If JP hadn't been her only real client, she'd have fired him so fast his head would have spun.
The rest of the day, she made calls and sent emails to all the wide receivers the agency had ever worked with. She asked them what they thought set a great wide receiver apart from a good one, and the information they gave her was golden.
JP needed to run precise routes, have breakaway speed, and make catches even when he was double teamed. By the end of the day, Melissa had a plan for success. Now all she needed to do was find JP. And shove her plan down his pretty throat.
She had less than one week to transform JP from a crap client to solid gold. Four and a half short days to work a miracle. If she pulled this off, her father would have to kiss her feet.
Although suddenly her father's opinion didn't matter nearly as much as it used to.
The phone rang, and when she picked up, Angie got straight to the point: "Your father needs to see you. Now."
Hadn't she told her father to leave her the hell alone for the next week?
"Fine," she said, ready to give her father a piece of her mind.
Her father pushed back in his seat when she walked in. "I've got some strange news. Bad news."
Her heart thumped. "Mom?"
"No. Your mother is fine. It's about Dominic."
She paused, her heart in her throat, trying to brace herself for her father's revelations. "What? What is it?"
"I just got a call from my friend at Sports Illustrated. One of their writers was doing a piece on the greatest heroes in football, and Dominic's name was on the list." Her father rubbed his hand over his face. "Evidently the writer unearthed some dirt on Dominic. Something from his past."
Dominic had been hiding something from her? From all of them? Her heart ached for him, even as she worked to bury her hurt at not being confided in.
"Did your friend say what it was?"
"No. And given that Dominic's on the verge of retirement, this is the time for him to be thinking about autobiographies, speaking tours, and motivational visits to high-school auditoriums. We all stand to lose big here, but Dominic most of all. You need to find out what the hell he's been hiding, and fast. Then fix it even faster."
Sweat dripped into Dominic's eyes and he pushed it away with the back of his hand. For the past forty-eight hours at seven thousand feet in Lake Tahoe, where the air was a hell of a lot thinner than it was at sea level in San Francisco, he'd pushed his body to the limit.
But he'd pushed JP harder.
JP was squatting on the grass, bent over his knees, dry-heaving. He'd thrown up everything in his system by noon. By late afternoon he was sniveling.
Though to be fair, JP hadn't cried uncle yet. He couldn't—not if he wanted to keep his pride intact.
Dominic grinned. Training JP had been a hell of a lot more fun than he'd expected. He was getting great pleasure from watching JP suffer.
Dominic stood over him, blocking the sunlight. "Let's hit the weight room."
JP groaned. "Leave me the f**k alone."
"No can do, punk. Not until you stop sucking."
"Fuck you."
"If you can still talk, I must not be working you hard enough."
JP pulled himself up with the help of a nearby tree trunk. "One day I'll pay you back for this."
"I have no doubt you will. I'll give you a head start to the weight room."
JP glared at him. "Don't do me any favors."
Dominic shrugged, intent on pushing JP until he showed some goddamn backbone. "Three, two, one."
They shot off down the dirt road toward Dominic's Lake Tahoe house at breakneck speed. For the first time, Dominic had to push himself, rather than hold back so that JP didn't quit out of embarrassment.
Five minutes later, JP's hand made contact with the redwood deck a length ahead of Dominic. Despite himself, Dominic was impressed.
When JP wanted to, he could kick it into overdrive. To be that fast after two exhausting days when Dominic had kept him running from five in the morning until midnight—that was impressive.
JP collapsed in the dirt, gasping, "Thanks."
Dominic leaned against the redwood rail. "Tell it to the bench press," he said, both of them knowing it was code for "you're welcome."
Dominic hadn't told JP why he'd decided to work with him, but he was pretty sure the guy knew he was doing it for Melissa. She deserved great clients. And since he figured his time in the pros was coming to an end, he could pass on some of what he'd learned over the past fifteen years to a young guy like JP.
No matter how hard they had to work, Dominic refused to let JP fail. Not when it meant that Melissa failed, too.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Melissa tried everything—the phone, email, even a visit to his condo—but Dominic had disappeared. It wasn't until another Outlaw walked past her cubicle and overheard her leaving Dominic yet another voice mail that she found out he'd gone to Lake Tahoe.
"That's right. I'd forgotten," she lied. She hated the fact that she was utterly in the dark about both of her clients.
Furious, she took a cab to the nearest car-rental agency. She certainly hadn't planned on a four-hour drive into the mountains tonight, and she nursed her anger throughout the long trip, cursing both their arrogance and her stupid dream of working with self-obsessed football players.
The sun had set by the time she pulled into a long dirt driveway. Pine trees stood tall on both sides of her car. Even in the dark, the setting was inescapably beautiful.
Climbing out of the car, she shivered in her thin cotton top. Evenings at Lake Tahoe were chilly. Her eyes grew huge as she stood in front of Dominic's house. Not at all ostentatious, even in the moonlight it was the most beautiful cottage she'd ever set eyes on.
She could picture herself running out onto the beach, chasing after children with towels, while Dominic stood on the deck behind the grill, flipping hamburgers and hot dogs.
Her eyes blurred with sudden tears, and she forcibly shook the images away. When would she accept that happily-ever-after was never going to happen?
Ignoring the doorbell, she pounded on the door and braced herself for Dominic's beautiful face. Instead, JP greeted her.
"I was wondering when you'd get here," he
drawled.
She wanted to kick him. "What are you doing here?"
JP moved into the kitchen, bypassing a wine rack to grab a Perrier. "Want one?" She shook her head.
"Suit yourself," he said, twisting the cap off his water and bringing it to his mouth.
JP was drinking water? Not wine, or bourbon, or something else that would impede his performance on the field?