by Crowe, Liz
“Yo, Franklin.”
She opened her eyes with a gasp and wiped the spit off her cheek. “Oh shit. Was I sleeping, right here at your kitchen table?”
He plunked a plate of food down in front of her, took the opposite chair, and sat. “Yep. Dig in. You need the protein.” He started eating without another word.
She watched him a while, then picked up her fork and dug in.
Chapter Seventeen
The great bedroom negotiation had been awkward, but it was nothing compared to the capital-A, awkward moment of Kayla’s introduction to J.D.’s ex-wife and his daughter. It was something J.D. had insisted on getting out of the way fast, as in within a few days of her moving into Gwen’s bedroom in his penthouse condo.
“You’re just making sure I don’t chicken out, right?” she asked as she stuck her feet into the designer heels and pulled on the Dior jacket of the suit he’d presented to her, as her “uniform” or something.
“I’d never accuse you of being afraid of anything.” He shot his cuffs for the millionth time, obviously so wigged-out nervous it had made her giggle. “The ring fit okay?”
“Yeah.” She glanced down at the obnoxious rock perched on her left-hand ring finger. “Kinda heavy. Good thing I’ve been lifting.”
He grinned at her and fiddled with his tie. She smacked his hand away and pulled the fancy four-in-hand knot to the left, centering it while trying not to let her fingers graze his neck or jaw, or chest, or anything else. He grabbed her hand, but she yanked out of his grip, frowning. “Sorry,” he muttered.
“Whatever. Let’s get this over with.”
They’d ridden the elevator down to the office floor, emerged, and walked into the cavernous, white-marbled entryway.
“Daddy!” A small girl-shaped torpedo launched itself from his open door and into his arms. “Are you coming to my game? Can you? I want you to. Mommy’s letting me get a kitten! I’m going to name her Mia, like Mia Hamm. Who’s that?”
J.D. kissed the pretty, dark-haired little girl’s cheek and put her down, keeping her hand tucked into his. Kayla smiled, amused by her rapid-fire commentary and how quickly she’d shifted her attention to the strange woman in her space.
“This is Makayla Franklin, honey. She’s … we’re…”
Kayla bent her knees so she was on Gwen’s eye level.
The girl stood her ground, her smile only slightly marred by the lack of a front tooth. She was wearing her uniform, complete with matching socks and a pair of small Nike cleats.
“What position do you play, Gwen?”
“I’m a forward!” She glanced up at her father, who smiled at her. “I score the goals.” The girl’s wide, pale blue eyes narrowed. “Do you play soccer? Daddy, did you bring her so I can play soccer with her?”
“I do play soccer,” Kayla said. “And we will definitely play sometime.” She leaned into Gwen’s ear. “I play defense so you’ll have to get around me to score those goals.”
“Yay! Hey, Mommy! Daddy has a new friend who’ll play soccer with me.”
Kayla rose, knowing this for the money moment. J.D. put his arm around her waist and she only stiffened for a half second.
A painfully thin but attractive woman stood in J.D.’s open office doorway. She was wearing a sleek, black dress, topped with a white jacket, and a pair of open toed, sling-back black and white shoes. In short, she could have just emerged from the pages of a high fashion magazine with her snake hips, jutting cheekbones, and perfectly red lips. Her eyes were narrowed as she took in the tableau in front of her—her daughter, clinging to her ex-husband, who had his arm around a tall, curvy, African American woman.
“Mommy! This is Daddy’s new soccer friend. Her name is … oh, what’s your name? I forgot,” she said in a loud whisper.
“Makayla,” Kayla whispered back, letting J.D. pull her closer. “Hello, Lisa. I’m Makayla Franklin. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” She held out her hand.
Lisa stared at it long enough to make everyone extra uncomfortable, then shook it quickly and let go.
As if sensing her mother’s unhappiness, Gwen let go of J.D. and grabbed Lisa’s hand instead. “This is your daddy’s fiancée, darling,” Lisa said, her voice clipped.
Kayla noted the ghost of bruises around the woman’s long neck. She reminded herself that J.D. needed her to play a part here, one that would convince this woman—someone she suspected would be a pretty sharp rival under normal circumstances—that he was officially off the market.
She smiled, turned to J.D., and pecked his cheek. “Okay, honey, I need to get back upstairs.” He tried to speak, likely to convince her to stick around, but she was a hundred and fifty percent done with this scene, at least for now. She felt frumpy, out of place, jammed into the designer suit like a big fat fraud.
“Wait, Makayla, when can we play?” Gwen was tugging on her hand so she focused down at the girl’s eager face. She was a perfect blend of her parents’ good looks, Kayla couldn’t help but think. Which made her feel like an even bigger fake. “Daddy, what is a fee-an-say?”
“Makayla and I will be getting married,” he said, his voice tight. “Soon.”
“Oh. So…” She glanced back at her mother. “You’ll be … a mommy?”
“No, darling, I am your mommy. We should go. We don’t want to be late for your practice.” Lisa hustled the girl past them toward the elevator. At the last minute, she turned and stared at Kayla. “Best of luck with him, Makayla. You’ll need it.”
J.D. closed his eyes.
Kayla chewed her bottom lip and berated herself over this whole stupid thing. Once the Baxter ladies were hidden from sight by the elevator doors, J.D. reached for her hand. “Thanks,” he said, subdued.
“Yeah. Fine.” She let the warmth of his palm soothe her for a quarter of a second then pulled away. This was business. This was also bullshit. But she needed to make it work until she could get on the team and escape. “Gotta go.” She didn’t give him a backward glance and when she turned to face the elevator doors, he’d already vanished.
****
Kayla shivered at the memory of that first meeting, followed by plenty of others, since Lisa did have a habit of showing up at odd times, typically with Gwen in tow, which meant Kayla had to make an appearance and play the happy fiancée. She sighed and made herself listen closer to the current meeting’s brainstorming session, eager to get out of this glass box and to her training session with the team.
“Keep at it, Kayla,” the coach had encouraged after he’d broken the news to her that she still had some ways to go to make the roster. “I know you can do it, and we’ll be ready for you.” She’d taken that at face value, and had dug in her heels, determined to earn her way onto that damn team.
She threaded her fingers together, letting the engagement rock cut into her flesh by way of grounding herself for a few seconds. When she realized the room had gone silent and that everyone was looking at her, she blinked and put her fingers back on the keyboard. “Sorry. What did I miss?” She smiled at the room. It did not return the favor.
“I said,” some random production flunkey blurted out. “I wonder if our intern knows this guy.”
“What guy?”
Said flunkey turned her tablet around with a sigh of exasperation and pointed to a man on the screen.
Kayla squinted the picture. “May I?” She touched the device.
“Whatever,” the woman said.
Kayla tried not to smile with satisfaction, having heard through the grapevine that this particular production grunt had been angling for her position—only for real—the year before.
The evil bitch in her made sure to use her left hand to reach for jealous girl’s tablet.
“Oh yeah, that’s Don, isn’t it? Don Harris. He was the doctor for the national team for a few years. He actually came from my alma mater. Was the head of the athletic medical department for a lot of years. Why?”
The room seemed to suck in a breath all at once
. “You’re kidding me, right?” The unlucky, unhappy woman said, snatching her tablet back with a flick of her wrist.
“No. I’m not kidding. What’s going on with him?” She looked to LeeAnn, the only female in the building other than Matilde who seemed willing to acknowledge her as a human being.
“He’s been accused of systematic, ongoing sexual abuse. The charges go back…” She scrolled down on her screen. “Back to when you were in school, maybe even before.”
“What?” Kayla’s mind reeled. “I mean … really?”
“Yes, so we were wondering—” Another female voice piped up from somewhere to her left.
LeeAnn held up a hand. She kept her gaze on Kayla. “If you want to talk to me about it, Kayla, you know I’ll listen.”
“I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt he never laid a hand on me. I only saw a few of the trainers while I was at school—for strains, sprains, stuff like that. Nothing serious. I only recognized him because of his work on the national team. But … shit.” She gnawed on her lower lip, as ghostly memories of rumors and a few ugly confrontations with coaches some of her teammates had filled her mind. “Oh. Jesus.”
She pulled up his name on her computer and the screen filled with breaking news about him. Plus a list of women who’d been coming forward ever since the first one had given a statement to a major newspaper. She knew at least five of them. The last one she saw made her gasp and slam the laptop shut. “I have to go.”
“Okay,” LeeAnn said. “But remember what I said.”
“Yeah. Got it. Thanks. Um … it’s only four-fifteen. Is it okay if I—” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder, her mind filling with an angry fog.
“Yes. Of course,” LeeAnn said, with a small smile.
“Of course,” the jealous chick parroted when Kayla turned on her too-tall heel and headed for the conference room door.
“Suzanne,” LeeAnn said. “Knock it off.” She said something else, which made the room bust out in laughter.
Kayla rolled her eyes even as she had to admit that LeeAnn had a way with the hen house—a way that could be in charge, and yet be everyone’s buddy at the same time. No wonder J.D. had given her so much responsibility.
She rode down a few floors, after deciding not to send a warning text. But when she glanced down at her phone, she saw a message from LeeAnn marked “Urgent.” Annoyed, she opened the message and stared down at it for a full ten seconds before she understood what she was being asked to do.
Don Harris is an old friend of J.D.’s. But we should bust the story out before anyone else jumps on it. Tell him I’m going with it, and I want to pull it ahead of Lady Balls.
She hit a quick reply sure without thinking about it as she raced down the hall to Marlo’s office. When she saw the door was closed, she only hesitated a half second before bursting in without knocking. “What the fuck, Marlo? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Her friend glanced up from her computer, took one look at Kayla’s stormy expression, and started crying.
Kayla shut the door and pulled a chair over to Marlo’s, put her arms around her friend, and held onto her for a long time.
****
“God damn it,” J.D. said when she broke the news to him over late night ice cream—a new habit of theirs. Kayla understood they were using it to sublimate the near constant thrum of sexual tension in their living space, which would drive her mad, but for the ice cream distraction. “I don’t know, Kayla. I should call LeeAnn.” He sighed and tossed his spoon into the carton they’d been passing back and forth between them like a couple of drunks sharing a paper-bagged bottle.
“Oh, I do know. And what I know is this—Marlo would never make up such a disgusting story just for fun. It must be true. She knows her past’s about to get dragged by the media for making this statement about that sick old fart.”
“Oh, hell.” J.D. groaned as he dropped his head onto his arms on the table between them. “Don? Really?”
“Yeah. No shit. I was shocked too. But seriously, Marlo told me everything, after I ripped her a new one for never telling me before.”
“You don’t think this is some kind of, I don’t know, piling on? Given the current atmosphere of ‘Me too’ and all that?”
When she jumped to her feet, he stayed seated and looked up at her, his blue eyes bleary.
“I’m going to pretend that you, in your forward-thinking, anti-colonialist, man-feminist glory did not just accuse my friend of piling on.”
He sighed. “I’m exhausted. I’m sorry. But you know what I meant.”
“You’d better walk yourself back a few steps,” she insisted, her ears ringing with anger, even as her entire body was a buzzing live wire of need—need for him to touch her, to kiss her and hold her.
No. That’s not what this is about, remember? You work for him. You are off limits, in more ways than one.
She glanced down at the diamond ring, feeling its heft and accepting that she’d gotten herself into this mess, it was high time she figured a way out of it. Once she’d tossed the empty ice cream carton and put their spoons into the dishwasher, she’d figured out what to do. Eager, she trotted back into the living room.
“Hey, sexy, I’ve something to ask…” She stopped when she saw him, stretched out on the couch, arm thrown over his eyes, ankles crossed, snoring. She pulled a blanket over him, pecked his stubbled cheek, and headed for her own, lonely bed.
She lay awake, staring at the ceiling, lecturing herself against doing something stupid. She’d been playing the happy fiancée thing for long enough that it was starting to feel natural, and the fact that they were more or less living together only normalized it even more. But now…
She bit her lip and let a hot tear fall before she wiped it away and rolled onto her side, forcing herself to get over it and get some sleep. She’d spent so much energy trying to prove how strong she was to the world around her, sometimes if felt so nice to let go, to enjoy herself in his company. She couldn’t let him too far into her heart, though. That would be a recipe for disaster.
Or would it?
Maybe it was high time to let him in … some other way. Maybe having him physically close would quell some of her new-found desire for the sort of emotional connection she’d shunned for so many years. She was only now accepting it for what it was.
She stared into the darkness, coming to terms with something so simple, so obvious, she had to cover her mouth to mute the nervous giggles. She sat up, clutching the soft, satiny sheet to her chest, staring at the closed door, tingling from head to toe at the light-bulb-like epiphany. She flopped back with a sigh and formulated her plan of action.
Chapter Eighteen
J.D. glared at his computer, sick in his soul at what he was reading, even though he’d signed off on the whole report not twenty-four hours prior. He had to let LeeAnn run with the story. He knew that. Once he’d voiced his one protest, he’d accepted that the truth had to come out. The concept that the man he once considered a friend had done such horrific things to young women—who could have done it to Kayla, who had done it to Marlo, who could be around when his own daughter went to a trainer for therapy—made him so furious he could barely see straight. He was glad they were doing this. But that didn’t make the oncoming conversation any easier.
“J.D.” Matilde’s voice came from the tiny, state-of-the-art speaker on his desktop.
“What?” he barked. He knew hiding from it wasn’t going to work. He had to face this. Don Harris had been his friend, yes. But he owed it to LeeAnn and her staff, not to mention all the women who’d been abused, to stand behind this as firmly as any head of a major media outlet.
“I have Mr. Harris on line one.”
“Great, okay. Thanks. I’ll take it. Just give me a minute.”
“Okay. He sounds pretty unhappy.”
“I’ll bet he does.” The thought of having to listen to a bunch of excuses for the horrible things he’d done to young, vulnerable college studen
ts made him want to put his fist through the wall. But he’d agreed to talk to him. Because that was the sort of man he was.
“For what it’s worth, you’ve done an amazing thing, exposing him and his terrible behavior.”
J.D. smiled at the speaker. Matilde was turning out to be the best personal assistant he’d ever had. She was soft-spoken but as efficient as a room full of CPAs. She’d even begun to anticipate things before he knew he wanted them. “Thanks, Matilde. I appreciate that.” He picked up the desk phone handset and stared at the blinking red hold light. “Guess I should get this over with, huh?”
“Good luck,” she said through the speaker. “Mr. Baxter will speak to you now,” she said into her end of the phone line.
“Hello, Don.”
“Don’t you hello me, you pussy-whipped son-of-a-bitch.”
“It’s nice to hear from you, too.”
“Go to hell, you sorry excuse for a man.”
“Listen, Don, I said I’d talk to you, and I guess you could say we’ve talked. So I’ll let you go.”
“Wait, wait, hold on. Let me finish.”
J.D. stayed silent, afraid that if he spoke he’d make it worse. His goal for the next few minutes was to get through this, hang up, and be done with Don Harris forever. They’d moved this documentary ahead of Lady Balls, a decision he supported. It had aired the night before, with plenty of on-line buildup. Their phone lines, social media accounts, and website were already blowing up with responses. His data-crunching department collected it all and gave him hourly updates as to the opinion split. So far it had stayed about sixty-five to thirty-five to the positive. But those negatives were ugly and some had come from some heavy-hitters in the sports world, many of whom he’d once counted as friends.
“You need to know that this whole thing is a stupid setup. I never touched those girls. I mean, you know, in an inappropriate way.”