Chapter Two
McKenna hiked her bag on her arm and pushed her glasses up as she rode the elevator to Tank’s fourth-floor apartment. Today was day one of Operation Tank Overhaul, and she was not looking forward to it.
Of all the players…why did it have to be him?
She’d managed to forge decent working relationships with most of the other Stingrays during her eight months as the director of social media marketing. Part of her duties included traveling with the team, so she’d spent a lot of time with the guys, and she’d been touched by how readily they’d welcomed her into their midst. Most of them were always happy to give her sound bites for her posts, pose for pictures, and they’d even gotten the hang of sharing photos and tidbits from their off-ice lives, whenever something happened they thought was worth a post.
She loved every minute of the job, coming to work each day excited and energized. The only somewhat sour note had been Tank, who had a way of driving her up the damn wall.
The man seemed to take pride in pushing all her buttons, which, to be fair, she probably made easy for him. She was typically better about not letting cocky guys get under her skin, but Tank was the exception to that rule. She was completely incapable of schooling her expressions around him, something that only served to egg the man on.
The man was sex-on-a-stick hot, like drop-dead gorgeous, and boy did he know it. She’d seen him nearly hurt himself to cross a room or a restaurant to flirt with some big-boobed, big-haired, sexy woman. He was so transparently shallow it wasn’t even funny. And while she’d known and ignored other men like that in the past, Tank’s actions annoyed the hell out of her for some reason.
If she was actually susceptible to guys like him, she’d think she was attracted. But, despite his stunning good looks, Tank wasn’t her type. Period. He loved the spotlight and leaving chaos in his wake, simply because he didn’t give a shit.
McKenna, on the other hand, preferred routine and control. She started each day with a well-thought-out agenda and a solid plan of all she needed to achieve. Her mom accused her of being a workaholic, something that wasn’t wrong.
She’d never been great about achieving a good work/play balance, but she blamed that on the fact she genuinely loved her job. And unlike Tank, she didn’t need to be front and center. Instead, she preferred to be an observer, comfortable hovering on the edge of any room, reading it and the people around her. It was her observational skills that allowed her—much like Lady Whistledown in the Bridgerton books—to create insightful, interesting posts about the team, the players, the fans, and the games.
But ever since getting that phone call from Benny yesterday morning—and by morning, she meant four a.m.—she’d been flying by the seat of her pants, unable to maintain her typical daily routine.
All because Tank Phillips couldn’t keep it in his goddamn pants.
To make matters worse, Tank clearly thought her meek, given that silly nickname he’d bestowed on her. Though she couldn’t for the life of her figure out where he’d gotten the impression she was timid. Sure, she didn’t talk a lot, but it wasn’t like she cowered or retreated from conversations.
If she hoped to have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting on top of this situation he’d created, she needed to set some very firm boundaries right from the start.
This wasn’t the first time she’d had to clean up a Tank mess because he wasn’t shy about expressing his opinions of players from other teams or past games played. Tank didn’t hesitate to speak his mind, even when it might piss off others, so she’d had to do some fancy footwork in terms of spinning his words, or attempting to hide them by inundating social media with a ton of positive comments from him—some things he’d actually said; others, shit she’d made up.
McKenna hadn’t been shocked to see Tank with the two women in the video, because she was sure they were the same women he’d brought to the team’s charity fundraiser in the fall. He’d swaggered around the entire night with a woman under each arm, introducing them to everyone as his dates, which made it challenging for her when it came time to find “family-friendly” pictures of him to post online.
The viral video, however, was in a league of its own. Rather than die down, the thing was still gaining momentum. McKenna wished someone would hurry up and create some new scandal so everyone could turn their attention away from Tank’s ménage à trois, complete with a bondage element.
Jesus. H.
While she appreciated the fact that no one would have been the wiser about Tank’s threesome if that fire alarm hadn’t gone off, he sure as hell could have minimized the damage by putting on some damn clothes and taking the handcuffs off that woman.
Benny called this morning to let her know the hotel had added their own fuel to the video fire, telling reporters there had been significant damage to the suite, mentioning a broken bedframe.
So that was fucking awesome.
Just what they needed.
More negative press to counteract.
When the elevator reached the floor, she stepped off and girded her loins, so to speak. With any luck, the publicity tour would do the trick—hopefully quickly enough that she wouldn’t be tied to Tank full time for the next six months.
The man didn’t strike her as the type to respond well to a keeper, which meant he was bound to be one gigantic pain in her ass the entire time.
Ugh.
Tank had done a great job yesterday during his press conference, sticking to the script while managing to portray genuine contrition. Luckily, the media soaked it up, even though she hadn’t bought the act. She hadn’t seen a whole lot of regret on Tank’s part during their initial meeting. At least not in regard to the video. The only thing he seemed sorry about was the suspension.
Taking a deep breath, she knocked on his door. Following the press conference yesterday, she’d made plans to meet Tank here. She’d passed at least half a dozen sports reporters on her way in, and Benny said there were twice that many camped outside the Stingrays’ headquarters, all of them hoping to score a scoop from Tank, despite his statement yesterday.
Her concern was that, if left unsupervised, Tank would give someone a scoop and God only knew what he would say. They were meeting here, privately, so the two of them could go over the schedule her team had prepared for the next two weeks. It was an ambitious tour, with something on the books for nearly every single one of the fourteen days of his suspension.
When he didn’t open the door immediately, she knocked again, a litany of curses flowing through her mind. If the asshole stood her up, she would lose her shit.
