Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Josie
“Hey, I’ve been thinking.”
I just woke up and wiped away my drool, and instead of responding to Dane, I squint at him.
“How long was I asleep?”
“The whole flight. We’re descending.”
“Wow.”
I sit up straight, my neck protesting after being in a weird position for a long time. Dane asked the team doctor to give me something for my air sickness before we boarded the plane, and whatever he gave me did the trick.
“I didn’t get sick at all.”
I can hardly believe it. Instead of puking into a bag and feeling like death, I slept. I actually feel pretty decent. My hangover headache is even gone.
“What was in that drink you gave me this morning?” I ask Dane.
“That was my juju juice. I can’t disclose the recipe, but it kicks the shit out of hangovers every time.”
He does a ninja karate chop with his hands and nods.
“Juju juice,” I say, glad I drank it without question.
I glance over at him, wondering if I should give up on trying to figure him out. He can be a dick, but he can also be thoughtful.
“Anyway, back to my idea,” he says. “You should quit your job.”
I clear my throat and look around, still not feeling completely awake.
“Can I get some water?”
“Yeah, we’ll get you some water,” he says impatiently. “But did you hear me? You need to quit your job.”
I live paycheck to paycheck on my salary. A seven-figure earner like him just doesn’t get what it means to struggle.
“I can’t do that.”
“Yeah, you can. Just call your aunt and tell her to shove it up her ass.”
I glare at him. “That way you can get rid of me and I can live in a van down by the river?”
His jaw drops an inch. “You watch SNL ?”
“Of course.”
He lowers his brows, looking skeptical. “Favorite skit ever?”
I consider, because that’s like asking a mother to choose her favorite child.
“I can narrow it down to ‘Schweddy Balls,’ ‘Dick in a Box’ and ‘Debbie Downer.’ Don’t ask me to choose between the three.”
His brows lower even farther. “What about ‘More Cowbell’? ‘Wayne’s World’?”
“‘Wayne’s World’ is in my top five. I’m not a big fan of ‘More Cowbell.’”
He arches his brows and puts his palms out in mock surrender. “Clearly you haven’t watched it enough times. I’ll have the videographer put it on a loop for you to watch on our next flight.”
“Sounds like an excellent use of her time.”
He laughs a single note and nudges my shoulder with his. “Last season, she made a looped video with a clip of Dalton tripping and falling while we were all walking through the tunnel at our arena. One of his hands landed on a dude’s crotch and they were both mortified. We watched it on the DVD players on our buses for the rest of the season.”
“Such a fine example to kids.”
He scoffs. “No one outside of the team ever knew about it, relax. It’s funny as shit. I’ll show it to you sometime.”
Our plane touches down and I grip the armrests out of habit. Dane grins at me.
“You know the seat belt will keep you in your seat, right? You don’t actually have to hold yourself in with your hands.”
“Eat shit, I’m a nervous flier.”
“Didn’t the medicine help with that?”
I turn to him, alarmed. “What did you have the doctor give me?”
“I didn’t ask him to give you anything. I’m not a fucking doctor. He just said he’d give you something to take the edge off your anxiety and settle your stomach.”
I exhale, reminding myself that we’re on the ground and I did have a much better flight than usual.
“Sorry.”
“Hey, about you quitting your job,” he says.
“I can’t quit my job, dickface. I need the money.”
“You call all your clients dickfaces?”
“Only the one who’s a dickface.”
He groans with frustration. “Anyway. You should quit and start your own company. I can help.”
I shake my head and laugh at the suggestion. “Oh, really? And how would you do that?”
He shrugs. “I have some ideas. Let’s talk about it after the game.”
I try to remember if we’re flying out immediately after the game, and I realize I don’t even know where we are.
“What city are we in?”
“Nashville. We can’t fly out until tomorrow morning because they couldn’t coordinate the planes to get us out tonight.”
The seat belt lights go off and I unfasten mine. I remember the deadline for the Brightside presentation, and it hits me all over again that I’ve lost the account.
I’ve considered sending résumés out to other PR companies a few times, but I’ve never been able to bring myself to do it. I tell myself Jane is the hardest on me because she knows I can take it. That it’s tough love to help me succeed no matter what comes my way.
This doesn’t feel like that, though. This feels like a knife in my back. I worked at the agency for years before getting my first big solo account with Brightside. And she took it away without even telling me.
I’m caught between a rock and a hard place. I want something better for myself, but I can’t afford to miss a single paycheck. I might as well check job listing sites while I’m at the hotel and arena today, now that I don’t have any other work to do besides watching over Dane.
Dane’s first game back after his suspension is a 5–2 victory. By the time he walks out of the locker room, freshly showered and wearing a suit, it’s nearly eleven p.m. and I’m tired.
“Hey, are you guys coming out?” Lucas asks, following behind Dane.
“Nah, not tonight.”
Lucas looks agitated. “Come on, man. Come out.” He glances at me.
“No,” Dane says, and I’m relieved.
I rarely drink, and last night, I made a fool of myself. I’m looking forward to some food, a shower and a great night of sleep.
Lucas walks over to me. He’s good-looking and nice, someone I’d normally be drawn to.
“You can still come if you want to,” he says.
“Where he goes, I go.” I shrug.
Lucas glares at Dane. “Can you keep from being a drunken asshole for one night so she can have some time off her twenty-four seven job?”
Dane narrows his eyes and a prickle of awareness tingles on my skin. Fresh off his suspension, I don’t want him fighting with a teammate with reporters swarming all over.
“I appreciate the invitation, but I’m going to stay with Dane,” I say.
A smile tugs on Dane’s lips as he puts an arm around my shoulder.
“Knock it off,” I say, shrugging his arm off and scowling. “I’m not a hydrant for you to piss all over.”
“You’re a fucking toddler,” Lucas says to Dane. “I’ll see you around, Josie.”
“You ready?” Dane asks me.
“Yeah.”
“I’m doing you a favor,” he says as we walk out to the car that will take us to the hotel. “Lucas is nice and all, but he’s not the guy for you.”
“Oh? And how do you know that?”
“Because I know him. He’s too emotional.”
I laugh at his reasoning. “Meaning what?”
“When his last girlfriend cheated on him, he was a mess for like two months. He doesn’t know how to button it up and move on.”
“So he’s not a manwhore like you? That makes me like him more.”
He furrows his brow. “Just because I don’t like committed relationships, that doesn’t make me a manwhore. I’ve never promised a woman more than I was willing to give.”
“So you’re up front about it? You tell them it’s only going to be one night?”
He shrugs. “If it comes up, which it usually doesn’t.”
“And then what? The next morning, they try to give you their number and you say no thanks?”
“I try to avoid that conversation by not being around the next morning.”
I cringe. “Look up manwhore in the dictionary sometime.”
We find the dark SUV with the driver taking us to our hotel, both of us getting in the back of the vehicle.
“So anyway,” Dane says. “I think you should start your own company.”
I get a good, long laugh out of that suggestion. “I’m a junior publicist without any experience running a business. Once I pay my bills next week I’ll have about eighty bucks to my name.”
“I could help seed you with money.”
My stomach rolls at the idea. “Absolutely not. I can’t afford to owe anyone money.”
“Look, you’ve got a niche thing going here. Watching over pro athletes. I’ll become a model player and say it’s all because of you. Then, you hire more people to do this job for other athletes, actors and musicians. It’s a gold mine.”
I can’t believe he thought of this. It’s not a bad idea at all, but I’m too risk-averse to try it.
“Maybe,” I say, knowing if I tell him no, it’ll cause an argument.
“The number one rule my agent taught me is to know your own value. You’re undervaluing yourself in a big way, and your aunt is taking advantage of it.”
It hurts to hear someone say that about one of the few family members I have left, even though he’s probably right.
“I’ll think about it, okay?”
He nods, typing into his phone. “I’m ordering Chinese delivery to our room. What do you want?”
I haven’t eaten anything but half of a sub sandwich at lunchtime and I’m ravenous.
“Veggie fried rice, crab Rangoon and an egg roll.”
He grins at me. “Is that all?”
“That’s all.”
Our driver drops us off at the door of our hotel and we go up to our fourth-floor room. The hotel staff left a gift basket on the desk with fruit, champagne, bottled water and snacks. I shake my head as I open it and take out a bag of chips.
“What?” Dane asks.
“At the hotels I stay in, you have to pay if you open the bottled water. And there are loud wall air conditioners and sketchy carpet stains.”
“Think about my idea,” he says. “You have nothing to lose.”
He’s partially right—I have nothing. Nothing to invest. No experience hiring, budgeting or recruiting new clients. I wish I could take his advice, but it would most likely put me in a deeper hole than the one I already live in.
“I’m getting in the shower,” I say, gathering toiletries and clothing from my bag.
Dane’s on his bed looking at his phone, his suit jacket hanging over the chair at the desk.
“Hey, put on those little black shorts and a tank top,” he says, not looking up from the screen.
My heart pounds erratically. “What?”
He meets my gaze. “You know what I said.”
“Yeah, but why?”
“Because you look hot in them. You’ve got a nice ass.”
My jaw falls and I force it closed. “I’m not here for your entertainment.”
He hums in amusement, his gaze back on his phone screen. “You like that I think you’re hot, Josie. Wear the shorts.”
I want to argue, but he’s right. I’ve always been the bookworm. The sidekick to the girls most guys wanted. It feels good to know Dane thinks I’m attractive, superficial as that may be.
“If I wear them, it’ll be because they’re comfortable, not because you like my ass in them.”
“Bullshit. You’d like nothing more than to lie across my lap and get that gorgeous ass spanked.”
I keep my head down as I rush to the bathroom, my clothes clutched to my chest to hide my nipples. No man has ever said anything like that to me. My heart is racing and I’m hot all over.
I won’t admit to him that he’s right because I can’t even process how right he is. I didn’t think I’d be turned on by spanking, but when Dane suggested it just now?
It turned me on hard.