Kitabı oku: «Something to Prove»

CHAPTER ONE

THEY HAD TRACKED HER DOWN, even at her sister’s Italian wedding hideaway.

Amanda Jensen disconnected the call from her boss and jammed her phone inside the pocket of her spa robe. Wouldn’t she love to shut off the thing completely? But since the magazine she worked for was going through layoffs and she was the last person hired, she couldn’t take chances.

“Sorry, but I have to go.” She wiggled her foot, hoping to gain the attention of the impossibly beautiful European woman with the glossy bun, wearing a white lab coat, who knelt over Amanda’s toes, meticulously applying a thin layer of French nail polish.

“But, madam, I have finished only one foot.”

She had, and it looked silly. Amanda stifled a laugh. “It’s okay, I’ll come back tonight to get the rest of the pedicure.”

“But, madam, our resort spa is full with the wedding guests.”

True. Jeannie’s wedding weekend had created a logjam of skiers, coaches, friends and ski fans, all clamoring to be made beautiful for the event of the season. Amanda’s stomach dropped. She was reminded of the subject of her interview assignment, and she felt queasy.

“Madam?”

“What? Oh, never mind my foot. It’s winter—I’m wearing closed-toe shoes.”

The European woman turned her doe eyes up at Amanda, insinuating what only doe eyes could insinuate.

Amanda shook her head. “No one’s going to be sucking on my toes anytime soon.”

Which was depressing now that she thought about it, but what could she do?

“It is winter in the Italian Alps, madam. Anything can happen.”

“Yes. Yes, it can.” That was how it had happened for her sister, and in this very resort.

Smiling, Amanda glanced through the plate-glass window at the glistening white slope dotted with pine trees, and for a moment she felt that old familiar tug in her heart. Mountains had been her home from her earliest memories. Now she lived in a concrete city, bustling, alive and powerful. And the demands of New York followed her, even to this snowcapped paradise.

Shaking off her wistful mood, she took one last inhalation of the siren’s call of cedar-and-rosemary-scented massage oil. She felt bad enough as it was, cutting out on her pampering afternoon with Jeannie, but work gave her no choice. She hoped Jeannie would understand.

Amanda pushed off the lounge chair in search of her younger sister, trying not to dwell on what she was missing. She and Jeannie had so little time together as it was. For months Jeannie had been recuperating in a hospital in Milan, healing from a horrific ski-racing crash. Amanda had been in the States, shuttling between her magazine job in Manhattan and their mother’s hospice in New Hampshire.

Home, she thought. Or what used to be home. Now her home was the place that employed her.

Jeannie’s home was Massimo Coletti.

“Ciao, bella.” Massimo ducked his head inside the herb-laced, steamy room, and immediately sent the temperature rocketing upward another few degrees. Her sister’s Italian skier fiancé was a knockout. Chiseled cheekbones, sleek shiny hair, glowing green eyes, dimples and a hard body that didn’t quit. But his sexiest trait, in Amanda’s eyes, anyway, was the way his gaze softened when he looked at her sister.

“Have you seen my Jeannie?” Massimo asked.

My Jeannie. Amanda sighed. Here was the man who made all the difference in healing her sister’s difficult past. “She’s in the massage room. I was just going to look for her.”

But Massimo beat her to it. He swooped in as the masseuse was leaving and gave Jeannie’s massage-radiant skin a hug. Then he leaned closer and kissed her on both cheeks. Amanda’s heart both gladdened and pounded. Jeannie giggled and threw her arms around Massimo’s neck, not shy about the towel that dropped to her waist.

It was the scar that undid Amanda. A long, jagged cut from a surgeon’s scalpel, winding its way down her sister’s left leg.

The old fury came back. This was her father’s fault. And Amanda hated skiing, she truly did. Hated it with a passion.

“Amanda, are you almost ready for the rehearsal luncheon?” Jeannie asked, gently touching her on the arm. “Because there’s this great guy I want to introduce you to. His name is Marco and he’s a friend of Massimo’s.”

“Marco is a writer like you,” Massimo explained, his arms around his beloved wife-to-be.

“He won the Milan Prize for literature. He’s very accomplished.” Jeannie squeezed Massimo’s hand and then looked at Amanda hopefully.

They wanted her to be happy. They truly did.

“You guys are sweet, but I’m an investigative reporter.” Okay, a fledgling investigative reporter. “There’s a world of difference in the kind of writing your friend does and what I do.”

Massimo’s brow scrunched. To a guy who sped down icy mountainsides at eighty-five miles per hour, one keyboard jockey was pretty much the same as the next.

“Just tell him I’m on deadline,” Amanda said. “If he’s a writer, he’ll understand.”

“Deadline?” Her future brother-in-law was so smooth that sometimes she forgot English was his second language.

“That means she can’t make it,” Jeannie said. “Why, Mandy? What happened?”

Amanda looked at her beautiful sister’s disappointed face. “Paradigm gave me an interview assignment here in the hotel. I’ll come back as soon as I’m finished, Jeannie, I promise.”

“I know you will.” The look of faith never left her eyes. Sometimes Amanda didn’t deserve her sister. “And this will give you incentive to come back.” Jeannie leaned over and rustled inside her purse, as if her upcoming rehearsal luncheon wasn’t reason enough for Amanda to hurry.

She felt guilty and sick. Why did her father have to be a famous ski coach, and why did she let it slip to her boss, who took advantage of it to make her interview a skier, of all people?

And not a sweet, hunky Italian skier, but an arrogant, aloof American skier who, her boss informed her, had once skied under her father’s tutelage.

Strike one, strike two. Could anything be worse about this assignment?

But her anger was erased by the photo Jeannie held up of one Marco D’Angeli. Marco of the Angels. Jeannie’s setup for her looked like an angel, with a cherubic face, the same glossy hair as Massimo, and the same soulful brown eyes. Unlike her sister’s fiancé though, Marco was thin and serious and…writerly. He posed with a pen in hand and not a stitch of clothing on his slight, studious frame.

Oh, my. “Is this one of those naked charity calendars?”

“His writers’ club is raising money for diabetes research.”

“Okay,” she joked, “sign me up for two copies. One for home and one for work.”

“Are you sure you can’t postpone the interview until tonight? Because then you could meet Marco in person.”

Amanda glanced at her younger sister’s pleading eyes. The younger sister who only wanted her to share some of the happiness and peace she’d finally found. Then she glanced at the hunky photo of the cute, nonthreatening Italian.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t right now. Chelsea made an appointment with the agent. I have twenty minutes for the interview, then I’ll need an hour or two to write up something quick. It won’t take me long, I swear.”

Jeannie’s head tilted. She would never understand Amanda’s drive—not completely. But how could she be expected to understand when she hadn’t been home when Mom was in hospice? When she hadn’t been there when Amanda couldn’t get their father to cover one godforsaken doctor’s bill?

Because in his world, their mother was a nobody. Just like Amanda was a nobody. Jeannie would never know that feeling, because Jeannie was a somebody.

“I need to secure my job, Jeannie.” Being an investigative reporter at Paradigm magazine was power. It was status. It was the ultimate trump card against people like her father. “Marco is a big shot like you and Massimo. I’m still on my way up in the world.”

“Amanda,” Jeannie said softly. “The right man will love you for who you are inside.”

Easy for her to say. “Sure he will,” Amanda said cheerfully. “Right after I nail this five-hundred-word profile. Now, will you help me prepare my interview questions? Because I have no clue who this guy is.”

“I’ll bet I know,” Jeannie said, the smile in her eyes again. “If they want to profile a skier in a glossy American magazine, there’s only one person.”

Massimo nodded. “Brody Jones. There is no other American skier.”

Amanda had never heard of Brody Jones before today. But that wasn’t saying much. When skiing came on television or showed up in the newspaper, then Amanda Jensen, daughter of the famous alpine ski coach, MacArthur Jensen, tuned out and turned the page.

Jeannie studied her nails. “Brody won’t be happy when you tell him who your father is.”

“No problems there,” Amanda said dryly. “Because I’m telling Brody Jones nothing.”

“And I wouldn’t expect him to give you any quotes.”

Amanda just stared. Her sister knew as much about being a reporter as Amanda knew about ski racing. “That’s what interviews are for, giving quotes. I scratch your back, you scratch mine. I give you print space to please your sponsors and attract fans, and in return, your exposure gives me readers and advertising. It’s an age-old deal.”

“She really doesn’t know Brody,” Jeannie murmured to Massimo.

“Doesn’t matter,” Amanda said. “He signed up for this interview, so he should know he’s expected to give quotes in return.”

Massimo laughed. Rather loudly, Amanda thought. Which was strange, considering she could see Massimo encouraging any media attention sent his way. As all the top-ranked skiers she’d known from childhood would have done.

Massimo turned to Jeannie and smiled gently. “Do you want to tell your sister about the American skier, or should I?”

BRODY PAUSED AFTER HIS THIRD set of single-leg squats and poured the last of the water in his bottle down his throat. The tiny resort gym was like a sauna inside.

“Um, are you Brody Jones?”

He glanced down to see a gangly American teen, his ski-team vest too big for his frame, standing beside the bench gawking at him as though he was his everlasting hero.

Brody shriveled inside. He wasn’t anybody’s hero. But he smiled at the kid anyway. Why disillusion youth? They grow up soon enough. “Yeah, I’m Brody. What’s your name, kid?”

“Aiden.” The teen shifted. “I, uh, want to be a great ski racer too.”

“Do you like to work hard?” At the kid’s awkward nod, Brody figured he’d spare him the lecture and just sign the autograph pad the kid was shoving in his face. Brody made a scrawl approximating his signature. Depending on his next race, the thing might end up on eBay.

Or not. Depending on his next race.

He smiled at the kid and handed it back. He really didn’t care where the autograph ended up. That was the beauty of it.

“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.

No, with any luck, Brody would forget she was a reporter and would instead consider the twenty minutes as coffee with a friendly person he could chat with.

Taking a short, careful swig from her ever-present water bottle, she considered the major flaw in her plan. Her father, per usual. Under no circumstances could she let Brody discover she was MacArthur Jensen’s daughter. Jeannie had implied that would send Brody fleeing faster than the roadrunner on skis. Amanda had no problem with that aspect of his personality. Anyone who distrusted her father was wise in her book.

She shook off the last of her nerves and strode down the corridor, the air cool against her bare legs because she was wearing one of Jeannie’s pre-injury outfits—a short, trendy skirt and a pair of her formerly favorite heels. Despite Jeannie’s admonition “to be herself,” whatever that was, Amanda was a celebrity profiler today, so she’d better act like one. Which gave her two choices for an approach strategy, as far as she could see.

Plan A was to keep the celebrity-reporter persona she’d prepared for. Disarm the recalcitrant skier with a nonthreatening approach. Plan B was her regular, hard-hitting interviewing style. Grill ’em and stick ’em and then serve up the painful truths.

Depending on how Brody reacted, she would adopt one tactic or the other. There was more than one way to open up a closemouthed celebrity.

Please, just give me one decent quote…

She stood outside the conference room and wished there was a window she could see through, but since there wasn’t, she pasted what she hoped was a vacant smile on her face and swung open the door like someone who meant business. Plan A and plan B, in combination. Once she met Brody, she would choose her final course.

Immediately, she needed to shield her eyes from the blinding afternoon sun slanting through the window. For a moment, she couldn’t see.

“Um, are you Amanda? From Paradigm magazine?”

She blinked to see a short man in a rumpled suit standing behind a conference table, his hand extended. He must be Harrison Rice, the agent. And next to him…

Amanda swallowed. Like a warrior prepared for battle, she thought.

Jeannie had showed her a photo of Brody Jones, downloaded from her phone’s internet connection. In it, he was dressed in a black helmet and tight racer’s uniform, his body bent so he was impossibly close to the slope, his powerful thighs straining while his biceps bulged, gripping a ski pole as he surged past a giant slalom gate.

Amanda hadn’t been able to see his face, but she’d seen his power and his sex appeal. She’d understood his charisma.

And now here he was in the flesh. Six feet one, two hundred pounds—she could recite his stats in her head. He was built. Hard. Powerful. And recklessly daring.

But he wasn’t behaving recklessly now. Like her, he wore body armor—in his case, a hat with a brim so low she couldn’t see his eyes clearly. Several days of stubble obscured his facial expression. He wore a tight black T-shirt that showed off his powerful neck, and over that, a team sweat jacket that read Italia—great. Did he know about her connection with her sister?

Stop that. You’re psyching yourself out before you’ve even started.

She gripped the agent’s fleshy paw, giving him both a friendly wink and a hardnosed MacArthur Jensen squeeze. “Hello there, I’m Amanda Jensen. I’m pleased to meet you, Harrison.”

She still hadn’t decided yet which plan to choose, A or B, and so was fluctuating wildly between them. While Harrison winced, clutching his hand, she switched her gaze to Brody. What should she say to him? How would he react?

Before she could decide, his chair slid leisurely back. As he moved, preparing to rise, his head slowly came up. The visor of the sponsor’s ball cap came off. And the most amazing pair of baby-blue eyes stared at her, sizing her up.

Amanda felt the shock zing up and down her anatomy. This guy had It. The physical key to setting her hormones on fire.

Because, oh, God, there was something about his eyes. They were probing eyes. Intelligent eyes.

Eyes that sucked her in.

He braced his hands on the table and fixed that quiet stare on her. He didn’t feel like a skier to her, not like any skier she’d ever known, anyway. Nothing Jeannie had told her could have prepared her for this. Without a trace of a smile on lips that were tense, yet still so full she could easily picture herself leaning over the table and kissing him, he said to her, “Amanda Jensen. Are you related to MacArthur Jensen?”

Oh, she was definitely going for plan A. Hard wouldn’t work with him. Best to play soft and dumb with this powerful, guarded man.

“Who’s MacArthur Jensen?” she asked.

SHE WAS LYING. BRODY KNEW IT, but what he really wanted to know was why she was bothering.

He shifted in his seat, purposely tuning out the words she was saying and concentrating on her actions. Her essence.

She smelled amazing, like pine trees and winter. And…cooking? Rosemary, yeah, that was the herb he was catching. But that couldn’t be right. Her presence brought to mind good food and companionship. A hearty meal in the company of true friends. Wine and humor.

He glanced at her mouth and watched her lips move as she spoke. He could easily kiss that mouth. She had the clearest porcelain skin he’d ever seen, and long, dark hair like Snow White. He imagined running his hands through it, feeling it drag across his chest. Every cell, every nerve in his body was straining toward her, and that wasn’t good.

He pushed back his chair and jammed on his ball cap again. Pulled the visor down low. Crossed his arms against her.

That was better. She stiffened, the Miss Airhead persona falling away. For a split second her gaze narrowed. She was a helluva lot sharper than she wanted him to see.

“Brody, what do you think about Amanda’s question?” Harrison grinned madly and dug him in the arm. What do you know, he was completely snowed by Amanda’s phony routine.