Free Rules of the Game by Nora Roberts Page A

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 Marcoses’—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 the 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.
    â€œIf they take this one,” Lee was saying, “the Kings lock up the division.” He slipped his hand over Claire’s. “We need these runs.”
    â€œWhy 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.
    â€œThere’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.”
    â€œI wouldn’t switch cameramen in the middle of a shoot,” Brooke mumbled.
    â€œYou 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 stranded on base. The crowds groaned, swore at the umpire and berated the batters.
    â€œNow there’s sportsmanship,” Brooke observed, casting a look over her shoulder when someone called the batter, who struck out to end the inning, a bum—and other less kind names.
    Lee gave a snort of laughter as he draped his arm casually over Claire’s shoulders. “You should hear them when we’re losing, kid.”
    The lifted-brow look Brooke gave Claire at the gesture was returned blandly.