The Striker's Chance (9 page)

“But you often leave the pitch in worse shape than when you stepped on it. Your injuries seem to be more frequent and more severe than when you played in England. Do you think your body can really sustain another season in the CSL?”

Kepler shrugged. “I took more than a year out from the sport, and it will take some time to bounce back. I have no reason to believe I can’t carry on scoring for Discovery for several years.”

That increasingly familiar pang of guilt was like an icy hand reaching up through Holly’s ribcage and squeezing her heart. She swallowed hard and nodded encouragingly at Kepler as Evan paused to scribble something in his notepad.

“Okay, next question,” Evan continued. “Since coming to Charlotte your personal behavior seems to have undergone a radical change compared to the Kepler de Klerk we were used to seeing routinely falling out of nightclubs and into taxis with an endless variety of women.”

“What’s your question, Evan?” Holly demanded.

Evan looked up from his notebook with a self-satisfied smirk. “Do you really expect us to believe you’re a changed man and not merely the subject of an expensive PR campaign?”

“Right, that’s enough.” She stepped forward. “You’re done.”

“That was only three questions,” Evan said smugly as Jeff moved to his side, ready to escort him out if necessary.

“And it was three too many. Out you go, and don’t expect another press pass for a Discovery match.” Holly pointed toward the door.

She glanced over her shoulder, grateful to see that Kepler’s posture was relaxed and slightly bemused. He certainly had his tempestuous moments, but she was thankful that he knew to hold it together in front of a room full of journalists.

“I’m going.” Evan pocketed his recorder and held up his hands. Then he leveled his gaze with Holly’s, leaned toward her and muttered at a volume clearly meant for her ears only, “Still an uptight bitch, I see.”

Kepler moved so fast, it wasn’t until one of the journalists stood quickly and tipped his chair over that she realized what was happening.

Kepler towered over the older man, clenching a fistful of Evan’s shirt. Jeff had one hand on Kepler’s arm, and Sven was rapidly advancing across the room from where he’d been standing by the door.

“Don’t you dare speak to her like that,” Kepler hissed. “Who do you think you are?”

Evan gaped at Kepler, but when cameras began to flash and click all over the room a sinister smile crept across his face. Holly’s heart raced with panic. Evan knew as well as she did that Kepler couldn’t hurt him with so many people watching, and that he didn’t need to. These photos were all the damnation anyone needed.

Sven barked at Kepler to let Evan go. Tyson Daniels had appeared from somewhere and had a hand on Kepler’s shoulder, and around them journalists and photographers jostled for position, trying to snap the best photo on everything from high-end professional lenses to low-resolution phone cameras.

Holly closed her eyes for a split second as she gathered herself. Then she slipped between the figures in the adrenaline-fueled, macho tableau. She elbowed her way between Evan and Kepler and, with her back to the reporter, laid a hand flat on Kepler’s chest.

He peered at her through eyes clouded with fury, his jaw set and hard.

“It’s not worth it,” she implored. “Just let him go.”

He glared at her for a second and then switched his gaze to Evan. After a few of the longest moments of Holly’s life, Kepler released Evan with a throaty sound of disgust.

She didn’t care what happened to Evan, or Sven, or Jeff—or anyone else in the room after that point. She just wanted Kepler out.

She gripped his forearm and led him through the door and down the hall. Jeff would never be able to keep the journalists from trying to follow them, and sure enough, within seconds their footsteps were chasing them down the corridor. Holly doubled her speed, and just as it occurred to her that Kepler was jogging after her on an injured ankle they reached the door to the equipment room. She yanked it open, shoved him inside and threw the bolt shut behind them.

He flipped on the light to reveal a long, narrow room crammed with everything from soccer balls to spare goal netting to small orange cones for sprinting drills. It was dry and cool, and the smell of new leather pervaded the air.

“I know, I know,” Kepler began, with what sounded like genuine remorse, as he perched on the edge of a table. “I’ve ruined everything. Go on, let me have it. No one can hear you yelling in here.”

“I’m not going to yell at you.” Holly was astonished to find that she didn’t even want to. “Evan is a first-degree asshole and deserves a lot more than what you did.”

His brow furrowed in confusion. “You’re not pissed off?”

“Don’t get me wrong, it’s a PR disaster. Evan was deliberately trying to provoke you, and he succeeded. There are several hundred ways you could have handled that better, and I’m going to have to call in every favor I’ve got in order to clean this up.” Her smile was slow and reluctant, but she couldn’t stop it. “That said, I appreciate you sticking up for me. I guess it’s not very ladylike to wish ill on someone, but Evan is the lowest of the low, and I loved seeing him so terrified.”

“He had no right to speak to you that way. Any decent man would have done the same,” he said with uncharacteristic humility. Then a sly smile crept across his face, and he seemed much more familiar. “Did he really look scared?”

“Petrified would be the word. And why not? He’s seen you take down some of the toughest players in the sport. Who wouldn’t be frightened if Killer de Klerk got in their face?”

Kepler wrinkled his nose. “I’ve always hated that name. I’m not a naturally aggressive player at all.”

“I beg to differ,” Holly countered playfully. She realized she was flirting, and although an alarm bell was ringing somewhere deep in her brain, she couldn’t stop herself. “I’ve watched a lot of footage of your games—you definitely tend to be on the giving end of the tackle more often than the receiving.”

“You need to watch again,” he chided. “Look for attempted tackles, not just executed ones. And bear in mind that everyone wants to go after the big, powerful striker up front because he’s the most likely to score. On the other hand, I’m impressed you’ve had a look at some old matches.”

He put his hands on her hips and drew her in between his knees, so the edge of the table bumped against her legs. She stuck out her hands to steady herself and they landed on his thighs, which were as hard as boulders.

He circled his thumbs on the points of her hipbones, and her face flushed as a matching heat began to simmer between her legs.

“Did you like what you saw?” he asked.

Holly eased her hands under the hem of his sky-blue shorts and found another pair of tight, black compression shorts underneath.

She traced the edges with her fingertips. “What are these for?”

“To keep my hamstrings warm,” he explained, his voice soft and husky as his hands made slow, subtle progress over the curve of her rear. “And to stop me from flashing a stadium of twenty thousand people.”

“Now that might improve ticket sales.” She slid her hands deeper between the two layers of cloth, relishing the muscular lines of his thighs. “What other secrets do you have under your uniform?”

His hands cupped her behind, and when he tugged her in more tightly Holly discovered that those compression shorts were no match for the strength of his arousal.

“I’d be more than happy to show you,” he offered as her palms came to rest on either side of his narrow haunches. He gazed up at her with a coy smile on his sensuous lips, his eyes smoldering with desire. His legs were warm beneath her hands, and her nipples hardened into traitorous peaks as he squeezed her rear through her skirt.

A shoe squeaked on the linoleum floor on the other side of the equipment room door, and her heart seized in a moment of panic at the thought of someone bursting in to find them. Her pulse slowed as she remembered locking the door, but the moment was gone. She withdrew her hands and placed them squarely on Kepler’s chest to keep him from pulling her any closer.

“We’re not doing this.”

“Doing what?” he asked playfully, but she shook her head. His smile faded and he dropped his hands. She took a decisive step backward. “You’re going to spend all night killing Evan’s story,” he said, rising. “And tomorrow morning you’ll hate me again.”

“Kepler, I never hated you,” Holly admonished, but he was yanking his shorts back into place and starting toward the door. He raised the bolt, pulled open the door and gestured into the hall.

“After you.”

Holly stared out at the empty corridor, suddenly feeling the weight of the crisis that awaited her beyond the doorway. She drew a deep breath, straightened her shoulders and marched through.

* * *

Holly tossed back the last of the white wine and set the glass beside her laptop. She’d spent several hours pulling every string she possibly could to mitigate the damage that the confrontation in the pressroom was bound to do to Kepler’s image.

It was just past midnight, and she thought she’d finally gotten ahead of the story. She’d had to promise the reporters from the Recorder’s rival papers two different sets of exclusives, neither of which Kepler would be thrilled to deliver. But it would be worth it when their positive coverage tomorrow morning made Evan’s article look petty and bitter.

Luckily Evan had made a few enemies in his career, and the clumped mess of people involved in the incident meant the photos didn’t have the kind of immediate, obvious impact newspapers usually preferred. They would appear in the
Recorder
tomorrow, for sure, but the photo editor at one of the other papers told her Kepler’s hand on Evan’s shirt was only barely visible.

Thank God Discovery came out with a victory over Cleveland. It was much easier to excuse the temper of a winning player than one who lost.

She picked up the wine glass before remembering it was empty and then plunked it back down. She felt full of excess energy with no way to expend it. The last few hours had been stressful, but also a major adrenaline rush. Now she was all keyed up with nowhere to go.

Holly caught sight of the
Women’s Wellness
magazine, opened it to Kepler’s spread and positioned it beside her laptop. It was a good article, written in a slightly flirty tone, and the photos were magnificent. Kepler’s smile on the cover was genuine and endearing, and from the easy way he straddled the gym equipment in the interior photos it was hard to imagine he’d ever been self-conscious about stripping off his shirt.

She slid a newspaper clipping about the restaurant launch next to the magazine. The accompanying picture showed Kepler looking country-club perfect in the blazer she’d begged him to wear, and his gracious smile gave absolutely no indication that he hated every minute of the event. His sunny good looks fit right in with the crowd of Charlotte socialites that had gathered for the launch. He could as easily have emerged from an old, esteemed family in Savannah as from an industrial seaport town in deepest Africa.

Finally she pulled out a write-up of Discovery’s first win in Pittsburgh a few weeks earlier. The sports photographer for the Pittsburgh paper had gotten an amazing shot of Kepler with his leg extended in a powerful kick, his shirt clinging to every muscle in his torso, his face a study in steely determination. Every inch the star player Discovery wanted.

Yet something was missing.

Holly rested her chin on her hand as she surveyed the fruits of her labor. The image was there, coherent and consistent. Still, and although she’d had no feedback to this effect, she couldn’t help feeling that the contrivance showed through.

She turned to her laptop and did a quick image search for Kepler’s name alongside the names of a few of the more colorful British tabloids. Her screen flooded with familiar pictures of Kepler squinting into paparazzi camera flashbulbs, ducking into taxis, always with a different woman on his arm.

She stared at the images for a long time, trying to spot the authenticity missing from her own campaign. But the longer she looked, the more she became convinced that these weren’t quite the real deal either.

With a few clicks of the mouse she surfed to a video website and scrolled through the results from a search on Kepler’s name. She’d seen most of it before—post-match interviews, clips of his goals, a few longer interviews from British television. She flicked through them with an impatient urgency, searching for something specific but not quite sure what.

She paused on a video several pages into the results. Its graininess indicated someone had captured it from an old recording. As it began to load she realized it was an interview from when Kepler first signed with a team in Spain almost thirteen years ago.

The pre-interview background was all in Spanish, as were the interview questions, but although his answers had Spanish subtitles Kepler spoke English. Holly’s jaw dropped as he first appeared on the screen. His hair was lighter, his face was rounder, and his frame was lankier. At eighteen, he seemed impossibly young.

“My mother ran an after-school study club in Kwazakhele, a township in Port Elizabeth,” he explained in a much stronger accent than he had today. “I used to kick the ball around with the other kids waiting for their siblings or parents to pick them up. I loved it. My school only offered rugby or cricket, but I was too tall and skinny for rugby and too impatient for cricket, so I was never that into sports. As soon as my foot connected with that ball, though, I was hooked.”

The interviewer asked him something in Spanish, and he replied, “Townships are these areas we have in South Africa.” He paused, clearly trying to choose his words carefully. “I guess you might call them slums, or shanty towns, but that’s not always necessarily true. Some people live in shacks, yes, but some live in houses. Some townships have schools and roads and shops, and others are all residential. But I guess it’s fair to say most people living in the townships are quite poor.”

Another question. Kepler smiled before he answered. “I was very young, so I never thought about the fact that the kids I was playing with had so much less than I did. That’s one of the great things about this sport—you don’t need lots of money or fancy equipment to play. Just a ball and a little bit of space. No one cared that I would go home to running water and a hot meal, while my opponent might have to sleep four to a bed on a packed-dirt floor. When the ball was in play, none of that was important to any of us. Winning was all that mattered.”