Free I'll Catch You by Farrah Rochon Page A

entire hour it took to make it back to her apartment in New Jersey. She smiled as she loaded two weeks’ worth of laundry into mesh laundry bags and packed them into her backseat.
    She was still smiling several hours later when her cell phone rang. She checked the caller ID and her smile widened even more at the name that appeared.
    “So, how was it?” she asked, balancing her cell phone between her ear and shoulder. She stuffed the mix of jeans, T-shirts, underwear and bath towels into the washing machine, thinking of the different ways her mother would kill her if she ever found out Payton did laundry without separating it into proper batches.
    “It was better than the folks at Gianni’s expected,” Cedric answered. “The place was packed. The restaurant manager said they did more business in that one hour than they had ever done on an entire Wednesday.”
    “That’s awesome,” Payton said. “I really wanted to be there but I was busy with that ‘little something else’ I mentioned on Monday. I’ve got some news for you,” she continued, unable to keep the enthusiasm from her voice.
    “Reliant?” was Cedric’s excited response.
    Payton rolled her eyes. He sure knew how to let the air out of her balloon. “No, not Reliant,” she lamented. “Would you forget about them for a while? I told you Reliant Sportswear will take time.”
    “Sorry,” Cedric answered, contriteness coloring his voice. “What’s the news?”
    “I got you another endorsement deal.”
    “A real one?”
    “Of course a real one.”
    “One where I actually get paid?” he clarified.
    “Yes,” Payton said with a long-suffering sigh. She added quarters to the washing machine and turned it on, then returned to the folding table where the load she’d removed from the dryer sat in a heap. Maybe with the Soft Touch deal she could finally afford a place with a washer and dryer.
    “So who’s the deal with?” Cedric asked.
    “You, Mr. Reeves, are the new face of Soft Touch Shaving Cream,” she announced.
    There was a pause, then, “Shaving cream?”
    Incredulousness oozed from his end of the phone. Payton clutched her fist around the rayon top she was about to fold, wishing for a moment it was her client’s neck.
    “This is good, Cedric. It’s a national campaign, and I got them to add twenty-five percent to their initial offer.”
    “Which comes out to?”
    “One point two million,” she said with way more gaiety than a professional sports agent should display. Forget being professional; she got twenty percent of that money. Payton saw her mountain of student loans crumbling right before her eyes.
    Adjusting the cell phone, she folded a bath sheet and added it to the laundry basket piled with clean clothes.
    “Cedric, you still there?” Payton asked after several beats of silence.
    “Sorry,” he answered. “I was still digesting the news.”
    “So, you’re good with this?”
    “You just got me a seven-figure endorsement deal. What do you think?”
    For a minute she’d thought he would throw the deal right back in her face. Compared to his teammates who had sneaker and video game endorsements, shaving cream was small potatoes. But it was a start. It showed that someone was willing to see past Cedric’s bad-boy reputation and take a chance on him. All Cedric had to do was live up to the model player she’d painted him to be in her negotiations with the people from Morrison Products.
    “So, what’s next?” Cedric asked.
    “First, you sign the contract. Then there’s a commercial shoot they’d like you to do as soon as possible.”
    “When do I sign?” he asked.
    “I can email the contract so you can read over it.”
    “Have you read it?” he asked.
    “Of course I have.”
    “Then that’s good enough for me.”
    The blanket of trust that came through with that one statement threw Payton off kilter. She wanted his trust. It was a necessity if their working relationship was going to be a successful one.