Page 5 of Score to Settle
If my comment hits, she doesn’t show it. Instead she stands, holding out her hand for me to shake. It’s so formal. If thenext five weeks are going to be like this, I’m going to be pulling over at a lot more broken-down Dodges. “Shall we get started now you’re finally here?” she asks, cocking an eyebrow like she’s daring me to carry on being a dick.
Happy to oblige, I throw a glance back to the stove. “Sorry, sweetheart.” I grin, guessing she’ll hate the endearment, and by the narrowed eyes I’m right. “The plates aren’t out yet. I’ve got time for a shower.”
“Excuse me?” Her look is pure disbelief, but I’m already by the door and Mama is coming to my rescue.
“House rules, I’m afraid,” Mama says, flashing Harper a sympathetic smile. “They can shower if I haven’t plated dinner. Believe me, raising three boys, you’re grateful when they wash. Besides, there’s plenty of time now that you’re staying here.”
I flinch. “Staying? At the ranch? You’re kidding, right?”
Mama shakes her head. “I don’t joke about business, Jake. You know that. Harper is here to go behind the scenes and get to know the real you so she can write a feature which will go a long way to saving your ass. She’s hardly going to do that grabbing a few minutes with you after practice. So I invited her to stay. She’s in Chase’s room.”
I sigh and disappear into the hall and up the stairs before the reporter can give me another of her glares. How the hell has this gone to shit so fast?
If my football career is hanging in the balance with only Harper Cassidy and this feature to save it, then I’m in a whole world of trouble. Because one thing is for sure—based on the looks she just fired my way, Harper already thinks she’s got me all figured out. I really need to get out of this interview…
THREE
HARPER
Notes for feature: The first time I meet Jake Sullivan he walks in an hour late and reeking of cheap women’s perfume.
“You’re at Oakwood Ranch? Have you been kidnapped?”
“Very funny, Mia,” I whisper as I close the door to Chase’s bedroom.
“So that’s it, then? You’re leaving me without warning? How am I supposed to survive with nerdy Edward and his blender on my own? Who am I going to bitch about those gold diggers onLA Love Huntwith?”
I laugh into the phone. “Edward’s not some creepy housemate. He’s your boyfriend and you bought him that blender for Christmas last year after you broke his old one making margaritas. I thought you’d be glad to get your couch back for a while. Besides, we both know Edward only pretends to hateLA Love Hunt. Now that I’m gone, he can watch it with you.”
Her cackle makes me grin. “True. So what’s it like being there again?” she asks. “Is Jake still as hot in real life as he looks on TV?”
I think of those broad shoulders and muscles, the dark hair he keeps pushed away from his face and the stubble across his strong jaw.Hotter, I think, but I keep it back. Mia needs no encouragement to start talking about hot men and my sex life, or lack of one.
I cast my eyes around Chase’s bedroom. It looks the same as it did on the one time I came here when I was sixteen. Dragged along by Mia to third wheel while she had a brief thing with Chase in high school. I only said yes so I could see where Jake lived. And because Mia begged me.
There’s still a teenage-boy feel to the space. There’s a poster behind the door showing the back of a woman’s naked body. She’s wearing cowboy boots and leading a horse into the sunset, long hair flowing down her back toward a perfectly shaped ass.
There’s a small desk and above it three shelves lined with shiny trophies. A Stormhawks flag hangs proudly on the wall, its bold red and white colors standing out against the plain walls. Chase might play for the Trailblazers now, but it’s clear who his home team was growing up. A framed college football jersey with the number “10” and “Sullivan” printed in bold letters hangs above the bed.
“It feels the same,” I say, remembering the instant sense of peace I felt staring across the paddocks and grassland as a sixteen-year-old madly in love with the star of the football team. The air fresh and dewy, the sky endless. Even on a cold November evening there’s a warmth to the ranch I can’t explain. It’s hard not to compare it to my dad’s house. How his minimalist décor creates the opposite effect to Oakwood Ranch—cold and uninviting. Or maybe that’s just the way it’s always felt with my dad after my mom died and it was just the two of us.
For a moment, the loneliness of my childhood threatens to consume me. I was only three when Mom died and I don’t remember her. But I remember the emptiness. My dad workingaway more often than not. I grew up being raised by nannies—people who were paid to care for me. I didn’t know any different until I started going to friends’ houses and seeing what families really looked like. No surprise I spent most of high school at Mia’s.
I glance out the window. Chase’s room is over the kitchen, facing toward a large barn. Beyond the wide driveway and the two trucks lined up beside Jake’s are a row of fenced paddocks, the grass rich green and overgrown. There’s a stillness here, a wild beauty that makes me feel like I can breathe a little easier, despite every fiber of my being screaming at me that this is a bad idea.
“Are you ripping off your clothes around him yet?” Mia’s laugh drags me back to the moment. Then she gasps. “Oh my God. Do you remember that story you wrote?—”
“Mia,” I cut her off, my face flaming at the memory she’s yanking, kicking and screaming, to the surface of my thoughts. “That was a long time ago. I was sixteen. Now I’m a journalist and a professional and I’m here to do a job.”
It might’ve been a long time ago, and I might be a different person now from the shy, nerdy girl I was in high school, but I haven’t forgotten the story Mia is thinking of. It was an article about Jake—the star of the football team. But I made the mistake of showing one person, and it got out—copied and plastered all over the school. I’ll never forget the hurt and humiliation from Jake’s words after he read it.
Mia laughs again. “Do a job? Do Jake Sullivan, more like.”
If it was anyone else, I’d carry on arguing, but instead I groan, not really minding. Mia has had my back since the seventh grade when her parents divorced and she moved from Michigan to be closer to her mom’s side of the family and the family business—running Arquette Media, the home ofSportsMagazineas well as a dozen other magazines and newspapers, and one news channel.
For all of five minutes we had plans for her mom to marry my dad, making us sisters. It quickly went out the window when we realized Mia’s mom’s corporate media head was the opposite of my dad’s journalistic view of the world.
But we’ve been best friends through high school and college, and she was there to pick up the pieces when it all went wrong in New York this summer. No one makes me laugh like Mia.
