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Bzzzzz...Bzzzzz...Bzzzzz
Katie hurled the vibrating cell away like it had stung her, and the sound of the phone she couldn’t afford to insure clattering to the floor snapped her right back into action mode.
How dare they take anything else from her, even something as trivial as her new phone? How dare Kyle try to take away her confidence and her sense of safety? How dare her own mother let him?
She snatched up the phone, ready to lay into either one, she didn’t really care who at this point. Ready to tell them that she still had the power to destroy Kyle.
But the call wasn’t from a number stored in her contacts, and it came from an Idaho area code. Even Lori could wait until morning, but what if it was Kyle? What if he was in town and looking for her? What if he had her address and was calling from a hotel, or from a phone he’d borrowed, or one he’d bought?
Katie gritted her teeth, shook out her prickly fingers, and stomped her bare feet on the cold floor, terrified to answer, but more terrified not to have all the information she possibly could to protect herself. This was real. This was survival mode and there was no way in hell Kyle would take any more from her than he already had. Her thumb pressed down to answer the call.
"Hello?"
chapter 8
Kyle Holt had the confident drawl of a politician. It was a voice that charmed both men and women alike, old and young. Katie had once told Dr. Walton that she’d fallen in love with Kyle’s voice first, and fallen out of love with it first too. She’d heard that voice in her head seconds ago as she skimmed through his thirty plus text messages, but nausea bubbled up in her stomach at the thought of hearing it for real, right up against her ear from somewhere in the same area code, no less.
Except it wasn’t Kyle’s Southern lilt that floated through the cell phone. This voice was deeper and more gravelly and she’d been listening to it on EXSN Sports less than a hour ago.
"Hey there, good buddy. Just your newfriendcalling to say what’sup."
Katie grinned into the phone. A big wide, feel-it-in-your chest grin, all the emotional turmoil she’d just been treading through dissipating like some mirage. Her pulse kept right on pounding though, but for a whole new reason. Landon Ryan was calling her? Just to chat? Now she really was dreaming. And she hadn’t even given him her number.
The smile dropped right off her face. "How did you get this number?"
Landon let out an astonished laugh. "Geez, calm down, I know it’s not every day a famous athlete calls you, but girls generally try to play it cool despite how excited they are inside."
Katie wanted so badly to fall into flirty banter with him. To let him sweep her away from all her troubles with his playful cockiness. But she didn’t have the luxury of getting distracted right now. Not when her number was apparently floating around for anyone with a little motivation to find. She’d been super careful when she moved to Idaho, staying as unlisted as possible, using her PO box on anything she could. She even Googled herself every few days just to be sure her personal information didn’t pop up. Her mother had never actually admitted to sharing it with Kyle…
"Seriously Landon, where did you get my number?"
"From the email blast you send out to all Maverick employees every month. It’s right there in your signature block."
She couldn’t imagine a scenario where the signature block on her employee email would get back to Kyle, but it rattled her that she’d never considered it.
"What’s up?" he asked. "Is it that big of a deal that I called?"
Katie did another scan of the room—coat stand, bathroom, bed, loveseat, closet—then blew out one final gust of pent up air.
"No, it’s not a big deal at all. I’m sorry, you just uh, caught me off guard. So, um, wow, um that was some game today, El Mago."
She tried to keep her voice steady, but must have done a poor job of it because Landon didn’t start talking baseball.
"Hey, are you ok?" he asked.
"Yeah, no, yeah, I’m good." She sank down onto the loveseat, swiping at the few tears that had managed to escape.
"Tell me what you’re thinking," Landon prodded.
Katie pounced on that. "What am I thinking? What areyouthinking?Taking a lead off that big when we’re two down with two outs?"
"No risk, no reward."
"Is that your motto?"
"Sometimes," Landon answered. "I got home didn’t I? Geez, you sound like all those reporters. I’m on a nine game hitting streak and no one wants to talk about that."
"That’s because you give them so much else to talk about. Plus, it would have been a fourteen game streak if you hadn’t let McMannis get the best of you in San Diego."
