Catching Cameron: A Love and Football Novel

by Julie Brannagh

  “We’re very happy with your ratings and the amount of advertising money Third and Long and NFL Confidential is making for the network. Your concerns are my concerns. What is it that we can do for you?”

  He looked like someone’s indulgent grandfather, but she was aware that he was as cutthroat in business as her father was. The only reason he’d agreed to this meeting in the first place was because she was making him money.

  “Well, Mr. Doyle, I’m glad you asked me that. I’d like to move to Seattle for family reasons. I wonder if there’s a mutually beneficial solution to this problem.”

  He stared at her for a moment. “What exactly are you proposing?”

  “I’d like to film my show in the Seattle area. I will still be traveling to games during football season, but I will be living there the rest of the year.”

  He tapped his chin with one finger. “Why do you believe I’m going to agree to this? We sank significant resources into obtaining your services from ESPN, Ms. Ondine. We’re based in New York City. You knew this when you took the job.”

  “Speaking of Third and Long, my contract was specific on my responsibilities with PSN. There should have been a separate negotiation for my appearance on the show, especially since my private life was exploited as part of it. My contract with your organization says that I’m allowed to leave without penalty if I agree to observe the non-compete in it.” She recrossed her legs. “I have a job offer from another sports network that’s willing to wait it out. They will be featuring me on their Sunday morning pregame show and another half-hour show during the week year-round. They’re offering a significant increase in compensation as well.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “So, you want to move to Seattle and you want a raise. Is that it?”

  “The money is important, but moving to Seattle is what I want most. I’d also like to work for an organization that treats me as a professional and doesn’t exploit my private life for ratings. I’m not sure PSN is willing to do that moving forward after Third and Long.”

  They stared at each other for a minute.

  His lips curved up slightly. “No.”

  She smiled in response. “No?”

  “That’s right. You’ll either work in New York City, or you’ll leave PSN and deal with the non-compete.”

  She wasn’t surprised at all that he ignored her comments about being treated as a professional. He appeared to be an amiable, agreeable older man, but she knew Ben would have checked out every decision he’d made on what to feature on Third and Long before he did so. She was a commodity to these guys, and they believed she and her work didn’t deserve their respect.

  She’d be off the air during most of football season, but she could work behind the scenes at her new employer’s and hit the ground running before the NFL draft next year. She’d already discussed it with the executive that would be her new boss. It was an easy decision.

  She got up from her chair, extended her hand to him, and said, “Thank you for the opportunity, Mr. Doyle. I wish you and your network well.”

  He shook his head. “You’ll regret this, Ms. Ondine.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “Again, thank you.” She turned to walk to the office door.

  “Wait,” he said as she reached out for the doorknob. She heard the chair he’d been sitting in creak a little as he got to his feet.

  “Who made you the offer, and how much of a raise?” he said.

  She turned to face him again. “FOX Sports. They also offered to double my yearly salary. They’d like to increase their female viewership and hiring a female football analyst is a priority for them.” She kept the pleasant smile on her face as she gave him a nod. “It was nice to have met you. Please give my best to your family.”

  She looped her handbag over her arm and turned the doorknob as he said, “I suppose you’d want to sit at the desk for our pregame, too.”

  “I’d like to advance in my career, as I told you when I was hired. Why would I bother with anything less? Plus, I really don’t want to work sixteen Sundays a year with Kevin Adkins.”

  They stared at each other for a minute or so. “So, you want me to get rid of Adkins, too.”

  “I didn’t say that. I said I didn’t want to work with him. There’s a difference.” She shrugged.

  His eyes narrowed. “What do I get out of all of this?”

  “You were just telling me how pleased you were with the ratings and the increased advertising dollars I generated for your organization.”

  He rubbed one hand over his face in exasperation.

  “Did your father teach you how to negotiate?” he said.

  “I learned that all by myself.”

  A FEW MINUTES later Cameron walked out of the PSN offices and onto the bustling New York City sidewalk for the last time. She took a deep breath of the humidity, the car exhaust, the food smells—she’d miss living here, but she had a new life waiting for her across the country. She hit “redial” on her phone and waited for her new boss at FOX Sports to pick up the phone.

  “It’s official: I’ve terminated my employment with PSN. I accept your offer,” she said.

  She heard him laugh a little. “We’re glad to have you on board, Cameron. We’ll see you in Los Angeles next week, and we’ll schedule a press conference to announce your deal then.”

  “I look forward to it. Thank you again.”

  She had one more phone call to make, and there was no time like the present.

  She stepped into the seating area of a sidewalk café and asked a server for an iced tea. “Coming right up,” the guy told her.

  “Thanks.” She hit a number on her cell phone and waited for her agent to pick up. “Hi, Laurie. Yes, I understand you’re busy. This shouldn’t take long. I’ve lost faith in your representation. I’ve made other arrangements.” She waited a beat. “You’re fired.”

  CAMERON HOPPED OUT of another cab half an hour later.

  “Here goes nothing,” she muttered to herself.

  She managed to get through the revolving front door at her father’s office building without incident. She had an elevator car to herself, too. When the doors opened, she strolled up to the reception desk like she didn’t have a care in the world.

  The lobby of her father’s office resembled a gentleman’s club, with its dark wood paneling, wainscoting, and thick and priceless antique woven wool rugs lying over hardwood floors. The four chairs she saw were wing-backed tufted leather, facing each other in front of a five-foot-tall gas fireplace with an ornately carved mantel. The nineteenth-century British landscape painting that hung over the fireplace was worth more than her parents’ apartment on the Upper West Side. The reception desk wasn’t the modern wraparound most companies featured. It looked like an antique library table, which meant it probably was.

  The woman sitting behind the desk looked like she’d just walked off the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, except she had more clothes on.

  “I’m Cameron Ondine. I’d like to see my father, please.”

  “Do you have an appointment?” Ms. Swimsuit Issue didn’t smile. Cameron was fairly sure that kind of thing was reserved for guys, specifically those with a high eight-figure balance in their checking account. “He doesn’t see anyone he doesn’t already have an appointment with. Let me take a look at his schedule.”

  “He’ll see me. Please let him know I am here,” Cameron said.

  The woman picked up her desk phone, dialed a number, and said, “There’s a woman here who claims to be Mr. Ondine’s daughter. She’d like to see him.” Cameron wondered if her father knew how rude his receptionist was. Maybe he didn’t care.

  The woman nodded several times, hung the phone up, and said to Cameron. “I’m sorry. He’s not available today. You’ll need to make an appointment and come back another time.”

  “I flew in here specifically to talk with him,” Cameron said. She pulled out her iPhone and dialed her father’s number.

  “On
dine,” he barked three rings later. She hit the speaker phone function for the hell of it.

  “This is Cameron. I’m standing in your lobby. Your employees won’t let me talk to you.”

  “You’re here?”

  The receptionist turned pale. Cameron resisted the impulse to laugh out loud.

  “Yes, I am. And it’s almost noon. Would you like to get some lunch?”

  “Of course. I’ll be right out.” He ended the call.

  Cameron put her phone back in her bag. Her father rounded the corner to the lobby two minutes later. He looked the same as he always did: He was tall; his dark hair was trimmed every three weeks; he was impeccably dressed in a handmade, tailored dark suit, and designer tie. He raised an eyebrow as he glanced at her.

  He didn’t have to say a word. She knew what he was thinking: What the hell is she doing here?

  She could count the number of times she’d actually visited her father’s company on the fingers of one hand. His workplace was sacrosanct. Whatever it was, it would wait until he came home from Wall Street.

  Her father was also followed by a frantic-looking female assistant.

  “Mr. Ondine, what would you like me to do about your one o’clock?”

  “Reschedule my appointments for the rest of the afternoon,” he said. The assistant was tapping away on her iPad. “I’m available on cell phone for emergencies.” Her father thought any financial news constituted an “emergency,” so it might be an interesting lunch.

  To Cameron’s surprise he reached out to give her an awkward hug. He wasn’t a big fan of public displays of affection, either. Maybe he wasn’t feeling well.

  “If you would have told me you wanted to visit, I would have sent the jet, Cameron.”

  “That’s really nice of you. The flight here wasn’t too bad.”

  He didn’t roll his eyes. Maybe it was trained out of him at Amherst. He gave a nod. “Shall we?”

  She turned to look back at the receptionist. “Thank you so much for your help,” she said. The woman stared at her.

  “How are you, Dad?” Cameron asked as they waited in front of the elevator banks.

  “I’m fine. Your mother has a slight cold, though. Will you stay for dinner? She’d like to see you.”

  “I’d like to see her too, Dad, but my flight back to Seattle is at seven pm tonight.”

  He held the door so she could step onto the elevator.

  “I’ll call my pilot and ask if he can take you home this evening. You can avoid the two-hours-in-advance check-in at the airport.”

  “It might be an inconvenience for him—”

  “Cameron, let me take care of this for you.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket, tapped in a text, and waited for a response as the elevator descended. “Your mother will ask the chef for an early dinner. My pilot will have the jet ready at seven PM our time, which should get you back to Seattle at nine PM their time. Will that work?”

  “Of course, Dad. Thank you.” If the flight was on time, she’d manage to make it back to the dorm before lights out, too.

  The elevator stopped in the lobby, and they walked outside. Her father held out his arm for her to take. “Where would you like to eat?”

  “I know you have your favorites,” Cameron said. “How about something a bit more casual?”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  She nodded at the food truck parked on the curb, one block down. “Greek food sounds good.”

  Her father was not a casual kind of guy. He preferred restaurants, specifically expensive, exclusive ones. He especially liked restaurants which provided a private room to conduct business in. She was willing to bet he’d asked his assistant to make a reservation at PJ Clarke’s Sidecar before he came out to the front desk to meet her, but he didn’t say so. He gave her another nod. “My assistant says their food is very good. Shall we try it?”

  “We can take our lunch to the park and visit while we eat,” Cameron said.

  Twenty minutes later, she was fairly convinced that her father’s body had been taken over by pod people. He ordered from a food truck like he’d been doing it his entire life. He asked the older gentleman dishing up their lunch if he could possibly double-wrap their food and drinks so they would make it to the park without incident. Cameron scrabbled in her bag for cash. Her father handed the guy a hundred-dollar bill and said, “Keep the change.”

  She’d never heard her father use the words “Keep the change” in her entire life. When the man and wife operating the cart thanked him, he smiled and said, “It’s a special day. I’m having lunch with my daughter.” He graciously accepted the small bag of baklava the woman pressed on them in response.

  They made their way across the street to Central Park and managed to find an empty park bench, which was a miracle of some kind as well. It was possible her dad’s security detail had been sitting on the bench ten seconds before they walked up to it, but she wasn’t going to think about that today.

  Maybe she’d hit her head on the overhead bin on the commercial jet or something. Maybe she was hallucinating. She waited for her father to do something rude, selfish, or thoughtless; it wasn’t happening.

  “I know you didn’t fly twenty-five hundred miles to visit a food truck with me,” he said.

  “We might have to go to one more often,” she said. She took a bite of excellent Greek salad. “Do you like your gyro?”

  “Yes. It’s very good,” he said. She handed him another napkin to protect his tie from yogurt sauce.

  “So, Dad, I’m not sure how to start this, so here goes.”

  She took a huge lungful of air. Her palms were sweaty. Her dad wasn’t a yeller. He’d managed to keep her in line over the years with much more subtle and effective strategies, like disapproving of most of her life choices and asking why she’d earned a master’s in art and antiquities if she had no intention of using her education. It was easier to give in to her parents’ pressure as far as a major, but she knew she wanted to work in broadcasting from her teenage years, especially sports broadcasting. She’d learned a few things during afternoons spent running around a lacrosse field or on the intramural basketball court: There were stories in every antique, but the stories of athletes—amateur to professional, and their struggles and triumphs—were the ones that captivated her most.

  She knew most people had challenges with their parents as they were growing up. She and her father didn’t have the shared history of laughter and fun in her childhood to buffer the frustration and anger at their disagreements in later years, though. She knew he loved her, but she would have liked to make a snowman with him on Christmas Day instead of getting a notice from his lawyers that he had added funds to her annuity.

  “I appreciate the fact that you took time out of your schedule to come to Seattle and check on my safety. I know you wanted to make sure I was okay, and I appreciate that, too.” She put her container of salad down on the bench between them and turned to face him. “Dad, I’m pretty angry with you for what you said to Zach when you saw him. Maybe we should also discuss what you did to Zach and his family when he and I were married ten years ago. You weren’t truthful with me for a long time, and I’m unhappy about that as well.” She let out a breath. “I know that you detest Zach, but I am in love with him. If you and Mom would give him a chance, you might like—”

  Her father half-turned to face her, too. “Eugene is a much better match for you, Cameron.”

  “No, he’s not. He’s a social climber who would make me miserable. I don’t want that life, and Eugene and I have nothing in common.”

  “Yes, you do. His family is similar to ours. You both went to the finest schools and know a lot of the same people. Eugene has the net worth to take care of you and the children you’ll have together. He wants your family to continue our path of philanthropy as well.”

  “Path of philanthropy”? It was more like charitable donations as a tax write-off and to make others think her parents were generous, but she
had bigger points she’d like to make with him first.

  “Dad, this isn’t the British regency, and I don’t want my future to feature a mission statement. I have my own money. I can take care of myself.”

  “Eugene will fit into our lives. Zach Anderson won’t.”

  “Dad, again: You don’t even know Zach. You can’t say whether or not he will fit into our lives. What if I want to fit into his?” She concentrated on keeping her voice down. The park was full of people on the beautiful August afternoon. “Why do you hate him so much?”

  Her father’s expression froze into a polite mask. “I don’t hate him, Cameron. I don’t hate anyone.” He picked up his gyro and took another bite.

  “You say that, but you tried to destroy him and his family ten years ago. You filed a restraining order against him? Maybe you could explain to me how in the world you got a judge to sign off on that in the first place, too. You threatened Zach again when you saw him at the Sharks’ training camp. Why?”

  Her father concentrated on smoothing out the paper bag they’d received their food in and using it as a placemat for his gyro.

  “Cameron, all I have ever wanted for you was the best in everything. Women still derive most of their happiness from a husband and a family. I knew you wanted a career when you were younger, so we steered you into the arts and antiquities major. You could have that career without sacrificing your home life to do so. If you marry Eugene, you’ll stay on the East Coast, which your mother and I believe is best for you as well. You’d be close to your family, close to your in-laws, and there are more career options here.” He took a sip of the iced tea he’d ordered. “It’s the best decision for your future. Look how happy Paige is.”

  “Dad, I’m not Paige.” Cameron loved her sister, but she’d lose her mind going to Fashion Week, Mommy and Me yoga classes, and three-hour lunches. “I’m never going to be Paige. Will you still love me if I make a different choice?”

  “That’s ridiculous,” he snapped.

  She waited for him to say he would love her anyhow, but he didn’t. She knew she was expecting a lot from a man who was obviously trying to understand her, but just once she’d like to hear him say the words.