“I’M NOT RETIRING,” Brody said definitively. “You asked me to think about it, and I thought about it. The answer is no.”
Jud Harris, the lead publicist and marketing liaison for the corporate sponsor who had made his racing possible for the past five years, leaned in.
“Brody, I’m afraid it’s not optional at this point. After that fiasco at the club, it was all I could do to talk the heads of the company into keeping you on at all. You need to play ball and seriously clean up your act.”
Play ball. Yeah, right. Brody curled his fists under the table, trying to control his anger as he kept his voice level.
“I’ve got a pretty healthy bank account, Jud. I can finance my own car and team.”
It would probably take everything he had, but he could manage it for a year or two, until he could get another sponsor.
If you can get another sponsor, a traitorous doubt in his brain taunted.
“C’mon, Brody, we drop you, it looks bad. Your other, smaller sponsors would follow. We’ve put up with a lot over the years, but now we need to do damage control. We’re just asking you to lie low for a while. Stay out of trouble and the gossip pages.”
Brody bit out a curse, knowing Jud was right. Sponsorship was about more than money, as well—sponsors were a part of the team’s image and a vote of confidence. They also created community—people who worked for or were customers of that sponsor supported the car and the team.
“I told you why I was there—”
“It doesn’t matter what really happened. It matters how it showed up in the news.”
Brody stood, needing to get some distance before he really lost his temper. He knew what Jud said was true, and that was what was eating at him.
He’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time, helping a friend—a married friend—who’d called from a notorious kink club, too drunk to drive. Reporters who hung around those places waiting for a story revealed Brody coming out of the club at three in the morning.
He was judged in the eyes of the media, and caught in a situation where he couldn’t reveal his real reason for being there. Not publicly. He didn’t care as much about protecting his friend, who shouldn’t have been there in the first place, as he did the three kids the guy had at home. They didn’t need to see their father’s picture on the news. Not like that.
So Brody let the public think what they wanted.
The playboy image he’d earned over the years meant it would be passed off as one more chapter in the story of wild Brody Palmer.
Jud took his silence as possible receptivity and continued to press.
“Besides, it’s not actual retirement, we’ll just play it that way to the press. It will amp up interest. Your fans love you. They’ll miss you and want you back. Then you return, we build it up and it’s a big deal. It’s been done before, in a lot of sports.”
“And what am I supposed to do in the meantime?”
“You settle down. Maybe find a nice girl and get married...or at least engaged. You can always break it off later. We’ll stage your comeback, you’ll come back the season after next, bigger than ever. The game is changing, Brody. People are more family oriented these days. Your lifestyle... Well, we have to protect the brand. Our brand,” Jud said firmly.
Brody thought his head would explode as Jud kept talking. He’d always enjoyed himself—in the car, he was all business, but in his life, he did what he wanted. He made his own rules. Until now.
Racing was his life. Driving was like breathing to him. The idea of losing it... He couldn’t let that happen.
If the sponsor bailed, it would affect the whole team. This wasn’t only about him. Other livelihoods, reputations and futures were on the line, as well. They might be able to move to other work, but not right away. And not all of them.
“You’ll keep paying the team salaries?” Brody interrupted.
“Absolutely. We’ll say it’s part of your retirement deal that they are paid out for the season, but they can’t know the truth. No one can. If this gets out, it would be a mess for everyone. Understand? Then the deal’s off, period.”
Brody nodded.
“Trust me,” Jud said. “This will work. But you need to do your part and really change your behavior. Ten years ago, you could get away with this stuff, but people are less willing to accept it now.”
Yeah, he understood. He had to stop racing for a year and lie to everyone he knew. Brody understood just fine. It didn’t sit well. There were some lines he didn’t cross: he didn’t sleep with married women, he never broke a promise and he didn’t lie. He had enough other vices to keep him in the news, but those were three he’d always held true, until now.
Every bone in his body rejected the idea, but he had to think of his team and his future. It was only one season, and then he would come back, stronger than ever.
He’d make sure of it.
“Fine. Draw up the paperwork.”
Brody walked out the door before he even heard Jud’s reply, but when he made his way out of the office building in downtown Manhattan, he stood on the sidewalk, feeling lost. Blending himself into the crowd on the street, he couldn’t help but wonder: What the heck was he going to do with himself for the next year?
HANNAH MORGAN SAT alone in a dimly lit Atlanta bar, a plate of ribs sitting untouched to her left, a bottle of beer to her right, and her laptop opened directly in front of her. Growling in frustration at the laptop, she pushed it away to grab the ribs and dig in.
Quitting her accounting job had seemed like the right thing to do two months ago, but now she was having serious doubts. At the time, she’d been passed over for yet another promotion and had finally asked her boss why she was always being rejected for promotions at the firm she’d always given her best to.
You play it too safe to handle the bigger clients, Hannah, her boss had told her. They need someone who can think outside the box, find creative solutions.
Too safe?
She hadn’t been aware that being sensible or responsible was a bad thing in financial management, she fumed for the thousandth time as she tore into a rib.
Well, she’d shown them. She’d quit. That was hardly playing it safe, right? Neither was taking off around the country to explore her options and try to start a new career. Now she was operating completely outside the box.
Take that, she grumped as she licked the spicy, smoky sauce from her fingers and then took another from the plate. She’d missed lunch while working on her photo blog, Hannah’s Great Adventure, which so far hadn’t been very adventurous at all.
It wasn’t that she hadn’t tried, but adventure and risk taking had never come naturally to her.
She eyed the few comments she did have on her blog.
Nice.
Pretty.
Then there was the one that asked if she had any pictures of herself, and when would she come to his town?
Ugh. That was not the kind of adventure she was looking for.
Unfortunately, though she was active on social media and always posting on her blog, traffic was low. But she was still new at this, right? It would take time to establish and make a name for herself.
Sighing, she pushed