Kit: Chicago Blaze #8

Kit

Molly Lynch isn’t like any woman I’ve met before. The pretty, ball-busting reporter has a penchant for asking questions that dredge up memories I’d rather keep buried. I answer them, though, because I’m so intrigued by her—a mix of shy and bold, so set in her ways that the slightest change knocks her off kilter. The closer Molly gets to my dark truth, though, the more I try to shift her focus to what I want most—her total surrender to me in the bedroom.


Molly

I finally have the life I’m meant for. Predictable. Boring. Safe. NHL player Kit Carter upsets the stability I crave when he looks at me with his dark eyes, wounded and guarded, but also swirling with desire. I can’t let him figure out who I truly am—driven not by ambition but by anxiety. Unable to let go of my control, even for a second. There’s something about Kit that draws me to him so powerfully it’s no longer a choice, though. I need to give in, even if it costs me everything.

Chapter One

Molly

“City desk, Molly Lynch,” I say into the phone as clearly as I can while finishing the last bite of a turkey sandwich at my desk.

“Lynch, get in my office, now!” my boss Lou barks, hanging up abruptly.

Lou refuses to join the twenty-first century and embrace the use of IMs. When he wants a reporter in his office, a growly phone call is all it takes to make us jump from our desk chairs and sprint to the other side of the Chicago Gazette’s second floor. 

I wind my way through the open-floor plan room, passing each desk as I wrinkle my nose at the smell of something rotten. God, I hope that’s not someone’s lunch. My stomach rolls at the thought.

“Hey Molls, can you look at this?” my co-worker Jenna calls out as I fly past.

“Later, I’m on my way to Lou’s office,” I yell over my shoulder.

“Keep it down; this is a newsroom, not a bar,” a grouchy copy editor says as I pass him.

And yet, we probably have more drunks here than in a bar. The longer one works in journalism, the more one needs a way to cope with the insane hours, stressful deadlines and general contempt from others. My drink of choice is hot green tea rather than alcohol, because in my first few years as a reporter, I’ve seen several colleagues end up in rehab.

“What’d you do, stop for lunch on the way?” Lou demands when I walk into his office about a minute and a half after our phone call—I clocked it.

“I can’t get here as fast as I could when your office was in the newsroom,” I remind him, breathing hard from my post-lunch power walk. “Back when you were the lowly city editor rather than the metro-area executive editor.”

“That’s a bunch of horseshit and you know it.” He waves his hand and pushes a stack of papers across his desk. “If the owners keep firing editors and combining positions, I’ll be the goddamned publisher before long.”

I glance at the watch on my wrist. “I have to be at city hall at one for a presser.”

“Sit down,” Lou says. “I need to go over a new assignment; it’ll be quick.”

“A new assignment?” I arch my brows as I move a stack of print papers off the chair across from Lou’s desk and sit down.

“What are you, a parrot?” Lou shakes his head. 

I suppress an eye roll and rein in the sarcasm as I explain, “That was a rhetorical question. I’m just surprised you’re giving me more work.”

“Look, I know you’re spread thin, between your regular beat and covering for Laura. But you know the drill—the new ownership isn’t letting us fill any open positions in the newsroom.”

“I know, I get it. So what now? Am I covering the entire metro area on my own?”

“You’re doing a feature story for a special section.”

I groan and slouch down in my seat. “Seriously? Special sections suck. No one reads them.”

“Agreed.” My boss peers at me over the top of his wire-rimmed glasses. “But advertising is forcing this on us.”

The Gazette’s city hall reporter, Laura Hinshaw, is out on maternity leave and I’m working night and day covering both her beat and my own. But she told me before she went on leave that she was fifty-fifty on whether she’d return to work or stay home with her baby, and if the city hall beat opens up, I want it. Badly.

I don’t have time for anything extra right now, but I want to stay in Lou’s good graces, so I’ll find a way to work in another story.

“Fine.” I cross my arms, resigned. “I’ll set aside my story about the city’s massive budget shortfall to write a scintillating piece about why Chicago is a great place to shop.”

“That sounds fascinating, Lynch, but the special section is about famous Chicago people.”

“Oh!” I light up, thrilled about the assignment now. “Oprah! Can I please have Oprah? She did her show from here and has done so much for the city, she’d be perfect. I have so many questions for her.”

“Christ, Lynch.” Lou glares at me. “You’re acting like some fresh-faced intern who hasn’t yet been crushed under the filthy boot that is journalism.”

“I’ve been a desk reporter here for five years,” I remind him. “I’m twenty-nine. I may not be a senior reporter, but I work my ass off every day for you. I put in more hours than anyone, and I deserve to interview Oprah as much as someone who’s been here longer.”

Lou lets out one of his trademark throaty smoker’s laughs. “If we all got what we deserved, I’d be on a beach in Tahiti sipping mai tais served by supermodels right now. But reality’s a bitch, Lynch. No one’s interviewing Oprah. All the reporters got assigned someone, so you’re stuck with whoever you got.”

I look at my watch again. “Can you just tell me? I need to be out of here in three minutes.”

Lou looks down at the paper on his desk. “Looks like you were assigned Kit Carter.”

“Who?”

Lou squints as he tries to make out the rest of the words in front of him. “Apparently he’s a Chicago Blaze player.”

“A hockey player?” I gape at Lou. “But I don’t know anything about hockey.”

He shrugs. “Well, it’s a personal profile, so you can work around that.”

“Shouldn’t one of the sports guys do this one?”

Lou gives me a wry look. “It’s sports reporters, Lynch; we’ve got several women in the sports department.”

I shake my head, frustrated by Lou, the most un-politically correct employee at the Gazette. “You know what I mean. I’d be much better suited for a profile on a city official.”

“This is the one you got. No trading assignments. You’ve got five weeks to write a three thousand word profile on this guy.”

I throw my hands in the air. “Three thousand words? That’s a ton. Why don’t I just write a novel about him?”

“Lynch, the bigger special sections are, the more ads they can hold.”

“Yeah, but…alright…I’ll do my best, but I don’t write puff pieces to begin with. I don’t see how I’ll come up with a hundred column inches about what a swell guy he is.”

“Take it in any direction you want,” Lou says as I stand up. “Nick from the sports department will help you get credentialed.”

I sigh heavily. “Okay. Is that all, or do you need me to run the printing press, too? Maybe vacuum the newsroom at the end of every day?”

“Part reporter, part comedian,” Lou grumbles, picking up a cigar from an ashtray on his desk. He can’t smoke them, so he chews on them instead. Disgusting. “Get the hell out of my office.”

I book it back to my desk, pausing only to grab my notebook and pen and shove them in my bag.

“Wait, what the hell is this?” I say to no one, pulling the pen back out of my tote.

It’s a blue pen with a cap on the end—not one of mine. I scan my desk for another loose pen, then check the cup of around a dozen black ballpoint gel pens I have next to my computer monitor.

Empty.

“Theo.” 

From my low, ominous tone and narrowed eyes, it probably looks like I’m considering murdering my colleague. But really, I just want to kick him squarely in the balls while wearing steel-toed boots.

“What’s up?” Theo says from his desk, which is directly across from mine.

“Look, I have,” I glance down at my watch, “about twenty seconds before I have to be out of here for a presser. Give me my pens.” I hold my hand out, waiting expectantly.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His stare stays fixed on his monitor.

“Theo, this stopped being funny about eighty-five pens ago. Give. Me. My. Pens.”

“Lynch, you just put a pen in your bag. I don’t see the problem.”

I only use one specific brand of black ballpoint gel pens, and I buy them myself because the Gazette stocks the supply cabinet with the cheap stuff. Several of my co-workers think it’s funny to steal my pens because it’s one of the only ways to rattle me.

“You’re a fifty-something father of three,” I remind Theo. “This is completely immature behavior you’re supposed to be above.”

“I’m forty-eight and you know it,” Theo says lightly, tapping away on his keyboard.

“Well, you don’t look a day over fifty-four,” I shoot back. “Give me my fucking pens, Theo.”

Theo turns his chair so he’s facing me. “You need to live a little, Lynch. Walk through the newsroom door at 7:25 a.m. for once, or 7:37, or hell…between 8:00 and 9:00 like the rest of us. You walk out of the elevator at precisely 7:30 every morning, and then leave your desk at 7:40 to make a cup of green tea in that ugly-ass green mug. Your notebook pages are perfectly filled with perfectly-penned words written only in those black pens of yours. Really nice pens, by the way. I have some myself.”

I scowl at Theo. “Your poor wife. I can’t imagine having to live with someone who stalks at this level.”