“Door number two,” Josiah said, grabbing one wing. “One. Just one.”
Stephen snorted and picked up his third wing. “Skinny boys.”
Different worlds, they lived in.
“It’s probably just some bullshit fluff piece. You know how ESPN starts running those filler interest pieces about this time of the year. Maybe someone on the team is doing charity work back home in the off season and they’re interviewing the coaches about it. Or there’s a trade coming.”
Trey started to agree, that there could be a completely benign reason for it, but his gut was roiling anyway. But he was cut off by a tap on the shoulder. He turned to see a cute blonde standing beside an equally cute brunette. Early twenties, he’d guess, probably still in college. “Hey.”
“Oh, my God, it’s him!” the brunette squealed.
“Trey Owens, you just won me five bucks.” The blonde smiled. “I bet her from across the room it was you, but she didn’t believe me. Thanks.”
“No problem. I get half, right?” he joked.
She laughed, then looked at the brunette. “Can I grab a quick picture while we’re here? To commemorate winning the bet?”
Trey hid his grimace with a smile. “Sure.” He scooted his chair out a little, ready to stand up next to her. But before he could, she plopped down on his lap and threw an arm around his neck. Pressing her cheek to his, she said, “Say cheese!” And then she was kissing his cheek and he was blinded by a flash. Before he knew it, they were gone, giggling as they jogged out the door.
Trey blinked. “I never get used to that crap.”
Stephen and Josiah made twin kissy noises at him. Stephen batted his eyelashes. “My turn next, cutie.”
“Lick my balls.” He threw a wadded-up napkin at Stephen’s face.
Stephen threw it back. “You need this, to wipe the lipstick off your cheek.
Trey grumbled and scrubbed at his cheek until the skin was raw.
“I’ll double that chick’s bet that picture’s already on Twitter,” Josiah said easily.
“Of what, her molesting me? No way.”
Stephen shook his head. “You are an idiot. It’s probably been retweeted twenty times already.”
Trey shook his head in return.
“Bet you a beer.”
He narrowed his eyes at Stephen, who held up his hands in defeat. “Fine. Loser buys lunch.”
“Loser buys lunch. Find it for proof.”
Stephen’s phone came out just for that purpose.
Josiah rolled his eyes. “Back to the topic at hand; what coach was all worked up over.”
“I hate not being in the loop. If it was a simple fluff piece, Kristen would have said so.” It irked him that, as a captain, he wasn’t up to date on the goings on of the front office. Not everything needed to be on his radar. He wasn’t a control freak. But if something big was going down . . .
“Found it.” Stephen slid his phone toward Trey. Josiah huddled next to him to look over his shoulder. “It’s already been up for three minutes, and has twenty-seven re-tweets.”
Josiah read, “Just me and my new boyfriend, hanging out. Oh, look, she even used your official Twitter handle so all your followers could find it.” He snorted. “Nice caption, chica.”
Me and my new boyfriend. Trey shoved the phone back in disgust. “Ha-ha, very funny.” He had a thought. “What if Cassie sees this?”
“Does she follow you on Twitter? I’m guessing not, as that would pretty much mean the jig is up.”
“No,” he said slowly, though the truth was, he wouldn’t know. He wasn’t on Twitter, technically. He didn’t like it. But his PR guy suggested taking the handle and creating a real profile so people would know the imitations weren’t him. Something about safeguarding his online presence. His agent tweeted for him, once in a blue moon, responding to fan tweets or sharing a link to an interview he’d done. “But if that gets reblogged enough times, and one of the local radio jocks makes a joke out of it—”
“If she hasn’t figured out who you are yet, she’s not listening to local radio. Or at least, not the stations that cover local sports.” Josiah punched his shoulder. “It’s fine. But you might want to preemptively strike that shit before she finds out anyway. You know it’s going to be ugly if she finds out any other way.”
“You’re right. I hate it when that happens.”
Josiah smirked.
Stephen clapped. “Food’s here. Let the eating commence.”
And that, Trey thought, was that.
* * *
Cassie waited impatiently for the sound guy to unclip her microphone. She bit back the urge to ask him to hurry up. It wasn’t his fault she was in a snippy mood, and she wasn’t going to take it out on him. But oh, she needed a punching bag. A stationary target. Like a hurricane. Completely indiscriminate. Just tear through until she hit her target.
Ken Jordan. Brilliant coach. Philanthropic paragon. Loving father and husband.
Coward.
He’d sat there—actually sat there during their interview—and draped his arm around her shoulder as if they were best buddies now. As if the nearly thirty years he’d missed prior were nothing, that they were thick as thieves and couldn’t be separated with a crowbar.
Funny how he forgot to mention all the times he’d blown her off, ignored her. How at family dinner the night before, he’d said a total of seventeen words, all of which were about passing him food.
This. Shit. Ended. Now.
The moment the sound guy untangled her wires, she smiled to thank him. Sure, the smile was a little ragged around the edges, but she was going to be polite if it killed her. She shook hands with Simon, thanked him for his hard work—avoiding bitching about having to change three times this morning because that color looks horrible on camera . . . stripes?! Are you nuts?! And her personal favorite, You look like a prostitute.
Who knew prostitutes wore Ann Taylor blazers and camisoles?
She took a moment to check her phone—on silent in her bag during the interview—and smiled a little for real at her mother’s text.
Good luck today. Knock ’em dead. The interview, not your father. Though really . . .
Through it all, her mother had kept a sense of humor about the whole thing. She’d admitted her wrongdoing, done what she could to correct it, and not once guilted Cassie for wanting to meet the man who had fifty percent helping in creating her.
Oh, God, she missed her mommy.
The second text, from Anya this time, snapped her out of her momentary melancholy.
Fight. Fight like hell, girl. You can do this.
Yes. Fight. She was here for a reason. She was going through all this crap for a reason. Because she was determined to have a place at her father’s dinner table when she wanted to visit. Because she wanted to be friends with her sisters. And not just fake, Facebook friends where they liked each other’s statuses and sent happy birthday e-cards. Real friends.
Time to fight.
She stormed out of the conference room, where the temporary studio had been erected, and over to her father’s office. Frank never glanced up from his computer.
“He in there, Frank?”
“He’s in there. I don’t think you want to—”
“Oh, I do,” she said in a steely tone.
“Have fun, then,” was all the grouchy man said.
Cassie started to knock, then decided, no, and pushed open the door. Ken sat in his desk chair, head in his hands, elbows on the desktop. On the speaker she could hear Tabitha.
“Is it over?”
“Yes. The interview’s over.”
A brief pause. “Well?”
“Well?” Cassie echoed. Her father’s head snapped up.
“Is she in there? Ken,” Tabitha snapped. “You didn’t tell me you weren’t alone.”
“I’m here, Tabitha. He’s going to call you back soon.” Cassie picked up the phone and dropped it back down in its cradle. The moment she did, her palms
started to sweat. Okay, that was a little more brazen than she’d intended. But she was running on emotion now. No sense in stopping.
Ken stared at her with cool eyes. “Something you want to say?”
“Several somethings.” But the moment she started, her throat seemed to stop working. She sank into a chair and closed her eyes. Ken said nothing, but she wasn’t going to open her eyes enough to see if he was secretly texting for security to come remove her.
Okay, this was ridiculous. Someone had to talk. “We’re not exactly nailing this whole father-daughter reunion thing.”
Ken’s chair creaked. “I thought the interview went quite well.”
“The interview, sure. But that’s a ten-minute piece—” which took two hours to film, for reasons unknown to her “—and I’ve been here several weeks now. You keep canceling lunch with me. You ignore me when I’m at the main house. You barely spoke to me last night at dinner, and what few words you did say were gems like, ‘The salt, please?’ I see more of your assistant and your wife than I do of you.”
“I have a busy job which demands—”
“Yeah, I get it. You’ve got a job. But you have time for your other daughters. Your teenagers. And I know I don’t need raising, and they do. I don’t doubt that.” She finally opened her eyes, prepared to bolt if he looked pissed enough for violence. Instead, he sat like a hunk of stone. A Ken Jordan statue placed in the chair to forever immortalize the holy grail of coaches.
She took a deep breath, then said what she’d been thinking. She was ready now, for the real answer this time. Not the PC bullshit answer he felt he had to give. “If you want me to disappear, I can. I’d rather leave now and give up the chance than wait around like a chore on a list for you to get to when you have the time. I’m not a priority, and that hurts.” She fisted a hand by her chest, pressed a little at the ache. “But I left a good life back in Atlanta to be here. I’m making this a priority. If you can’t do the same, then I think we can just call the experience a flop and move on.”
He was quiet so long, Cassie knew the answer before he opened his mouth. She gathered her bag and prepared to go.
“Wait.”
She froze, ass hovering over the chair.
“I’m sorry.”
At that, she plunked back down. Not what she’d expected.
“I’ve got daughters.” He ran a hand through his hair, tugged a little, then looked at the photo of the four of them in Hawaii. “You’d think I knew what I was doing now.”
She smiled slightly. “Different with a fourteen-year-old than a twenty-eight-year-old.”
“No kidding.” His laugh was more of a huff of breath. “You scare me. Okay?”
She blinked. “I . . .”
“Not you. The idea of you. The idea of this . . . thing. Anything, but especially a child, who I let sit in a corner for almost thirty years, not tending.”
“You didn’t—”
“Know. I didn’t know. And I know that. But there’s guilt, too. I was young, sure. But I was still old enough to at least check. How did I not know? How was I unaware this whole time there was part of my flesh and blood out there, without me, not knowing me and not sure of my love for them? Did you suffer at all from that? Did you have issues from not having a father? Did I create that?” He fisted his hand over his own heart, a mirror of her gesture. “It hurts. And part of that is guilt, misplaced or otherwise. But I let that hurt, that guilt, do the talking. I let it blind me to the fact that I was screwing up your time here.”
So much of it was what Trey had warned her of. He’d been right on the money. “You really are,” she said, and he laughed a little louder this time.
“I really am.” He glanced around the office, at his pictures and framed awards, his diplomas. A wall of things that were important to him. “You’re not here.”
“I could be,” she said softly.
The phone rang, and he hit the mute button on the ringer without even looking at the display. “Are you ready to go?”
Go home? Her stomach clutched at the thought. “I . . .”
He seemed to sense what she was thinking. “I meant for the day. Kristen says you’ve been hanging out with the nerd herd, doing some work with them. Learning the ropes. I didn’t know if you had plans to pop over there.”
“Oh. No. My day is free.” She’d scheduled in necessary freak-out time after the interview. Because it just seemed prudent.
He nodded, a lot. Kept nodding, like one of those ducks dipping into water. Frank’s voice pierced through the door. “Tabitha’s on one!”
“I’ll let you get that.” Cassie stood, shaky on her legs. “I’ll see you at home?”
“No,” he said absently.
“Okay then.” She took one step, then heard him pick up the phone. “Sorry . . . yes, I know . . . won’t be home for lunch. I’m taking Cassie out.”
Her heart soared at the words. He hung up after a quick good-bye.
“Will this screw up your schedule for the day?” she asked cautiously.
He shrugged and stood. “I had planned on running over to talk to the captains about this little scenario. Figured they’d want to hear about it before it hit ESPN tonight at six.”
“Got it. Should I meet you somewhere?”
Ken grabbed his wallet and stuffed it in his back pocket as he walked to the door and held it open for her. “Why don’t you come with me? We’ll grab a bite to eat afterward. You haven’t seen the practice field yet, have you?”
“I haven’t seen much of anything besides these offices and the tech area.”
“Stick with me, kid.” He winked. “I can show you the ropes.”
She wasn’t sure she wanted to know all the ropes. But this was the start—the open door she’d hoped for.
* * *
Trey finished unlacing his cleats and toed them off. His white socks were streaked with grass stains and dirt, and he shook them out to get rid of the aches. The first week breaking in a new pair always sucked. He let his feet relax a minute, wiping his hands on the legs of his mesh shorts. Another scorcher. He longed for the first crisp hint of autumn. When wearing pads and a helmet for four quarters wouldn’t seem like a punishment sent from Satan himself, but a privilege bestowed from on high.
Killian walked by on his way to the water bottles, nodding at his socked feet. “New set?”
“Hell yeah.” He curled his toes and grimaced. “Never fun.”
Killian nodded, then sat down for a second. A rare choice for him, the loner. “Saw on a blog you’ve got yourself a girlfriend.”
Trey’s jaw clenched. “Fucking press with nothing better to talk about . . .”
“I hear ya.” Killian sent a stream of water into his mouth, swished, and spit to the side. “People can’t just watch the action on Sunday. Everyone’s gotta have an opinion on our lives off the field.”
“You know, two decades ago? Those players had it made. Long as they kept their noses clean and didn’t get busted for drugs or DUIs, or mess around with a hooker or four, nobody said anything. Now everyone’s in your business twenty-four seven.”
Killian’s hand tightened on the bottle so hard water shot out to the side. He glanced down for a moment, then shrugged one shoulder. “Fuck ’em.” With that pretty sentiment, he was gone.
Josiah slid in to the vacant spot. “What did chatterbox want?”
“Apparently my Twitter girlfriend from yesterday is getting plenty of blog time. He was just commiserating.” Trey pulled on his running shoes, Josiah doing the same. “Swear, one of these days I’m gonna—”
“Coach is here,” Josiah muttered.
Trey clammed up. He was in just a foul enough mood to let a curse or three fly. And tired enough to not want to run the laps Jordan would give him for the offense.
“Owens, Walker, I need you.”
“Coming, Coach.” Trey waited for Josiah to finish lacing his own sneakers, then jogged over to where Coach Jordan stood. He was on the first rise
r, as if a spectator instead of a coach. Removed from the action on the practice field. “What’s up?”
“Need a quick chat. Let’s take this up a few.” Coach Jordan walked up several steps, until they were at the top riser. “I did a press conference this morning concerning some non-football matters, and I thought you’d want to know. I’m not sure how hard it will hit things, but we’re hoping by getting ahead of the story and making it a non-issue, the press will follow.” He swallowed, and some of the natural Hawaiian-born tan paled. Trey shifted, just a little, in case he had to catch the coach before he pitched forward and tumbled down the bleachers.
“I have another daughter. Not with my wife, Tabitha. She’s recently come into my life, and I refuse to hide her. So she’ll be around here from time to time. Attending functions with the family. Given my . . . history,” he said tightly, “with championing family togetherness and solid Christian morals, having a child out of wedlock who I didn’t have a hand in raising will look hypocritical. I’m taking steps to rectify that within my own family. But people might want to make a big deal over it.”
Trey sat heavily, stunned. Had the coach cheated on his wife? They’d always seemed so unified. By Josiah’s speechlessness, Trey knew he wasn’t alone in the shock.
Coach Jordan ran a hand over his head, looking a little embarrassed. “I wouldn’t make a big deal about it, except I know people will use this as an excuse to pounce. They always do. But hopefully we cut a lot of that crap off at the knees. I just wanted you guys to know, since the interview runs tonight at six. If players have problems, assure them this shouldn’t affect anything, we’re handling it, it’s a private matter, and urge them not to comment if anyone asks.”
Josiah nodded. “Yeah, sure Coach.”
Trey nodded as well. And then tried to picture the shock Coach must have received. Did some woman walk into his office with a toddler in tow? Dump a girl on the doorstep of his house for his wife to find? Threaten to call the media if he didn’t speak up? “Is she—your daughter—staying with you guys?”
“Yes, she is.” He scowled now. “And when you meet her, I want you to treat her with the same respect you show Irene and Mellie.”
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