BABY MAKER
By Holly Rayner
Copyright 2016 by Holly Rayner
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part by any means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the explicit written permission of the author.
All characters depicted in this fictional work are consenting adults, of at least eighteen years of age. Any resemblance to persons living or deceased, particular businesses, events, or exact locations are entirely coincidental.
Table Of Contents:
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
ONE
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Amy
I sat back at my desk, looking over the draft of the story on the screen in front of me, and stretched against the tight, aching feeling in my lower back and shoulders. I smiled slightly, reading my own words. They weren’t bad; but it was obvious—to me, at least—that I wasn’t fully invested in the piece. I glanced out the window and saw a few flurries of snow twisting and turning in the gusty breeze outside. By the time I left the office, it would be dark out, and bitterly cold, to boot.
Be patient, Amy, I told myself, reaching for the lukewarm coffee next to my computer monitor. They won’t keep you on fluff stories forever. They have to give you something substantial eventually.
I sipped at my coffee and looked back at my monitor. As Minneapolis’ second-largest newspaper, the Inquisitor handled some headline news, but ever since they’d hired me on at the end of my internship, a few weeks before, I’d been on make-work: fluffy local news bits for the middle pages, and occasional advertorial pieces. Reading my story again, I decided I’d done the best I possibly could with the anemic material I’d been given, and sent it to my section editor for markup.
It was Friday afternoon. In a few hours, I’d be done for the day, and for the week as well—since I was a newbie, and only getting softball-pitch stories, I had so far managed to escape working weekends. I thought about what I might do with myself over the weekend; I still needed to get some Christmas shopping done, and that would give me an excuse to spend a little bit of money on myself. A nice new bath bomb would do me good.
“Michaels!”
I looked up, startled out of my thoughts of a hot bath full of fragrant steam. My section editor, Malcolm, was standing a few feet away from my desk.
“Just got your piece about the Mayor’s Christmas appeal. Good job. I don’t think we’ll need any major changes on it.”
I smiled, though I was pretty sure I could have turned in something less thorough, less well-written, and still gotten the pass—it was filler content, after all. But steady work would—should—get me ahead at the Inquisitor, and proving that I could do great things with iffy stories was part of my plan to move up.
“Since I’ve got nothing but make-work for the rest of the day, what about letting me out early to beat the snowstorm about to bear down on us?”
Malcolm rolled his eyes and gestured to the half-empty cubicle farm. “With half the staff working from home, normally I’d have told you not to even bother coming in,” he said. “Before you go, though, I just got a beep from above. Kent wants to see you.”
My heart started beating faster in my chest, and I regretted the extra cup of coffee I’d helped myself to. Kent Lambert, editor-in-chief of the Inquisitor, wanted to talk to me. I’d met him once, briefly, when I’d been accepted as an intern, and only seen him a few times in general staff meetings since then.
“He does?” I had to be a little proud of myself for keeping my voice calm and level.
Malcolm nodded. “Looks like someone’s taken some notice of the work you do around here,” he said, with a little smile. It made his eyes brighter, his face—starting to show signs of advanced middle age—a little softer, kinder. “Get yourself in there. He wants you ASAP.”
Malcolm turned away, then, and I turned back to my monitor, trying to collect my thoughts. In spite of what my boss had said, I couldn’t be sure that Kent wanted to see me for a positive reason.
I took my purse out of my desk drawer and began pulling out the few makeup items I kept with me. If I was going to meet with the editor of the paper, I was going to go in looking my best. I smoothed my hair down and dotted a little bit of lipstick on my lips. I powdered my nose and forehead to get rid of the little bit of shine, and cleaned up a smudge of mascara under my right eye. Then I took a deep breath, drank down a few sips of water, and popped a mint into my mouth.
Grabbing my phone, notepad and pen, I rose to my feet, feeling anxious. I’d long since given up on wearing high heels to work, so all I had left to do was straighten the hem of my sweater dress before I made my way towards the elevator. Kent’s office was on the top floor of the building, alongside the offices of the publisher and a few executives. I tried not to fidget while I waited for the slow, old elevator car to reach my floor; I spent the minutes racking my brain over what Kent could possibly want with me. I wasn’t even aware that he knew my name.
I wanted to believe that Malcolm was right—that my strong work ethic and quality writing had marked me out as someone to watch, and that Kent had decided to give me something a bit juicier. But it was equally possible that Kent wanted to let me know that the newspaper had made some kind of hiring error—that they simply didn’t have the budget to keep me on.
The elevator doors opened and I stepped inside, trying to keep myself as calm as possible as I made my way to see the man who could destroy my career or push it up from the ground floor. I tapped my foot on the tiled floor of the elevator car, waiting impatiently as it groaned and squeaked through the levels of the building.
I stepped out of the elevator and turned left, towards Kent’s office. I took a deep breath, smoothed my hair and clothes one last time, and knocked on the wooden door to the editor’s office.
“Come in!”
I turned the knob and stepped inside.
Kent Lambert looked exactly the way that you might expect the editor-in-chief of a major tabloid newspaper to look: he had started balding, though it would be a while yet before he’d be tempted to do a comb-over, and he had on a dress shirt, the sleeves rolled up to just under his elbows. When I’d seen him before, I’d noticed a slight paunch to his stomach, but he generally managed to dress in such a way as to minimize it. He always wore black or navy pants, and either a black or brown belt that matched his shoes.
“Ah, Amy, come in,” he said, smiling at me. The expression made me relax a little, though not completely.
“Malc said you wanted to see me,” I said, letting the door close behind me.
“He sent over the piece you just submitted,” Kent said. “Good work on that. Almost a shame it’ll be in the filler pages.”
I kept my smile on my face and opened up my notebook, doing my best to seem confident. “I do what I can,” I told him. “I guess I’m still in t
he ‘glad just to be here’ phase.”
“Not yet at the ‘why aren’t I an editor’ phase?” he asked with a wink.
“Not yet,” I laughed, convinced that my heart was beating at a thousand beats per minute.
“I might have something for you, actually—assuming you’re interested in something a little meatier,” Kent said, and my fear shifted into intrigue.
“Sounds like an early Christmas present.”
“You can look at it that way,” Kent agreed. “Do well on this assignment, and the rewards here at the Inquisitor will be huge.”
“I’d love to hear more about it,” I told him.
“You follow hockey at all? NHL?”
I shrugged. I’d lived in Minnesota for all of my life—even if I hadn’t liked hockey growing up, it was kind of impossible to avoid. “I know the basics, keep track of the teams,” I said, noncommittally.
“Then you’ll be a great fit for this. I want you to do a profile on Finn McClane.”
I wrote the name down in my notebook with a nod. “Sure. Something short and sweet, or…?”
“An extended piece,” Kent said. “I want you to really delve into him. From what this paper already knows, you’ll have some really juicy stuff to dig up.”
I raised an eyebrow at that; there was a tone in Kent’s voice that implied he wanted something more than just thoroughness from me.
“Okay, so we’ve covered him before?”
“We have, but don’t let that tie your hands,” he said, dismissing the issue. “What I want is for you to really, really dig. Find any little thing that you can bring to light about the guy.”
My stomach, which had started to recover after finding out that Kent wanted me about an assignment rather than a firing, started to twist again.
“He’s your typical NHL bad boy, so you should have no end of material to play with. Get it to me ASAP—no later than Christmas—and you’ll be on the shortlist next time we have a permanent opening for a section.”
My mind was spinning as I scribbled down a few notes. I thanked Kent for the opportunity and excused myself to get started, and as I waited for the elevator once more, I started thinking. It was obvious that the chief wanted me to do a hit piece on this guy, but I tried to tell myself that it was exactly the kind of testing assignment new journalists got, no matter what paper they wrote for.
Ten years from now, when you’ve broken some real, substantive stories, no one is going to remember this, I told myself as I stepped into the elevator. And what the hell—a star like McClane isn’t going to have the time or energy to worry about one little journalist.
TWO
Amy
Back at my desk, I thought about the best way to get started on the project Kent had given me. The first task was to find out what people were saying about Finn McClane in general; if I could avoid covering old ground, so much the better.
I pulled up his name on Google and started looking through the most recent stories: he was the star player of the Minnesota Magpies, and when his picture came up on the sidebar I found myself staring at it with more than just a little interest. At 26, he didn’t have the beat-up look that NHL players took on after a while; he had a big, white smile, and his bright gray-green eyes sparkled in a face that didn’t have any signs of broken bones.
The existing coverage on McClane made my job instantly harder. I skimmed article after article on him: he volunteered at children’s hospitals throughout the state, and had gone with his teammates to serve Thanksgiving dinner at a homeless shelter only weeks before. He was wholesome, and while his quotes made him sound more than a little cocky—maybe even arrogant—he had a frustratingly spotless public image. He was the talented kid who’d made it good by getting a scholarship, then a major league offer, in rapid succession, and he was considered a local hero by some.
Well, this is going to be difficult. If I could even manage to make him look like he doesn’t like dogs or something, it would be the work of my life so far.
I sighed. Somewhere during my research, Malcolm had left a fresh coffee on my desk, and I sat back, looking at my screen and taking a sip.
Finn McClane had either a very wholesome life, or he had some really smart people working for him. He attended nightclubs and celebrity events from time to time, but none of the women he’d been seen with were scandalous. Rather, they were all pretty beige, safe choices—pretty girls who were trying to get a start in modeling or acting, but who had day jobs.
I combed through the public records resource that the newspaper paid for access to, but there was nothing there that didn’t show Finn to be a model citizen. He was—at least publicly—the golden boy to end all golden boys. He even seemed to have avoided the usual small-time level of scandal that college athletes tended to find their way into.
The only way I could see myself somehow getting some dirt was by talking to Finn himself. If I could get him on his own, I might be able to tease something out of him.
I looked through the information I’d assembled and found the name of Finn’s manager: Heather Cunningham. She was an independent agent, so it was more likely that I’d be able to get her directly rather than having to deal with half a dozen minions. I would call her, try to set up an interview, and hope that she was interested in getting as much press for her client as possible.
I tapped her number into my phone and waited as it rang three times.
“Heather Cunningham speaking,” a brisk, female voice said as soon as the call connected.
“Hey, Heather,” I said, settling on the familiar form—it was a risk, but it might pay off. “I’m Amy Michaels, from the Inquisitor. I was wondering if your client might be interested in giving an interview for a profile we’re doing on him.”
There was a brief pause on the other end of the line and I wondered if we’d gotten disconnected somehow—or if Heather had hung up on me.
“Oh, Amy…” Her voice was sympathetic, tinged with annoyance. “You must be new. Otherwise you’d already be aware that there is no way I’ll let anyone from your newspaper near my client—not after what happened last time.”
“I don’t know what that’s in reference to, but I can assure you I’m a totally different journalist from whoever went after Finn last time,” I protested.
“Doesn’t matter,” Heather told me. “The closest any of you will get to him is the press box at a game. You’re lucky that we’re not allowed to bar you.”
I closed my eyes, sighing. I had to admit that since I was, literally, being asked to write a hit piece on Heather’s client, her instinct to protect him was valid.
“Thanks for not just hanging up on me altogether,” I said, realizing that I’d hit a dead end and it was time to cut my losses.
“If you ever get employed at a paper that actually has ethics, I’d be happy to give you an interview with Finn,” Heather told me. “Until then, I’m afraid it’s an absolute no.”
I hung up, sighing again and finishing off my coffee in a few gulps. I checked the time; it was about ten minutes after the end of the working day, and I was more than ready to leave. The fact that I’d made no progress on the assignment bothered me, but my salary wasn’t good enough for me to want to spend hours rustling up a lead when I wasn’t even being paid for it. Not to mention that I’d planned to meet my friend Jen at a party that night.
I gathered up my things and wrapped my coat and scarf tightly around myself before heading out to the parking structure. I wasn’t about to give up on the story, but I knew I was going to have to figure something out.
“Let it marinate over the weekend,” I told myself. I had two free days ahead of me, which would give me plenty of time to figure out a solution to the problem of Finn McClane.
Little did I know, they were only just beginning.
THREE
Finn
“Finn, are you paying any attention to what I’m saying?”
I smiled politely at my date, nodding along with whatever story sh
e was telling.
“Of course,” I said, flashing her a pearly white grin. “Keep going.”
I thought to myself that if Heather was going to keep pushing these dates on me, she could at least do some basic vetting first. I’d agreed to go out with this girl—Shana, or Lana, something like that—because Heather kept insisting that as part of my image, I needed to be seen with beautiful women on my arm; not partying too hard, of course, but not staying home or on the ice all the time, either.
Some of the women that Heather had set me up with had at least had some basic knowledge of hockey, and could talk about whatever team they liked, but this one had given me a blank look before saying “The Magpies, obviously,” and going on to talk about yet another party she’d been to.
I’d tried again a little while later, and even as a few people came up to us to congratulate me on my team’s latest win, the girl had gone completely dead in the eyes as I chatted about strategy and gameplay. The only thing she seemed to know—or want to know—was that I was a star player for a major team. Anything else she just didn’t care about.
Baby Maker - A Secret Baby Sports Star Romance Page 1