Page 20 of Reckless Kiss

Chapter 7

After the bathroom Hope and I enjoyed a nice night of conversation. I genuinely liked her and she had this wit I really appreciated. Despite the fact we were intimately known to one another I began to feel a kinship to her I could only describe as brotherly.

So I invited her over for football Sunday with Jeffry, Grant, Mary, and John.

“Do you guys do this every Sunday?” Hope sat cross-legged on the loveseat, two full plates of food on the coffee table in front of her. She looked like a kid on Christmas morning.

Grant and Jeffry looked on from my kitchen as they piled their own plates with food. Jeffry decided to explain with his mouth mostly full. “I’m here every weekend because Leo loves me.”

I shook my head at this lack of basic manners. “Football is my favorite weekend activity.” Aside from sex, of course. “It’s on all weekend. College on Saturday and the pros on Sunday. I usually work Saturday so I’m here alone, but on Sunday I have this oaf over and when I’m feeling social I have everyone.”

“And all this food?” She grabbed the plate on the left and dove into the loaded potato skins.

“I have a wonderful cafe at the end of the street. I always order food when I have guests, yes.”

“You can put me on the invite list any time.” She moved on to the tiny pork sandwich. “Any time.”

Jeffry plunked his plate down beside hers and sat on the couch as close as he could get to her. “The nachos are solid but they get soggy pretty fast, so eat those first. The wings are the best. All three flavors are worth dying for.”

“I’m saving those for last.” She nodded solemnly, as if food were the single most important thing in the world.

Jeffry seemed to agree with her because they moved on to a heated discussion on beer pairings. I swirled my Scotch and watched my phone as it lit up with a string of messages from Marie.

Semi-formal.

I want the team to arrive on time and as close together as possible.

She was so worked up over this it boggled my mind. I felt out of the loop. Behind the eight ball. In the dark. So I employed my best weapon: research. I’d spent the better part of the week reading old articles on the Nashville franchise—the rise and the fall. It was a bizarre moment in professional football history and somehow the details remained murky.

It set me off, honestly.Whywere there so few details. Why did no one discuss it, even today? Why was no one reporting on the magnitude of the Renegades sale?

“Hey Hope?”

“Yeah?”

Lovely. Now she was speaking with a half-full mouth of food and a nearly drunken slur to her words. The food coma was already setting in and we were just starting the second quarter.

“You still do some producing?” Like her ex, Hope was deep in the sports news industry.

Her eyes sharpened suspiciously. “I do specials and films now, why?”

“This Renegades sale...you have any idea why no one’s talking about the ten year ban on the owner or the old Nashville franchise?”

She set her nearly empty plate down and wiped her fingers clean, straightening up and shaking off the food coma. “It’s a blackballed topic. You report on it, you’re done. It won’t even air so there’s no reason to risk it.”

Won’t even air?“What do you mean?” What she was saying was so far beyond anything I’d ever heard in the industry before.

“I mean the Nashville franchise and it’s owners are taboo. They aren’t even discussed in the newsrooms. If someone brings it up the room goes silent and management redirects immediately.” She cracked her neck as if just discussing this topic were giving her stress. “I mean, if you try to bring a piece like this to the table you’re tossed out on your backside before you even get the words out of your mouth. No two weeks notice. No warning. Just ‘goodbye, don’t let the door hit you on the way out, no one else will hire you.’”

That was stunning. “As in, they tell all the other station managers and that reporter is blackballed?”

“Bingo!”

“But why?”

“Because the first rule of Nashville is you don’t discuss Nashville.”

I had no response to that. In my years in the industry I’d encountered secrets and lies that everyone knew about. It was out in the open and clear as to why it was avoided at all costs. This was completely different because it was just one giant black hole. No information. No knowledge. Nothing at all.

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