Getting Lucky (Harlequin Blaze #381)

Twelve years of representing some of the nation's top athletic talent had earned Dexter Brantley a reputation as a lucky bastard. The epithet was sometimes shouted in anger as in the time when a lucrative endorsement deal with a new shoe company--founded by a former college roommate--earned him and his clients tens of millions. Sometimes the moniker was spoken in dazed wonder, as in the time a snooty skating star had been reluctant to sign with him for fear of sacrificing her precious art for the sake of fat professional contracts--until she'd seen exactly how much money Dexter could flood into her bank account.After one of the most successful rises to the top of sports agenting imaginable, Dexter didn't mind the nickname no matter how it was used. In fact right now, as he sat in a nine-car pileup on the George Washington Bridge during the morning rush hour with a hundred cars honking behind him, he decided he'd give anything to feel like a lucky bastard again.His cell phone rang as an emergency vehicle threaded through the pandemonium behind him, blocking out the shouts of the pissed-off Turkish cabdriver waving his fist just outside Dexter's smashed-up new Escalade.Ignoring the cabbie and the steaming wreckage of a bread delivery truck silhouetted behind him, Dex answered the call and spoke into the headset that never left his ear while he was in the car."Brantley. What do you have for me?""I have a fairly angry catcher and his utterly livid new wife in your office who expected to meet you five minutes ago to discuss his free agency when--""Trish, I'm going to need you to handle this one for me." Dex fought the urge to jump into the brawl the cabbie so obviously wanted now that the guy's sweaty nose was pressed to the window right beside Dex's ear while he screamed at him. "There's a huge mess on the George Washington. A tractor trailer rear-ended a bread truck that slid into a whole slew of other--""No, Dex." Trish's voice was totally unsympathetic."You'd better be on that elevator on your way up here now because Mark Setano's wife is totally losing it in the waiting room. I think she just tore your autographed Bucky Dent jersey off the wall."Through the growing fog of condensation on the driver's side window, Dexter heard a banging on the car and decided he was ready to give the cabbie the fight he wanted."If she hurts that jersey, I'm suing," Dex growled to Trish before he tore off the headset and forcefully threw open the car door.Right into a cop who had apparently come over to ask about the accident.The officer doubled over for only a moment before he half straightened with a snarl on his red face. "Oh God." Dex reached to steady the guy or extend an apology--damn, he didn't know what to do."It's his fault," the cabbie chimed in, pointing to Dex as he spoke in silky smooth English. "He was driving too fast, zipping in and out of the traffic on the bridge.""Wait--" Dex could see the inauspicious tenor of this conversation and realized his day was going to hell even faster on this end than it was in his Manhattan office right now.The officer straightened fully, his injuries apparently not keeping him from reaching for the pink and yellow pad of tickets inside his jacket. Swiping away a small spot of blood from his nose, the cop looked meaningfully at Dex and then back at the cabbie as he clicked open his pen to get started."So what did he do?"Dex slumped back against his car door, unwilling to open his mouth again since he had a way of making more trouble than he cleared up lately. Ever since he'd turned thirty-three and the rumors of the Brantley family curse had surfaced out of ancient history to bite him squarely in the ass.Several of his biggest-earning athletes had experienced a freakish run of bad luck and when a national newswire picked up some hometown history article about the misfortunes ofRock, Joanne is the author of 'Getting Lucky (Harlequin Blaze #381)', published 2008 under ISBN 9780373793853 and ISBN 0373793855.