Page 31 of The Show

Rafe didn’t do as good a job as Murray had in hiding his grin. He didn’t even bother to try actually. It probably had something to do with the fact he and Beulah had finally gotten together because they’d been working so closely with each other and realized they didn’t in fact hate each other; something I’d made a tidy hundred gees out of, given he’d found it impossible to keep his dick in his pants.

But this Lowe situation I seemed to be in was not even in the same universe as similarities go.

“Oh man, you are fucked!” Rafe laughed through his words. “Guess you couldn’t say no to Gramps again.”

“Nope. He didn’t give me the chance to either. He took me right back into the party after that last request. He’ll know too, he’ll keep asking me. And if I don’t work with her he’ll want to know why, and then I’ll have to tell him, and it’ll become another family drama that everyone will find out about.”

I took a deep breath, quenching the rising panic before it got out of control.

“You know,” Murray wagged his finger at me, “Lowe was looking at you last night.”

I frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“At dinner, I caught her staring at you.” He correctly took my clenched jaw as a sign he needed to elaborate. “She was staring for a long time, the way I used to look at Kit, or the way you look at her.”

“Oh, fuck. Is that why you kept chuckling to yourself last night?” Rafe asked.

Murray nodded.

“You know, Pennington, you two would have very blonde babies.” Rafe laughed so hard at his stupid joke that he fell back.

Murray opened his mouth to say something equally ludicrous, then closed it again. I didn’t get a chance to ask him why when Rafe leapt to his feet and ran round me. I followed his path to see him relieving Beulah of a large tray of coffees as she yawned widely.

“Why are you all out here so early?”

She rubbed her eyes then pulled up the large cashmere blanket she’d been wearing which had slipped down her shoulders.

“Says the woman who never slept past five a.m. until three months ago,” chuckled Rafe, his hungover mood vanishing as he placed the tray on the floor, then pulled her into his lap and wrapped himself around her enough that she wouldn’t even need the blanket.

“Exactly!” she giggled at him. “I’m trying to reform, and this is enabling behavior.”

He rolled his eyes and kissed her cheek while she settled into him in a way that made my nose turn up. Far too early for that. I glanced over to see Murray meeting his eyes, expecting the same reaction, but got nothing because he was probably wondering where he could get a piece of the same.

I was beginning to feel a little outnumbered, and reached for a cup of coffee. “Thanks, Beulah.”

“Was Kit up?”

“No, still asleep, where most sensible people should be.” She shook her head at Murray then shrieked, and from the look on Rafe’s face, I hastened a guess he was the cause. “Well? What are you guys doing out here so early?”

Murray picked up one of the coffees and sipped. “We’re working out Penn’s game plan.”

“What’s does that mean?”

“It means, Pennington has finally come to terms with the fact he owns a baseball team, and we need to figure out how to make it good.”

She looked at me, eyes eager and wide. “Oh, how are you going to do that?”

When Beulah had come back into our lives a few months ago, we had all gone to watch The Yankees. I’d used the journey to the game as an opportunity to teach her as much as I could about baseball, and having been solely accustomed to my sisters showing very little interest, I was pleasantly surprised at how much she seemed to have enjoyed learning. It was made all the sweeter when The Yankees won.

In fact, it was the last Yankees game I’d attended.

“We’re going shopping. Wanna come?”

She blew on her steaming coffee. “What are we shopping for?”

“Baseball players,” I grinned.

“Sure. Why not? I don’t have a job right now, and I need a break from worrying about passing the bar.”

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