Sooo 2 Chapters in one day is because its my birthday and I'm a lot further ahead than you guys! I hope you can keep enjoying the story and are patient enough to see it through. Once again YES it's a ROMITRI fic also as usual I own nothing enjoy!
Chapter Five
Someone took the seat next to Dimitri in the first-class cabin, but he was too preoccupied with the spreadsheet he'd pulled up on his laptop to pay attention. It wasn't until the flight attendant called for electronic devices to be shut off that he grew conscious of a dark, subtle perfume. He lifted his head and found himself looking into a set of intelligent blue eyes. "Tasha?"
"Good morning, Dimitri." She leaned against the headrest. "How in the world do you cope with these early morning flights?"
"You get used to it."
"I'll pretend to believe you."
She was wearing some kind of a silky lilac wrap dress, slim and sleeveless, with a purple cardigan knotted around her shoulders and a silver chain at her neck studded with three bezel-set diamonds. She was a beautiful woman, cultured and accomplished, and he liked doing business with her, but he didn't find her sexy. She was too carefully put together, too aggressive. Pretty much a female version of himself. "What takes you to Tampa?" he asked, already knowing the answer.
"Not the weather, that's for sure. It's going to be ninety-three degrees there today."
"Is it?" Dimitri paid no attention to any weather that didn't affect the outcome of a game.
She gave him a smile designed to charm. It might have worked if he didn't own a similar smile that he used for exactly the same purpose. "After your phone call last night, I decided we needed to evaluate where we are and see what adjustments we should make. I promise I won't talk your head off the entire flight. Nothing is more annoying than being trapped on a plane with someone who won't shut up."
If he had to be cooped up on a plane with one of his matchmakers, he would have preferred Rose. He could have bullied her into leaving him alone. Tasha's appearance this morning had nothing to do with a sudden urge to visit Tampa. He'd explained the new arrangement to her over the phone last night then hung up while she was still in shock. Obviously, she'd recovered.
She contented herself with general chitchat until they were in the air, but once the breakfast service started she began working her way to the point. "Melanie really enjoyed meeting you. More than enjoyed. I do believe she has a bit of a crush on you."
"I hope not. Nice person, but I didn't feel any real connection with her."
"You were only together for twenty minutes." She gave him the identical sympathetic smile he used when a client was being difficult. "I understand exactly where you're coming from, but the time limit you've set is a bit of a problem. I've been in this business long enough to recognize when two people need to give themselves a second chance, and I think you and Melanie qualify."
"Sorry, but it's not going to happen."
Her forehead remained smooth, her expression composed. "This won't work, you know." She toyed with the yogurt carton on her fruit plate. "I never put down the competition, especially when it's a tiny operation like Marriages by Myrna. It smacks too much of bullying. But—"
"Perfect for You."
"What?"
"She calls it Perfect for You, not Marriages by Myrna." He couldn't imagine why he felt the need to clarify this, but somehow it seemed necessary.
"A wise decision," Tasha replied, with only a whiff of condescension. "But let me just say this. I resent the way people think a trip to Kinko's to get business cards printed up is all it takes to be a matchmaker. But then, as a sports agent, you know exactly what I mean."
She'd scored a field goal with that one. Rose had no depth of experience, only enthusiasm.
Tasha pushed aside her tray, although she'd only nibbled at the corner of a honeydew cube. "Is there something we're not providing that makes you feel the need to expose my candidates to an outsider? I'd be lying if I said I wasn't the tiniest bit threatened, especially since I offered to sit in on these initial interviews myself."
"Don't worry about it. Rose lacks the killer instinct. She liked Melanie better than she liked her own candidate. She tried to talk me into seeing her again."
That caught her by surprise. "Really? Well… Ms. Mazur is an odd little duck, isn't she?"
It must have been the engine noise because, for a moment, he thought she said "odd little fuck," and he was hit with a vision of Rose naked. The notion took him aback. Rose amused him, but she didn't turn him on. Not really. Maybe he'd thought about her sexually a couple of times, and he'd made a couple of smarmy references to fluster her. But nothing serious. Just messing around.
The plane hit an air pocket, and he pulled his mind from the bedroom back to business. "I don't expect you to be comfortable with this, but as I said last night, the process will go smoother if Rose's there for all the introductions."
The fire in her eyes told him exactly what she was thinking, but she was too much of a pro to lose her cool. "That's a matter of opinion."
"She's a tadpole, Tasha, not a shark. The women relax with her, and I can get a clearer picture of who they are in a shorter period of time."
"I see. Well, I've been doing this for a lot more years than she has. I'm sure I could expedite these interviews better than—"
"Tasha, you couldn't be nonthreatening if you tried, and I mean that as the highest form of compliment. I told you from the beginning that I intended to make this easy on myself. It turns out that Rose's the key, and nobody's more surprised about that than I am."
She retrenched, but she wasn't happy about it. He didn't entirely blame her. If somebody poached on his territory, he'd have come out swinging, too. "All right, Dimitri," she said. "If this is what you need, then I'll make sure it works."
"Exactly what I want to hear."
The flight attendant took their trays, and he pulled out his copy of the Sports Lawyers Journal. But the article on tort liability and fan violence didn't hold his attention. Despite his best efforts to keep it simple, his hunt for a wife was growing more complicated by the day.
***
I like her," Dimitri said to Rose on the following Monday evening as Rachel left Probka's. "She's fun. I had a good time."
"Me, too," Rose said, even though that was hardly the point. But the introduction had gone better than she'd dared hope, with lots of laughter and lively conversation. The three of them had shared their food prejudices (Dimitri wouldn't touch an organ meat, Rachel hated olives, and Rose couldn't stomach anchovies). They told embarrassing stories from their high school years and debated the merits of the Coen brothers' movies. (Thumbs-up from Dimitri, thumbs-down from Rachel and Rose.) Dimitri didn't seem to mind that Rachel wasn't a knockout on the order of Gwen Phelps. She had both the polish and the brains he was looking for, and there were no cell phone interruptions. Rose allowed the twenty minutes to expand to forty.
"Good work, Rose." He drew out his BlackBerry and typed a memo to himself. "I'll call her tomorrow and ask her out."
"Really? That's great." She felt a little queasy.
He looked up from the BlackBerry. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing. Why?"
"You have a funny expression."
She pulled herself back together. She was a professional now, and she could handle this. "I'm just imagining the newspaper interviews I'll give after Perfect for You hits the Fortune Five Hundred."
"Nothing's more inspiring than a girl with a dream." He returned the BlackBerry to his pocket and withdrew his well-stuffed money clip. She frowned. He frowned back. "Now what?"
"Don't you have a nice, discreet credit card tucked away somewhere?"
"In my business, it's all about the flash." He flashed a hundred-dollar bill and tossed it on the table.
"I'm only mentioning it because, as I think I told you, image consultation is part of my business." She hesitated, knowing she had to tread carefully. "For some women… women of a certain upbringing… obvious displays of wealth can be a little off-putting."
"Believe me, they're not off-putting to twenty-one-year-old kids who've grown up with food stamps."
"I see your point, but—"
"Got it. Money clip for business, credit card for courtship." He slipped the object under discussion back into his pocket.
She'd basically accused him of vulgarity, but instead of being offended, he seemed to have filed the information away as dispassionately as if she'd given him tomorrow's weather report. She considered his flawless table manners, the way he dressed, his knowledge of food and wine. Clearly these things had all been part of his curriculum, right along with torts and constitutional law. Exactly who was Dimitri Belikov, and why was she beginning to like him so much?
She pleated her cocktail napkin. "So… about your childhood… ?"
"Which is none of your damned business."
"Something bad then."
"Horrifying," he said dryly. "Look, Rose, I grew up in a trailer park. Not a nice mobile home park—that would have been paradise. These heaps weren't good enough for scrap. The neighbors were addicts, thieves, people who'd gotten lost in the system. My bedroom looked out over a junkyard. I lost my mother in a car accident when I was four. My old man was a decent guy when he wasn't drunk, but that wasn't very often. I earned everything I have, and I'm proud of that. I don't hide where I came from. That dented metal sign on my office wall, the one that says beau vista, used to hang on a post not far from our door. I keep it as a reminder of how far I've come. But beyond that, my business is mine, and yours is doing what I tell you. Got it?"
"Jeez, all I did was ask."
"Don't ask again."
I want you in the clubs every night," Tasha announced to her staff the next morning. Spiridon, Probka's bartender, had awakened her at midnight with the disturbing news about Rosemarie Mazur's success with her latest match, and she hadn't been able to fall back to sleep. She couldn't get past the feeling that another important client was slipping away from her. "Pass out your business cards," she told Marcella and Mirabel, along with Diana, the girl she'd hired to replace Iris. "Pick up phone numbers. You know the routine."
"We've done that," Mirabel said.
"But apparently not well enough or Dimitri Belikov wouldn't have made plans with Mazur's prospect last night instead of ours. And what about Hendricks and Mccall? We haven't shown them anybody new in two weeks? What about the rest of our clients? Marcella, I want you to spend the rest of the week staking out the modeling agencies. I'll hit the charity luncheons and the Oak Street boutiques. Mirabel and Diana, work the hair salons and the big department stores. All of you—clubs at night. By this time next week, we're going to be screening a fresh batch of candidates."
"A lot of good it'll do with Dimitri," Mirabel muttered. "He doesn't like anybody."
They didn't get it, Tasha thought as she returned to her office and flipped through her calendar. They didn't understand how hard you had to work to stay on top. She gazed down at Friday's calendar entry. In a short, terse phone conversation, Ivan Zeklos had set up their date for this weekend. She'd done her best not to think about it since. Just the possibility that someone might see them together gave her nightmares. But at least he didn't seem to have told Dimitri about her spying episode.
A helicopter flew overhead. She rubbed her temples and considered setting up a spa day. She needed something to lift her spirits, something to make her feel like her old self again. But as she turned toward her computer, a traitorous voice whispered there weren't enough massages, ayurvedic facials, or hot stone pedicures in the world to fix whatever wanted to stop working inside her.
Rose couldn't afford to pin all her hopes on Rachel's date with Dimitri, so she spent the rest of the week hanging out at two of Chicago's top universities. At the University of Chicago in Hyde Park, she alternated between haunting the hallways of the Graduate School of Business and lingering by the steps of the Harris School of Public Policy. She also made her way to Lincoln Park, where she spent most of her time with the music majors at the De Paul Concert Hall. At both schools, she kept her eyes open for comely graduate students and beautiful faculty members. When she found them, she approached them directly, explained who she was and what she was looking for. Some were married or engaged, one was a lesbian, but the world loves a matchmaker, and most of the women were interested in helping her. By the end of the week, she had two great candidates ready to go if she needed them, as well as half a dozen women who weren't right for Dimitri, but who were interested in signing on as clients themselves. Since they couldn't afford the kinds of fees she wanted to charge, she established an academic discount. Dimitri was out of town for the week, and he didn't call. Not that she expected him to. Still, for someone who spent all his time on the phone, she would have thought he could have spared a few minutes to check in with her. Instead of stewing about it, she slipped on her sneakers, jogged to Dunkin' Donuts, and distracted herself with an apple Danish.
Dimitri spent the first four days of the week traveling between Dallas, Atlanta, and St. Louis, but even as he met with clients and player personnel directors, he found himself thinking ahead to his Friday afternoon powwow at Stars headquarters. When it came to the Stars, he tried to do as much business as possible with Ron McDermitt, the team's top-notch general manager, but once again Mia Rinaldi had insisted on seeing him instead. Not a good sign.
Dimitri prided himself on having a good relationship with all the team owners. Mia was the glaring exception. It was his fault they'd gotten off to a bad start. One of his first clients had been a Green Bay veteran unhappy with the contract his former agent had negotiated. Dimitri wanted to prove how tough he was, so when the Stars expressed interest in the guy, Dimitri had unfairly strung Mia along, letting her believe she had a good chance at signing him even though he knew otherwise. He'd then taken her interest in the player to the Packers' bargaining table and used it to gain the leverage he needed to get his client a better deal. Mia was furious and, in a blistering phone call, warned him never to use her like that again.
Instead of taking her words to heart, he'd gotten into another battle with her a few months later over a second client, this one a Stars player. Dimitri had decided he needed to sweeten the third year of an existing three-year contract, again negotiated by a former agent, but Mia refused to budge. After a few weeks, Dimitri threatened to hold the player out of training camp. The guy was her best tight end, and since Dimitri had her over a barrel, she came through with a respectable counteroffer. Still, it wasn't the splashy new deal Dimitri thought he needed to establish his reputation as an agent on the move. He dug in and sent the player deep-sea fishing the day training camp started.
Mia was enraged, and the media had a field day playing up the feud between the Stars' tight-fisted owner and the city's brash new agent. Dimitri capitalized on the player's popularity with the fans by giving interviews at the drop of a hat and dramatically berating Mia for treating one of her best men so shabbily. As the first week of training camp came to end, Dimitri kept on showboating, staying cozy with the sports columnists and working the sound bites on the ten o'clock news. A back swell built against Mia. Still, she wouldn't budge.
Just as he'd begun to have second thoughts about the wisdom of his strategy, a stroke of luck occurred. The Stars' backup tight end broke his ankle in practice, and Mia was forced to cave. Dimitri got the extravagant deal he wanted, but in the process, he'd made her look bad, and she'd never forgiven him. The experiences taught him two hard lessons: In a good negotiation, everybody comes out feeling like a winner. And a successful agent doesn't build his reputation by humiliating the people he has to work with.
The Stars' receptionist directed him to the practice field, and as he approached, he saw Adrian Ivashkov cozying up to Mia on the sidelines bench. He swore under his breath. The last thing he wanted Ivashkov to witness was Mia Rinaldi cutting him to shreds. Adrian looked like he'd stepped out of Surfer Magazine: beard stubble, gel-rumpled brown hair, tropical print shorts, a T-shirt, and athletic sandals. Hoping to minimize the collateral damage, Dimitri made a quick decision and concentrated on him first. "Is that a new Porsche I saw sitting in your parking space?"
Adrian gazed at him through the yellow iridium lenses of a pair of high-tech Oakleys. "That ol'junker? Heck, no. I bought it at least three weeks ago."
Dimitri found a laugh, even though the hair had begun to stand up on the back of his neck. And not from being around Ivashkov. He slipped on his own sunglasses, not so much to protect his eyes, but to even out the playing field.
"Well, well, well…" Mia Rinaldi cooed in the husky, bimbo voice she used to conceal her razor-sharp mind. "Look who's joined us. And I thought our exterminator had gotten rid of all the rats around here."
"Nope. The meanest and strongest somehow manage to survive." Dimitri grinned, doing his best to hit the balance between not pissing her off any more than he had to and letting Adrian see she couldn't intimidate him.
The Stars' owner and chief operating officer was in her forties now, and nobody wore the years better. She looked like a more intellectual version of Marilyn Monroe, with the same cloud of pale blond hair and a powerhouse body, today clad in a clingy aqua shell and pencil-slim canary yellow skirt slit up the side. Busty, leggy, and delectable, she should have been a centerfold instead of the most powerful woman in the NFL.
Adrian rose. "I think I'll get out of here before the two of you accidentally hurt my passing arm."
Dimitri couldn't back down now. "Shoot, Adrian, we haven't even started having fun yet. Stick around and watch me make Mia cry."
Ivashkov gazed down at his beautiful boss. "I've never seen this crazy man before in my life."
She smiled. "Run along, Adrian honey. Your sex life will be screwed up forever if you're forced to watch all the ways a woman can chop up a snake."
Retreat wouldn't win Dimitri the quarterback's heart, and as Ivashkov began to walk away, Dimitri called out after him. "Hey, Adrian… Sometime ask Mia to show you where she buries the bones of all the agents who don't have the balls to stand up to her."
Adrian waved good-bye without turning around. "I didn't hear that, Ms. Rinaldi. I'm just a sweet mama's boy from California who wants to play a little football for you and go to church in my spare time."
Mia laughed and stretched her long bare legs as Adrian disappeared through the fence. "I like that boy. I like him so much I'm going to make sure you never get your grubby hands on him."
"I doubt it was too hard to lure him out here today so he could witness our little meeting."
"Not hard at all."
"It's been seven years, Mia. Don't you think it's time we bury the hatchet?"
"As long as the blade ends up in the back of your neck, I'm game."
He slipped his fingers in his pockets and smiled. "The best day of my career was the day your brother-in-law signed on as my client. I still savor every minute of it."
Mia scowled. She loved Christian Ozera as though they were blood relatives instead of being related by marriage, and the fact that he'd ignored her entreaty and signed with Dimitri was a bitter pill she'd never quite been able to swallow. Dimitri's first negotiations with her over Christian's contract had been brutal. Just because family was involved didn't mean Mia believed in loosening her iron grip on the Stars' finances, and he still remembered the way she'd methodically x-ed out an admittedly outrageous bonus package Dimitri had stuck in to test the waters.
"Family is family, and business is business. I love the boy, but not that much."
"Who are you kidding?" Dimitri had said. "You'd walk over coals for him."
"Yes, but I'd leave my checkbook behind while I was doing it."
Dimitri gazed toward the practice field. Although training camp wouldn't start for more than a month, a few players were running drills with the team's trainer. He nodded toward a fourth-year player, one of the Zagorskis' clients. "Keman's looking good."
"He'd look a lot better if he spent more time in the weight room and less time selling used cars on TV. But Dan likes him."
Dan Calebow was the Stars' president and Mia's husband. She'd chosen not to take his name when they married. They'd met when Mia had inherited the Stars from her father. At the time, Dan had been the head coach and Mia had known nothing about football, something that was hard to believe now. Their early battles were nearly as legendary as their ensuing love story. Last year one of the cable channels had made a cheesy movie about them, and Dan was still getting ribbed because he'd been portrayed by a former boy band singer.
"I want a three-year contract," Mia said, getting down to the business of Caleb Crenshaw.
"Yeah, I'd want one, too, if I were you, but Caleb's only signing for two years."
"Three. It's not negotiable." She stated her case without consulting notes, reeling off complex statistics in her breathy, sex-kitten's voice. They both had excellent memories, and he didn't write anything down, either.
"You know I can't advise Caleb to take that offer." He propped his foot on the bench next to her. "By the third year, he'll be worth millions more than you'll be paying him." Which was exactly why she wanted the three-year deal.
"Only if he stays healthy," she retorted, as he'd known she would. "I'm the one taking all the risk. If he blows out his knee that third year, I'll still have to pay him." She went on from there, emphasizing her altruism and the unending gratitude a player should feel for simply being allowed to wear the uniform of football legends like Bobby Tom Denton, Cal Bonner, Darnell Pruitt, and, yes, Christian Ozera.
Dimitri threatened a holdout, even though he had no intention of carrying it through. What he'd once seen as a canny bargaining tool he now regarded as a desperate measure guaranteed to do more harm than good.
Mia bore down, hitting him with more breathy statistics, peppered with allusions to ungrateful players and bloodsucking agents.
He countered with statistics of his own, all of them pointing toward the fact that tightwad owners ended up with resentful players and a losing season.
In the end, they arrived at the place they'd both pretty much known they'd reach. Mia got her three-year contract, and Caleb Crenshaw got a one-and-a-half-million-dollar signing bonus for the insult. Win. Win. Except it was an agreement they could have reached three months ago if Mia hadn't gone out of her way to make things as hard for him as she could.
"Hey, Dimitri."
He turned to see Lissa Ozera approaching. Christian's wife couldn't have been more different from the standard-issue knockout blond NFL spouse. Her body was trim and compact, but hardly memorable. Except for a pair of jade green eyes that tilted up at the corners, she and Mia bore little physical resemblance. He definitely liked Lissa a lot more than he liked her sister. Chris' wife was smart, funny, and easy to talk to. In some ways, she reminded him of Rose, although Rose was smaller, and her shock of curls bore no resemblance to Lissa's straight blond hair. Still, they were both feisty smart-asses, and he wasn't letting down his guard in front of either of them.
Lissa had a baby in her arms, one Andre Eric Ozera, aged nine months. She held a curly-haired little girl by the opposite hand. Dimitri was glad to see Lissa, neutral about seeing the baby boy, and less than pleased to be in the presence of the three-year-old girl. Thankfully, Victoria Rhea Ozera who had given herself the nick name Pippi for reasons unknown to him, had a more important target in sight.
"Aunt Mia!" She dropped her mother's hand and made her way toward the Stars' owner as fast as her small feet, clad in bright red rubber boots, could carry her. The boots looked weird with her purple polka-dot shorts and top. It also hadn't rained in two weeks, but he had personal experience with Pippi Ozera's single-mindedness, and he didn't blame Lissa for choosing her battles.
In a case of like attracting like, Mia hopped up from the bench to greet the little curly-haired larcenist. "Hey, pumpkin'."
"Guess what, Aunt Mia…"
Dimitri tuned the kid out as Lissa came over to him. She touched the side of his neck. "I don't see any puncture marks, so your meeting must have gone well."
"I'm still alive."
She shifted the baby from one arm to the other. "So have you found Mrs. Belikov yet? Rose's got this weird— and totally unnecessary—thing going about confidentiality."
He smiled. "I'm still looking." He grabbed the baby's drooly fist as a distraction. "Hey, pal, how's that throwing arm coming along?"
He wasn't great with kids, and the little boy buried his face in his mother's shoulder.
"No football," Lissa said. "This one's going to be a writer like me. Aren't you, Andre?" Lissa kissed the top of the baby's head, then frowned. "Have you talked to Rose today?"
"No, why?" Out of the corner of his eye he saw Mia smile fondly at Pippi. He wished just once she'd give him a smile half that genuine.
"I've been trying to get hold of her all day," Lissa said, "but her phones aren't working. If she happens to call you, tell her I want to talk to her about the grand soiree tomorrow afternoon."
"One o'clock." Mia spoke over the top of Pippi's curly blond head. "Does she know we changed the time?"
Dimitri went very still. A party? This was exactly the chance he'd been waiting for.
"I wish I could remember," Lissa said. "But I'm on deadline, and I've been distracted."
The Ozera and Calebows/Rinaldi's got together all the time, but Dimitri never received an invitation, no matter how many times he explained to Chris that he needed one. Dimitri wanted a chance to be with Mia when they weren't doing battle, and an informal social gathering was the perfect opportunity. Maybe if they weren't wrangling over a contract, she'd see he was generally a decent guy. Over the years, he'd tried to set up a dozen lunches and dinners, but she always ducked, generally with cracks about food poisoning. Now Lissa was throwing a party, and she'd invited Rose. The person she hadn't invited was him.
Maybe it was a female-only affair. Or maybe not.
There was only one way to find out.
