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with a pair of women’s underpants on his head, as a hairy-chested frat brother rode on his back.
“Oh my god!” Jen had exclaimed. “That pompous ass is mine forever!”
Piper blinked her eyes at the memory. She was doing a lot of that lately.
Her office door clicked open. Her head shot up as Heath Champion walked in. “Long time, no see,” the agent said.
She couldn’t handle any more trouble. At the same time, she finally had a distraction from her brooding. “What do you want?”
“I’m here to negotiate a deal,” he said. “For Coop. He wants you to move in with him.”
“What? He sent his agent to negotiate this?”
“Football players,” Heath said in disgust. “A bunch of spoiled brats. They don’t know how to do a damned thing for themselves.”
She dug her fingernails into her palms. “I don’t believe this.”
“At least it doesn’t involve livestock. I hate it when I have to negotiate livestock.”
“Mr. Champion—”
“Heath. I think we know each other well enough by now.”
“Heath . . . I am not moving in with your client.” Her neck had started to hurt along with her stomach. And she wanted to cry. She dug her fingernails deeper. “Out of curiosity . . . Agents get ten percent when they make a deal for a client, right?”
“The percentage varies, depending on the type of negotiation.”
“So if you did negotiate this deal—which you’re not going to do—how would you get your cut?”
“Vegetables. Next summer.”
“I see.”
He leaned back on the heels of his very expensive loafers. “Just to clarify. You don’t want to move in with him?”
“That’s right.” Moving in with him would mean acting as though they were nothing more than sex pals. Before the first day was over, she’d be begging him to fall in love with her. Just the thought made prickles of sweat break out all over her.
“Then make a counteroffer,” he said.
“I don’t have to make any kind of offer!”
“It’s a negotiation. That’s part of it.”
His exaggerated patience made her want to leap over her desk and throttle him. “My counteroffer is for him to get out of my life.”
He had the gall to appear disappointed in her. “That’s not a counteroffer. That’s an ultimatum. In my experience—and I have a lot of it—these things go better when both parties negotiate in good faith.”
She’d stepped smack into the middle of Crazy Town, and ironically, that finally steadied her. She remembered her first meeting with Heath, when Coop had tossed her contract at him and Heath had negotiated more money. For her. These two didn’t have a normal agent-client relationship, and they wanted to suck her into their nutso world. Fine. Fight crazy with crazy. This was something she could handle. “A counteroffer? How about this? If he gets out of my life, I promise to send him all my Bears T-shirts.”
“I can guarantee he won’t accept a few T-shirts in lieu of life in a luxury condo. Surely you can do better.”
All she wanted was for the misery to stop, and that wouldn’t happen until Coop left her alone. She glared at the Python. “If he gets out of my life, I’ll personally fix him up with Deidre Joss.”
“You’re still not taking this seriously.”
She was taking it more seriously than he imagined. Why was Coop putting her through this? She should have talked to him yesterday. She should have stood in the cold and let him say what he had to say without uttering a word in return. But she’d been too big a coward. She still was. “I’ll do one free month of IT work for the club. But I’ll only work with Tony, and only if Coop forgets I exist.”
“Three free months.”
