“The teacher is burning them, and then we get to paint it tomorrow.”
Burning them? “You mean firing them? Like in a kiln?”
“Yeah, yeah. That. And I’m gonna make mine blue, like your jersey.” His eyes were wide with the hope his dad would be impressed.
Killian’s heart clenched in his chest. “Sounds like the best-looking panda I’ve ever heard of. Can’t wait to see it.”
“I’ll bring it this weekend!” Charlie bounced, and the screen bounced with him, making Killian close his eyes a moment or risk getting motion sick. “And Mom says we can walk around and do stuffs in San Francisquo!”
“San Francisco,” he corrected automatically. “Bud, can I talk to your mom a minute? I’ll say goodnight when we’re through, ’kay?”
“Okay.” Not sensing the brewing trouble, he happily called for his mom, then handed her the phone with a quick, “Dad wants you,” before racing off to do who knew what.
Emma’s face appeared, looking tired but happy. “Hey, you. Good timing, he was seconds away from putting on his pajamas. You’ve delayed bedtime for a few minutes.”
He grimaced. “Sorry.”
“No problem.” Her easygoing nature made him send up another prayer to the gods she’d made the co-parenting thing so easy. “He’s thrilled about seeing you this weekend.”
“Yeah, about that.” He closed his eyes a moment, savoring the last few seconds of peace. “You guys can’t come.”
The silence was thick, and he lifted his eyelids to see Emma looking over the phone, staring off into the distance. Her voice was hollow when she asked, “Why?”
He sighed and rubbed at his temples. “I’ve got a reporter dogging my heels.” He looked up and saw Emma’s face had blanched, the pallor fading her natural Vegas tan. “Not about Charlie, or you,” he added hastily. Christ, he hadn’t meant to scare her. “She wants to do some human interest piece. Thinks she’ll get a good return on the investment since there isn’t much about me out there in the media.”
“For a reason,” Emma snapped off. “Why the hell did you agree to this?”
“I didn’t,” he shot back, then closed his eyes and counted to five. Yelling at Charlie’s mom was never his first choice. “I didn’t,” he tried again, more calmly. “She kept bugging me, following me around, showing up where I didn’t expect her. Then she started digging. I was worried what she’d find on her own. So I made a deal with her that she could interview me if she kept to topics I was good with. Sports, hobbies, that sort of junk.”
Emma watched him quietly.
“It was the best I could do on the fly. You know I would never do anything to hurt Charlie. Ever.”
“I know that,” she said, her face softening. “I do. You just scared me.”
They were both silent a moment. Killian’s lips twitched as he huffed out a laugh. “We’re quite the pair, aren’t we? Keeping secrets like the CIA.”
“It’s for Charlie.”
“I know.” He breathed heavily. “I can stay an extra few days over Christmas, if that’s okay. Maybe take him somewhere. I’ll make a few extra trips out in the off season, too.”
“You’re always welcome to come and stay as long as you and Charlie want.” She tapped a finger to her lips. “I’ve been thinking about moving back to the area.”
“Emma, no.” He was definitely putting his foot down here. This would be the one downside in their arrangement . . . Emma’s tendency to follow random harebrained ideas without thinking them through. “People don’t recognize you there. They don’t know your name, and they can’t place you. That’s why you’re there.”
“But it’s been almost seven years. So much has gone on since then. You honestly think if I was in, say, Albuquerque, they would put two and two together faster than someone here?” She lowered her voice. “Charlie misses you like crazy. Every day. I know you miss him, too. I can sell houses wherever. I’m good.”
“You are,” he said numbly. “But Emma . . .”
“It was just a thought.” She sighed, resigned. “I should have known you would say no.”
“For Charlie.”
“For Charlie,” she repeated, but the look on her face was one that said she wasn’t happy about it. “I’ll get him so you can say goodnight.”
“Emma?”
She looked down as she stood up.
“For you, too.”
She scrunched up her face in the way he knew meant she was fighting back tears. “I’ll get him. Hold on.”
He waited while she summoned their son from the all-important task of putting on his pajamas. Killian said goodnight, grinning as Charlie recited the vowels for him as a stall tactic for bedtime. And when Emma hung up, he tossed the phone down on the coffee table, scrubbed a hand over his face, and felt like kicking something.
* * *
“So you don’t go on TV,” the man next to Aileen said slowly.
“Nope, just the website.” She’d explained Off Season to him now—twice—but he wasn’t seeming to get it.
“And you’re just . . . reporting on funny stuff?” The older man, with a potbelly that hung well over his seat’s lap belt, held up his hands. “Why wouldn’t you want something like a network job?”
“I would love one,” she said simply. “But I’m working my way up.”
The man shook his head in disbelief and turned to talk to the man on his left. Maybe that man had a more respectable job.
She’d scored a media pass on the team’s plane, much to her shock. Part of her wondered if Killian had had anything to do with that, but she doubted it. She was traveling with the team. Hello, dream come true. She’d ask the man next to her to pinch her, if she didn’t think he’d find offense in that. But along with the dream came the reminder she was still a small fish in a very big pond. Or rather, not even a fish. More like a tadpole, still fighting to make it to the juvenile stage.
So she’d just keep fighting, and when big, fat catfish like him became complacent, they’d get fished out and she’d have the pond to herself.
She turned back to her laptop and the notes she was making on the trip. Killian had seen her as he’d boarded the plane, that much she knew. His eyes had swept over her, as if she were a part of the scenery, then did a comical double-take and focused more intently. She’d waved, given him a cheeky grin, and he’d rolled his eyes and kept walking.
Par for the course, it seemed.
She also got a room at the same hotel as the team, though it hadn’t mattered if she did or not. She would have slept on the floor outside Killian’s room if she had to. Something about his attitude gave her the feeling he’d dodge and weave to avoid spending much time with her. Which, if he used the team as an excuse, she could hardly argue with. But it wasn’t in keeping with the spirit of their agreement.
She’d let him come to freaking bowling league, hadn’t she? She’d opened up to him about why she’d become a journalist, about why she bowled. Wasn’t that keeping her end of the bargain?
The plane dipped, and she gripped the armrest tightly. Flying was so not her favorite thing to do.
“Freckles.”
She jolted at her name—wait, that wasn’t her name, so why did she respond when he called her that?—and looked up to see Killian standing there. “Hey.”
“Reeves,” the man to her left said. He held out a hand, which Killian seemed to take only out of politeness. “Great game last weekend. I was wondering—”
“Freckles. I need to talk to you.” He turned and walked back down the aisle.
She blinked. When her seat companion turned to look at her, she shrugged. “I’ve been summoned.” She unbuckled her seatbelt and maneuvered her way around the older man—not an easy task . . . which he could have made easier by simply being a gentleman and getting up—and followed Killian back to the players’ area of the plane. He’d taken a row by himself, sitting propped up against the window. She started to turn in to sit next to him as the plane made another dip. She almost fell on her face, but he grabbed her arm and pulled her down against him.