Which was true, in a way. Sort of. As soon as I figured out how to tell someone a foot and a half taller than me and weighing two and a half times as much as me that he can't go to the strip club and take shots out of the girls' belly buttons.
Chase, however... He was looking at me with a different expression, one that I couldn't quite interpret. I kept on finding my own eyes drawn back to him, although I hastily pulled my gaze away each time.
I didn't want to give him any ideas, after all.
Benson had started roaring on again as soon as I'd stopped talking, but he finally sounded as though he was winding down. "And so, I'll leave you with Kaylie-"
"Katy," I muttered softly, although no one heard me over the bear of a man beside me.
"-so that she can take your pictures, or whatever it is that she needs to do. Maybe she'll make you pose with cute furry animals, or something like that. Try not to fuck this up, you assholes."
And on that lovely, uplifting note, Jim Benson III let go of me and stomped off towards the exit from the locker room. His assistant, a tall, willowy thin, very quiet and nervous looking blonde, sashayed after him, her heels tottering on the thickly carpeted floor.
A minute later, I found myself standing alone, surrounded, both horizontally and vertically, by football players.
"So." The comment came from a huge man, easily three hundred pounds, every inch of it muscle. "What're you gonna do?"
The other players remained silent, waiting for my response. I took a deep breath, trying to find a single nerve that wasn't frayed, before turning to the massive giant of a man.
"Well, I'm mainly going to try and post things on the social media pages that show your fans the qualities that we want them to see," I began, managing to muster up a bright smile that hopefully didn't crack to reveal my nervous interior. "Take some pictures of you handing the game ball off to a sick child, pictures of you posing with fans, comments from you about how you can't wait to go get some good ol' Philly Cheesesteaks after a game in Philadelphia, that sort of thing. Basically, I want to convince your fans that you aren't drunk and balls deep inside someone every second that you're off the football field."
"Yeah, if only!" another player piped up, eliciting a rough laugh from the men.
That joke, lame as it was, apparently broke up the meeting. As if on some unseen and unheard signal, the men turned away from me, heading over to their lockers. Evidently, it was time for practice, as they started changing into uniforms right in front of me.
No, seriously, right in front of me. I hastily averted my eyes as one man dropped his pants right in front of me, his member hanging down and wiggling! As I pulled my eyes away from him, I saw him grinning, clearly aware of the discomfort he'd caused me.
I turned away, thinking that I could duck out of the locker room before I caught sight of any more testicles - and nearly collided with Seth Chase, standing barely a foot behind me!
"Oh!" I exclaimed, as I bounced off his hard chest. For a moment, I felt myself teetering, on the verge of tumbling backward-
-and then his hand reached out and caught me, as easily as he caught a football out on the field.
I brushed my hair out of my eyes as he pulled me back up to my balanced equilibrium. "Uh, thanks," I said, blinking as I looked up at him. Man, he really did have nice blue eyes. I risked a smile.
Chase didn't smile back. "So, you're here to fix me," he said, his gaze pinning me in place.
"I'm here for the whole team, actually-"
He waved a hand dismissively. "We both know who's usually on the front page of the papers, whose picture is in the racy tabloids. I knew that Benson would get annoyed, but I never imagined the old boar would do something about it - not when he's this close to a Superbowl win. So, you're the watchdog that he's got nipping at my heels, huh?"
Chase paused, although I had no idea what he wanted me to say here. He was right - I already knew that one of my biggest challenges would be trying to find a way to keep him out of the paparazzi cameras - but I didn't want to admit it to him.
So I just shrugged, risking another smile. "Looks that way, doesn't it?" I said weakly.
For a moment, Chase just stared back at me. I wondered whether he had any rule against hitting women. I then remembered the story a couple months ago, about how he climbed into the ring at an all-woman ultimate fighter cage match, and decided not to bet on his chivalry.
And then, out of nowhere, he smiled.
He had a hell of a smile, the small little part of my brain that wasn't totally dazzled observed calmly. With a smile like that, I could see how he convinced so many women to hop into his pants, even when the cameras were flashing and aimed at them. Something about it just looked so deliciously naughty, almost magnetic.
"We'll see how long you can last," Chase said.
It took me a moment to process that statement - and by the time it had set in my head what he really meant, he was already gone, on the other side of the locker room.
Chapter Four
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"Seriously, this job is going to kill me!"
On that declaration, I tilted back my glass of beer, taking a deep gulp before setting it back down on the bar in front of me. I knew that I probably looked like an idiot with a little beer foam mustache, but at the moment, I felt just too angry to care.
"I still don't get what you're complaining about, Katy," spoke up Miranda Lawson next to me. She lifted her own martini glass and took a small little sip before carefully, calmly setting it back down on the bar next to my own drink.
I turned to look at her, raising my eyebrows. "Yeah, well, you're perfect and everything always somehow works for you, so of course you don't see any problems," I replied, trying to remember to fight down my anger, to not blow up at my best friend.
I looked at Miranda as she blushed a little from the compliment. Tall, with long, slender legs that poked out appealingly from inside her pencil skirt Miranda looked every inch the sexy professional. Her every movement made her soft curls of red hair bounce around a face that had just the lightest little spattering of freckles, just enough to be alluring without overpowering her delicate features.
Sometimes, I thought to myself, she looked so damn beautiful that I wanted to slug her, give her a bruise so that I wouldn't look quite so much like a short little troll standing next to her.
And yet, despite all odds, this woman had been my best friend for at least the last decade, ever since we were both awkward teenagers in middle school. Miranda had been the new student to arrive at my school partway through the year, and I ended up being the first girl to go sit next to her at lunch and invite her to join my little group.
Of course, before long, Miranda became the most popular girl in the entire school. She was always perfect at everything she did - but even though I always felt as though I should hate her for it, I could never quite bring myself to feel anything more than slight twinges of envy towards her. Even as she did every task perfectly, made instant connections with everyone she met, she managed to keep a smile on her face, and never point out just how much better than me she was at everything.
After college, Miranda headed off to the finance world, where she immediately landed a job doing some sort of incredibly complex financial trading thingy, making scads of money. I still don't understand it, even after she's explained it to me multiple times. What matters, however, is that she's always willing to pick up the tab when we go out for an after-work gripe session.
"So the problem," Miranda commented after another minute, "is that no one really believes that you'll accomplish anything as the social media manager for the team. They can't see you making any dent in the bad press."
"Yeah, that's pretty much it," I nodded, comparing the level of my beer to Miranda's martini. I wanted to drink more, but I also didn't want to get more than a drink ahead of my friend.
She shrugged. "Well, I think that's a good thing!"
"How is that a good thing
?"
She tapped the gray slate bar in front of us with one perfectly manicured fingernail. "Essentially, they expect to see zero change from you. So any improvement, no matter how small, means that you're exceeding expectations! They've set the bar much lower than they probably anticipated!"
Damn it, how did my best friend always make my problems suddenly seem so reasonable? I took another drink while I tried to figure out how to respond. Miranda, meanwhile, leaned back - and then suddenly reached out and grabbed my arm.
"Hey, there they are!" she exclaimed, pointing up at the television mounted on the wall behind the bar.
I looked up, and sure enough, an old game of the Hawks was on (the same game from the previous afternoon). "Yep, that's the team," I agreed. "Amazing on the field, total shitshows when they're off of it."
Miranda stared up at the screen, looking entranced, as if she'd never watched a football game before. For all I knew, that might actually be the case, even though I remembered her dating several guys from the football team back in high school and college. Miranda's tastes ran towards big, blocky, and bulging with muscle.
"So wait, you get to go see the inside of their locker room and stuff, right?" Miranda piped up a minute or two later.
"Yeah, why?" I replied, glancing over at her in surprise and wondering where this was going.
"So, do you think that you'll get to see..." Miranda's voice trailed off, but I didn't need to look at how she was biting her lip to read her thoughts.
I rolled my eyes at her, making sure that she saw the gesture. "Look, just because I'm single, I'm not planning on chasing some dude from a football team," I pointed out. "And given that I'm trying to cover up all their naughty extracurricular activities, I'm pretty sure that this will turn me off from wanting to go within ten feet of any of their diseased dicks."
It wasn't until I'd finished my sentence that I realized that I'd spoken a bit too loudly, and a couple other people in the bar were casting surreptitious looks over in my direction. Miranda, however, just laughed.
"I don't know," she said, her eyes drifting back up to the television's screen. "They are pretty cute - especially Seth Chase! Did you see those latest pictures of him in the Enquirer? They had to put a big huge black bar to cover him up, but even the visible parts were pretty sexy! I wouldn't kick him out of my bed, if you know what I mean!"
Of course I knew what she meant. People sitting at the other end of the bar probably heard enough to know what Miranda meant.
I thought back to my brief encounter with the man himself, in the locker room. Sure, he hadn't been naked, or even partially naked, but that didn't mean that I didn't get a good look at his handsome features, those sparkling blue eyes. Those were the kind of eyes, I remembered, that could very easily make a girl lose control and decide to do some profoundly stupid things.
"Declaration," I announced instead, reaching out and holding my beer glass aloft. "Listen up - I'm making a declaration, right now."
Miranda's perfectly manicured eyebrows rose, but she picked up her martini glass and held it up a couple of inches, waiting for me to make my declaration.
We'd started making declarations like this back in high school, after Jimmy Parsons had broken up with me for the third time in as many months. After spending several hours weeping over my loss, while Miranda held out a box of tissues for me to steadily drain in an attempt to staunch the flow out my nose and eyes, I eventually struggled to my feet and announced that I was making a declaration - a promise to myself that I couldn't break.
Since that time, we'd made dozens of declarations to each other, and most of the time they worked out pretty well. Some of them, of course (Miranda's weekly declaration, every Sunday morning, that she was "never drinking another sip of alcohol again"), flopped and failed. But by and large, we stuck to our declarations.
"Declaration," I announced again, holding my half-empty glass of beer aloft. "All of the football players on the Hawks are off limits. No dating, no hookups, not even flirting if I can help it. It just seems too dangerous, especially considering how challenging my job feels already to me."
"No flirting, even?" Miranda questioned. "Are you sure? That seems pretty extreme. And besides, isn't one of the perks of this job that you get to socialize and get to meet these big, strong, sexy, very rich men a bit better than anyone else might?"
I stubbornly shook my head. "I'm here for my job, not to find a hot guy to get me out of my dating slump," I answered. "No dating! No letting any of these men interfere in my personal life. And that's my declaration."
And before Miranda could poke some more holes in my argument, I lifted my beer glass up a little more, and then downed it in a single motion.
"Another!" I called out, setting the glass down on the bar with a solid thump, making a little puddle of suds.
Next to me, Miranda shook her head. "I still think you're missing out on a great opportunity," she commented, but she wisely didn't try to argue.
Instead, with a grimace, she tossed back the rest of her martini, setting down the empty glass next to mine on the bar.
"Barkeep!" Miranda called out, twirling one long and elegant finger in the air. Somehow, her casual tone caught the attention of the man, and he headed over to us.
"Another for you two ladies?" he asked, his eyes solely on Miranda.
"Yes, another of the same, thank you!" she replied, giving him a little smile that probably set his blood close to boiling. He hurried off to get my friend her martini, not even bothering to ask me if I wanted a different beer.
I didn't let the lack of attention bother me. After all, for as long as I could remember, Miranda had been upstaging me - but she was always so nice about it, so accommodating to me, that I could never sustain any anger towards her. Over the years, I'd grown used to it, had come to enjoy the advantages of just standing next to the brightest star in the room.
The declaration was a good idea, I insisted to myself. My job was to be involved in the Hawks' activities off the field, but to try and steer them away from their bad decisions, to try and keep the reporters from splashing candid photos of them across the tabloids. And if I was going to stand any chance of succeeding at that lofty goal, I needed to make sure that I had the authority to command them to do what I needed, without hesitation.
If I wanted that authority, I'd need to find some way to impress upon them that I was looking out for their best interests. I didn't know how I was going to accomplish that.
I did know, however, that I couldn't let them see me as a woman, as someone that they could flirt with to get out of trouble.
I looked up at the television, watching the previous weekend's football game. Just as I looked up, however, the view cut away, instead showing one of the most recent pictures of Chase. This one showed him standing, fully exposed, on a hotel balcony. The sports station editor had done his best to blur out any details, but the overall picture was clear enough.
"Any improvement is a good one," I muttered as I buried my head in my hands.
Seeing me drop my head down, Miranda looked over in sympathy. "Maybe we should take you out tonight, try and find you someone else so that you'll forget all about those sexy football players," she suggested.
I shrugged my shoulders. "Yeah, whatever. Can't hurt."
Chapter Five
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"Hey, man, what's going on?"
Chase started as he realized that the voice was addressing him. "Yeah, what?" he asked, blinking as he looked up from the laces of the football in his hands.
DeShaun was a few paces away, looking curiously at him. "Come on, man, I can tell that something's bothering you," he said, taking a step closer. "Your practice today's been all kinds of off. So talk to me - what's going on?"
"It's nothing," Chase said, tightening his fingers on the football. He turned, sighting in on the target downfield, and threw the ball in a single, swift overhand motion.
Next to him, DeShaun held his tongue fo
r a moment, watching as the football sailed perfectly through the hole in the middle of the downfield target. "There's something, man," he said, once the ball hit the ground. "Don't think that a single throw is gonna tell me that you're not a million miles away in that head of yours."
Chase sighed, but he knew that the man wasn't going to let up on him. Sometimes, DeShaun could be annoying, but he was also just about the closest friend that Chase had, and he was one of the few people who truly understood the pressures on him, why he acted out and blew wads of cash on booze and strippers.
Hell, most of the time, DeShaun was right there alongside him - although the paparazzi cameras always seemed to crop him out. What he'd done to get that deal, Chase had no idea, but he kind of wished that he could secure a similar deal.
"You remember that girl in the locker room this morning? Benson's new hire to try and fix our image?" he asked, as he bent over to pick up the next football from the row on the ground in front of him.
"Yeah, Katy," DeShaun recalled. Chase turned and looked at him in surprise, and the wiry wide receiver shrugged his shoulders. "I'm good with names," he said diffidently. "But what about her?"
For a moment, Chase didn't answer, focusing on the ball in his hands. DeShaun's mouth pressed together into a thin line.
"God, man, you're not gonna fuck her, are you?" he groaned. "Look, I know that you can't ever seem to quench that thirst of yours, but at least stick with the strippers and fans at the clubs! Don't go stirring up team business with your dirty-ass dick."
"That's not it!" Chase snapped, turning and hurtling the ball downfield. This throw, however, had too much spin, and the ball went wide of the target. "Come on, why do you assume that I'm trying to fuck every woman I meet?"
"Because usually, it's true," DeShaun grinned. Chase threw a half-hearted punch towards him, but he easily danced back, evading the attack. "Now tell me what's on your mind, will ya? I gotta get back to running drills."
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