“What’s that?” He dropped the ball into a nearby bag and approached the fence, squinting in the sunlight to see what she was showing him. “An article about you?”
Emmy stopped holding up the paper and glowered at him. “Don’t say that like you have no idea.”
“Why would I have any idea?”
She lifted the paper again and recited his own quote back to him with a hint of faux masculinity in her voice, affecting his Midwestern softness. When she looked back up, he was grinning at her, and her heart might as well have exploded.
“Do you really think I sound like that?”
“You’re sort of missing the point there, Thirteen.”
Tucker unlocked the gate and opened the door, swinging it in towards him. “Come in here and let me have a look.”
Emmy hesitated, clinging to the paper and staring at him through the open gate.
“I won’t bite,” he assured her.
That wasn’t what worried Emmy so much. She was more afraid of her own desire to take a nibble out of him.
Must keep tongue and teeth to myself.
He smiled again, and she wasn’t sure she’d be able to keep any promises she’d made to herself when he played dirty like that.
Chapter Fourteen
He should have left her outside.
Keeping a cage between them seemed like a smart thing, given his penchant for wanting to touch her. She must have been aware of it too, because she kept an arm’s length between them when she handed the paper off and quickly went to sit on the bench. She picked up one of his wayward balls and tossed it from hand to hand.
Tucker flattened the rumpled paper and read through the article. He was apparently going too slow for Emmy’s taste because her knees began to bounce, and he was barely halfway done when she got to her feet and started to pace nearby.
“I don’t know what you’re so bent out of shape over. It’s a really flattering article.”
Emmy’s cheeks turned red, but not in the cute way he was used to. Her neck and ears flushed a pink hue as well, reminding him of a cartoon character who was about to have steam pour out of her ears.
“You’re quoted in it.” She tapped the paper, though nowhere near his actual quote. “You can’t pretend you didn’t know about this.”
“I had no idea.”
“Then why are you quoted in it?”
“Simon interviewed me on opening day, remember? He asked some questions about you. I had no idea we were still on record. I thought we were shooting the shit and he wanted to know how you were fitting in.” He folded the paper up and handed it back to her. “I really don’t know why this has you so upset. Have you read some of the stuff they write about me?”
“That’s not the point. You’re a star, Tucker, they’re supposed to write about you. I’m nobody. My job is to stretch out muscles, ice wounds and make sure you idiots don’t royally screw up your multimillion-dollar contracts.”
“You’re not nobody, Emmy.”
“I’m nobody that deserves a two-page newspaper story. I sure as hell shouldn’t be written up in a market I don’t even work in anymore. This isn’t good for me.”
Tucker crouched down and picked up a baseball, not sure what to do with his hands when they were empty and she was off-limits. He wrestled with the notion that maybe he should give her a hug, but he wasn’t sure where that registered on the scale as far as bad and good ideas went. Holding a baseball took the notion off the table entirely.
“Why?” he asked plainly. He couldn’t wrap his head around her reaction to the article, or why she was mad at him for being an unwitting party to it.
“Imagine you had a famous father. Like an actor.”
“Okay.”
“Now imagine you wanted to be a part of the same industry he was famous for.”
“Sure.”
“And say you work your ass off to succeed. Envision the years it took you to be taken seriously as your own person in that industry.”
The little bulb went off over Tucker’s head, and he caught up to what Emmy was suggesting. “Oh.”
“It’s bad enough he mentions my dad three times. What’s worse is the number of times he points out I’m a woman.”
“Well…you are a woman.”
“I know.”
“So…”
“My doing this job isn’t about me being a woman. I got this job because I’m good at it.”
“No one is claiming you aren’t. We know you’re good. Didn’t my quote say as much?”
“People reading this article aren’t going to be thinking about that. They’re going to read this and say, She got the job because she’s a woman. When the God’s honest truth is I probably had to work ten times harder to get it because I don’t have a cock.”