“I don’t think he does,” I admitted. “I think he’s very over being Hank. But his pay is great, and he gets really good benefits. That’s why he wants to stay with the team.” And that was why I wanted the job in the front office. From the time the team was founded, the Woodsmen had always been big on being a “family,” and that meant that once you were part of it, they did treat you very well. My mascot job had meant that I could take care of my grandma.
“How long have you been the rat?”
“I’ve only been Nutty the Chipmunk for two years, since I was in college.”
“You went to college?”
I felt a little offended. “Yes, I did. Emelia Schaub College, just down the road.”
“It’s tiny. You didn’t want to go away from here? See something new?”
I felt my heart skip a little. “No. I’m good where I am. Do you want to leave here and go somewhere else?”
“Not particularly, but it’s not up to me.” Davis turned and looked into my eyes. “I guess I’ll find out tomorrow if I’m going. Where I’m going.”
“That would be really unfair, if they traded you because of your knee, before you even get a chance to show them it’s better!”
“I’m nothing if I’m not throwing a football for them,” he said, looking back out at the lake. “It’s business. It’s just business.”
“But you’re not. You’re a person, and it’s your life. I’m sure they’ll take that into account.” I nodded. “I think it will all work out.”
“Fucking Pollyanna.” But he didn’t say it in a mean way. “Most things don’t ‘work out,’ you know.”
I did know. I knew that pretty well. But that didn’t mean you had to quit trying.
Chapter 6
“What do you think you’re doing?”
I spun around. “Oh! Lyle. You startled me!” I smiled at him.
The security guard didn’t smile back. “Why are you at the stadium today? And why are you down here?”
“I’m waiting for someone in a meeting upstairs. I was just going to get something out of my locker,” I explained. “Sorry, I didn’t know it wasn’t allowed.”
Lyle’s expression softened somewhat. “Go ahead, get your things. I’ll wait for you here.” I hurried into the darkened locker room and retrieved the makeup bag I’d left after rehearsal the night before. I’d been so ready to leave I had run out without it.
I held it up to show Lyle when I left the room. “See?”
He followed me toward the elevator. “We’re just being extra careful, because of the thefts.”
I stopped as I pushed the up button. “‘Thefts?’ As in, plural? I only knew about Rochelle’s ring.”
Lyle got a little uncomfortable. “We’ve had a few things walk away. Haven’t you noticed the extra security?”
I hadn’t. “I don’t understand why you don’t just look at all the camera footage.” I pointed at a discrete lens above our heads. “Aren’t we all being filmed, like all the time?”
“Now we are.” He chuckled a little. “The worst-kept secret around here was that the cameras weren’t ever on. They spent a ton of money putting the damn things in, but never bothered to start recording. That’s how it is in a big organization. It’s all somebody, somewhere, making a decision, or messing one up, but you never can tell who’s doing what. They never put a human face on things. It’s all just business.”
That’s what Davis had said. It was just business. I wondered how his meeting was going. I had a brief thought to the feeling of his hands on my waist. “Good luck finding the thief,” I told Lyle, and stepped into the elevator.
Davis was just coming out of the big corner office when I entered the lobby. His face gave nothing away. A smaller man in a very fancy suit was right in front of him. I noticed that he hadn’t bothered to hold the door for the guy on crutches.
“Katie.” Davis didn’t sound upset. Maybe it had gone well? “This is my agent, Ethan Tolvaj. The one you were texting from the hospital.”
“It’s nice to meet you in person,” I told the agent.
Ethan didn’t look at me. “Davis, we’ll talk more later. Good meeting.” He hurried out of the lobby.
“Friendly,” I mentioned to Davis.
“He sucks, but he’s a good agent.”
We walked in the direction Ethan had gone, but he hadn’t bothered to wait and hold the elevator. “So?” I asked as the doors closed and we started to descend. “How did it go?”
“All right.”
“What does that mean? What did they say? Do they want to trade you? What’s happening?”
Davis stared at me curiously. “You sound like you care.”
“Well, of course I care! I’ve been on pins and needles wondering if you were going to have to go to another team.”
“Because you’d be off the gravy train if I did,” he said, nodding slowly.
Honestly, it felt like he had slapped me in the face. “No, that’s not it at all. I wasn’t thinking about myself, I was thinking about what you said last night, how you didn’t want to go.” I studied my purse strap. I kept treating him like I would an equal, and he didn’t want that. He wanted to be my employer, and I needed to give up on acting friendly. We walked out to the car, parked in the special players’ lot, without saying a word.
“Davis! Hey, man, how are you doing?”
We turned and I saw the placekicker, a nice guy about my age, and about my weight too. He was as skinny as a rail but I’d seen him plenty in the gym trying to add muscle.
“Hey,” Davis said, squinting at him. “Lorenzo,” he finished finally.
Lorenzo got a big grin when Davis said his name. “How’s the knee?”
“Much better,” Davis said, then repeated it. “Much better.”
“We heard you were out for the season,” the placekicker told him. “Is that right?”
Davis made a face which looked like a snarl. “Don’t count me out. Kayden Matthews looks a little too comfortable in my job. You can let him know I’m watching.” His voice suddenly got very deep. “All the time, I’m watching him. And I’m coming back.”
Lorenzo lost his smile and gulped. “Ok,” he said, his voice an octave above where it had been. His eyes shot to me, and I tried to look reassuring, like I wouldn’t let Davis kill him in the parking lot. Lorenzo skedaddled, I guessed the word would be, into the stadium. Davis stood watching him go.
“Sweet Lord, you almost made him pee in his pants!” I exploded when he was gone. I couldn’t help myself. “Why would you say that to him?”
“He and Matthews are friends. I see them fucking around instead of paying attention at practice or to the games all the time. Now Kayden knows.” Davis’ face was absolutely ferocious. “No one is taking my place. No one.”
I realized I was kind of gaping at him. “Ready to go?” I managed to ask. Silently, he got into the SUV.
“It went well,” Davis announced when we were almost at his house.
“Huh?”
“The meeting. The surgeon’s reports were all good, the physical therapist too. They’re planning for me to get back by next season. I say December.”
“December? Are you serious?” I tried not to swerve as I looked at him to check if he was making a joke. “It’s the end of August. Less than four months, you think, for a knee surgery like yours?”
“I’m a hard worker. I’m not screwing around with this.”
“Sure, but you can’t rush things. Sometimes your body just needs to heal, or you could hurt yourself again.”
When I chanced another look at him, he was starting at me coldly. “The longer I’m out of commission, the longer you have a job. Is that what’s going on?”
“Jesus fucking Christ!” I exploded, then clapped my hand over my mouth. If my grandma ever heard me talking that way, she would wash my mouth out with a bar of Ivory. No joke, it had happened once or twice. I took my hand away. “Why would you say something like that? Gravy train? Wan
ting you out of commission? What have I done to make you think that I want you to be injured? My Lord, you’re a pill!” I was shaking my head in anger. “Don’t say another word to me.”
“I—”
“Not another word!” I warned him. “I don’t want to have to stop this car, but so help me, I will. So help me!” I was seething.
We pulled into his long driveway, passing through the pine trees that opened onto his green lawn. I got out and tried not to slam the door. It was a new car, after all.
My phone vibrated in my bag and I grabbed it out, watching Davis progress up the steps to the porch. When he got there, he tossed his crutches in the corner.
Well, that was just great! “Hello?” I demanded.
“Katie?” The man’s voice sounded confused. “Katie Bell?”
Oh. “Yes, this is Katie. Hi, Mason.”
He laughed. “You sounded so pissed, I didn’t recognize your voice. Maybe you saw that the caller ID was from the dealership. You may not know this, but car salesmen don’t have a lot of fans.”
I laughed too, my shoulders relaxing out of my ears. “I was mad at someone else. Something else. Are you calling because my car is here?”
“It is. Just what you ordered, and I’m ready to drop it off to you. How about tomorrow night and we can go out afterwards?”
I looked up at Davis’ house. He could do without me for dinner. I’d stick something in the oven. Well, maybe not the oven. “Sure,” I said. “Let me give you the address of where I’ll be.”
And then I had a date. The last one, with Lindy’s friend Everett, had been another bust. But I already knew Mason, and I liked him. I felt like, at the very least, we would have fun at dinner. He was no Everett, telling me detailed stories about a carbuncle he’d had on his back. Lindy had spent most of the meal mouthing “I’m sorry” to me and no one had eaten very much. Turned out that the tale of the draining carbuncle was very disgusting.
Davis came back out on the porch and my anger boiled up. “If you say a word to me about a needing written invitation to go inside, I’m out of here. Permanently,” I announced.
He cleared his throat. “I’m making dinner. Do you want some?”
My eyebrows shot up. “You. You’re making dinner?” Wasn’t he the guy who started a fire when he heated something in the oven?
“Just pasta.” He kept looking at me.
“Is that apology pasta?”
“It is.”
“You’re going to have to say it, not just have me eat it.”
Davis cleared his throat again. “I don’t really think you want me to be hurt.”
“Or stay on the Woodsmen because you’re my gravy train.”
“Or that. I’m sorry.”
“What the heck anyway, Davis?”
He shrugged. “Sorry.” It seemed sincere.
“Ok, well, it better be good pasta. Otherwise I take my acceptance of your apology right back.”
His lips quirked. “I’ll do my best. I was the guy who started a fire heating your dinner in the oven.”
“Maybe I’ll just come in to keep an eye on things.”
“Maybe you should,” he told me. “What would you have done if you’d had to stop the car?” he asked as I went through the front door.
“You don’t want to find out,” I warned him. “Don’t try me.” Ok, maybe we could be friends. Friendly, anyway.
We walked in, and I found the pot full to the brim, boiling over and spilling down on the stove. Well, at least he had put water in before he turned on the burner.
The next day as I was finishing up pre-making a dinner for Davis—a salad with chicken, tons of veggies, and homemade pita chips to put on top, so no heating required—I mentioned that I wouldn’t need his car anymore.
He was doing his exercises in the family room while I worked. I had pointed out that he had a very nice home gym, but he told me the wood floor was better for him. Whatever.
“Thank you very much for letting me use it all this time, and I have to say, I know I’m going to miss driving it. But my new car is in, so time to hand back the keys. Except you won’t fit in my car, so when I drive you, we’ll still take the big one. And probably when I go grocery shopping, I’ll have to take the big one. And really anything that doesn’t involve just me traveling alone, I’ll have to take the big one. This new car is very, very small.”
“I guessed that.”
“Yeah, well, I’m sorry it took so long for me to get it, but it’s being delivered here today.”
“Delivered? What dealership is doing that for you?” He moved and grimaced.
“Don’t push yourself. If it hurts, there’s a reason.” I walked over to him, in case he needed me. “I’m only getting the delivery because I went to high school with the guy who runs the dealership.”
“A friend from high school.”
“Yeah, a friend. We went out a little,” I explained.
“A boyfriend from high school. That’s why you did the hair thing.” He made a swirling motion over his own head.
“Not a boyfriend. He was more like a sometimes date.” I wasn’t going to discuss my hair straightening techniques with him.
“And now you’re going out with him again?” Davis asked me. I glanced at him, but his face was impassive.
“Yes. Why?” The doorbell rang. “Ok, that’s probably him now. He’s early.” I walked quickly to answer the door. Mason was on the front porch, extremely handsome and as always, well-dressed. He’d always had a ton of girls after him in high school, and I assumed it was probably still the case.
“Katie,” he smiled at me. “You look beautiful.”
“Thank you,” I answered, feeling suddenly shy. “Can I see the car?”
“Of course, come check it out.” He followed me off the porch and we walked around my new vehicle, and I opened the door and peered in.
“I don’t think that’s the radio I ordered,” I said, studying it. “Or these hubcaps, either.” I tapped them with my foot. “They’re much nicer.”
“I made a few upgrades,” Mason told me. “I had never seen anyone order such a stripped-down car before. Just consider it a gift from an old friend.”
“Really?” I smiled at him. “Wow, that’s so nice! Thank you!” I gave him an impulsive hug. “I’m so excited to have a radio that works! Mine never did so I sang instead.”
Mason laughed. He hadn’t let go of my arms. “Your radio in that car never worked?” He was looking at Davis’ new SUV.
“Oh, that’s not my car. It belongs to—”
“Me.”
Davis himself was standing on the porch, looking down at us. Frowning.
“Come meet my boss,” I said, hooking my arm through Mason’s. “Mason, this is Davis Blake. Davis, Mason Whitaker.”
“I know who you are, of course,” Mason said, extending his hand.
Davis looked at it for a long minute, but finally shook it. From the way Mason suddenly flinched, he had gripped pretty hard. “Katie, I have something for you,” Davis said.
“For me?” I asked.
“Is there another Katie here? Come inside.” Davis held the front door open and after I walked through, he closed it in Mason’s face.
“Davis! That was rude.”
“It’s my house. Here.” He held out a paper grocery bag and I took it from him.
I reached inside. “Oh! Hey, how did you get this?” It was my hula girl, the one my grandpa had brought back from Hawaii. She had danced on the dashboard of one or another of his cars for almost 60 years. The rest of the bag had all the stuff from the glovebox, all my grandpa’s old maps and his logbook of car repairs. I was so glad to see it, I was beaming at Davis.
“I called around and they found it. I thought you could put it in your new car.”
“Wow, thank you so much! It means a lot to me, having these things. Thank you for doing that.” I held the bag to my chest, still smiling.
“Least I could do after I tapped your
car.”
“Was that another joke? You’re up to three or four by now.”
Davis huffed his laugh. “You’re not going to hug me like you did to that guy?”
All of a sudden, I felt very, very awkward. “Oh, I, uh…”
“I’m kidding.” He yanked open the door. “Joke number five. Have fun on your date.”
“Do you want me to come by this weekend?” I asked.
“No. I’m busy.”
I nodded at him. “Thanks again for getting my stuff for me.” I walked slowly out to where Mason was waiting at my new car, feeling Davis’ eyes on my back.
“How did you end up working for him?” Mason asked, as I got into the driver’s seat.
“Long story.” I was still watching Davis, standing on the porch. I started the car and the new engine whined to life.
“Is he as big an asshole as he just seemed?” Mason whistled. “He must be fun to work for.”
“No, he’s not an asshole. Mostly.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to insult your friend.”
“No, he’s not my friend. Not really. But he’s not an asshole all the time.”
“Maybe I caught him on a bad day.”
I changed the subject to asking Mason about the car, and then how he had ended up taking over the dealership. “I was in a band after college and I didn’t think I’d be back here, but my dad had a heart attack,” he explained.
“Oh, Mason, I’m sorry! How is he doing?”
“He’s better, really, he’s fine now. But he wanted to give up working so hard. He needed to. It was time for me to step up and help out my family. They did a lot for me, you know?”
“I do know how that is.” I was practically pressing the accelerator to the floor to get up a hill. This little car certainly didn’t have the horsepower that Davis’ SUV did.
“Hey, Katie, I should have told you this before, but I was really sorry about Julian.”
I kept my face carefully neutral. It always made people uncomfortable when I got upset, and I was past instantaneous crying when I heard his name by now, anyway. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”
“I wish I had gotten back here for the funeral. I didn’t hear about it until afterwards.” He started to explain where he had been and why he hadn’t come home but I stopped him.
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