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,
