“You know what? I came out here to apologize and tell you that I had no idea what you and Clayton were talking about. That I was sorry I crossed a line I shouldn’t have, but now I’m just going to tell you to take a long, long walk off a very short cliff.”
Corey laughed again, and Taran had the urge to deliver the punch she’d promised him earlier. But a door opened and closed behind her, and there stood Austin. It only took one look to know that Sean’s partner had been caught up on everything, and the good-looking older man had his game face on. Clearly, he didn’t appreciate anything she’d done in the last twenty-four hours. As he approached, his sky-blue eyes cut her to pieces.
“Taran,” he said, but as always with his accent, it sounded more like Turn. The southern accent that pressed hard into every word he spoke reminded her of her former fiancé, Jeremy. “I need a minute with my client.”
“Do you have a problem with us dating?” Corey asked him before Taran could answer. They weren’t dating, but that didn’t seem to be an issue for Corey and the daggers shooting out of his eyes.
Austin turned to him. “If you want to date this pain in my ass, be my guest, but personally, I think you might find someone better.” The better came out more like bitter.
It was Taran’s turn to shoot a nasty look, and Austin was on the receiving end of it.
She walked away before she did something she’d regret and slammed back into the kitchen, where all eyes were on her. “What?” she asked them.
That was a stupid question. They either wanted to know what was going on between her and Corey or why he’d fired them. The first she couldn’t answer, and the second, well, she understood Corey’s point of view on that, and he was probably right. So instead, she turned her eyes on Sean.
“I want to write an ‘In Case You Didn’t Know’ on Clayton Evans next month. I know he’s on a media hiatus, but this is a good way to bring him back into the public eye, and I could probably pull strings and get him the cover. Wouldn’t it be nice for your best draft pick to grace the Sports Illustrated cover two days after the draft?” She stared Sean down waiting for an answer.
He finally sighed. “I was actually going to suggest it to you before you started this whole mess.”
“Great,” she snapped. All she could think about was Corey’s comment about not being laid in years. Where did he get off? So what if she hadn’t had sex in over two years? How was it his business? And she had only responded to his kiss. It wasn’t like she’d walked into the room and randomly kissed him. Now Corey would be a roadblock to this story; she was certain he was on his way to at least one of the Evanses to drag her name through the mud. “Talk to Clayton today, and tell him I’ll be on a flight out to spend the next two weeks with him.”
That was how she did her stories. She didn’t do interviews. She immersed herself in the life of her feature and learned what they were really like. Her stories weren’t about image or status. They were about getting to know the subject. The real lives of the athletes America loved to love, or loved to hate.
“No need,” Sean said.
“Sorry. I don’t call stories in,” she reminded him. And she frowned again as she thought about the way Corey had laughed when Austin called her a pain in the ass. She wasn’t really. She was just tough, and she needed to be to keep her life together.
“I meant,” Sean corrected, “Clayton will be in Jersey this week for Nick Evans’s wedding.”
“Even better,” Taran lied. She’d go out to see him regardless. But his being here was worse because it meant immersing herself in the Evanses’ world, and that meant more Corey Matthews.
The man who thought she couldn’t get a guy to sleep with her.
“The good news is he’s not moving his money. But he refuses to have us do his contracts or publicity.” Austin walked back in and turned to his wife. “Hun.” That was all it took. One word, and Sydney knew exactly what her husband wanted. She cleared the girls out of the room. As Taran followed her and Erin outside, she knew they were going to grill her. The problem was she had no idea what to say.
But Erin turned to her and said, “Why didn’t you just ask Sean about Clayton? Seriously, Taran, for the last two weeks he’s been saying he was going to ask you to do a story on Clayton. You know Sean trusts you.”
She did know that. “I didn’t want to write about Clayton. That was Corey’s idea.”
They both looked confused, so she told them how the whole thing had started and how they’d gotten where they were today. They were both laughing when she was done.
“My meddling husband. If he had just butted out, he wouldn’t have these problems.” Erin shook her head.
Sydney’s face said she didn’t totally agree with that statement. “Are you still after the Matthews story?”
Taran could lie, but she felt like she’d done enough of that in the last two days. “Until Wayne changes his mind, I’ll probably always be after that story.”
Sydney’s blond hair bounced as she shook her head. “This is nothing but trouble.”