Game On Read online

  Game On

  A Romantic Comedy that Scores

  Barbara Oliverio

  Contents

  Praise for Barbara Oliverio

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Epilogue

  Review

  More Titles by Barbara Oliverio

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  See what critics are saying about the novels

  of Readers FavoriteTM Award Winning

  Barbara Oliverio:

  “…all the ingredients for the perfect romcom…fascinating characters who spring from the page with their energy… interesting settings that are clearly depicted for us… lots of fun, dollops of anguish, and a well thought out and executed plot.”

  Readers Favorite

  * * *

  “Scintillating and refreshingly original….there is more to this romcom than meets the eye as Oliverio cannily entwines the joys of cooking and love with the sustenance found in the sanctuary of family.”

  Bookviral.com

  * * *

  “…a wealth of fantastic and hilarious characters…”

  Novelgrounds

  * * *

  “This was a good first book from the author, and to top it off we got some authentic recipes provided in the back.”

  Mrs. B’s Books

  * * *

  “…just the thing to take my mind off the wet, windy, wintry weather raging outside my windows last weekend.”

  BondiBookGirl

  * * *

  “Great debut. Barbara Oliverio thrills readers with a recipe of humor and a crisp storyline…I loved it, loved it.”

  Chicklitpad.com

  * * *

  “Reading about the cruise made me want to take another one (it’s been 8 years). The fun, formals and frivolity of a cruise are well-portrayed in this charming book.”

  Window on the World

  * * *

  “Overall, Barbara Oliverio has again delivered a fun, easy-going and thoroughly enjoyable romantic comedy; I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next!”

  “A Spoonful of Happy Endings”

  * * *

  “The tone is light-hearted and, as a reader, you soon sense you are a part of the heroine’s adventure.”

  Readers Favorite

  Game On: A Romantic Comedy that Scores

  Barbara Oliverio

  * * *

  Published by Scolapasta Press, Ltd.™

  Denver, CO

  719.339.6689

  * * *

  Copyright ©2017 by Barbara Oliverio. All Rights Reserved.

  [email protected]

  www.scolapastapress.com

  * * *

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from Scolapasta Press, Ltd. ™ or Barbara Oliverio, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

  * * *

  All images, logos, quotes, and trademarks included in this book are subject to use according to trademark and copyright laws of the United States of America.

  * * *

  Author Artist Li Hertzi

  * * *

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017901847

  Romance

  Comic Fiction

  Humor

  * * *

  All Rights Reserved by Barbara Oliverio at Scolapasta Press, Ltd.

  Created with Vellum

  For sports fans of North Central West Virginia, from my childhood until today, and especially for my late mother’s favorite teams: Ida May Black Diamonds, Carolina Destroyers, Monongah Lions, North Marion Huskies, Fairmont Falcons, WVU Mountaineers, and from the City of Champions – the Steelers, Penguins, and Pirates.

  * * *

  Mostly for Darby. You’ll be in my heart, Always.

  Prologue

  “So, how do you feel about this outstanding win, champ?” I thrust my mike into his face. No answer. He was noted for his stoic attitude. I turned to his coach, hoping at least to get more answers from him.

  “What do you think about your decisive victory?” I hoped my earnest question would garner at least a grunt. Nothing.

  In the distance, I heard my name being called.

  “Maisie! Maisie!”

  “Come on guys, give me something?” I begged.

  The distant voice grew closer.

  “Maisie! Maisie!”

  My exclusive interview with this year’s champ was fizzling out.

  “Ouch!” I rubbed my head after my brother Vincent gave me a particularly fierce head noogie. He flopped down next to me, dissolving my dream interview at the World Series into reality on the family room couch.

  “Ma needs you to set the table for dinner,” he said. “What are you doing, anyway? Playing tea party with your stuffed animals?”

  He grabbed my stand-in for this year’s baseball pitching MVP and tossed him casually in the air.

  “When have I ever played tea party?” I glared into his blue eyes with my own violet ones.

  “Oh, right,” he stifled a laugh. “I see your ‘microphone’ there.”

  He pointed to the wooden spoon that, up until his interruption, was working as a very serviceable mike.

  “Get out!” I emphasized by pointing the spoon, er, microphone up the stairs. Unfortunately two of my other brothers were clomping down the stairs at the same time.

  “What’s going on?” asked Angelo.

  “Well,” said Vincent, “Maisie is pretending to be a sportscaster again.”

  They all chuckled.

  “You guys are so annoying!” My face reddened as I fell backward on the couch, knocking over my interviewees. I grabbed Puffy Bear and Doggy Dog to my chest.

  “C’mon, Maisie, we’re just giving you a hard time,” said Tony, draping his arm across my shoulders.

  “Harrumph” was all I could answer.

  At that moment, my mother descended the stairs slowly, wiping her hands on her apron.

  “Why can I not find even one of my children to set the table for Sunday dinner?” she asked.

  “Well, Johnny, Sammy, and Joey are out with Pop,” began the jokester Angelo, stopping when he saw the look in Ma’s eye.

  “We came down and found Maisie pretending to be a sportscaster again, and, well …” Vincent’s voice trailed off as he saw that Ma was in no mood for his dimpled charm.

  My ten-year-old head hung low.

  Ma walked over and scootched next to me.

  “Oh, my baby girl. I did you a disservice by bringing you into a world with only brothers, didn’t I?”

  A chorus of “hey” echoed from my siblings.

  “They don’t take you seriously, do they?”

  “No, Ma.” I leaned on her shoulder.

  “Well, Maisie, it’s hard not to be swept up in
all this sports business with your father being a coach and your brothers constantly on some sort of field or court.”

  “It’s not like she isn’t on a field or court herself, Ma!”

  We could always count on Vincent to be accurate in his attempts to avoid punishment.

  “Hush!” Ma waived both boys away. “If you believe you can be a sportscaster, then you work on that, sweetheart. And your brothers are going to help you.”

  Hands on hips, my mother turned to my brothers.

  Uh-oh. Ma was about to make a proclamation. And no one disagreed with Ma and her proclamations. Even at five foot one, she ruled the roost.

  “Whenever Maisie needs to practice her interviewing, I want you boys to help her.”

  “What do you mean, Ma?” I asked.

  “Instead of pretending with your stuffed animals, you go get a couple of your brothers to play with you. Whenever you need them.”

  “Play-ay?” I drew the word out. She didn’t really understand, did she? Oops. I should just take what I can get.

  “Right boys?” Ma looked them in the eye, one at a time, as they each opened and then wisely closed their mouths.

  “Yes, Ma,” they chorused.

  “Are we settled? And you’ll tell your other brothers?” she asked.

  “Yes, Ma” again.

  She stood with purpose.

  “Now, who is helping me set the table?”

  Without question, we all followed her like ducklings up the stairs. I was the last one, behind Vincent.

  He turned to me, not entirely unkindly, and said, “Okay, you want to be a sportscaster? It’s all up to you now, Maisie.”

  1

  “It’s all up to you, Maisie.”

  I nodded.

  “Are you okay, girl?” Dave’s voice in my earpiece became more insistent.

  “I got this.” I nodded again.

  “We could get Mark to do a straight voiceover from the studio later during the live broadcast if you want.”

  “I said I GOT THIS.”

  Geesh. You would think I had never covered a sports event before. I mean, I knew I wasn’t Michele Tafoya (if only!) or even that walking hairdo from the ONESport network, Calliope Newsome, but I had been doing this job at this small station long enough to have some credibility. I guess producers like Dave have to worry about such things, though. They are responsible for every minute of a sports broadcast, while the sportscasters and sideline reporters just have to do their own individual pieces. I knew I didn’t want to be a producer. I always wanted to be in front of the camera.

  Oops! Camera. Darn, someone was signaling to me from beside the camera. I had drifted off and almost missed my shot. I straightened up, shoved my mike into my face, and brightened up my smile.

  “This is Maisie Valenti, at an opening round of the county peewee baseball tournament where the Thornville Giants are battling the Winston Rangers for the championship. You can feel the excitement here as fans from both teams crowd the stands.”

  Well, maybe crowd wasn’t the right verb, but I didn’t really want to say that the stadium was only half full. I knew that Jeff would do a tight enough shot that it wouldn’t look so sparse.

  “Today’s game should be a hard-fought battle, and both teams will come away with their heads held high.”

  Of course they would, because in this peewee league, they didn’t keep score, and both teams would win trophies. Oh well, my job was not to critique the league, just to cover the event.

  “Back to you in the studio, Mark.”

  I stood still long enough for Jeff to stop rolling and for the producer to give me the okay in my earpiece. If he would have wanted to redo it, we would have, but I hoped that the handful of sentences was sufficient to use on the evening newscast.

  “All done, Maisie. Good job.”

  I pulled my earpiece out and started to help Jeff tear down the shoot.

  “Hey, Jeff, sorry I drifted for a minute. I don’t know what happened there.”

  Jeff lifted his head, and his ponytail bobbed as he methodically went about the task of packing up the camera equipment to load into our mobile van, ready to move on to the next location. Ordinarily the producer would have just sent me and a very, VERY mobile camera to do cut-in shots like this one, but today he decided that it would be better to have Jeff come with me and for him to stay in touch during the shots. I didn’t argue. I was just the talking head, after all.

  “No problem,” Jeff said. “This is the—what, fourth?—cut-in shot we’ve done this morning. I can see how you might have wandered a bit. Just a good thing you weren’t here by yourself.”

  His normally serious face broke into a sideways grin as he wrapped the cords expertly around his arm and, with a practiced move, secured them and tossed them into the van—and then moved to another piece of equipment.

  “Hey, are you saying Dave sent you with me because I couldn’t handle this on my own?” I stopped my own task of returning the microphone equipment to its designated carrier. In the time I put the mike away, he would have everything else done.

  Jeff’s grin spread across his face.

  “Chill out, champ. No one thinks you can’t handle this type of assignment. Dave just knew it would be a grueling day, moving from town to town with all the opening rounds of the tournament. Can’t you appreciate that? He’d have sent me out with anyone, even one of the men. That’s why he wanted to be in your ear—to help.”

  He had neatly stopped me before I could protest that I could handle myself as well as any of the men in the newsroom.

  Hmmph. I closed my mouth and resumed twining the microphone cord. Glancing over at Jeff, I decided to practice what my father always recommended and avoid trying to beat an enemy that didn’t exist. Jeff was just being practical.

  “Hey Maisie, let’s go. We’re burning daylight!”

  He pounded the van door and made a mock stern face.

  I snapped the lid on the microphone case, turned, and stuck my tongue out. “Cool your jets, Mr. Kelley. Remember, I’M the talent,” I said.

  I proceeded to promenade with dignity around the van. Well, that is, until I tripped in a small divot on the turf.

  Jeff burst out in a pleasant laugh.

  “Yep. Talented, all right. Just sorry I didn’t have the camera rolling on that.”

  My face burned as I continued around the van and entered, slamming the door behind me.

  We continued our tour of county peewee baseball fields and returned to the station hours later, sweaty and tired.

  “Thanks for the camera work, Jeff. I can always count on you.” I leaned back on my seat, gulping the last of a bottle of water as we pulled into the station parking lot.

  “No problem, kid.” He always called me “kid,” even though the difference in our ages couldn’t have been a decade. Before I could hop out of the van, he touched my shoulder.

  “There is something I wanted to share with you, though, Maisie.”

  Oh no. Jeff was senior cameraman at our small station, and his genial bearlike personality was funny and friendly. I couldn’t imagine what he had to say that was so serious.

  “I’ve had a job offer from the NBC affiliate in Albuquerque.”

  “What?” My eyes widened, and I threw my arms around his neck. “That’s fantastic! I mean, not for us, but for you. Fantastic! And Melissa and the kids—they’re happy, too?”

  He grinned broadly.

  “Ecstatic. You know she grew up in Santa Fe, so we’ll be close to family. She’ll also be closer to the art scene in Santa Fe and Taos, so that will be great for her sculpture studio. I wanted to tell you before I told the others, because I knew that you would appreciate it. You are one of the few people here who want to move up, too.”

  He was right. Our little local station here in middle America was a great place to work, but most people at the station were, well, comfortable. They were good at what they did, to be sure, but not eager to move anywhere else. Jeff was one of the
only people who understood my dream to move up—possibly even to a dream job with a major sports network.

  “I know, I know. People will be happy for you, but …”

  We tilted our heads toward one another and nodded, no further words necessary.

  “So, I told Gordon on Monday, but I didn’t want you to hear it through the station grapevine.”

  “I appreciate that, buddy. I’m happy for you, but I’m going to miss you! I can’t imagine who they can get to replace you.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about that,” said Jeff. “Gordon pulled out a folder of resumes for me to review before we even finished our conversation.”

  “That’s Gordon.”

  “Yep.”

  “So,” Jeff, ever practical, wanted to wrap up our conversation. “Let’s get this truck unpacked.”

  “Wait. When do you leave?”

  “I’ll be here two weeks, and I’m sure the new guy will be here by then. You’ll have him wrapped around your little finger within a day.” He winked.

  “Hey! What …” I sputtered, but he was already out of the van.

  I rewound our conversation later as I pulled into the Jivin’ Java on the corner of our one main downtown street. Was I the kind of person who “wrapped guys” around my little finger? Impossible. I grew up with so many brothers and had to fight for everything. I definitely was not a girlie-girl or flirty-flirt. Well, Jeff always was a kidder.

  I pushed through the café’s double doors, taking in the bright tinkle of the entry’s bells. The barista on duty looked up and smiled.

  “Kinda early, aren’t you?” Devaney commented, as she rearranged the display of muffins and croissants in the glass case to make room for sandwiches that the late-evening crowd would want.