims together. “To the game?” he asked with a slow smile.

  Brooke felt the quick nervous flutter in her stomach and nodded. “To the game,” she agreed and drank. Her eyes widened but remained steady when he reached out to take a handful of her hair.

  “I saw this in the sunlight,” he murmured. “Even in that mob of people at the airport, I’m not sure what I would have done if that fence hadn’t been in the way.” He let it sift through his fingers. “It was a long four days, Brooke.”

  She nodded, taking his hand to draw him onto the sofa beside her. The curves of her body seemed to fit naturally against the lines of his. “You’re tense,” she said quietly.

  “Postseason games.” He drew her closer, knowing the nerves would gradually drain before they built again the next day. “Maybe the lucky ones are the players raking leaves in their backyards in October.”

  “But you don’t really think so.”

  Parks laughed. “No, I don’t really think so. The play-offs pump you up until you’re ready to explode, but the series . . .” He trailed off with a shake of his head. He didn’t want to let his mind run that far ahead. The rules were three out of five—they weren’t there yet. For now he didn’t want to think of it, but of the woman beside him, the quiet afternoon and the long evening ahead. He thought that he’d remember her this way, a little pensive, with the smell of woodsmoke and fall flowers mixing with her own perfume. His mind drifted lazily, comfortably, as he sipped the iced wine and watched the flames dance.

  “Have you been busy?”

  Brooke tilted her head in absent agreement. She didn’t want to think of work any more than Parks did. “The usual,” she said vaguely. “E.J. talked me into seeing a perfectly dreadful movie where the cast pranced around in mythological costumes and shot lightning bolts.”

  “Olympian Revenge?”

  “It had a talking three-head dragon.”

  “That’s the one. I caught it in Philadelphia last month when we had a rainout.”

  “I saw the mike in the frame three times.”

  Parks chuckled at her professional disdain. “Nobody else did,” he assured her. “They were all asleep.”

  “Gross ineptitude keeps me awake.” She leaned her head against his shoulder. It occurred to her how empty her home had been for the last few days, and how cozy it felt again. Brooke had never felt the need to share it before. In fact, she had always had a strong proprietary feeling about what was hers. Now, sitting quietly on the sofa, she realized she had already begun to give up her privacy, willingly and with total unawareness. Turning her head, she studied Parks’s profile. “I missed you,” she said at length.

  He turned his head as well so that their lips were close, not quite touching. “I’d hoped you would.” Then he shifted so that his mouth grazed her cheek. She trembled. Not yet, he told himself as the heat flared inside him. Not quite yet. “Maybe I’ll give you that present after all.”

  Brooke’s lips curved against his throat. “I don’t believe you bought me anything at all.”

  Recognizing the ploy but willing to play, Parks rose. “You’ll have to apologize for that,” he said soberly as he walked to his suitcase. He flipped open the case then rummaged inside. When he stood again, Parks had a white box in his hands. Brooke regarded it curiously but with some of the wariness he had noted outside.

  “What is it?”

  “Open it and find out,” he suggested, dropping it into her lap.

  Brooke turned it over, examining the plain white box, testing it for weight. She wasn’t a woman accustomed to spontaneous gifts and in the short time he had known her, Parks had already given her two. “You didn’t have to—”

  “You have to give your sister a Christmas present,” he said mildly, sitting beside her again. “You’re not my sister and it isn’t Christmas.”

  Brooke frowned. “I’m not sure I understand the logic in that,” she murmured then opened the lid. Packed in wads of tissue paper was a fat pink ceramic hippo with heavily lashed eyes, a flirtatious grin and varicolored polka dots. With a laugh, Brooke drew it out. “She’s gorgeous!”

  “She reminded me of y
ou,” Parks commented, pleased with the laugh and the look of humor in her eyes when she turned them to him.

  “Is that so?” She held the hippo up again. “Well, she does have rather fetching eyes.” Touched, she stroked the wide ceramic flank. “She really is sweet, Parks. What made you think of it?”

  “I thought she’d fit into your menagerie.” Seeing the puzzled look on her face, he gestured toward the shelf that held her monkey and bear. “Then there’s that pig on the front door, the little carving of a jackrabbit in your bedroom, the china owl on the windowsill in the kitchen.”

  Comprehension came slowly. There were animals of varying types and materials scattered all through the house. She’d been collecting them for years without having the slightest idea what she was doing. But Parks had seen. Without an instant of warning to either of them, Brooke burst into tears.

  Stunned, then alarmed, Parks reached for her, not having a clue what he would offer comfort for. Still, he’d seen enough tears from his sisters to know that logic often had nothing to do with tears.