her breath as it shuddered into his mouth. Very slowly, he drew up the zipper, letting his knuckles graze along her skin. Then he ran his hands up her back until their bodies fit together again.
'Kiss me, Brooke.' He rubbed his nose lightly against hers. 'Really kiss me.'
Tingling from his touch, aroused by the whispered words, she pressed her open mouth to his. Her tongue sought his, hungry for the moist dark tastes that had already seeped inside of her. He waited for her demands, her aggressions, feeling them build as her body strained against his. With a groan of pleasure, Brooke tangled her fingers in his hair, wanting to drag him closer. When he knew his chain of control was on its last link, Parks drew her away. He'd learned more of her, but not enough. Not yet. And he wasn't going to forget that he had a small score to settle with her.
'When the camera's rolling, it's your game and your rules.' He cupped her chin in his hand, wondering how many times he'd be able to walk away from her when his body was aching to have her. 'When it's not,' he continued quietly, 'the rules are mine.'
Brooke took a shaky breath. 'I don't play games.' Parks smiled, running a fingertip over her swollen mouth. 'Everyone does,' he corrected. 'Some make a career out of it, and they aren't all on ball fields.' Dropping his hand, he stepped back from her. 'We both have a job to do. Maybe we're not too thrilled about it at the moment, but I have a feeling that won't make any difference in how well you work.'
'No,' Brooke agreed shortly. 'It won't. I can detest you and still make you look fantastic on the screen.'
He grinned. 'Or make me look like an idiot if it suited you.'
She couldn't prevent a small smile from forming. 'You're very perceptive.'
'But you won't, because you're a pro. Whatever happens between us personally won't make you direct any differently.'
'I'll do my job,' Brooke stated as she stepped around him. 'And nothing's going to happen between us personally.' She looked up sharply when a friendly arm was dropped over her shoulder.
'I guess we'll just wait and see about that.' Parks sent her another amiable grin. 'Have you eaten?' Brooke frowned at him dubiously. 'No.'
He gave her shoulder a fraternal pat. 'I'll get you a plate.'
Chapter 4
Brooke couldn't believe she was spending a perfectly beautiful Sunday afternoon at a ball game.
What was more peculiar was that she was enjoying it. She was well aware that she was being punished for the few veiled sarcastic remarks she had tossed off at the de Marco party, but after the first few innings, she found that Billings was right. There was a bit more to it than swinging a bat and running around in circles. During her first game, Brooke had been too caught up in the atmosphere, the people, then in her initial impressions of Parks. Now she opened her mind to the game itself and enjoyed. Being a survivor, whenever she was faced with doing something she didn't want to do, Brooke simply conditioned herself to want to do it. She had no patience with people who allowed themselves to be miserable when it was so simple to turn a situation around to your advantage. If it wasn't always possible to enjoy, she could learn. It pleased her to be doing both.
The game had more subtlety than she had first realized, and more strategy. Brooke never ceased to be intrigued by strategy. It became obvious that there were variables to the contest, dozens of ifs, slices of chance counterbalancing skill. In a game of inches, luck couldn't be overlooked. This had an appeal for her because she had always considered luck every bit as vital as talent in winning, no matter what the game. And there were certain aspects of the afternoon, beyond the balls and strikes, that fanned her interest. The crowd was no less enthusiastic or vocal than it had been on her first visit to Kings Stadium. If anything, Brooke reflected, the people were more enthusiastic even slightly wild. She wondered if their chants and screams and whistles took on a tone of delirium because the score was tied 1-1, and had been since the first inning. Lee called it an example of a superior defensive game.
Lee Dutton was another aspect of the afternoon that intrigued her. He seemed-on the surface-a genial, rather unkempt sort of man with a faint Brooklyn accent that lingered from his youth. He wore a golf shirt and checked pants, which only accented his tubbiness. Brooke might have passed him off as a cute middle aged man had it not been for the sharp black eyes.
She liked him…with a minor reservation-he seemed inordinately attentive to Claire.
It occurred to Brooke that he found a great many occasions to touch-Claire's soft manicured hands, her round shoulder, even her gabardine-clad knee. What was more intriguing to Brooke was that Claire didn't, as was her habit, freeze Lee's tentative advances with an icy smile or a stingingly polite word.
As far as Brooke could tell, Claire seemed to be enjoying them-or perhaps she was overlooking them because of the importance of the de Marco account and Parks Jones. In either case, Brooke determined to keep an eye on her friend, and the agent. It wasn't unheard-of for a woman approaching fifty to be naive of men and therefore susceptible.
If she were to be truthful, Brooke would have to admit she enjoyed watching Parks. There was no doubt he was in his element in the field, eyes shaded by a cap, glove in his hand. Just as he had been in his element, she remembered, at the glossy party at the de Marco villa. He hadn't seemed out of place in the midst of ostentatious wealth, sipping vintage champagne or handling cocktail party conversation.
And why should he? she mused. After their last encounter, Brooke had made it her business to find out more about him.
He'd come from money. Big money. Parkinson Chemicals was a third-generation, multimillion-dollar conglomerate that dealt in everything from aspirin to rocket fuel. He'd been born with a silver spoon in one hand and a fat portfolio in the other. His two sisters had married well, one to a restauranteur who had been her business partner before he became her husband, the other to a vice president of Parkinson attached to the Dallas branch. But the heir to Parkinson, the man who carried the old family name in front of the less unique Jones, had had a love affair with baseball.
The love affair hadn't diminished during his studies at Oxford under a Rhodes scholarship; it had simply been postponed. When Parks had graduated, he'd gone straight to the Kings' training camp-Brooke had to wonder how his family had felt about that and there had been drafted. After less than a year on the Kings' farm team, he'd been brought up to the majors. There he had remained, for a decade.
So he didn't play for the money, Brooke mused, but because he enjoyed the game. Perhaps that was why he played with such style and steadiness.
She remembered, too, her impressions of him at the de Marcos'-charming, then ruthless, then casually friendly. And none of it, Brooke concluded, was an act. Above all else, Parks Jones was in complete control, on or off die diamond. Brooke respected that, related to it, while she couldn't help wondering how the two of them would juggle their need to be in charge when they began to work together. If nothing else, she mused as she crunched down on a piece of ice, it would be an interesting association.
Brooke watched him now as he stood on the bag at second while the opposing team brought out a relief pitcher. Parks had started off the seventh inning with a leadoff single, then had advanced to second when the next batter walked. Brooke could feel the adrenaline of the crowd pulsing while Parks talked idly with the second baseman.
'If they take this one,' Lee was saying, 'the Kings lock up the division.' He slipped his hand over Claire's. 'We need these runs.'
'Why did they change pitchers?' Brooke demanded. She thought of how furious she would be if someone pulled her off a job before it was finished. 'There's two on and nobody out.' Lee gave her an easy paternal smile. 'Mitchell was slowing down-he'd walked two last inning and was only saved from having runs score by that rifle shot the center fielder sent home.' Reaching in his shirt pocket, he brought out a cigar in a thin protective tube. 'I think you'll see the Kings going to the bullpen in the eighth.'
'I wouldn't switch cameramen in the middle of a shoot,' Brooke mumbled.
'You would if he couldn't focus the lens anymore,' Lee countered, grinning at her.
With a laugh, Brooke dove her hand into the bag of peanuts he offered her. 'Yeah, I guess I would.' The strategy proved successful, as the relief man shut down the next three batters, leaving Parks and his teammate
