Jennifer Lohmann - Winning Ruby Heart

“Micah, man, stay longer next time,” said one of the cooks from the kitchen, who met him at the front door to drop a sack of food in his lap. “None of this eatin’ and rollin’ when I’ve got a fantasy baseball team to manage.”

Micah handed Patty a wad of bills before turning to the cook. “Frank, you know I’ll be back for lunch tomorrow and you can pick my brain then.” They exchanged a few more pleasantries, and then Micah was out the door with a wave.

As he made his way to his car, he wondered if he should track down Ruby and warn her of King’s interest. Not that King was likely to remember the rise and fall of Chicago’s native gazelle. He’d been busy working his way up the sporting news food chain covering high school football in Texas during that time. However, it was a convenient excuse to ask her for that interview again. No way was he letting her play the part of reformed recluse.

* * *

MICAH ENTERED HIS office on the sprawling suburban Chicago campus of the National Sports Network to find the message light on his phone blinking and no fewer than five sticky notes on his monitor. Since all the notes were from his boss, Micah listened to the phone messages first. There were the usual calls from publicists and agents looking for spotlight stories, two from viewers who had managed to bluff or gruff their way past the operator and one call from King, assuring Micah that he was onto him and would solve the mystery of the female racer.

Micah wouldn’t give King the chance. King wouldn’t even think to ask the interesting questions, like how she’d managed to negotiate her lifetime ban down to five years. The details of her settlement with the governing body were locked up in a nondisclosure agreement, but whatever she’d done for the reduced sentence, her coach had been arrested and the once-great sports agency run by her agent had been dismantled in disgrace. Suggestions that the governing body had gone easy on her because she was white, young, cute and rich had been the dominant theme in any conversation about her punishment.

Micah logged on to his computer and hunted around the old news stories about Ruby, an itch at the back of his brain. The Ruby he remembered had been completely focused on running, but selling out an entire system of cheaters implied that she’d been listening when the people around her talked about the supply chain. She’d claimed not to have been included in the decision making and had simply followed the recommendations of her coach. If Micah was willing to grant her the benefit of the doubt in order to follow his train of thought, then everyone around Ruby had assumed she was too dumb to be a liability and she’d proved, to herself if to no one else, that they’d all underestimated her.

Micah’s realization only made him more determined to prevent King from getting that interview.

He didn’t have time to return the calls, and there was no need to go see what his boss wanted, because Dexter, one of NSN’s executive producers, sauntered up to Micah’s door and leaned against the metal jamb, his arms crossed and curiosity etched across his dark skin. “King Ripley came back from lunch telling everyone you got lucky while in Iowa.”

“As usual, he had access to all the facts and came to the wrong conclusion.”

“But you did have Amir take video of Ruby Heart running.”

That explained why there had been five stickies on his monitor instead of one. When Micah had first started at NSN, he’d been surprised at Dexter’s clairvoyance. Now it was both a blessing and a curse. “I did.”

Dexter’s dreadlocks swayed as he nodded. “And you’re sure it’s her?”

“She didn’t deny it, though she said she’d never do another interview.” The anger he’d seen in her face when she talked about press intrusion into her life had to be a part of whatever new role she was playing.

“And you want her to be in the ultra series.”

“The feature,” Micah said. Ruby may not wish for the spotlight, but the spotlight wished for her.

“Get the interview first. We’ll run that and see how interested people are.”

As soon as Dexter left the office, Micah searched through his contacts until he found Mike Danforth’s number. Five years ago, Mike Danforth had worked in the same office as Ruby’s agent. Mike also owed him a favor and would probably see nothing wrong with Ruby sweating under the hot lights of another interview.

CHAPTER FOUR

RUBY WALKED INTO her parents’ large Lake Forest home and put her running bag on top of the washing machine. Neither the clunk of the bag on the appliance nor the buzz of the overhead lights were enough to distract from the usual deathly silence of the house. Not that the house was emotionless, because cold was an emotion, at least as Ruby had experienced it for the past five years.

She grabbed a towel from her bag, wiping the sweat from the back of her neck. Running had been her passion, her chore and her job. Now it was a gift she both gave and received, and she didn’t ever take it for granted. She’d been itching to get out and run again after a few days’ rest, and today’s volunteer shift at the animal shelter had been especially lovely with the warmer weather and partially cloudy skies. By the third dog she took out for a run, Ruby had settled into a routine and had been able to banish the constant specter of Micah Blackwell.

Her daydreams were nightmares where an interview reinvigorated press attention. At night, though, Micah’s chocolaty voice invited her into his world and she dreamed about what his deltoids and trapezius must look like to support his pecs. She explored the rest of his body in her dreams, too, only to wake up hot and excited.

She walked to the kitchen and got herself a banana and a glass of chocolate milk. When she turned to head down to the weight room for some stretching, she found her mother floating in the doorway, the light linens she wore given a weightless quality with the slight breeze of the fan. Her mom looked thin, which wasn’t unusual, but the black circles were back under her eyes and her cheeks had a sunken quality Ruby didn’t remember having been there this morning.

“You promised.” Her mom’s fingers fluttered together with the same airy quality of her clothes, giving the impression that her mom had so little substance the air from a fan could blow her away.

Her mom’s voice was also several octaves above normal, a sign her mother was more wounded than hurt, so Ruby only asked, “What did I promise?” before taking a gulp of her milk. In another lifetime, she would have rushed to her mother to apologize and beg forgiveness, even before knowing her crime. Also in another lifetime, she would fear finishing a race without knowing her mother would be at the finish line.

In this lifetime, her mom didn’t even know there was a finish line.

“Running.” Her mother’s voice cracked between the two n’s. “You’ve been running.”

“Mom, I’ve been volunteering at the shelter for three years. Why are you complaining about it now?” Ruby’s running used to be a source of pride for her mother. At track meets, in church, and at the grocery store, her mother had always been the first person to exclaim over her daughter’s athleticism and how her daughter was going to be an Olympic champion. Ruby had won her first big race by running right into her mother’s open arms.

Now every time Ruby returned from her shift at the shelter, her mother eyed the running shoes left by the door with the same disgust she gave an errant cuticle. One of the many hard things Ruby had learned five years ago was that her mother’s love was conditional on Ruby’s success.

Ruby didn’t even know what success looked like anymore. Three measly minutes. If she’d run each kilometer only four seconds faster she’d have been looking at her goal from over her shoulder rather than staring at its butt.