Julia London by Lucky Charm Page A

So
listen, what we’d like to do is get together and talk through some things with you and
your agent and see if we’re all thinking alike and if there is a place for you at
ESPN.”
    “Sure! Yes, okay,” she said, and squeezed her eyes shut, waved her hand hard
to keep from bursting into tears of pure delirium. “What sort of place are you
thinking?”
    “Well, we’re thinking a humorous talk show to air Friday nights. How does
that sound?”
    Was he kidding ? How did that sound? How did that sound ? Like
all her dreams and hard work had paid off! Like she had found the pot of gold at the end
of the rainbow and was now going to wallow in it, completely naked! “It sounds fantastic,
Dan. I can’t wait.”
    “Don’t get too excited yet. There are a lot of details to be
ironed out,” he said, and began to talk through them. When she finally hung up, she
couldn’t wait to tell someone. Anyone . She dialed her mom but got the answering
machine. She tried to catch her old college friend Amy at work but got her voicemail.
Guido was gone for the day, and that left . . .
    Oh shit , she’d forgotten
Parker. She glanced at her watch. It had been forty-five minutes. Kelly grabbed up her
stuff and sailed out the door.
    He was leaning against a mailbox, one arm propped on top,one ankle crossed over the other, casually perusing the hundreds of people
who went streaming by. “Parker!” she cried as she came through the revolving doors,
darting in between pedestrians.
    He turned toward her with a very warm, spine-tingling
smile on his face. “I’m sorry,” she said, juggling her things as she ran up to him. “But I
got the most amazing phone call before I left work.”
    “Oh yeah?” he
asked, instantly taking her laptop from her. “Let me guess—you booked the
Knicks.”
    The world was suddenly so bright and so wonderful that Kelly laughed
heartily at that. So heartily that Parker looked at her a little strangely. “No, but
something just as good. ESPN called,” she said. “They are thinking of testing me
for a talk show!”
    “Seriously?” Parker asked, looking quite impressed.
    “ Seriously !” she squealed. “They want to test me for a talk
show! I am so excited, I honestly think I could fly!”
    He laughed, put his hand on the
small of her back, and ushered her into the stream of people on the sidewalk. “Don’t fly
away just yet,” he said, seeming genuinely pleased for her. “But that’s fantastic, Kelly.
Really wonderful. I can only wonder what took them so long.”
    “Me, too!” She
laughed again.
    She talked excitedly about it as they walked down the street to a
restaurant. Kelly hardly noticed—she just walked through the door, still talking as Parker
opened it, then fell into a seat the maître d’ showed her to, exhausted and thrilled and
suddenly very happy to be with the one guy in all of New York she never thought she’d
like.
    It didn’t hurt that he was sharing in her excitement, oohing and aahing at
all the right moments, hanging on her every word—and looking so incredibly handsome while
he did it.
    They ordered lunch, and Kelly told him how long she had wanted this, how it
was so great because ESPN was in Connecticut, still close to New York, which she loved,
and how this was a dream come true.
    “I know how you must feel,” he said.
“It’s sort of like getting the call that they are bringing you up from the minors.” And he
went on to tell her about the day he got The Call. Even now, ten years later, he still
sounded excited and grateful and proud.
    “It will probably be a big
adjustment for you,” he said. “You’ll have to work all the time to get a show like that up
and running.”
    Kelly laughed. “I work all the time as it is, so that’s nothing
new.”
    “Oh come on—surely you don’t work all the time. No one works all the time. What do you like to do when you’re not working?”
    “I don’t know,”
she said, thinking about that. “I work out. I