Page 7 of Hot Damn
I’ve had very little to do with the Rogues in any capacity except fronting twenty-five percent of the money Oakley needed to make the franchise happen as well as a quarter of the money needed to build the state-of-the-art arena the team trains and plays in. I gave my three partners complete control; I’m silent in every way.
Which I’m sure is going to bite us in the ass at some point.
“You don’t have anything to do with running the franchise, Cam.”
“But surely the interviews and articles won’t have the same weight if someone remembers I’m a joint owner of the company that owns the team I’m interviewing?”
“Let me and Oakley worry about that. And let me tell you why you’re the perfect choice. You’re good. At your job. And that’s not a biased father talking. Sure, there are a few other journalists I could send in but none of them are female, and I think when we look at the team, the owner, the GM, the assistant coach, we need a woman on this. I want you to punch up the female angle on this, show that having women in charge doesn’t take away from the men on the team or the sport.”
I close my eyes. I’d thought the same thing earlier when we were in the locker room discussing how to calm the storm Draper had stirred up but I couldn’t come up with a name, another journalist I trust to do this.
“You’re right. I know you’re right about it needing a woman,about taking that angle, but isn’t there someone from the network who can do it?”
“Who? The ex-cheerleader Derrick has on the sidelines during football season? No. Definitely not. She knows football, is great at reporting it, but she doesn’t have the journalistic skills needed for this.” I can all but see him shake his head and frown. “I want a serious journalist on this. One used to getting into the hard questions, finding the best in the subject. And I want you.”
“Dad.”
“Oh, now I’m Dad, huh.” There’s a smirk in his voice. “Baby girl, if what I’m hearing is true, you’re in a unique position to help these two navigate the media storm that’s coming.”
I should have known he’d pick up on that. “I wasn’t as old as Whitney.”
“No. You weren’t. And I never chose to hide you, Andrea did, and this is a completely different situation to the one we found ourselves in but it doesn’t take away from the fact that you can relate to the media frenzy that’s already winding up.”
“Fine.” I draw in a breath. As much as I don’t want to do this, I do. Icanrelate to Whitney and Beckett. I might have been young but I remember every second of the nightmare Andrea caused when she went public with my real father’s name. “But I want to do this my way. I don’t need a crew tonight. I want to do a series of informal interviews filmed on my phone.”
“What are you thinking?”
“What makes you think I’ve got anything in mind?”
He laughs and I can’t help the smile turning up my lips. “You are your father’s daughter.”
“According to Andrea anyway.”
“Don’t. She’s right though, you are like me. And it pisses her off that she had nothing to do with the way you are. You might look like her, hell you could pass for her clone, but you arenothinglike her in nature and she knows it. Resents it.”
I hate talking about my biological mother. We have a fractured relationship at best, and considering how often she hits meup for money it’s definitely better that way. In fact I wish it would break apart completely. I’ve accepted I was—am—nothing more than a means to an end, or in our case, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
“Cam.” Dad’s voice brings me back from the edge of the dark pit that holds my thoughts about Andrea. “Don’t go there, baby girl.”
“It’s hard.” I feel the sting of tears but they’re not because the woman who gave birth to me never loved me. They’re because this man did. No questions. No matter what I threw at him in those early years, no matter how hard or far I tested him, he held steady. “Thank you.”
“Cam. You have nothing to thank me for. You were born for me to love.”
Sniffing, I scrub my fingers over my eyes. “And I was born to love you.”
Those words? They’re our thing. Even before Dad managed to get me away from the toxic Andrea and the man I’d thought was my father, he’d insisted on those words passing between us.
They’ve given me comfort from the first time we spoke them. As they do now. They also gave me confidence. An intrinsic trust in myself that no amount of self-awareness could deliver.
“I’ll come into the office tomorrow and lay it all out for you and Derrick. Nine work for you?”
“I’ll make it work. When do you want to air the first interview?”
“Can I do it tonight? Before the ten o’clock news?”
“I’ll meet you at the station. After it airs, we can have a late dinner together.”
“You haven’t eaten yet?”
