Carly Phillips - Hot Item

She wondered if he’d been at all affected by their time together or if she was just another fling. She’d never know, Sophie thought sadly. She could hazard a guess though, and the answer was as painful as the lump in her throat.

“RILEY NASH, you are a first-class jerk,” his ex-wife muttered.

It wasn’t anything he hadn’t thought about himself since leaving Florida, but Lisa’s reasons for calling him the name were way different than his own.

“It’s not like I brought her back a huge gift. It was just a stuffed animal from the airport.” The gift wasn’t behind Lisa’s anger-that much Riley knew. He just wanted to buy himself time before dealing with the real issue between them.

Riley leaned back in his chair in the small restaurant his ex had chosen as a neutral meeting ground. Though he steeled himself for an argument, he remained outwardly relaxed and in control, leaving the hysteria for Lisa.

“You cannot be that stupid,” Lisa muttered. “You know that’s not what I’m upset about.”

“I think we can refrain from name-calling,” Ted, the ever rational one said, patting Lisa’s hand to calm her down.

Riley had to refrain from gagging at the other man’s patronizing, too fatherly manner. “All I did was let my daughter sleep over,” he said to her for at least the dozenth time.

“And you let her go to the Seaport with friends after I said no!”

He couldn’t deny part of her statement, but there had been extenuating circumstances. Like it or not, he’d come to the conclusion that Sophie’s words made sense. Lizzie needed a father not a friend. Still he hadn’t wanted to deprive her, nor had he wanted her to end up resenting him the way he resented Spencer.

He couldn’t stop thinking of Sophie for many reasons, not the least of which was how he’d treated her their last day in Florida. She deserved so much better. But from the moment he’d realized he cared enough about Sophie to want her to understand his motivations regarding his daughter, he’d been scared by the implications. Scared that he’d come to care for Sophie Jordan as much more than a one-night stand. The minute she’d hit on his weak spot-his relationship with his daughter-his defense mechanisms had kicked in and he’d latched on to the first excuse to push her away.

That he regretted his actions was an understatement.

“Riley,” Lisa said through clenched teeth. “Let me know if we’re boring you.”

He refocused at once. “I let Lizzie go to the Seaport, yes, but I was there the entire time. Which I’ve been trying to tell you, but either you hung up on me or screamed so I couldn’t get a word in edgewise.”

Yet another reason their marriage had failed. Too much screaming and not enough communication skills. Skills that Sophie certainly didn’t lack, Riley thought, surprising himself with his train of thought.

“Well. That changes things,” Ted said.

Lisa shot her husband a scathing glare. “It certainly does not.” She leaned closer to Riley. “Did she know you were there, watching her?”

He shook his head. “Of course not. She’d have been good and pissed, and-”

“You’d have been the bad guy. Instead, you allowed her to think she was defying me, making you her hero and me the bad parent. Again.”

He winced at her description. “I didn’t do it deliberately. I didn’t think-”

“That’s just it! You didn’t think. You never do.” Lisa clenched her fists and pounded on the table. “As long as your needs are met, as long as you look good to Lizzie or the press, all’s well in Riley’s world. To hell with the rest of us.” Tears of frustration sparkled in her eyes.

Riley had seen those tears many times before. During their marriage they had argued over many issues, although since the divorce, the only one they ever had to agree on was Lizzie. And until his daughter had hit adolescence, their differing parenting styles hadn’t caused real conflict. Riley suffered a pang of remorse that it did so now.

“This can’t continue,” Lisa said, squaring her shoulders defiantly. “It isn’t fair to me and it isn’t fair to Lizzie, allowing her to think she can circumvent authority by going to her daddy.”

“The reason we wanted to get together today was so we could agree on some ground rules.” Ted inserted himself in the middle of their war of words.

Riley forcibly bit back a nasty retort. Knowing that his reaction to the word rules had set him on the wrong path with Sophie, he gritted his teeth and merely nodded. He knew one thing for sure. They all had Lizzie’s best interest at heart and they had to get along in order to share custody.

“So what did you have in mind?” he asked, wary but willing to listen.

“A simple thing called joint parenting. In other words, if I tell Lizzie something, you back me up in front of her.” Before he could argue, she held up one hand. “And if you tell her something, I’ll back you up. In private, we can disagree but we present a united front to her. And if we change our minds, we do it together. No divide and conquer. Not anymore.”

“Why do I sense an or else coming?”

Lisa sighed. “Or else I’m going to have to sue for full custody.”

“The hell you will!” Riley rose quickly, knocking over his chair in the process.

The other customers in the small restaurant stared openmouthed, but he didn’t care. “You will not take my daughter from me.”

Ted tossed his napkin on the table and stood. “That isn’t going to happen. Lisa spoke without thinking. Nobody’s going to do anything rash. We…” He gestured to the three of them. “We are going to find a way to co-parent through the rocky adolescent years. And we’re going to do it like a family. Elizabeth’s family.”

Riley met Lisa’s gaze and nodded in agreement. For the first time, he actually agreed with the stuffed-shirt accountant. He’d better, if he didn’t want to find himself in court fighting for custody of the person he loved most.

SOPHIE RUBBED her eyes, exhaustion nearly overwhelming her. Although the tech guys had gotten the computer system up and running within twenty-four hours of the crash, the damage had been done. Despite the firewall, a nasty virus had infected the system via e-mail and Athletes Only’s form contract, one carefully negotiated and containing a confidentiality clause, had been distributed to everyone in the main computer’s database of e-mails. A.O.’s contract was no longer confidential and a week after the story about Spencer’s sexual orientation had broken, everyone had something else on their minds.

A knock sounded and she glanced at her office door. “Come in.”

Her sister Annabelle strode in and shut the door behind her. “How long were you going to wait before calling in reinforcements?”

“Where’s my nephew?” Sophie asked, ignoring work for the most important thing: family.

“He’s home with his grandparents. It’s way past time I came back to work. As much as I love him, I’m losing my mind,” Annabelle said.

Sophie rose, came around the desk and pulled her sister into a huge hug, then stepped back to check out the changes since she’d seen her last. Her always curvy sibling was even more so post-pregnancy. “Motherhood agrees with you. You look gorgeous. And I am so glad you’re here.”

“Believe me, I’m thrilled to be here. Now fill me in on the computer crash.” Annabelle pulled up a chair and settled in. “I thought our system was secure.”

Sophie seated herself on the corner of her desk. “Apparently nothing’s foolproof. This was a form of the Klez virus that comes in an e-mail attachment. Once a computer is infected, the virus automatically sends out copies of itself when the machine is connected to the Internet. And it’s usually without the user’s knowledge.”

“Somebody’s been researching again,” Annabelle said, teasing Sophie.

She shrugged. “How else could I understand what’s going on around here?”

“And try to control it?” Annabelle squeezed Sophie’s shoulder.

“It’s not like anything else around here is falling into place,” she muttered.

“We’ll fix things. How close is Spencer to signing Cashman?”

Sophie rolled her eyes upward. “Your guess is as good as mine. His father has this good-old-boy Southern attitude. He expects Spencer to take him at his word that he’s a client of Athletes Only. He says he operates on trust and Spencer should, too.”

“A little Jerry Maguire thing going on?” Annabelle asked.

“That’s what has Spence nervous. Add the computer crash, plus Cambias sniffing around courting Cindy-”

Annabelle’s eyes opened wide. “He’s what?”

Sophie shook her head. “There’s no other word for it. He sends her flowers, shows up to take her to lunch, that kind of thing.”

“Do you think he’s really interested in her?”

“I hope so, because she’s falling hard and fast. He’d better not want access to anything business related,” Sophie muttered.

Without warning, Frannie came storming through the door. “You have to see this. Come to the conference room quick.”

Sophie shot Annabelle a worried glance and together they followed Frannie out the door, down the long hall and into the conference room, where they had a fifty-inch LCD screen. To her surprise, there was a clip of Tom Arnold, special correspondent for Fox’s irreverent Best Damn Sports Show Period, talking to Uncle Yank at an airport.

“Where is that?” Annabelle asked.

“Kennedy,” Frannie said.

“I didn’t know he was coming back early from his cruise.” Sophie eased herself into an oversize chair, knowing that whatever happened next, she wouldn’t like it.

“Nobody knew.” Frannie clicked a few buttons and soon they were watching the beginning of the interview.

“Good flight, big guy?” Tom Arnold asked.

“The best,” Uncle Yank said in a voice as loud as his Hawaiian shirt and baggy Bermuda shorts.

“So what’s so important that we came out here to meet you instead of waiting until you could come on the show? Because I know Chris and John were looking forward to talking to you next week.”

“They were?” Sophie and Annabelle asked in unison.

Yank chuckled and slung an arm over Tom Arnold’s shoulder as if they were old buddies. Which they were, but that wasn’t the point. Uncle Yank had a gleam in his eye and Sophie leaned forward in her chair.

“A man can’t wait to brag about his honeymoon, Tom.”

“Yeah, I’ve had a few of those myself.” Tom grinned.

Sophie figured Lola was standing in the background, waiting to throttle her husband.

“So you return to pure chaos at home.”

“Nothing we can’t handle. The draft is all ours next week.”

As far as Sophie knew, nobody had been in contact with Uncle Yank, but obviously she was wrong. “Who’s spoken to him?”

“It must have been Spencer,” Frannie whispered. “Unfortunately, you haven’t seen anything yet.”

Tom raised an eyebrow. “Your firm’s signed Cashman? Because Miguel Cambias has also mentioned some serious talks with the first-round draft pick.”

“Anybody with half a brain knows there’s no contest between Cambias and Athletes Only. It’s like choosing between a prostate exam and a blow job. What’s an intelligent man gonna pick?”

“Oh God,” Annabelle muttered, covering her face with her hands.

“Why doesn’t he just wave a red flag in Cambias’s face?” Sophie asked.

Once he stopped laughing, Tom leaned in closer to Yank. “Now I have to ask the question everyone’s wondering about. You lose any clients after Spencer got pushed out of the closet?”

“Spencer Atkins is the best damn sports agent, period. Besides me, of course. No fool’s going to leave A.O. because the man prefers receiving to passing.”

“Fair enough. Are you ready to return to work?”

“Damn straight. Get it? Straight.” He belted Tom on the back. “With the draft in a few weeks, I’ve got a boatload of work ahead of me. Not to mention my personal mission.”

“Could that personal mission have something to do with your gorgeous nieces?” Tom asked, as if he’d planned to make this transition.

Goose bumps like warning signals prickled along Sophie’s skin.

“It just so happens it does. You know I’m just coming home from my honeymoon. I waited too long to get hitched, but now that I have, I’m a spokesperson for commitment.”

“Oh, brother.” Annabelle, who’d taken a chair beside Sophie, reached over and grabbed her sister’s hand.

“Two of my nieces, Annabelle and Micki, have also gotten themselves shackled.”

“And that leaves Sophie,” Tom said, nodding slowly as if just catching on.

Sophie’s stomach cramped and she closed her eyes for a brief moment. Of all the harebrained, half-cocked, stupid ideas…