Tarvaris would have surgery and be assigned to injured reserve for the rest of the season. His replacement would be offered a one-season contract, most likely with a small signing bonus for the alleged inconvenience of living in San Francisco for another two to four months. Kendall knew Seattle had cut Chase Adams, a starter-quality cornerback, due to the impact of his veteran’s salary on their cap when a rookie low-round draft pick ran rings around the guy. He’d be expensive, but he’d also be a quarterback’s nightmare.

If the Miners had any hopes of making the postseason, they weren’t doing it with just one cornerback. They needed at least another guy on the depth chart in case of injury.

“We talked with the agent. Adams is motivated to come here and will sign for less than market value in hopes of catching on for more than one season,” Rod Carpenter said.

“What’s the holdup?” Kendall said.

“You’ll authorize his salary and a hundred thousand dollar signing bonus,” Rod said.

“Yes. Call the agent right now before Adams signs with another team,” Kendall said.

This was the most frustrating thing about Kendall’s current position: The guys she worked with were cordial to her face, but she knew every male in the Miners’ front office was rooting for her to fail. They all wanted her job, and they weren’t afraid to make that clear.

They’d appointed her because she’d been with the organization the longest, she was very good at her job, and she had enough football knowledge to not embarrass herself in public or at a meeting. It looked good to the league that the Miners appointed a woman too. In other words, she’d probably hold this job for a few weeks, they’d appoint one of their cronies as GM, and she’d (hopefully) go back to her former job.

Frankly, the GM job was a nightmare. She preferred being the director of football operations. She still had to go to meetings and listen to a bunch of guys pontificate on topics that could be solved much more rapidly without listening to their high school/college football exploits and the usual shit talking about women or wives. Her days used to consist of managing the team’s salary cap, dealing with player contracts and agents, ensuring the team’s financial health, and making sure the heads of other departments were doing their jobs. She listened to other people tell her why the ticket prices should go up or how much it was going to cost to serve organic food in the team’s cafeteria instead of what they were currently serving.

She spent a lot of her day now signing off on other people’s research and decisions. She couldn’t make an effective decision without doing her own research, though, and the system she’d had in place in her former job wasn’t working so far in the GM’s job. It was like trying to drink from a fire hose, and every guy in the room right now knew it.

She stifled a sigh as Rod Carpenter came back into the room and told the group, “We got him. He’ll be here tomorrow morning for a physical and contract signing.”

The team was damn lucky Chase Adams was still available during the period of time since they’d made the initial call, and someone who should have known to pick up the phone and ask her for the authorization didn’t do so.

One more emergency solved. Of course, that left a few more, including the fact the Miners’ head coach had become even more difficult to deal with in the past three weeks. Team personnel tiptoed around him. Another assistant coach had been ordered by his doctor to take a leave of absence due to stress-related health issues last week. Jack Phillips’ reaction to this was to call the assistant coach a “pansy” in front of the players and tell him if he didn’t show up he was fired. HR had since gotten involved. She was waiting for a hostile work environment lawsuit filing to land on her desk any minute.

She was also dealing with Rocky Hill, an All-Pro offensive lineman with two previous DV arrests. Hill had violated a protective order two days before the team played in Seattle and spent the night in jail. She wanted to cut Hill from the team. Her colleagues (vociferously) disagreed. He was on the agenda, and her stomach churned in anticipation of what was going to happen when she told them she’d made a decision. She was cutting him and starting the backup, and if they disagreed, she was going to let the local press know exactly why he was benched for Sunday’s game.

She wished she could go back to her office, shut the door, and construct spreadsheets for the rest of the day, but it wasn’t going to happen.

Kendall had started working for the Miners in their mail room at sixteen years old. Her family’s next door neighbor was the team’s former GM, and she’d needed a part-time job for a few hours a week after school and on Saturdays. She enjoyed watching her high school’s team play football, but the more she was around the Miners and the headquarters, it grew into a passion. She wanted to keep working for the Miners. The former GM told her that the only way she’d get a front office job was to focus on business education, so she earned a Bachelor’s first and her Master’s at Wharton in San Francisco. She kept working for the Miners all through college and grad school, and she was rewarded with a promotion to the assistant to the director of football operations job the Monday morning after she graduated with an MBA.

Two years ago the director retired, and she landed his job.

She knew other women doubted their career paths or took time off to get married and have babies. She wanted children and a husband, but she also wanted her career. She couldn’t see any reason why it wouldn’t work. She’d have to hire a very reliable nanny and marry someone who was willing to pitch in, but it could be done.

Three hours of mind-numbing discussion about the minutiae of running a professional football franchise later, Kendall was able to escape to her office. She’d been taking notes the entire meeting. There was research to be done and decisions to be made, but first of all, she needed some lunch. She stuffed her tablet into her handbag and glanced up as Sydney walked into her office.

“I’m going to grab a sandwich. Do you want me to get you one too?” Kendall said.

Sydney shut the office door behind her and leaned against it. She raised one eyebrow.

“You know why Drew McCoy was in San Jose, don’t you?”

“Want one of those Izze things? I know you really like the clementine. It sounds refreshing. Maybe I’ll get one for myself too.” Kendall heard her phone chirp. She grabbed it out of her pants pocket.

“Were you talking to him?” Sydney said. There was no doubt who Sydney meant. Damn it.

“I can’t officially talk to him. It’s considered tampering,” Kendall said.

Sydney let out a gasp. “You talked to him.”

“It wasn’t that big of a deal . . .”

Actually, it was a huge deal, up to and including the fact they’d had sex, but she wasn’t going to share that with her assistant. Kendall had tried to keep the friendly, engaging Sydney at arm’s length and be professional for the first few months or so they worked together. Her detachment had collapsed in a heap one afternoon when Kendall discovered her usually unflappable assistant in tears in the ladies’ room because the boyfriend she’d been dating since high school dumped her via text message.

Six months later, Kendall was the one falling apart in the ladies’ room during a workday. Sydney had cancelled all of her meetings, gotten her a fresh box of tissues, and bought her a two and a half pound bag of M&M’s.

“If it wasn’t a big deal, you would have told those guys about it.” Sydney crossed to Kendall’s desk, grabbed a clean sticky note and a pen, and said, “I’ll order lunch. What do you want?”

“Turkey on wheat.”

“And provolone, I know. I’ll get you an Izze. Anything else?”

“Do they have M&M’s?”