“We ready?” I asked, glancing back at Joe as Quinn, Sean, and Cam Mitchell took their places in front of me. We were doing a group question-and-answer session to use in any of the segments we needed filler for, and the three of them had volunteered for the job.
I’d briefly considered turning Sean down, just to get a rise out of him, but the fans really did love him. Plus, I’d probably done enough damage to his self-esteem with the way I’d just left things in the hall.
I imagined if I’d ever kicked a puppy, it would have looked something like Sean did as he stood waiting for me to keep tearing him apart.
I felt a little bad about his state of emotional duress…but not enough to switch places.
Women were always making themselves feel bad for the well-being of another person, and I just wasn’t about it. I was intelligent and worthy, and if it took a little reverse psychology to get there, Sean would eventually know those things about me too.
Big picture, Sean was smart and charismatic, and he had a lot to offer. In fact, I knew he’d be a big part of the success of the entire series if I could harness his cocky confidence and use it in the right way. He just needed a little taste of humility. And I certainly wasn’t too proud to walk a mile of orgasms to give it to him.
Joe nodded and gave me a point of his finger, and the red light on the front of the camera illuminated.
I quelled my fluttering nerves with a swallow of breath and reminded myself that being anxious was a part of my process.
Even though I felt pretty strongly that I was called by some higher power to be a performer and blessed with the personality to back it up, I never did it without fear. Fear that I’d be enough, fear that I’d do my best, and fear of how my audience as a whole would receive it.
I’d built an extraordinary level of vlogging success for myself, for which I was exceedingly grateful, but that didn’t mean I stopped dreaming. No, I had stars in my eyes, and no matter the distance, the reach never seemed too much.
“Welcome back, Mavericks fans and drooling women who know nothing about football. Today we’re back for another session with three of the New York Mavericks’ most promising players—and hunkiest hunks.” Quinn’s, Sean’s, and Cam’s smiles grew instantly, and my own lips curved to match with a wicked twist. “Go ahead, guys. Lift your shirts and give the viewers a look.”
Cam and Quinn glanced at each other uncertainly, but Sean didn’t hesitate, lifting the royal fabric of his uniform shirt and flexing his muscles with a wink. I laughed at his willingness and shamelessly used it against him.
“Well, I’d say we know who the brazen one of the bunch is, don’t we, ladies?” I asked, turning to address the camera directly.
Sean was getting used to my digs at this point, though, and he used the insinuation as a compliment rather than an insult.
“Why, thank you, Six.”
I smiled widely. My puppy was being good, so he deserved at least a little bone.
Not to mention you actually want to bone him again…
Damn. And I had been doing so well up until this point.
Eyes toward the camera, I refocused on the task at hand.
“Today, we’re getting down and dirty and personal with these three. Their likes. Dislikes. How many times a day they shower. All the questions they’d normally be too afraid to answer, we’re going to do our best to force out of them. Saddle up, viewers. There are a couple of broncos in this mix.”
I smiled at my own line and looked to my cheat sheet of questions, but I didn’t get even the first word off my tongue.
Blaring and screeching like a banshee, the most obnoxious of noises catapulted itself from the speakers at the ceiling of the conference room. Lights flared and people scattered, and I caught a peek of even the grounds staff running down the hall outside.
Quinn and Cam moved immediately.
“Come on,” Quinn ordered as the two of them made it to the door. “Let’s go check the locker room. Make sure the guys get their asses out in a timely fashion.” With a twist of the top of his abdomen, he turned the other direction. “Sean, you get Six and the crew out of here and into the evacuation zone.”
Sean nodded and came my way, putting a hand to my back and gesturing toward the hall behind us to Joe.
“Go that way,” he ordered. “Follow signs for the east parking lot.”
Joe and Barry both packed up and turned tail, leaving Sean and me to follow behind them dutifully. Sean’s hand felt warm and reassuring on the small of my back, and it heated my skin all the way through my thick sweatshirt.
“What the hell is going on? Is someone storming the stadium?”
“What?” Sean laughed, turning his mesmerizing eyes on me and lifting the corner of his mouth. “Haven’t you heard a fire alarm before?”
“I have, obviously,” I defended with a roll of my eyes. I’d attended several schools, all of which conducted monthly fire drills. But I swore the teasing lilt of this alarm sounded different. “But fancy, professional football stadium alarms sound different from poor people alarms.”
I wasn’t exactly poor, but I hadn’t grown up far off. Living in Southern California, I’d watched as my immigrant parents struggled to make ends meet. We had food to eat, but not much pop and pizazz. This alarm sounded like it was encrusted in eighteen-karat gold.
“What?” Sean scoffed, laughing a bit while the top half of his face turned down at the edges. “What are you talking about? What’s different about it?”
“I don’t know,” I mused, searching for the words to explain. It was musical, vibrant. The kind of thing I didn’t normally associate with a call to evacuate or face certain death. “It kind of seems…upbeat.”
“Upbeat?”
“Yeah. Like in Titanic where they play music for the rich people while they load the lifeboats.”
“Wow. Your take on a classic movie has me questioning how closely I watched it before. And if my hearing is the same as yours. But, hey, I’ve been hearing it about once a month for the last six months, so maybe I’m just used to it. They can’t seem to get all the kinks worked out of the new system. Alarm, sprinklers, that fucker keeps going haywire at the blink of a hat.”
I laughed at his mixed metaphors and hurried toward the daylight at the end of the hall.
Sunlight flooded back into my eyes and warmed the skin of my cheeks as we finally stepped out the door that led to the east parking lot. A crowd was gathering a hundred or so feet back from the building—some distance of regulation, I was sure—and the owner of the Mavericks was pacing the front of the group like a caged lion.
Some of the guys’ voices carried easily over the closing distance.
“Fuck, I’m a little cold,” Martinez announced. Big as a tree and normally jovial, the man was standing in only royal blue boxer briefs and shower flip-flops, shivering and running one hand up and down his other arm while a baggie of carrots dangled from that hand.
“Dude,” Sam Sheffield added and nodded down toward his black boxers, bare legs, and half-tied Nike trainers. “Fucking same.”
I stifled a giggle and moved my eyes back to Wes Lancaster. His pacing had turned to a scary combo of stalking and bristling and I did not envy the guy in charge of the fire alarms.
“Wow. Mr. Lancaster looks pissed.”
Sean dropped his voice to a whisper as we reached the group and walked by the man-turned-animal himself. “Ha. He was pissed five months ago. Now, he’s…well. That.”
“Gene! Get over here!” Wes shouted. “What do we have to do to make this goddamn thing stop going off? I’ve got players out here in their underwear for shit’s sake and a sprinkler-soaked office. My patience is running out.”
A man I assumed was Gene jogged over toward him.
“So sorry, Mr. Lancaster,” he said. “We thought we had it fixed last time, but apparently, it’s not fixed.”
“Christ, you think?” Wes retorted.
I’d really been rooting for Gene to come out with something Oscar-worthy. Something that would bring Wes back from the brink and save the man from having to search the classifieds for a new job. But it was pretty apparent good old Gene kind of sucked at explanations, and from what I could see, fire alarm systems, too.
Get your highlighter ready, Gene. I see mind-numbing searching and ink-stained fingers in your future.
A part of me wished I’d had my camera, but the smarter, more rational side of me knew it was for the best. All signs pointed to Wes Lancaster flipping his fucking rage-filled top if he caught me filming footage of this circus.
But good God, I could see visuals of the most perfect segment clips and the dundt-dundt-dudda-dundt-dundt-dudda music playing in the background.
Martinez in his fucking underwear and flip-flops.
Sam Sheffield faring no better.
Son of a bitch, it would’ve been gold.
“Gene, let me level with you,” Wes stated. His lips were set in a firm line, and a little vein on his forehead popped out and started pulsating. “I’m one fire alarm without an actual fire away from taking a sledgehammer to the whole damn system. So, you need to fix it, or you might as well get ready to replace the entire fucking thing.”
I bugged out my eyes, turning casually to show them to Sean without calling attention to myself. The spectacle was completely mockable, but I was a guest, and I’d learned the hard way serious hosts didn’t like when you overextended your welcome.
Sean laughed at the overdramatized expression on my face and pulled at the end of one of my ringlets. I’d always been self-conscious of my hair and its endless exuberance growing up.
Most of the other girls had hair that fell below their breasts in straight, strategic lines, but mine went wherever it wanted. Of course, now I understood how well the hair fit my personality and embraced it.
It was vibrant. It was loud. It was nonconformist, and it was me.
Half-distracted by trying to hide my mooning face from Sean’s discerning stare, I moved my focus to a point in the distance, well above his shoulder.
And found comedic gold.
“Oh my God,” I breathed at the sight of the people moving from the building hand in hand.
“What?” Sean asked eagerly.
I indicated the direction of my gaze with a jerk of my head, and Sean spun to face them.
Georgia Brooks, the woman who’d hired me, and a deliriously handsome man, clutching each other and soaked from head to foot, were exiting the building in a tangled human web, wreathed in smiles.
Lost in each other, they ignored the crowd easily. Georgia’s dress was torn in the front, and the man’s pants were unzipped, but perhaps the funniest aspect of all was the way Georgia’s bra hung from the front of his crotch, obviously caught in the teeth of his zipper.
Apparently, his pants were left unfastened for a reason.
“Oh my God,” I repeated, this time choking out the words with a laugh.
Sean joined in, and soon, the whole group was turning to discover the culprit.
Wes maintained his ignorance for a while, but by the look on his face when he finally caught on, it wasn’t nearly long enough.
“Jesus Christ!” Wes shouted, and I had to cover my mouth with a hand. “Kline!” Wes shook his head and sank it into his hands, patience obviously tried.
“Georgia,” Wes said through gritted teeth as Georgia and Kline came to a stop in front of him. “Do you want to explain to me why you and your husband are just now making it out here, soaking wet and barely wearing any clothing?”
Georgia giggled, and Kline’s smile grew even bigger. “I’m guessing you don’t want either one of us to explain that, buddy.”
“How many times do I have to ask you to stop coming here for conjugal visits? You’ve got six thousand square feet of big-ass house to sully with your depravity. Spare my offices!”
Georgia’s smile was unrepentant, and I instantly liked her even more. Women with balls were so my style. “Please. You’re trying to tell me you and Winnie don’t have sex on Mavericks’ property? Sell it to someone your wife doesn’t drink margaritas with.”