Page 14 of A Kind Wedding

Another reporter waved her hand and Todd called on her. "Nevada is a lot different from Finland. Are you liking it here?"

Mikael gave her a wide grin. "It's hot here. But so are the women." He waggled his brows.

“Oh, God, I've got to put a stop to this." I marched to the front of the room and then up on the platform set up for the event. Todd, Naomi, Connor, and Mikael looked at me in surprise, as did the rest of the team.

I ignored them all as I stepped in front of the mic. "We are very excited to have Mikael here playing with the Silver Nuggets, but we don't want to forget the rest of the team. Last season, Dylan Katz blocked what could've been a goal from the Buckaroos, thereby saving our win and the championship. Dylan, why don’t you come up and answer some questions?"

As I looked at the team, they were surprised, and then they stood a little taller at being recognized.

Dylan stepped forward, glancing at Naomi and Todd as if he felt he needed their permission. Naomi smiled and motioned to the mic. I glanced at Todd, who was giving me a hard stare, suggesting he didn't like what I did.

I stayed on the platform, making sure Todd didn’t muck things up again. Once our time was up, we exited the platform, and Pierce Jackson and Reed Hampton stepped up along with Bo Tyler and their team.

I didn't get very far away from the platform before a hand gripped my arm and stopped me in my tracks.

"What do you think you were doing?" Todd looked down at me in disapproval.

"What were you doing?” I shot back.

"I was doing exactly what I set out to do, which was to highlight Mikael and get attention on him."

"Did you hear the things he was saying up there? He's going to make you and the rest of the team look like a bunch of misogynists. And after everything that you did to Naomi last year, everybody's going to think all you care about is sex. This is a hockey team, Todd. Not Mikael’s team. Not let's-have-a-scandal to make money."

His jaw tightened. "It's been my experience that all publicity is good publicity."

"Well, after tonight, I suspect you'll find out that’s not true."

“Mr. Marshall?" Todd and I looked to see a photographer with their camera trained on us. Todd slid on a smile as his arm came around me. He leaned over as the photographer took a picture. "We need to talk about this, but not here. I expect to see you up in the suite once this is all over with." With that, he walked off.

I stood for a moment, holding onto my righteous indignation. I felt certain that the things Mikael said were going to be used as soundbites to make Todd and the rest of the team look bad. But Todd's reaction suggested that perhaps my job was at risk.

I had been between the proverbial rock and a hard place. My job was to market the team, but to do it in a way that was good for the team as a whole, I had to stop the interview of Mikael because he wasn't ready. But in stopping it, I’d gone against my boss. He hired me because I knew my job, but clearly, he didn’t trust me.

I blew out a breath and left the ballroom, heading straight to the bar. I figured I had another fifteen or twenty minutes before Todd expected me in the suite to reprimand me or fire me.

I downed my drink wondering what I’d done to deserve such a string of bad luck, starting from my fiancé cheating, getting laid off, and now pissing my boss off for doing my job.

7

Todd

Usually, I found Betts's defiance stimulating. And this time it was no different. Seeing the fire in her eyes as she confronted me turned me on.

But I was also pissed off.

She'd marched up onto the platform and taken control of the press conference, which might've been admirable except for the fact that she'd embarrassed me. With our two best players gone and Naomi splitting coaching duties with Connor, we had a lot to do to entice fans back to the game. Making me look ineffectual wouldn't do it. I gave my employees a great deal of leeway in how they interacted with me, but there was a limit, and Betts crossed it.

I was ready to let her know just how egregious her behavior was when a photographer pointed his camera at us. I pushed my anger away and smiled with my arm around Betts, hoping he interpreted the move as saying that her little stunt didn't faze me. It was clear that now wasn’t the time for me to have a serious talk with Betts about boundaries. I let her know that I planned to talk to her later and then walked off so as not to make a scene.

I made my way over to where Naomi stood at the back of the room with her friends Analyn and Ruby while their husbands were on stage, introducing their team.

Naomi glanced at me. "Well, that went well."

I looked at her, not sure whether she was being serious or snarky.

"I guess we'll find out when the media posts the story,” I replied.

Naomi gave me a sheepish smile. "You did go off script. Betts was clear that we were supposed to stay on point."

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