Cathryn Parry - Something to Prove

“You gonna win next week, Brody?” the kid asked.

“Of course. Are you gonna win your next race, Aiden?”

Aiden blinked at him. “Yes?”

“Say it proud, brother.”

“Yes!”

Brody high-fived him and the kid laughed, which made him laugh too. The world thought Brody was washed up, but he wasn’t. He had just one more race he needed to compete in, but that was nobody else’s business but his own.

“Can I take a photo of you, Brody?” The kid held up his phone.

“Sure.” He looked like crap, but he obliged Aiden with the photo op. Even smiled for the camera.

A throat cleared behind him. “We need to talk strategy.”

Brody turned from the kid to his longtime agent, Harrison Rice, hopping from one foot to the other, looking as if he was being raked over the coals, which he usually was.

“Yeah?” Brody picked up his dumbbells and decided to let Harrison say whatever he needed to say. Brody didn’t need to talk anything with him. He had his own strategy. Always had had.

He lifted the weights and blew out the tension. One more set. He knew the routine cold, and nothing and no one could snap him out of it.

Harrison sat on the bench beside him and wiped his brow with his handkerchief. It was hot in here, but Harrison was the only guy Brody knew who actually carried a handkerchief in his pocket.

“Here’s the deal, Brody—you can’t say anything this afternoon. If the reporter starts digging too much about your last season with MacArthur, or about your injury, then we’re screwed.”

Brody paused in his reps. “Exactly why did you agree to this interview, Harrison?”

“Because the Xerxes people wanted it.”

Right. Brody rolled his eyes. “You don’t see the irony of my sponsoring an energy drink?”

“It’s an excellent deal they’re offering.” Harrison spread his hands. “What am I supposed to do? If you want a comeback, you need training money. If you need training money, you need sponsors.”

True. Though Brody didn’t want a comeback, not a full-fledged one, anyway. Harrison knew that. Of everyone on his business team, Harrison was the one guy who’d been with him since the beginning when Brody had been a pimply rebel teen fleeing a lousy home life to the ski slopes of a New England prep school.

He lifted the weights again. There weren’t too many people he trusted and he surrounded himself with the few he did as coaches and equipment specialists. And Harrison, who was both agent and business manager. “Do we have any other options?”

“No. And I would tell you if we did.”

Brody breathed out and set down his weights. “Who’s the reporter?” he asked quietly.

“A woman from Paradigm magazine.”

“Paradigm? The monthly New York glossy?”

“They have reporters who cover sports stars,” Harrison said defensively.

“Great.” He felt like spitting. “A celebrity reporter. Even worse.”

“It’s what Xerxes wants, and it’s a puff piece. It’s tailor-made for our purposes.” Harrison shifted. “I’ve been thinking about it, Brody, and here’s how we’ll handle it. I’ll write up some quotes and put them on index cards for you. When the reporter turns on her tape recorder, you read from the cards. Better yet, memorize them. That’ll satisfy her, and get us what we want.”

Brody just stared at his agent. If Harrison wasn’t such a miracle worker with the sponsors—which unfortunately he really couldn’t afford to give up—then he would’ve told him to forget it. The same way he’d cut himself loose from his former coaches, trainers and the whole national ski-team organization in favor of forming his own team.

“So, are we on board?” Harrison adjusted his cuff links, and Brody couldn’t help smiling. Yes, his agent was a slick suit inside a sweaty gym. But he’d never turned his back on Brody after the accident, unlike almost everybody else in his life.

He curled a clean towel around his neck and headed over for his cool-down stretch. As a young hotshot, he hadn’t believed in stretching. But at thirty-two, with two debilitating crashes and rehabs behind him, he’d learned that wisdom was better than bravado.

Not always, but usually.

“Brody? Are you even listening to me?”

He gave Harrison a look. “Freaking journalists.” They mangled quotes. They chopped up quotes. They quoted out of context. They took old quotes and applied them to new situations. “Why don’t we just tell her to write what she wants, because that’s what those guys do anyway.”

“Yeah, I know. Everybody’s a lying jerk.” Harrison sighed.

But Brody grinned at him. “Everybody except you, Harrison. You’re the real deal.”

“That’s why you love me, Brody.”

“Don’t make light of it, or I’ll drop you, too,” he joked.

“Whatever.” Harrison wasn’t in a joking mood. “You just make sure the reporter doesn’t find out what we have to hide, not unless you want your reputation to go down in flames. Because sometimes I wonder.”

Brody’s knuckles went white as he gripped the water bottle. He suddenly couldn’t breathe.

“Yeah, something you care about,” Harrison said. “That’s good. You remember that, Brody.”

And then Harrison was gone. But his threat hung in the air—poisoning the rest of Brody’s cool-down.

AMANDA STOOD AT THE SINK in her hotel bathroom and sucked in deep, cleansing breaths. It wasn’t like her to be nervous. Then again, maybe it was finally sinking in that she could be facing her career Waterloo, and before her career had ever gotten off the ground. Because, knowingly or not, Chelsea had given her the one assignment that hit too close to home.

He’s a skier, she thought. And he’s just like Dad.

Therein lay her problem.

According to Jeannie, Brody Jones had a reputation for walking out on reporters without saying a word. He was aloof and disrespectful of anyone with a pen and microphone.

From long experience, Amanda knew what a losing proposition it was to deal with arrogant competitors like that. Her father—case in point. The last time she’d met with him, in his office in Colorado Springs near the Olympic training center, had been a disaster. She’d completely failed. She’d received nothing she’d needed from him, and their mom had been the one to suffer for it.

Grabbing Jeannie’s hairbrush from their mixed jumble of toiletries on the countertop, Amanda vigorously brushed her hair until it crackled with static electricity.

Slow down. Breathe.

I’ve learned since then.

She held on to the edges of the countertop and stared at herself in the mirror, struggling to find calm. This would be different. She’d done her homework and had thought through all the angles for her interview approach. She’d even dressed in full body armor for the event. Today she wore one of Jeannie’s feminine silk-and-Spandex shells over her thinnest lace bra. That was a new tool in her repertoire and one that wasn’t entirely comfortable, but she’d seen how the celebrity reporters in her office dressed, and she would do what she must.

By rote, she ticked through her habitual, pre-interview routine. She dabbed on her lip balm. Pulled her hair back from her face. Tested the batteries in her never-fail, top-of-the-line digital voice recorder.

The tiny gadget was inconspicuous and quiet; she would place it on the table beside her oversize purse and hope that Brody Jones would forget it was there and would open his mouth, just once. One good quote, that was all she needed from him, and then she could return to her sister and the safe, non-skiing man her sister had lined up for her to meet.

She glanced at her phone. Three more minutes. And she’d better set it to silent mode, because the fewer distractions to spook Brody, the better. That was why she’d memorized what she needed to ask him, because she’d figured it was best not to face him with a notepad. Or a pencil. Or anything that screamed Interview with a capital I.