Rules of the Game Read Online Free PDF Page A

o’clock.”
    â€œParks,” he corrected tersely and broke the connection.
    Falling back on the pillow, Brooke started to laugh.
    She was still in high good humor when she dressed that evening. Still, she thought it was too bad that the file she had read on Parks hadn’t contained a bit more than all those baseball statistics. A few personal details would have given her more of an edge. What would Parks Jones have to say if he knew he was taking his future director to dinner? she wondered. Somehow Brooke didn’t think he’d be too pleased when he learned she’d left out that little piece of information. But the whole scenario was too good to miss. And there was the fact that he’d touched off something in her that she wanted to get out of her system before they started to work together.
    Wrapped in a bath towel, Brooke pondered her wardrobe. She didn’t date often—her choice. Early experience had influenced her attitude toward men. If they were good-looking and charming, Brooke steered clear of them.
    She’d been only seventeen when she’d met her first good-looking charmer. He’d been twenty-two and fresh out of college. When he’d come into the diner where she had worked, Clark had been quick with a joke and generous with a tip. It had started with a late movie once or twice a week, then an afternoon picnic in the park. It hadn’t bothered Brooke that he wasn’t working. He’d told her he was taking the summer off before he settled down to a job.
    His family was well connected, genteel and Bostonian. The genteel, Clark had explained with an acerbic humor that had fascinated her, meant there were plenty of heirlooms and little ready cash. They had plans for him that he was consistently vague about with the carelessness of the young. He’d mentioned his family now and again—grandparents, sisters—with a humor that spoke of an intimacy she envied almost painfully. Clark could make fun of them, Brooke realized, because he
was
one of them.
    He’d needed a bit of freedom, he’d claimed, a few months to flow after the regimentation of college. He wanted to be in touch with the
real
world before he chose the perfect career.
    Young and starved for affection, Brooke had soaked up everything he’d told her, believed every line. He had dazzled her with an education she had wished for but had never been able to have. He’d told her she was beautiful and sweet, then had kissed her as though he meant it. There had been afternoons at the beach with rented surfboards she’d hardly noticed that she’d paid for. And when she’d given him her innocence in a kind of panicked, shamed excitement, he had seemed pleased with her. He’d laughed at her naive embarrassments and had been gentle. Brooke had thought she’d never been happier.
    When he’d suggested they live together, she’d agreed eagerly, wanting to cook and clean for him, longing to wake and sleep with him. The fact that her meager salary and tips now supported both of them had never crossed her mind. Clark had talked of marriage the same way he had talked of his work—vaguely. They were something for the future, something practical that people in love shouldn’t dwell on. Brooke had agreed, rosily happy with what she’d thought was her first real home. One day they would have children, she had thought. Boys with Clark’s handsome face, girls with his huge brown eyes. Children with grandparents in Boston who would always know who their parents were and where their home was.
    For three months she’d worked like a Trojan, setting aside part of her small salary for the future Clark always talked of while he pursued what he called his studies and systematically rejected all the jobs in the want ads as unsuitable. Brooke could only agree. To her, Clark was much too smart for any manual labor, much too important for any ordinary position. When the