Winning Ruby Heart

“Yes. He’s a very nice man.” She didn’t need to be told what advantages she’d had and what gifts she’d thrown away. Micah may have been the first to explain this to her, but he hadn’t been the last. “Did you come here just to talk about Currito?”

“Why are you running?”

Because she’d seen the Christmas letter her mother had put together with glowing reports of her brother Josh’s engagement to the perfect Christine and her sister Roxanne’s appointment as editor of a top economics journal—“an honor at any age, but especially when she’s so young.” At the bottom of the letter had been that one sentence, “Ruby is doing well and still at home.” She’d read that one line over and over, wishing her mother had found something else to say about her youngest child. Then Ruby had realized she didn’t have anything else to say about her life, either.

She could continue to define herself by her sins or do something else.

But Micah’s velvet voice couldn’t fool her into any more confessions, so she said only, “It’s good exercise.” She’d had plenty of one-liners ready to tell a curious person if someone realized who she was, but none of them were appropriate for the man who’d barged into her hotel room. She hadn’t seen the cameraman, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t waiting around some corner. Cameras flashing. Microphones shoved in her face again. Her mom’s nerves sending her back to the hospital. And the never-ending stream of comments from people judging her. Not just her doping, which deserved judgment, but her hair and her lack of breasts and her thighs and the way she smiled.

Male athletes who slip and repent seemed to receive forgiveness from the American public fairly easily. Maybe it was her perspective, but Ruby had never seen a famous woman forgiven, only hounded.

In her irritated state, she couldn’t resist uttering her next statement. “It’s very meditative,” she said. “You should try it.”

Her parting shot hung in the air above Micah’s head. If she reached out, could she snatch the words back? No such luck.

He chuckled, which made her feel worse. “Running isn’t really the sport for me anymore, though you’re right, it was meditative. Wheelchair marathons serve a similar purpose for me now.”

“I’m sorry. That wasn’t, well...” She knew about his marathons. Four years ago, she’d been in Grant Park during the Chicago Marathon, pretending she was enjoying a day in the city. The wheelchair marathoners had flown by in a blur of wheels, helmets and arms. One in particular had caught her eye and she’d stood at the top of the bleachers to watch him speed to the finish.

The marathoner had been so full of movement, so alive, and she hadn’t been sure if the need that had filled her body had been desire for movement or desire for the man. Until he’d taken off his helmet and she’d realized the surge of lust had been for a man who hated her.

“It’s wasn’t a nice thing to say,” she finished lamely. It’s not a nice thing for you to be here, her fear whined in her head, but that was an excuse, and she had been done with excuses for five years.

“No, it wasn’t.” His biceps bulged when he crossed his arms over his chest.

“I’ve seen you. At the marathons.” Her voice hitched, dammit.

The brief flicker of openness on his face disappeared. “You didn’t answer my question. What are you doing here, Ruby?”

“You asked why I was running. I did answer that question.”

His face remained impassive, though his arms tightened about his chest, the line between his biceps and triceps clear. He had good definition, and she wanted to know what lifts he did and how he did them.

How would that ridge where the deltoid led into the biceps feel under the pads of my fingers? And down the arm, where the brachialis meets the brachioradialis. She had to shut down those thoughts immediately. Wondering about his exercise routine could be justified as an athlete’s curiosity. The other...well, the other wouldn’t and couldn’t happen.

Her head jerked up from his arms to his face when she realized he was talking and she hadn’t heard a word. She could tell by the raise of his eyebrows that he hadn’t missed her singular focus on his arms, though he didn’t say anything. To her relief, he repeated his question. “Why did you compete in a race?”

Ruby is doing well and still at home. “I get sick of running by myself.”

His sigh was heavy, disgusted. “That’s not an answer.”

“If you have questions that you want answers to, ask me for an interview.”

The way he seemed to grow taller in his chair could be a trick of the eyes, but she didn’t mistake the way his dimples deepened, beckoning her into his sphere. Come into my lair, my pretty. “Since you conveniently raised the subject, NSN is actually working on a series about ultra runners—and I would like to interview you. Amir is down the hall and the hotel would be happy to provide us with an appropriate space, I’m sure.”

Of course they would. The clerk downstairs was a woman, and she knew how quickly female defenses fell at the siege of Micah’s charms.

For those athletes still enjoying their glory, Micah’s interviews were probably warm, intimate experiences. For her, it would be a poison-filled trap.

“No,” she said, certain of this one thing, if only this one thing.

He huffed in response, his eyebrows raised in surprise—faked, she was sure. She ignored his act and continued, “I came here to run in a race and see how I did.” Those three minutes poking at her pride nearly overwhelmed Micah’s presence, but she shook off her disappointment before he could sniff it out. “If I’d wanted to be interviewed by Micah Blackwell of the National Sports Network, I would have called you up and let you know I’d be here. I didn’t, so I don’t.” Because she managed to make those words come out strong, unlaced by her fears, she straightened her shoulders and looked him in the eye.

“USA Track & Field deserves to know who you are and what you are doing. The American public deserves to know.”

“No!” She’d surprised them both by yelling the word and she took a deep breath to calm herself. “For years, the press and the American public had their nose in every little thing I did. My haircuts. My nail polish. The color of my sports bra. And, only during Olympic years, my running. You’ve had your rule over my life. You’re all vultures—you can find another scandal to pick at. I wanted to run in a race with other people. I did that today, along with ninety-nine others. I’m no different from any of them.”

Even under the brunt of her anger, Micah’s face was open and placid. Whatever emotion had driven him to her door he’d buried deep inside, where she couldn’t see it, replacing it with curiosity. Share your intimacies with me. Confession is good for the soul. What a liar his face was. Confession opened wounds from which fresh blood poured. It riled up the vultures until they circled over her life and waited for it to be destroyed. “You didn’t seem to mind the press’s attention until you got caught doping and they took away your gold medal.”

Her jaw clenched and she had to spit out her response. “You’re here because you think I will get you good ratings, which means you’re no better than I am. And before you lecture me—” Ruby put her hand on the doorknob “—I sure as hell know more about my sins and their consequences than you do.” She opened the door. “Now get out, before I call the front desk.”

“I still want an interview.” Micah didn’t appear to be going anywhere. His hands weren’t even on the wheels of his chair. “You should think about it. I’ll be far kinder to you than King Ripley will be if he figures out who you are.”

Except Ruby was certain she could outsmart King Ripley. “I am sure it’s considered bad etiquette to wheel you out of my room against your will, but I didn’t invite you in here, so I don’t really care.”

Micah cocked his head and regarded her, his scorn caressing every square inch of her bare skin. The sensation was familiar enough that she relaxed her shoulders. He was nothing she hadn’t endured before and couldn’t endure again. Besides, she was smarter this time. A different and better person. He didn’t have to know that Ruby Heart was a new person because she knew.

“I think I could stop you,” he said. Several long seconds went by with his arms still crossed over his chest, the bulges of his deltoids straining his T-shirt sleeves. Would he call her bluff? Finally, he put his hands down and left her room without saying another word. Ruby shut the door with a soft click, then leaned her forehead against the wood and took a deep breath, closing her eyes against the memories of a phone constantly ringing and camera flashes invading her peace.

She breathed deep into her abdomen before she opened her eyes again. This was the only race she was allowing herself to run. Without an interview, any story Micah did about her was dead as soon as she drove home.

She turned back to her desk, the egg-salad sandwich—now warm as well as soggy—wilting on its plastic wrap next to a small bag of potato chips and some carrots. She was no longer hungry, but she’d been an athlete for too long to confuse food with emotions. Besides, she thought as the bag of chips wrinkled when she cracked it open, she didn’t have to taste the food to gain nourishment.

* * *

MICAH HADN’T GONE five feet when he stopped and reflected back on Ruby, both the woman in the hotel room and the girl he’d interviewed five years ago. Despite being twenty-four when she’d won her gold medal, and in the public spotlight off and on for the previous four years, after she had captivated the world by winning the silver medal in a sport Americans hadn’t known they’d cared about, Ruby had been a girl existing in a silly, cloud-filled dream world where putting one step in front of the other until her chest broke the finish line was the only thing that mattered.

The juxtaposition between the Ruby of then and the Ruby of now was jarring. If she’d denied being Ruby Heart, he might have even believed her. Five years ago, Ruby’s hair had been bleached blond and razor sharp at her chin. She’d worn heavy black eyeliner and bright red lipstick. Everything about that Ruby had been composed to catch—and hold—your attention. Like the rest of America, the costume had fooled Micah into believing Ruby was slicker and worldlier than she actually had been. Not until he’d rewatched his interview with her on YouTube with five years of distance could he see the bewilderment in her eyes under all that makeup.

This Ruby Heart, with her pigtails, wide brown eyes and smattering of freckles, had all the innocence of the clichéd girl next door, designed to be forgotten once your front door shut. Only now Ruby’s eyes had the harshness of a woman who knew what it felt like to have a knife in the back combined with a sense of resignation, as if she expected another stab at any moment.

Had she really changed from that attention-seeking girl she’d been? She’d turned down an interview, but Ruby was a runner, and she might also be the kind of person who liked to be chased. Which was fine; Micah still enjoyed a good hunt.

One thing was certain, she still had the same glorious body. Her T-shirt and gym shorts meant there had been plenty of bare skin for him to appreciate. When she’d moved her arms, her biceps had expanded and collapsed and he wished he’d managed to make her take a step toward him. With so little body fat, her legs were a lesson in muscle anatomy, and they rippled when she moved.

Micah had always been a leg man, and his tastes hadn’t changed just because his own legs were now the downstairs neighbor he waved at but who never waved in return. Calves made shapely by high heels were not the legs he fantasized about. He liked the condensed power in a female athlete’s thighs—a ham man, his teammates had said. His college girlfriend had played tennis, but her thighs in that swinging white skirt had nothing on Ruby in gym shorts. All that power in a sleek, racing version.

Micah rubbed his face, then squeezed the bridge of his nose, forcing himself to remember why Ruby was in that hotel room and not fresh off another Olympic triumph. Pigtails were as much a costume as the red lipstick had been. She needed no pity. And she didn’t deserve his admiration of her body. She’d been given the opportunity to compete on the greatest stage the world offered her sport and she’d responded by filling her veins with the blood of another person. Blood doping was a gruesome way to cheat, making a mockery of both the sport and the people for whom that blood meant the difference between life and death. A vampire, draining the sport and the athlete of all its integrity. A monster.

And, after her interview, she’d had the audacity to expect pity from him.

He put his hands back on the wheels of his chair and refused to think of Ruby’s thighs in any way other than belonging on the hot seat while Amir filmed the interview of Micah’s career. He would show the world how little a doping athlete changed, no matter the tears they produced in a confessional. And then he’d take the promotion NSN offered.

CHAPTER THREE

MICAH HAD ARRIVED back in Chicago late Tuesday night and wasn’t expected in the studio until after lunch on Wednesday, so he stopped at his favorite restaurant for a bite to eat before work. The lunch hour meant Micah had to force his way through the other regulars, all of whom greeted him, to get his wheelchair to a table. But Sheila, the hostess, always took special care of him and got him a table for four, which was great until King showed up. “Is this seat taken?” the other reporter asked while pulling out a chair and sitting down. Micah didn’t bother to say no; King would only pretend that the restaurant was too noisy to hear.

After asking the waitress, Patty, for a beer, King turned to Micah with the manly joie de vivre that could lure inexperienced athletes into ignoring the cameras and pretending they were in a high school locker room. Savvy athletes, however, treated the wink-wink, nudge-nudge with the same distant professionalism they offered reporters in the locker room after a game, making the majority of King’s interviews some of the most boring two minutes of sports reporting on television. The man kept his job only because the few times he got an athlete to confide, internet GIF memes were sparked and YouTube hits records set. Often, those athletes didn’t have long careers. Micah tapped his fingers against his chair and waited for the inevitable intrusion that would come after the small talk.

King took a long pull on his beer and set the bottle down with a thunk. “Amir says you spent the entire race in your room and then the night in a runner’s room.” Micah didn’t believe Amir would sell him out, especially after King turned his head to one side, as if offering up his left ear for girlish intimacies, and nodded knowingly.

“I think,” King said, tapping his index finger against his lips, “that you knew this runner before you met her at the race.”

Micah threw the man a bone, since King didn’t have the investigative skills to do anything with this conversation. “I did know her before.”

“From college?”

“No.”

King lifted his brow for an elaboration, but Micah didn’t offer one. The other reporter shrugged off the small insult, took another long pull of his beer and then signaled for another. “A friend, then. Your connection to the elusive Currito?”

Micah had long since stopped being amazed that King couldn’t conceive of a nonplatonic reason for Micah to interact with a woman. In an industry dominated by men who didn’t even bother looking to see whose dick hung the lowest—because, of course, they would win—Micah knew his supposed celibacy was a curiosity. He had heard all the rumored reasons for why he never had a date at office parties, ranging from some sort of self-imposed sexual exile out of a dislike of women with strange kinks to the ongoing question of how well his plumbing worked. The folks in the first camp would probably be disappointed to learn that there weren’t hundreds of women lined up outside hotel rooms across America with fetishes for men who couldn’t wiggle their toes. The one woman with such a kink who’d found Micah had been strange in bed. It was not an encounter he wanted to repeat.

Lack of imagination generally meant his coworkers credited Micah’s physical body for his sparse sex life instead of recognizing that Micah worked too damn much. At least, that was the reason most of his girlfriends never made it far enough past “short-term” for his coworkers to meet them.

King, Micah knew, fell firmly into the camp that believed Micah couldn’t get it up anymore. Much to Micah’s amusement—and many women’s disappointment, he was sure—King didn’t seem to understand how a woman could find sexual pleasure unless a man stuck an erect penis into her vagina and then bounced his ass up and down in the air. Once, after ten hours of drinking on a flight to Sydney, King had told Micah that lesbians had to use “accessories.” Micah had yet to decide if King’s indirect approach was better or worse than the strangers who flat out asked intrusive questions.

The memory of the conversation reminded Micah that he didn’t want to be sitting in public with King and alcohol. Unfortunately, Micah had talked himself into a King-created corner. Denying now that he hadn’t spent the night in Ruby’s bedroom would only push King and his beers into asking what Micah hadn’t been doing when he hadn’t been in the room—wink-wink, nudge-nudge. Saying that Ruby hadn’t been his connection to Currito would also stretch King’s imagination to the breaking point.

“A friend,” Micah said simply, before pulling his cell phone out of his pocket and checking the time.

“You are a mysterious man, Micah Blackwell.”

Micah nodded, the statement overwhelmingly true from King’s point of view. “And, given that I overestimated how much time I have for lunch, I’m likely to stay that way.” When the waitress arrived at his signal, he asked for his lunch to go.

King peered across the small table at Micah and harrumphed. “You think you can keep this a secret.” The ensuing silence would almost have been suspenseful if King hadn’t been flicking his index finger from his lips to point at Micah and back again, over and over and over in some falsity of a knowing gesture. “Now I am interested and on your trail.”

“Okay.” Micah backed his chair away from the table and swore under his breath when he hit the chair behind him. The benefit of King moving the chairs out of his way as he navigated through the restaurant was overshadowed by the exaggerated way in which the man drew attention to what a stand-up guy he was by “helping.”

“Micah, man, stay longer next time,” said one of the cooks from the kitchen, who met him at the front door to drop a sack of food in his lap. “None of this eatin’ and rollin’ when I’ve got a fantasy baseball team to manage.”

Micah handed Patty a wad of bills before turning to the cook. “Frank, you know I’ll be back for lunch tomorrow and you can pick my brain then.” They exchanged a few more pleasantries, and then Micah was out the door with a wave.

As he made his way to his car, he wondered if he should track down Ruby and warn her of King’s interest. Not that King was likely to remember the rise and fall of Chicago’s native gazelle. He’d been busy working his way up the sporting news food chain covering high school football in Texas during that time. However, it was a convenient excuse to ask her for that interview again. No way was he letting her play the part of reformed recluse.

* * *

MICAH ENTERED HIS office on the sprawling suburban Chicago campus of the National Sports Network to find the message light on his phone blinking and no fewer than five sticky notes on his monitor. Since all the notes were from his boss, Micah listened to the phone messages first. There were the usual calls from publicists and agents looking for spotlight stories, two from viewers who had managed to bluff or gruff their way past the operator and one call from King, assuring Micah that he was onto him and would solve the mystery of the female racer.

Micah wouldn’t give King the chance. King wouldn’t even think to ask the interesting questions, like how she’d managed to negotiate her lifetime ban down to five years. The details of her settlement with the governing body were locked up in a nondisclosure agreement, but whatever she’d done for the reduced sentence, her coach had been arrested and the once-great sports agency run by her agent had been dismantled in disgrace. Suggestions that the governing body had gone easy on her because she was white, young, cute and rich had been the dominant theme in any conversation about her punishment.

Micah logged on to his computer and hunted around the old news stories about Ruby, an itch at the back of his brain. The Ruby he remembered had been completely focused on running, but selling out an entire system of cheaters implied that she’d been listening when the people around her talked about the supply chain. She’d claimed not to have been included in the decision making and had simply followed the recommendations of her coach. If Micah was willing to grant her the benefit of the doubt in order to follow his train of thought, then everyone around Ruby had assumed she was too dumb to be a liability and she’d proved, to herself if to no one else, that they’d all underestimated her.

Micah’s realization only made him more determined to prevent King from getting that interview.

He didn’t have time to return the calls, and there was no need to go see what his boss wanted, because Dexter, one of NSN’s executive producers, sauntered up to Micah’s door and leaned against the metal jamb, his arms crossed and curiosity etched across his dark skin. “King Ripley came back from lunch telling everyone you got lucky while in Iowa.”

“As usual, he had access to all the facts and came to the wrong conclusion.”

“But you did have Amir take video of Ruby Heart running.”

That explained why there had been five stickies on his monitor instead of one. When Micah had first started at NSN, he’d been surprised at Dexter’s clairvoyance. Now it was both a blessing and a curse. “I did.”

Dexter’s dreadlocks swayed as he nodded. “And you’re sure it’s her?”

“She didn’t deny it, though she said she’d never do another interview.” The anger he’d seen in her face when she talked about press intrusion into her life had to be a part of whatever new role she was playing.

“And you want her to be in the ultra series.”

“The feature,” Micah said. Ruby may not wish for the spotlight, but the spotlight wished for her.

“Get the interview first. We’ll run that and see how interested people are.”

As soon as Dexter left the office, Micah searched through his contacts until he found Mike Danforth’s number. Five years ago, Mike Danforth had worked in the same office as Ruby’s agent. Mike also owed him a favor and would probably see nothing wrong with Ruby sweating under the hot lights of another interview.

CHAPTER FOUR

RUBY WALKED INTO her parents’ large Lake Forest home and put her running bag on top of the washing machine. Neither the clunk of the bag on the appliance nor the buzz of the overhead lights were enough to distract from the usual deathly silence of the house. Not that the house was emotionless, because cold was an emotion, at least as Ruby had experienced it for the past five years.

She grabbed a towel from her bag, wiping the sweat from the back of her neck. Running had been her passion, her chore and her job. Now it was a gift she both gave and received, and she didn’t ever take it for granted. She’d been itching to get out and run again after a few days’ rest, and today’s volunteer shift at the animal shelter had been especially lovely with the warmer weather and partially cloudy skies. By the third dog she took out for a run, Ruby had settled into a routine and had been able to banish the constant specter of Micah Blackwell.

Her daydreams were nightmares where an interview reinvigorated press attention. At night, though, Micah’s chocolaty voice invited her into his world and she dreamed about what his deltoids and trapezius must look like to support his pecs. She explored the rest of his body in her dreams, too, only to wake up hot and excited.