Chapter 4 Chanel
“I could live like this forever. I can truly say that I am a blessed woman.” I giggled as I bit into another one of the expensive chocolates.
It was nothing new for me to receive expensive gifts from athletes after I had done a story on them, but I hadn’t even written Ashton’s story yet. I was pleasantly surprised when the gifts were delivered to my home an hour ago.
I thought about calling him and thanking him, but I figured there would be time for that. I had been reading a book and bored. A part of me had been considering calling Collier and seeing if we could make up, but then I had to ask myself if that was what I really wanted. I didn’t.
Collier was boring, full of himself, and I knew we weren’t going anywhere. So calling him up would have been a waste of my time. Since he walked out, he hadn’t called me, and I knew that I should just let it go.
The ringing of my phone interrupted my useless internal debate. “Hello?”
“Hey, you might want to get down here to the station as soon as possible,” Tommi stated when I answered the phone.
I swung my legs onto the floor and sat up. I had been reclining on my chaise lounge when my phone rang.
“Come to the station for what? Is it Evie? No, it’s got to be Sabrina. What has she done now? Please say it wasn’t a drunk and disorderly.” My best friend was as bourgeois as I was, but put a little liquor in that girl, and she could get as ratchet as a hood girl and had a mouth like a sailor.
“No, it’s not Evie or Sabrina.”
“Then you’d better not be calling me about Darius’s bum ass. I don’t want to hear a single word about him.”
“Girl, please. If his ass was on fire, I wouldn’t call the firehouse to come save him, so I definitely won’t pick up the phone and call you about anything. No, it’s Ashton Santoro.”
“What?”
“He was just brought in to cool off after an assault and battery, but they’re waiting for his coach to pick him up. I knew you had just interviewed him recently, so I decided to call and give you a heads’ up.”
“Assault and battery on who?” I asked, rushing into my closet to change clothes.
“Alex Curry.”
It felt as if my brain was slammed against the front of my head, because it instantly started hurting.
I wanted this phone call to be a bad dream.
This was all my fault. Had I not shown him those pictures of his wife and his teammate together, he wouldn’t have been locked up.
I should have let sleeping dogs lie, because it was not my secret to tell. But damn it, I had needed that story.
I hadn’t put out a good story for LSM in a while, and Andrew Nowinski, my editor, was in my ass about it. My attention had been so consumed with Bolton Sports for a long while, and I had given them everything. I had allowed my focus on LSM to falter, and I felt bad about it.
They were the ones who had given me my shot in this industry and allowed me to make a name for myself with the interview with Noah Jones, the football legend.
It had been that interview that brought my name before Bolton Media in the first place, and they had hired me on for their sports division, Bolton Sports.
I had proposed the interview with Ashton, and when Andrew threw out the idea of building it into a series, I went for it. It alleviated my guilt to some extent, but now I regretted that I had done that.
“I’m on my way down there now, Tommi. Can you hold him until I get there?”
“I’ll stall things as long as I can, but you know how it is for the rich and powerful. Y’all pull all type of strings,” she teased.
“No, I don’t. I’m not rich or powerful, just wealthy and bold.”
“Don’t I know it.”
We ended the call, and I hurriedly dressed and raced to my car. I put on Solemn and listened to her music on the drive over. I hoped that I could catch him, but I wasn’t sure what I would say when I saw him.
He probably blamed me, too, and I couldn’t even be upset with him. This was not what I wanted for him. To see a great man go down like this at the end of an exemplary career was horrible, especially at the hands of a sister.
People always hyped up his and Muffin’s marriage. But I had learned long ago that things weren’t always what they seemed. Although they had been married plenty of years, I noticed a few years ago that her demeanor had changed.
I did not know the woman, but I knew that the way she dressed and carried herself in the beginning was completely different than the way she started presenting herself a few years ago. The sweet, modest, pretty, and quiet young lady had morphed into a gorgeous, sexy, flirtatious siren.
I pulled into the parking lot of the county jail and headed to the front doors. Tommi was standing in the reception lobby, talking to another officer. When she spotted me, she said something to the woman, nodded, and then headed in my direction.
“Did I miss him?”
“Not yet. But barely. He should be walking out any minute. His coach is outside waiting for him. He’s already been in to check on Ashton, and we let him know that he should be out soon. He said he would be waiting out front for him and to please let Ashton know.”
“I wonder what they’re going to do. It’s his final season.”
“You would know better than me. I don’t follow sports, other than to let folks know that’s my famous, beautiful cousin on TV.”
I chuckled and waved off her comment. Thomasina was a gorgeous woman herself.
She was petite at five-two, with chocolate skin, slim curves, big, round, expressive hazel eyes, and dimples in both cheeks.
She usually wore her shoulder-length, wavy hair pulled back in a ponytail when she was at work, but after hours, it flowed around her shoulders.
My cousin was a baddie, and despite the work that she did for a living, she was very feminine and girly.
She claimed that she was entering into her soft-girl era.
She had nothing to prove to anyone anymore, and rather than being focused on climbing higher in law enforcement, she was taking some time to breathe, relax, and take care of herself mentally, spiritually, and physically.
She wasn’t even chasing a man any longer.
“I just want to say thank you for calling me. I know that I didn’t give you any details, but this means a lot to me.”
“Are you feeling some sort of guilt, cuzzo?”
“What makes you ask that?”
“Because I know you. You have a way of pushing and triggering these big ass men, and later, you drag yourself for doing it, but the stories you create are informative and entertaining.”
“I’m really re-thinking how I handle this shit, because I can’t keep having these men out here acting like maniacs because I pushed their asses too far.”
She shrugged and turned her lips down. “I mean, it would be nice if they could come out of these interviews a little on the chill side. Might make people like me have an easier day on the job.”
“Was it that bad?”
“Let’s just say that tiny me trying to pull these two gigantic ass men apart wasn’t a walk in the park.”
“What about James?” I asked about her partner.
“He’s out sick, and I’ve been paired with someone who’s fresh out of training. Girl, that boy don’t know his right foot from his left. I think I’m going to see about staying partnered with him, though, because he has the potential to be—”
“Hold that thought, Tommi.” I interrupted my cousin and rushed by her in the direction of Ashton, who was walking out of a door with an officer. The officer said something to Ashton, and he replied before he nodded and started walking in my direction.
He paused the minute that he saw me, dropped his head, and shook it.
“Fuck.” I heard him mutter as I approached him.
“Ashton.”
“What are you doing here?”
“First, I wanted to thank you for sending the flowers, candy, wine, and card. They were very nice and thoughtful. A girl could get spoiled with lavish gifts like those.”
“Don’t count on ’em from me,” he grumbled.
“Before you explode on me again or blow the moment, let me say that I understand why you were upset, and you had every right to be. Honestly, it’s been on my mind since you left the restaurant. Also, I accept your apology, and I want to apologize to you.”
“For what?” he asked with his face screwed up.
“For blindsiding you the way that I did, Ashton. You’re a great athlete but an even better man. You didn’t deserve that. It didn’t matter how important the story was or how much I thought you deserved to know the truth. There was a better way of handling the situation. I apologize.”
He bobbed his head and crossed his arms over his chest. “Still waiting for the reason that you’re here. I didn’t call you.”
“No, you didn’t. Let’s just say that I have friends in important places.”
He sneered. “I didn’t take you for a country girl.”
I smirked. “You got it. It goes over most folks’ heads when I say that.”
It was a play off the song, “Friends in Low Places” by Garth Brooks.
“Yeah, I listen to a little bit of country every now and then.”
“You’re just full of surprises, Mr. Santoro.”
“And you’re just full of pivots and digressing, aren’t you, Ms. Dubois?”
“Touché. The reason I’m here is because I want to help you deliver a story that’s beautiful and heartfelt. A story that paints you in a light that will touch your fans and endear you to their hearts, even through the upcoming storm.”
“What storm?” His expressive, thick arched eyebrows dipped down as he scowled at me and licked those full, pouty lips. That movement alone entranced me, because they looked so damn kissably soft, and I wondered just how soft and plump they were.
I wondered what his lips would feel like on a woman’s body, turning her hot with fever one moment and sending a chill of anticipation down her the next.