Warning Track (Callahan Family #1) - Carrie Aarons Page 0,3
the swarm of media waiting outside, but I don’t mind almost running over screaming idiot reporters with my car.
The footsteps of another person echo down the large, concrete bowels of the stadium before I can see them around the rounded hallway. I steel myself, hoping it isn’t one of my coach’s or another player. I’m really not in the mood to chat, and I finished the season on a shitty note with most everyone.
After being traded from Los Angeles in mid-September, I was none too pleased. The trade seemed off; I was playing my best season I’d ever had, with a point three two batting average going into the playoffs. And then, just like that, I was scooped up by the Pistons for some reason that was shadily hidden every time I asked about it. The entire deal stunk from the get-go. It was no big shock to me when the allegations came out in October, and then Jimmy Callahan was federally charged. Sure, it’s the biggest scandal in baseball since Pete Rose’s gambling and subsequent lifetime ban. It’s probably even bigger than the steroid era suspensions.
I would come to find out, due to the testimony of the executives and owners who testified against Callahan in return for their own immunity, that he’d bribed both the general manager and owner of the Los Angeles ball club I’d called home for ten years. In return for finagling draft picks by throwing games, using players who were in on his scheme, he paid my former GM a whopping two million dollars to execute a clause in my contract that sent me packing for Pennsylvania.
None of it was above board. They’d fucked me over, sent me to a team that hadn’t made the playoffs in two years, and unfortunately, due to the ruling from the league, none of the dealings could be reversed. All the players and front office staff who were involved have been fired and banned, but unfortunately, there was no way they could reverse the trades and underhanded agreements Callahan and his goons had made.
So here I am, on a team that is not mine. Playing for a club I am ashamed to take the field for.
And standing in front of me in her enraging, fucking gorgeous, glory is Colleen Callahan, daughter of the traitor.
“O-Oh, Hayes,” she stutters before me, those damn heels coming to an abrupt stop.
I should just keep walking, pass her with no comment and no respect, but that itch of rage under my skin is still alive and well. I’m raring for a fight, and I just got the most worthy opponent.
Not that I’d ever consider going toe to toe physically with our new general manager. Though there was that one dream, right after I’d been traded and met her, when I’d woken with wetness in my boxers like some goddamn teenage boy.
What I mean is, she’s smaller than my right arm. Slim in the most feminine kind of way, Colleen Callahan has that all-American look to her. She should be someone coming right off a farm in Connecticut, or the beach in Nantucket. Her honey-brown hair is always slicked back, poised looking. Those eyes, the same color as some of the sweetest whiskey I’ve ever downed, are rimmed with thick, black lashes. Her cheekbones are impossibly high, almost fox-like, and the pink blush of her cheeks as she holds me in her gaze has my brain humming.
The curve of her suit, something out of my wildest sexy librarian fantasies, gives only the subtlest hint of the small swell of her breast and cinch of her hips. It pisses me off that her modesty has my imagination running wild, far more than it would if I took in a bikini-clad woman on a Malibu beach.
If she were a different woman and I was a different man, I would love ruffling those perfectly-laid feathers. Unfortunately, that would never be the reality. Her family is enemy number one, and I only have to survive them for one season before free agency.
“Isn’t that Mr. Swindell to you? Now that you’re the head honcho, I’d expect that formality. Or, since I’m not technically here under legal means, does that mean you don’t have to pay me that respect?”
It’s a low blow, mentioning her father’s scandal right out of the gate, but I’m fucking pissed. We all are. Most of the players here don’t even want to go out and represent the team this year, but that would mean giving up