Scrambling - Lex Valentine Page 0,1
When she finished, she laid it on the blotter. “It’s a standard agreement. If I sign it, are you going to screw me?” she asked with a lift of her delicate brows.
Evan and Reed exchanged an amused glance. “You’re not our type,” Evan told her.
Her green eyes darkened, and she picked up a pen. After signing the agreement, she pushed it toward Evan. “Send me a copy of that.” She nodded toward the paper. “Now, what is it that you’d like to talk about that requires a gag order?”
“This is highly personal, Ms. Jensen. Reed and I would like to go public with something, but this being the NFL, we decided we couldn’t do it without you and your approval. We don’t know how to put a positive spin on the situation, but we figured you could.”
Evan stared at her, watching her gaze shift from him to Reed and then to her hands, which lay flat on her leather blotter. When she looked up, Evan knew she had guessed the truth. He smiled slightly.
“I can see you think you know what I’m about to say,” he told her, leaning forward in his chair. “I’m gay. So is Reed. We kept our sexuality under wraps during college in order to play football, but now we want to come out. I figured if anyone could help us, it would be you. You’d know what to say to the media to make them accept two openly gay NFL players.”
Darcy pursed her lips for a moment, then let out a sigh. “You’re lovers?” she asked.
Reed shook his head. “My partner is Lennox Sterling. He was my college ‘roommate.’”
“I know who Lennox Sterling is. He’s a multi-millionaire. Owner of the Sterling Resort line of boutique hotels here on the West Coast.” She raised her brows. “If you want to come out, you could do worse for a lover in the eyes of the media.” She glanced over at Evan. “And you? Who is your partner?”
“I’m single,” Evan replied. “No lover. No partner. And I’m pretty picky about who I’m with. Football has always come first for me.” He and Darcy stared at each another for a long moment. “Can you help us? Or are you going to tell us to stay in the closet for the good of the team?”
The PR director rose from her desk and paced her office, obviously thinking. “I’m not going to give you an answer today. I need to think this through very carefully,” she said in a serious voice. “I believe there is a way to make this work to everyone’s advantage. A sort of ‘new team, new players, new era in football and the NFL’ kind of thing. I’d try to use the angle that the Stars embrace the ideals of the modern world even though its roots are in tradition.”
She ran a hand through her blonde hair and turned to look at them. “Are you sure you want to swim in the media shark tank you’ll be tossed into over this? Are you sure you want to put up with the good ole boy attitudes you’re going to find and the homophobes who believe gays don’t belong in football?”
Before Evan could answer her, Reed spoke up for the first time. “You and I both know that there are already gays in football. They just don’t have the courage to be out,” he said, his voice firm and edged with annoyance.
“They aren’t out because it’s damned hard to be gay in a sport filled with testosterone-driven heterosexual men, many of whom will feel threatened by your sexual orientation and who will probably want to kick your ass for daring to be fags in the NFL,” she shot back.
Evan swallowed hard. He knew she was right. He knew what to expect. He wouldn’t have many friends in the game if he came out. Even people who didn’t care if he was gay would be resentful that he had upset the heterosexual apple cart of their sport. The media would focus on who he was fucking and not how he played.
He exchanged a glance with Reed, knowing his best friend was thinking the same thing. Before either of them could say anything else, Darcy sat down behind her desk again and reached for her phone.
“Look, before you two decide you absolutely want to do this, I want you to speak to a friend of mine. I won’t tell him what you told me. It will be up to you to