“Jackass,” she chuckled. “I want an opportunity that I’m not likely to ever get.”
“What the fuck?” I said stunned.
“Never mind,” she replied waving me off. “It’s just a little family drama that I’m sure goes on in every family.”
“You sure you don’t want to share it?” I asked as I picked up my beer and drank deeply. Payton did the same, and when we’d both set our glasses down, I asked, “What are you going to do?”
“Beats the hell out of me,” she sighed. “Keep working?”
“On what?”
“What I’ve been working on,” she shrugged. “Aiming high and hoping to be the first female GM of a Super Bowl winning team.”
“That’s a pretty big goal,” I said as I watched her draw circles in the moisture on the side of her glass.
“I know, right?” she said sadly. “I feel like my mother hates me for wanting something more than she had, but I don’t know why. I’m still young, you know?”
Not sure what else to say, I just nodded as I finished my beer, but by the time we were both ready to leave, I had a plan in mind that I wanted to run by someone I trusted before I took action.
Payton and I exited the bar together. Jack had grudgingly taken Payton at her word and offered me a temporary stay of execution, but as I paid the bill, he grunted that I’d better not try to take advantage of her or else there would be consequences. Despite the fact that I found his overbearing protectiveness tiresome, I gave him the satisfaction of pretending to be scared of his threats. If nothing else, it would ensure that he didn’t talk to the press about me.
“Can I drop you somewhere?” I asked as we walked toward my black Lincoln Navigator.
“Yeah, actually, would you mind taking me by Soldier Field?” she asked as I held the door for her and helped her up into the vehicle.
“Not a problem,” I said as I told my driver where to go and hopped in on the other side. We both spent the drive in silence, looking out the windows at the city rushing by. I wanted to touch her again, but everything about her body language told me not to try. For some reason, Payton Halas Lasky made me feel like a 15-year-old schoolboy, and I spent the ride trying to come up with a clever way to ask her out. It felt ridiculous. I was one of the richest men in the country, and this woman struck me dumb.
When we pulled up in front of the stadium, Payton quickly opened her door and hopped out before I could get out. She quickly walked toward the side entrance tossing thanks over her shoulder.
“Hey, can I get your number?” I shouted at her back just before she reached the door.
“You’re a smart guy,” she called over her shoulder. “If you want it enough, you’ll figure out a way to get it!”
Then she disappeared into the dark, cavernous opening on the side of the building and left me standing there cursing the fact that I hadn’t asked sooner and then grinning because she obviously knew how much I enjoyed a challenge.
Chapter Six
Payton
I stumbled slightly as I walked down the dark hallway toward the training room. Around me, the walls were covered with photos and memorabilia that featured my grandfather and the Bears players and coaches. It was a sobering reminder of the fact that my mother had been at least partially right when she’d pointed out that I was part of the Halas legacy. Mixed with the alcohol, the weight of expectation came crashing down around me and I picked up my pace in an attempt to outrun it.
My heels clicked on the tiles just outside of the locker room and announced my presence.
“Sweetness?” Gus called from inside the training room. “Is that you, darlin’?”
“Yeah, it’s me, Gus,” I replied as I quickly crossed the carpeted part of the room where the players’ lockers lined the walls. This was the room where they did all of their preparation for the games. It was where the coaches shouted at the players, pumped them up, and then knelt with them to say a prayer before the game. It was where they cheered them on when they were winning at halftime or voiced their deep disappointment when they were trailing. It was where the press did the after-game interviews as players walked around bruised, bloodied, and half dressed as they tried to celebrate or forget what happened on the field.
Growing up, I’d spent an enormous amount of time in this locker room, and I’d learned almost everything I knew about football from the men who’d inhabited this world. They’d treated me with respect, but also as one of their own.
As a girl in the boys’ world, I’d learned a lot of things that other girls had not, but that hadn’t seemed to have been a reason for the players to change their behavior — much. Sure, they’d watched their language and kept their clothes on around me, but mostly they talked to me in a way that other adults did not. They talked to me like I was a real person, not just a spoiled, owner’s kid who had nothing better to do than hang out in the locker room with famous players. They were my big brothers, and they all had my back. Granted, I’d learned swear words and insults that would have peeled the paint off of the fancy living rooms that my mother spent most of her time in, but I’d also learned when and where to use what I’d learned and, for the most part, had kept the worlds separate.
Gus Washington was the team trainer, and in many ways, I was closer to him than I’d been to my own father. Gus had earned his nickname, Gogo, when I was a small child and couldn’t pronounce his name properly. When I’d outgrown my inability to say his name, I’d addressed him as Mr. Washington until, one afternoon after a particularly brutal game against the Broncos, I’d been helping him clean out the whirlpools and mop the blood off of the floors in the training room and he’d suggested that I’d earned the privilege of calling him Gus, and I hadn’t called him anything else since then.
He was a compact man, smaller than most all of the players, but incredibly powerful for his size. Despite the fact that he was a few years over 70, he had maintained his strength and fitness through martial arts training, daily runs through the South Side neighborhoods he’d grown up in, and the occasional open water swim in Ohio Beach’s play pen. He’d never had a problem with any of the players; I’d overheard them talking in hushed tones about how they’d never want to get on the wrong side of Wash. Rumors floated around about where he came from, but Gus was a man of few words and extreme privacy, so he let the rumors that he’d been a hired hitman for the Russian mob do the job of keeping the players in line for him.
“What are you doing, Gus?” I laughed as I rounded the corner and found him bent over one of the silver whirlpool tubs scrubbing the inside with a large sponge. “You’ve got a staff to do that for you!”
“Yeah, but I don’t like the way they do it,” he grumbled as he vigorously scrubbed a spot just under the jets. “Never do it right.”