Catching Cameron: A Love and Football Novel

by Julie Brannagh

“Tell everyone I love them. I’ll call you tomorrow. But you text me if you need help with the paperwork,” he said.

  They hung up, and he dropped his phone into the blankets on his bed. He picked it up again, and hit “redial” on Jason’s number. It was almost ten on the East Coast. He knew Jason was probably catching up on work he didn’t get done while he was chasing his three-year-olds.

  Zach’s call went to voicemail.

  “Hey, Jason, Whitney’s starting at the UW in a month. Didn’t you tell me there was another endorsement you were going after? Call me.”

  CAMERON DRAGGED HERSELF up three flights of stairs to her dorm room after eating a shocking amount of seafood and drinking a few mojitos, thanks to the Sharks PR department. She couldn’t believe the ship they saw the sights of Puget Sound from didn’t capsize from all the food and alcohol, either. She wasn’t hungry for dinner at all. Maybe that was a good thing.

  She could take a shower, answer some more e-mail, and go to bed. She still hadn’t figured out what she was going to say to her father besides “Please don’t fly anyone out here to get me.” She yanked open the heavy fire door that opened onto the third floor, and stopped in the doorway.

  Zach’s room was twenty feet ahead, and his door was open. There was no way she could walk by his room without him seeing her. She wasn’t exactly in the mood for a heart-to-heart at the moment. Maybe she could tiptoe past.

  She turned to let the door close slowly against her back. If she could keep the door from latching—

  CLICK.

  Zach poked his head out of his room. “There you are.”

  Damn. She resisted the impulse to run to her room and slam the door.

  “How was your afternoon on the high seas?” he asked.

  She wondered if he’d asked someone where she was, or figured it out on his own. This, of course, made her remember Logan’s comments, too. Why would Zach care where she was at all?

  “It was fine. I’m pretty tired. I think I’ll go to bed.” She pivoted on one foot and tried to move past him. He reached out and caught her elbow in his fingertips. His grip was gentle, but it was there.

  “I have a surprise for you.”

  “Maybe tomorrow,” she said. “I really need to get some sleep.”

  “If we go now, you won’t have to share with the rest of the guys. C’mon.”

  “Share what?”

  He patted his warm-ups pocket with his other hand, most likely checking to see that he had his room key. He closed the door to his room as well. He moved her back toward the door to the stairs, pushed it open for them, and walked her down the stairs.

  “I think you’ll like this,” he said.

  “Where are you taking me? Don’t you have bed check pretty soon?”

  “Not for another couple of hours.”

  He opened the door on the second floor for her, and they moved down the dim hallway toward the open cafeteria. The Sharks front office staff was gone for the evening. The players didn’t spend a lot of time in this part of the building, but Zach seemed to know how to use it for a shortcut to wherever it was he was taking her. The only noise they heard was some distant laughter and talking from the game room upstairs.

  Zach’s fingertips brushed the small of her back. “Let’s go in here for a minute.” He gestured toward the commercial kitchen. She angled her body so he couldn’t touch her again, but she felt it all the same. Zzzap. It had nothing to do with static electricity, and everything to do with the fact they were alone in a darkened building.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Making a little dessert. Want to help?” he said.

  She shook her head. “I ate so much food on that cruise . . .”

  He broke out in a grin. “I’ve been told there isn’t a woman on the planet that can resist freshly baked brownies with chocolate sauce and whipped cream.” He pulled a couple of add-water-and-bake brownie mixes, a jar of chocolate sauce, and a candle out of a grocery bag. He must have refrigerated the whipped cream—at least, she hoped he did.

  “You’re going to make me some brownies?”

  “I’m making myself some brownies. I’m asking you to share them with me.”

  “I shouldn’t be eating them,” she said. “I thought you had something you wanted to talk with me about.”

  “I do,” he said. “How about helping me mix these up while I make sure nobody made off with my can of whipped cream?”

  She was a little surprised to see he knew how to preheat an oven. He moved around the kitchen like he knew what he was doing, too. She watched him measure some water, pull a wooden spoon and a metal spatula out of the drawer by the stove, and retrieve a couple of hot mats.

  He pushed the measuring cup of water and the paper “pan” of brownie mix toward her.

  “Okay, but I’m not eating any.”

  “We’ll see about that.” A few minutes later, the brownies were in the oven. He’d located his untouched can of whipped cream, let the jar of chocolate heat to room temperature, and showed her to one of the tables in the cafeteria. “I’ll be right back,” he said.

  He dashed into the kitchen and reemerged a minute or so later with the lit jar candle, which he placed in the middle of their table.

  “Now we can have a chat.” He dropped into the chair across from her and pulled out his smart phone. “I have a timer on here, so we won’t burn the dessert.” He put the phone on the table face-up. “I thought this might give us a little privacy for a conversation.”

  “We could have talked in the lobby!”

  “And anyone could have walked in on us, too,” he said. “The guys don’t usually hang around in here at night because there’s food available upstairs.” She shook her head, but she knew he was right. Dammit. “I had a long talk with my agent today, and he had a chat with yours before he called me.”

  “Your agent talked to my—why?”

  “We’re trying to present a united front here. Jason told me we’re pretty much screwed. You work for them. I agreed to participate in the program. The production group can make up almost any story line they want, and there’s not a lot we can do about it. There is one thing we can control, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Access and content. If we’re not giving them anything juicy to tape, they’re not going to have much to work with. It’s up to you, but I think we tell them they can have all the access they want. We’ll tell them we’re cooperating. At the same time, we’ll need to make an arrangement while we’re here.”

  She didn’t like how that sounded at all. He leaned over the table toward her. Their candlelit table for two was an oasis in the dimness of the huge cafeteria, and her heart rate picked up a little. She could see the twinkling lights of boats bobbing around on the lake outside of the facility. It was surprisingly romantic for the most inexpensive date she’d been on in her life.

  Date? Oh, no. Not a date. What was she thinking? He was still the guy who’d left her, and he didn’t even have the courtesy to tell her why.

  He reached out and patted her hand with his much bigger and warmer one. “You and I seem to rub each other the wrong way.”

  She was shaking her head before he even finished his sentence. “No, we don’t. That’s not true. I stopped thinking about you a long time ago—”

  “That’s why you went after me like a pit bull on a porterhouse the last time we saw each other, huh?”

  “You took my cab.”

  “You took my cab.” The timer on his phone went off, and he let out a long sigh. “Let me go get the stuff, and I’ll be right back.”

  A few minutes later, he returned to the table with two bowls full of freshly-baked brownies, laced with chocolate sauce, and the can of whipped cream tucked under one arm.

  “I told you I shouldn’t be eating this,” Cameron said.

  “Just a few bites.” He held the can of whipped cream over his forearm like a waiter displaying a rare bottle of wine. “Want some?”

  She
was going to have to invade the team’s weight room tomorrow or go for a long run, but the warm brownie and chocolate sauce smelled like the best thing ever. She gave him a nod.

  He squirted some whipped cream on her dessert, and a little on the back of her hand, too.

  “What was that?”

  “A little extra.”

  She reached out and took the can away from him. “I’ll give you some extra,” she told him.

  “Ooh. I’m scared.”

  She reached out and squirted some whipped cream on his bowlful of brownies, and squirted a little on the end of his nose. He wiped it off with one finger, sticking his finger into his mouth. He also reached out to grab the can again. She put it behind her back.

  “Oh, I see. Playing hard to get.”

  “No. I just want to make sure there’s some left in case I want some—Zach!” He dodged around the table and disarmed her with shocking speed.

  “Game’s over. Eat up, Cameron.”

  She took a bite of the dessert, and almost moaned out loud. She hadn’t eaten junk food in a long time, so fresh-out-of-the-oven boxed brownies were heaven in a bowl to her. She closed her eyes as the chocolate melted on her tongue. Nobody knew she was hungry all the time now—even a weight gain of a pound or so showed up on camera, and she’d hear about it from those who watched PSN. It really wasn’t their business. She worked in a profession that demanded female perfection, though, and she’d learned it was easier to avoid foods that caused her to gain weight.

  Tonight, though, she wanted to dive face-first into the bowl.

  Zach took a couple of bites, too, and rested his spoon inside the bowl. “As I was saying before we got into our latest spat, we’re going to have to figure out how to at least be friendly toward each other. If we don’t give them anything to blow out of proportion, they’ll get bored and go tape some of the other guys, or concern themselves with our new coach or something.”

  “You were just as responsible as I was for the latest spat—”

  He glanced at his phone. “We have an hour before I have to be in my room for the night. Maybe we should spend the time trying to figure out how we’re going to spend the next twenty-eight days together, instead of sniping at each other. What do you think about that?”

  Chapter Eleven

  * * *

  CAMERON SHOVED THE half-eaten bowl of brownies, chocolate sauce, and whipped cream away from her before she ate every last bit, and whatever was left over in Zach’s bowl, too. The dessert was delicious, but she was looking for any distraction from her current circumstance: She was alone in a dimly-lit cafeteria with Zach, the man she could never seem to forget, and he was on a mission. She felt a little jittery, and it had nothing to do with the sugar and caffeine content of the dessert.

  She was getting the truth, and there was no time like the present to start asking questions. She hauled breath into her lungs.

  “I asked you a question the other day. You still haven’t answered it.”

  He forked up another bite of dessert. His words were a bit muffled. “What are you talking about?”

  She clasped both hands together in her lap. “Why did you leave me, Zach? You walked out of our hotel room that day, and I never heard from you again until I ran into you on the street in New York. I called your cell phone. I left messages at Sharks headquarters for you. You ignored all of it. Why do you think I should just forget about that and pretend like everything between us is great?”

  “I didn’t leave you.”

  “You were on your way to the hotel gift shop, you said, but you never came back. I was so freaked out I called my parents and asked if I should file a missing persons report. Imagine how shocked I was to learn that you’d already signed the annulment paperwork, you’d taken five million dollars from my dad, and you were on your way back to Virginia.” She’d thought she’d cried her last tears over Zach Anderson, but maybe not. She blinked them back. Again. “You couldn’t even call me and say, ‘Hey, Cameron, it’s not working for me. I gotta go’?”

  He leaned over the table. “I didn’t leave you. I was ambushed in the hallway outside of our room by your dad, his attorney, and four guys from hotel security, who forced me into another room.”

  Her mouth dropped open in shock. “That can’t be true—”

  “It is. Your dad told me you’d called him and said you’d married me against your will. He’d obtained a restraining order against me before he left for Las Vegas. He told me that if I left quietly and agreed not to contact you again, he wouldn’t have me arrested. He told me that his attorney had already talked to the five teams most likely to draft me. They told him they weren’t interested in any player that had a criminal record, which is exactly what I would have ended up with if I tried to contact you again.”

  Cameron was shaking her head. “I called to tell him we were married and I wasn’t coming back to New York. I said nothing about ‘against my will.’ I told him I was happy, and I wanted to stay with you.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “When did this happen?”

  “You were in the shower the morning after we got married. I knew I didn’t want to go back. I wanted to stay with you.”

  Zach’s eyes flashed with anger. “Well, then, it was one hell of a misunderstanding. I might also mention that your dad told me the other thing he was planning on doing was having my younger sisters removed from my care and sent to foster homes. He said a twenty-two year old college student wasn’t a fit parent for four young girls.”

  She closed her eyes. She wanted to tell Zach he was a liar and she wouldn’t sit here and listen to him malign her dad, but she knew better. Her dad mowed down anything in his way. He always had. She should have known that the concern her dad exhibited when he arrived to fly her back to New York was an act. Zach was just one more impediment in his plans for Cameron’s future.

  Her father would die before he’d let his daughter stay with a guy who grew up in a trailer park. Zach had graduated from a very good college, but it wasn’t Ivy League. She couldn’t imagine him at her parents’ country club, or attending the Metropolitan Opera’s opening night. It was a large part of the reason why she’d married him less than eight hours after they met: For once in her life, she could forget excruciatingly correct etiquette and attire at the boring social functions her parents insisted she attend and spend her time with a man who found joy in things like eating pancakes in the wee hours of the morning at a diner.

  “My dad is not the nicest guy, but his story doesn’t mesh with yours,” she said. “He told me you demanded five million dollars to sign the annulment paperwork.”

  Zach pursed his lips. “That’s interesting, Cameron. He offered me a cashier’s check, which I tore up in front of him.” She regarded him in shock. “I signed his annulment paperwork. He told me that he wanted me to sign a non-disclosure, and I tore that up in front of him, too.” He leaned over the table a bit. “I flew home, got my sisters and our grandma, packed what little we could, and drove to Seattle.” He stared into her eyes. “I wasn’t sure I could outrun your dad’s goon squad, but I was sure as hell going to try. My sisters didn’t need any more upheaval and trauma.” He shoved away his empty bowl. “My littlest sister finally stopped having nightmares about being taken away from us a couple of years ago. She’s been accepted to the University of Washington, but she told me last night on the phone she doesn’t want to leave us. Gosh, I wonder why.”

  “My dad wouldn’t have gone through with it . . .” she sputtered.

  “Maybe you should ask the Sharks about it, Cameron. The general manager told me shortly after I signed with the team I had a very powerful enemy, and they almost didn’t draft me over the existing restraining order your dad had filed.”

  She felt sick to her stomach. “You’re joking.”

  “The team’s attorney found another attorney who managed to have the restraining order lifted, but it took a couple of years. I had to have permission from the court to enter New York to play game
s while it was in force since you were living there, too. Did you think it was a coincidence that I didn’t play the days you were doing sideline reporting with PSN at a Sharks game for a couple of years?”

  “I—I just thought you didn’t want to run into me—”

  “It’s a good thing the team could handle the problem quietly and internally. Most teams get rid of guys with any hint of problems with the law. Guys who have restraining orders don’t get endorsements, either. I didn’t do anything wrong, but I wonder to this day how the hell your dad got a judge to sign off on that. The team also had an investigator who verified that there was no criminal wrongdoing in the first place.” He let out a long breath. “Imagine what would have happened to my family if I wasn’t able to make a living.”

  The impulse to defend a family member was swept away in the uncomfortable, hot flood of guilt and embarrassment that washed over her. If Zach was telling the truth, there was no defense for her father’s actions toward him and his family.

  “Where are your parents?”

  “We never got to that while we talked the night away before our wedding, did we?” He clasped his hands on the tabletop. “My parents were out of the picture. I never met my dad. My mother died of a drug overdose when I was sixteen. My four younger sisters have three different fathers who signed over their parental rights so they wouldn’t have to pay child support. The girls were too little to know the difference.” He leaned back in his chair.

  She couldn’t believe how calm and unemotional he was about a situation that would bring most sixteen-year-olds to their knees.

  “We’d be a big hit on Maury Povich, wouldn’t we?” he said.

  Cameron gaped at him as everything he’d told her sank in. Her father had made Zach’s life a living hell when he’d done nothing to deserve it. She knew many NFL stars came out of significantly underprivileged backgrounds, but this was insane. She couldn’t imagine how he’d managed to keep his family together on his own, either. He couldn’t work while he was playing college football, so he and his sisters must have lived on almost nothing for years.