My Front Page Scandal. Carrie Alexander

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      “I’m Brooke.” He’d pinned her with his eyes. They were bright green and hugely dilated. She felt her own widening. Even battered, disheveled and disgraced, David Carerra was too much man for her to take in. “Brooke Winfield.”

      He smiled with only one side of his mouth—crooked and cocky. Sticky spikes of hair had flopped over the wide bandage wrapped around his head. “I remember.” His gaze dropped. “Especially the dress.”

      She shuffled her feet together, clutched the jacket collar. “I don’t usually wear—” She stopped. He doesn’t need to know that. “This is yours.”

      “The jacket? Keep it.”

      “You’ll be cold.”

      “They gave me painkillers. I’m comfortably numb.”

      “Mr. Carerra,” the doctor interrupted. She handed him a prescription form. “You may have a headache for a few days, and you’ll need to clean your wounds properly.” She glanced at Brooke. “I’ll discharge him to your care. Our tests showed no sign of concussion, but it’s best if you keep an eye on him for the next twenty-four hours.”

      Brooke blinked. “Me?”

      David spread his hands. “Angel?”

      “I couldn’t possibly—” Brooke’s voice halted again at the shock of hearing herself sound exactly like Great Aunt Josephine, even when she hadn’t meant to. While she wasn’t sure where to take the rest of her life, she knew that emulating her prim-and-proper aunt was not the way to go. And dressed as she was, with the city’s most rebellious bad boy in tow, there was no telling where the night might lead.

      “Thank you.” She removed the prescription from the doctor’s hand. “I’ll look after him.”

      2

      CAMERA FLASHES BLINDED David the instant he stepped outside of the hospital. He winced and threw up his arm to block the photographers’ shots. Returning to Boston had been a bad idea even before the accident. Now every rag in the area would have a heyday, plastering his ravaged face on their front pages.

      “Carerra!” called one of the circling vultures. He recognized Bobby Cook, a wannabe sports writer who slummed for the Insider, a tabloid that preferred flash and trash to legit reporting. Cook had been raking through David’s past since his retirement, looking for the buried muck. Little did Cook know that he’d need more than a rake. Maybe a back hoe.

      “What happened tonight?” shouted a reporter. “Were you drunk?”

      “Where’ve you been?”

      “Why’d you come back?”

      “Who’s the chick?”

      The questions came in quick succession. David made no reaction.

      “Hey, ya lousy quittah,” shouted someone at the back of the group. Probably a photographer, hoping to provoke a response. David was much too familiar with their tactics. “Look this way, jerk-off.”

      David grabbed Brooke’s hand and shoved through the gathering of journalists. He pushed her inside the waiting cab, following so closely he almost landed in her lap. Without bothering to disentangle their limbs, he slammed the door shut, clipping a protruding lens. The photographer went reeling.

      David met the driver’s flat glare in the rearview mirror. “Floor it.” The man grunted, but the cab took off with a jerk.

      “What was that about?” Brooke was flush with outrage.

      “Read tomorrow’s paper and you’ll find out.”

      She put her hands on his chest as if to push herself away. “Will it be the truth?”

      “Who cares?”

      She gave him a slow blink. “Bitter much?”

      His face was stiff and bruised, and it hurt when it moved. He laughed anyway. “You’re supposed to be my angel. Don’t I get any sympathy?”

      They were still entwined. He was aware of every detail about her—the thick lashes, the shallowness of her breathing, the jut of her sharp chin and slight quiver of her bottom lip, the press of her thighs and the shadowed crevice between them where her dress had slipped too high. She was an interesting mix of innocence and provocation.

      He curved a hand around her thigh—taking his time—and lifted it from his. She yanked it away as if he’d tried to molest her and scooted across the seat, giving her skirt a violent jerk that must have come close to snapping a few of the leather bands.

      With her legs clamped together, she smoothed back her hair. “I didn’t realize that Boston had that many paparazzi.” Even though she was obviously trying to sound unflustered, there was a tremor in her voice.

      He shrugged. “Just enough to be annoying.”

      “Was that why you were speeding on your motorcycle in the first place, to get away from them?”

      “Yeah. They were way back, but closing in. I thought if I banged a U-ey, as you locals say, I might lose them.”

      She rubbed a knuckle across her mouth. “I watched from the window. You bounced off a lamppost and scraped the curb.”

      “What window?”

      “Worthington’s. I’m a display artist—a window dresser.” She looked down at herself and sucked in a gasp. “I have to go back. I—uh…” She put one hand on her thighs, crossed the other arm over her breasts. “I left the window in a mess.”

      “Where is this place, exactly—Worthington? I can pick up my bike, if it’s still there.”

      She gave the driver a Newbury Street address on the ritzy northern end. “You don’t know O.M. Worthington? It’s a venerable department store. A Boston institution.”

      “Sounds vaguely familiar.” With a tired sigh, he relaxed his aching body against the seat. The last time he’d been this sore, he’d run into a two-hundred pound catcher at home plate. “They sell designer dresses and stuff, right? I’m not a big shopper.”

      She pinkened at his lazy perusal. Very little of her was visible under the oversize jacket, but if the leather S&M dress was any example, he should shop more often.

      “We sell everything,” she said quietly.

      “Shoes?” He knew what women called her kind of shoes. Come do me. The throbbing desire to take her up on the unspoken invitation rivaled all his aches and pains added up together.

      He closed his eyes. You’re in enough trouble. Don’t ask for more. “Do you sell good reputations? I seem to have lost mine.”

      “Don’t be so hard on yourself. I’m sure you had your reasons for quitting the team.” She didn’t ask what they were. A proper Bostonian to the СКАЧАТЬ