“Let me just say, it was made clear to me recently that I was expected to say Mara and I are good friends,” Kirby said. “Which was news to me.”
CHAPTER
FIVE
Mara turnedto Kirby with murder in her veins. Janette seemed equally surprised.
Comparison was supposedly the thief of joy, but Mara had learned early on that her job was to measure up to her competition. Judge them. Analyze. Evaluate. And win.
By her analysis, there were two objectively gorgeous, dynamic women sitting in front of her, ready to take her down in whatever arena possible. It wasn’t a fair fight.
And Kirby made Mara want to brawl.
Or run away.
Fight or flight.
She couldn’t do either during the interview, though. Instead, she’d planned to keep her conscience and hands clean, unlike last time in Beijing.
To freeze. And lie.
But Kirby had blown that plan to smithereens.
“It sounds as if someone asked you to play nice for this interview,” Janette said. “Was it Mara?”
“No!” Mara said.
“Of course not. Mara would never,” Kirby said with a laugh.
“Well, then who?”
“It wasn’t Coach Wu or any other ski team staff. People can connect the dots from there, but that’s all I’ll say.”
“We were simply asked to be professional,” Mara ground out.
“Potato, potahto.”
Mara had suspected Kirby might not play along, but she hadn’t expected her to make it seem like a whole ridiculous and underhanded scheme.
“Well, since we’re not hiding that you have bad blood, let’s get to the elephant in the room,” Janette said. “Four years ago, during the cross-country skiing press conference before the Olympics, Mara, you said something very out of character about Kirby. My team and I went back and scoured the Internet. We never found another interview quite like that one. What happened?
Mara had known this was coming. And she’d thought it through. She’d practiced. Thank God, because her mind was spinning. “I regret that. The Olympics are a pressure cooker. There’s a lot of intensity. We’re competitive, and we all care a lot. I shouldn’t have said what I said. I crossed a line.”
Her voice sounded thin and rushed, but she held it together.
“What? No,” Kirby said. “I loved it.”
Mara bit the inside of her cheek and tried not to outwardly react.
“Really?” Janette said. “It wasn’t very sportsmanlike.”
“So?” Kirby said. “It got so many more eyes on our race. I like the attention. And it put this enormous chip on my shoulder. Which worked out well for me.”
“Okay, let’s talk aboutthatrace. The thirty-kilometer mass start. The one that changed everything for both of you,” Janette said. “One of the headlines about Mara after the Beijing Olympics was ‘always a bridesmaid, never a bride,’” Janette said, directing her calculating gaze to Mara. “How would you describe your history of silver and bronze Olympic medals, Mara?”
There was an awkward silence as Mara tried to figure out how to respond. She didn’t thrive under the spotlight like some people.
“I’m proud of my silver and bronze medals. I?—”
