3. Cami
Cami
I ’m in the owner’s box. Waiting. I know the call is coming and to make sure I’m alone when it does, I told Oakley I wanted some time up here to decide if the suite would work for filming the first of the team’s exclusive interviews.
My phone vibrates in my hand. I still haven’t switched the sound back on and I’m not inclined to do it now because the damn thing has been blowing up since the press conference earlier. I’ve ignored all the calls so far. Except I can’t ignore this one. I have to decide how to answer it though.
Am I Cami Nelson, features reporter for the Baton Rouge Times , or am I Camilla Nelson Barnes, daughter of Fenton Nelson Barnes, owner of the Times and the FNB network?
I decide to let my father make the decision. Accepting the call, I bring the phone to my ear but I can hear him talking before it’s even next to my face.
“Cam, I’m putting you in charge of this. I want TV and print copy. If I’m giving in to that shark of a woman, I’m getting as much out of it as I can.”
“Ah…okay.” What the hell did Oakley do? Or maybe it was Nat, she’s gone up against Fenton before and won. Something not a lot of people can say .
“Do your interviews on camera but I want a series of feature articles for the Times Sunday edition separate from the TV footage. After they’ve run each weekend, we’ll put them up on the network website. I’ve spoken to Derrick and Bas. They’ve agreed you are the best reporter to do both, and you should be the point person between the team and FNB.”
“You don’t think it’s a conflict of interest?” My father is well aware I’m a silent partner in the company that owns the Rogues’ hockey franchise. And while my connection isn’t a secret, my name is rarely mentioned when the team is in the press.
I’ve had very little to do with the Rogues in any capacity except fronting twenty-five percent of the money Oakley needed to make the franchise happen as well as a quarter of the money needed to build the state-of-the-art arena the team trains and plays in. I gave my three partners complete control; I’m silent in every way.
Which I’m sure is going to bite us in the ass at some point.
“You don’t have anything to do with running the franchise, Cam.”
“But surely the interviews and articles won’t have the same weight if someone remembers I’m a joint owner of the company that owns the team I’m interviewing?”
“Let me and Oakley worry about that. And let me tell you why you’re the perfect choice. You’re good. At your job. And that’s not a biased father talking. Sure, there are a few other journalists I could send in but none of them are female, and I think when we look at the team, the owner, the GM, the assistant coach, we need a woman on this. I want you to punch up the female angle on this, show that having women in charge doesn’t take away from the men on the team or the sport.”
I close my eyes. I’d thought the same thing earlier when we were in the locker room discussing how to calm the storm Draper had stirred up but I couldn’t come up with a name, another journalist I trust to do this.
“You’re right. I know you’re right about it needing a woman, about taking that angle, but isn’t there someone from the network who can do it?”
“Who? The ex-cheerleader Derrick has on the sidelines during football season? No. Definitely not. She knows football, is great at reporting it, but she doesn’t have the journalistic skills needed for this.” I can all but see him shake his head and frown. “I want a serious journalist on this. One used to getting into the hard questions, finding the best in the subject. And I want you.”
“Dad.”
“Oh, now I’m Dad, huh.” There’s a smirk in his voice. “Baby girl, if what I’m hearing is true, you’re in a unique position to help these two navigate the media storm that’s coming.”
I should have known he’d pick up on that. “I wasn’t as old as Whitney.”
“No. You weren’t. And I never chose to hide you, Andrea did, and this is a completely different situation to the one we found ourselves in but it doesn’t take away from the fact that you can relate to the media frenzy that’s already winding up.”
“Fine.” I draw in a breath. As much as I don’t want to do this, I do. I can relate to Whitney and Beckett. I might have been young but I remember every second of the nightmare Andrea caused when she went public with my real father’s name. “But I want to do this my way. I don’t need a crew tonight. I want to do a series of informal interviews filmed on my phone.”
“What are you thinking?”
“What makes you think I’ve got anything in mind?”
He laughs and I can’t help the smile turning up my lips. “You are your father’s daughter.”
“According to Andrea anyway.”
“Don’t. She’s right though, you are like me. And it pisses her off that she had nothing to do with the way you are. You might look like her, hell you could pass for her clone, but you are nothing like her in nature and she knows it. Resents it.”
I hate talking about my biological mother. We have a fractured relationship at best, and considering how often she hits me up for money it’s definitely better that way. In fact I wish it would break apart completely. I’ve accepted I was— am —nothing more than a means to an end, or in our case, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
“Cam.” Dad’s voice brings me back from the edge of the dark pit that holds my thoughts about Andrea. “Don’t go there, baby girl.”
“It’s hard.” I feel the sting of tears but they’re not because the woman who gave birth to me never loved me. They’re because this man did. No questions. No matter what I threw at him in those early years, no matter how hard or far I tested him, he held steady. “Thank you.”
“Cam. You have nothing to thank me for. You were born for me to love.”
Sniffing, I scrub my fingers over my eyes. “And I was born to love you.”
Those words? They’re our thing. Even before Dad managed to get me away from the toxic Andrea and the man I’d thought was my father, he’d insisted on those words passing between us.
They’ve given me comfort from the first time we spoke them. As they do now. They also gave me confidence. An intrinsic trust in myself that no amount of self-awareness could deliver.
“I’ll come into the office tomorrow and lay it all out for you and Derrick. Nine work for you?”
“I’ll make it work. When do you want to air the first interview?”
“Can I do it tonight? Before the ten o’clock news?”
“I’ll meet you at the station. After it airs, we can have a late dinner together.”
“You haven’t eaten yet?”
“No. And now I’ll get to eat with my favorite daughter.”
“I’m your only daughter.”
“You’d still be my favorite girl.”
Laughing, I say, “I bet. I promise not to tell Mom.” And by Mom, I mean my step-mother, Dana. The woman who raised me as her own from the minute my father brought me home.
“Mom knows you’re my favorite,” he murmurs with a smile in his voice. “You’re her favorite girl too.”
I’m her only as well but I don’t say it because I know how much they tried to have children before and after I came along at eight. It used to upset me that I wasn’t hers but not because I felt less loved. No, I’d gone to sleep every night wishing with everything I was hers, that Dana was my real mother.
It wasn’t until my sixteenth birthday that I realized she was my real mother, the only one who mattered. From that day forward she was Mom, and I never went to bed without saying thank you for that.
I may have had a seriously warped biological mother but the one who raised me, the one who loves me unconditionally with everything she has, shaped me into the woman I am.
“Will Mom have dinner with us?” Maybe it was Beckett and Whitney Higgison’s situation but suddenly I need to spend some time with both of them.
“I’ll give her a call as soon as we hang up.”
“Okay, then don’t bother coming into the station, I’ll meet you at home.” The home I no longer live in but still think of that way. Despite living in my own place for three years, my two-bedroom condo isn’t home. “I’ll stay the night,” I add.
“Excellent. We’ll have breakfast together too.”
“Blueberry pancakes?”
“You bet.”
My eyes sting and, blinking rapidly, I pull in a slow breath and fight off the tears. “Dad…”
“I’m proud of you, Cam.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
“I’ll see you later at the house.”
“Okay.” The door opens behind me, and I turn to see Oakley, Nat, Walker, and the Higgisons enter the suite. “I gotta go. See you later. ”
“You were born for me to love, baby girl.”
A smile curls my lips. “And I was born to love you.”
As I hang up my gaze collides with Beckett’s and the flash of angry heat in his eyes takes me by surprise, gives me a jolt.
He’s pissed. I get it. He doesn’t want to do this, and I can’t fault him for that, which is why I’m going to make this as pain-free as possible.
Waving at the chairs I’ve pulled into a semi-circle I say, “Why don’t we all have a seat and talk before I film anything.”
“I’d rather get this over with,” Beckett grumbles but he ushers Whitney into a chair then takes the one beside her.
“I understand that. But I thought if I ran through what I want to ask and what your answers are, if you’ll answer, we’ll be a little more comfortable on camera.” I smile at Whitney. “Do you want a cola before we start?”
“I’m good, thanks.”
“Are you sure?” I indicate the bar behind me. “You can have whatever you want.”
“She said she was good,” Beckett barks.
“O-kay.” I give him a tight-lipped smile. “Let’s get started then.”
“What do you want us to do?” Oakley asks from behind me.
“Nothing. I’m going to chat with Beckett and Whitney then we’ll decide what questions and answers we’ll put on video.” I glance around. “I think I’ll set my phone up on that side table when I’m ready to record.”
“You don’t want one of us to hold it?” Nat asks with a frown. “Wouldn’t it work better that way?”
“No. I want these ten-minute recordings to be completely informal. I want it to appear as though the only people in the room are the ones in front of the camera.” I turn to Walker. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to do your interview after Beckett and Whitney.”
He glances at Oakley before agreeing. “Sure.”
“What time is practice tomorrow? ”
“The guys get in anywhere from six to use the training room, but we’re suited up and on the ice at eleven.”
“I’d like to get some candid shots and video. I won’t interview anyone before practice but if you could ask a couple of the players, I’d like to bring them up here one at a time and record their informal interviews after training is done.”
“I want to see everything before you air it,” Nat demands in her tough GM voice. “Nothing goes live or into print without my approval.”
“Of course.” Nat knows me. She knows I wouldn’t put the team or any of the people involved in a bad light but I get that she needs to be the hard-ass GM right now. Although I am surprised the team's marketing and media manager isn’t here. I’m not going to ask because I don’t want anyone else in here right now.
Beckett is agitated enough without adding another possibly hostile person to the room, and Dwight Mitchum would definitely be hostile. I’m still shocked that Oakley hired my ex.
Then again, the man knows what he’s doing when it comes to marketing. It’s the media part of his job I’m not happy about.
But then I’m the silent partner so I have little say in who works for the team my company owns. And I trust Oakley. If she thinks Dwight is the best for the job then he is. I’ve got other things to worry about than a man I dated for four years back in college.
“Okay. Beckett, let’s start with you. Are you happy you made the move to the Rogues?”
He cocks an eyebrow at me. “I was…”
A laugh. “I can imagine you’re not too happy about it right at the moment but then it’s not really the team’s fault your secret daughter has been outed.”
“No. It’s mine.” Every eye swings to Whitney. “Dad has always kept our life and his job separate and I joined them together tonight in a very public way.”
I like this girl. She’s not backing away from her involvement in the scandal of the hockey season. We might only be into the first few weeks of pre-season but there hasn’t been anything newsworthy before tonight. Except the Rogues franchise itself of course.
“Did you do that on purpose, Whitney?”
“Hey!” Beckett launches to his feet. “That’s enough.”
I tip my head back and lock my gaze with his. “I’m not accusing her, Beckett, I’m asking.”
“It’s okay, Dad.” Whitney puts a hand on her father’s arm. “I get why she’s asking and we’re not recording yet.”
He glances down, the frown on his face smoothing out slightly when his eyes land on his daughter. “I don’t like where she’s going with that question. You’d never do something like that without talking to me about it.”
In one simple exchange, father and daughter have demonstrated their love in a way that tells everyone watching they’re a tight unit.
It’s Beckett and Whitney against the world and as the adult, Beckett has protected her from the harsh realities of that world.
Until now.