Losing at Love (5 page)

“And Penny Harrison, basically on one foot, is going to try and serve out this match against the number one player in the world.” The broadcaster’s voice, filled with awe, echoed through the speakers. “We all knew how talented she was, heard everyone comparing her to Chrissy and Martina and Steffi, but this is something else, ladies and gentleman, this girl isn’t just great, this girl has heart.”

“Oh, no way. You’ve got to be kidding me,” she muttered, as she watched a black and white version of herself limp across the beat up clay on Chatrier, the crowd noise fading quickly, replaced by the imported sound of a racing heartbeat, steadily slowing down as the camera zoomed in on her face, her pupils almost fully dilated, making her eyes look black. Her jaw clenched against the agony in her ankle, spiking up through her leg to the rest of her body, screaming at her to just stop and lie down, make it end. The sweat trickled down her forehead in tiny rivers as she tossed the ball up for the serve and then a black screen with the sound of her serve, her scream and then the crowd exploding, then silence as the Nike logo flashed broad and bold across the screen.

She grabbed her phone and flickered through her messages before finding one from Jack, who, when he wasn’t being her older brother, moonlighted at her agent.

Nike is trying to capitalize on the injury. Commercial to air during Wimbledon. Call you tomorrow with the details.

Texting him not to bother, that she’d already seen it, she sighed, letting her head fall back onto the arm of the couch. Famous for winning, but not exactly the way she imagined. Gotta be more careful what she wished for as she just might get it. The only thing to do now was to replace that moment with a different one. Screw it. She was going to win Wimbledon, even if her fucking foot fell off in the process.

June 15th

Indy loved grass. Not the kind of grass that the stoners used to smoke behind school back in California, but the beautiful, lush, green grass courts at the end of OBX’s complex far away from the clay torture chambers she’d had to use leading up to the French Open. The frustrating effect that the clay courts had on her serve was reversed almost completely on the finely manicured lawns she’d be playing in England and it was a beautiful thing. Serve after serve, up the middle, out wide, into the body, it didn’t matter, her serve was going to wreak havoc on each and every opponent she faced at Wimbledon and what her serve didn’t handle, her forehand would. Grass even helped her net game, the surface allowing her feet to travel just a little faster rather than getting bogged down or sliding uncontrollably on the clay; she could keep her footing more easily and a dive for a ball didn’t result in being covered in red gunk or feeling like she’d landed on solid concrete. It wasn’t soft, but it definitely hurt less. She’d never had enough appreciation for grass before, but nowadays, it was her favorite thing in the whole world. Her game was made for it.

Her feet shuffled through the bright orange cones, pivoting on a dime, three crossover steps and then a spin, then a full out sprint to the baseline, leaning over it to shorten her time by another couple of seconds.

“Excellent, Indy,” Dom called as she ran through the agility course. He turned his stopwatch toward her and she read the time, a smile breaking through the desperate pants for breath, her hands on her hips, sweat running in rivulets down her neck. Her entire shirt was soaked from the intensity of the workout but she’d cut even more time off her personal best. This is what she’d dreamed about before she came to OBX, working with Dom, feeling like every second she spent out on the court was one inch closer to being the best tennis player in the world.

“Walk it off, stretch it out and then grab some water.”

“Let me go again,” she said, swishing some water quickly, but moving to the start of the small maze of cones he’d set up at the end of her singles training session.

“You know who you sound like?” Dom asked, the question going unanswered. They both knew. She sounded like Penny and as far as Indy was concerned, it was pretty much the biggest compliment her coach could give her. “One more time.”

She put her toe on the line, filled her lungs, exhaled slowly and on Dom’s signal, she ran.

~

“Heard you have a meeting with Ms. Morneau this afternoon,” Dom said as they gathered up the stray balls from the court.

“Yeah, she wants to go over some sponsorship stuff.”

“She mentioned something about it. Just…” he trailed off.

“What?” she asked. It was rare that Dom spoke to her beyond what was going on with her game. She knew he shared a deeper connection with Penny and Jasmine after training them for so many years and it was something she wanted for herself too.

“I know I’ve said this before and I don’t want to get in the middle, but be careful with how much freedom you give her, Indy. Tennis has to come first or all the stuff that comes with it, well, it won’t be around all that long, if you know what I mean. I’ve seen people get caught up in it. Hell, I had to learn that lesson the hard way too. Just keep your eye on the prize.”

“You don’t have to worry about me, Dom. I know what’s really important.” She gestured around her to the court. “This is the only thing that matters.”

“Okay, good.” His eyes narrowed at her, like he was trying to see through her skin. Whatever he saw seemed to satisfy him, because he nodded and said, “Go on then, you’re going to be late for your meeting.”

“Crap, Caroline is going to go nuts.”

Heading out from the locker room into OBX’s main atrium, showered, dressed and running even later than she’d originally thought, Indy flew by the security desk, sending Roy, the facilities head of security, a quick wave. As usual, he was buried behind a newspaper, but still somehow managed to see her and raise his hand in greeting.

She found Caroline in one of OBX’s conference rooms, usually used by the coaches for parent meetings and other official things that needed to be kept confidential. “Sorry I’m late, Dom and I ran over during my session.”

Caroline’s hair was pulled back in a neat twist, high collared sleeveless green silk shirt tucked smoothly into light gray linen pants. It was a stark contrast to Indy’s cotton shorts and OBX t-shirt. Her agent tsked, letting her disapproval be known, but then simply gestured to the seat beside her at the long conference table, “Are you sure it was Dom who delayed you? Nothing else?”

Indy braced herself for the lecture she’d managed to cut short the day before when Caroline saw her with Jack. “Yes. It was Dom and if it hadn’t been Dom, it’s
still
none of your business.”

“We’ll see,” Caroline arched a perfectly shaped eyebrow. Indy was about to protest again, but Caroline cut her off with a sharp shake of her head, “Let’s get started then, since we are short on time.”

Large stacks of paper encased in plastic covers, each with dozens of tiny fluorescent colored sticky-notes jutting out of the sides, were laid out on the shiny mahogany surface in front of an empty chair. Indy sat, staring at them for a moment before she said, “All these companies are interested in me?”

“There are several different piles. These are the companies that have expressed interest and contacted me with offers,” Caroline said, motioning to the first pile. “Next, companies I reached out to and have made offers since. The last two are companies that will be interested perhaps after a few more victories and companies that have offered deals we should not concern ourselves with, though I felt it was, how you say, incumbent upon me as your representative to make you aware of such offerings.”

Indy nodded, biting her tongue between her teeth, still not moving her eyes from the table. A soft laugh drew her attention away. She would have called it affectionate if she didn’t know better. “Where do we start?”

Caroline tapped the pile closest to her. “We start here, with the bidding war I have facilitated for your outfitting deal.”

The sides of her mouth twitched, trying to play it cool, but it wasn’t possible to keep the grin down. “Bidding war?”

“Yes, mon cher, a bidding war. Though I must mention, the deals are not quite as lucrative as I had hoped.”

Indy nodded. “Okay, why not?”

“It seems, after your most recent display in France, the usual sponsors are considering you and the Randazzo girl as a package deal. There is nothing in here that comes even close to the offers your friend Penelope was presented with after her junior win at Roland Garros. She and her brother did not jump at the first offer and it was very smart of them.”

“So what your saying is the deal like the one Penny has isn’t on this table right now?”

“Not while your partner remains an amateur. If perhaps you signed together, then while it would not be exactly the same, you would find it closer to the amount your talents are worth.”

“And how much would that be?”

“Five million dollars annually for your main sponsor, be it Nike or Adidas or perhaps Fred Perry or Lacoste, though I think you would do better with a company that has a more solid foothold on American sporting wear. We should not discount the global market either.”

“Right, okay,” Indy agreed, her mind starting to spin, not really sure what Caroline meant. “So what does that mean?”

Caroline waved a hand at all the offers with a dismissive sniff. “For now, all of this means nothing. You must establish yourself more and then, we will see.”

“Establish myself?”

“Yes,” Caroline said. “Winning Wimbledon Juniors, that should do the trick.”

“Well that’s always been the plan, so you can let them know it shouldn’t be a problem.”

~

“There you are,” she said, rounding the last of the library stacks and finding Jack tucked away at the table in the back corner surrounded by piles of paper, his laptop open on the desk off to the side. “Wow, that’s a lot of stuff.”

“Contracts,” Jack muttered. “Penny’s the favorite to win Wimbledon, bum ankle and all, and since the Nike commercial started airing, we’ve got about ten times the media requests we had before Paris.”

“The commercial was awesome,” Indy said, pulling a chair up beside him and dumping her bag on the table. “Mind some company?”

“Have a seat. Calculus?”

“How’d you guess?”

“Wild stab in the dark. How’d the meeting go with the She-Devil?”

Indy flinched. “The meeting was fine, but…” she trailed off.

“But…” he echoed.

Better to just rip the friggin’ Band-Aid off. “She knows about us,” she said quickly, her words blending together, but one look at his face and she knew he understood. He made the same face as his little sister when she was unhappy about something, his lips forming a thin line, green eyes narrowing, not in anger, but in annoyance.

“Caroline’s sharp; I’m actually surprised she didn’t figure it out sooner.” He rubbed at his face, sitting back in his chair. “What did she advise you?”

Indy’s brow furrowed as she leaned forward, elbows on her knees, a hand landing upon his thigh. “I told her it wasn’t any of her business.”

Jack took her hand in his, entwining his fingers with hers. “Baby, it is her business. She’s your agent, it’s her job to protect you in situations like this.”

“Situations like what?”

“Situations that are potentially damaging to your reputation as a professional.”

“You’re not a situation, Jack,” she said, not liking this conversation at all.

“You know what I mean.”

She could see him pulling away, not actually, but in his eyes, the set of his shoulders, the sudden tension in his hand. She made a choice. She raised their joined hands to her lips, pressing a kiss against his wrist before sliding out of her chair, but not rising, simply slipping into his lap. “Pretty sure I can’t sit in a situation’s lap,” she whispered, settling his hand against her hip before taking his face in her hands, brushing her thumb across his mouth. His tongue snuck out, nudging her finger and she smiled before leaning in and catching his lower lip between hers, nipping at it lightly.

One of his hands slid around to the small of her back, drawing her body tightly against his; the other hand cupped the back of her head, fingers twisting into her hair, tugging on it just a little and then harder as she groaned into his mouth and arched into him. Whenever they were together, Indy felt like he was always testing, figuring out what she liked and giving her a little more of it every time. It was how he approached everything, that brilliant mind of his experimenting until he found just the right formula for success. Just as the thought crossed her mind, he wrenched his mouth away from hers. Then, with the slightest increase in pressure from his thumb, he angled her head just right, his lips finding that spot just below her ear that he’d discovered the day before, closing around it in a hot, wet kiss. Her entire body jumped at the contact.

“Fuck.” The word slipped out, but it seemed to spur him on. He stood quickly, settling her on the table. Indy’s hands fumbled at his shoulders, trying to find purchase there and keep their bodies close, but he didn’t let her get far, his hands at her hips, flexing against them for a moment before pulling her against him, groans escaping their throats in harmony.

“Do you know what you do to me, baby?” he asked, but she responded without words, shifting her hips, feeling his reaction to her. “Shit,” he ground out from between clenched teeth. “We can’t…Indiana; we can’t do this here.”

She leaned back, trying to catch her breath, but it was nearly impossible with his mouth still hovering over her pulse point.

“Okay,” she said, trying to untangle herself from him, but only succeeding in rubbing full length against him.

“Fuck, Indiana,” he said, his head dropping to her shoulder.

“Sorry,” she said, her tone letting him know she wasn’t sorry at all.

“Yeah, you sound it.” Finally he stepped away from her, giving her the space to climb down off the table. He fell into his chair and she sat back down on hers and the moments bled together as they simply sat in silence. No awkwardness, just a comfortable quiet.

“It’s getting harder to stop,” she said, her voice still laced with everything she felt for him.