Warning Track (Callahan Family #1) - Carrie Aarons Page 0,23
until it sweeps dangerously over her tailbone. The entirety of her back is exposed, smooth, golden brown skin on display for all to see. I want to run my hands over all of that velvet and hear her intake of breath as they move to disappear under the black material of her dress.
Shit, I think I might be in trouble.
11
Colleen
The ticker on the bottom right-hand corner of the screen alerts viewers to just how much time there is until my father’s interview debuts.
It’s the only thing that has been covered on the baseball scene, much the sports scene, in the last two weeks since it was announced. I decide to stay in my office, or his former office, to watch it rather than going home.
I don’t know why, as its masochistic, but it feels like the only way to watch it. I’ve been on edge for days, accidentally dropping things or trailing off in the middle of sentences. I’m not an aloof person, I have clear-cut communication skills and am usually extremely attentive to my staff and the coaches. But this is fraying my nerves, the waiting, and a part of me is relieved that it is finally here despite whatever he’s going to say.
The office is slowly becoming my own. About three weeks ago, one of our staff members came in and packaged up all of my father’s belongings and took them out while I was in a meeting. I’d come back to a bare office and was greeted by the knock of our usual interior designer an hour later. Since then, she’s had my office repainted a warm white, brought in a bunch of beautiful white flowering plants, added touches of Pistons red to accent, and had my favorite family photos framed to put on the credenza. I transformed the bar into a cart with flavored fruit waters in beautiful pitchers, and some of my favorite chocolates and cookies, rather than the chauvinistic scotch lineup like something out of Mad Men.
It’s more my space now, but as I watch the TV, the sportscaster teeing up for the interview, I can’t help but feel like an intruder in here.
My nails are chewed down to the quick, a gross habit I’ve tried quitting a billion times but can’t, and I try to force my mind in another direction. Something outside of this job, and it lands right on last weekend, when I felt my heart flutter for reasons it hadn’t in quite some time.
Hayes Swindell had … flirted with me. At first, I wasn’t sure, because even thinking that sounded crazy in my head. But then he said it twice, how he’d basically want me to bid on him, and a whole swarm of butterflies had flapped through my stomach. Imagine that, a date with Hayes?
For me, a date with anyone would be out of the ordinary. Like I said before, I don’t date and have barely held a relationship in my adult life. But a date with one of the most dashing men I’ve ever met? That made my throat run drier than that summer vacation I spent in Arizona with my father when I was ten.
Hayes sported that just-rolled-out-of-bed look even when he was all dressed up in a tuxedo, which was a deadly combination. It’s got to be the hair, which Uncle Daniel has complained about twice now since he asked me to address it. But Hayes clearly won’t cut it, and I don’t have the heart to rob millions of women from looking at those dirty blond locks. There is something so Roman soldier about his whole appearance, like he’s an extra on the set of 300.
I’m pretty sure he was throwing out some signs at the bachelor auction, and while I know it’s off-limits to even entertain that with one of my players, I couldn’t help it. For a split second, I was just a normal woman being hit on by a very gorgeous man, and I liked it.
And then there was the actual act of watching him up on that stage. I thought he would act reserved and somewhat grumpy at being paraded around, but the man put on a damn show. Strutting around the small elevated podium as the announcer rattled off his stats, his accomplishments in the league. He threw winks and smirks at the women raising their paddles, trying to win him. In the end, he’d gone to the wife of one of our season ticket holders, a nice old woman