“That’s great news.”
“Yeah, well, the no red meat, no caffeine and no salt diet she has me on isn’t fun, but it was the only way she’d let me out of her sight.”
“It’s because she loves you.”
“Yeah, she does,” he says, “God knows why.”
“She’s a true saint among women.”
Stew snorts, but doesn’t contradict me. “Where’s the kid? I sent him down to get you.”
“He thought I should do this on my own.”
His forehead crumples in surprise, but then, inclining his head, he considers it. “Yeah, you two will do just fine.”
“Do what?”
“I was born at night, but not last night, young lady. I don’t know who either of you thought you were fooling now or even back then.”
“What?”
“Weren’t you two an item when you were with the Dodgers?”
“Absolutely not. There was nothing going on.”
“I mean I just assumed you broke up at some point there, maybe when you left to come here, but I thought . . . we all thought it was . . .”
“It was what?”
His cheeks stain red and I never thought I’d see Stew blush, not if both of us lived a hundred years. “Foreplay,” he mutters, “all those fights, you know? It does it for some people.”
And now it’s my turn to flush in embarrassment, becausethat’snot a word I ever thought I’d hear him utter.
“We weren’t,” I clarify.
“But now.”
“Yes, now we are.”
“Good. I don’t know who would put up with either of you for the rest of your lives, stubborn mules, the both of you.”
My brain finally fully catches up to the completely insaneconversation we’re having just outside the door of the Brooklyn Eagles board room.
“Wait, so . . . who exactly thought that? About Charlie and me?”
“Everyone,” he says, with casual shrug and a sniff. “Anyone who was around you together, most of the league, probably”
“And this whole time I thought . . .” I trail off.
I’d been worried about ever being perceived asthat girl, as someone who shit where she ate and took advantage of being an attractive woman in an industry full of men, sleeping my way to the top and not earning it.
But, apparently, no one cared.
I got promoted with the Dodgers, twice.
I got this job.
The Yankees want me to be their next General Manger and, all this time, I was worried, for nothing.
