I shook my head. “Because everyone else thinks I should be different than I am?”
“You’re a brand, not just a person. You knew this when your career took off. If you want to be up here at the height of your success, the top of your game, with the best of the best, then there will be sacrifices.”
I jammed my hands into my pockets. He was right. I did know that it was going to happen. I had just told myself that if I carried on doing my own thing, it would become part of this “brand” of mine and all would be forgiven. Bad boy makes good on the football field and all that. I suppose I had a false image in my head all along, and now Coach was bursting my bubble.
“Let me give it to you straight,” Coach said. “You have to work with a PR Manager if I’m going to put you back on the team at all.”
I groaned again.
“Like a babysitter?” I asked.
“No, like someone who will help you clean up your act so you’re really worth something on my team.”
I shook my head. “I’m not doing it. I don’t need someone to tell me what to do.”
Coach nodded. “That’s fine, Hanson. You do what you think is best. But realize that I’m not going to let you play unless you’re working with a PR Manager.”
“You’re giving me an ultimatum?”
Coach shrugged. “I’m just trying to help save your career. Take it or leave it.”
“You can’t do that to me. I’ll go to the Board.”
“Go ahead,” he said.
I looked out over the field. I missed being in the game. I missed being part of the team. Football was my life. I had played it all through high school and college, and being scouted as a pro player had been my dream since I was a kid. I was twenty-four and at the peak of my career, DUI aside.
I couldn’t lose all that now, not even because I didn’t want to be treated like I needed supervision. Especially because the DUI was such a bullshit charge to begin with. I know everyone thinks that, but in my case, it was the truth.
“You’re not going to let me negotiate on this?” I asked Coach.
He shook his head. “Your negotiating days are over. It’s a manager or nothing at all. I think it will be good for you. You can get yourself sorted out a little bit.”
My image didn’t need sorting out. I was happy with who I was. Yes, the suspension had been shit, but other than that, I knew who I wanted to be.
“What will it be, Hanson?” Coach asked me.
I didn’t have a choice. I realized that. “You’re forcing me to say yes,” I said.
“I’m not forcing you to do anything. You put yourself in this position. Not me.”
I nodded “Okay, fine. I’ll do it.”
Coach smiled and clapped me on the back. “I knew you would come to your senses. Come on. She’s waiting in my office.”
“What? Already? My suspension isn’t even over yet.”
Coach nodded. “I want you to get started as soon as possible. The quicker you pull yourself together, the better it will be for the team.”
Coach turned and walked back toward the facility. I followed him. I didn’t have a choice. I was reeling. I had just been told I would have to get my shit together if I wanted to play at all, and now she was already here to tell me what to do. Not only did I have to have a PR manager, but it had to be a woman who would be in charge of telling me what to do .
Fucking fantastic.
We walked through the corridors. We passed the cafeteria where my team-mates were eating. They sat around the table, talking and laughing. I thought about the incident earlier. They didn’t like me. That much was clear. I knew they were pissed off about me being suspended, but they were being childish about it.
We passed them and walked on. I wouldn’t be joining them today. At this rate, I wouldn’t be joining them anytime soon. I felt like an outsider with my own team.
Coach turned to me before we walked into his office.
“Just behave, okay? I don’t what you being rude to her.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “You don’t have to keep lecturing me on everything.”
Coach looked at me long enough that I fought the urge to squirm before he opened the door.
“Miss Townsend,” he said with a broad smile.
I followed him in. I didn’t know what I’d expected to see, but it wasn’t this. When she turned to us, I stopped and stared.
The first thing I noticed were her eyes. They were the clear blue color of a newly-formed icicle and looked just as piercing. Her eyes were offset by jet-black hair, short and styled around her face. Her look was fierce. And hot.
I slid my eyes down her body. She was athletic and curvy in all the right places. Her legs and arms were more slender, but not in a reedy way. She worked out. I liked it.
“Hello, Mr. Bell,” she said, holding her hand out to me. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
Oh God, that couldn’t be good.
I took her hand. Despite her strong appearance, her skin was soft and her handshake feminine.
“I haven’t heard anything about you, Miss Townsend.”
“Lacey, please,” she said.
Her name didn’t suit her. It was a tame name for a woman that looked like she could be wild behind closed doors. I could just imagine what she would look like naked. Her body was in perfect proportion, her stomach flat, her tits the perfect size.
She cleared her throat. I glanced up at Coach Thompson. His eyebrows were raised, arms folded over his chest. It was like he knew what I was thinking. But he had to be thinking something along the same lines when he looked at her. She was a walking orgasm.
“We’ll be working quite closely together,” she said. “I expect you to make time for me. I’ll need you to send me your schedule so we can set a time every day in which we’ll be able to meet.”
“You jump right into business, don’t you?” I asked.
“It’s what I’m here for, Mr. Bell.”
“Hanson, please,” I said, mimicking her.
She nodded, her face an expressionless mask. She was so serious, so uptight. It just made me want to crack her and get her to relax.
God, the things I would do to her.
Too bad I couldn’t. Because she was here to reform my image, not let me fuck her.
Except, something told me I could change that.
Maybe it was the way she cocked her eyebrow to stare back at me as I continued gazing at her. That one little movement showed me all I needed to know: she was up for a challenge.
Perhaps I could challenge her to see which one of us is better at oral sex. As an athlete, I was used to making everything a game.
We could make a bet to see which one of us would come first: her, from the rapid circles my tongue would make all around her clit, or me, from the strength of her cheek muscles sucking on the head of my cock while her hand moved up and down along my shaft.
I could already picture it in my mind. Now I just had to make it a reality.
Even though I knew the coach would kill me if I so much as touched her, I couldn’t help but follow my basic instincts. Looking at the cleavage poking out at me from her blouse was enough to cement my decision to go after my brand new PR rep, no matter the consequences.
Game on.
Chapter 7 – Lacey
Hanson Bell was a man who knew he was good looking and used that knowledge to get what he wanted. He had an arrogant grin and a swagger about him that came from an overdose of self-confidence and a history of being told he was more than good enough.
“I’ll leave the two of you to talk,” Thompson said, after introducing us.
If he had noticed that Bell’s attitude was different than usual, he didn’t let anything on. I had a feeling that the two of them had just had a talk, though. He held out his hand again, and I shook it. He shot a glance at Bell that I couldn’t read. A reprimand? A warning? Then he left the office.
When the door closed behind him, I was aware of Bell and his ego, and
how small the office was with the three of us crammed in here together. I knew what I was doing, though, and if there was one thing I didn’t step aside for, it was someone’s pride.
“Right,” I said. “We have a lot to do if we’re going to get you sorted out by the time you hit the field again.”
He raised one eyebrow at me. His smile was off-balance. I assumed it was his game face, and I wasn’t talking about football.
“You look like just the person to sort me out.”
He looked me up and down, his grin unfaltering.
“I can tell we’re going to have a lot of fun.” He leaned into me and said in a whisper, “It’s what I do best.”
His breath brushed the skin on my neck, and I shivered. When his eyes met mine again, I nodded briskly. I didn’t want to let on that he was getting to me. I wasn’t going to fall for his antics, even if he was one of the hottest guys I’d ever seen. He looked even better in person than he did in the photos.
“Your innuendo isn’t lost on me, Mr. Bell.”
I opened my phone and pulled up the image of him leaving the hotel with two women. Turning the phone to him, I cleared my throat.
“And I’m up to date with your idea of fun. This is the kind of thing that will drag you down, and I’m here to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”
He didn’t look as shocked as I had hoped for, but the grin had disappeared and he looked irritated.
“What I do with my free time should be my business.”
“If you want personal privacy, you’re in the wrong career.”
He shook his head. His initial approach had evaporated. Thank God. Bell was so much more attractive in person, and I could only stay serious for so long when there was sexual tension like this.
He sat down in one of the chairs, elbows on his knees. His arms were big, and inked up. The sleeveless shirt he wore showed them off beautifully.
“I don’t need this, you know that, right?” he said. “This… image makeover thing you’re supposed to be giving me.”
“What you need is to get back on the team and stay there.”
“I managed it without anyone until now.”
“You’re suspended,” I pointed out.
He rolled his eyes. Oh boy. When he wasn’t putting forth his ridiculous charm, he seemed to have an attitude like a teenager. What fun. But I couldn’t help but want him. Despite myself, my panties dampened and my pussy clenched itself tight in between my thighs.
I wouldn’t do it, I told myself. I wouldn’t let this guy drag me down career-wise, no matter how good-looking he was.
I didn’t sleep with my clients. Ever.
Looking back at his strong body and handsome face, I had to remind myself of that fact again. It didn’t stay in my mind as long as I had wished. Instead, it was pushed out by thoughts of Hanson pushing himself into me, filling me up and making me beg for more.
Don’t do it, Lacey, I told myself.
I knew I was strong enough to withstand this cocky player. I just wasn’t so sure that I wanted to.
Chapter 8 – Lacey
By the time I was back in my own office after meeting Hanson Bell, I knew exactly what I was in for with him. A hard time.
Bell was the type of person that thought he was above rules, above the word “no,” and hot enough to get away with it. Coach Thompson was clever enough to know what he had in Bell as a player, but he was a little bit like a father, too nervous to reprimand his son.
It made for a bad combination. Especially considering that my body seemed to think differently about Bell than my mind did. I was glad, however, that he was gone, because without his presence to distract me, I was gathering the mental fortitude to focus on representing him instead of fucking him.
“Lacey,” Conrad said, knocking on my door with papers in his hand. “Do you have a stapler I can use?”
I nodded and opened my drawer. I held it out to him. His hair was messy and his tie askew. It looked like he’d slept in his office again.
“I heard you got Hanson Bell,” he said, taking the stapler from me and crushing it down on the corners of his pages. “How did that go?”
“Not as well as I’d thought it would. He’s a real piece of work. It’s not going to be easy getting this guy on track.”
Conrad grinned and handed me the stapler back. “I could have told you that. The guy is a legend on the field, but off it? He’s a machine. Women fall for him wherever he goes. He’s like a modern-day Hansel, leaving women in his wake instead of breadcrumbs.”
I chuckled. “That’s a terrible comparison.”
Conrad shrugged. “It’s true.”
I nodded slowly. I had a feeling Conrad was right, if Bell’s response to me was anything to go by.
“What are you going to do with him?” Conrad asked.
I shrugged. “My job. I’m going to get him back on track and turn his notoriety into esteem.”
Conrad chuckled. “You would be the first woman that would make a lasting impression on him.”
I shook my head, but I was smiling. “It’s because I’m not here to have a piece of him.”
“And if he won’t change?”
“I’m not going to ask him to change. I never ask anyone to change. I’m just going to ask him to put the side of him the public likes to see in the forefront and keep the rest to himself.”
Conrad shook his head and walked to the door, still chuckling.
“Some people aren’t as four dimensional as you paint them to be,” Conrad said, turning at the door. “What if there isn’t anything else to show? What if there’s nothing more to him?”
“Then what they say about him is true,” I said. “He would be just a dick.”
Conrad laughed at my joke and left my office. I turned my attention back to his file. I didn’t think for one second that the side Bell showed everyone was the only side to him. And it wasn’t just because of my dirty fantasies about him. Instead, it was the philosophy I lived by in this job.
Everyone had alter egos. Everyone had secrets. You just had to know which parts of yourself to highlight so people didn’t think you were an asshole.
I leaned back in my chair and stared at my laptop screen for a moment, thinking. A trail of breadcrumbs, huh? And what was it leading to?
I opened Google and typed in his name. The usual results popped up. Wikipedia page, game stats, score cards. All the stuff you would expect for a pro football player. But there were also other pages that had nothing to do with his achievements on the field, but off it.
If they could be called achievements. Hanson Bell was a tabloid favorite. There was only one thing that made the gossip magazines happy and that was gossip, of course. And there was more than enough of that going around in Hanson’s life.
From what I could tell, Hanson Bell was a different-woman-every-night kind of guy, and he made sure that the world knew about it. Or rather, he didn’t hide it. Page upon page that I pulled up in my search results reported on his extra-curricular activities. They called him a womanizer, a player that hadn’t been benched in his sex career so far.
This wasn’t good. I could relate to the man. It was easier to sleep around and not get attached. But if it was about fame and reputation, Bell would have to keep what happened between the sheets away from the press.
I didn’t believe that people could change. In fact, they only became more of what they already were over time. I did believe that you could choose what you showed the people around you. It was what made me so good at my job.
My clients listened to me because I didn’t expect the impossible from them. I helped them be who they were, just more efficiently.
It was something I’d had to do my entire life, so it was only natural that I would be good at it and choose it as a career. I had a father that couldn’t practice what he preached and a vision for who he wanted me to be. It taught me how to show the right faces to the right people.
Hanson Bell was going to be easy. Sex was
like an addiction. It made you feel good, and when you came down from your high, you looked for another fix.
That boy knew what he was doing. His reputation was the price, and he was all too happy to pay up. That wouldn’t do, though. It was my job to pull him out of the image he had created for himself.
I had an idea about how to do that, too. If he was portrayed as someone who took, rather than gave, we had to do the opposite. If he was self-centered, he had to show a selfless side of himself. If he was hated, he had to show compassion. People were easy to please and to convince. You just needed the right formula.
I pulled a notepad closer and started scribbling down bullet points about the kind of person Hanson was showing himself to be to the public, and what we could do to fix it. By the end of the day, I had an idea in mind. Hanson wasn’t going to like it, but he would have to choose. Either his career would suffer even more, or he would play my game by my rules.
The women had to go. He had to clean up his act and show that he could be without random hookups, if that was what it came down to. He needed to demonstrate dedication and commitment, not only to football and his team, but to himself, as well.
I leaned back in my chair again and swiveled back and forth, my elbows on the armrests and my fingers interlinked. I thought about Luke.
He had been a good guy. Any other woman would have been thrilled by someone who was that committed. I just wasn’t like other women. I didn’t want commitment. I wanted fun. I wanted no-strings-attached sex. I wanted to be my own woman, without having to make changes for a man. It wasn’t a lot to ask, was it?
Luke had thought so. He had gotten hurt because he had invested himself emotionally in me. I had warned him not to.
I hadn’t gotten hurt by telling him goodbye. Would I miss him? Yes, there were sides to him that I enjoyed spending time with. But I could do without those things if it meant maintaining my own independence.
The moment you committed yourself to someone else and let them in, you sacrificed a part of yourself. The more you did together, like build a life and a family, the more you lost of yourself. Until eventually, there was so little left that you were only half of who you used to be. And then, when something went wrong and you lost the person you put everything into, you couldn’t stand by yourself anymore.
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