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
