The best thing she could do now was finish up the work on her desk and go to Seattle. She could spend time with Drew and maybe get some answers to the questions she had about any future they might have together. She pulled up the salary cap spreadsheet she’d been working on and forced herself to concentrate. The sooner she was finished, the sooner she’d be on her way.
KENDALL SAVED HER work to a thumb drive a few hours later and stuck it in the zippered pocket of her handbag. She knew she’d need the information to answer questions and be up to speed for the Friday morning conference call she’d agreed to as a condition of her staying in Seattle until Saturday morning. She’d meet up with the Miners in Atlanta on Saturday night for Sunday’s game.
Sydney walked into her office with reddened eyes and a shredded tissue in one hand.
“Don’t cry, or I’ll start crying,” Kendall said. She reached out to embrace Sydney. “You’ll be running your new office in a week or so.”
“Thank you for everything,” Sydney said in a tear-filled voice.
“No, thank you. I hope you know I’m your friend.”
“Uh huh,” Sydney said. “You’re my friend too.”
“If you ever need a job, I hope you’ll call me first,” Kendall said. “I know you’ll be here through grad school, but if you want to relocate . . .”
“I think you’re going to end up in Seattle after all. The University of Washington has a pretty good grad program,” Sydney said. Kendall let out a laugh. “I hope I’ll see you again soon.”
“I’ll call you when I get back from Seattle.”
Sydney gave her one last squeeze and grabbed Kendall’s coat, the tote bag with her tablet and phone, and her quilted cloth overnight bag off of the coat rack that sat in one corner of Kendall’s office. “Ready?”
“Ready,” Kendall said. She gave Sydney one last hug. “Thank you.”
“Anytime.”
Kendall sprinted to the elevator bank. Outside of the Miners’ corporate offices, she hailed a cab, flung herself and her belongings in the back seat, and said, “San Francisco International Airport.” The city whizzed by, but she hardly noticed. She wanted to get to Drew. She could be fussing over him and holding his hand instead of having another thrilling encounter with airport security.
For the first time in her life, she made it to the airport in plenty of time. While working on her tablet in the airline’s MVP club, she felt her phone vibrate. She grabbed it out of her handbag, glancing at the screen. The display showed it was Sydney.
Kendall hit the “talk” button. “You can’t possibly miss me already,” she teased.
“There’s a problem,” Sydney said.
“What happened?”
“Rocky Hill got arrested again two hours ago for beating up his girlfriend in the lobby of the Bellagio. He’s in jail in Las Vegas. Jerry Berggren should be passing you momentarily in the airport. He’s going to bail him out.”
“WHAT?” Kendall knew she couldn’t scream in a crowded airport, but she really wanted to. “I knew this would happen. I knew it. I told those guys we needed to cut him, and they all fought me—”
“There are already media trucks parked around the building and your desk phone is ringing continuously. I don’t know how the media knew before we did. Hill called us twenty minutes ago.” Kendall pulled the phone away from her ear and noted the “missed call” symbol on her phone’s screen. “I keep hearing doors slamming and people yelling in the hallway.”
Kendall closed her eyes. She didn’t want the Miners to bail the guy out. She was cutting him and she wasn’t accepting any arguments about it, either. It couldn’t wait until she came back from Seattle. It needed to happen now, and she was going to spend the next day or so being the public face of the organization while she had to stand up in front of a mob of press and admit she didn’t have the spine to make her co-workers realize why Rocky Hill might be an All-Pro, but he was a public relations nightmare for any organization stupid enough to sign him. It was going to be a shit storm. She had no other choice than to get her ass back to the office.
DREW WAS PREPPED for surgery by what seemed like an army of nurses and the anesthesiologist. The anesthesiologist administered the first sedative, and the surgeon and nurses gathered around the table in the operating room and laid one hand each on the blanket covering him. They all grinned at him.
“Go Sharks,” someone said.
“Yeah,” he responded. He was already a little sleepy. That anesthesiologist knew his shit.