Epilogue Two Taylor
Epilogue Two
Taylor
I guess we don’t all get the happily ever after. Out on the court, I could see them laughing and kissing each other. They even showed up on the damn Kiss Cam. But don’t worry. It didn’t hurt the way it used to. I had gotten over it. I really had.
It had been tough for me in the past, but now it was nice to see them together—she looked radiant, and my brother, he was basically drooling over her.
It was just the lovey-dovey shit that was nauseating.
Anyway, I had my own life, and by my own life, I mean basketball. I’d made it into the NBA. I was playing with the Boston Celtics and earning that NBA money.
My life had made a 180-degree turn. I had a million-dollar condo in downtown Boston and was traveling all over the world, winning games—sometimes losing them—and living a life most people could only dream of. But it was also lonely.
Most of my teammates were either married or hooking up with anything that moved (I did that, too, but not all the time). But even with all the traveling and riches, what I really missed was affection.
I’m not going to cry about it or anything, but I hadn’t experienced anything like what I’d felt for Kami with any other woman, and I was starting to ask myself if it was my fate to be alone.
How pathetic.
That was on my mind one morning, a morning when I was supposed to close one of the most important endorsement contracts of my career, and I had to do it with her.
I couldn’t stand her, with her air of superiority, the way she was always telling me not to let fame get to my head, the way she bossed me around.
Just the other day, she’d said that if Nike told me to get the swoosh tattooed on my forehead, I’d better do it—that was the first time she mentioned they might sponsor me.
She was the daughter of a big shareholder in the Celtics, so you can imagine the type we’re talking about.
When I met her, I remember thinking she was hot, with her penetrating black eyes, but not two minutes later, she opened her mouth, and I lost interest. I would have preferred another agent, but how was I going to refuse an offer from Jack Gates’s daughter?
If he said she was the one I needed, I had to bow my head and say yes, especially being the new guy who was still proving himself.
We met at her office, and I couldn’t help noticing what she was wearing: a black tube dress and stiletto heels to try to make herself look a little taller than a Minion.
Every time I saw her, she seemed to have a different pair on.
Sexy as they were, my takeaway was how much of a complex she might have about being five foot two.
Sometimes, to get on her nerves, I liked to stand and lean over her desk to make her feel small—that wasn’t like me, but her goddess of negotiations attitude made me want to do it.
She knew she was the one who held the reins. And she loved throwing that in my face.
“Good morning, Di Bianco,” she said, taking out papers and spreading them across the desk. “Here’s the contract we’ve finalized with Nike.”
I sat down to read it over. When I realized it was more than thirty pages, I looked up at her and said, “You’re kidding, right?”
“Too many pages for your little brain?”
I threw the contract down and scowled at her. She grinned.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That was taking it too far.”
“I have an engineering degree from Harvard, top of my class. I’m not just some dumb jock.”
“And just like everyone who went to Harvard, you can’t help but mention it,” she said, raising a perfectly sculpted eyebrow.
OK, that stung, but I just wanted to get down to business. “Can we stop the pissing contest and talk about what I’m here for?” I asked.
“I’ll ignore the vulgarity and get to the point: Nike wants you.”
“And what about you? Do you want me, too?” I asked, not knowing where the hell that had come from.
“All I want from you is your signature on this contract I’ve been negotiating for months.”
“How much are they paying?” I asked.
“A million a year.”
“You did your homework,” I responded, impressed. That was a lot of money.
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” she said, sitting on the desk and looking at me with those glassy eyes that were so sexy it was hard not to imagine her down on her knees—
“I want to up my percentage on this.”
When she said that, all erotic thoughts disappeared from my mind. “What? Are you crazy?” I asked, almost choking.
She didn’t even blink. “If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t—”
“If it wasn’t for you, I’d just have a different agent.”
“Yeah,” she said, “another agent who would have no hope whatsoever of getting you this kind of deal your first season on a team.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I damn well do know that. Who do you think talked to my father to get him to pull strings at Nike—telling them you were the next big thing? You may think a million bucks is a lot of money, but if you show who you are out there on the court, you could be looking at three times that in a few years.”
We didn’t say anything for a moment, but I hadn’t failed to notice she was complimenting me. “You talked to your father about me?” I asked.
She blushed slightly, and I wondered what planet I was on. Her, blushing? I’d always thought she had ice in her veins. “It’s part of my job,” she responded. “I observe, I make assessments.”
“You break guys’ balls.”
She hit the desk with her tiny fist to keep from laughing. “Will you just say yes and sign?”
“I don’t know, I think I might need something to sweeten the deal.”
“Something more than a million dollars?”
I stretched my arms up in the air, pretending to yawn.
“Am I boring you?” she asked with a scowl.
“No, but I could use a massage. My back’s been killing me,” I responded.
“Careful, Di Bianco,” she warned me.
I bent forward and looked closely at her, at those thick eyelashes, those carmine lips.
“Or what?” I asked, surprised again at how gorgeous she was.
“Or I can make your life on this team a living hell,” she said without skipping a beat.
“Damn,” I replied with a laugh, “you’re actually scaring me.”
She got off the desk and ripped the contract from my hands. “Either you accept my offer, or it’s bye-bye to this contract,” she said, getting ready to tear it up.
“Not even you would be capable—” I began, and then I saw she wasn’t bluffing. She really was ready to rip it in half. “What the fuck?”
“You play with fire, you might get burned, Taylor.”
“You’re honestly willing to give up all that work?”
“You think I can’t find other players to represent?”
“I’m a future star, you said it yourself, and I know it’s not just dumb luck that you chose me to work with. You’re like me. You want the best.”
We stared at each other for a few long seconds.
“Sign the damn contract, bump me up to 30 percent, and the offer’s back on the table,” she said, very sure of herself.
I hesitated, then responded, “I’ll sign, but with one condition,” and I lifted a finger to emphasize that. “You have to be my date to my brother’s wedding.”
I observed her reaction: first a blank stare, then a long exhalation, then a look of something like relief. “I didn’t know you had a brother.”
“I’ve got my secrets. I’m curious now what you thought I was going to ask.”
“Nothing,” she said, putting the contract back on her desk. “I’ll go. I mean, it’s pathetic that you can’t get a date without extorting someone, but you’re pathetic, so no surprises there. Now sign.”
She looked like she wanted to wrap things up, but I circled the desk and stood in front of her. She had to crane her neck up to look at me.
“What did you think I was going to say?” I asked again.
I was starting to get a handle on the dynamic between us, and if she thought I was the kind of guy to abuse my position, I needed to make it clear that wasn’t my intention at all.
“Answer me, Victoria.” That was the first time since we’d met that I’d called her by her first name.
That got a strange reaction—almost a flinch—and she responded, “Sign it, Taylor.” And when I watched those lips move, I felt a stab of pain between my legs. I was dying to kiss her—to bite that fleshy lip and feel her tongue wrapping around mine. I had to control myself, dammit.
I grabbed the pen she handed me, bent down, and signed the agreement, increasing the percentage of her earnings. Now she grinned, and my face started to feel warm.
“A pleasure doing business with you,” she said, turning her back and slipping the contract into a file folder.
Before walking out, I turned back to her. “Vic, I’d never ask you to do anything you weren’t comfortable with. I’m sorry if it came across that way. Anyway, I know the day will come when you’ll be the one begging me for it.”
I couldn’t stop myself after what she’d just made me feel—and I was intentionally getting under her skin.
The first day we met, she’d told me, Don’t call me Vic.
She always had a snappy answer for everything.
But not this time. As I walked out, I couldn’t believe what I had said.
Had I really hinted to the daughter of one of the team’s owners that I thought she was hot for me?
And what did it mean that she didn’t respond?
Jesus, Taylor, as soon as you pull out of one thing, you get stuck in another.
Hey! Don’t be perverted, I didn’t mean it that way.