“Sorry, but it’s not going to happen.”
Her forehead remained smooth, her expression composed. “This won’t work, you know.” She toyed with the yogurt carton on her fruit plate. “I never put down the competition, especially when it’s a tiny operation like Marriages by Myrna. It smacks too much of bullying. But—”
“Perfect for You.”
“What?”
“She calls it Perfect for You, not Marriages by Myrna.” He couldn’t imagine why he felt the need to clarify this, but somehow it seemed necessary.
“A wise decision,” Portia replied, with only a whiff of condescension. “But let me just say this. I resent the way people think a trip to Kinko’s to get business cards printed up is all it takes to be a matchmaker. But then, as a sports agent, you know exactly what I mean.”
She’d scored a field goal with that one. Annabelle had no depth of experience, only enthusiasm.
Portia pushed aside her tray, although she’d only nibbled at the corner of a honeydew cube. “Is there something we’re not providing that makes you feel the need to expose my candidates to an outsider? I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t the tiniest bit threatened, especially since I offered to sit in on these initial interviews myself.”
“Don’t worry about it. Annabelle lacks the killer instinct. She liked Melanie better than she liked her own candidate. She tried to talk me into seeing her again.”
That caught her by surprise. “Really? Well …Ms.Granger is an odd little duck, isn’t she?”
It must have been the engine noise because, for a moment, he thought she said “odd little fuck,” and he was hit with a vision of Annabelle naked. The notion took him aback. Annabelle amused him, but she didn’t turn him on. Not really. Maybe he’d thought about her sexually a couple of times, and he’d made a couple of smarmy references to fluster her. But nothing serious. Just messing around.
The plane hit an air pocket, and he pulled his mind from the bedroom back to business. “I don’t expect you to be comfortable with this, but as I said last night, the process will go smoother if Annabelle’s there for all the introductions.”
The fire in her eyes told him exactly what she was thinking, but she was too much of a pro to lose her cool. “That’s a matter of opinion.”
“She’s a tadpole, Portia, not a shark. The women relax with her, and I can get a clearer picture of who they are in a shorter period of time.”
“I see. Well, I’ve been doing this for a lot more years than she has. I’m sure I could expedite these interviews better than—”
“Portia, you couldn’t be nonthreatening if you tried, and I mean that as the highest form of compliment. I told you from the beginning that I intended to make this easy on myself. It turns out that Annabelle’s the key, and nobody’s more surprised about that than I am.”
She retrenched, but she wasn’t happy about it. He didn’t entirely blame her. If somebody poached on his territory, he’d have come out swinging, too. “All right, Heath,” she said. “If this is what you need, then I’ll make sure it works.”
“Exactly what I want to hear.”
The flight attendant took their trays, and he pulled out his copy of the Sports Lawyers Journal. But the article on tort liability and fan violence didn’t hold his attention. Despite his best efforts to keep it simple, his hunt for a wife was growing more complicated by the day.
I like her,” Heath said to Annabelle on the following Monday evening as Rachel left Sienna’s. “She’s fun. I had a good time.”
“Me, too,” Annabelle said, even though that was hardly the point. But the introduction had gone better than she’d dared hope, with lots of laughter and lively conversation. The three of them had shared their food prejudices (Heath wouldn’t touch an organ meat, Rachel hated olives, and Annabelle couldn’t stomach anchovies). They told embarrassing stories from their high school years and debated the merits of the Coen brothers’ movies. (Thumbs-up from Heath, thumbs-down from Rachel and Annabelle.) Heath didn’t seem to mind that Rachel wasn’t a knockout on the order of Gwen Phelps. She had both the polish and the brains he was looking for, and there were no cell phone interruptions. Annabelle allowed the twenty minutes to expand to forty.
“Good work, Tinker Bell.” He drew out his BlackBerry and typed a memo to himself. “I’ll call her tomorrow and ask her out.”
“Really? That’s great.” She felt a little queasy.
He looked up from the BlackBerry. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Why?”
“You have a funny expression.”
She pulled herself back together. She was a professional now, and she could handle this. “I’m just imagining the newspaper interviews I’ll give after Perfect for You hits the Fortune Five Hundred.”
“Nothing’s more inspiring than a girl with a dream.” He returned the BlackBerry to his pocket and withdrew his well-stuffed money clip. She frowned. He frowned back. “Now what?”
“Don’t you have a nice, discreet credit card tucked away somewhere?”
“In my business, it’s all about the flash.” He flashed a hundred-dollar bill and tossed it on the table.
“I’m only mentioning it because, as I think I told you, image consultation is part of my business.” She hesitated, knowing she had to tread carefully. “For some women…women of a certain upbringing…obvious displays of wealth can be a little off-putting.”
“Believe me, they’re not off-putting to twenty-one-year-old kids who’ve grown up with food stamps.”
“I see your point, but—”
“Got it. Money clip for business, credit card for courtship.” He slipped the object under discussion back into his pocket.
She’d basically accused him of vulgarity, but instead of being offended, he seemed to have filed the information away as dispassionately as if she’d given him tomorrow’s weather report. She considered his flawless table manners, the way he dressed, his knowledge of food and wine. Clearly these things had all been part of his curriculum, right along with torts and constitutional law. Exactly who was Heath Champion, and why was she beginning to like him so much?
She pleated her cocktail napkin. “So…about your real name…?”
“I already told you. Campione.”
“I did some research. Your middle initial is D.”
“Which stands for none of your damned business.”
“Something bad then.”
“Horrifying,” he said dryly. “Look, Annabelle, I grew up in a trailer park. Not a nice mobile home park—that would have been paradise. These heaps weren’t good enough for scrap. The neighbors were addicts, thieves, people who’d gotten lost in the system. My bedroom looked out over a junkyard. I lost my mother in a car accident when I was four. My old man was a decent guy when he wasn’t drunk, but that wasn’t very often. I earned everything I have, and I’m proud of that. I don’t hide where I came from. That dented metal sign on my office wall, the one that says BEAU VISTA, used to hang on a post not far from our door. I keep it as a reminder of how far I’ve come. But beyond that, my business is mine, and yours is doing what I tell you. Got it?”
“Jeez, all I did was ask your middle name.”
“Don’t ask again.”
“Desdemona?”
But he refused to entertain her, and she ended up staring at his back as he headed for the kitchen to pay his respects to Mama.
I want you in the clubs every night,” Portia announced to her staff the next morning. Ramon, Sienna’s bartender, had awakened her at midnight with the disturbing news about Annabelle Granger’s success with her latest match, and she hadn’t been able to fall back to sleep. She couldn’t get past the feeling that another important client was slipping away from her. “Pass out your business cards,” she told Kiki and Briana, along with Diana, the girl she’d hired to replace SuSu. “Pick up phone numbers. You know the routine.”
“We’ve done that,” Briana said.
“But apparently not well enough or
Heath Champion wouldn’t have made plans with Granger’s prospect last night instead of ours. And what about Hendricks and Mccall? We haven’t shown them anybody new in two weeks? What about the rest of our clients? Kiki, I want you to spend the rest of the week staking out the modeling agencies. I’ll hit the charity luncheons and the Oak Street boutiques. Briana and Diana, work the hair salons and the big department stores. All of you—clubs at night. By this time next week, we’re going to be screening a fresh batch of candidates.”
“A lot of good it’ll do with Heath,” Briana muttered. “He doesn’t like anybody.”
They didn’t get it, Portia thought as she returned to her office and flipped through her calendar. They didn’t understand how hard you had to work to stay on top. She gazed down at Friday’s calendar entry. In a short, terse phone conversation, Bodie Gray had set up their date for this weekend. She’d done her best not to think about it since. Just the possibility that someone might see them together gave her nightmares. But at least he didn’t seem to have told Heath about her spying episode.
A helicopter flew overhead. She rubbed her temples and considered setting up a spa day. She needed something to lift her spirits, something to make her feel like her old self again. But as she turned toward her computer, a traitorous voice whispered there weren’t enough massages, ayurvedic facials, or hot stone pedicures in the world to fix whatever wanted to stop working inside her.
Annabelle couldn’t afford to pin all her hopes on Rachel’s date with Heath, so she spent the rest of the week hanging out at two of Chicago’s top universities. At the University of Chicago in Hyde Park, she alternated between haunting the hallways of the Graduate School of Business and lingering by the steps of the Harris School of Public Policy. She also made her way to Lincoln Park, where she spent most of her time with the music majors at the De Paul Concert Hall. At both schools, she kept her eyes open for comely graduate students and beautiful faculty members. When she found them, she approached them directly, explained who she was and what she was looking for. Some were married or engaged, one was a lesbian, but the world loves a matchmaker, and most of the women were interested in helping her. By the end of the week, she had two great candidates ready to go if she needed them, as well as half a dozen women who weren’t right for Heath, but who were interested in signing on as clients themselves. Since they couldn’t afford the kinds of fees she wanted to charge, she established an academic discount.
Heath was out of town for the week, and he didn’t call. Not that she expected him to. Still, for someone who spent all his time on the phone, she would have thought he could have spared a few minutes to check in with her. Instead of stewing about it, she slipped on her sneakers, jogged to Dunkin’ Donuts, and distracted herself with an apple Danish.
Heath spent the first four days of the week traveling between Dallas, Atlanta, and St. Louis, but even as he met with clients and player personnel directors, he found himself thinking ahead to his Friday afternoon powwow at Stars headquarters. When it came to the Stars, he tried to do as much business as possible with Ron McDermitt, the team’s top-notch general manager, but once again Phoebe Calebow had insisted on seeing him instead. Not a good sign.
Heath prided himself on having a good relationship with all the team owners. Phoebe was the glaring exception. It was his fault they’d gotten off to a bad start. One of his first clients had been a Green Bay veteran unhappy with the contract his former agent had negotiated. Heath wanted to prove how tough he was, so when the Stars expressed interest in the guy, Heath had unfairly strung Phoebe along, letting her believe she had a good chance at signing him even though he knew otherwise. He’d then taken her interest in the player to the Packers’ bargaining table and used it to gain the leverage he needed to get his client a better deal. Phoebe was furious and, in a blistering phone call, warned him never to use her like that again.
Instead of taking her words to heart, he’d gotten into another battle with her a few months later over a second client, this one a Stars player. Heath had decided he needed to sweeten the third year of an existing three-year contract, again negotiated by a former agent, but Phoebe refused to budge. After a few weeks, Heath threatened to hold the player out of training camp. The guy was her best tight end, and since Heath had her over a barrel, she came through with a respectable counteroffer. Still, it wasn’t the splashy new deal Heath thought he needed to establish his reputation as an agent on the move. He dug in and sent the player deep-sea fishing the day training camp started.
Phoebe was enraged, and the media had a field day playing up the feud between the Stars’ tight-fisted owner and the city’s brash new agent. Heath capitalized on the player’s popularity with the fans by giving interviews at the drop of a hat and dramatically berating Phoebe for treating one of her best men so shabbily. As the first week of training camp came to end, Heath kept on showboating, staying cozy with the sports columnists and working the sound bites on the ten o’clock news. A back swell built against Phoebe. Still, she wouldn’t budge.
Just as he’d begun to have second thoughts about the wisdom of his strategy, a stroke of luck occurred. The Stars’ backup tight end broke his ankle in practice, and Phoebe was forced to cave. Heath got the extravagant deal he wanted, but in the process, he’d made her look bad, and she’d never forgiven him. The experiences taught him two hard lessons: In a good negotiation, everybody comes out feeling like a winner. And a successful agent doesn’t build his reputation by humiliating the people he has to work with.
The Stars’ receptionist directed him to the practice field, and as he approached, he saw Dean Robillard cozying up to Phoebe on the sidelines bench. He swore under his breath. The last thing he wanted Robillard to witness was Phoebe Calebow cutting him to shreds. Dean looked like he’d stepped out of Surfer Magazine: beard stubble, gel-rumpled blond hair, tropical print shorts, a T-shirt, and athletic sandals. Hoping to minimize the collateral damage, Heath made a quick decision and concentrated on him first. “Is that a new Porsche I saw sitting in your parking space?”
Dean gazed at him through the yellow iridium lenses of a pair of high-tech Oakleys. “That ol’ junker? Heck, no. I bought it at least three weeks ago.”
Heath found a laugh, even though the hair had begun to stand up on the back of his neck. And not from being around Robillard. He slipped on his own sunglasses, not so much to protect his eyes, but to even out the playing field.
“Well, well, well…,” Phoebe Somerville Calebow cooed in the husky, bimbo voice she used to conceal her razor-sharp mind. “Look who’s joined us. And I thought our exterminator had gotten rid of all the rats around here.”
“Nope. The meanest and strongest somehow manage to survive.” Heath grinned, doing his best to hit the balance between not pissing her off any more than he had to and letting Dean see she couldn’t intimidate him.
The Stars’ owner and chief operating officer was in her forties now, and nobody wore the years better. She looked like a more intellectual version of Marilyn Monroe, with the same cloud of pale blond hair and a powerhouse body, today clad in a clingy aqua shell and pencil-slim canary yellow skirt slit up the side. Busty, leggy, and delectable, she should have been a centerfold instead of the most powerful woman in the NFL.
Dean rose. “I think I’ll get out of here before the two of you accidentally hurt my passing arm.”
Heath couldn’t back down now. “Shoot, Dean, we haven’t even started having fun yet. Stick around and watch me make Phoebe cry.”
Robillard gazed down at his beautiful boss. “I’ve never seen this crazy man before in my life.”
She smiled. “Run along, Dean honey. Your sex life will be screwed up forever if you’re forced to watch all the ways a woman can chop up a snake.”
Retreat wouldn’t win Heath the quarterback’s heart, and as Robillard began to walk away, Heath called out after him. “Hey, Dean…Sometime ask Phoebe to show you where she buries the bones of all the agents who don’t have the balls to stan
d up to her.”
Dean waved good-bye without turning around. “I didn’t hear that, Mrs. Calebow. I’m just a sweet mama’s boy from California who wants to play a little football for you and go to church in my spare time.”
Phoebe laughed and stretched her long bare legs as Dean disappeared through the fence. “I like that boy. I like him so much I’m going to make sure you never get your grubby hands on him.”
“I doubt it was too hard to lure him out here today so he could witness our little meeting.”
“Not hard at all.”
“It’s been seven years, Phoebe. Don’t you think it’s time we bury the hatchet?”
“As long as the blade ends up in the back of your neck, I’m game.”
He slipped his fingers in his pockets and smiled. “The best day of my career was the day your brother-in-law signed on as my client. I still savor every minute of it.”
Phoebe scowled. She loved Kevin Tucker as though they were blood relatives instead of being related by marriage, and the fact that he’d ignored her entreaty and signed with Heath was a bitter pill she’d never quite been able to swallow. Heath’s first negotiations with her over Kevin’s contract had been brutal. Just because family was involved didn’t mean Phoebe believed in loosening her iron grip on the Stars’ finances, and he still remembered the way she’d methodically x-ed out an admittedly outrageous bonus package Heath had stuck in to test the waters.
“Family is family, and business is business. I love the boy, but not that much.”
“Who are you kidding?” Heath had said. “You’d walk over coals for him.”
“Yes, but I’d leave my checkbook behind while I was doing it.”
Heath gazed toward the practice field. Although training camp wouldn’t start for more than a month, a few players were running drills with the team’s trainer. He nodded toward a fourth-year player, one of the Zagorskis’ clients. “Keman’s looking good.”