“What do they suggest we do?” Jack Cowley asked in frustration.
Janna had a few choice ideas but kept them to herself.
Lou lifted his head. “First thing? We go down and talk to the team and make sure we’re all on the same page with this. We tell them we don’t want any of them to comment on this in public at all, unless it’s to say Lex is their teammate, and they stand by him and his story one hundred percent.”
“What if his story is a lie?” Janna asked quietly.
“What if it is?” Lou shot back. “We can’t be bothered with that shit right now! Our primary job is to make sure this doesn’t impact the Blades’ ability to sell tickets, period. You got a problem with that?”
“No,” Janna managed in a barely audible voice.
“Good, because I’m depending on you here, Janna. I know you dealt with shit like this when you were with the network. Now. What do you think we should do next?”
Janna was silent. There was a buzz in her head, getting louder and louder.
“Janna?”
She licked her lips, trying to compose her thoughts. Lou seemed far away, like she was viewing him through the wrong end of a telescope. Is this how people feel before they faint? she wondered. She hoped not. “Next we should . . . um . . . issue a statement to the press, and—”
“Right, right,” Lou cut in impatiently, “telling them the same thing we told the team, that we stand by Lubov one hundred percent. I’ll write that up. In the meantime, I want you to talk to the guys, Janna.”
God, no. Please, no. “Lou,” Janna said, rubbing her forehead in an effort to silence the buzzing, “could Jack do it instead? I’m not feeling too well today.”
“I got something else planned for Jack,” was Lou’s dismissive reply.
“Can’t wait to hear this,” Jack deadpanned.
Lou ignored him. “Like I said a minute ago, Corporate is going crazy over this. Lubov’s the one they’ve been on us to push as ‘the next big thing,’ as you both know. Now something like this comes along and they’re panicking. They want us to fight fire with fire.”
Janna tensed. “What does that mean?”
“Jack, I want you to dig up everything you can on this bitch, Theresa, whatever the hell her name is. Where she’s worked, who she’s fucked, where she hangs, the whole shebang. The idea is to discredit her, make her look like the gold diggin’ whore she probably is.” He shook his head disgustedly. “These women, they come on to these famous jocks like gangbusters, and then when the guy turns around and tries to give her what she’s been teasin’ him for, they scream rape. Who the hell are they kidding? They know these guys are likely to settle out of court; that’s why they do it. They just want the fucking money.”
“That’s not true,” said Janna.
Lou gave a curt laugh. “Oh, it’s not? No offense, but when did you turn into Gloria Steinem? Believe me, pussycat, I’ve been in the business a lot longer than you have. I know a cocktease when I see one, but more importantly, I know a cocktease who smells cash. This bitch smells cash.”
“She’s not a whore, Lou!” Janna snapped. “The woman was attacked!”
“How can you be so sure?” Jack Cowley demanded, clearly siding with Lou.
“Because she’s my roommate!”
Silence filled the room, awful, pregnant, and ominous. The buzzing in Janna’s head stopped, and she closed her eyes, waiting—for the dismissal, for the shouting. Instead, Lou said to her in a voice so calm it was terrible, “Could you repeat that, please?”
“She’s my roommate,” Janna repeated. “Theresa is my roommate.”
“Jesus, Mary and Saint Joseph.” Lou struggled out from behind his desk and approached Janna, one hand gripping his chest as if in cardiac distress. “You’re shitting me, right? Please tell me you’re shitting me.”
Janna stared down at the carpet.
“Holy Mother of God, what did I ever do to deserve this?” Dazed, Lou slowly began circling his office. “Okay. Okay. Janna?” Wincing, Janna slowly lifted her eyes to meet his. “I want you to listen to me very carefully, okay, hon? If you ever—ever—introduce one of your girlfriends to any of the players again, I will fire you. You got that, sweetie?” Janna nodded dumbly. “The same holds true for you: If I ever find you’re mixing business with pleasure, you are outta here. Am I making myself clear?”
“Yes,” Janna whispered.
“Good. Terrif. Glad we understand each other.” He circled back to his desk and heaved himself back into his chair. “Just when I think things couldn’t get any worse . . .”
“Actually, I think things might be getting considerably better, and soon,” Jack Cowley offered cryptically. He’d been deep in thought throughout Lou’s speech to Janna, and now had the look of a man who’d had an epiphany.
“Care to elaborate?” Lou pressed.
“Well, rather than wringing your hands over Janna’s connection to the . . . defendant”—he flashed Janna an overly polite smile that made her skin crawl—“let’s use it.”
“How?”
“We have Janna persuade her to drop the suit completely.”
“What?!!” Janna squawked.
Lou was nodding his head slowly, taking it all in. “More, I want to hear more.”
“Janna talks her into dropping the suit by pointing out how her name will be dragged through the mud, and how she’s not likely to get much money from it anyhow. Lubov’s good name is restored, we don’t have a PR nightmare on our hands, and everyone goes on with their lives. It’s a quick, painless solution, and it’s exactly what Corporate wants.”
“Except I won’t do it,” Janna retorted.
“Why not?” Cowley asked. “Are you one hundred percent sure things happened the way your friend said they did? Were you there?”
“No, I wasn’t there,” she replied vehemently. “But I saw the condition Theresa was in afterwards. She was a mess. Her cheek was bruised. She wouldn’t lie about something like this.”
“You’re sure?” Cowley asked again.
“Doll face, listen.” Lou’s tone was coaxing. “I can see you care about your friend deeply. Don’t you realize the pain you’ll be saving her if you talk her into forgetting this whole thing? You’ll be doing her a favor.”
“Oh, really?” Janna’s tone was curt. “And what about the next woman Lubov attacks? Will I be doing her a favor, too?” She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “I’m not doing it, Lou.”
“So you want her life to be a living hell?” Jack Cowley asked. “You want her to go through all this public humiliation and pain.”
“Of course I don’t!” Janna shouted in frustration. God, she hated his weasly guts. “But I don’t think it’s right to try to talk Theresa out of this just to make our lives easier. If I thought it possible she was exaggerating or didn’t understand what bringing charges against him entailed, then maybe I’d think about dissuading her from going forward with this. But I know Theresa. If she said this happened, it did. And I am not selling her out.”
“Aren’t you noble,” Cowley sniffed sarcastically under his breath.
“Go to hell,” Janna snapped. She turned to Lou. “Up until now I’ve done everything you’ve asked, and more. But please don’t ask me to do this. Please.”
Lou sighed. “Go down to the locker room, then, and tell ’em Corporate loves and supports Lubov. Tell ’em to keep their mouths shut and not to talk to the press. When you’re done with that, set up a press conference for late this afternoon. See if you can get Gallagher to sit there with you. It’ll look good if the public sees the team’s captain standing by one of his players.”
Janna blanched. “You want me to do the press conference?”
“Goddamn right I want you to do the press conference. Having a woman come out there to say Kidco supports Lubov is the best PR move we can make.”
“But—”
“It’s your job, MacNeil,” Lou growled. “No buts.”
Janna r
ose unsteadily as the feeling of being underwater returned. “Then I guess I better go do it.”
The cold metal wall of the bathroom stall felt soothing against her cheek. She had fled to the Ladies Room as soon as the press conference ended, wanting nothing more than to hide. She knew now that if she ever had to switch careers, she could probably make it as an actress. She’d given two Academy Award-caliber performances today: one in front of the media minutes before, the other in the locker room earlier in the day, both involving carefully crafted scripts. Pretending. And for Janna, outright lying, because she didn’t support Lex, she didn’t stand behind him, she wanted him to rot in jail, to suffer, to pay. And as good as her performance in the locker room was, she knew damn well that every player in there aware of her relationship to Theresa had to know she didn’t believe a word coming out of her own mouth.
She wondered about that. Wondered how they viewed her in light of it. Did they see her as a hypocrite? Someone just doing her job? Did they think she was a traitor as far as Theresa was concerned? Or did they stupidly, mistakenly, think she thought Lubov was innocent? The thought killed her, that anyone could think she, of all people, didn’t believe Theresa’s story. How many of them believed it? she wondered. Ty did, she was pretty sure of that. Kevin Gill, too, although she hadn’t had a chance to speak with either of them. But the rest of the team? She wasn’t so sure. She’d caught some of the sympathetic glances the guys shot Lubov while she was speaking. She also noticed how a few them walked past him and squeezed his shoulder in a gesture of unmistakable solidarity. It had made Janna sick when she’d seen that. Made her sick even to be in the same room with Lubov. Her impulse had been to stare him down, challenge him, but she couldn’t. Her actions had to match her words as much as possible. And so, she simply avoided eye contact with him even while she acted her guts out for the rest of the team, carefully meeting the gaze of each and every one of them as she always did, her voice strong and unwavering. She could honestly say she hated her job today, and the place it had brought her to. She had no integrity.
The word made her laugh, a hollow sound that echoed off the tiled walls of the empty bathroom. Integrity. What planet was she on?! Doing PR could be the antithesis of having integrity, especially if you believed the age-old adage that there was no such thing as bad publicity. Plastic surgery, public drunkenness, divorce, adultery, attempted rape—all of it was grist for the PR mill. So what if the actor in question purchased five thousand dollars worth of crack from an undercover cop, or the rising young hockey star sexually assaulted a woman? As long as the PR machine ensured that their actions didn’t aversely affect their ability to make money at the box office or for their employers, what did it matter? The offense was incidental; what was important was remaining in the public eye. That was the career path she’d chosen to pursue.
She exited the stall and went to the nearest sink, dampening a paper towel that she pressed to the back of her neck. Not surprisingly, her skin felt clammy, almost as if she was coming down with a flu. She glanced at her face in the mirror. She looked pale and tired, like she’d been through an ordeal, which of course she had. Poor little me, she mocked her reflection. It crossed Janna’s mind that when she got home, she would have to let Theresa know that she gave a press conference, if her lawyer hadn’t told her already. Great. She knew Theresa would understand she’d been forced to do it, but she could also imagine Theresa telling her that if the situation were reversed, she would have quit. Maybe that’s what I should do, Janna thought. Quit.
The door to the Ladies Room quietly creaked open. Janna looked in the mirror; reflected there was the image of Lex Lubov creeping inside. She whirled to face him.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Fear overtook her in the form of a cold sweat. Did anyone else know she was in here?
“Janna, please, I must speak with you.”
“Give me one good reason why I should listen to anything that comes out of your lying mouth.”
“Because I am human being, human being like you.” He held his hands out in front of him in supplication. “Please, two minutes.”
Janna’s eyes traveled the length of his arms, to the bandage carefully wrapped around his right hand. The buzzing in her head started again, low but insistent. “What happened to your hand, Alexei?”
His eyes briefly flickered down to his wound, then back up to her face. “I hurt in practice.”
“Liar.”
“Janna, please.”
“What?”
“Your friend, what she say is not true, it did not happen that way.”
“Oh?” Janna could barely keep the contempt out of her voice. “What happened?”
“Your friend, she want to have fun very badly. Very much, she was saying, ‘Kiss me, touch me.’ So I kiss, I touch.”
“And then she asked you to stop, but you wouldn’t.”
“No. No. I keep on and she saying, ‘More, more,’ so I give her more and then I am stopping because I am respecting her and she goes crazy, she is mad I am not loving her, she goes crazy on me. I swear to you this is the truth.”
Janna was incredulous. “You expect me to believe this? You expect me to believe you and not her? Why would I do that?”
“Because I am telling the truth!” he exclaimed. His face was turning red with obvious frustration. “Why you do not believe me?!”
“Why?! Because I know for a fact you’re lying, Lex!! I live with Theresa! I saw the shape she was in after she managed to get the hell out of your apartment! You tried to rape her!”
Lex was stubbornly shaking his head. “No. No. I did not do this thing. No.”
“Yes! You! Did!” Janna yelled. She took a deep breath, trying to regain control of herself. “Fine, let’s say you didn’t, Lex. Why come to me? What do you want from me?”
“Talk to that girl, tell her not to do this thing.”
“What? Haul your ass into court? Forget it.”
“This could hurt my career!”
“You should have thought of that before you attacked an innocent woman.”
“Tell her,” Lex demanded. “She will listen to you. Tell her.”
“No!”
Janna had had enough. She picked up her briefcase, and moved to walk out the door. But Lex blocked her way.
“Get the hell out of my way, Lex.”
“Tell her not to do this thing!” he repeated angrily. Glaring, he grabbed Janna’s arm. “Tell her, goddammit!”
Livid, Janna twisted out of his grasp. “If you ever lay a hand on me again, you SOB, you’re going to have another assault case on your hands, you got it?!”
With that, Lex laughed. A low, threatening laugh. “Fine. Go back to your whore friend. Tell her she will be sorry, eh? She will not succeed! I am great hockey player! I have many friends, lots of money! She will not succeed! Tell her! Or else!”
Janna responded with a laugh that was just as ominous, if not more so. “You stupid, little jackass! Don’t you dare threaten me! Don’t you understand what I do for a living? One phone call from me to the newspapers and your career is sunk! Or don’t you realize that?”
“You would not do such a thing.”
“Try me,” Janna growled. “Now get out of my way unless you want to wake up tomorrow morning to headlines about your embarrassing drug problem!”
“But that is a lie!”
“Just like your saying you didn’t hurt Theresa,” Janna countered sweetly, pushing past him.
She started down the hall; a second later, she heard the bathroom door swing open. She glanced over her shoulder just in time to see Lubov storming away in the opposite direction. It wasn’t until he was well out of sight that she realized she was shaking. Tears of relief formed in her eyes, and she let her briefcase drop to the ground as she leaned up against the wall, breathless. The confrontation with Lubov terrified her, but she’d risen to the occasion and held her own. She had, as Ty had said to her that night in the Chapter House, felt the fear
and did it anyway. And that made her feel proud.
Even so, she couldn’t help thinking about Theresa, who also knew what it was like to fight her way out from under Lubov’s glare. Theresa who’d had to struggle beneath those hands. . . . She had to find Ty, make him realize what an animal they were dealing with here.
She had to find Ty.
CHAPTER 10
“Can you believe that?!”
Ty was lying on the couch staring at Janna, who stood halfway across his immense living room glaring at him, nostrils flaring, steam coming from her small, perfectly shaped ears. For the past ten minutes, she’d been raving—no, ranting, raving implied lunacy whereas ranting implied seething anger, so he’d go with ranting—about Lubov.
It had been one helluva day, right from the moment he woke up to see that disgusting headline in the paper. Practice was a bust, which he knew it would be; the whole team understood what was about to go down and no one could concentrate worth a damn. Before he’d even had a chance to talk to them, Janna had come from Corporate and given her little speech, which ticked him off but he let it go, because after all this was a “crisis,” right?
Next thing he knew, he was sitting next to her at a press conference feeling like a total schmuck because he’d been told not to say anything, just sit there in a supporting role. He’d complied, but before he could grab a minute to talk to Janna she’d disappeared, only to reappear ten minutes later when he was in Coach Matthias’s office with a look in her eyes that screamed “I need to talk to you now.” He raised his left hand in the “Gimme five” gesture, and as soon as he wrapped up with Tubs, he had tracked her down in the players’ lounge, where she’d growled at him that they couldn’t talk there.
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