She ripped her hand away. “I don’t think so, Wade.”
I grinned.
“A fiery one.” Wade laughed it off. “I like that.”
Idiot. I really should fire him. But he’d scored me a huge contract to play with the Titans. He’d been with me from the beginning, and loyalty was a bitch.
“So should we sit?” he asked. “Talk about this incredible opportunity with ESPN?”
“We can sit. But I’m not taking the job. I’ve had enough cameras and reporters to last two lifetimes.”
“Come on, Cal. I came all this way. Let’s at least discuss it.”
“There’s nothing to discuss. I’m going to tell you exactly what I told you over the phone. I’m not interested.”
My reputation was bad enough. The last thing I needed was to rip a team to shreds during a halftime report only to be ridiculed for my opinion later. No matter what I said, it would be twisted to make me look like a dick.
Granted, in my career there had been plenty of on-camera moments when I had been a dick. But the media had searched for it. They trimmed clips and made sound bites to suit their needs. To make me the Cal Stark everyone wanted me to be.
The asshole.
“Cal.” Wade gave me a flat look. “Come on. This is huge. Only the greats get these chances. You’ll make millions per season as a color commentator.”
“I already made millions.”
“Then make more.” He meant make him more.
“It’s a no, Wade. A fuck no.”
His smile dropped and his jaw clenched.
“Now that we’ve got that out of the way,” I said. “Would you like to sit down and eat? Catch up? But if you’d rather hit the road . . .”
“Yeah.” His nostrils flared. “Think I’ll bump up my flight. We’ll talk later.”
“Not about this.”
“Fine.” He strode past me, his irritation as fragrant as the scents escaping the kitchen.
Wade would pout for a week or two, then he’d call me like this incident had never happened. I’d be his buddy again, especially if he found another opportunity to cash in on my career while I was still relevant.
But for tonight, I didn’t give a shit if he was pissed. He could have saved himself a trip if he would have just listened to me from the start.
“That went well,” Nellie muttered as the door closed behind him. “He’s a peach.”
“Isn’t he?” I dropped my hand from her back. “Well, that didn’t take long. Should we go?”
“Oh, hell no.” She frowned and took a step toward the hostess station. “You owe me dinner.”
How could I forget? I lingered behind her, keeping a few feet between us, as she told the hostess my name. Then the hostess led us through the restaurant to a tall-backed booth against a shaded window. The steakhouse was rustic and dim, the atmosphere perfect for an intimate date.
I slid into my side of the booth as Nellie did the same, taking a menu and flipping straight to the wine list. Neither of us spoke as we made our selections and ordered from our waiter.
It wasn’t until the wine was delivered that Nellie leaned her elbows on the table, assessing me with her sharp gaze. “So you really don’t want more money?”
“What for?” I shrugged.
“Rich people love to get richer.”
“I’m rich enough.”
There was plenty in my bank account that continued to grow thanks to a steady income stream from my investments. I had my ranch. I’d build a house. If my father ever failed to support my mother, she would want for nothing.
I liked money. But I wasn’t my dad, constantly needing more and more.
Nellie lifted her wineglass to her lips, taking a long sip. Her gaze never wavered from my own.
“Don’t believe me?” I asked.
Nellie set the glass down. “I believe you. But I’m having a hard time reconciling the Cal who doesn’t want to make millions of dollars a year by appearing on a few TV shows to the Cal who told me our senior year in high school that if I couldn’t get a car with a decent muffler and fewer rust spots, then I needed to find a parking spot farther away from his Mercedes.”
I cringed. Not my finest day. Had that day made her diary from senior year?
She’d had a piece-of-shit car in those days. Something she could afford. Probably her mother’s hand-me-down. And I’d struck a low blow.
There were no excuses to make. It had just been me, a spoiled shit of a teenager, acting like a spoiled shit of a teenager.
“I’m both of those people, Nellie.”
“Are you?”
I sighed. “I don’t know.”
She studied me for another long moment, and this time, I didn’t have the courage to hold her gaze. So I plucked up the small booklet tucked between the salt and pepper shakers and flipped open the first page.
“A history of Calamity,” I read, quickly scanning the article. Then, because I didn’t want to talk about the past or about football or about ESPN or about anything that might make Nellie hate me more, I gave her the short version of the story.
“The town of Calamity was originally called Panner City.”
“I didn’t know that,” she said. “I assumed it was named after Calamity Jane.”
“Nope. The town was a settlement during the Montana gold rush. By 1864, three thousand miners lived here.”
“That’s a lot of people.” More than lived in Calamity today according to the article.
I twisted the booklet to show her the old, sepia photo of what had to be the mining camp. Huts and tents were cramped together. On the next page, there was a photo of one man panning next to a stream. Beside it was a black-and-white sketch of a handmade sluice box.
“It was renamed to Calamity after a series of disasters struck in a period of just five months,” I said, continuing to read. “The mine collapsed in Anders Gulch. A dozen men were killed. Then they had a spring flood that washed out the smaller sites. Next came a fire that burned nearly everything to the ground. It’s speculated to have started in the saloon.”
“Drunken bar fight?”
“Probably.” I flipped the page, seeing more photos. “The last disaster happened in late summer. A lightning storm caused a herd of cattle to stampede through the camps. Flattened tents and people too.”
“Eww.”
I chuckled and handed her the booklet. While she read, I sipped my wine, grateful to whoever had come up with the idea to include Calamity history with the meal. It saved us from personal conversation.
Any conversation with Nellie was dangerous, not just because of her brutal honesty, but because she knew me too well. And for tonight, I just wanted to eat a meal across from a beautiful woman and not delve into anything deeper than this glass of cabernet.
Nellie put the booklet away and leaned back into her seat, giving me a smug grin. “Let’s talk about football.”
“Football?” Why was it so sexy that she knew football?
She shrugged. “Seems like a safe topic.”
“Agreed.” I mirrored her posture, relaxing into the booth. “What do you want to know?”
“The juicy gossip. And I mean the goods. The stuff you’d only know about because you were on the team.”