Catching Cameron: A Love and Football Novel (7 page)

Zach saw him smile.

“I’d ask for a volunteer, but I think the choice is already made. Anderson, will you help us out? I’d really appreciate it.”

Chapter Six

T
HE
S
HARKS’
GM was smiling and nodding at Zach as if this was already a done deal. Zach had a no-win choice: Tell him no, and find his ass benched or traded before the end of the day; probably somewhere he wouldn’t want to go. Tell him yes, and have to deal with another on-camera incident with Cameron. He knew she considered herself a professional, but this would be too good to resist. She’d carve him up like a Thanksgiving turkey, and there was nothing to do but smile and take it.

Derrick reached over and slapped him on the back. “You’re my boy, Anderson.”

Applause broke out around the room. Nobody seemed to care he hadn’t agreed to the idea. Somehow, he had a feeling it wouldn’t matter. Maybe he should call his agent and ask for some advice, or maybe he should man up and stop acting like such a candy ass. She was one-third his size. Why the hell was he letting her in his head?

He could only imagine what questions she would dream up for him. Mostly, he wanted to go somewhere quiet and regroup before he saw her again.

It wasn’t going to happen.

“It’s important that we get out front of the news cycle with a positive story about the Sharks to minimize any damage to our brand from this morning. Even more, we’d like to announce our changes on
our
timetable, not FOX Sports’s or ESPN’s.” He clasped his hands. “Zach, if you’ll come with us, we’ll get things rolling. Steve, the floor is yours.”

The guys in the front row got to their feet. Zach followed them out of the room.

He expected bone-jarring hits and injuries from his career. Nobody ever told him dodging beautiful blondes with their own camera crews would be a bigger hazard than facing a ferocious offensive line sixteen Sundays a year.

A
FTER A SHORT
meeting with the PSN production staff and taking the fastest route possible back to her dorm room, Cameron locked the door behind her and leaned against it. The floor was silent. All the players were still at the media training. The room was just as she left it—rumpled bed, half-unpacked suitcase waiting for her to do something about it, and the message light on the multi-line bedside phone blinking frantically. It was a little past noon Pacific Time, and she felt like she’d already put in a twelve-hour day. She resisted the impulse to crawl back into bed and have a good cry.

This wasn’t the first time in her life she’d faced opposition to what she did for a living; she went through this with her own family on an almost-weekly basis, for God’s sake. Today, though, it struck at something inside that left her shaken. She knew most people made a snap judgment about her because a young, attractive blonde supposedly knew nothing about sports. It was still surprising to her that she would face the same attitudes after working her way up from a minimum-wage runner for on-air talent to a successful ten-year broadcasting career, but she’d probably still be facing those questions until she retired and went on to do something more “appropriate” for a living.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She fished it out, took one look at the screen, and let out a groan. She needed five minutes to pull herself together, and then she could answer her producer’s questions. She sent the call to voicemail. Her phone rang again about a minute later. Same guy. She stabbed the button that answered the call with one finger.

“Hi, Ralph. How are you?”

“I’m fine. I heard you’re having a great time.” She stifled another groan. “Hey, I have good news, though. The Sharks would like to give you an exclusive, and they’ve asked for you specifically.”

“That’s great.” She picked a piece of lint off her jacket. “When would they like to do this?” She tried to inject some excitement into her voice. “I’ll need to come up with some interview questions. Do you know whom I’ll be talking with?”

Ralph sounded positively gleeful. “We’re on our way over to pick you up for some lunch and a chit-chat. Why don’t you meet us at the front door in ten minutes?”

Her stomach twisted itself into a knot. She’d already had something to eat. They wouldn’t be meeting her face to face unless it was something she wasn’t going to like, and she had a really bad feeling she knew what that might be. PSN’s owner and management wouldn’t rest until they forced another confrontation with Zach.

“I’ll grab my purse and meet you downstairs, Ralph.”

“I’m looking forward to it. See you in a few.” He hung up.

Her parents would be happy. After all, she’d realized in the past fifteen seconds she needed a serious dialogue with herself over her career choice. She hurried into the bathroom, applied a swipe of neutral lip gloss, grabbed her handbag and room key, and hurried out the door.

She was relieved to see Logan waiting downstairs, too.

“Did they tell you who we’re interviewing?”

“Oh, hell, no.” He grinned over at her. “Shall we make it interesting?” He pulled a twenty dollar bill out of his wallet. “My money’s on either their starting QB or Zach Anderson.”

“Maybe it’s both.”

“Well, Cam, pick one.” He nudged her with an elbow. “I’ll make it easy on you. I’m going with Tom Reed. They’ll leave Zach for an hour-long, endlessly teased special.”

Cameron glanced up at him. She knew he was right, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. “Okay. You’re on. Forget the twenty bucks. I want a cronut when we go back to New York instead, you dork.”

It was a challenge for the driver of the stretch limo carrying Cameron, Logan, and the rest of the PSN production team to pull the car into the parking lot of a somewhat deserted-looking pub with no street appeal five minutes from the practice facility. He managed, though, and the group piled out of the car.

“It’s a good thing we didn’t dress up,” Ralph joked.

“I thought Seattle was known for its seafood,” Kacee said. It was nice to see that they remembered to pick up Cameron’s assistant from wherever it was she was staying at. “Maybe we should have gone to a seafood place instead.”

“I’ll bet they have some fried shrimp here,” Logan told her.

Kacee rolled her eyes and walked away from him. Logan had been flirting with Cameron’s assistant for months now. Kacee wanted someone with a lot more money, for starters. Logan found her obsession with Wall Street frat rats in suits hilarious. Cameron needed to spend some time impressing on Kacee that money wasn’t everything, but she knew she didn’t have a lot of credibility in that area. Her co-workers all knew where she spent her summers, for instance, and it wasn’t in stifling hot New York City.

A woman with two-tone hair, wearing a polo shirt with the pub’s logo and an inadvisable number of colorful tattoos on both arms waved one arm toward the seating area. “Sit anywhere,” she told them. She did a double-take when she saw Kevin. “Hey, I know you,” she said. “You’re on PSN.”

He gave her a nod.

There weren’t a lot of other customers. The lunch crowd had gone back to work, and it was too early for happy hour. Cameron grabbed one of the slightly sticky laminated menus from the center of the long table and pretended to study it. She wasn’t hungry, but not ordering really wasn’t an option. She didn’t want to be accused of “not being a team player” on top of whatever else it was she was going to be upbraided for after this morning’s confrontation with the coach.

“What are you getting?” Kacee whispered to her.

“Chef’s salad with chopped egg and dressing on the side,” Cameron whispered back.

“Want to split some fries?”

“Sure.” She wouldn’t eat them, but it would make Kacee feel better. If Cameron didn’t stay ten pounds underweight at all times, she got nasty e-mails from viewers. As a result, French fries weren’t something she indulged in typically.

While the server took their drink and food orders, Ben, executive program director of PSN, took a sip of the iced tea the server ran to get for him. Her speed probably had something to do with the twenty he’d handed her before he even arrived at their table. He got up from his chair and addressed the group.

“I thought it might be nice to take a few minutes to talk about what’s going to be happening over the next few days. First of all, we’re already seeing a ratings spike with the advertising we’ve done on Cameron’s coverage of training camp. The most surprising contacts we’ve had were from women’s magazines, female-oriented cable channels, and female bloggers who’d like to interview Cameron about what it’s like to room with eighty guys for a month.” He beamed like he’d thought it up all by himself, and glanced over at her. “We’ll set up a conference call with the media who’d like to interview you later this week.”

She smiled and toyed with the straw in her glass of iced tea. Kevin glared at her from across the table.

“As far as the training camp coverage, I got a phone call from the Sharks’ GM an hour ago.” He stopped talking while the server delivered plates and silverware to the table. She put a huge cheeseburger and fries down in front of Cameron.

“Excuse me. I didn’t order this,” Cameron said. “I asked for a chef’s salad with chopped egg and dressing on the side.”

“We’re out of salad,” the woman told her. “Plus, your collar bone is going to injure somebody. Eat up.” She put a large container of ketchup down in front of Kacee along with another cheeseburger and fries. “You, too. You can diet when you go back to New York City.”

Her comments were met with uproarious laughter from every male at the table, and a look of horror from Kacee.

“I don’t eat red meat,” Kacee told her.

“You do now. Take a bite. Maybe you’ll get through the afternoon without passing out.” She swished further down the table, and put a grilled chicken breast and steamed vegetables down in front of Ralph. “I am
not
giving you a bacon cheeseburger, so you can get that thought out of your head right now. Does your wife know you eat this badly?”

“I don’t have a wife.”

“Well, then, it’s my job, isn’t it? Does anyone need anything else—napkins, a refill? Okay then.” She walked away without waiting to see if anyone at the table made a further request.

“I thought they were more polite in Seattle,” Ralph said.

Ben was still laughing. “Maybe not.” The two customers at the bar had left, but Ben glanced around before leaning toward the others at his table. “Okay. PSN has been given an exclusive, and Cameron will conduct the interview. We’d hoped to save any contact with this player until later in the season, but we believe her interview with Zach Anderson will break ratings records.”

Cameron hadn’t been able to resist the siren song of golden brown, perfectly done fries after all. She choked on a French fry. Logan slapped her on the back until she stopped coughing.

“Easy,” Logan told her. Ben waited until Cameron seemed like she’d live.

“We’ll tape the interview as quickly as possible, either late tonight or tomorrow morning. The Sharks have breaking news, and we’d like to scoop everyone else as a result.”

“So, what’s the breaking news?” someone else asked.

“The Sharks’ head coach is suspended indefinitely as of about an hour ago. The assistant coach is now the acting head coach. I was also told that the suspension is a formality. Unless he agrees to diversity training and formally apologizes to Cameron and Ms. Larsen, he’s fired. The Sharks are trying to distract from the upheaval by offering the interview. They asked for pre-submitted questions, and I told them that would not be a problem. We’ll formulate those this afternoon.”

Cameron stopped in the midst of cutting the cheeseburger in half so she could eat a few bites. It actually smelled pretty good. Flinging the uneaten half at Ben wouldn’t be a great idea, but it would be nice if she could actually do the job she was hired for. When she wasn’t pissed off about that, she was breathing deeply to stave off a full-scale panic attack. She was going to have to face Zach again on her own. She didn’t want to. Her colleague Kevin was smirking at her from across the table. He’d take the interview in a heartbeat. If only that was an option.

“Were there guidelines for those pre-submitted questions?”

“No. There were no guidelines.” Ben took another bite of his chicken breast and chewed for a few minutes. “Maybe we shouldn’t ask Zach Anderson about his sex life this time, hmm?”

A few hours later, Cameron was back in her dorm room with carefully formulated and pre-negotiated notecards full of questions. According to the phone call she’d just gotten, Zach was making rapid enough progress with the media trainer that the team felt comfortable taping the interview this evening. Cameron had an hour to figure out what to wear, get makeup and hair done, and go over the questions one more time. She laid the notecards down on the computer desk in her dorm room and rifled through her suitcase to find something suitable for a formal on-air interview.

“Too pink. Too red. Too low-cut. Too high-necked. Too last season,” she muttered to herself. She yanked a slightly wrinkled, above-knee length, cobalt blue sleeveless sheath dress out of her suitcase, and pulled out the portable steamer she always traveled with. She rifled through her jewelry roll for the dangly bronze-pearl-and-brown-gold earrings she’d bought last week. She tossed a pair of nude pumps with slender heels on the bed. Truthfully, how she looked on-air was the least of her problems at the moment. Her stomach was churning. She could feel cold sweat trickling down her back. She was shaking.

She could hear the guys shouting at each other and laughing out in the hallway. If she got her ass in gear, she could step out there, spend a few minutes observing, and maybe write a little later about what happens when grown men are forced to live like college students for a month. The network would post whatever she came up with on their NFL blog. Her bosses would be happy about coverage that would thrill the average football fan.

She couldn’t figure out why she was so freaked out about seeing Zach again. They had been married for three days, ten years ago. Her father and his attorneys told her Zach was more interested in her money than he was in her. They offered him a financial settlement for his agreeing to an annulment, and according to them Zach didn’t need five minutes to think about it. He’d signed where they told him to, her father handed him a check, and he’d walked away. He’d never tried to contact her again.