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  She didn’t really expect him to recognize her right away, but deep down, she had always been sure he would. But Tyson looked right through her. He gave her a dazzling smile, but there was no hint of any recognition whatsoever. That was bad enough, but even worse, she was suddenly, painfully tongue-­tied and to her horror, could only stare up at him and blink.

  “Darlin’, you’re supposed to wanna talk to the winner,” Tyson quipped. He winked at her before taking off to the locker room.

  He was correct, of course. The losers wanted to make like good sports and get off the field fast. Professional courtesy dictated that you allow them to go back to the locker room and lick their wounds a bit before putting on their brave faces in postgame press conferences. Sometimes a reporter wanted to try and make a splash and sneak a question in there, usually trapping the more emotional and volatile players, but it was generally considered bush league.

  Dani knew going in that the odds were slim he would recognize her. Part of her held out hope that the night they spent together had stayed with him in some fashion. But apparently not. He was polite, but it was clear he had no idea who she was. Worse than that, he had winked at her in a way that suggested if they were in a different setting, he would hit on her. Now that he was back on top, he was as cocky as ever. She felt so foolish. Once again, he had successfully humiliated her, this time without even trying.

  Dani got the nudge from her crew that the studio wanted her feed and she hustled to find another player, preferably from the winning side. She was too late, though. All the worthy playmakers of the day were already occupied with other reporters.

  Still, even in defeat Dani found victory. She managed to score eight words from Marcus LaRue, the rookie phenom who hated reporters. At first she wasn’t even going to bother. Getting snubbed twice in one day would make her look like a total amateur. But something about the way his icy blue eyes connected with hers made her take the risk. She stuck out the mic and asked him the stupidest thing she could, figuring he was just going to walk by her anyway.

  “How do you feel, Marcus?”

  He stopped right in front of her and bent his head to her microphone long enough to say, “Like I got Palmer’s number on speed dial.”

  He looked at her so hard it was like a slap. Her mouth dropped open, and Marcus LaRue went back to trotting off the field with a dozen other correspondents running after him. Her crew was already feeding the exchange to the booth, ecstatic at the feat she had managed to accomplish and wanting to beat to the punch anyone else who might have caught the sound bite.

  But Dani was still shaken from the encounter. And while there wasn’t a station that wouldn’t rush to run such a rare comment from LaRue, there was still going to be time to fill.

  She quickly managed to conjure up what she remembered of the game and added some commentary. She must have made some seriously spot-­on points because the booth threw her a follow-­up, one that made her already preoccupied mind overcompensate and become overconfident.

  The announcer in the booth asked about the chances of the Tyson Palmer–­led Mavericks finally getting their Super Bowl. A legitimate follow-­up, with an eye-­rolling snort when Dani replied live:

  “I’m not sure the Mavericks have what it takes to win the trophy. It appears they’re still reeling from the losses of Macey and Stillman, so the protection just isn’t there and it shows every time they try to rally. Lots of missed opportunities for the Mavericks today, from late throws and hesitation on some key plays by the offense. Maybe it’s a communication breakdown, but from here it looks like Tyson’s chicken.”

  It was bad enough she broke her first rule of sports reporting: when talking to a player, address them by their first name; when referring to them, use only their last name. It created a clear boundary of professionalism. But Dani couldn’t resist the not-­so-­subtle dig at Tyson.

  And then, out of nowhere, a large black fly went barreling into her mouth. Startled and grossed out, Dani waved her arms and made what sounded like a loud accompanying squawk, complete with bulging eyes. Once again, her timing had been perfect. A pretty, blond girl had just called one of the league’s finest quarterbacks a chicken and then did a perfect chicken impression, flapping and squawking for the camera. The capper being that Tyson was an actual, well-­known chicken brand.

  The cameraman couldn’t cut away fast enough, and everyone in the studio, including the boys at the big desk, guffawed about it on air for nearly two minutes. It completely eclipsed Dani’s coup of getting the LaRue comment. By the end of the day, her squawk had been replayed on every major network at least a dozen times. Within twenty-­four hours, there wasn’t anyone in broadcasting who didn’t know Dani Carr’s name.

  Dani tried to look on the bright side of the whole experience. She’d gotten a little payback for Tyson blowing her off. When he played away, loud clucking jeers began whenever Palmer took the field. Even Mavericks fans at the home stadium were known to start squawking when his performance was less than stellar. Tyson Palmer tried to play it off, but after it stuck, his easy smile began to get tighter and tighter.

  And Dani was strangely okay with that.

  CHAPTER 8

  DANI HAD DINNER with her family before heading to the airport to begin what she tried to view as an adventure. She indulged in sausage and peppers and ignored all the jokes Dante made about Brendon’s preference for chicken nuggets.

  “His father must be some sorta Swede,” Dante said.

  Both Papa and Danza gave him a stern look, with Danza adding a very chastising shake of her head. They all knew the day would come when Brendon would fully understand that despite all the ­people around him, he had only one parent. Not a crime by any means, but they all felt sad for him nonetheless.

  No one felt worse about it than Dani. She pretended she was going to steal a nugget from Brendon and when he held out his chubby little hand to feed it to her, she thought about calling the whole thing off and going back to Carrino’s Plumbing and Supply.

  Dani had only shared the same stadium with Palmer one other time since that day. Keeping her distance had been easy. She was now considered a media darling, and she took a tiny bit of license with it. She didn’t care if anyone thought she was ducking him. Her newfound celebrity meant she now had her choice of which games to report, which kept it simple.

  Until the day she got the offer she couldn’t refuse, presented to her in such a way that she would not only be crazy to turn it down, but to do so would also be career suicide. It had started with a phone call at home from her boss two weeks earlier. He had sounded equal parts confounded and amused.

  “Sorry, Carr, I have to fire you. You’re going to work for Marcus LaRue.”

  “As what?” She laughed, waiting for the punch line. Sure, everyone knew Marcus was an odd sort. And Dani was the only person he’d talked to all season. The one sentence he gave her were the final words before the total media withdrawal that had started with the death of his mother. After that he started giving mostly one-­word answers and would turn his back completely when pressed for more. But even then, he was leveling them with his aloof stare. He drove the league crazy with his refusal to cooperate. It was quite comical really. Reporters followed Marcus, screaming questions at him while he went about his business as if they weren’t there. There was nothing they could say to shake him, and it wasn’t long before they started to complain. The league fined him and he still remained silent, seemingly willing to lose money in return for what he deemed his right to privacy. They stopped short of threatening him with suspension, mainly because they wouldn’t have the nerve to actually do it if he called their bluff. Nobody wanted Marcus off the field, not the owners of his team, not the fans, not the league. If anything, his reticence only added to his allure, and many began to sympathize with his plight. By strange coincidence, his withdrawal occurred simultaneously with Dani’s rise.

  �
�LaRue struck a deal with the league. He’s willing to go back to giving interviews. But he wants his own correspondent, the only person who gets his time. That person is you.”

  “Me?” Dani said, shocked.

  “We’re just as surprised as you are,” her soon-­to-­be-­ex-­boss confirmed. “Half of us think it’s just his way of making fun of everyone, wanting to use the ‘chicken girl.’ My vote was for he has a crush on you, but we all know the odds of that. We all tried to find out the real skinny, but in case you haven’t heard, you’re the only one he’ll talk to.”

  “That’s not funny, Brad.”

  “What a coincidence, I’m not laughing,” he responded dryly.

  “I don’t want any part of this,” Dani snapped.

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Because it’s not in line with my ultimate goal. I don’t want to be some player’s handler.” Dani thought fast but not quite fast enough. She had never told her boss about her goals when it came to broadcasting, mostly because he didn’t ask or care. As far as bosses went, he wasn’t awful. To his credit, he usually looked her in the eye when he spoke to her. But through the conversations they had, it didn’t take long for Dani to figure out that while Brad appreciated her intelligence, both of them knew that once she got old, or gained weight, or lost her looks, her job would be given to the next twentysomething in line. Every woman currently on the sidelines knew their clocks were ticking, in one way or another.

  Unless Dani did something spectacular, something that would set her apart permanently from the rest, and Dani knew just what she wanted that something to be: she wanted to sit with the “boys.” Her rise in popularity had been steady, thanks to the video, and they were getting ready to bounce the oldest member of the current pregame crew on one of the major networks. Her agent agreed that while it was a long shot, Dani’s iron was hot, and it was time to strike. The last time they spoke, she was all but guaranteed an interview for the broadcast job.

  “I don’t think you get it. This is your ultimate goal.”

  “I’ll call you back. I’m going to call my agent.”

  She called her agent, who not only knew about her current job offer, but was also the bearer of bad, if not infuriating, news.

  “When I called to schedule your interview, I got the blow off. They told me Tyson Palmer is being outfitted for the position behind the desk.”

  Once again, she was back at square one. Her agent told her what the Marcus offer was in terms of a salary. Then she called Brad back.

  “I really don’t want to do this.”

  “And at the risk of repeating myself, why not?” Brad said in all seriousness. “It’s already creating the most delicious buzz. The pay is more than my boss makes. It’ll cement you in the industry from a publicity standpoint alone.”

  “Funny you would put it that way. That’s what the job description sounds like. I don’t do PR. Why does he want me for a publicist?”

  “Who cares if he wants you to be his chief cook and bottle washer? There’s not a woman in broadcasting who wouldn’t kill for that kind of exposure. Someone created this job just for you. Take it, Dani.”

  She really couldn’t explain why not without sounding like a nut. It was the creepy look Marcus had given her that day. The only way she could’ve described it was it felt like he had opened up her skull and looked inside.

  “I don’t want to move my son away from the family. They watch him while I work,” Dani said. It was a righ­teous argument, and it was definitely at least part of the reason.

  “Wait, you have a kid?” Brad really knew how to hit her where it hurt. “So hire a nanny. Hell, hire ten nannies.”

  “A nanny isn’t family.”

  Brad sighed so loud Dani could hear it reverberate through the phone. “Move your family with you. I don’t think you understand, Dani, if you turn this thing down, you’re sunk. There are higher forces at work here.”

  She knew Brad was referring to the tight-­knit community of puppet master billionaires that controlled the league. But what Brad didn’t know was that Dani was up to her highlights in higher forces, and it had started to freak her out.

  “I guess it’s been nice working with you.” She crossed herself and surrendered to the inevitable.

  “You start in two weeks. We’re sending you out the paperwork. May the force be with you.”

  “Let me know if and when you’re rolling through Boston,” she said sarcastically. It wasn’t like she was in any danger of getting fired now. “I’ll be sure to shut off my phone.”

  She heard him snort through the receiver. “You must be slipping. Or now that you’ve gotten celebrity status you’re getting lazy. You better start watching some ESPN and do your homework. You’re not going to Boston. LaRue just signed with the Austin Mavericks.”

  A chill went down her spine. Dani took a series of deep breaths, like they had taught her in Lamaze. On each inhale she thought, Austin is fine, he won’t be there. With each exhale she breathed out, He got the job behind the desk. The worst thing that was going to happen was she was going to feel irked most of the time because she would have to hear his name constantly being dropped. She could live with that.

  After sufficiently calming herself she went downstairs to share the new development with her family. She thought that with two weeks to call her own and a new ridiculously high salary, she would offer to take them all to Disney World. Brad’s genuinely surprised comment about not knowing she was a mother left a really rotten taste in her mouth.

  As the family celebrated her good fortune, beginning with a vote on where they should stay in Disney, her eye caught something on the ESPN ticker feed as it ran across the bottom of the TV screen. It was the blurb about Marcus signing with the Mavericks.

  “Look! That’s my new job.” This is going to be okay, she thought. We’ll be able to come back and visit whenever we want.

  The family resumed celebrating and making plans without noticing when Dani’s face turned from excited to horrified.

  The following story in the ticker feed was also about the Mavericks. It was announcing the one-­year, very lucrative deal securing the ser­vices of Tyson Palmer.

  DANI SPENT THE REST OF those two weeks trying not to think about it. They weren’t able to pull off Disney on such short notice but settled for a long weekend in Hersheypark. Dani ate her weight in chocolate and thought about Tyson anyway. She couldn’t take Brendon with her. She was going to be in uncomfortably close quarters, and the more he saw her, the higher the odds would rise that he might recognize her. Even if they managed to get past any lingering animosity, Dani had made up her mind that it was in the best interest of Brendon that he never find out the identity of his father. Her father and brothers were all the positive male role models he’d ever need.

  After making her decision she concentrated on Brendon. Dani didn’t want to waste a minute of being with him. As the days drew closer to her departure, she alternated between terror she wouldn’t be able to pull it off and the depression that she knew she would.

  She was busy taking some cell phone video of Brendon when Dante announced her ride had arrived. She held back tears and hugged her baby tight. Her parents assured her that they would take good care of him and she’d be back before she knew it. They promised to figure out the Skype thing. Dante promised he would stop by the house for lunch every day to check up on things and hang out with Brendon, which they all knew he would do because he lived a few blocks over and was a mooch who loved his mom’s cooking.

  “Be good, baby,” Dani whispered into Brendon’s tiny ear before kissing his cheek. “Mommy loves you.”

  CHAPTER 9

  MARCUS “HONEYDEW” LARUE was discovered quite by accident at the age of seventeen by a recruiter for Tulane. While in New Orleans on business, he witnessed young Marcus swipe a large honeydew melon from an open-­air market. So did
the proprietor of the fruit stand, who gave chase. From his car at a red light, the recruiter watched Marcus dodge a cyclist, weave in and out of traffic, and jump over a large aggressive dog, all while protecting the melon. The exhausted owner gave up quickly, but the recruiter followed a hunch and the thief. Both were good moves. He tracked Marcus down to a run-­down apartment on the outskirts of town. Marcus had earned an A in street smarts by the age of twelve, life lessons taught, most of the time unintentionally, by the various men who drifted in and out of his mother’s life. Some of those teachers had been nice, some not so nice. The recruiter talked Marcus into getting his GED, got him a spot on the team at Tulane, and the rest, as they say, was history. In Marcus’s rookie year with the Boston Blitz, bragging that her son had “hit the jackpot,” his mother died of an accidental heroin overdose.

  He was stealing the melon for his mother, and it was the saddest coincidence that his mother used to call him Honeydew too, because she said he was as sweet as her favorite fruit.

  Intellectually Marcus knew his mother’s death wasn’t his fault. He’d spent a long time readying himself for what he figured would be the eventual outcome of her addiction. He just never figured anyone else would care. No one gave a crap about his mom while she was alive. But as the media descended during what was supposed to be his time to grieve, the self-­protective shell that Marcus had already formed became harder. His reaction was to do what he had always done: keep control. Only he was no longer a stray dog, scurrying from one place to another in the name of survival. He didn’t need to worry about where his next meal was coming from. He also discovered as he watched the sometimes frenzied attempts to uncover his story, that he enjoyed the game.

  Marcus was a loner who would always show up at the exact time he was expected, fulfill his contractual obligations, and then slip back out into mist. There wasn’t anyone who could get a solid read on him and what he did during his off time. It fueled speculation that he had something to hide, and everyone wanted to know exactly what that was. His criminal record, such as it was, consisted of one shoplifting offense when he was ten. He never took a dirty drug test. There were no random baby mammas. With the exception of his mother, there was nobody from his past willing to lend insight. The lesson he learned was that when he thwarted those who thought they had the right to know something, they would resort to anything to get the story. If that failed, the proper media response was to go ahead and muddy the waters, careful not to cross the line into slander. Maybe the media did it in the hopes of making him talk, maybe just to screw with him. It eventually led to the widespread rumor that he was secretly gay, because he had to be hiding some kind of big secret, even if no one had ever discovered exactly what it was.