Читать книгу Something to Prove - Cathryn Parry - Страница 10

CHAPTER TWO

AMANDA FELT A HUMMING INSIDE her and willed herself to stop looking at Brody’s mouth.

Instead, she gazed out the window at the mountainside punctuated with tall pines. And skiers. But none of them were solid and haunting, with lips that were flat on the bottom and bow-shaped on top. The kind she could feel herself kissing…

What was she doing? Fantasizing about an interview subject was wrong, and completely unlike her. She needed to get a grip.

“So…” Shifting in her seat, she aimed the voice recorder at him. Time to get to work. “I understand you have an amazing record, Brody, ten years and fifty World Cup podiums. You’re the most accomplished skier from North America in quite a while. You’ve won everything there is to win. Nobody is even close to your record. I’d like to know why you’ve come back after being gone from the circuit for two years, and what you hope to accomplish this season.”

He eyed her. He eyed the recorder.

Please, Brody. Talk to me.

“I’m here to win my next race,” he said.

Good, that was good. She nodded. Please keep talking.

“I’m here to win it my way.”

“What does that mean?” she asked softly. “I really would like to know.”

His agent grew nervous, fidgeting with his pockets. “Brody means he feels privileged to be back, and he’s looking forward to having a great season.”

Brody met her gaze and held it. Her insides heated. She felt that invisible line again, tugging her to him.

No. She couldn’t give in. Obviously, something was going on, something he and his agent were hiding. She wasn’t an investigative reporter for nothing. She had intuition. Gold-plated hunches, the editors called them in the newsroom of her first reporting job, back when she’d been still in high school.

She leaned forward on her elbows. “Brody,” she said, purposely ignoring the agent’s coughing fit on the other side of the table, “what makes you different from the other competitors in the circuit? In the way you ski, I mean? What makes caravans of people follow you from race to race just to catch a glimpse of you in action?”

As if you don’t get it, Amanda. It’s called world-class sex appeal, and you can’t buy that in Walmart.

“Have you ever been on skis?” he asked intently, his smile slowly forming again, his hands inches from hers.

She held her breath, not wanting to go there. But his eyes were insistent. And if she wanted to get her story, she needed to keep him talking. “Yes,” she admitted, “but not since I was little.”

“Do you remember how it felt?” His voice was low. “To go fast? To feel the wind in your hair? To feel like nothing could stop you and you were part of heaven and earth?”

Her gaze felt tied to his. She couldn’t help swallowing, because those visual cues—the intensity of his facial expression, his strong athlete’s neck, the proud affiliation of his ski-team jacket—brought back the bad parts of skiing, the things she’d always hated and felt terrorized by, growing up. For too long, skiing had been about failure, humiliation and shame. And now, her sister’s broken, ruined body.

She swallowed again, but she could never get rid of the bad taste in her mouth; it always came back to haunt her. There was no solution, even though Brody Jones seemed to sense her discomfort.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing.” But tears were threatening, so she blinked fast. She had one strong point in her life to fall back on—her job—and here, with this skier, she couldn’t even do that properly.

Exhaling, she lifted her chin. She needed to hold on to whatever shred of an interview she had left. “We all grow up, Brody. Life changes. Nobody can help that.”

“True.” His brow creased as he looked not at the voice recorder, but directly into her eyes. “But we can remember when life was simpler. At heart, I think people want to recapture that. Maybe that’s why they go to mountain races—to breathe in the air and soak up the sun and ring cowbells like they’re kids again. You could, too, if you wanted.”

She dropped back in her seat and stared at him.

He smiled, embarrassed this time. “Or not. It’s a theory, but you asked.”

He’s giving me amazing quotes, the reporter part of her brain said. Brody hadn’t said anything like this, not that she’d read, to any other reporter.

“You…stayed away from the circuit for two years,” she pressed on. “Even after you were healthy. You said you were finished, that you’d accomplished all you wanted to accomplish. What made you come back to the tour?”

“Time is up.” The agent stood. “Miss Jensen, it’s been a pleasure to meet you.”

But Amanda looked to Brody. Her hunch was right. His mask was back in place, as if he regretted opening up to her. Something was wrong, and he was hiding whatever it was.

“I’m not going to screw you over, Brody,” she murmured. How could she, after the kindness that he’d shown her?

He reached over and turned off her digital recorder. “You’re a journalist,” he said with an edge to his voice. “It’s what journalists do.”

“Some journalists maybe, but not me.” She pointed at him. “Let’s get something straight. You talk about the joy of youth. Well, I’ve known since I was a kid that I was a born writer, and that I loved doing it. I caught the enthusiasm for reporting early, and I never lost it. Believe me, I don’t compromise my journalistic integrity for anyone, including my employer.”

He smiled widely at her. “Then you’re the first of the breed I’ve met.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“We’ll see, won’t we? I gave you quotes. Let’s see what you do with them.”

“Cynical, aren’t you?”

He shrugged. “I’ve had my words twisted by all the so-called nicest journalists. They write what they want to write, for whatever agenda they have. I’ve learned better than to try to control it.”

“Refusing to speak—is that the way to control it?”

He shook his head. “Even that doesn’t work. Stuff still gets made up.”

“Believe it or not, Brody, I take my job seriously. I might go undercover now and then, I might bust a person’s chops, but I never, ever mess around with quotes. Are you kidding me? That’s for hacks, and I don’t care how many awards they might have won, it’s still hack reporting. That’s like, like…” She was so mad she was stuttering.

“Cheating?” Brody asked.

That was it. Cheating. She nodded in excitement. “Exactly. You understand.”

“Yeah.” He smiled sadly. “Yeah, I understand.”

“Well, that’s good.” Harrison clapped from where he stood. “Time is definitely up.”

“Amanda Jensen.” Brody stood and moved around the table, then held the door for her. Her knees were suddenly weak and she wobbled on her too-high shoes. “It was a pleasure to meet you.”

And then he leaned close and kissed her first on one cheek, and then the other. She felt the electricity from his kiss ricochet all over her body. By reflex, she reached up and touched his arm. It felt rock-solid.

He grinned at her sheepishly. “Sorry. When in Italy…”

Her cheeks flamed.

“Yes,” she breathed.

And then he reached up and tipped the brim of his hat to her.

Like a wayward cowboy, he was out of there. Taking all the air in the room with him.

BRODY SPLASHED COLD WATER on his face, the back of his neck, his forearms. He leaned over the sink, feeling wired, as if he’d just finished a challenging run and wanted to go back up the mountain and do it again.

Because he did want to do it again. He wanted to see more of Amanda Jensen, and outside the interview room.

He reached for the paper towels. Unfortunately that was off the table. Maybe someday they could get together, after he’d finished what he’d come to accomplish, but not now. He had so little free time as it was. Harrison was a pain about scheduling him.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Harrison muttered, his voice echoing off the tile in the empty men’s room. He’d already attempted to chew Brody out for being needlessly open with a reporter, but Brody had shut him down, reminding him there were times when going off-script was the best strategy. When he followed his intuition on the race course, good things happened. It was the reason for his wins, and nobody could deny that, especially his agent.

“Don’t worry about her. She isn’t going to screw us,” Brody said, but Harrison just grunted. Brody wadded the wet paper towels and turned, realizing that Harrison was preoccupied with reading text messages on his phone. He mopped perspiration from his forehead and cursed under his breath.

“What’s the matter?” Brody asked. “Xerxes yanking your chain?”

“No. Give me a minute,” Harrison said, furiously typing a text message.

“Not a problem.” He thought of Amanda again. Something about her niggled at him. What had upset her and tripped her up, enough to almost throw that one part of the interview?

“Why haven’t I heard of her before?” he muttered, though it was likely Harrison wasn’t listening. “News of a reporter like her would have gotten around on the circuit.”

“We could be in deep trouble here, in case you haven’t noticed.” Harrison snapped his phone shut and scowled at him.

His agent was always the jumpy type, but today he was excessively nervous. He’d been sticking to Brody in full-on babysitter mode, and Brody had taken enough. “Cut her some slack,” he said, more sharply than he’d intended.

“It isn’t her I’m worried about.” Harrison stalked to the far sink and soaped up his hands. “It’s you,” he said over the spray of water. “You don’t seem to grasp what’s at stake.”

“Are you talking about the note cards?”

“I’m saying I’m not sure we can pull this off anymore.”

Brody stilled. Everything in his life depended on them making this race a go. “What is it?” he asked in a low voice.

“You know you’re the center of my business, Brody. You always have been.”

He waited, his heartbeat slowing until it was a dull thudding in his chest.

“I met you when you were what…eighteen?” Harrison continued. “A local kid at a local race.”

Those days were a distant memory. Brody couldn’t go back there if he wanted to. He didn’t want to, but that was beside the point.

“You had it even then, raw talent compounded with charisma. Only a handful of athletes in any sport have those. But because you skied, the big boys were blind to it, agents bigger than me.”

“Why the trip down memory lane?” Brody asked sarcastically.

Harrison wasn’t laughing. “People mocked me when I signed you, did you know that? I was a small-time agent at a big agency, scrounging for crumbs. And you delivered, more than any American skier ever had. The sponsor deals rolled in. Companies signed you who hadn’t known what skiing was until you lit up their TV screens.”

“So what’s the problem?” Brody said, his voice hard. “Just spit it out and tell me.”

Harrison shook his head. “No, because I don’t think you get it. And I want to make sure you hear this from me—You crashed and burned, Brody. You. Everything ended because people don’t like losers or also-rans. They want to see successes.”

Brody felt the ice in his veins. He didn’t care about the successes. Not really. He didn’t even care about losing. That’s not what this comeback was about for him. And he couldn’t acknowledge the anger that Harrison so obviously wanted him to feel.

“You think I don’t know I allowed myself to be manipulated? You think I’m not serious about fixing what happened?” His voice shook. “Everything has changed about me. I’m not that guy anymore, Harrison.”

“You were talking about being a kid today.”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

“I have as much to lose as you do, which is everything. Not just every deal we’ve made together, but your entire legacy, demolished.”

Brody felt a shudder go through him as if Harrison had sucker-punched him. His name and his integrity were the only reasons he’d come back. To fix the mistakes that he’d made. To make it right this time, in a way he could be proud of.

He walked to the paper towel dispenser, avoiding looking at his reflection in the mirror as he did. To change that feeling—wasn’t that the whole point of this exercise?

“Are you chewing me out because I talked with a reporter?” Brody stared at the wall in front of him, doing his best to hold on to the good he felt about Amanda, the good that Harrison was doing his best to stomp flat. “Are you complaining because I dared to trust somebody, just a little?”

“I’m saying you should trust me. Me, Brody.”

Yeah, he’d ignored Harrison during the interview and maybe that had been out of line. “Okay. I’m sorry about the index cards. I should have told you before I went in that I wouldn’t use them. The last thing I’m going to do this time around is be someone I’m not.”

Harrison took a long breath. “Understood. And I accept your apology, by the way.”

“Good. So tell me what your text message says before I rip that phone out of your pocket and read it for myself.”

Harrison took a step back. Yeah, you should be worried, Brody thought.

“We need to get you out of this hotel, now,” Harrison said.

“Why?”

“Because Jean-Claude texted me that MacArthur Jensen is on his way over.”

“What?” Brody felt his anger flare. “That’s not funny.”

“I’m not joking. There’s a cocktail party scheduled in honor of his daughter’s wedding tomorrow. He’s got one damn daughter, and she has to get married here, of all places. Jean-Claude is following him in the rental car as we speak.”

“You have my equipment manager tracking MacArthur Jensen?” Brody shook his head. “Never mind, don’t tell me.” He paced to the wall and back. It had obviously been a mistake to believe the rumors that his former coach didn’t plan to attend his only daughter’s wedding.

MacArthur Jensen was their wild card. Neither Brody nor Harrison had any idea what he would do when they bumped into one another for the first time in two years. Every nightmare Brody had was related to the knowledge that his former coach could destroy him whenever he wanted.

The goal had been to have the race long over before they crossed paths again.

“Brody, you know I’ll do everything I can to buffer you from the outside pressure.” Harrison touched Brody’s arm, but Brody backed away. Harrison shook his head. “See, you need to trust me when I give you advice. If you don’t trust me, this isn’t going to work.”

“Then what do you suggest I do?”