23. Every Hero Should Have
EVERY HERO SHOULD HAVE
“ I don’t want to be used to help anyone’s image,” she said when Warren returned from Gillette Stadium.
He’d brought her home, then returned alone to the stadium, neither of them saying much about the meeting.
Emma spent more time talking about the tour she was on and keeping it light.
She had a lot of things in her head that she wanted to write down before she forgot.
Which was stupid because she could easily go back by the sounds of it.
She knew Warren was telling a few people now about her and she understood the reasoning behind it.
What she was trying to do was figure out what their parting comment was about and didn’t want to jump the gun and assume anything.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I just had that talk with them. They said it wasn’t what they meant.”
“Do you believe it?”
“I have no reason not to,” he said.
“Seriously?” she asked. “You trust them?”
“Until they give me a reason not to,” he said. “But it’s not an individual sport. It’s for the team and the club. They try to get ahead of anything that they can. Good or bad.”
“I understand,” she said. “But I’ve sat here trying to write and my mind kept going back to what they’d said and why. I should have asked more, but didn’t want to be rude.”
He moved over and sat next to her. Lucky came running out from behind a chair and jumped on his lap.
“I see he’s still hiding?”
“It’s new for him. I understand. He’s staying in the same room as me. He was next to me until he heard a noise. If he were a guard dog, I’d be screwed,” she said, laughing.
“I’ll protect you,” he said seriously. She turned and noticed he didn’t have any of the lightness to him he’d had this morning.
She snuggled under his arm. “I’ve never needed anyone to do that for me.”
“Even as a Bond?” he asked.
“I think because I come from the Bond family, I’m always careful, but I’m still myself. Honestly, I’m on better behavior because of my father’s career than I am being from the Bond family. We’ve weathered a lot of storms, and bad press is still good press for businesses.”
Though her Uncle Charlie had never felt that way too much when she was younger. He’d loosened up significantly in his semi-retirement when he handed over The Retreat to Hunter and focused more on other businesses and traveling.
“I’ve been on the negative side of attention for years,” he said. “I wanted to do whatever I could to make sure my mother never had to deal with it again.”
“I think it’s admirable that you put your mother and sisters first. It’s a trait every hero should have.”
He closed one eye at her. She always picked on him for being a hero, but he’d said he never felt like much of one.
“You’ve said that many times,” he said. “I’m no one’s hero, Emma.”
“You are whether or not you see it. But you need to put yourself first too.”
“I am,” he said. “With you. You’re the first person I’ve brought in to any team I’ve played for. The first one I’m giving access to and letting you into my world.”
Her jaw dropped. “Are you kidding me? We’ve only been dating for two months.”
“Does time matter when you feel it’s right?”
This was what her mother had been on her case about. That she had to just feel and not analyze and pick it apart.
“No,” she said. “But it’s new to me.”
“We can figure it out together,” he said. “Right?”
“We can,” she said. “Can I ask what they meant about me being a breath of fresh air and the other WAGs not being happy? And I think it’s cool to have that title. It’s petty of me, I know, but I’ve never had a title that silly before.”
She wasn’t knocking it, but most of her life she was just known as the rich girl.
The girl from that family.
She always had to wonder who was her friend and what they wanted from her.
She brushed it off and learned to not let it get to her.
That could be why she was happier being on her own.
She interacted with people on her terms and never got too close.
Now she was getting close to someone and it was like waking limbs. Pins and needles covered her body as she frantically pieced everything together as if writing one of her books.
But in life, she couldn’t write the ending as much as she wanted to and had to remind herself when comments like today came about.
“You’re the girl next door,” he said. “In looks and attitude. Take out your background and you’re funny, sweet, and polite.”
She burst out laughing. “ No one thinks I’m polite. Are you smoking crack? I know that’s not part of your health regimen. So are you pounding soda?”
He pushed her face into his chest to get her to stop laughing.
“You’re not always polite, but you’re not mean. You know when to say what...for the most part.”
“For the most part,” she agreed. “What about the other WAGs ?”
She rolled it off her tongue longer than it needed to be. It was still funny to her.
“Well now,” he said. “Some of the more popular players have significant others who enjoy being on camera.”
“Got it,” she said. “Long manicured nails, tight clothes, more makeup in one night than I wear in a year, and hair that took hours to style?”
“Not everyone,” he said. “But there are several. They like the attention. Or some do and they are in their own clique. Remember, I’ve only been on the team for a year, so I’m not close to a lot of people.”
“Which surprises me,” she said. “You’re a likable guy. And the team captain.”
“But I don’t like to go out and many of them do,” he said. “I don’t have a significant other so when I am invited, I go alone, and it feels like the odd man out.”
“Is that why you say you’re a hermit?” she asked.
He shrugged, but she poked him in the side when he didn’t answer. “I think sometimes it’s just better to keep to yourself.”
“Who digs at you?” she asked.
“What?” he asked.
She lifted her head and looked at him, holding his stare. His light blue eyes trying to read her mind. He had another thing coming. No one could ever figure out what was in her mind, including herself half the time.
“I asked who digs at you. Everyone has someone who digs at them. Or dug at them. That makes them change what they’d normally do or think. For me, it was Stanley Herbert. What a douche.”
His shoulders and chest were shaking with laughter. “What did he do? Do you want me to go beat him up for you?”
She hopped a little on the couch. “Would you please? That would teach him to tell me that no one would want to read romance books. That they are trash and not good literature.”
“Ouch,” he said.
“Yeah. He was a wannabe dick. He wanted to be the next great American author. We had an assignment once where we had to pick a popular fiction book, read it, and discuss what we liked, what we’d change, how it was rated.
All sorts of things that the class got to debate if they wanted or had read the book. ”
“I can just imagine what he picked,” he said. “One of your mother’s books?”
“Oooooh yeeeeeah,” she said, laughing. “Everything he said I contradicted. I had to. It was just too funny. He had no clue what he was talking about. The fact that half the class and the professor read it too and agreed with me was icing on my yummy I-told-you-so cake.”
“Do you know what happened to good old Stanley?”
“I Google him once in a while to see if he ever published a book,” she said. “So far nothing, but I do see he works at some magazine.”
“Magazines are losing steam,” he said.
“Oh, they are. It’s a popular cultural one. That’s even funnier.”
“Then why did you let him dig at you?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, shrugging. “I think it was just the fact that he thought he was better than everyone else and knew it all. He wasn’t and he didn’t.”
“What did you do that you wouldn’t normally do?” he asked, tucking her hair behind her ears. She liked it when he did those romantic gestures without thought.
Her heart was racing, there was a thumping sound in her ears, and her palms were getting sweaty.
She’d always written about these feelings but realized she’d never felt them herself.
“I let him fuel me to just spite him. To prove that romance could be good and make money.”
“So it’s not what you wanted to do?” he asked.
“Nope,” she said. “It was never in my mind. I had plans to write true crime, mystery, and thrillers. Not to compete with my mother, but close enough.”
“And what changed that? I enjoy finding these things out about you.”
“I’ll tell you and then I expect you to tell me the person who dug at you,” she said. “Deal?”
She stuck her hand out and he slapped his large one in it. She tried to squeeze it tight but didn’t accomplish what she hoped when her fingers couldn’t even wrap around. He laughed and barely squeezed hers but enough to have her yanking it back.
“Deal,” he said.
“So, I never cared for romance myself. Don’t you ever say I said that!
There isn’t anything wrong with it or any other genre.
It’s just not what I read or liked back then.
But since he was on his high horse, I wanted to pop him off with a broom.
I bought a bunch of romance novels to get an idea of what readers were looking for. ”
“Research,” he said.
“Oh yeah. I hadn’t expected to get turned on reading them, but hey, there is a positive. And they were fantastic. I mean, it was so nice to read happy endings.”
“Arousal is a good one to have,” he said, snickering. “I know that’s how I feel reading your books.”
“It tells me I’m doing a good job there. But, back to Stanley, who I’m positive only gets off by his own hand.”
“Emma,” he said, rolling his eyes.
“See, not always so proper and polite.”
“No one said anything about being proper.”
“Nope,” she said, smirking. “Back to me. I like talking about me. I don’t do it much.
Thanks for listening.” She was moving her hands around more than normal while she talked.
“Once I got a good idea of what readers would want, I decided to give it a try. I drafted my first romantic suspense. It was rough and needed work. It wasn’t my best, but I was determined. ”
“And that determination has paid off,” he said. “I bet good old Stanley isn’t looking down on romance now.”
“Sure, he is,” she said. “Those types of people never change, Warren. Ever. Don’t forget that either. Now tell me who dug at you.”
He was silent and she poked him in the side until he talked.
“My father,” he said. “And trust me, he’ll never change either.”