by KB Winters
After my first panic attack, I was referred to a counselor by my doctor and saw them for five or six weeks, long enough to unburden myself, get reassurance that I was going to be okay and not drop dead of a self-inflicted heart attack. So, I picked up the breathing exercises when things got dicey.
And with Trey—we were well past dicey.
I didn’t even know what I was doing with him. Was he really just a fuck buddy? Or something else? Something more? Sometime during the car ride to the hotel, he sweet talked his way back into my good graces and made me drop whatever anger and frustration I might’ve felt. His wicked smile, warm body, and killer lips were an impossible combination to resist. I was wet and ready to explode before he even got me up to his room.
And once we got there…
I shivered and shook my head. No, there wasn’t time to get back into all that. It would have to wait until I was alone and could really indulge in the steamy memories. Right now, I had to get my head back in the game. I needed to get home, shower, change, and put on my shields and armor before going in for the mega ass chewing I knew I’d get from Mr. Jones.
“Morning,” a thick, sleepy, and utterly sexy voice called from the bed as soon as I opened the bathroom door.
Shit. I shut the door softly and used the light on my phone to guide my way back across the dark room to start gathering my clothes. “Hi,” I whispered in reply.
The bedside lamp clicked on and I glanced over to see Trey sitting up in bed, his bare naked torso—drool worthy muscle upon muscle—displayed down to his hips where the crisp white linen sheet lay. He was covered, but the tent of the fabric made it obvious that he’d woken up in a very good mood. I tore my eyes off his package. Not right now, Josie. Get a grip!
Trey chuckled and stretched his arms up over his head, and I was lost again, mesmerized by the play of his muscles as he moved. The way they stretched, shifted, pulled and contracted. “Gorgeous, what the hell are you doing out of bed?”
“I have to get to work,” I said, resuming my search. Clothes. Right. That was what I needed. Currently, I was wearing Trey’s discarded tee shirt. It was huge on me and covered my girlie parts. Although, the way Trey was eye-fucking me, it didn’t matter what I had on.
“Work?” he spat it out like a filthy curse word.
I laughed softly and snatched my jeans, tee shirt, and button up sweater from the floor as I retraced our steps from the night before. “Yes. My boss will need a briefing on my time on the road.”
“Didn’t you say you’re gonna get your ass torn in two?”
I groaned. Why had I told him that? I’d even let it slip that I was supposed to get an interview. Thankfully, he hadn’t brought that up again. “It’s a good possibility. Yes.”
“That doesn’t sound like fun…you should stay here instead.”
I laughed and stared at him. “I need my job. If I don’t go, I’ll get fired.”
Trey shrugged. “It sounds like that’s inevitable. So why put yourself through it? You’ll find a new job. I can talk to my agent, Mason. He knows all kinds of entertainment people. He can find you an agent and you can do anything. Fuck your boss.”
I sighed and balled my clothes up against my chest. “Is that why you think I’m here? For connections? That I slept with you just to get access to your people and score some entertainment gig?”
Trey stared at me a long moment, as though the idea that I didn’t want his help was foreign to him. The sick truth hit me between the ribs and my heart broke. He’d really never met someone who didn’t want something from him. My belly ached.
“Wow, that’s not what I’m doing here. That’s not what I’m about.” I shook my head, trying to tamp down the overwhelming surge of emotions welling up in my chest. “Thank you, though. I need to get going.”
I turned and went into the bathroom and shut the door before he could come up with something else to offer me. I dressed quickly, and when I went back into the bedroom, Trey was sitting at the edge of the bed wearing his boxer briefs. I studied the lines of his back and wanted to go over and say something else, but my mind was blank. “Trey…”
He turned and looked at me, his face still contorted, confused.
I offered a little wave. “I’ll see you around,” I said, wincing as soon as it came out of my mouth. It sounded so trite. So lame.
“Yeah, sure, baby. See you later. Good luck today.”
I gave him a quick nod, grabbed my purse from the luggage rack by the door—not even remembering tossing it there—and hurried from the room. In the elevator I swiped on my lip gloss, put my shades on, and checked my hairstyle in the shiny reflection of the elevator walls, thankful they weren’t made of solid glass like Trey’s hotel in Seattle.
The lobby and street outside the hotel were clear of photographers, and I breathed deeply of the already warm morning air. I was leaving Trey’s world and returning to my own. But something stopped me, tugged back on me, and I turned to glance back up in the direction of his room one last time before hurrying to catch a cab.
As expected, Mr. Jones had a million and one things to tell me, not one of them pleasant.
“I cannot even begin to fathom how you could spend ten days traveling with the team and not get more than this!” he raged, waving a hand at the laptop screen where my vignette footage was pulled up on the screen. He narrowed his eyes at me and I found it hard to breathe. I was defenseless and I knew it. “The words epic disaster come to mind. The station heads are up my ass about blowing all that money for you to travel and you coming back empty handed. They want your head on a platter…”
My heart sank to my toes. It was expected. But no matter how much I’d attempted to prepare myself—it stung all the same. I’d never been fired from a job before. A few weeks ago, when I’d first gone to Mr. Jones and issued my ultimatum about getting out of the coffee route and getting a real job at the station, I hadn’t actually been prepared to leave.
Mr. Jones threw himself back behind his desk, his office chair groaning and squeaking with protest at his weight. He frowned at me and clenched his hands together. “Aren’t you going to say something? Anything?”
I met his eyes and blinked rapidly. I promised myself I wouldn’t cry. I’d made it so far, and I wasn’t about to break down now. “I’m sorry, Mr. Jones. I tried working with his PR team but no one would return my phone calls. At the media events and postgame conferences, I couldn’t get a good spot to get attention. The whole thing was…” I paused, searching for the right word. Clusterfuck wasn’t exactly a professional term. “…a lot harder than I’d anticipated. I told you I didn’t want to be in sports reporting. It’s not—”
Mr. Jones’s sharp glare stopped me in place.
I sighed, restarting. “I understand if you need to let me go.”
He steepled his fingers together and leaned over. “Were you really the girl in the pictures all over the fuckin’ gossip rags?”
Shit. I squeezed my eyes closed. I’d been clinging to a shred of hope that maybe he hadn’t seen or heard about that. Channel 6 was a reputable station. I’d hoped that no one important had been wading through the mud of gossip.
“Josie? Was it you?”
I nodded; my eyes still shut tight.
“Fuck.”
I dared a look at him. “Does everyone know about that?”
He snorted. “Yes.”
“Even…even—”
“Yep, the station execs too. Who do you think told me about it?”
“Shit…” I sagged into the seat opposite his and buried my face in my hands.
“They wanted to know how you could be sleeping with him and still not be capable of getting him to agree to a sit down with the station.”
I shook my head slowly back and forth, lost in a sea of self-loathing. Professional or not, clusterfuck was really the only way to describe the mess I was in. “It was just a stupid—”
“Woah! Save the details of your love life, Josie.” Mr. Jones held up
a hand. “You really don’t think you could get him to do the interview?”
I sucked in a long breath. It was the worst rock and a hard place situation that I could think of. If I did the interview now, the pictures of me and Trey together would only get dragged back up again. No one would be talking about the interview itself. They would be talking about our relationship. Besides that, I didn’t want to ask him to do the interview. And I certainly didn’t want to be the one conducting it. I hadn’t from the very beginning—but especially not now. Not after everything that had happened between us.
“I can’t, Mr. Jones.”
He sighed heavily. “I don’t want to do this, Josie, but—”
“Wait!” An idea went off in my head like a massive Fourth of July firework. I jumped up from my seat and Mr. Jones reared back in his chair, surprised at my sudden burst. “I have something to show you!”
“Okay…?”
I fished my phone out of my pocket, pulled up the pictures from the hotel lobby, and flipped it around so that Mr. Jones could see the screen. He slipped on a pair of thick rimmed glasses and leaned forward as I swiped through the collection of images. “What am I looking at? Wait, isn’t that Senator McNary?”
I nodded. “Do you recognize this man?” I asked, pointing at the stranger. I still hadn’t been able to identify him—not that I’d given it much though. But seeing his face again, the sense of familiarity triggered again. I knew him from somewhere.
“Hmm. I don’t think so. Why? Who is he?” Mr. Jones flicked his eyes up so that he was peering up at me from beyond his glasses.
“I don’t know. But he looks familiar. I’ll track him down.” I sank back into my chair but this time leaned forward and fixed my eyes on my boss. I’d piqued his interest. I just had to bring my pitch home. “I was getting breakfast, at the Denver hotel, right before I came home. I saw the senator and this man, whoever he is, talking in hushed tones off by themselves. I was too far away, and the lobby was too busy to hear what they were saying, but after a little while, I saw the mystery man pull a thick envelope out of his pocket and hand it to the senator.”
“That’s…odd…”
“I know!” I grinned; my gut had been right on. “I pretended I was taking some selfies but managed to snap these shots instead. Something about it didn’t sit right with me. Why would the senator be in Denver and in such a dive hotel—” Mr. Jones shot me a dark look and I grimaced. Oops! “I just mean, him and this guy were very out of place. Expensive, custom tailored suits, pricey shoes, luxury watches. Why would they be meeting there? And the envelope? I don’t know…it feels like a story.”
Mr. Jones leaned back and took off his glasses. He absently twirled them around by one stem as he considered me. “The next meeting with the station manager isn’t for another two weeks. I can keep you here until then. But if I go to that meeting and I don’t have a good reason to keep you here…you’re gone.”
“So, I can run down this story?”
“Shake a few trees, rattle a few cages. If you come up with something—and it has to be good—I’ll let you run it on the nightly news.”
A surge of excitement, anticipation, and a twinge of dread swelled up inside of me. I jumped back to my feet. “Thank you, Mr. Jones! I can’t even tell you—”
He held up a hand and then put his glasses back on. “Save it, Crawford. Just get me the story. And this time…no mistakes.”
“Yes, Mr. Jones. I promise, no distractions,” I said, nodding fervently as I backed out of his office.
I finally exhaled once I was out in the hallway and then took off to my own desk, resigning myself to sleepless nights, eye strain, and, above all, no distractions from Trey Delgado for the foreseeable future.
20
Josie
The station was buzzing with gossip and although no one directly came up to me and asked me about the sexy encounter with Trey, I could feel eyeballs on me all the time. I sat at my sad little desk and tried to glean information about my mystery man’s identity, but the feeling was getting to me and it was like my skin was crawling with ants. I gave up on getting work done at the office, checked out a station laptop, and went to a coffee shop a few blocks away to get some peace and quiet.
A few hours—and about three lattes—later, I had my answer.
The man was Michael Arlington, a billionaire out of Texas who’d made his money in the oil industry and then parlayed his wealth into a handful of other companies to diversify. It took me a few minutes longer, but it all fell into place. I’d seen him before, in person, because he was friends, or at least, colleagues with my daddy. I stared at his icy blue eyes in one of the Google images of him and remembered the last time I’d seen him. It was at a huge Christmas party in Dallas. My parents were invited and asked me to tag along for the night. It had turned into a set-up with one of my daddy’s friend’s son. Lyle something or other. The date fizzled out and I ended up leaving the party after about an hour, but not before my daddy had taken the opportunity to show me off and introduce me to hordes of his friends and business partners who were there as well. Michael Arlington was one of those people.
Thinking back, I couldn’t quite remember how my father knew him, but at the very least they were in the same social circles and had been friendly enough with one another to let me know he was something more than just an acquaintance. A pit formed in my stomach wondering just what Mr. Arlington was tangled up in—and even more so—if my daddy knew.
The connection to Senator McNary came relatively quickly. Jameston McNary was a newly re-elected senator and Mr. Arlington was a fairly public member of his super PAC. Meaning, he donated mountains of cash to his campaign. Could that have been what was in that envelope? A fat check for his campaign? Nope, that didn’t work out. The campaign was long over. And the envelope was way too thick—like cash. Lots of cold hard cash. And why there, I wondered. Why that hotel? Neither one of those men lived in Denver. I’d already searched for any political events in the area, scouring their social media accounts for clues, and still came up empty.
All I really knew was that something wasn’t right. My first reaction to spotting the senator was spot on. He was tangled up in something suspicious—I just knew it. It was thrilling and terrifying to think that little ole me could be on the edge of something big. Maybe even earth shattering, a story no one else even had a whiff of.
It could make my career.
But I needed more information.
After another hour of wracking my brain, I got up from my corner table, stretched and twisted at the waist to release the tight muscles in my lower back from being hunched over my laptop all morning. I made my way to the counter, ordered a fourth refill, and a breakfast sandwich to go along with it, and then returned to my table. As I waited for my name to be called, I tapped the tip of my pen against my legal pad. Sometimes I was old school.
“Josie? Order up!” the friendly, fresh-faced barista called over the counter, holding up a small white plate with a steaming hot croissant sandwich and my well used cup in the other.
I scrambled to get the order, dropped another bill in her tip jar, and took the haul back to my makeshift workstation. I shut the laptop while I ate. I wasn’t going to get anything from staring at the same stuff over and over again. Except maybe a case of eye strain.
The sandwich was buttery and delicious. I missed this cafe while on my trip with the Warriors. Hotel food and take out wasn’t quite as enjoyable when you didn’t know the best places to go. I sighed, as my thoughts drifted from thinking about food, to the ten-day trip, to thinking about Trey. I wondered what he was doing. He seemed so sad when I left his room that morning. His cocky, rough and tough exterior had been stripped away, if only for a moment, and I’d caught a glimpse at something much darker.
Loneliness.
My heart twisted in my chest. My appetite drained away and I pushed my plate to the side, leaving the last few bites of food. Trey had somehow managed to do everything I didn’
t want but got inside my head—and my heart—all the same. Was I that desperate for a man? I didn’t think so—there had to be another reason. Maybe I’d seen Trey’s silent heartache all along.
“JoJo?”
I jerked around in my seat at the sound of my name. I’d been so lost and tangled up thinking about Trey I hadn’t even seen my co-worker, Hallie, come into the coffee shop. She was a tall, broad shouldered girl, who looked like one of those beach volleyball athletes. She was probably right around my age, I’d never asked. And she had beautifully dyed blonde hair, bright blue eyes, and a contagious smile. She waved as she caught my attention before making a pit stop at the counter to place her order. She worked on the PR side of things at the station, which meant we didn’t cross paths all that often. However, we’d hit it off, having started working for the station at the same time, and we’d even gone out for after work drinks on a few occasions. Enough that we could be called friends.
After she ordered, she hurried over to join me, casually dropping into the chair opposite mine. “Hey! I didn’t know you were back from your trip!”
I nodded and tried to plaster on a smile. Thoughts of Trey were still running around in the back of my mind and made it hard to focus. “Yeah, last night…well…afternoon, I guess it was.” I shook my head, trying to turn off the rampant thoughts of Trey meeting me at the hotel, the flowers he’d given me, and the night spent in his hotel room, wrapped around his delicious body. Ungh.
“Awesome,” Hallie said, smiling and nodding. She reminded me of a puppy. “Well, I have to tell you, it’s been quite exciting around the office.”
I scoffed. “I’m sure. Not every day your reporter runs off with a pro baseball player…”
Hallie’s brow wrinkled. “What are you—oh…”
