I could get used to this if I allowed myself.
But that was a big if. And a dangerous one if my job wasn’t already hanging in the balance like everyone knew it was. Nate probably wouldn’t face any major consequences for starting up a personal relationship with me, but I had to play by a different set of rules. Arbitrary rules, true. And sexist ones. Archaic, even. But none of those arguments changed the fact that this was the field I’d chosen to work in, and I’d known going in that it would be an uphill climb with roadblocks to maneuver myself around at every step.
Still… I might as well enjoy the rest of the time I had with Nate. Everyone knew there was no chance I’d keep this job after the first season of Eye of the Storm was officially in the books, so why pretend otherwise?
“I don’t know how you could drink those macchiatos,” I said, blowing on my coffee to cool it off before taking a sip. “They’re so sweet.” Never mind the fact that I had a sweet tooth to rival the product tasters at Hershey’s and was jealous as all hell that he could have them.
“Just like me. Strong, dark, and sweet as your grandma’s pie.”
I shot my eyes over to find his full of laughter.
“Couldn’t go with the tall, dark, and handsome line,” he said, winking. “No one would ever buy the tall part.”
“You think I’m going to believe you’re sweet?”
“Maybe someday you’ll be ready for a taste so you can see for yourself.”
Maybe seemed to be too wishy-washy for the state of things, considering a warm, tingling sensation had started in my belly and jolted through my body like a flash of lightning. I bit down on my lower lip to keep from saying anything at all before I’d thought through every possible consequence of any potential response.
“Maybe you’re ready now,” he said, leaning back and draping his arm over the back of the chair like he could read my mind. His lazy posture made me wish I was next to him, his arm wrapped around my shoulders, instead of being seated on the other side of the table.
“Tell me what it was like for you growing up,” I said, desperately needing to change the subject.
He shrugged, but there was a bit of disappointment in the move. “I could say it was all hockey, all the time, but that wouldn’t exactly be true. Mom and Dad wouldn’t let me be quite so single-minded about anything.”
“No?”
“Not unless it was my education.” He grinned, and my insides melted. “My parents were—actually, they are—both working-class. He’s a plumber, and she runs his office. They make good money, considering what they do, but they wanted better for their kids. My sister, Nicole, went to college like they wanted her to. Now she’s a teacher, and she married an engineer, so they’re solidly middle class and moving ahead in the world, the way Mom and Dad wanted. I was always a good student, but I wanted to pursue a hockey career even if it was a long shot for me to make it in the NHL. They tried to get me to play college hockey. I insisted I had a better chance of making an impression if I went into juniors.”
“They seem to be fairly equal in scouts’ eyes these days,” I said.
“They are.” Nate winked. “But I did my damnedest to convince my parents otherwise.”
“Don’t you usually start in juniors in high school?”
“Yeah. It meant leaving home with two more years of high school to go, and forgetting about college. Let’s just say that my parents weren’t too keen on the idea.”
“But you did it anyway?” I asked.
“I did. But the only way they’d agree to it was if I made them a promise.”
I raised a brow. “What promise?”
“I told them that if I didn’t get into the NHL by the time I was twenty-four, I’d come home and start college in earnest. And if I did make it by then, I’d take a couple of courses every semester and do summer school, too. It might take me a long time to get my degree, but I’d get one. They weren’t thrilled with the idea of me waiting so late to get started, but they agreed in the end.”
There wasn’t any point in denying I was impressed. Coming from a family like mine—even if my mother didn’t want me to do anything with my degree once I got it, both of my parents had been adamant that college was an absolute necessity—I had an appreciation for the kind of dedication it took to put such a priority on higher education. “So did you keep your promise? Get a degree?”
“I’m keeping it,” he said, taking another sip. He winked. “I’m on the ten-year plan at Portland State. I started once I made it to the AHL level, even though that was sooner than I’d said I would. I’d thought about getting started while I was in juniors, but I needed some more stability than I had back then. Logistically, it wasn’t exactly a piece of cake figuring out how to make it all work.”
I nodded, completely enraptured. Smart men were a heck of a turn-on for me. “So you’re taking classes now?”
“I’m technically a junior, but it’ll probably take me two to three more years to finish since I’m still playing full time. Business management major.”
“Business?” That one took me aback. I shook my head. “Not what I imagined.”
“What, did you think I was going to be a nutrition science major? Or maybe kinesiology? Something that makes more sense for an athlete?”
“Not really. I’m not sure what I expected, but not business management.” My stomach rumbled again, but I didn’t get the impression that Nate heard it. At least I hoped he hadn’t. I took another swallow of my coffee, wishing there was more substance to it so we could keep talking like this for hours to come. My inner geek was getting off on this conversation as much as my superficial side was enjoying staring at him. “So, are you going to use it to help your parents out after you retire as a player? Find ways to help the plumbing business grow?”
He scrunched up his nose. “Plumbing’s not my thing. I figured I could find a way to use it to continue in the hockey world. Get into upper management or something with a team. Maybe.”
“You could also go into broadcasting,” I suggested. He gave me a look that said I had lost my mind, but I wasn’t going to give up so easily. “You’re good on camera. Some guys, you can hardly get a decent sound bite out of them, but you’ve always got something interesting to say. You don’t clam up. Plus, you’re easy on the eyes,” I added with a wink.
“It’s a possibility, I guess.” He shrugged. “I don’t know if I’d really like it.”
“Why’s that?”
“I’m not keen on the idea of getting the story when it’s something I don’t think should be a story.” He didn’t sound angry, but there wasn’t any point trying to convince myself he wasn’t thinking about how I’d jumped right in with the rest of the media after the night of the banana peel incident. How I hadn’t let it go for most of a week. How I’d put the job ahead of what was right.
“You don’t always have to get the story,” I said. “Sometimes, you can tell them what the true story ought to be.”
“Can you really?” he asked, sarcasm dripping thick, like molasses.
“That’s what I’m doing now. You might know that, if you’d bother to watch.”
“But aren’t all your guys telling you they know better than you do how to do your job? Or was that all a figment of my imagination?”
“I’m still doing it my way,” I pointed out.
More than ever before, I was determined to produce this show the way I thought it should be, not the way everyone else seemed to think I should. Because, whether the powers that be liked it or not, Eye of the Storm was my baby. At least until they took it away from me. But I had no intention of producing a show I wasn’t proud of in the hopes that I could somehow save a job that was already essentially a lost cause.
Nate passed appraising eyes over me and nodded. “You are. I wouldn’t take that away from you.”
“I wouldn’t let you, anyway,” I said. Then my stomach made itself known in the most undignified way possible, and I groaned.
“Hung
ry?” he said, grinning.
“You could say that.”
He finished off his Americano and leaned forward across the table, making like he was reaching for my hand before he stopped himself. “I’ll make you a deal.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What kind of deal?”
“I’ll watch your show. Really watch it, even though I hate watching anything that’s about me.”
“If?” I added when he didn’t finish.
“If you’ll let me take you out to dinner tonight.”
“Doesn’t seem like much of a hardship on my part.”
“Good. Then you’ll come?”
Even with the warning bells clanging in the back of my mind, reminding me that dinner was a hell of a lot closer to a date than coffee was and that if I had any intention at all of keeping my job I needed to stay the heck away from dating any of the players on the team I was responsible for covering, I nodded. “Yeah. You can buy me dinner. I’m starving.”
I only hoped I wasn’t committing career suicide.
Probably an unfounded hope, but still.
THE NEXT DAY, as Dave and Ben set up their cameras, microphones, and lights in Jamie Babcock’s living room, I couldn’t seem to stop myself from yawning. Often. Repeatedly. Loudly, too. It didn’t even matter that we were surrounded by organized chaos. Jamie invited his brother along, who brought his fiancée, who brought her brother, sister-in-law, niece, and nephew. Then there were Jamie and Katie’s two cats, one of which was currently circling my legs and doing its best to trip me at every turn while it studiously avoided the two children. And Katie’s sister was still due to arrive at any moment.
None of that was doing a thing to wake me up. I either needed a stiff cup of coffee or a dunk in a basin of cold water.
“Late night?” Dave asked with a knowing wink after I yawned for at least the eighth time since we’d walked through the front door and started getting ready for whatever was to come.
“Not for the reasons you seem to be implying.”
“Whatever you say, boss,” Dave said, but he smirked over at Ben, who laughed out loud while he adjusted the height of a light rig.
In truth, Nate and I had been out until the wee hours of the morning…but we hadn’t done anything more than talk, laugh, and tease each other. Dinner had been an extended version of our afternoon over coffee. Lots of making eyes at each other. Even more getting to know one another. Not even a hint at anything that went beyond flirtation.
I wasn’t sure who felt more anxious about taking things further, him or me. It seemed odd to think about Nate Golston being nervous, considering he came across as ridiculously full of confidence and more than merely sure of himself in most of our interactions. But every time I’d gotten the sense that a kiss, however innocent, was imminent, he’d backed off.
And me, being the bookish and awkward nerd I’d always been…well, I’d never been the one to make the first move with someone I was interested in, no matter how much I might want to. I could hang out with guys all day long, trading barbs with the best of them. But when it came to anything in the realm of one-on-one relationships with a man, anything in the love-and-dating world, I turned into a giant chicken.
So nothing had happened.
Yet in some ways, everything had happened.
Because I wanted him to kiss me, even knowing exactly what that would mean for my career once word got out. And it would get out. There wasn’t any way of hiding it. His life was too public, and my life revolved around my job these days.
I wanted a heck of a lot more than just kisses, too. The more time I spent with Nate, the more I came to realize he wasn’t just a sexy-as-all-get-out athlete with an amazing smile. He was confident, intelligent, driven, loyal, and he had a sense of humor that wasn’t too far from my own.
The problem was it might not just be nerves on his part. In fact, nerves might not even be part of the equation on his side of things. I could just be reading that into it because that was what I felt.
What if he still saw me as the enemy? As someone who was only trying to get the story, as he’d put it earlier. Yeah, he’d invited me out for coffee and followed it up with dinner, but maybe he was just trying to deflect my professional attention away from him by showering me with personal flattery.
No matter how many times I tried to work it all out in my head, I couldn’t settle on a single answer. For all I knew, he might not have come to that conclusion himself.
The doorbell rang, snapping me out of my ruminations.
I whipped my head over to see if the guys were ready to start filming, but they’d beaten me to the punch. Ben already had a camera over his shoulder, and Dave had his set up on a tripod. With a nod from me, they both pressed their buttons to start filming.
Katie Babcock raced down the hall with Cam Johnson’s little boy, Connor, trying to climb her and Cam attempting to drag Connor down. Katie, grinning from ear to ear, flung open the front door to let her sister in, oblivious to the chaos surrounding her.
“You’re late,” she said without any preamble.
Dani Weber came in, nearly a mirror image of her older sister. Dani’s brown hair was long and slightly curling, with a hint of red highlights. Katie’s was growing out, cut in an adorable bob. They were the same height and had identical faces. The only difference other than their hair, as far as I could tell, was that Dani had a few more curves.
“Only late because I stopped to hug Mom and Dad before coming over.” Dani came through the door and tossed a duffel bag and her purse on the floor at the front of the hall. She pried Connor’s sticky fingers free from Katie’s hair to help Cam extricate the boy. The sisters came into the living room and plopped down on the couch next to each other, acting like there was nothing more natural or normal than the cacophony in this house.
I took a seat on the floor in a corner of the room where I could spy on everyone and observe. I had a mic of my own, which allowed me to quietly give instructions to Ben and Dave, letting them know who I wanted them to focus on and when.
Jamie, Levi, and Sara Johnson went into the kitchen to prep some steaks to go on the grill. They started talking about Sara’s father, Scotty Thomas, and whether or not he was dating a woman who worked in the Storm’s travel department.
Cam got down on the floor in front of Katie and Dani. He dragged Connor down there with him, who then decided to climb him like a jungle gym, cackling like a loon. His daughter, Cassidy, was already on the floor crawling around. She giggled at everything her brother did, especially if it was something that hurt Cam. The two cats got in on the act, too. Filming a bit of that wouldn’t be bad at all. It made Johnson seem like an ordinary dad, not some millionaire athlete.
The two sisters started talking like there weren’t any cameras around, catching up on the things sisters who hadn’t seen each other in months would do. How’s school? What have you heard from Luke? Why is Dad so grumpy today?
I sent Ben in to catch the kitchen talk, just in case it turned into something as juicy as the steaks might be, and I directed Dave to film the action on the floor while I eavesdropped on Katie and Dani’s conversation.
“I’m taking an independent study this summer,” Dani said. “They don’t usually let students do this one until they’re seniors, but I nagged my prof until he agreed to let me.”
The talk of college and professors automatically sent my thoughts back to Nate, which didn’t help me at all. I shoved the thought aside.
“So you aren’t coming home for summer break?” Katie replied, sounding wounded. “I had all sorts of plans, and Mom wanted to get us all together to go to the Bahamas…”
“Do they have wine in the Bahamas? I only think of fruity rum drinks.”
Katie scowled at her sister. “Don’t change the subject.”
“I’m still coming home.” Dani rolled her eyes. “I’ll need somewhere I can set up a studio and do my work, and I’ll have to shoot up to Seattle a couple of times to meet with Dr. Schlesinger
and show him what I’ve done, but otherwise I can do it all from here.”
“What kind of independent study is this?”
Dani tucked both feet underneath her, sitting cross-legged on the couch. “A makeover challenge. I’m supposed to find a woman—a real woman, not some supermodel type—who has a hard time finding clothes that flatter her because of whatever problem area. And then I have to design a wardrobe that not only flatters her but that fits her aesthetic.”
“Are you going to have time to go to the Bahamas?” Katie asked.
Dani winked. “For that, I’ll make time. Especially if she lets me have some of those fruity rum drinks.”
“I’ll sneak you a few if you don’t let Dad know.”
“Seriously, though, why was he so grumbly with me when I was there?” Dani asked with a pout. “He hasn’t seen me in almost a month. I come home for a long Easter weekend, and all he wants to do is glare and grumble about staying away from asswipes.”
“He saw you kiss Harry.”
Harry. I did a quick mental rundown of the team, trying to remember which of the players the others all called Harry. Big, redheaded defenseman named Cody Williams who looked kind of like the British royal. Scruffy facial hair that had nothing to do with being a playoff beard. He tended to wear bowties, and he actually pulled the look off. He was like a sexy physics professor off the ice but a mean SOB on the ice.
Dani didn’t exactly blush, but it came close to it. “None of Dad’s business who I kiss.”
“Mm hmm. You remember how many years it took him to be okay with me being with Jamie? And you’re his baby.”
“But still a grown-ass woman who can make her own decisions when it comes to who I kiss.”
“It’s not like Harry is even close to your age, either.”
“He’s close enough.”
Katie rolled her eyes. “Not going to make a difference to Dad. Not when it comes to you being with one of his players. Especially not if the player in question is that much older than you.”
Game Breaker (Portland Storm Book 14) Page 8
