She elbows him and he shrugs. “Guess we’ll leave your brother in charge two weeks in a row,” he says.
The clock is ticking and I know I’m out early, but Chloe should be here by now. I can see Mom looking at the door every time someone opens it as Dad talks about Gabe’s QB play and I half listen. The crowd in the room diminishes, leaving Mia and her mom waiting for Gabe and a few others.
Mom whispers, “Are you sure Chloe said she’d be here—” Before she finishes her sentence, the door flies open and Chloe rushes in, decked out in a Militia blue business suit with a white frilly blouse like she’s trying out for the part of our team mascot. All she needs is a hat and a flute. Her only concession to normalcy is the shiny red spike heels that don’t stop her from tapping across the room in our direction at top speed.
“So sorry I’m late. Henry had some questions on the clips we sent into the studio for the broadcast.” She beams an innocent smile, unaware that she’s let a very dangerous cat out of the bag. I should have fucking told her my mother hates reporters more than I do.
But the look on mom’s face tells it all.
“This is Chloe Smith.” I throw a hand in the direction of my parents who are now standing. “Meet my Mom and Dad.”
Chloe puts out a hand to shake, her smile still wide. “I’m so pleased to meet you. You have to be extremely proud of your son.”
My mom goes cold, staring at Chloe without a smile, but my Dad takes her hand and makes up for Mom with a warm greeting.
“We are. He’s told us you’re special to him.” He leaves it at that, not mentioning that I’ve hardly told him anything about her. Especially not the one key fact that she’s a fucking reporter.
Chloe wraps an arm around mine, leaning into me, looking giddy with pleasure and oblivious to my mother’s silence. Maybe she thinks my mom is shy. Too bad she’s not.
“Too bad it’s such a late game or we could go to dinner and get to know you better,” Dad says. He tries to cover for my mother. We both know she’s protective of me, same as I’m protective of her. The big surprise is that I’m feeling protective of Chloe right now, needing to protect her from my mother’s bias against her.
“Did you say you work for a studio?” Mom says, her voice low and full of consternation.
Chloe blushes and says, “Yes I’m a sports broadcaster.” Before I can stop her, before I can think of something diverting to say. My mother’s intake of breath is sharp and unmistakable.
Her voices rises an octave and she says, “You’re a reporter?” Mom flashes me an accusing glance and Chloe looks between us, going from puzzled to dawning realization as Dad clears his throat.
“That’s right mom. What are the odds?” I wait a beat for her to take in the fact that I’m okay with it, forcing her to hold back. But I know mom is a decent woman at heart and she’s not about to be mean to a stranger even if she is a sports reporter, especially since I’ve made it clear that Chloe is no stranger to me.
“Chloe is very special. Her father was a sports reporter too,” I say. “He’s recently passed away.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Mom says.
Dad says, “Smith? You don’t mean your father was Oscar Smith?”
“Yes. Did you know him?” Chloe says, bright with hope.
“No, but I knew of him. Watched his broadcasts all the time—enjoyed the heck out of him. He was quite a character.” Dad’s won Chloe’s heart forever. I can tell by the way she looks at him and the sad cast that always comes over her face when she remembers him.
“He was a wonderful character—and wonderful father.”
The room’s emptying out and it’s time to go, so we all walk out together, mom remaining stoic until I give Chloe a short sweet kiss good night. I’m not ready to upset my mother with a flagrant PDA, not with the kind of kiss I want to give Chloe.
After we leave to go back to my condo, Mom gives me a lecture and warning from the back seat of my car about Chloe using me.
“I knows all about it, Mom. I’ve been careful. She’s trustworthy, I swear to you. We have… something.”
In spite of Chloe’s wish for her donation to my foundation to remain anonymous, I break the confidence and tell Mom and dad about the ten thousand dollar donation Chloe made to Frank’s Foundation.
“Guilt money,” Mom says. And she’s not far off the mark, but I explain.
“In a way,” I say. “It was to make up for the reporters at the funeral. She made the donation shortly after she saw the clip when she was doing background research.”
It’s dad who asks, “Why is she doing background research on you?”
I shrug. It’s a good question and I take for granted that she has something up her sleeve, I’ve been living with the knowledge since the moment I met her, waiting for the other shoe to drop so that I’ve almost forgotten there’s something brewing, obviously on her back burner.
“Probably some exposé of some kind, but don’t worry. There’s nothing to tell that hasn’t already been out there.” That’s not entirely true since there’s been nothing but rumors about my back in the news and she knows about it. She knows everything that’s been well hidden in the Militia’s vault of silence impervious to all media inquiry. None of the training or medical staff are allowed to talk to the press on threat of immediate dismissal.
But still, there’s nothing to the back injury. It’s a minor injury that’ll be history in a few weeks. There’s nothing to the rumors about it being season ending and she knows it. Or at least I think she does.
“Of course I’m going to worry, Tate,” Mom says. “What kind of mother would I be if I didn’t?”
I smile at her in the rear view and we put the discussion aside.
But uneasiness brews inside me even as we talk about the game and the restaurant and long after I go to bed lying awake almost until dawn.
Chapter 17
chloe
Pressure is coming at me from both sides. From Henry I expect it. Dealing with professional pressure is what I thrive on, right? Deadline? No problem. It’s the other side I’m feeling that I don’t know what to do with. The pressure from left field, the kind I never knew about, never thought of, never realized even existed.
The Fontanna pressure to be his fucking girlfriend and put him before the story. We’ve been together every night this week and it’s been good between us, like we’re building to something. It feels right, but there are expectations and that feels like pressure going against the rest of my life, displacing and opposing everything I’m working for professionally.
It’s not that he’s said anything, because how could he? He has no idea what I’m working on, that my Perspective piece, the so-called human-interest exposé is even a thing, let alone aimed at him. Now, sitting at my desk in the busy station crowded on a Saturday morning, with the big Monday Night game two days away I try to remember why the hell I decided Tate Fontanna should be my subject?
Then I remember that first day. The day I slapped down the two-hundred percent challenge and he came back with the Miss No-Name reporter snap. It was a white-glove slap across the face moment if there ever was one. But it all seems so distant and irrelevant right now.
Henry would never have bought into it if he hadn’t known about Tate’s uncle, the funeral debacle and the accusations surrounding his uncle’s drunk driving. And Tate’s guilty conscience.
Most of all, I don’t want that dredged up, no matter how immune to the slings and arrows he is, Tate still holds that guilt deep down. I know it and I feel the pressure to protect him from it.
Henry stands in front of my desk, arms folded. “Let’s have the preview. My office in ten. Sarina will be there—”
“No one else,” I say. He nods in agreement and I gather up my source material file, the zip drives and a notebook and pen. Sometimes I like to go old-school. Especially times like these when I have that feeling in the pit of my stomach like I wish Dad were here for advice or at least a pithy saying. I
’m riding the edge and I feel like I’m getting to the end of the line, about to fall off.
Walking to Henry’s office like I’m walking the plank, I close the door behind me and nod at Sarina. She’s leaning on the edge of the desk.
“I’m excited to see what you’ve got, Chloe. I loved the outline and the preliminaries.”
“Showtime,” Henry says.
Sitting at the console for the big screen, I plug in my zip drive and load up the file then hit play. The voice-over is rough and not all the clips are treated. It’s not synched and there are still a few holes to fill in. Like a puzzle with some missing pieces, you can still see what it’s supposed to look like. By the time it’s finished my chest is so tight I’m seriously considering how I can score a Zanex before I have a heart attack—and I normally don’t even take aspirin for headaches.
Spinning my chair around to face my mini-audience while they clap, true smiles of appreciation on their faces, I feel a little loosening of the vice pinching my heart. If I have to go down as a total bitch, the kind of woman who would betray a man who might be her boyfriend, a man who’s trusting her, then I may as well do it for a great piece of work.
“Great job, Smitty,” Henry says. “So far. When can you have it completed?”
“I agree,” Sarina says. “I can help with revisions to the narrative, but we need to put this out now, cash in on the injury issue plaguing Fontanna now.”
Cringing at that last comment, I wonder if maybe Sarina is the source of all the off-the-record speculation about Tate’s back being a season ending injury. He hasn’t said anything, but that kind of talk is bad news for contract negotiations—even if it is idle speculation. I’ve seen player’s stock go down on the basis of less, sometimes no more than gossip.
“Come on—where are you at? 90%?” Henry prods.
“Seventy-five percent at best,” I say.
“Bullshit.”
I shrug. “I’ll finish it up. I’ll take your suggestions for the narrative, Sarina. Send me an email with your comments.” I stand, pull my zip drive and put all my files together.
She nods. “I have to admit, you’re doing a terrific job. I promise I’ll do your piece justice.” I have to admire her for giving me unabashed credit.
“I’ll take credit on the screen if you don’t mind,” I say.
“Sure,” she says, looking at Henry.
“You’ll get a credit line. But Sarina’s right. Now that Fontanna’s injured, it’s the perfect time to run it—before he gets back to a hundred percent.”
More pressure. Great. I head for the door.
“I’ll pressure the medical staff,” Sarina says, “and the coaches for information about the injury, I’ll get some clips of whatever bullshit they feed me.” She pauses, licks her lips. Both her and Henry’s eyes are on me.
“Can you get any of the records from the trainer, your source?” Henry says. “Get him on record about the back injury being pre-existing?”
I don’t dignify the request with an answer. Overhearing something in a bar is one thing, stealing files or pressuring a source is another. I have my lines. But their pressure on me doesn’t relent in his stare on me.
“The thing is, my source doesn’t know he’s a source, so that’s not happening.”
Henry nods. “Fine. We’ll see what Sarina can get from Fontanna.”
Snapping my eyes to his, I know it’s a calculated move, aimed at my jealousy nerve in a deadly strike. He’s on Twitter and Instagram and sees what’s going on. He hasn’t asked me about it, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t believe the gossip. I’ve been careful at the studio and at the stadium, not like my normal self, frankly, but Henry’s a cagey guy.
In spite of the tremor quaking through me, making me want to scream, I remain calm and say nothing. I can warn Tate about Sarina, but I know he needs no warning, know he’s more immune to her charm and underdeveloped interviewing skills than anyone I’ve ever met.
“Knock yourself out, Sarina.” I walk out the door, taking everything with me.
It’s late, well past midnight and I’m still at the office. Still have everything with me at my desk. The entire paper file with source material and my notes, the zip drives and my tablet. I have everything there is on Tate and how he’s playing injured and why he’s driven, not just for the money. Closing the door behind me and locking it doesn’t make me feel any better. Because it’s all on the servers at the studio. Thank god I never put it in the cloud. We hardly kept anything proprietary in cloud storage mainly because of paranoia.
Pacing around the dimly lit office, not caring that it’s stifling hot, not caring that I’m still wearing heels and my feet are starting to get angry, I contemplate my options. I pull a red Twizzler from the jar on my desk and start chewing my dinner as I move.
Everything in the file reveals Tate’s story, gives the Perspective about why he plays even when he shouldn’t. I included his relationship with his uncle and the guilt over his death and how he feels his uncle should have been the one in the NFL. But his uncle Frank got hurt in college and when he was supposed to return for his senior year as the team’s star linebacker, he didn’t. Instead of rehabbing his injury and getting back into condition, he’d got hooked on drugs. Frank had been in and out of drug rehab since then for several years until Tate was in his sophomore year of high school.
Tate was going to quit football and his mother was worried about him, so she asked her brother to help. That’s when his uncle took over, made it his mission to see that Tate got where he should have been. Frank coached him through school, and worked with him to get into the best college, working with recruiters, sending out film, the whole works. He went to every game and helped Tate work out in the off season and then went to the draft combine with him and finally sat with him in the audience at the NFL draft, celebrated with him later—until he left to drive home, a long drive Tate knew he shouldn’t have taken.
It was my fault he got so involved in football again instead of finding another passion. I knew it gnawed at him, it had to. It was my fault he had so much to drink, my fault that he got in the car to drive when he shouldn’t have. My fault that he died.
Tate’s words haunt me like a bad ghost. I want no part of spreading that bad karma, or piling onto and exploiting those guilty feelings. It’s all wrong. Even if he’s over it, even if words can’t hurt him, it’s wrong. And I have a bad feeling that the story might still be able to wound him.
There’s also the fact that the story would hurt his contract negotiations and that makes me tighten the circle I’m pacing.
I have clips galore from news stations and photos from press clippings all through his youth, interviews of him with his uncle standing at his shoulder and his mom and dad in the background. I had it all, the whole story perspective about what made Tate Fontanna play, even when he was hurt. I even had information on the drugs he was taking, the painkillers that had been prescribed and the injections. I have the evidence proving Tate’s guilt, piles of spin for the show, proof that guilt is the driving force of Tate’s punishing success. Perspective?
Lies. Bullshit. A spin of poisonous webs leaving out anything good or sane to create the tragic story.
But I know Tate Fontanna is anything but a tragic story. He’s no more tragic than I am. Unless I let the station air this Perspective bullshit. Then I turn into a tragic loser who should be a decent broadcast sports journalist. Or hell, any kind of decent journalist or decent human being.
The file is large even compressed. I sit down in front of my computer, staring at the screen, staring at the paper file, the scattered thumb drives on my desk. It’s dark and everyone’s been gone for an hour.
My phone rings. It’s Sarina.
“Where’s the file, Chloe? I asked you to send me the whole thing today so I could work on the narrative. All I have so far is a skeleton outline and very few details and no images or video clips. I need this file tonight.”
“I know you do.
”
“Where are you? At the studio? I’m coming in— “
“No. Don’t bother. I’m not sending the file. I’m not giving it to you.”
What the—why not? What’s going on? You can’t do this—I’ll give you credit.” She pauses and I let her go on, gather herself. “I’ll give you a guest spot, bring you in for a thirty second interview— “
Now I have mercy and stop her, “No, you don’t understand. I’m not blackmailing you for credit. I have no intentions of handing over the file to you or Henry. I won’t let it air.” There’s dead silence for a beat and then a scream.
“You have a job to do,” she yells into the phone, but I keep it to my ear to hear her hysteria, make sure I know, get the full picture of what I’m in for. “I’ll see you’re fired if you don’t— “She goes on, enraged, but I don’t blame her.
When she finishes, I laugh. “Don’t worry about getting me fired, Sarina. Because I’m giving my resignation. Tonight.” I hadn’t realized I would say this until I do. The weight of misery lifts, but it’s replaced with fear and the odd sensation of being untethered, floating with no direction. Who the hell am I if I’m not a sports broadcaster, a reporter, the daughter of Oscar the mouth Smith? His darling little girl Smitty?
You’re my little girl. I hear my mother and grandmother’s voices but it doesn’t comfort me. I want to be my father’s daughter. Of course, I still am, will still be a broadcaster and all those things I’ve dreamed of, worked for, strived to be—just like my father.
This is nothing but a hiccup along the way. He’d said the same words to me when he’d been fired once when I was nine. I didn’t know what it meant back then, to be fired, to have that rug pulled from under your life and your dreams, but I know now he must have been terrified and in true Oscar Smith form, he never let on.
Working quickly, I delete the files from my computer and the shared file system, wiping it clean because I know how. Dad had one of his IT friends tutor us in hiding the evidence a while back and I’ve kept up to date ever since, understanding the value in the ability to defeat forensic computer investigations and file recovery.
Playing for Keeps: An Enemies to Lovers Sports Romance Page 18
