Game On (A Bad Boy Sports Romance) (7 page)

              I took her hand and shook it firmly, giving her a nod in return. “It’ll be a pleasure working with you, Ms. Washington. Looking forward to being in touch.”

              “I’ll give you a call as soon as I have a counteroffer drawn up, and we can get it submitted through my offices. I don’t advise going to see them in person while this is in dispute.”

              “Thanks,” I said, and as she nodded to me, I made my way out of the office, feeling confident. I was not a legal-minded person, but if there was one type of people I knew how to talk to, it was sportspeople. As I stepped down the stairs of the offices and headed towards my car, I hit the ‘call’ button for the first team manager on my list and put the ear to my phone.

              If Paul and Janet wanted a fight, I was going to bring the best ammo that I had.

              I was already halfway through a box of stale crackers, curled up in bed with a face mask on, wearing a thrift store terry cloth robe and watching game show reruns. As usual, I hadn’t had the time to go proper grocery shopping, so I was just nibbling on whatever I happened to have in the house. This time it was crackers and some peanut butter hidden toward the back of the cabinet. Last night with Kieran had been my first proper meal in quite awhile. It was a wonder I managed to survive on scraps stolen now and then, scooping up handfuls of dry cereal and granola on the go. It wasn’t that I didn’t care about what I ate-- it was just that I cared a whole lot more about my career than anything else. I was too busy to eat right. Too busy to take care of myself. That’s the way I built my life, everything balanced on top of the towering, precarious structure of my ambitions.

              But last night, Kieran had taken me to a real restaurant for the first time in ages. Normally, even when I met up with subjects for interviews at restaurants, they were pretty low-key, cheap establishments. Just a place to get chips and salsa while I hammer some guy about his inner strength and favorite childhood memories. I generally spent much more time asking questions and scribbling down answers than I did eating. Priorities. But when Kieran texted me the instructions for our totally professional and definitely not personal date last night, my jaw had dropped. He’d gotten us reservations at a swanky Italian place near the strip somehow, at the last minute.

              Part of me wondered if he’d actually made the reservation a week ago, just planning quietly to rope me into going last night. Either way, I was begrudgingly impressed. He was doing a lot to keep me interested, which was bizarre to think about considering the fact that Kieran was a superstar football player who could literally have just about any woman he wanted. But for some reason, he chose to spend his time with me. I told myself he probably had a bunch of other girls he hung out with, too-- that I wasn’t special. And the truth of the matter was, we were still just professional acquaintances. Just because I had exclusive rights to his interviews didn’t mean I had exclusive rights to his heart.

              Not that I wanted that or anything. It would be foolish to want something like that. No matter how much attention he gave me now, I told myself it was probably just the way he was-- cocky and borderline rude in the public eye and overly affable and generous in closed quarters. Maybe he was just buttering me up as a sort of bribe to make me cast him in a more positive light, since my status as his interviewer set me up to control how people perceived him. So perhaps his kindness toward me was just a ploy to keep his image clean and pretty. Just a business move.

I couldn’t even really blame him if that were the case. I’d had subjects try to bribe me before in more subtle ways. And sometimes less subtle, too. One time an ad rep for a Utah team tried to pay me twenty bucks to gloss over some shady stuff he let slip during an interview. He’d gotten a little drunk and said more than he should have. But since the shady information was still pretty damn boring, I kept his dirty laundry out of the article anyway. Without accepting his pitiful bribe.

Kieran, though, was a different story. He was an enigma to me, still. I couldn’t quite figure out what his plans were for me, what he really thought of our dynamic together. Sometimes when he was answering my questions it pretty much felt just like any other interview, albeit with an easier, more natural banter than usual.

But then at times he would stop and give me this thousand-watt grin, beaming at me like he’d never been so happy or relaxed in his life. I wondered what it was about me that put him so at ease. Maybe it was just the fact that I wasn’t after his money or fame. There was no expectation of a relationship after the interviews ended. We were just two people thrown into a professional obligation together who just happened to get along really well, at least after that first rocky encounter at the cafe.

And he asked me questions, too. Asking what my daily life was like, how I felt about my career, how I managed to juggle all my responsibilities at once. Kieran seemed genuinely intrigued by my boring, hectic life. I couldn’t understand it. I wrote it off as just his ability to be very charming and charismatic, his skills at making people trust him and feel comfortable with him. In some ways, he would have been well-suited to working as a reporter himself: he was dedicated, determined, friendly, and awfully nosy.

Last night he’d admitted to me, “I’m sorry for all the questions, I just like to remind myself that life goes on outside the football stadium sometimes. I kind of miss it.”

That had shocked me more than anything. Here was this guy who had it all: money, publicity, enormous talent, and a sure shot straight to the top of his field. Not to mention the cocksure attitude he displayed in the public eye. He was the last person I would have ever expected to miss the dull comings and goings of we normal folks.

Our dinner together had gone so well that I even allowed myself to break one of my own rules I’d set for myself a long time ago-- I had a glass of wine. Normally I would sit there, totally stone cold sober, while my subject drank and got sloppier and sloppier, slurring the answers to my probing questions. I knew that when I drank sometimes my journalistic edge got a little, well, fuzzy. It was too much of a risk to drink while conducting an interview. But last night… I let myself enjoy the night for once. The food was phenomenal, Kieran looked good enough to eat, himself, and we were getting along so swimmingly that I went ahead and let him order me a glass of merlot. Of course, once I started drinking my interview questions sort of flew out the window, but we had a good conversation anyway.

Finally, after dodging the topic all night, Kieran let me explain to him the conversation I’d overheard in the parking garage yesterday. He listened intently with his brows furrowed as I described Paul and Janet’s exchange. I watched the smile fade from Kieran’s handsome face as he realized that perhaps this was more serious than he’d thought. I hated to be the bearer of bad news, but he needed to know. And he was thankful for my intel, assuring me that he would look into it today and do some digging into alternative contracts.

So now I sat in bed, trying to eat crackers and peanut butter, watch game shows, and edit an article all at the same time. All of this was scarcely enough to keep my mind off of Kieran. He was all I could think about. His smile, his laugh, his muscles…

I sighed heavily and shut my laptop, flopping back against my pillows. There was very little chance of my getting anything done tonight. I was already ahead of the game with work anyway, so it wouldn’t hurt to give myself a night off for once. I stared at my phone, willing it to buzz. I wanted to hear from Kieran about how his day had gone, how much he’d found out about what Paul and Janet were planning. I wanted to know if he was okay.

Which was definitely outside the realm of a professional relationship.

But who was I kidding? I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of fondness for the guy. Despite our rough start, he had proven himself to be a truly wonderful person. He was charming my socks off at every turn, with his witty remarks and easy grin. And dinner last night… I could only imagine how expensive that bill had to have been. Just the wine alone was more than I ever spent on food in a day. But none of that bothered him at all. He had paid the bill, left a generous tip, and walked me back out to my car like a perfect gentleman. He’d even asked me if I was sure I was good enough to drive after having one glass of wine a couple hours earlier. I was floored by his kindness toward me, especially since I was totally unaccustomed to men treating me with respect, much less outright interest.

It was bizarre. And now I couldn’t get it off my mind.

Almost as though he’d read my thoughts, my phone suddenly buzzed and I snatched it up so quickly I nearly fell off the bed. My heart did a little leap for joy as I saw Kieran’s name pop up on the screen. I excitedly slid the text open to see:

Sorry, I know it’s late but I found out some sketchy stuff today. Could you please come over so we can talk about it? I don’t wanna be alone right now. Need a second opinion and I trust yours. I’ll send you my address.

I bit my lip for a moment, pondering the ethics of going over to my subject’s house at ten o’clock at night to discuss private matters. I assured myself that some of the best reporters in the history of journalism had achieved such success by getting perhaps too close to their subjects, so really it was just in both our best interests for me to go over and see him. It was all for work. Especially if he had some new juicy recon for me to add into my article material. This was what reporting was about anyway, wasn’t it? Chipping away at a subject until the truth is revealed, whether it’s prettier or uglier than the outside image?

Okay, I texted back. Be there soon.

He sent back his address and I inhaled sharply. Of course he lived in one of the nicest areas in the Vegas area. I jumped out of bed and threw on some jeans and a flowy tank top and was about to rush out the door when I passed a hallway mirror and noticed that I was still wearing my chamomile face mask. I looked like an actual monstrosity. Definitely would not do for me to show up at Kieran’s house-- or mansion-- looking like the creature from the black lagoon. I dashed back to the bathroom to wash it off, dry my face, and then bolted out to the stairwell to get down to the parking lot of my apartment complex. I turned the engine over and stepped on the gas pedal hard, peeling out down the Vegas streets.

Neon lights flashed somewhat menacingly overhead, casting my line of sight in in electric pinks and greens. Vegas this time of night was coming alive, the strip glittering with signs beckoning to the restless locals and excitable tourists to come in and find their own shangri-la. I was used to it by now-- the constant noise and color, like every tacky roadside attraction monstrously welded into one bright, overenthusiastic amalgam of everything too shiny and too forward. Vegas was a marvel of mankind’s hubris: a metropolitan oasis in the middle of an unforgiving desert.

Traffic was wild tonight, even though it was only Thursday, but luckily I was a local. I knew all the back roads and shortcuts to get across town in record time while everyone else was still stalled out in the bumper-to-bumper grind. I navigated my rickety little car up and down the side streets, the surrounding neighborhood increasing in opulence as I approached the part of town Kieran inhabited. He lived in an incredibly exclusive part of town, one that I’d never so much as set foot in before, but I knew the way all the same.

Sometimes when I was bored or overly stressed, I would a drive to clear my mind. A couple times, these aimless midnight drives led me across town to Kieran’s area. I would gawk at the huge, beautiful houses with their perfectly trimmed hedges and vibrant green lawns, shaking my head at the Mercedes Benzes and Rolls Royces parked in the driveways. It was a lifestyle I had never even touched but through a wistful windowpane, a life that didn’t belong to me and probably never would. It wasn’t like I really craved the money these people had. It was the stability of not having to worry about paying rent or buying food or gas that got me. That, and the possibility of getting to travel the world without much worry. I’d spent my entire life here in Nevada, and while I had done pretty well digging out a life for myself here, I really wanted to expand my horizons and see new places.

I pulled up to the enormous honey-brown stucco, two-story house and parked in the driveway, gazing up in utter amazement at the building he lived in. There was a cast-iron balcony jutting out of the front and the whole exterior gave off an upscale Spanish villa vibe. I walked up to the elaborately carved front door, feeling very underdressed, even for a late night house call.

Before I could even knock, the door swung open to reveal Kieran standing there in jeans and a white T-shirt that accentuated every firm ripple of the muscles underneath. I swallowed hard. He looked delicious… and a little sad. His blue eyes had a sorrowful, concerned light to them and I instantly asked what was wrong.

“Just… come in and we’ll talk about it. I need your advice,” he said softly, guiding me into the house. On the inside, the decor was significantly less opulent. The quality of what was here was still very high, of course, but the house seemed painfully empty. With its high ceilings and wide open spaces, the few pieces of furniture and personal accoutrements seemed pitifully understated. I supposed it made sense, really. Kieran was a single guy living in a veritable castle meant for several family members, not just one.

“This is beautiful,” I breathed, turning in a slow circle and staring up at the ceilings and intricate wall mouldings. “I can’t believe you live here. Well, actually I can.”

He laughed and gestured for me to follow him into a living room area. He flopped down on a plushy brown sofa and beckoned for me to sit beside him. I obliged willingly, all the while reminding myself that this was a professional meeting, despite the late hour and casual vibe.