Even as she thought it and started scrolling for the footage, she acknowledged it was a false start. If the subject itself wasn’t interesting, nobody cared what other people had to say about it.

Battleship sunk.

Maybe a plea to Killian would work. She could beg. Much as she wanted to leave Off Season, she still had to pay the rent on her crappy apartment. And since no other networks were climbing over one another to garner her attention, it wasn’t like she could just easily move on.

Which, of course, Bobby knew.

She glanced over toward her parents’ photo and felt the prickle of tears behind her eyes. “Mom . . . why am I even doing this to myself? Is it worth it? Did you feel like it was worth it when you had success? Or am I just going to be let down by that, too?”

Her mother’s smile, forever frozen, was unhelpful.

“Wonderful.” She let her forehead fall to the desk. The Bobcats were traveling to Miami, which meant she would tag along—at her own expense this time—and pray to get two minutes alone with Killian. The longer distance meant more time spent in modes of transportation surrounded by a hundred other people, and less down time at the hotel before and after the game.

Begging wasn’t her style. But when it came to begging or not eating . . . her stomach was going to be making some very pitiful sounds to go along with her pleading words.

* * *

Shutting the hotel door behind him, Killian blew out a breath. It had been a total whopping. Dolphins over Bobcats, 30-7. Not their best showing, and the fans had let them know it. His ears were still ringing from the boos.

He just wanted a quiet room, the trail mix he’d brought with him, a movie, and a soft bed to lounge on.

And someone to lounge with.

The idea popped into his mind before he was even halfway to the remote, and his imagination filled in the details. Stretching out with Freckles in bed, him in sweats, her naked—hey, his imagination, his choice—with her legs draped over his lap and her head on his shoulder. Watching a horror movie on pay-per-view, running a hand down her back to soothe her during the scary moments . . .

His phone was out with her number dialed before he could second guess himself. Five minutes later, she was in his room. Ten minutes later, she was naked.

An hour later, he was sated, with her body draped over his like limp spaghetti, ready for trail mix and a movie.

Her hand caressed up and down his ribcage. “Wanna talk about the game?”

“Nope.”

“Okay.” She said it so easily, as if she’d been prepared to hear that answer and had already accepted it.

He let his hand roam down her back. “What movie should we watch?” The options flipped across the screen one by one. “And your warning is if you pick a chick flick, I’m tossing you out in the hallway without your clothes.”

“Now there’s a walk of shame to remember,” she joked, poking his belly in retaliation. “How about something scary?”

“Seriously?” He stared down at her, wondering if he’d somehow telegraphed his desires. She blinked back up at him, clearly innocent. “You want to watch a horror movie?”

“I’m not a fan of watching them alone in my apartment,” she explained, hugging him tighter. “But I can be convinced when I’ve got someone to squeeze. My startle reflex is pathetic, so I’ll jump and jolt a lot. There’s your warning.”

He debated a moment, letting the image from his imagination spin out once more. But something held her back. “Is it my day, or yours?”

She rolled until her head was pillowed by his stomach, so she lay crossways over the bed. Her feet still barely reached the edge of the mattress. “I didn’t think we were keeping track anymore. But . . .” She closed her eyes and tapped her fingers on his stomach in a pattern he took to mean she was counting something. “Yours, I think. I’d be willing to take it, though, if you’re feeling generous.”

He sifted his hand through her hair. Her eyes drifted closed and she made a little hum of pleasure. The sound vibrated through his torso and his cock jumped at the feel of it. Down, boy. Not now. Later. “Why journalism?”

She snuggled a little more into him, draped one arm over his chest, and sighed. “We’ve talked about that. My parents were both journalists.”

“How old were you when they died?”

“The plane crash was when I was eighteen.”

He waited for her to go on, but she was surprisingly quiet. “I’m sorry.”

“Me, too.” She drew a pattern over his chest, twirling his chest hairs in little spirals here and here. “My mom was brilliant. Dad used to joke his main goal in life was to keep up with her. He was more into photojournalism, but my mom was the real hard-hitting stuff.” She smiled a little, and he could see she was rifling through memories. “She was the one who would find the most war-torn country, rife with murder and rape and political unrest, and fly straight into the eye of the storm. Dad would follow and catch what he could with photos. Keeping up with her was like trying to keep up with smoke, he said. As many dangerous places as they ended up, it was like they were in some sort of protective bubble. Trouble seemed to bounce off them. They always made it back in one piece.”

“Where were you while this was happening?” He wasn’t sure he liked the idea of a tiny Aileen being left behind.

“Oh, this was all before I was born.” She waved that off. “They still worked once I came along, but it was more local. And by local, I mean inside the continental U.S.” She grinned. “Mom was forever plotting another trip to DC or New York or wherever corruption lived and needed to be blasted out in the open. She took me a few times on the less intense trips. I missed some school, but mom insisted it was more educational than sitting at a desk memorizing the order of presidents. What was the point in knowing the past if you weren’t experiencing your present to the fullest, she’d always say.”

“Nice.” He stroked the backs of his fingers over her shoulder and upper arm, watching goosebumps raise on her porcelain skin. “What happened?”

She knew without him elaborating what he was asking. “Small plane crash. Them and four other people. No survivors. The weather turned ugly mid-flight and there was no good place to put down. Just one of those freak things.” She gave a shaky laugh. “They spent nearly a decade of their lives bouncing around from one developing country to the next, risking themselves in war zones, and they make it back okay only to die in a freak plane accident. I remember thinking how unfair that was. That Mom was sitting up in Heaven rolling her eyes at the totally anti-climatic way she’d been taken out. Probably sounds stupid,” she muttered, pressing her nose to his skin. “They’re dead, no matter how it happened. But that’s what I remember most. Not the sadness, but the rage at how they’d been taken from me. As if dying in the line of journalistic duty would have made it easier.”

“It might have,” he said, his heart breaking for the angry young woman she must have been. On the cusp of adulthood, when she’d needed guidance like never before, it had been ripped from her.

“I always knew I’d be a journalist like her, but print just wasn’t where my heart was.” She grinned up at him, eyes still a little shiny. “And I just found myself inexplicably drawn to hot athletes.” Climbing over him, she straddled his lap. “Can’t imagine why.”

He could. She’d taken the heart of her parents’ profession and twisted it to make it something she wouldn’t be competing with them on. So their memory would live on, untouched by her successes or failures. He rubbed up and down her back. “I want some trail mix.”

She blinked, clearly thrown by the change of subject. “Ooookay. Do you need to make a vending machine run?”

“Nope. I have some.” He rolled her off, then headed to grab the bag from his duffle. He tossed it to her and she read the label.