Page 30 of Their After Hours Playbook

“Oh. I was pretty little. Only two. My mom was working as a hostess at a restaurant out on Long Island and Tom walked in one day. I guess it was love at first sight.”

Paige struggled with the notion of anyone falling in love with Tom Armstrong, but Zach thought the world of Tom, so surely he had some sliver of a nice personality. She’d simply never had the pleasure of encountering it. “What happened with your dad? If you don’t mind me asking.”

“He and my mom were never married. They met right out of high school. It wasn’t serious. She got pregnant and he took off.”

Paige shook her head. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s hard to miss someone you never knew, if that makes any sense.” Indeed, Zach didn’t seem to feel sad about any of it. He shared it in such a matter-of-fact way. “What about your dad? Your mom raised you on her own, didn’t she?”

Paige nodded. It was funny how similar her own story was to Zach’s. “My parents did marry, but it didn’t last. Only a year. Just long enough for her to have me. By all reports, he couldn’t deal with my mom’s career. It was all-encompassing.”

“Of course. You don’t win a whole bunch of national championships without being fully in it.”

“Seven championships to be exact.” Paige nodded in the direction of the stove. “Water’s boiling.”

“Oh. Thanks.” Zach hustled over and dumped the entire box of pasta into the water, then gave it a stir. “So, do you want to tell me about what happened between you and Tom? Because knowing both of you, I really don’t get it.”

Paige rolled her neck, instantly feeling tense. “I don’t know. Do you really want to hear this?”

“I do. I absolutely do. I want to understand why you hate him and I want to figure out why he thinks you’re a pit viper.”

Paige reared back her head in shock. “A pit viper? He called me that?”

Zach squinted and offered a sheepish smile. “I probably shouldn’t have shared that little detail.”

Paige shook her head and poured herself another glass of wine, then topped off Zach’s glass. “Here’s the story. Ten years ago, when my agency was still very much in its infancy, one of Tom’s clients came to me and asked if I might be interested in representing him.”

Zach stepped closer, seeming engrossed. “Who was it?”

“Roger Fielding. The tennis player.”

“I know who he is. He was still on our roster until he retired a few years ago. So obviously you didn’t actually steal him away.”

“Exactly. It never came of anything. The only reason Roger approached me at all was because his daughter, Laurie, showed so much promise in the sport. He was hoping I would take them both on, since Tom had been hesitant to sign Laurie.”

“Ah. Right.”

“But Tom thought I was trying to poach his client. So he had it out for me after that. Not that he’d been particularly welcoming or kind to start.”

Zach sighed, seeming more resigned than disappointed. Perhaps Tom had always shown this side to Zach. “Professional jealousy. He really did view all other agents as the enemy. I think it was the way his dad raised him, and he started the company.”

Paige took another drink of her wine. “I went for years just thinking we would hate each other and that would be that. Then, apparently Tom saw his chance to get back at me. He tried to hire my husband, Andre. While we were still married. And while Andre was working for me.”

True surprise crossed Zach’s face. “Whoa. Seriously?”

Paige nodded, trying not to think too hard about how badly she’d felt betrayed. “Yes. It was the beginning of the end of our marriage.”

“But you don’t actually blame Tom for that part, do you?”

The question froze Paige in her tracks. Because the truth was that she did on some level blame Tom. But hearing it worded in that particular way, by Zach, made her second-guess this old assumption she’d made. Just then, the timer went off.

“That’s the pasta. One sec.” Zach grabbed some oven mitts, then drained the noodles into a strainer in the sink. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“I know. I’m thinking about it.”

Zach turned the pasta out into a deep skillet, then poured in some of the sauce he’d made, rich with tomatoes and its lovely accompaniments. “No worries. I’ve got all the time in the world.”

“I do blame Tom, to be honest.” Paige approached the stove to better watch him work as he tossed the noodles and adjusted the seasonings. “There was no reason to recruit Andre other than revenge. But when I talked to Roger, he approached me. Not the other way around. And I told Roger that he would have to separate from your firm before I would sign him. I wasn’t going to steal him away.”

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