Katherine tried not to take his vehemence personally but it still stung. Being together hadn’t seemed ridiculous a day ago. But he was right. This idea didn’t benefit her. She was only twenty-seven. She still had her whole career ahead of her. There was no guarantee that she would spend it all with Aero TV and if this ever got out, her career would be ruined. She’d done everything right from the moment she started school. Being the journalist she was didn’t happen overnight. It had been a lifetime of working hard and now they wanted her to kiss and flirt with a man so they could increase their ratings. Make more money. But what about her integrity? Her reputation?
‘What do you have to say?’ Lukas asked her and all heads swivelled towards her. Encouragement on Jennifer’s and Robert’s faces, something hard on Scott’s, curiosity on Dominic’s and Erin’s. But Lukas…he only expected an answer. Nothing more.
‘I don’t want to do it. It’s too much of a risk to my career if it ever got out. It benefits everyone but me.’
‘It benefits the network, Ms Ward,’ Scott said.
‘The higher ratings benefit you, Kat,’ Robert said in a placating tone. ‘Imagine how much further your name would go. Think about the clout you would have to negotiate your next contract.’
‘Ms Ward.’ Scott Courteney turned to face her. To intimidate her. ‘You need to be a team player and do your part. We’re all working to grow this network.’
‘No.’ Katherine refused to budge, and she could see pride in Lukas’s eyes.
Scott’s expression turned menacing. ‘Kat, do you want to work here?’
‘What just a minute—’ Lukas gritted out.
‘You can’t be serious,’ Katherine spoke over him. She glanced at the man who just tried to stand up for her, who made butterflies take flight in her belly with just a look. Just a touch. And she saw pride had turned into glittering anger.
Jennifer swivelled her chair to face Katherine. ‘We could always find other ways to maximise interest, but they wouldn’t be as mutually beneficial. Articles we could run.’
Jennifer’s gaze bored into her own and a shiver passed down Katherine’s spine. She would run the feature article despite being asked not to. Despite the fact that it wasn’t true. But if everyone already thought Katherine and Lukas had been together in Lapland and an article came out that was written by her attacking him, the world would tune in for the drama. She would get a reputation for being unscrupulously ruthless and Lukas would lose any opportunities he had left. She couldn’t do that to him. Do that to herself.
‘The visibility will definitely be good forbothof you,’ Erin said, trying to diffuse the situation, but it didn’t matter because Katherine was backed into a corner. Either she said yes or she lost her job, her reputation, Lukas’s career. She’d worked too hard for all that she had achieved for it all to fall apart now. Scott would fire her and hire some other new face who was passionate about the sport. This was her dream career. And what if she said no and lost it all but Lukas’s PR team still used the idea as a Hail Mary and forced him to go with it—because she knew how much his career meant to him? Would they find someone else to agree to this ridiculousness?
Some other woman who would get to be with him and touch him and listen to his voice and that accent she now found so endearing.
She hated the idea.
So here she was. She could agree or lose her job because of a situation with Lukas.
It’s not his fault.
No, it wasn’t but Katherine couldn’t refuse. It would cost her her career and she would not let Lukas jeopardise her job again. Never again.
‘Fine, I’ll do it,’ she said, defeat clear in her voice to all at the table.
Lukas wanted so badly to be angry at Katherine for agreeing. It had felt like they were on the same page in their opposition to this ludicrous proposition and it had felt good. Like maybe in this small way they could be a team. Be something more than the nothing they were forced to be by going back to their own lives now that they had left Finland. But he couldn’t blame her. He knew what this job meant to her and this asshole threatening her career had Lukas seeing red.
Maybe it was good she had agreed because they wouldn’t be able to blame her when he refused and brought this madness to a halt.
‘But I won’t be.’
‘Lukas—’ Dominic finally spoke up ‘—listen to them.’
He had never been more furious at his manager than right now.
‘We are all aware of your current predicament in the sport, Lukas,’ Scott said in a way that he clearly thought was charming, but really, all it did was make him come off as slimy. ‘This is your last shot.’
‘We’re all working to leverage this attention for both of you,’ Erin said. ‘Despite the negative publicity that initially made them nervous—’ she glanced briefly at Katherine ‘—teams would take you over someone in their academy or a pay-to-drive racer if they can get some sort of ROI with you. With all this attention, you would be bankable. You’d attract sponsors for the team. Your name would be worth even more money than it already is.’
Pay-to-drive. ROI. It was all so money dependent now. Where did talent lie? Lukas was confident he could take any car farther up the field than any of the teams still needing drivers could currently imagine being, but he was forced to consider how he could make them money away from the track too. As if championship winnings were no longer enough. It made white-hot heat fill his body. Blood pound in his ears.
‘Lukas,’ Dominic said. He knew the tone well. It was usually followed by something blunt he didn’t want to hear. ‘Do you want to have a drive next year? I’m doing all that I can. Erin and I both are. We wouldn’t be sitting here if we didn’t think this was your best option. There are two teams who haven’t signed a second driver and at this point I’d say they are 75 to 80 percent more likely to sign two rookies. But we are trying our best to shift the needle here. Trying to get them to look at you as their saving grace, because we know you can be the difference between them earning sixty million or eighty million dollars.’
Those numbers meant that Lukas’s options were firmly at the back of the grid, but at least he would be racing. If he could get the teams more sponsorships that meant more money and better car development, so maybe they would be able to fight even higher than that. But it would also mean that his privacy went out the window. That people could see who he was. That maybe they would see the boy who chose himself and imploded his parents’ happiness for his own selfish reasons.
It occurred to him that if he took the team principal job he wouldn’t have to deal with any of this nonsense. But he wouldn’t be racing. All the sacrifice would have been for nothing. How could he have cost his father so much, only to see the dream die now? He owed his father.
