Free Rules of the Game by Nora Roberts

small smile from forming. “You’re very perceptive.”
    â€œBut you won’t, because you’re a pro. Whatever happens between us personally won’t make you direct any differently.”
    â€œI’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.
    â€œI 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