Did that project confidence? Or desperation?
“Do you have any numbers for me?” he asked as soon as they’d ordered. “I think you know I’m expecting something concrete.”
Brooke knew. But she was here to disappoint. Memories of the bad luck she and Aunt Ruth had had trying to get that big ticket item over the years rattled her nerves. But she used her pageant smile.
“What I have for you, Mr. Earnshaw, is a promise.”
“I don’t invest on promises. I invest on solid business plans. You brought me the inventory of your collection, I assume.”
Brooke handed it to him. “It’s all there, from the Ty Cobb-signed bat to the jersey worn by the great Lou Gehrig.”
“Lou Gehrig, huh?” Earnshaw nodded as he examined the list, running his finger down the printout. “Yes, yes, yes …”
Please let him keep on with that word.
“All these are good, but there’s nothing that…ignites. No big ‘draw,’ you know? Now, if you had a World Series trophy from an important year, or, say, even a pair of 1919 ticket stubs from Shoeless Joe Jackson’s-thrown World Series game, I could see that Left Field could be a contender in the baseball museum business. Or, say, a Mickey Mantle jersey. But you face several insurmountable obstacles. Location, for one.”
He would mention the Mickey Mantle jersey, shoving a sliver under the fingernail of her feelings. Case in point of their thwarted efforts to procure big ticket items.
Regardless, she had to fight for her dream.
“Maddox is off the beaten path, maybe. But it’s comparable to Chincoteague, which gets incredible tourist traffic. We’d expect to be stop number two on the New York City populace’s Atlantic Coast trip southward. They’ll all come. Do you know how many Yankees fans there are out there, Mr. Earnshaw?”
“I do, actually. And if you had something more, I can actually see that happening. However, as the collection stands …”
“Mr. Earnshaw. This is my grandfather’s collection. He worked for the Yankees during some of their golden years.”
Her voice trailed off. She hadn’t meant to let herself whine or beg. She cleared her throat. “It would mean so much to my aunt to have a place to honor her father’s memory. There’s no one on the whole East Coast who’d be a more dedicated museum curator, I can guarantee it.”
The food came, but Brooke wasn’t hungry. Emptying her soul did that to her.
Mr. Earnshaw didn’t lift his fork. He just blinked at her a few times. “If this was about heart, you’d have your funding in a nanosecond, Miss Chadwick.” He cleared his throat. “I knew your father a little. He deserves my utmost respect. I’d love to do something for him, and supporting Left Field would have been my first choice.”
“But—” It came out choked. Brooke looked down at her plate of garlic-butter drenched noodles and choked on the rest of her retort.
“Listen. Give it some thought. You come up with a new idea, a stronger business plan. Something that can generate an income. Then come to me. I’ll be your most enthusiastic investor.”
“So that’s a no.”
“It’s a no.” He frowned. “Unless you come up with a better guarantee for my investment, I’m passing.”
“Thank you for meeting with me.”
Wow. If Trae Earnshaw was giving her a hard no, she wouldn’t even dare think about taking this idea to J.B. Rivershire— or anyone else. Her idea didn’t have financial merit, so that made it worthless. She’d been rejected and had let down Grandpa Thunder, and Aunt Ruth in the process.
Brooke dug a twenty out of her purse and dropped it on the table to pay for her uneaten lunch. It caught the breeze from the ceiling fan and fluttered to the floor, just like her last hope.
Chapter Eight
Stipulation
The ocean breeze smelled of salt and his childhood— both the good and the bad of it.
Dane lugged the bat bag from the bed of his old Dodge pickup. He wanted to get to the dunes and set out equipment before the Rockwell’s Rockets swarmed. The sand was packed under his step, still wet from Saturday’s rain. Good. The boys would run easier.
And there was a chance Brooke and her team might appear. She did tell them practice was Monday, on this strip of beach sand. It might not have been entirely honest to accuse her of copying his plan of practice time and location, when he’d told the boys to wait to hear from him then texted it out to their parents after eavesdropping on Brooke’s announced plan.
Brooke. Sure enough, she’d been there at the coaching assignments. The brown eyes, those velvet lips, the way she looked at him as he leaned in. He’d definitely given her a chance to remember how she’d wanted him that day. Yeah, totally worth the ten-mile commute. Especially when he’d talked her into lifting her Dane Ban.
Cha-ching.
Yeah, this could be exactly the break from the office his clerk said he needed.
And, with any luck, and a different approach— even if he hadn’t figured it out yet— the ring in his pocket might just find the finger it was intended for.
Bam. The equipment bag clunked against his truck’s paint job bringing him back to the present. He checked for a paint chip. Whatever. By this point in his legal career, he could’ve bought a better truck, but the patina of age alone—
He took his eyes off the paint job as someone drove onto the sand beside him.
“Dane? That you?” Quirt pulled up beside Dane in his own old truck, a Chevy the same metallic color as Dane’s Dodge, with the window rolled down. Dane hadn’t seen his best friend in far too long. He’d put on a little weight. Marriage did that. “Rain cleared up in time for your practice,” Quirt said.
“How’d you know about my practice?”
“Brooke mentioned it.”
She’d mentioned him, huh? Of course she had. Her last conversation with him had been all about Quirt. Sort of.
Dane may have embellished a bit to Brooke about how much Quirt had understood his absence from the wedding. Yeah, Dane had been in court that day, but if Quirt hadn’t sounded so begrudging when he asked Dane to be his best man, Dane might have been able to move some things around.
“Your Dodge’s engine still running? My Chevy’s transmission is slipping. It’s hard to get parts for a 1978.” Quirt’s iceberg hadn’t completely thawed, but he could have a civil conversation about trucks. That was a step in the right direction.
“Truck’s fine. It’s a Dodge.” Dane always threw in the brand loyalty dig.
Quirt just laughed. Maybe his skipping the wedding hadn’t rankled Quirt so much as it had bothered his pretty little sister.
But then Quirt’s face clouded. “Hey, I need a favor.”
“Sure.” Dane needed to make it up to him for ditching the wedding. “I owe you.”
“Well, it’s not for me. It’s for Brooke.”
Brooke, huh? Even better. Especially since she’d been an off-limits topic for going on three years now. He’d have to play it cool. “What’s up?”
“Oh, never mind. It’s legal stuff, and I’m sure you hate that, people asking all the time for free legal help.”
“Doesn’t count. You’re family.” He’d like Brooke to be his official family. Seeing her again Saturday, rain-soaked and adored by a dozen kids, he’d never been more attracted to her. Standing so close to her under that umbrella had dialed all his senses to high and it took all his willpower to not throw a repeat of that church kiss onto her face.
But now Brooke needed legal help? “She in legal trouble?”
That got Quirt talking.
“Not exactly. Just got a letter. An order to appear at a reading.”
“What kind of reading?”
“A will.”
“Anyone you know?”
“That’s the thing. No. None of us ever heard of the guy. Not even Brooke.” Quirt frowned. “The letter said to bring counsel.”
“Who’s her attorney?”
“That’s where you come in.”
“Oh.” Dane nodded slowly as he started throwing down home plate and the bases on a flat portion of shoreline. “I get it. When is this thing?”
When would he get to see Brooke again, as in off the ball field and away from a bunch of little kids was what he was really asking.
“Tuesday. Tomorrow. There’s an address and time.” Quirt shoved a small paper into Dane’s hand. So he’d come prepared, assuming Dane wouldn’t refuse.
Good assumption.
“It’ll take some arranging, but I can make that happen.” Wild dogs and horses and boars couldn’t keep him away, more like it.
Quirt lifted a hand to shade his eyes from the afternoon sun. “There’s just one catch.”
“What’s that?” No flirting? No more kissing in church?
“She doesn’t know you’re her attorney.”
Dane stopped and looked at Quirt. “Uhhh—”
“No, not like that. I mean, you show up at the reading. She says hi, you say you’re observing. If she gets into any trouble, you’re there for her. The safety net.” Quirt pulled a baseball out of the bag and tossed it in the air. “I mean, nothing’s going to go wrong.”
“But if it does?”
“You’re the hero.”
The word hit like a gong. Hero. Hero to Brooke Chadwick. It soaked into the thirsty sponge of his hope.
Yep. That was his new tactic. Right there.
Until he thought of the sixty ways it could go wrong.
“Brooke’s not dumb. She’s going to see through it, and she’s going to know you’re setting her up.”
“Not likely.” Quirt shrugged. “She thinks I hate you.”
Well, there was that possibility. Even after yesterday’s discussion, she might still harbor that belief. “But you don’t?”
“I hate the idea of your hitting on Brooke.”
Dane let this roll off him. “How up on this are you? Would you even know if she’d gone and hired her own attorney?”
Quirt stiffened. “Come on, Dane. You’re the only attorney she’s going to trust.”
Oh, really? Well, that changed things up. Dane threw home plate onto the ground and kicked dirt around it, not answering yet.
Quirt launched into another argument. “I mean, after everything she went through over the last year, I think she deserves something good, don’t you? Like an inheritance, whether it’s a stupid antique lamp or a million dollars. The letter from the attorneys said she needed counsel. You can’t leave her hanging, Dane.”
Just then, Brooke rolled around the corner of the reed-covered dune in her old Honda. Dane watched, his heart contracting in his chest. “There she is,” he said. “You want her to see you here?”
Swearing, Quirt started up his engine and jammed his truck into gear. “We didn’t have this conversation.” Out the window he yelled, “I’ll shoot you the details.”
Brooke rolled up beside where Dane had dropped home plate. “Nice configuration.” She indicated the diamond placement. “Sun won’t be in anyone’s eyes. What was Quirt doing here?”
“Telling me how to coach.”
“Naturally.” Brooke rolled her eyes. “Imagine being his younger sister. Quirt Sensei knows everything there is to know about teaching kids anything. Then think how Sunday dinner conversations go all through little league season.”
“He should get his own team.”
“Right?” Brooke’s eyes widened— to even deeper brown pools than before, which he hadn’t thought possible. So beautiful; he could dive into their fathomless depths.
She was looking back into his eyes, some kind of connection between the two of them forging, one different from the obvious physical cables that linked him to her. It was new and more complex, and Dane felt its mighty tug. He stepped closer to where she stood, to where he could smell the scent of her shampoo, to where he could almost reach out and brush the skin of her wrist with his fingertips, and—
Thirty little boys arrived, aborting all his plans.
Drills, scrimmage, and the consumption of about ninety Little Debbie cakes ensued. Brooke dug in right there with them, pitching and teaching them to slide. Yeah, Quirt could have nothing on her. By the time the boys piled back into their minivans or onto their bikes to leave, her pants had a sand smear up her hip, and the collar of her shirt had popped up on one side.
As they collected the bases, Dane reached out and straightened her collar, his fingers lingering near the sweet curve of her shoulder. She blinked up at him for a second, but then she spoke, breaking the spell.
“Not a bad day for the Rockwell Rockets.” She grabbed a bat lying halfway between home and first base. “They need to quit picking reeds out of the sand when they’re in the outfield, of course.”
Dane hoisted the equipment bag over his shoulder and together they headed to her car. “Yeah, they’ll give those Golden Thunder Monkeys a run for their money.”
“Batmen,” she corrected. She paused when they reached her car, her hand on the trunk. Dane saw the way she shifted her weight, the way she bit her lower lip. Legal training had taught him to look for these clues. Brooke had something to say. Maybe she’d ask him for help with the will reading, and then all Quirt’s secrecy could be circumvented. He waited patiently for her to speak.
“You working tonight?” she finally asked. It hit him like one of the Little Slugger bats in his canvas bag. She wanted to spend time with him, and not just at baseball practice.
Oh, yeah. This could come together. Dinner, the two of them, maybe at her place…
“Aw, sugar,” he said, catching his swear before it completed. “I’ve got a conference call with a client at six.” That was in twenty minutes. Ballard wouldn’t be patient if Dane was late, and neither would Tweed. This case had millions riding on it, and taking time off for kids and baseball had already garnered a couple of frowns.
“In Naughton? You’d better hop in that polluter and make tracks.”
“You’re calling my sweetheart a polluter?” He feigned offense. “Fine. Now I’m not taking you in her to spin doughnuts on the sand today.”
“Doughnuts? On the sand?” Her face brightened, a lot more than he’d expected. She opened her trunk, and he set the equipment inside. “Isn’t that what you do with high school girls you’re trying to impress?”
“With any girls I’m trying to impress.”
Brooke opened her mouth as if to answer, but she closed it before speaking, leaving him wondering what she’d meant to say.
“The boys did great today,” she said instead of whatever she’d stopped herself from replying. She went toward her car’s door and pulled her keys from her pocket.
“They had a good coach.”
“Oh, you mean yourself?” She lifted an eyebrow, and he got lost for a second in those brown eyes again until she said, “Next practice Wednesday, then?”
“What about tomorrow?” he said. Waiting two days to see her sounded like a month. “The boys need consistency.” She’d probably buy that cover.
“I have, uh, something else.”
The reading, he knew. She didn’t elaborate, but she bit her lower lip, a job Dane would gladly take on, too.
“Actually, so do I. Wednesday, then?” Dane asked, knowing he’d see her sooner, thanks to Quirt. “See you later, Brooke Chadwick.” Later and often.
Dane saw his chance, and his strategy started to gel in his mind. Hero, just like Quirt said, starting tomorrow afternoon.
__________
The second Dane stepped off the elevator into the steel and glass office of Tweed Law, Ullman Tweed himself stopped him.
“Dane, a word, please.”
“Sure, sir.” They walked and talked like people too busy to stop for even a short conversation, which they were. “Everything copacetic?”
“More than,” Tweed said, turning toward the law library. “You keeping track of how much revenue you’ve brought into Tweed Law since starting here?”
“No, sir,” he lied. He knew
to the dollar what he’d contributed. It was leverage. “We’ve had some good victories lately.”
“Good!” He puffed. “Good victories, indeed. Good enough that your name was bandied about at the partners’ meeting.”
The partners knew his name? Dane choked a little. “That’s real nice.” Downplay it, downplay it. “Anything they’d like me to do differently?”
“Nope. Just more of the same, and you’ll be on track for big things.” Tweed didn’t elaborate, but he gave a knowing nod before depositing Dane near the conference room where his call would start in too few minutes.
“Oh, and Rockwell,” Tweed turned back a moment. “Put in the work.”
“Yes, sir.” Dane got the subtext— make it happen, and work as many hours as it took.
Chapter Nine
Uncivil Action
The offices of Ullman Tweed should have sprung for better lighting. Dane rubbed his eyes with his fists. What with the money they were taking in hand over fist from generous juries, they could have at least picked up one incandescent bulb at the Home Depot. It’s not like future juries would be any less eager to stick it to the big pharmaceutical and insurance companies Tweed’s firm was known for attacking. The money fire hydrant wasn’t drying up anytime soon.
Meanwhile, that bluish-white flicker was shortening his lifespan.
“Sun ray lamp. Sun ray lamp.” Dane muttered as he typed in the online search terms. Sure, he should have been analyzing depositions for arguments in Ballard v. Insura-Care, but Superman needed a yellow sun. Didn’t the rat-maze overlords here expect every associate to be super? If not, where had hundred-hour work weeks come from?
He took a bite of the stale ham sandwich he’d left on the corner of his desk. Vonda came in and dropped yet another stack of files dead center in front of him. Mm. Another pile of files for an after-dinner feast.
“Hey, Mr. Rockwell?” Vonda lingered at his cubicle since he wasn’t anywhere near having a private office yet. “You need anything else? I’m heading out. It’s eight.”
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