Sizzling by Susan Mallery

media people who know what they're doing and
they're not idiots."

"You're trying to run my life,"
he said, not actually annoyed by her suggestions. He knew he had to
fire Seth— he'd just been putting off the inevitable. But he
was surprised she was taking an interest.

"You can do
this," she told him. "Take responsibility. We'll change
together."

"This isn't a conversation I ever thought
we'd be having," he admitted.

Gloria smiled. "Surprise."
    * * *
    FIRST THING in the morning Reid fired Seth by phone and
followed up with a fairly aggressive letter from his attorney. Seth
tried protesting but quickly gave it up, which told Reid the guy knew
he'd screwed up, but rather than fix it, he preferred to walk away.
His next call was to Zeke.

"You heard from my attorney?"
he asked by way of greeting.

"About Seth? Sure. About
time."

Reid leaned back in his chair and groaned. "You
knew he was a loser?"

"He's lazy. He does the least
he can do and calls that a win. He's in it for the money and the
perks. He likes having a successful client list."

Which
explained why he'd let Reid go without a whimper. No more baseball
career and since all that negative attention in the media, not much
of a potential for endorsements.

"I told him to send me
everything," Reid said. "I'll be forwarding a lot of it to
you."

"You know we'll get the job done," Zeke
told him.

"I know. How's the money situation?"

Zeke
chuckled. "I assume you mean yours." There was the sound of
typing on a keyboard. "Your portfolio is diversified. Stocks,
real estate, a few small companies. Ballpark? One hundred and
eighty-five million, give or take a few."

Reid swore
silently. He'd never paid attention to things like investments.
That's what he paid Zeke to take care of. He'd done what he loved for
nearly ten years and he'd been paid well. He'd lived hard, but he'd
never been stupid with his money.

"All that and I
couldn't send those kids home from their state championships,"
he muttered.

"We took care of that," Zeke told him.
"We sent out a check more than a month ago."

"A
thousand dollars. What was that supposed to cover?"

"Two
return tickets. Why? Did the family have other expenses?"

Family?
"Zeke, it wasn't a family. It was the whole damn team."

Zeke
swore. "I didn't know. Seth made it sound like just one family.
A check for that amount had to have been seen as an insult."

"It's
worse. They're families who are barely making it. The screw-up on the
return ticket was financially devastating for a lot of them. One
family lost their car."

"Dammit, Reid. That kind of
crap isn't supposed to happen. That's why you hire people like me and
Seth."

Reid was beginning to realize that Zeke and Seth
were nothing alike. "I want to fix this," he told his
business manager. "Can you find out how much everyone spent to
get home and send them a couple thousand more than that? And the
family who lost their car— let's get them a new one. And a
check to cover any issue with taxes."

He heard the
clicking of Zeke's computer keyboard. "Consider it done.
Anything else?"

"Not right now. But soon. I'll go
over the letters and requests from Seth as soon as they arrive. I
have a feeling there's going to be a lot more stuff to make up
for."

"We'll get it done," Zeke told him. "This
is fixable."

"Right," Reid said as he hung
up.

Only it couldn't all be fixed. Like the kid who had died
not knowing that Reid cared about him. That couldn't be fixed or
undone. How many other people had been disappointed by him? How many
other disasters had his name on them?
    * * *
    THE NEXT MORNING Reid went looking for Lori. Sometime in the
night when he once again couldn't sleep, he'd had an uncomfortable
realization.

Lori had been upset because he hadn't slept with
her. He'd slept with the other two nurses but not her.

He
wanted to tell her not to take it personally, but she was female and
of course that's how she would see things. How could he explain that
he hadn't slept with her because he