Changing the Play

by Julia Blake

  Finally he said, “Honestly, I probably wouldn’t tell them.”

  “You’d lie,” she said.

  “I’d refrain from telling the truth.”

  “One date with me isn’t worth it,” she said.

  “You’re wrong, Rachel,” he said, his conviction fierce. “You’re a risk I’d be more than willing to take.”

  Oh. It stunned her that he’d risk losing the interview he’d pursued so doggedly for her. It was his way of declaring that she was important. That he was serious about her.

  She didn’t know what to say, but ultimately she didn’t have to say anything. Her phone buzzed in her hand again. He nodded to it. “You have to get back to work.”

  “I’m sorry, Nick.”

  He stood back to clear her path to the locker room door, and as she passed him, she tried not to breathe in his wood-and-salt smell.

  Later that night, with the roar of jet engines humming through a business-class cabin, she realized that Nick’s scent still clung to her clothes.

  Chapter 9

  Nick sat at the anchor desk, looking over his scripts for the next round of highlights. To his left, a makeup artist was touching up his coanchor for the night, Erica Rodriguez. It was 12:47 a.m. on a Thursday night—well, really a Friday morning. All they had to do was get through the last thirteen minutes of the show, and everyone would be home free. A few of the PAs and writers were heading to a bar afterward, but all Nick could think of was bed. Preferably his filled with a stubborn, smart-as-hell redhead.

  After they’d parted ways at the high school field, he’d thought about calling her and asking her out again but had decided against it. Rachel seemed like the kind of woman you couldn’t push. But at the Ice Center, he couldn’t help it. He’d asked her out because he needed her to say yes, wanting a chance to get her away from work and show her that, reporter or not, he was worth a shot. She’d shut him down, but he’d seen her hesitation. She was tempted. He’d just wait for her to warm up to the idea and try again.

  Too bad waiting sucked.

  He grunted in frustration and swiped the iPad that held his scripts back to the right page.

  “Something wrong, Ruben?” asked Erica.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” he said. Even though the makeup artist had left the set, they were mic’d up. Everyone on a headset in the control room could hear their conversation.

  Erica laughed, her long black hair swaying in a curtain down her back. “So it’s a woman, then.”

  He frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  The IFB in his ear crackled to life, and Mindy’s voice cut in loud and clear. “I think it’s about Rachel Pollard.”

  “The agent?” Erica asked with a look of surprise. “I’m impressed. You actually have good taste.”

  “Chris came back from the shoot and said you didn’t leave her side,” said Mindy.

  Nick tapped his pen against the desk. “Don’t believe everything you hear.”

  “We’ve got one minute, everyone,” Sam, the show’s director, cut in over IFB.

  “Rachel Pollard’s very pretty,” said Erica with a raised eyebrow.

  “She is,” he said tightly, because there was no point arguing the truth.

  “Smart too.” Erica nudged him with her elbow. “Why don’t you ask her out?”

  She’s shot me down once already. Why not make it twice for kicks?

  “You better not ask her out before this feature’s done,” Mindy crackled in his ear. “She’s still a source. There are rules.”

  Sam popped up in his ear. “Thirty seconds. Back on camera two.”

  Nick shifted in his seat to address the right camera. “We’ve got the Islanders highlight off the top?”

  “Nick,” Mindy crackled in his ear.

  He shot a glare at the camera. “Rachel’s got other things going on.”

  He couldn’t see into the control room, but he could imagine the epic eye roll that had earned him.

  “If you were hypothetically going to ask her or any woman out, you know you could talk through techniques with me,” his coanchor teased.

  “No.”

  Sam began counting down. “Five . . . four . . .”

  “You don’t seem to be dating much,” said Erica. “Maybe you’re losing your touch.”

  Jesus Christ.

  “Knicks highlights off the top!” shouted Mindy in his ear.

  “Three . . . two . . . and cue!”

  The theme music started playing as camera two zoomed in on a two-shot of them. “Welcome back to the Sports Desk. I’m Erica Rodriguez.”

  “And I’m Nick Ruben. The definition of insanity? Doing the same thing twice and expecting a different result.”

  “Which makes us ask, why are the Knicks starting point guard Harry Pugh . . . again?”

  He grinned at Erica. “I think all of New York’s asking that question as the team’s officially shut out of the playoffs with another loss on the road.”

  “And Pugh’s third-quarter ejection for his third technical foul this season didn’t help. Let’s take a look at those highlights.”

  Erica zipped through the Knicks script, riffing on a powerful dunk from Chicago’s center.

  Nick liked working with her. She was a tough, practical woman with a good ear for on-air banter and encyclopedic sports knowledge. She had also made it clear as day when she settled into her desk in the newsroom that she wasn’t going to take shit from anyone who thought she’d just be a pretty face who tossed softballs to male analysts.

  At 12:58 a.m., the final music played, Nick and Erica signed off, and camera five bumped them out. Sam gave them an all clear, and immediately Erica swiveled in her chair to face him. “I’m serious.”

  “About what?” he asked, unclipping his mic from his red tie.

  “Why don’t you ask Rachel out?”

  He frowned. “Why the sudden interest in my dating life?”

  Erica pulled her mic wire out of her dress and coiled the cord next to the battery pack. “Because anyone paying attention knows that you’re not dating at all, Nick.”

  “How do you know?” he asked.

  She shot him a look. “You don’t blink when games go long, you rarely text during commercial breaks anymore, and with the exception of tonight, you’ve been up for a last-minute beer after work a lot more than usual over the last few months.”

  “We go on when the games are done, I didn’t want to risk my phone going off on set, and you guys keep catching me when I feel like having a beer,” he said, firing back responses to each point, even though he knew she was right.

  “Nice try,” she said as he fell into step beside her. “I also happen to think Rachel would be great for you.”

  Huh.

  “So let’s say hypothetically I’ve already asked Rachel out,” he said.

  “Then why would you let me tease you like that?”

  “Mindy can’t know,” he said, leaning on Erica’s desk as she sat down in her cubicle across from him to gather up her makeup. “Not that it matters, because in this hypothetical scenario Rachel didn’t say yes.”

  “Ah,” said his coanchor as she zipped up her purse.

  “We sort of used to know each other.”

  “College?” she asked.

  “High school.”

  “I take it you didn’t part on the best of terms?”

  “Worse. She thinks I didn’t even know she existed,” he said.

  “And you did?”

  He let out a long breath. “Every damn day.”

  The truth was he’d never really stopped noticing Rachel. He might’ve avoided making contact with her in New York, but he couldn’t help slowing to watch whenever she was at a press conference or on the rare occasions she gave interviews. He skimmed the wires and blogs for menti
ons of her and her clients. Hell, he’d kept as close an eye on her career as she had his.

  Now he wanted more. He didn’t want to know about the career path. It was the woman who fascinated him.

  Erica stood to haul her purse up over her shoulder. “You know what your problem is, Ruben? You’re not seeing this from her perspective.”

  “How’s that?” he asked.

  “Do you know how many men probably approach her each and every day just because she happens to be an agent who’s a woman? Prove to her that you want to date her because you want to date her. Not because she’s convenient or a superstar. You want a serious date with a serious woman, not some fly-by-night thing.”

  “Fly-by-night? Really?”

  Erica rolled her eyes. “Ask Rachel out again, but this time show her that you know her better than any of those other guys. Stand out. And, you’re right, don’t tell Mindy.”

  Erica left him alone in the newsroom with the white noise of a couple TVs turned to an endless loop of highlights filling the empty space. His friend was right, he realized. He needed to step up his game and show Rachel he’d asked her out not because he wanted company but because he wanted her company.

  It was time to show Rachel he wasn’t a playboy. For her, he could be so much more.

  FIVE DAYS after her late-night flight to Texas, Rachel was back in her office, fighting exhaustion.

  Brock was an ass. The doctors had patched him up and sent him away with a warning that there wasn’t much they could do to ease the pain of his broken ribs. He’d told Rachel that was okay because at least it distracted him from her lectures.

  Lucky for Brock, a basketball player had been caught with a brick of coke in his car in Detroit two days ago, and now the press was off chasing that story. Rachel had taken the next plane back to New York, determined to put some distance between her client and herself before she killed him.

  Now she sat slumped at her desk, tapping her pen over and over against a contract she’d drawn up for a potential client. Her attention should have been solidly on the legal jargon. Instead her tired mind kept wandering to a certain sportscaster with a killer smile.

  With a sound of disgust, she threw the pen down and leaned back. This was ridiculous. She and Nick had shared exactly one quick kiss and some sexual tension. That was it.

  Except somewhere between New York and Dallas Rachel finally admitted to herself how much she couldn’t stop thinking about “one quick kiss.” The memory of his tongue sliding over her lips and his hands digging into her hips was enough to make her breath hitch. And then there was the one night, after a sixteen-hour day of dealing with Brock, she’d slid between the cool cotton sheets of her hotel room bed and slipped her hands between her legs with no one but Nick on her mind. No, she’d never admit it, but she’d always know the truth.

  It was tempting to tell herself that she could just sleep with him and get it over with, but the very idea was laughable. There was no fucking this man out of her system. If just kissing him had her tied up for days, what would actually being in bed, naked under him, do to her?

  All the right things, and that was the problem.

  To Nick, she was the next conquest. She knew his type, the kind who thrived on the chase. Once that faded he’d lose interest.

  She’d played that game too when she’d first gotten to the city. But then she’d grown up, shedding the men who just wanted her for her courtside seats. She was done with the playboys, the Peter Pans, and the emotionally stunted frat boys. She was done with guys like Nick Ruben.

  Desperate for distraction, she practically dove on her desk phone when the intercom chirped.

  “You have a delivery,” said Nathan over the hollow speakerphone.

  “Bring it in.” Anything to distract her from the constant feedback loop.

  The blinds were down in her office, but the delivery should be a rack filled with Katerina’s next round of tournament clothes. That would mean a lengthy Skype session as the tennis player examined everything over video chat.

  Instead of clothing, however, Nathan pushed open her office door clutching a vase filled with pure white Madonna lilies so big she could barely see him through the floral forest.

  Rachel blinked, stunned.

  “Where do you want these?” Nathan’s voice came muffled through the lilies.

  “Here.” She hurried to pick up a couple of binders to make room, and Nathan bent to put down the cut-glass vase.

  “Those are heavier than they look,” he said as he brushed pollen off his lapel.

  Cautiously she approached the bouquet and began to search for a card among the fragrant blooms. She found it, already knowing who had sent it and why he’d chosen this flower.

  The heavy blue paper whispered as she pulled it out of its envelope. The message was simple, one sentence in bold letters:

  Please don’t say you can’t.

  She sank onto her couch, her thumb brushing over the black ink. The gesture shouldn’t sway her as much as it did. There was something so sweet and old-fashioned about the gift that she couldn’t help herself.

  And just like that her mind opened up to things that hadn’t seemed possible before.

  “Thank you for signing for these, Nathan,” she said.

  As soon as her assistant shut the door, Rachel snatched up her desk phone.

  Emma answered on the second ring. “Do you know how badly the Rockies are lowballing Andrews?”

  “Forget the Rockies. Come to my office. And bring Louise, since you’re going to gossip to her about everything anyway.”

  Emma snapped into best friend mode without missing a beat. “On it.”

  Two minutes later, Emma hurried in with Louise in tow. “What’s going on? Is everything okay? Wow, those are gorgeous.”

  “Look at them.” She gestured at the flowers helplessly.

  “I am,” said Emma. “They’re pretty hard to miss.”

  “Who sent them?” asked Louise.

  Emma circled the vase like it was a land mine. “And why did they send you sympathy flowers?”

  “What?” she asked, confused. “No, it’s not a sympathy bouquet. They’re white lilies. The same kind that my mother’s been growing in our front yard for more than twenty years. The same ones that she shows off at the local flower show every May.”

  “Oh,” said Emma, sitting down heavily on the edge of Rachel’s couch. “They’re ‘I know you’ flowers.”

  “From Nick Ruben?” Louise asked.

  “He’s already asked me out once,” she said.

  “But you said no,” said Emma. “Right?”

  “I said no,” she said.

  “But you’re still freaking out,” said Louise. They all looked at her, and she shrugged. “I’m just clarifying.”

  “He sent you flowers, but he’s a reporter, which means he’s supposed to be the enemy,” said Emma as though contemplating the possibility that Nick might not be so bad.

  “A really hot enemy who seems to really like her,” said Louise. “I think they’re more like ‘I was paying attention even if you didn’t know it’ flowers. What teenage kid remembers something like that if he isn’t really into a girl?”

  “What? No,” said Rachel. “Nick hardly noticed me in high school.”

  But now she wasn’t so sure. It was little moments that he kept dropping into conversation. Why would he remember something as small as the Diamondbacks hat she’d spent an entire summer breaking in unless he’d been paying attention? And why would he be paying attention unless . . . ?

  “No,” she said. “I can’t say yes.”

  Louise frowned. “Why not?”

  She sucked in a long breath before admitting what she’d never articulated to anyone. “Because I don’t want to be that woman stuck on her high school crush.”

  “That is ac
tually ridiculous,” said Emma.

  “You’re not seventeen anymore,” said Louise. “It’s not like you’re in the middle of some wish-fulfillment fantasy dating the star quarterback.”

  “Wide receiver,” she corrected.

  “Whatever,” said Emma. “And then there are the flowers. The really big arrangement of just perfect flowers.”

  They all stared at the lilies again like they were a puzzle that needed working out.

  “He just sent them to try to get me to cave,” said Rachel.

  “On what? You already granted him the interview with Kevin,” said Louise.

  “What if he’s trying to get more access?” she asked.

  Emma rolled her eyes. “He’d have to be pretty maniacal.”

  “He’s a reporter.”

  Her friend gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I think you should consider giving it a shot. It’s been a while since you’ve gone out on a first date.”

  She arched a brow. “What do they say about the pot calling the kettle black?”

  “We’re all workaholics,” said Louise.

  “Take one for the team,” said Emma. “Go on a date. Come back with sexy story time. There’s no harm in that.”

  This was hopeless. She should hustle them out of her office and ask Nathan to get rid of the bouquet. It wouldn’t matter where it went, it just needed to be out of her office where the heady perfume was already permeating everything.

  Still . . .

  “So you think I should say yes?” she asked.

  “When’s the next time he’s scheduled to do a one-on-one interview with Kevin?” asked Emma.

  She rounded the edge of her desk to check her calendar, even though she knew too well when the next interview was. “March thirtieth. Next Monday.”

  Louise shrugged. “I just think it might be worth hearing him out. You might even have fun.”

  “Rachel Pollard and a reporter. That’ll be the day,” said Emma before she nudged Louise. “Come on, let’s let the lady of the lilies get back to work. She’s got an early meeting tomorrow.”

  “Don’t remind me,” Rachel grumbled. One of her retired clients with a bad prenup was doing a celebrity dancing show for some quick cash and would be making the rounds of the morning shows the next day. That meant a four a.m. wake-up call to get him into hair and makeup before meeting with the first round of producers.