LITMIR.BIZ

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life forever, and the mature man in Deuce knew that. It was that temperamental little boy in him who wanted to punch a wall at the thought.

       “Sure did. And I’m impressed with this house. Doesn’t look anything like the old Swain place.”

       “Have you seen Monroe’s?” Dad said, throwing a proud look at Kendra.

       She still sat at the kitchen table, the brown-and-white dog sizing him up from her lap. The almost-blush that Diana had caused had faded, but Kendra’s eyes were still unnaturally bright.

       “Yep,” Deuce said, his gaze still on her. “I saw the bar. Big changes there, too.” He dug his hands into his pockets and leaned against one of the high-gloss countertops. “In fact this whole town looks completely different.”

       Dad squeezed Diana a little closer to his side. “This is the reason, Deuce. This lady right here has done it all. She’s a one-woman growth curve.” He slid his hand over her waist and patted her hip, then glanced back at Kendra. “And so’s our little firestorm, Kennie.”

       “So what’s going on down there, Dad? Kendra tells me you’re sticking your toes into the Internet waters.”

       “We’ve been testing the waters for over a year and we haven’t drowned yet.” Dad laughed softly. “And if everything goes like we think it might, we’re going in deeper. Right, Kennie?”

       She leaned forward and slid her mysterious envelope across the table. “And here’s the boat we’re taking out.”

       “Oh!” Diana squealed and grabbed the envelope hungrily. “Let me see! How wonderful that Deuce is here for the final unveiling. Have some coffee, everyone. We’ll go into the family room and have a look at Kennie’s masterpiece.”

       Kennie’s masterpiece? Not exactly just some paperwork. Deuce gave her another hard look, but she gathered up the dog and her mug and turned her back to him.

       As the women moved to the other room, Deuce sidled up to his dad. “So, how you feeling? That, uh, thing working okay?”

       The older man gave him a sly smile. “My thing works fine. I don’t even take that little blue pill.”

       Deuce closed his eyes for a moment. “I meant the pacemaker.”

       Dad laughed. “I know what you meant. It’s fine. I’ve never been healthier in my life.” He looked 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

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