Chapter Four
Four
Michelle
Traffic moves at a snail’s pace.
I stifle a yawn, or try to at least, but it makes its way out with jaw-cracking power.
I really need sleep.
The mere thought of sleeping conjures the look on Tristan’s face when he realized I’d been bunking in my office. My stomach twists.
Well, I didn’t exactly confirm it, but I didn’t deny it, either.
He knew.
Heat rises in my face. Why does he care so much? It doesn’t matter where I sleep, not really. And I’ve made it clear that we are friends, and we are friendly, just like I am with everyone in the office. There’s no reason for him to care so much…is there?
Just as I begin to form a possible answer to that question, a car behind me honks.
Glaring in my rearview, I grit my teeth.
The driver honks again.
Where the hell do they expect me to go exactly? Should I get out and explain that we’re all stuck in the same unmoving traffic? Or just ram the car in front of me because they honked? Monster truck my way over it?
As if the Nissan I’ve been driving for the past six years has monster truck energy in it.
Thankfully, the bar and restaurant where we’re meeting is off the next light, and it’s only a few more minutes of stop-and-go before I veer onto a side street and find a place to park.
Night’s begun to fall. Streetlights pop on overhead as I hurry through the parking lot and onto the sidewalk. The restaurant’s nothing fancy, and I grimace as I catch my reflection in the window.
My button-down and slacks look completely out of place here. The players and trainers inside are all in sweats or jeans, and Maddie and a few other staffers must have changed before coming.
Maybe I should just turn around, get back in my car, and sit for another hour in traffic before I finally crash in bed. The door opens as I reach for it, and I close my eyes as the heady scent of fried food and baking bread wafts out.
“There you are,” a familiar voice says as a thick arm wraps around my waist. “I was wondering if you were going to chicken out or not.”
I force my eyes up, away from the tight gray sweatpants and up the toned body, only to find myself face to chest with none other than Tristan Gold.
Squirming, I try to wriggle out of his grip, my face hot with something that’s not at all embarrassment at having one of the players manhandle me. Nope. That’s good old-fashioned lust.
I step away from him, only to bump into someone trying to leave.
“Sorry,” Tristan apologizes for me, that winning smile lighting up his face.
Seriously, the man is so effortlessly handsome it should be illegal. Criminal-offense-level hotness. A felony clad in gray sweatpants.
“I was trying to keep her out of your way,” he continues, and I go stiff as a board as he steers me away from the hostess area and the door.
“We’re all in the back. I was just coming to see if you arrived and—”
“Here I am,” I say primly, wrapping my fingers around his wrist and pulling it away from my body.
He freezes, staring down at me with a worried expression, and I frown.
“Is it not okay that I touched you?” he asks. “I really was just trying to get you out of the foot traffic. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. My sisters would kick my ass if they thought I did.”
I want to tell him he’s full of shit, but he looks so genuinely concerned that all I can do is sigh in exasperation. It would be like kicking a puppy. A golden retriever puppy. With gray sweatpants.
“Gold, you’re fine.”
His smile returns, and he manages an incredibly obnoxious wink that I would never in a million years be able to pull off. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
I snort in spite of myself and roll my eyes as I grin up at him.
Tristan starts to put his arm around me once more, but he stops at the last second and points to the back section of the restaurant, where everyone’s eating and laughing. “Everyone is just there.”
“I saw when I walked by,” I tell him, and his face falls slightly before brightening again.
He leans down, squeezing my hip in a way that leaves me hot all over. “I’m glad you came.” His voice is barely audible over the noise of the restaurant, but I hear him clear as day.
My heart skips a beat, the warmth of his breath against my ear sending a shiver up my spine. I turn my head slightly to respond, only to find his face is still right there, less than an inch away from mine. His hazel gaze flickers down to my lips, and I go hot all over.
“You’re here!” Maddie squeals, jumping off a barstool and rushing over to us. “I was worried you would flake.”
I take a step away from Tristan and raise my eyebrows at her word choice.
“I mean, uh, you know, have to stay late to work more.”
Tristan’s laugh booms out, and more than a few heads turn our way to look at the cause of the noise.
“Nah, Maddie, we’re going to make sure my girl here gets home and gets some sleep.”
His girl. My heart squeezes a little, and I don’t know what to say to that.
I am not good at this. This is why I don’t go out with coworkers or fraternize or any of it.
I’m not good at being anything but a workaholic. I used to be good at soccer, too—but that dream died a long time ago. I have a few friends, but work’s sucked so much time and energy out of me that they’ve mostly stopped asking me to hang out.
I can’t blame them.
Maddie and Tristan are both watching me, and I force a smile, you know, like normal people do.
I wish Abigail and Luke were here. They’d know what to do.
Abigail always knows how to put people at ease and loves the spotlight—she’s easy to hang out with, even when I don’t feel like talking, because she’ll make the conversation for me until I’m laughing along with her.
Luke would be there, a buffer between me and Tristan, like the grumpy overprotective brother I never knew I wanted.
“I have a few ideas I want to talk about,” I blurt out to Maddie.
Her face falls, and I don’t dare look up at Tristan. I can imagine the look on his face. I don’t need to see it in real life.
“Right now?” she asks.
“Right now,” I agree, hating myself for insisting on it.
But hell, I’m already here, and I might as well kill two birds with one stone.
“Who is here from PR?” I ask, glancing around the room.
Maddie’s crestfallen, and Tristan lets out another soft laugh, slanting me an enigmatic look before walking over to where the trainers appear to be having a drinking contest.
Good. That’s who he should be hanging out with; people who know how to have fun.
People like him.
“Most everybody,” Maddie finally answers, watching me watch Tristan walk away. “In the corner,” she says, nodding to a booth. “There aren’t many of us left. What are you thinking?”
When I wrench my attention away from Tristan’s delicious backside, Maddie’s looking hopeful again.
My smile is real this time. “I think you’re going to love it, and I think you’re just the person to make it happen.”
With that, I raise my chin and walk toward the booth where the PR people are chatting.
If they look slightly disturbed or even squeamish at the sight of me, I ignore it.
I splay my hands out on the table, also ignoring the fact that something sticky now coats my palms.
“I have a plan,” I tell them in lieu of a greeting. “But I need your magic to make it happen.”
“We are overworked, underpaid, and understaffed. It’s going to have to be real magic at this rate,” one of them says dryly. He’s got on thick glasses, and he looks like he’s been up as long as I have.
Don’t they know how Mark’s been riding my ass? Sending emails at all hours of the day and night? Expecting answers to questions he hasn’t even thought of yet?
I manage a laugh. “Aren’t we all?”
That gets their attention, and I realize I’ve hardly gotten to know any of them at all, but that this was the right thing to say.
That’s me, Michelle Oxford, just one of the worker bees. Not at all responsible for the current shit-show state of the Aces.
Guilt threatens to swamp my new devil-may-care attitude, and I cling to it like a life raft.
“Magicians are known for their sleight of hand, right?” I ask, suddenly desperate to make this fucking work. “That’s what we’re going to do.”
“We’re listening,” Thick Glasses says.
“We’ve been letting the press control the narrative too long. We’ve let them run the show, and I’m done with it.” I slap my hand on the table for emphasis.
They sit up a little straighter.
“We’re going to do as much in-your-face charitable shit as possible.
We’re going to get out in the community.
We’re going to spread good news stories about each of the players.
You’re going to make them look over here,” I say, wriggling one hand in front of their faces, “while I put out fires and help the rest of the front office staff get up and running.”
Their eyes are wide, and a few of them nod in agreement.
“What do you have in mind?” Thick Glasses asks. “Any specifics?”
“I sure don’t,” I say with a slightly panicked chuckle. I point to Maddie, who’s slipped into the booth and watches me with her face in her hands. “She will, though. Maddie, you’re going to get as much grassroots social media going on this as possible.”
It’s a shot in the dark, and possibly extremely ageist to assume our young intern is the social media expert, but she brightens up, her eyes practically glowing with excitement.
I can see the wheels start to turn in her head. “It’s too bad Luke’s been traded,” she says. “Abigail and him would be perfect for this.”
A speculative glint appears in her eye, and she tilts her head at me. “We could—”
“No fake relationships,” I interrupt, leveling a glare at her. After what Abigail went through with the ex-owners’ ideas of PR…nope. Not doing that again. “I want our guys out in the community, doing good work, changing the narrative by doing the right thing. Real things,” I add.
Disappointment flickers across her face, but she nods, recovering in record time. “Got it. We can do this.”
“Bad news always gets more airtime,” one of them says. “This won’t be as easy as—”