“What’s wrong, Sally?” Har asked me in a concerned voice the minute I made it to where she was waiting.

Was I that obvious? I guess so.

Chapter Five

Two weeks went by in the blink of an eye, just like I knew they would. Days became a repetition of each other. They were a steady, reliable daily battle that had to be perfectly planned.

6:15 a.m. – A run.

7:00 a.m. – Breakfast.

7:20 a.m. – Make lunch.

7:45 a.m. – Attempt to dodge the media / if I failed: talk for ten minutes

8 a.m. – Pipers practice followed by a protein shake.

11:30 a.m. – Lunch in the car.

12 p.m. – Wait for Marc to pick me up so we could go to an afternoon appointment(s)

6 p.m. – Yoga / weightlifting / gardening / maybe a swim / anything else.

7 p.m. – Dinner.

8 p.m. – A shower.

8:30 p.m. – A snack / television / reading time.

10 p.m. – Bedtime.

If you really wanted to get down to specifics during practice, you could add: make sure I won daily sprints, fart around with Harlow, have Jenny mother me, help out the younger girls and stare at the mute that stood in the corner every once in a while. I mean, every once in a while. No one had time to do it all practice, every practice.

I mean, come on.

Then off to burn under the sun, despite wearing shirts and a hat with designed to protect against UV rays. The one shower a night was probably the reason I was still single, but what was the point in showering twice if I knew I was just going to get sweaty from practice and work? Nothing said sexy like long jeans, a long-sleeved shirt and work boots. During work, Marc would harass me about Kulti and if I had any gossip to share with him. Needless to say, he was disappointed I didn’t have anything to complain about.

The man everyone was so curious about hadn’t said a single word to me. Whomp, whomp, whomp.

In between all of the ways The King had saturated my life, was the annoying conversation I finally had with Eric, my brother, that went along the lines of “blah, blah, blah, that guy is a fucking asshole, blah, blah, blah, don’t listen to a goddamn thing he has to say to you—“ I didn’t even get a chance to tell him that Kulti had forgotten how to speak “—blah, blah, blah, no one here can believe he decided to coach for the WPL. Someone told me he got offered an eight-figure contract to coach for one of the Spanish teams—“ more blah and a little more wah.

On top of everything else I didn’t get to tell him, he didn’t find out during that biweekly conversation that I’d begun getting passive-aggressive messages from Kulti fans… all because of him and his damn leg.

* * *

“…an idiot.” I looked up at Gardner and noted, “He is an idiot. I’m not going to argue that.” Then I continued reading the email I’d gotten the night before. “Casillas had it coming to him. I’m tired of Kulti getting blamed when he was doing what he needed to be doing. You seem like a sensible lady, so I really hope for your sake you don’t start talking a bunch of shit about The King and learn to regret it.”

Gardner sat back in his chair with a shake of his head. “Jesus, Sal. I’m sorry.” He blinked a few times. “Let’s get someone in here so we can come up with a strategy to get this crap figured out because I’m really over my head here.”

“I’m sorry too, G. I hate to bother you with this crap, but I don’t know if there’s something I should do, or if I should keep ignoring the messages.”

He waved me off with one hand, already dialing numbers on the conference phone on his desk. ”Don’t think twice about it… Sheena? Can you come down to my office? I have Sal Casillas in here. She’s been getting some strange emails regarding Kulti, and I’m not sure what the best route to take is.” A second later, the phone was back on its cradle, and he raised both eyebrows up to his hairline. “She’ll be over in a second.”