“Brooke says she refuses to worry about it.” Aunt Ruth passed the gravy to Quirt. Olivia made the best gravy. “But I think if the letter says bring a lawyer, they’re not just a-whistlin’ Dixie.”
Quirt took a big helping of gravy and poured it over his meat, his potatoes, and his vegetables. He’d gained fifteen pounds already, being married. “It’s not like we have our own lawyer, not anymore.”
“Dad probably would’ve whistled Dixie at the whole idea,” Brooke said. “I can’t imagine it’s any big deal.”
“Come on. It’s totally a big deal.” Olivia took a yeast roll from beneath the gingham dish cloth. “I mean, how many of us have had a summons to a reading of a last will and testament of a stranger? It’s mysterious. And you should definitely take a lawyer. What if there are documents to sign, and you end up signing something with adhesion clauses?”
“Adhesion clauses?” Brooke asked, over the sound of the rain lashing against the windowpane.
“Fine. I’m not a lawyer, but I do watch a lot of Court TV while I’m correcting papers.”
“Truth,” Quirt chimed in. “She could probably pass the bar exam. They say ten thousand hours makes you an expert in any field, right?”
“Pish.” Olivia kissed his cheek. “Better than championship bass fishing as a guy who doesn’t even have a rod and reel.” Then she turned back to Brooke. “Can’t you ask one of your father’s former colleagues?”
Quirt and Brooke and Aunt Ruth all exchanged glances. “Uh, no,” all three of them said.
“Sometimes there’s a downside to being the prosecuting attorney who nearly never lost a case,” Quirt said through a mouthful of roast. “You shouldn’t trust anyone who hated your dad.”
“Why’d he name you in the will, anyway?”
Brooke shrugged and sipped her lemonade. This was actually a pretty good distraction from First Pitch. It would only take about half her strength to get over there for little league coach assignments at three o’clock. She could do that, despite the memories.
“No clue. The obituary online said he’s a Yankees fan. Maybe he heard about the museum.”
“Are you telling people about it yet?”
“Only the investor.” Potential investor. Ugh. The meeting with Earnshaw was just a couple of days away, and she still didn’t know what he was going to say to convince him her and Aunt Ruth’s dream was a good risk. She didn’t have that one big item he said the museum needed. Pins and needles pricked her soul. “Let’s quit worrying. It’s probably some rinky-dink item. Nobody would give anything really good to a perfect stranger.”
“Don’t be late or you won’t get your Norman Rockwell collector’s plate and your fifty bucks.” Quirt guffawed.
“Should we take bets?” Aunt Ruth clapped. “Ten bucks, anyone in?” No one was in. Aunt Ruth could’ve been a bookie if she hadn’t been raised right by Thunder Chadwick.
“Speaking of Rockwell, don’t you have a lawyer friend with that last name, Quirt?” Olivia reentered the room carrying a coconut cream pie. Maybe Brooke should bet. Her lucky streak just started. “He’s the one you asked to be your best man, but he refused, right?”
Brooke’s head whipped toward Quirt. “Dane refused? What?” He’d skipped the wedding, but Brooke didn’t know he’d stiffed his best friend. Whoa. That was pretty low.
“Dane. Yeah, that’s his name.” Olivia scooped the first slice, but even the coconut and vanilla didn’t capture Brooke’s full attention. Had Dane and Quirt fought, really fought? She’d thought things were going to get better when Dane asked him to be best man. Then…that kiss in the church and the fight and—
Come to think of it, Brooke hadn’t seen him in a year. Not since First Pitch. Not once.
A gnawing came at her heart.
“So are you going to go to the will reading anyway?” Olivia asked. “Alone?”
Brooke couldn’t answer. She glanced at the time. “Hey, I’ll be back to do dishes in an hour. Time to get my ball team together.” She was out the door and into the rain in a flash.
Brooke tugged her favorite Maddox Little League t-shirt over her other clothes as she jogged across the windy park through the pounding rain to where assignments were already underway.
“Oh, good. There’s Miss Chadwick, just in time for your team.” The announcer, Pansy Proust’s father, held a microphone while scads of preteen kids milled around, getting soaked but not caring because they were kids, still waiting to be assigned. “Hold up, I’m just getting word. We’ve got one more player for Mr. Rockwell’s team. Reggie McGrath, head over by your teammates. All right!”
The crowd gave a polite clap, but all Brooke heard was Rockwell. Since when would the organizers allow a Rockwell to interact with the youth of the town? Other than Dane, not one member of that family would pass the criminal background check. And she wasn’t entirely sure about Dane. There was that one incident with his old Dodge truck and spinning doughnuts on the dunes right before the Pony Swim over at Chincoteague. Had they let him off with a warning?
Too many umbrellas made it impossible to see whether it was Dane’s Uncle Georgie the gun-runner, Cousin Eddie the car chopper, or—
“Miss Brooke Chadwick. It’s time to meet your team!” One by one the little leaguers jumped toward her as their names were called. Two little girls even hugged her, and she bent to high-five them, but her mind was on the Rockwell team.
It couldn’t be. Dane wasn’t in town.
“We should name our team Chadwick’s Champs!” “No, we’re going to be Batmen!” “Aw, I wanted to call us the Golden Thunder Monkeys.”
All the yelling kept her busy refereeing while the rain soaked through her Maddox Little League t-shirt and hoodie and scrubs to her skin. Brrr. “We’ll take a vote at our first practice on Monday afternoon at the dunes. Come with your best ideas.”
“Aw. I already came with mine. My dad said Golden Thunder Monkeys is brilliant.”
Wiping the rain out of her eyes, she released them to their parents, telling them to meet after school every day next week.
“Hey, if it isn’t Miss Chesapeake.” A man came up beside her and held his umbrella over her. Brooke looked up and had to wipe drips of rain from her eyes to see a deep dimple beside a smile of mischief. That dimple had made her knees watery and her will slippery for a decade or more. Dane Rockwell.
“Former Miss Chesapeake, that is,” she heard herself saying as her nerve endings tingled. How did he still have this power over her, even after Ames had deadened everything else inside her?
“If I didn’t know better I’d say you were stalking me. Practice at three at the dunes? Exactly the time and place my team, Rockwell’s Rockets, is going to meet. Huh.”
“Your team? You’re coaching?” She kept her tone even, despite the fact the rain had made his dark hair curl and an intruding memory of his kiss at church made her focus go fuzzy.
“Just coachin’.” He got a smile of mischief that deepened his dimple, and she drew its depths with her eyes more than once in a breath until he said, “What? Kids love me. And I’m not too bad at the sport. I learned from the best— Matthew Chadwick.
Fastest way to soften her, talk about her dad. “My dad was the best, wasn’t he?”
“Your team have a name yet?” Dane held his umbrella over her as they crossed the park back toward Left Field. “Not that it could ever be as cool as Rockwell’s Rockets.”
“I’m sure there was no top-down pressure for that name.” She leaned against him, a nudge that allowed her to touch him, even in the rain, and the contact seared through her, making her wish for the umpteenth time she could figure out how to be flame-retardant when it came to Dane and his trick, relighting candle effect on her. “Anyway, no hard and fast decision yet, but trending toward Batmen or Golden Thunder Monkeys.”
“A couple of winners.”
“Better than last year’s Turtle Terror. Never won a single game.”
“Turtles, huh? Doomed themselves
to slowness, I take it.” Of course Dane would instantly perceive. She exhaled. When was the last time someone had gotten her humor so quickly? Not since she and Quirt and Dane had spent summer days sitting in the tree fort trying to make each other laugh, all while she pined for Dane, stealing glances at that dimple even before it got its manly edges.
“Aren’t you living in Naughton?” Ten miles stretched between the bigger city and this coastal haven. “Kinda far to commute for coaching. What about work?”
“Commuting to community service.”
“Community service. Is that court-assigned, or is it court…I don’t know— escaping?”
“Ha, ha. Very funny. I assure you, I am in good ethical standing with the Commonwealth of Virginia Bar Association.”
Maybe she shouldn’t tease him about criminal charges. With his family, it could be a sensitive topic. Not that she’d ever lumped him in with his Rockwell family. He was the outlier there, for sure.
“Have to get out of my three-piece suit sometime.”
She pictured him in a three-piece suit, and he looked like an Abercrombie model. She let out a little sigh. Last time she’d seen him, he’d twirled her in the air one day, teasing her with his wicked lures, and the next kissed her with more passion than she’d ever experienced surging up from her toes, a kiss that refused to be forgotten and that recurred in her dreams more often than she ought to admit. How would a repeat of that kiss feel now? Could it be as good— could anything? With caution, she glanced to see if he seemed interested today, or if it was all back to treating her like Quirt’s little sister.
“How’s Quirt?” he asked, answering that question and defusing the ticking bomb of excitement, letting it drop with a hollow clunk. Disappointment colored her response.
“You skipped his wedding, Rock.” It came out more accusatory than she intended, but the issue needed to be aired. Her childhood nickname for him closed the distance. “He wanted you to be his best man, standing by his side on the most important day of his life.”
“About that …” He scratched the back of his neck, no apology in his eyes. It was like he didn’t have a clue how much he must have hurt Quirt, let alone how disappointed Brooke had been— partially at not getting to see him in a tux. But that was beside the point.
“About nothing, Rock.” She stood under his umbrella, the distance close due to the border of the fabric shielding them from the rain. She could smell his sandalwood cologne from here, but she’d better ignore that because he was definitely going to hear this truth from her right now.
“Quirt had to get married without his parents, and then he got stiffed by his lifelong best friend. You’re in this town and not lying on his doorstep, licking his boots, begging for forgiveness?” Honesty got her on a roll, and her pulse quickened— possibly also due to Dane’s nearness. “He got married, Rock. To a nice girl named Olivia, who’s a killer cook, and he’s fat and happy— fatter, anyway.” Dane hadn’t just abandoned Quirt, he’d left Brooke hanging, too, aching to see him, disappointing her more than she ought to admit. Most disappointingly in a public way, as Olivia’s maid of honor, Brooke had walked down the aisle of the church without an escort. “Even though he was really hurt, he’s doing fine— just fine— without you.”
The last line she knew had a barb, and after she inserted it, she burned with shame, and took a little step back from him, her shoulder getting splashed with rain.
Instinct drove her back under the umbrella.
But she’d needed to say it to him because Dane needed to know about that wedding. No parents, no Dane, just Aunt Ruth from their family. It’d felt empty, echo-y in that chapel walking toward Pastor Walden, Dane’s absence leaving yet another void.
Dane had done to Quirt what all men did: left people hanging.
Here the two of them stood at the door of Dane’s truck, beads of rain collecting along the rim of the umbrella and dripping off at the metal ribs. Dane looked at her for a long stretch, his face a mask. At last, he raised an eyebrow, and Brooke would be darned if his eyes didn’t twinkle.
“It’s your fault, you know.”
“My fault!” Brooke’s jaw dropped in confusion and remnants of hurt. “We all make our own choices, Rock. We’ve been given free will. Every one of us.”
“And you used your free will. You chose to tell me to stay away until further notice, Brooke.” He backed her up against his truck, calm as a cat, sending her pulse skyrocketing with his nearness. “I’m only here for the baseball. Believe me.”
Brooke racked her brain. She’d told him to stay away? Until further notice? When?
“Please. I wanted you there at that wedding.” She hiccupped, a reaction to his words and the zinging in her veins as Dane hovered far too close for comfort. “For Quirt’s sake, of course.”
“Quirt’s sake.” Dane invaded her comfort zone— which really should be called her discomfort zone. Rainwater from the side of his truck soaked through her shirt, but she couldn’t move out of the hold of his gaze.
“Of course,” she stammered, followed by a gulp. “And, I mean, obviously for the whole family.” She tugged at the wet sleeve of her hoodie, trying to push away the feelings resurging inside her for him. Dane’s breath smelled like peppermint and lemon as he leaned toward her. Not even drenching rain could keep that fire from lighting inside her. In fact, it might be making it worse— gasoline rain, from under this shared umbrella. She stared at his lips, breathing far too close to her face, reminding her of that dangerous kiss last spring.
“The whole family?” He leaned in even closer, only inches separating them now. Centimeters. “Including…?”
“Yes, fine.” She said it. “Including me.” Exasperation mixed with the attraction she couldn’t ignore. “I wanted you there.”
“So you’re officially telling me otherwise.”
“Telling you otherwise?” Confusion slowed down her inner turmoil. “What does that even mean?”
Dane closed the distance between them, his body pressing her back to the side of his truck, his wrist brushing against her neck as the two of them leaned. The pressure of his torso against hers shot her blood pressure numbers into the stratosphere. All her body’s electrical circuits surged dangerously in the rain.
“Quirt knew why I couldn’t come,” he said. “I had a court case and was in trial that couldn’t be rescheduled. He understood.” He stared at her lips, and her own parted slightly. “So, really, isn’t this about your disappointment that I missed the wedding?”
She could hardly breathe. Did he have any idea what he was doing to her? If so, this was dirty pool.
“I’m sorry if you thought I meant—” What had she meant? Probably just that she’d been confused that day, that kissing him had been a divine experience, one that she shouldn’t have had while wearing another man’s ring. Guilt had made her lash out. Guilt at feeling so much for Dane when Ames had proposed and she’d accepted. Guilt that, had she seen the future, shouldn’t have occurred in her in the first place.
“You finally came to your senses, I see.” Dane pushed off the truck, pulling himself back from her, and allowing her breathing to resume.
He handed her the umbrella and took her by both shoulders. Would he kiss her now? Tingles of desire shot from her head to her toes, hope and despair swinging wildly.
“I’ll see you later, Brooke, maybe at baseball practice.”
Baseball practice. Yeah, she thought. Dane’s arm’s muscles rippling as the pitched or batted, his legs striding across the field, his smile beaming as he made a good play. She’d definitely want to see him later at baseball practice.
Instead of bestowing the kiss, though, he steered her aside and then swung his truck door wide, climbed into his old Dodge truck, tipped an imaginary hat, and left her standing under his umbrella by her car on the curb, more dazed than she’d been in a year, and aching for Dane, who still had more power over her than she dared admit.
__________
Monday d
awned clear, but Brooke’s thoughts and emotions were as cloudy as they’d been Saturday afternoon. Dane’s accusation that she’d been the one disappointed about his missing the wedding had torpedoed her common sense and her world’s clarity. For the last year, Brooke had been a total pragmatic, putting dating and relationships miles out of her field of view. But then one Dane sighting and she was all goo-goo eyed?
Stupid. Ridiculous. Especially when he was such a player. Not a single ounce of his flirting on Saturday had been sincere. She knew that with all the logic in her.
Focus. Brooke had to focus. Get it together. Later today she’d need all her faculties for Earnshaw lunch meeting. There she’d deliver the disastrous report that she had zero new evidence to persuade him he wanted to dump a small fortune into their dream.
Unless… Would her charm get her through? Ugh. Not with Earnshaw, and definitely not with these nerves and lack of focus— thank you very little, Dane Rockwell.
So much depended on this one meeting.
At noon, Brooke peeled away from the pediatrics floor too late, giving her no time to switch out of her scrubs or take her hair out of its nurse’s bun. Great. Trae Earnshaw was just going to have to see her looking her pageant best. Blah. Professionalism as a businesswoman requesting money, where art thou?
Not at this restaurant, she thought as she swung wide the door and spied Earnshaw.
“Mr. Earnshaw,” she said, extending a hand to him as he stood up at his table at Oyster Bay, for which she was seriously underdressed.
“Good to see you, Miss Chadwick. I’m taking you away from your day job, I see.”
Great. She looked like someone who needed another job to support this dream.
“It’s a day and night job, Mr. Earnshaw. I’ll do everything it takes to get Left Field up and running.”
Wills & Trust (Legally in Love Collection Book 3) Page 7