Turnabout's Fair Play (16 page)

Flannery accidently hit S
AVE
instead of D
ELETE
. Oh well, she’d delete it later. She turned the sound off and reholstered the phone.

Cole stood in front of a display case of recent releases, making the small front office look even smaller. The
clack
of her shoes against the travertine tiles caught his attention, and he gave her a big grin.

“Cole, it’s good to see you again.” They exchanged the expected handshake. “Come on back.”

“I’ve been looking forward to this. It’s real exciting to do something new—different from sports. I’ve been writing since I was a kid, dreaming of being a published author someday.” He stopped and touched her shoulder.

She turned to look up at him. Even with her in three-inch heels, he towered over her.

“I want you to know, I want you to be just as hard on me as you are on all of your other authors when it comes to edits. I know I’m going to take a lot of flack about being just another celebrity who thinks he can write a book. I don’t want that to be what people say. I want them to be surprised because it’s actually well written. And I may have a degree in English, but you’re the pro here, and I want to learn from you.”

Heat tweaked Flannery’s cheeks. “It’s a deal. I think you and I are going to work quite well together.”

“And besides, football won’t last forever. Maybe one of these days I can be angling for your job.” He winked at her.

“Yeah, we’ll just see about that.” Flannery’s good humor lasted until they entered the small conference room. Jack and Dustin stood and greeted Cole, who looked as confused as Flannery had been over the unexpected player substitution.

Instead of being able to come up with a few really good ideas and brainstorm how to put them in action, Flannery and Jack spent most of the meeting telling Dustin that everything he was suggesting were things that their marketing department already did. The plastic folder which he’d indicated contained all of Jamie’s notes sat beside his tablet computer, unopened.

Flannery kept an eye on the clock, and at ten forty-five, she closed her folder—all of the copies of marketing campaign ideas they’d done in the past still in it.

“I hate to cut this meeting short, but I have a flight to catch.” She stood and extended her hand across the round table toward Dustin. “Thank you for coming in, Dustin. I’ll—”

“I’ll get my assistant to show you out.” Jack motioned Dustin toward the door, turned, glanced at Cole’s back, and then gave Flannery a significant look.

Cole stood, his brows drawn close together. “That was weird. Who was that guy?”

“Well, apparently Jamie O’Connor got laid off this week, and this is his replacement.” She caught the corner of her bottom lip between her teeth.

“I don’t want to work with this Dustin guy. He didn’t listen to a thing you said and doesn’t know anything about books or marketing them. Jamie at least seemed to have an idea of how sports marketing and book marketing could work together.”

From what Jack had told her they’d discussed Saturday night at the reception, Flannery grudgingly agreed. Jamie had apparently expressed some innovative ideas. None of which Dustin seemed familiar with.

She ushered Cole down the hall toward the front office. “Well, this was just an informational meeting. There’s nothing that says we have to work with the advertising agency. Next week Jack and I will work on putting together our own marketing plan. Then when we meet with this guy—with Dustin again later in the month, we’ll see if he has anything significant to add to it.”

“Well, if I have any say about it, I don’t want to work with that agency. I know Jamie O’Connor’s been laid off and all, but I’d rather we figure out some way we can work with him.” Cole turned and shook her hand when they reached the front office. “I’d rather work with Jamie O’Connor, if at all possible.”

“We’ll see what happens.” Flannery stood in the reception area for a moment until Cole disappeared through the door.

Rushing back to her office, she tried to repress the response she’d really wanted to make, but it trumpeted through her head.

She’d rather work with Jamie O’Connor, too.

Chapter 11

Y
ou don’t have a window or aisle seat anywhere?” Jamie tapped his driver’s license on the high countertop.

“No, sir. Center seats only. Three left. Rows eight, twelve, and sixteen.” The airline rep looked up at him, brows raised in question.

If he had to squeeze in between two other people, he might as well be near the front. “Row eight.”

“You will have a two-and-a-half-hour layover. Is that okay?”

After what transpired this morning? “Yes, as long as I can get a flight out today.”

A few minutes later the rep strapped the barcode strip onto the handle of Jamie’s small suitcase and then stapled the claim tags inside his ticket folder. “Departing at 2:04 p.m. Salt Lake City is your final destination. Arrival at 8:40 p.m. local time.” She closed the folder and handed it to him. “Your flight will be departing from gate C-3. Enjoy your trip.”

“Thanks.” Jamie tucked his sheathed netbook in the crook of his arm and headed for the security gate. Thankfully, not too many people seemed to be flying anywhere at lunchtime on the first Thursday in June, so he didn’t feel rushed in taking his netbook out of the case or removing his shoes—why had he worn athletic shoes instead of something easy to slip out of?

He made it to the other side with no problems and strode a few paces away to put his shoes back on. Before leaving the area, he hailed one of the TSA agents not currently doing anything.

“Is there a Starbucks somewhere near the C concourse?”

“There’s a kiosk right here”—the guy motioned toward a large cart in the corner of the retail lobby the security gate opened out to—“but they’re limited in what they can fix. There’s a full-service store down near C-10 if that’s what you’d prefer.”

“Thank you.” Jamie tucked his ticket folder into the outside pocket of the computer cover and slid his driver’s license into his wallet and returned it to his back pocket.

While the line at security might not have been long, apparently the coffee shop hadn’t gotten the message. But he had almost two hours to kill before the boarding time printed on his ticket, so he didn’t mind standing in line. He let his mind wander—but not too far. He didn’t want to turn into a frustrated, angry traveling man today by getting wound up about this morning.

Finally. Only two people in front of him. He swerved yet again to avoid the ginormous carry-on bag flailing precariously off the shoulder of the woman directly ahead of him. He graciously stepped out of her way after she finished her transaction. After he ordered and joined her at the other end of the counter to wait for his large, extra-shot, double-caramel latte—fat-free, sugar-free, extra-hot, no foam, please—he made sure to give her plenty of room.

The baristas here were fast, so a few moments later, Jamie snagged the last open table in the small café. He pulled out the computer and started it up.

E-mail first, as usual. Messages from Ainslee, Darrell, and Wade. He couldn’t read those right now. He’d already turned his phone ringer off. Ainslee meant well; he just wasn’t ready to talk about it yet. He’d barely been able to tell Cookie that he wouldn’t be going back to the office after today and had decided there was no time like the present to go out to Utah to visit his mother.

He could tell from Cookie’s voice that he’d worried her, but she didn’t try to talk him out of it. He’d call her on his layover and try to explain things. If he could.

He clicked the second button on his “Favorites” toolbar, hoping to read something new from his favorite contributor.

“May I join you?”

Heart thundering, Jamie closed the lid of the small computer and looked up. No, his ears hadn’t deceived him. “Flannery? What are you doing here?” He stood and motioned toward the other chair at the small table. “Please, join me.”

“Thanks.” She popped the lid off her large cup and added five packs of sugar to it.

Like some coffee with your sugar there, Flannery?
Not that he had room to speak—with his double shot of the sweetened caramel flavoring in his own drink. But at least his was sugar-free.

“Oh—your flight—I forgot…you said you’d have to cut the meeting short to catch a flight….” Even as the words tumbled out of his mouth, he cringed at his own discombobulation.

“Yes. So I should be the one asking what are
you
doing here.” She stirred her latte, sipped it, nodded, and snapped the lid back on.

“I’m flying out to Utah to visit my mother.”

“I assume this wasn’t a planned trip.” Flannery’s short-sleeved, dark-blue sweater over a pinkish top with jeans gave her a comfortable, casual air that reminded Jamie of the first time he’d ever met her, at a cookout Cookie had dragged him to at the home of some of her friends last fall. The cookout at which Jamie had made his first great impression on Flannery by calling her Fanny. And then he’d done it again a week ago at the wedding rehearsal. Would he never stop messing up in front of her?

“No. It was sort of a…l–last minute decision.” He might not be ready to talk to anyone else about it, but Flannery deserved an explanation. “Look, about this m–morning …”

Flannery set her cup down and looked at him with questions in her hazel eyes. She pushed her long, thick, blond braid over her shoulder. “I got your message. But Dustin had just arrived, so I couldn’t answer your call.”

Jamie thought a few very un-nice things about Dustin Aaronson—but regretted them when he looked across the table at the beautiful woman seated with him. Maybe not beautiful. Her pert nose and rounded chin kept her from being a true beauty. But not from bringing about a relapse of his stammer.

She would never think mean thoughts about someone.

“I should have told you…. Saturday night, I should have c–come clean and told you I’d been l–laid off. But I was kind of hoping to do this—maybe on my own. But I shouldn’t have made you or Jack or Cole think I was still representing the Gregg Agency. Because I know that’s why y’all agreed to m–meet with me.”

Flannery sat there, looking regal and sipping her coffee for a long moment. “Yes, you probably should have told us that. I’m sorry you lost your job. I hope this didn’t create any problems for you.”

“Other than being called into Armando’s office and made to sign a noncompete statement barring me from doing any work with Cole Samuels for at least six months or face being sued? Not really. I ended up not having to work the rest of today or tomorrow. But actually”—he tried to shift into cocky-grin mode—“that’s not a bad thing. Because I’d been putting off all my month-end reports to do after the meeting with Cole. So it got me out of some tedious paperwork.”

Flannery set her cup down on the table and toyed with the cardboard sleeve. “I can’t help but think this is partially my fault.”

She looked so forlorn, he wanted to reach across the table—not a long distance—and take her hand and offer her comfort. “No—why would you think that?”

“Because I’m the one who told the girl who answered the phone about our meeting with Cole the first time I called your office.”

She’d told…but Ainslee wouldn’t have…would she? Now he really wanted to check his e-mail. He tapped his fingertips against the cover of the netbook. “I don’t think that had anything to do with it.”
Liar
. “Even if that did play into it, it really didn’t do anything other than show me that sports marketing probably isn’t where I’m supposed to stay.”

“What will you do now?”

He shrugged. “Go out to Utah and spend a few days with my mom and her family.”

“Her family?”

“My stepdad and their kids.”

“Wouldn’t that make them your siblings?”

“Half. But they’re both so much younger than me, and we’ve never lived together, so it’s hard to think of them as related to me.”

Flannery cocked her head. “You and your mom aren’t close?”

He shrugged—less comfortable talking about his mom than what’d happened this morning. “After my dad died, she moved me into my grandmother’s house and then left and traveled out West to ‘find herself,’ or something like that. She met Don, they got married, and she’s lived out there with her new family ever since.”

Flannery’s eyes widened a bit more at each revelation of his past. “But you still saw her—at least for holidays, right?”

“Christmas, usually. But I think that was more Don feeling bad that Mom and I didn’t get along very well.” He pressed his lips together, thinking about the months before she’d left and the few times she’d come back before meeting and marrying Don. “We had a couple of really nasty fights, and when I was fifteen—right before she and Don got married—I told her I never wanted to talk to her again.”

Jamie almost lost himself in the warmth of Flannery’s gray-brown-green eyes. Only Cookie and Danny knew this much about him. Why was he telling this woman who, before today, had made it abundantly clear she didn’t want anything to do with him?

“But you’ve reconciled since then?”