CHAPTER 3 JOLENE

I dart out of the press conference as he starts wrapping it up and I run toward the exit behind the media room—the one I know he'll use to get back to the team owner's office. I get there just as I see his figure retreating toward a back set of elevators.

Normally the press isn't allowed back here, but when Jack was a player, he gave me a keycard so I could talk to him about his real estate development. I never gave it back.

"Mr. Dalton, may I have a private word with you?" I yell as the elevator doors open so he can step on. He glances over at Steve Shanahan, the general manager, before his eyes move back toward me.

"What's this about?"

I clear my throat. "One of your potential head coaches."

He gives me a long look before he finally nods, inclining his neck toward the elevator as if to tell me to hurry up before the doors close. I race over and hop on.

"Which potential candidate?" he asks.

I glance a little nervously at Steve.

"Anything you say in here stays between us. Full disclosure, whatever you tell me is likely going to be shared with Steve anyway," Jack says, correctly reading the situation.

"This is off the record." My voice is clear despite the nervousness I feel. I've gotten good at faking it over the years.

"Agreed," Jack says. We get to the floor where his office is, and I follow him down the hallway.

Steve accompanies us, but Jack holds up a hand to him just before we walk into the office. "Can you give us a minute?"

Steve nods, and I'm thankful it'll just be the two of us.

I find I can't sit when Jack closes the door behind me, though, sealing the two of us into privacy in this rather large, foreboding office.

He slides into the executive chair behind the executive desk, and he studies me while I pace.

I finally stop and square my shoulders as I face Jack Dalton. "Don't hire Lincoln Nash."

His brows rise. "Would you like to tell me why?"

I clear my throat. "He's football royalty, Jack. Hiring him would clearly be nepotism, and how will that look as your first year owning the team?"

He chuckles a little even though there's really nothing funny about what I'm saying. "But listening to you would look better? I asked you why I shouldn't hire him, and nepotism isn't an answer, Ms. Bailey."

"You've heard of the well-publicized feud between the Nash family and the Baileys, right?"

He nods. "Couldn't someone make the claim that you reporting on football is also nepotism?"

My eyes flash with anger. "They could. They'd be wrong."

"The same might be said for Lincoln. He was a strong candidate, and I'm sorry you don't like him, but your reasoning sounds like a family dispute, not a legitimate reason not to hire him."

"So you're hiring him?" I press.

"You're with the media. I can't confirm that."

I press my lips together.

"Look, I'm sorry if hiring him will make you uncomfortable, but you don't have to report on the Aces. I do, however, have the obligation to choose the very best candidate to lead our team to victory, whether that's Lincoln Nash or someone else. If I only brought in candidates everybody loved, I wouldn't have a very big pool to pick from, would I?"

"I suppose not," I mutter. The only coach everyone seemed to love—Coach Mitch Thompson—has retired, which is why there's an opening for a new head coach in the first place. "Thank you for your time."

He nods, and I turn to leave.

"Ms. Bailey?" he asks before I open the door. "Thank you for sharing your concerns with me. Between you and me, I hope you get the position over both Rivera and Sanders."

"If you'd be willing to share that with Marcus Dean, I'd appreciate it."

"I'll put in a good word," he promises. "We don't have enough women with the balls to do what you do, and I love to see it."

The irony that he used a male body part isn't lost on me. "Thanks, Jack."

He nods, and I head straight to my own office, just a three-mile drive from the Complex. A little traffic slows me down, and I use the time to dictate the breaking news story from the press conference for Marcus.

I fix it up on my tablet then email it off to him, and I stop by his office as soon as I return.

"I saw your copy already," he says when I knock on the door frame.

"I snagged a meeting with Jack after the conference," I say. "He wouldn't confirm anything but it sounded to me like Nash is the leading candidate right now."

"Really? Wow. Meetings with him are hard to come by. How'd you manage that?" he asks, clearly impressed.

"He trusts me from covering the grand opening of one of his real estate developments. I guess the entire subdivision sold out immediately after the story broke, and he's been in my debt ever since." I shrug, and that's the difference between guys like Rivera and Sanders versus me. I'm willing to get to know the people behind the athletes. Most sports reporters leave out that important element. They're players, yes, but they are people with interests and lives outside of that, and part of my niche is learning more about who they are off the field while analyzing what they're doing on it.

"Good work, Bailey. If I was keeping score, I'd say today ticks another point in your column."

I nod and keep my face stoic even though I'm brimming with excitement over the compliment. Because that's the thing…he is keeping score. Another point for me means I'm all that much closer to scoring my dream job.

I wrap things up then head over to Sam's. I knock on the door and Sam appears a minute later to answer and let me in. I hear the boys in Cade's bedroom yelling about zombies, so I assume they're playing Minecraft again…as usual. Those boys are straight obsessed with that game.

"What are you making?" I ask as I follow her into the kitchen.

"Spaghetti. You two want to stay?"

I nod. "If you don't mind. I can get you back tomorrow night."

"Nonsense," she says, patting her short, dark pixie cut. "Tomorrow night is pizza night."

I laugh. "Then I'll treat for pizza since it's my day to pick up the boys."

"I will take you up on that."

"I'm just going to go say hi to Jonah," I say. "Be right back." I head down the hallway to Cade's room and find the boys in there laughing. I stand in the doorway for a beat and watch them.

It's clear which boy is mine. Jonah has my light hair, hazel eyes, and golden skin while Cade is all his mom with nearly jet-black hair, blue eyes, and pale skin, though he has his dad's mass of curly hair instead of his mom's straight hair.

I chose the name Jonah for two reasons. For one, I liked that it continued the tradition of Jo names in my family: my parents are Joseph and Joanna, and they named me Jolene. But for another, the name means dove and as I was going through my pregnancy largely alone, I loved the symbolism of peace and tranquility.

They're as close as two seven-year-olds can be, and I will forever be grateful that I found Sam in a random working mom's play group back when I was a single new mom and had no idea what I was doing.

She's become a sister to me over the last seven years, and our boys are like brothers. Or cousins, I guess, if we're sisters.

I walk in and plant a kiss on the top of my son's head. He says a quick hi back without taking his eyes off the game.

I give him another kiss, and he playfully bats me away, but I will never, ever stop kissing my boy.

I head back to the kitchen.

"So how was your day?" Sam asks carefully.

"It was…" I trail off, and then I grunt. "Ugh."

"That good?"

I take a slice of French bread Sam already cut off the cutting board and take a bite. "I think they're going to hire him."

She wrinkles her nose. "Freaking nepotism at its finest."

"That's what I told Jack Dalton!"

She sighs dreamily. "You have the best job. You talked to Jack Dalton today. And I'm over here like, Lord, bless me with a football player…"

"Well, yeah, it's great, but it was just a quick word, not a romp or anything since he's happily married, and Jack had the nerve to tell me that the job I'm going for is essentially nepotism, too!" I set the bread down and lean on the counter, pissed about that conversation and unwilling to admit that, well, he's right.

"Well…it sort of is, isn't it?" she points out.

"Ugh!" Frustrated tears fill my eyes. "I mean, I guess, sort of. It just sucks that if I get this job, everyone will either say it's because of my family or because I'm a woman. It'll never be because I'm the best candidate for it."

"Couldn't the same be said for Lincoln?" she asks.

The tears tip over. I'm so, so good at schooling this shit except when it comes to Sam. I let it all out in front of her. Poor woman. "But he's an asshole! I'm not! I'm nice!"

She laughs and narrows her eyes at me. "You? Nice?"

I laugh.

"Being nice doesn't mean anything, especially not in the cutthroat business you're in," she says.

"I know. I'm just so frustrated."

"I get it. And maybe he won't get the job." She shrugs with a bit of hope.

"Maybe," I allow, but I don't have much hope she's right. "But maybe he will."

"You know what I think?" she asks, and she grabs the pot of boiling noodles and dumps them into the colander sitting in the sink.

"What?"

She shakes the colander and lets it sit to drain the pasta, and then she turns and looks at me. "I think deep down, you've got a thing for ol' Linc, and that is why you're so opposed to him coaching the Aces." Before I get a chance to respond, she yells, "Boys! Two minutes until dinner!"

I glare at her. That is not why I'm opposed to it.

I'm opposed to him coaching my favorite team because he's a dick straight out of a family that's an entire bag of dicks.

Whether or not I find him attractive has absolutely nothing to do with it.

And whether or not I still have feelings for him is also irrelevant.

Completely.