“You need a lesson in calming down.” Pulling out of the parking lot, he gave her one quick glance in the fading lights before they hit the open road. “What’s up with the attitude? Don’t you care at all about your career?”
She was quiet for a long time. Long enough he’d figured she wouldn’t answer the question when she actually spoke.
“Maybe this is how I care.”
It was spoken quietly, but he heard it clear enough. “Sawyer warned you—”
“Sawyer likes a paycheck.” Rolling her shoulders—he could only tell thanks to the proximity of their bodies in his tight interior—she waited a beat. “I’m bringing in a paycheck. That should be enough for him.”
“He’s looking out for you as an athlete.” Even as it came out of his mouth, he knew it sounded stuffy. Stuffy wasn’t his style, honestly. He loved having fun, but he also never even danced close to the line of trouble with the team or his career. His idea of fun was, admittedly, more juvenile than would cause problems for the Bobcats or his agent. How many marshmallows could he stuff in his mouth and still say “Chubby Bunny” or going with buddies to three movies in a row and eating enough popcorn to make their stomachs rebel.
Okay, when he thought it through, it might sound sad to someone accustomed to more mature entertainment. But that was their problem, not his.
“He’s looking out for Kat, age twenty-six,” she argued back. “Which is great for twenty-six-year-old Kat. How about thirty-six-year-old Kat? Forty? Fifty? He’s not a money manager. He’s an agent for athletes. What happens when I’m not an athlete?”
Michael shrugged. How the hell would he know what professional tennis players did after they were put out to pasture?
“I was quiet for years. I avoided stuff that looked fun because it might cause problems, maybe, potentially. And then I got hammered over something that wasn’t even my fault. Tried and convicted in the court of public opinion.” She waved a hand across the center console with a swift chopping motion. “Done avoiding ‘maybe’ and ‘potentially.’ If something looks fun, and I like it, I’m doing it. I’m not mincing words. And if the tour doesn’t like it, if sponsors don’t care for it… that’s their problem, not mine.” He heard a smug smile in her tone when she added, “John McEnroe is now my spirit animal.”
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered, earning him a throaty chuckle from Kat in the dark.
Chapter 4
Kat woke the next morning to a ringing in her ears. When she moaned and rolled over to wiggle her earlobe, she realized it wasn’t her ear that was ringing but her phone. With a sleepy, half-formed, “Hello?” she answered the phone.
“Wanna explain why I’m fielding calls asking if you’ve taken up stripping in the off-season?” Sawyer’s voice asked mildly.
Shit. Mild Sawyer was not a good thing. Mild Sawyer meant he had worked his way past pissed and moved straight into I’m going to annihilate everything you love with a surgeon’s precision to make you pay for your misdeeds. Mild Sawyer was basically a cartoon villain.
“That’s an easy one to refute,” she said, striving for a calm that hovered just out of reach. She sat up and ran a hand over her hair, which did nothing for the bedhead frizzies that popped up all over. “Tell them that’s impossible because I get severe vertigo riding the slowest kiddie carousel at the supermarket. I’d vomit spinning around a pole. Nobody’s going to pay to see that.”
“Katrina.” His voice was deadly calm.
“Okay, Sawyer, but seriously…” Before she could finish that thought, her eye caught sight of the clock. “Sawyer! It’s six in the freaking morning here!”
“Whoops.” His voice held zero regret.
Biting back a scathing retort, she went on. “Seriously, this one wasn’t my fault.” Kat swung her legs off the bed and stretched her back out. Every single one of her joints popped… or that’s how it felt, at least. “I went out for a few drinks—totally legal, not at all scandalous or odd. I ended up being picked, at random I must add, to be a part of a lip-sync battle. I didn’t volunteer. I thought resisting would cause a bigger scene.”
Not entirely true. She had actually wanted to do it… but had originally lacked the courage. Sometimes she just needed a boost to get into something.
“You’re dancing on a bar,” he pointed out easily, as if he’d told her the weather called for a light jacket.
Watch yourself, girl.
“That’s where battle was taking place. Two seconds before I got up there, there was some business dude standing where I was, doing the exact same thing I did. It’s completely normal, totally allowed. And that guy rocked a Britney Spears song. But does anyone mention that?”