“There’s obviously something.”
“No, no,” Charles said hastily. “O’Donnell just thinks I’m gonna say something offensive, I guess.”
“Yeah, cuz nobody else is throwin’ f-bombs or snark at reporters. That’s just stupid.” But Derek decided to let it go, since they were almost to the party. Instead, for the moment, he focused on the team’s owner. “That dude is weird. I’ve never liked him.” O’Donnell might have been the one to hire Derek, but Derek knew it was most likely due to Charles’s insistence that he’d been picked up by the Fishers.
Charles seemed more than willing to change the subject. “You don’t like anybody.”
“That’s not true. I like your mom. And I had this one nanny with a really big chest. I liked her a lot.”
“Never would have expected that from you, choirboy.”
Derek threw him the finger.
They pulled up to the front gate and were buzzed in. Parking, Derek turned to his friend. “You ready to be in the spotlight?”
Charles turned pensive again. “Sure.”
A valet opened the door, ending their conversation. Derek followed the big man into the O’Donnell residence. There was something going on with his friend. He shoved his hands in his pockets and sighed. Nothing could affect the game tomorrow; Derek needed a win. He needed to prove himself off the bench. And he couldn’t do it without Charles.
Am I really that self-centered?
“Hey!” he called after Charles. “Let me fix your tie!”
CHAPTER 4
They have none of them much to recommend them …
—Pride and Prejudice
Hara leaned against a pillar at the edge of the large, all-white living area. Five times the size of a normal room, the hard, glistening space was filled with marble and ornate gold trim and beautiful people in beautiful clothes. White-gloved waiters with golden trays of drinks and hors d’oeuvres wove silently through the guests and clusters of creamy velvet settees.
She felt like she was in a scene from her favorite book, the proud young woman at the ball surrounded by an opulently dressed crowd looking down their noses at those who were not in their private clubs. Thank God for her camouflage, the expensive LBD and Louboutins. Carter would have loved the decadence but it put Hara on edge. She’d wandered in a few minutes ago, hoping to come off as elegant, arranged against the stone column. A deep cold seeped into her shoulder blades as she dithered between giddy and terrified.
She shivered. Oh, great. Glancing down, she saw the light blazer over her thin dress did nothing to hide the resulting hard nipples. She knew she should have slapped on Band-Aids when she was getting dressed.
The party in full swing around her, she pondered her next move. Her inclination was to force herself into a bold strut up to the nearest group of diamond-bedazzled octogenarians and insert herself “confidently” into a conversation, whether it be about the price of beef or redecorating a Manhattan high-rise. She could make shit up and tee-hee with the best of them—prison visitation rooms had taught her all about reading your audience. The most important thing was to assert dominance quickly without coming off as cocky. She needed to look like she belonged. Fake it until you make it. Stop hiding!
Before she was forced to make a move, however, a portly old man broke away from a clique of men fresh off the Monopoly board and approached her. “Ms. Isari?”
“Yes?” she stuttered.
“Hello, I am Connor O’Donnell.” He twiddled his fingers at a spindly woman who had materialized at his side. “And this is my wife, Molly.”
“Oh, hello!” Hara leapt to attention the best she could on high heels and the stone floor, and thrust out her hand. It took a beat for Mr. O’Donnell to shake. Finally, he grasped her fingers, crunched down like he was trying to squeeze the last drop from a tube of toothpaste, and pumped once. Mrs. O’Donnell’s handshake, however, was so tepid Hara wasn’t sure they’d actually touched.
“Is everything to your liking in your rooms? Is there anything I can do for you?” Mrs. O’Donnell asked, her voice as light and airy as her handshake.
“Honestly, I can’t imagine what else I would need. Everybody has been very kind. Your home is beautiful, thank you so much for hosting me.” Polite on the outside, her insides were agog over these two blue-blood conservatives pushing seventy who just happened to hang an orgy painting in the guest hall. Totally normal.
“That was completely my husband’s doing, dear.” The older woman lowered her eyelids and offered him an unreadable look before gliding away, saying, “You must excuse me, I will need to attend to those arriving.”
Hara nervously turned her attention back to O’Donnell. She couldn’t believe she was talking to an NBA team owner, weirdo or not. It was crazy. She smiled broadly at the man, hoping the wattage would blind him to any small town that might be peeking out from behind her edges. “Believe me, I know how lucky I am to have this opportunity, sir.”
“That’s true. We’ve struggled to get Charles to talk to journalists. The people at ESPN have been trying to get a full interview for months. He’s finally agreed to an exclusive, though, and we thought a contest was the best way to put a positive spin on it. Sportswriters from every outlet entered articles. However, after reading your article analyzing the leadership potential in last year’s All-Stars, I knew you were the one. Insightful and very thorough.” He winked at her. “And the fact that you’re an attractive, up-and-coming young woman is good PR.”
Hara bit her lip. Had she been profiled? Was she picked because she was female? Her smile this time was forced. “Well, I’m the woman for the job.” Hara would write the hell out of the interview, whether or not he liked her ass.
“Glad to hear it. We’ll be meeting him in just a short while. Ms. Bingley filled you in?”
“Madeline? Yes.”
“Good. Good. Well, I must mingle. There are plenty of girlfriends and wives of the players here, you should have no trouble finding someone to talk to. Until later.”
The old man hailed a small group farther off and wandered away.
Hara leaned back against the wide pillar.
Was she here because of what she looked like, rather than her talent as a writer? She grappled with that inner demon briefly but then decided to push it out and shut the door. The only thing she could do now was to go forward and prove that she deserved to be here—she’d been doing it for years. She was a sportswriter. A good one. And O’Donnell wouldn’t have brought in someone unless they could do a decent job, she assured herself.
Hara forcibly shifted her concentration to the interview, going over details in her head. But it wasn’t just insecurities distracting her: Her contacts were contracting against her rapidly drying eyeballs. She desperately wanted to rub them, furious with herself for giving into vanity and wearing contact lenses instead of her glasses. They always bothered her, and this was no exception. Blinking as rapidly as a ticking clock didn’t help.
She was also trying to distract herself from the roomful of partygoers ignoring her. She didn’t usually allow herself the luxury of feeling shy, but the intimidating crowd had no idea she existed. Streams of people flowed around her, including women too flawless to be real, with artful makeup and perfectly proportioned bodies wrapped in haute couture and gold and diamonds.
I’m just as good as everyone here, Hara told herself sternly, squaring her shoulders. She ran a palm across her flat stomach; the dress and jacket clung in the right ways, even if doing nothing to hide her hard nipples. With her hair pulled up loosely, she’d followed the directions from a Vogue video and added a dab of rose-colored blush to her angular cheeks, mascara to her already dark and long lashes, and a sheen of pink-tinged lip gloss to lightly lined lips. She felt sexy. Also professional, she reminded herself, fingering a rolled-back cuff on the silky suit jacket. But she’d let the jacket hang open, and it slid over her hips, not hiding her curves.
Hara found it amusing that O’Donnell suggested she
would only find something to talk about with the young women in the room. Her job was to talk to everyone, and this was a varied crowd. The professional athletes tended to stand out, being at least a head taller than the other men. She recognized a few of the Fisher team owners, and a handful of movie and music people.
When she spotted Kendrick Lamar with Mark Wahlberg, she thought she might pee herself, just for an instant, but then got her fangirling under control. It was time for business.
* * *
Derek appraised the twin butlers in gold livery and white gloves at the entrance to the grand room, sentinels guiding and guarding at the same time.
His mother would have scoffed and claimed this was new money, whispering loudly about the gaucheness. But Derek could respect that people wanted grandeur in their life. They wanted a sense of import. Of magnificence. What was wrong with that?
Charles had stopped twenty feet from the entrance to the room, to let Derek retie his tie.
“Wreck, can I tell you something?” Charles asked, his head craned up. “We good, right? You and me been buds since forever, since we was grommets, skateboarding to the courts.”
Derek dropped his hands, done with the tie. “Yeah?”
“If something did come out about me, something that might make me look bad, you’d have my back, right?”
“Oh Jesus.” Derek’s heart lurched. He peered around, made sure no one was close. “Fuckin’ A, man. ’Course I got you.”
“I’ll tell you about it later, but I didn’t kill nobody, you can get that look off your face.”
“Hold up.” Derek pitched his voice low. “Is this about your mom? Her coming into money before you went off to play pro ball?”
“Goddamn it, I knew you caught that. Ma. The biggest mouth.”
“You the one bringin’ it up.”
Charles walked farther away from the party entrance and the people, Derek following.
“She didn’t know what she was doin’ was wrong. Before I announced where I was going to college, the school came to Ma and told her they’d give her money if I went there. They called it a bonus, told her everyone did it. She knew that’s where I wanted to go anyway, so she didn’t spend too much time thinking about it, just accepted the money. You know her. So damn naive. I didn’t know anything about it until I came back home on my first break and she was changin’ shit up. She thought she’d surprise me.” He groaned. “She did.”
“Why you telling me this? Especially right now?”
“What if the press finds out? What if this reporter did some digging before she came here? What if I’m about to get jumped?” Charles eyes were wide, his nostrils flared.
“Goddamn it.” Derek clenched his fists, not sure what to think. “How could you let this happen? It’s not just your mother. Your school could be stripped of every title you won for them, and you’ll get fired.”
“I don’t need the lecture right now. I need your support.”
“You know what you need to do? You need to go in there and out yourself right now, get ahead of this thing, put your spin on the story. I know your mother, I believe you, there was no way she realized she was doing something wrong.”
His friend was unable to meet his gaze.
Derek inhaled sharply, having thought of something else. “O’Donnell knows about it. It’s why he doesn’t want you to talk to reporters.”
“Yes and yes.”
“What a slimy fucker. Did he know before he brought you onto the team?”
Charles shoved his hands in his pockets. “We gotta go in. I’ll explain more later. But will you come into the interview with me? Watch the reporter, see if you think she maybe knows something?”
“I … I guess.” Derek’s thoughts were in chaos. He struggled between his love for a friend and a sickening sense that his ethics were about to be challenged. “Charles, seriously, think of a way you can self-report, use this opportunity to get on top of it.”
“Let me think about it.” He stood up straight and clapped Derek on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it too much. I’ll take care of it. I ain’t lettin’ this ruin our season.”
Charles loped away from him, headed for the party. Derek could only stare after him.
The season. This could ruin everything. Why did shit always have to be so complicated?
Derek needed time to process. Normally, his was a black-and-white world. There was a right and a wrong, and that was it. But here, in this instance, he was mired in the rare gray in-between. Ms. Butler … he adored the woman. Charles was his friend. They’d lived in poverty, with a financial insecurity that Derek had never had to deal with. She’d accepted what the school had told her. She hadn’t broken the law. But, ignorant or not, she had broken the rules and her son knew about it.
If Charles was dropped from the team, Derek would suffer, too. There’d be no one there to advocate for him, and the team would falter without their best player. He wouldn’t get his chance to prove himself without Charles’s help.
Derek frowned, shoved that dark thought back into the farthest corner.
He followed after Charles, who seemed to have thrown off his cloak of anxiety as he stepped into the crowded room with panache and waited a second for people to notice him. Derek’s own steps were measured, guarded—he might have had more experience with the moneyed and the influential than Charles, but his famous teammate glided through the masses, confident and charming, no matter what was going on in his head. Derek wasn’t jealous. They were a team. They always had been.
In the great room, he felt the energy building. Partygoers near the doors turned and beamed at Charles and Derek. The rookie twisted his lips into what he hoped was the semblance of a smile, trying to project pleasantness while avoiding eye contact with people he didn’t know or care about.
Surrounded by happy, expectant faces, Derek felt out of sorts. For him, even when he was in the best of moods, parties were torture. He always felt unbalanced in a crowd, and more alone, and lonelier, than he did by himself at home. He did not know what to do with his face or how to hold his hands or where he should stand; yet, on the court, or even at a business meeting, he knew how to command, how to move without a thought. Groups of chattering people, though … he didn’t understand small talk. Why would he want to discuss the weather? That was five minutes of his life wasted, unused time he would never get back.
Deep down, however, the real reason was because he froze when others expected something of him, especially human contact, and he was sure that eventually he was going to let them down. They’d find out he was boring, or too serious, and they’d cut him off.
He shook off the flash of self-awareness. Now was not the time for that.
A couple of suits raised a glass in salute to him, but the majority of the attention was on Charles, Boston’s most popular player. Derek strove to keep his face blank while people fawned over his teammate and lifelong friend. He did not have a desire to become chummy or hang out with any of this crowd, but he did hope one day soon they’d also acknowledge him as a solid player, a local boy making good, just like Charles.
I know I gotta earn the star recognition. Derek purposefully slowed his roll, let Charles have more space. Let him enjoy his limelight.
He scanned the crowd, not really seeing anyone. But then a light twinkled in his periphery, catching his attention.
A young woman’s sequined black gown reflected the warm glow from the chandeliers. He stared, mesmerized. She was incredibly sexy, a tall waif with the long body and stance of a ballerina, pink cheeks lighting up her smooth, tawny face, and shockingly blue eyes peering out from under a thick mane of black hair.
Wait a second. Is that …
It was. The young woman from the car earlier, the one who’d whacked her head on the window frame. He’d felt bad for her, but he’d also been pretty irritated to think she’d been eavesdropping. He was tired of never having a minute to himself. Yet her intelligent blue eyes, even behind glasses, had captured
him. Now she was sans glasses and the translucent cobalt of her eyes struck a chord deep inside him, making him think of Caribbean waters. The sparkling dress showed off her lightly bronzed skin and a fluted collarbone.
He could picture himself kissing her there, in that hollow.
His skin prickled as she shifted slightly and their eyes connected. He saw the fire under the water.
Derek’s chest tightened, his body flooded with thirst. He wanted to drink her in.
His automatic response was swift and surprising. He kicked himself internally, trying to snap out of it. He told himself she was probably bulimic. Or bitchy. He didn’t have time for any drama. What if she was a stalker? He’d run into her twice in the last six hours.
Oddly, she blinked at him. And then blinked again, rapidly.
He forced himself to nod and keep moving. Talk about the worst time and place to meet a girl. Plus, the only reason a young woman would be at this party, alone, was to find a rich man.
Not happening, blinky.
* * *
The crowd around Hara had shifted their focus to two men entering the room.
The six-foot-seven Charles Butler, scrawnier than Hara had imagined but just as handsome, charmed the people around her with his smile and fist bumps—a completely different personality than the quiet, frustrating version he often presented to the press before or after games, answering questions with one or two words, if at all. Now the player strolled casually through the crowd, calling out to people by name.
But it was the man next to Charles who had grabbed her attention. She couldn’t believe it.
Only a few inches shorter than his popular teammate, Derek Darcy was just as tall and as built as he had been earlier that day, and he looked damn fine. Once again, she thought of a lion as he moved, silent and lithe. His broad shoulders and biceps bulged through his suit jacket, not to be missed, nor was the strong square jaw. Hara felt herself drawn to him, wanting to touch him, to share space with this perfect specimen of a man.
The Wrong Mr. Darcy Page 4
