Going for the Goal

by Sara Rider

  As usual, it didn’t.

  She tried reading her magazine again, but it was no use. There was only one surefire way to let go of all the details skittering in her brain and relax into slumber. She trailed her hand down the middle of her chest, slowly tickling her stomach, fantasizing it was a huge, rough man’s hand instead of her own. She teased herself until she couldn’t wait any longer, finally dipping lower to where she needed it most. She closed her eyes and groaned through tightly clenched teeth. Anticipation built until every tightly coiled ligament in her body was ready to snap, but relief didn’t come. It wouldn’t unless she gave in to what she really needed. Finally, she let go of her inhibitions and thought of the one man guaranteed to send her over the edge.

  She bit her lip and stifled a cry as her orgasm smashed through her body, leaving her as loose as a wet noodle. She rolled over, tucked her pillow under her head, and sank into the mattress.

  “Goddamn you, Nick Salinger,” she muttered just before sleep overtook her.

  4

  “Is there a problem with the contract? We can always renegotiate the terms if that’s what you want.” Jillian pressed her index finger into her ear, trying to drown out the ambient noise of the lounge as she hunted for the nearest exit.

  “It’s not the contract. You’ve been more than fair, really,” Brody responded through the static-filled phone.

  Jillian’s heart sank. She found a back door exit near the bathrooms that led to a dark, quiet alley. “But there’s someone else.” Don’t say Lou Parsons. Don’t say Lou Parsons.

  “Yeah.” Brody sounded remorseful. “Uh, Lou Parsons stopped by my house last night.”

  Dammit! “Brody, you don’t have to sign with me, but at least take my free advice. Lou Parsons is not the right agent for you.” She leaned back against the chilly building facade and dug her fingers into the rough brick to squash the urge to say something she would regret. This was the second potential client Parsons had poached from her in the last few months. The man was a thief and a liar, and he would swallow a sweet, naive kid like Brody whole. Of course, if she said that out loud, one way or another it’d get out and she’d be painted as a jealous shrew.

  “He’s offered to loan me a quarter million dollars in my first year to get my clothing company off the ground in case the endorsements don’t come as quickly as we hope.”

  “That’s because he’s going to lock you into a long-term representation contract that doubles his percentage of your earnings to recoup it, plus an outrageous amount of interest if you don’t repay it in three years. I’ve seen this before. You’ll be paying him twice as much as he deserves for the rest of your career.” She leaned her head back a little too hard, banging it against the unforgiving brick. “You’re not going to struggle with endorsements. You’ve already got a half dozen big-name companies preparing bids for you. Look, here’s what you need to do. Tell Lou that you want to strike the clause on—”

  “Um, I already signed the contract.” God, he sounded so young. “I’m sorry. I really do appreciate everything you’ve done for me. I just couldn’t turn down what Lou offered.”

  She exhaled heavily and rubbed the tender spot on the back of her head. “That’s okay. I wish you the best of luck.”

  She hung up and swore when she realized she’d forgotten to prop the back door open, leaving her stuck outside the club in nothing but a cream-colored pencil skirt and a pale pink silk shell. Goose bumps prickled her arms and legs as she walked slowly and carefully to the front of the building. New York City had had an unusual warm spell last week, but winter had reappeared with a vengeance this morning, leaving the sidewalks and roads an icy mess. She’d just lost the most important client of her life to a walking, talking bag of biohazardous waste. The last thing she needed was to slip on her sky-high, weather-inappropriate gold Jimmy Choo pumps and land face-first in an actual pile of garbage.

  Luckily, the bouncer let her back in without too much grief after she explained her predicament, allowing her to rejoin the three agents she’d met up with earlier in the evening.

  She ordered another martini at the bar before heading back to the table, not trusting that her drink would still be there when she returned.

  She forced a smile onto her face and slid onto the barstool with her suit jacket draped over the back. No surprise, a server must’ve come by and swooped up the fifteen-dollar drink she’d taken only one sip of before running out for the call. “So, gentlemen, what’d I miss?”

  “I believe we were telling you about our competitive 401(k) package,” Jim Langston, the CEO of All Star Sports, said.

  She took a sip of her drink to mask her annoyance. She’d already made it clear she wasn’t willing to merge with All Star. Her unorthodox methods and willingness to look outside the box made her stand out, and it seemed everyone wanted a piece of what she had to offer. Yet none of these people clamoring for her skills actually believed she could make it without a big agency behind her.

  Her independence meant everything to her, and she wouldn’t compromise it for the world. The only reason she entertained these conversations was because it was a good way to court votes for the upcoming election for the board of the NYAPSA. With Brody Shakeman in her grasp, she’d made the decision to declare her candidacy this year. The Association was supposed to protect athletes from unscrupulous agents by internally regulating the industry, but with Lou Parsons serving as the president for the past seven years, it had devolved into nothing more than an old boys’ club. Losing Shakeman’s contract meant Jillian probably didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell, but she wasn’t going to give up. After watching her dad lose everything he’d ever worked for, she knew firsthand how corrupt sports agents could ruin lives. She owed it to her dad and to herself to try.

  Since she’d already made her case and earned their promise to vote for her instead of Parsons’ puppet candidate, Jillian had no choice but to reciprocate by listening to Jim’s pitch for the fifteenth time, despite seething inside over losing a top client to her number one foe. All because she had been ten minutes too late in getting the contract to Shakeman.

  “Everything all right? You look like you just lost a big client or something,” said Owen Jones, Langston’s second in command, who specialized in foreign athlete immigration issues.

  She whipped her head around so fast to look at him, she heard her neck crack. “How did you guess that?”

  “I kind of figured it out by the way you’re trying to choke the life out of that martini glass. Tough break.”

  “There’ll be other clients.” She set her drink back on the table and plucked an olive from the little plastic sword resting along the edge of the glass. Losing clients was part of the game, but she’d been in this business for five years now, and if she didn’t land a veritable star soon, people would start to doubt her capacity to do so.

  “Did you hear Nick Salinger still hasn’t signed with anyone?” Adam Nelson, a younger agent in their company, piped up.

  “Uh, you all right there, Jillian?” Owen asked, tapping her lightly on the back.

  “Fine,” she said huskily. If Nick Salinger hadn’t barged into her office like a hurricane on steroids yesterday afternoon, the other agents at the table would’ve been staring at her in awe for signing Shakeman instead of in pity while she choked on her olive. The last thing she wanted to do tonight was think about that man or his stupidly gorgeous face. Then again, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that Salinger would be on the tip of everyone’s tongue, given how rare it was for one of the biggest stars in the NHL to be looking for a new agent while on the verge of signing a new contract.

  “Rumor has it the Punisher’s turned down over a dozen agents who’ve made a play for him so far. I wonder what he’s waiting for? The last thing he needs is to go into trade talks without representation,” Owen said.

  “After that hit on Liakos, the trade t
o Utah’s practically a done deal. I bet he’s one of those obnoxious egos who refuses any agent who isn’t promising to secure him a fifteen-million-dollar signing bonus. With his attitude, he’s lucky Utah still wants him at all.” Jim swirled his rum and Coke before polishing half of it off in one gulp. “Some athletes are more trouble than they’re worth.”

  “Or maybe he’s holding out because he doesn’t want to leave the Vipers,” Jillian blurted out. The three men looked at her like she’d sprouted a unicorn horn. Why did she suddenly feel compelled to defend the man who had just destroyed the single biggest breakthrough of her career? Maybe she’d hit her head against that brick wall harder than she thought.

  “Know something we don’t, Nichols?” Owen asked.

  She took a casual sip of her martini, averting her eyes from Owen’s suspicious gaze. “Nah. Just a hunch.”

  “You might be right, but it’d be a stupid move. The Vipers are a good team, but their locker room dynamics are a mess right now. They don’t have a chance of making it to the Cup if they don’t shed some of their old-timers. The only way they’d keep Salinger is with a massive pay cut. He’d be an idiot to take that deal over what Utah’s probably gonna offer, especially since . . . ” Adam’s jaw dropped midsentence, eyes widening as he caught sight of something past her shoulder. “Holy shit, Salinger’s here!”

  Icy dread trickled down her spine and pooled in her stomach. She refused to look for herself, praying it was all just a sick joke.

  “Get your wallets out, lady and gentlemen,” Owen said, throwing a fifty-dollar bill onto the table. “This is a chance to prove who among us has what it takes to win over a client like Salinger.”

  “I thought you said he wasn’t worth it,” Jillian croaked.

  “Are you kidding? With the kind of money Salinger earns, I’d let him clean his skates on my butt cheeks for a three percent cut.”

  “No fair,” Adam interrupted. “Jim’s already got NHL clients; he should have to put in double. And Jillian should only have to put in half.”

  She gripped the edges of her stool to restrain herself. Let it go, Nichols. Do not take the bait. She had ten times the experience Adam did, but he couldn’t see it simply because she wore a silk thong under her skirt instead of boxer shorts.

  This kind of silly, macho posturing was beneath her. Besides, she didn’t want a client like Salinger anyway. Even if he did earn a multimillion-dollar salary. She had standards, which meant it didn’t matter that he could bring the kind of professional challenge she’d been dying to sink her teeth into for ages.

  And who cared that signing a megastar like him could prove her success with Jaime Chen wasn’t a fluke—something she desperately needed after the humiliation of losing Shakeman to Lou Parsons? She was above all that. Even if it’d feel really good to show these guys she was every bit as capable as they were.

  She swiveled a fraction to the left to sneak a glimpse of Salinger and almost snorted. He was surrounded by a half dozen women who were giggling and pawing all over him. Shocker.

  He might be handsome, but the fact that he knew it meant he was nothing but trouble. The last thing she needed was a client calling her in the middle of the night demanding she get a hundred bottles of Cristal to his hotel room within the hour, or begging for help because he forgot to check if all the women at his orgy were of legal age.

  Even if he really did owe her big-time for causing her to lose Shakeman. Dammit!

  Before she knew hat she was doing, she reached into her wallet and pulled out a fifty. “I’m in.”

  After his meeting with Allan Tyson this afternoon, Nick needed a drink. The Vipers’ general manager had told him flat out that Liakos refused to play on the same line with him without an apology for breaking his precious little pinkie finger. There was a lot of bullshit Nick was willing to swallow, but apologizing to a dick like Liakos was out of the question. The management also wanted an image overhaul. The words “or else” weren’t spoken out loud, but they might as well have been tattooed on Tyson’s forehead. Nick left the meeting with a promise to sort out the personal shit off the ice one way or another before Liakos was ready to lace up his skates again.

  All he wanted to do was play hockey with the team he’d dedicated his life to for the last nine years. When did that get to be so hard?

  And when did he start coming to places that had a menu an inch thick of mixed cocktails but only Bud Light on tap? At least Ben was having a good time, and that was all that mattered. For the first time since Liakos had sucker-punched him in the eye, Ben was smiling.

  When Nick had agreed to come here after his brother had read a rave review in the New York Times, he’d figured there wouldn’t be much chance of anyone in the place being a hockey fan. Unfortunately, he was wrong. On another night, he would’ve welcomed the attention of the beautiful women hovering around his table like hummingbirds in a flower garden. Maybe even taken one home. Tonight, he signed autographs and politely waved them off. Not that it kept them from coming back. But as long as Ben was happy, he wasn’t going to sweat it.

  “I thought most hockey fans were guys,” Ben said, nudging Nick with his elbow. “Demographics are a little skewed here, don’t you think?”

  “Actually, there are a lot of female fans out there, but I’m pretty sure most of these women aren’t asking for my autograph because of my hockey skills.”

  “Funny. The media has painted a pretty vivid image of these secret non-hockey skills of yours. And yet, never once have I had to have an awkward conversation over morning coffee in your kitchen with a woman wearing last night’s cocktail dress and heels.”

  Nick gave him a sidelong glance. He was about to remind his brother that he wasn’t such a jerk that he would bring a woman home during Ben’s visits, but he caught sight of the one woman whose attention he actually did want, sitting at a table across the room. “No way.”

  “What?” Ben set his drink down and dabbed at a stain on his shirt with a small paper napkin.

  “It’s her.”

  “Changed your mind already? Who’s the lucky lady that gets to be the object of your affection for the evening?”

  “No, I mean it’s her. Jillian Nichols. She’s here. And she’s coming over.”

  The low light reflected off her smooth, chin-length blond hair like a golden halo as she marched toward his table. With her delicate features and slight frame, she could’ve passed for the quintessential girl next door, but she had a confident stride that reminded him of a tiger on the hunt. It hadn’t escaped his notice that she’d grown even more beautiful over the past nine years, but still had that feisty expression that seemed to challenge anyone to comment on her looks. Like she was just waiting for the chance to unleash her claws on the poor fool who dared to underestimate her. That was the part that attracted him the most.

  But the anticipation tingling in his stomach had nothing to do with her beauty and everything to do with the faint hope that she might have reconsidered his request for representation.

  He stood up to greet her when she reached his table. “Jillian. What a coincidence.”

  “Nice to see you again, Mr. Salinger. I’m here with my colleagues Jim Langston, Owen Jones, and Adam Nelson from All Star Sports.” She gestured with a small head tilt to the men. “Since you’re in the market for a new agent, I thought I’d introduce you.”

  He’d been so consumed by the way the silky ruffles down the front of her pink camisole floated as she walked that he’d barely noticed the group of men flanking her. “Very thoughtful.” He shook the men’s hands but never took his eyes off her.

  “That’s me. Always thinking of others.” Amusement danced in her voice.

  Yeah, she was definitely up to something. He grabbed her waist with both hands and pulled her flush against his body. “But then again, you know the only agent I’m interested in signing with is you.”

&nb
sp; Her hazel eyes widened until they were impossibly round. “What are you doing?”

  He took a second to breathe in her subtle floral perfume, ran his hands along the curve of her hips. Her body was tiny compared to his, but somehow she felt right. “Checking you for weapons. Last time we met, you stabbed me in the leg with a paperweight.”

  The men behind her laughed awkwardly, like they assumed he was joking. Too bad he didn’t give a shit about them or what they thought.

  She scowled and he let her go. Reluctantly. “Lucky for you I’m unarmed at the moment.”

  “I’d be even luckier if you’d reconsider representing me.”

  “Mr. Salinger,” said the oldest-looking agent, whose name he’d already forgotten, “perhaps you’d like to hear what I can do for you. I represent—”

  “Sorry. I’m not entertaining other offers at the moment. I’m still holding out for Ms. Nichols.”

  Jillian took a step backward and turned to the dumbstruck agents who’d been watching their exchange. “And there you have it, gentlemen. Pay up.”

  The baby-faced guy in the group scowled and handed over a wad of cash, which she shoved unceremoniously into her small purse. She gave Nick a little wave and headed toward the front exit.

  Nick scrubbed a hand over his jaw, wondering what the hell had just happened.

  “So that’s what it feels like to be used by the opposite sex,” Ben said with a small chuckle.

  “Now you see why she’s the only agent I want on my side.”

  “I do. She’s not the first woman to chew you up and spit you out, but this is the first time you’ve sat back and taken it like a chump.”

  “Shit. You’re right.” He pulled out some cash to cover the bill, then grabbed his jacket and followed Jillian.

  He caught her by the elbow just as she stepped onto the frost-slicked sidewalk, then tugged her around to face him. “So I’m good enough to be used for a little ego stroking in front of your colleagues, but not enough that you’d actually consider signing me?”