“Know what?”
He held me at arm’s length with his clammy hands on my shoulders. He gave me a shake. “Young lady, come with me!”
“What the…”
He grabbed my hand and dragged me out of the office, down the hall, and into the large conference room, where every other staffer had already gathered, including Dru, who was standing near the door with a big smile on her face.
“What’s going on?” I asked again, this time directing the question to Dru, who just made a silly face and let her thin eyebrows go up and down.
“Okay, people, listen up,” Walter said, rubbing his hands together like two blocks of sandpaper. “Two big announcements today.”
He took out his reading glasses and set them on the tip of his nose, then tugged a piece of paper from his back pocket and took his time unfolding it.
He cleared his throat and read from the paper. “According to our server administrator – that’s the guy in charge of keeping the website up and running—our website crashed twice yesterday.”
He looked at the group from over the top of his glasses, as if he was waiting for them to groan at the news.
“Ordinarily, that would not be good news, but the reason the server crashed this time was the amount of traffic going to Kate’s article about Sean Donovan!”
Everyone clapped and cheered. Dru came forward to give me a big hug. I blinked at them.
“Wait, I don’t understand,” I said.
“You melted down the fucking server, Katie Holmes,” Dru said, pounding her fists in the air as if she were at a Springsteen concert. “Tell her, Walter. Tell her how many hits the story got.”
“I’m trying,” Walter huffed. He looked at the paper again. “In the last three days since the story was posted to the site, it has gotten almost two million hits. Two million fucking hits, people! We haven’t had a story this hot since Ray Rice punched his girlfriend in an elevator! Well done, Asher! Well done.”
“Speech, speech,” Dru said, then everyone chimed in.
I had to take a moment to catch my breath. I had no idea the article I’d written on the private side of Sean Donovan would cause such a stir.
I knew ESPN had picked up the story and mentioned my name several times. I appreciated the notoriety, but in my heart, I felt like a total shit for deceiving Sean.
I hadn’t spoken to him since that day in the hospital and never expected to speak to him again.
Still, I never intended to hurt him or cause him any kind of grief. If I had it to do over again, I would have left Katie Holmes in the box and figured out another way. Then again, if it wasn’t for Katie Holmes, I would have never had the most amazing night of my life.
“Um, well, thanks, I guess,” I muttered with a smile. “I’m glad the article was so well-received.”
“Have you talked to Sean Donovan since the article came out?” someone asked.
I blinked at the question. “No, I haven’t.”
“Did he really take you to a secluded cabin in the woods and tell you about his father?” asked someone else.
I glanced at Dru, who was the only person I’d told about going to the cabin with Sean. I hadn’t written anything about personally visiting the cabin at the lake because I knew what the connotations would be. I’d only mentioned the cabin as part of Sean’s memories of his father and the times they’d spent there.
Dru made a face that told me she’d been running her mouth. I gave her a face back that said we’d talk about her lack of discretion later on.
“I never actually went to the cabin,” I said, swallowing the lie. I looked at Walter. “Didn’t you say you had two announcements to make?”
“What? Oh, yes.”
He tucked the paper back into his pocket and plucked the glasses off his nose.
“The other good news is that we received a call from the Kings press office this morning. Sports Insider Online is no longer banned from Kings Stadium. Your press credentials will get you back into the games and press conferences now, and they promise no longer to shoot us on-sight, so it’s a good day, people. And we owe it all to Katie Holmes…” He grinned at me. “I mean, Kate Asher!”
Kate