When Stars Collide (Chicago Stars #9) - Susan Elizabeth Phillips Page 0,115
to make me some pancakes?”
“I do not.”
“Want to go out for pancakes?”
“What I want is to talk to him.” She sounded whiny and pitiful, exactly the way she felt.
Clint cocked an eyebrow at her. “The last time you did that, things didn’t go well.”
“He told you about it?”
“Let’s just say I had to pick up the pieces you left behind.”
She winced. “I need to fix this.”
“I’m afraid your idea of fixing it might be different from his.”
“I won’t know that until I talk to him. Please. Call him on your phone.”
“Exactly how self-destructive do you think I am? I need him.”
The stubborn set of his jaw told her no amount of pressure would make him agree. Who else would know where he was? Maybe his friend Ritchie Collins, the Stars’ wide receiver she’d met that night in Phoenix? “Ritchie! How do I find him?”
“Ritchie’s on a mission trip to Haiti with his church.”
“Shit. Who are his other friends on the team?”
“Most everybody, but if you think I’m handing over a roster, you’re wrong.”
“His agent, then. He has to talk to his agent, right?”
Clint gave her an oily smile. “A guy named Heath Champion. The top sports agent in the business. And a word of advice: they don’t call him ‘the Python’ for nothing.”
* * *
Superagent Heath Champion’s office was all intimidation with lacquered walls, luxury leather, and a set of silver-framed family photos to give it a human touch—a pretty auburn-haired woman and some children. The man himself—rugged, hard-edged, handsome in an intimidating way—regarded her with cool politeness. “That would be a violation of agent-client privilege.”
“I’m not going to kill him!” she exclaimed. “I just want to talk to him.”
He gazed at her over his desk. “So you’ve said. But Thad’s had some stalking incidents in the past.”
“Do I look like a stalker?”
“You do seem a little unhinged.”
And that was why they called him the Python.
She was getting nowhere, although she did contemplate the possibility of trading her own easygoing agent for this hard-edged browbeater. She planted her hands on his desk and leaned forward. “Throw me a bone, Mr. Champion. Who can I talk to who won’t care so much about your precious agent-client privilege?”
Six hours later, she was in Louisville, Kentucky.
* * *
Thad’s mother was the coldest, most hostile woman Olivia had ever met. Understandably so, Olivia reluctantly admitted, since Dawn Owens also believed Olivia was stalking her son.
She appeared to be in her fifties, but Olivia calculated she was older. She could have been a model for senior fashions with her slender body, light brown bob, good skin, and Thad’s perfect nose.
“I’m not a stalker. I swear,” Olivia said, which only made her seem more like a stalker. She tried to peer past Mrs. Owens’s tall silhouette into the front hallway of the Owenses’ colonial-style home: brass wall sconces, a grandfather clock, no Thad. She tried again. “I’m Olivia Shore. Google me. I’m completely respectable. Thad and I traveled together for a month promoting Marchand Timepieces. We’re friends. And I—” She knew she was looking crazier by the second, but she couldn’t help herself. “And I love him. With all my heart.”
Mrs. Owens pointed toward the street. “Leave before I call the police.”
Olivia gave it one more try. “I’ve driven all the way from Chicago. Is he here?”
Thad’s mother turned her head toward the foyer. “Greg, call the police.”
A deep, male voice—but not the one she wanted to hear—rumbled from inside the house. “Thad’s on the phone, Dawn. He says to let her in and feed her, but that’s all. Hold on. Uh-huh . . . Uh-huh . . . He says if she seems like she’s drunk, put her up in his room for the night and don’t let her drive, but kick her out first thing in the morning.”
Totally defeated, Olivia rubbed her cheek and turned away toward the front sidewalk. “I’m sorry I bothered you.”
“Wait,” Dawn Owens said from behind her. “Come in.”
* * *
Thad’s old bedroom was disappointingly stripped of his childhood mementos. The ivory walls displayed a series of floral watercolors instead of sports posters. There were no shelves full of Little League trophies, no abandoned Trapper Keepers, or boxes of old mix tapes. It wasn’t as though his parents had forgotten him, however. The downstairs was filled with photographs of Thad at every stage of his life.
His father, Greg, was an accountant, a good-looking one—tall and lean like his son, but with salt-and-pepper hair. Over dinner last night, he’d confessed to