Shot Caller (A Bad Boy's Baby Novel) (5 page)

“Shit!”
I exclaim, fumbling to
catch my phone as I very nearly drop it into the toilet. Clutching the device
to my heaving chest, I force myself to consider this information with as clear
(and clean) a mind as I can manage.

So.
Maddox, a man I happen to have slept with, will be playing with The Empire.
I’ve run into past lovers before, albeit not on the job. What’s the worst that
could possibly happen? I’m not looking for any romantic entanglements. And he
probably has scads of notches on his bedpost. He probably won’t even remember
that one night we had together. Just because it was some of the best sex
I’ve
ever had, before or since…

“Stop
it, Abrams!”
I
mutter, shaking the memory of Maddox Walcott’s glorious rippling muscles out of
my head.

I
can’t let my decision-making be clouded by a man I barely even know. I spent
four years of my life letting my decisions be swayed by my husband, a man I
thought I knew right to the core. I don’t need any more of that kind of
interference in my life. Whatever I decide to do about this job with The
Empire, I’m going to make my decision for me. Now, I just have to actually
make
a decision.

Somehow…

Chapter Three

Maddox

Atlantic City, New Jersey

February

I
stand in front of my new teammates, trying not to sneer at their grimacing
mugs. They look like a bunch of six-year-olds in bad need of a nap. Guess
they’re not too happy to see me. I don’t much blame them. These blokes have
been training together for the better part of a year under the watchful eyes of
club owner Dale Tucker and manager Chris Glover, a former MLS player himself.
We’re only a month away from our opening match, which makes me fashionably
late, I suppose. Makes sense that no one’s pleased with the big reveal of Mad
Man Walcott on their roster. I wouldn’t be too thrilled if someone came along
at the last minute and stole my thunder, either.

“All
right, gather up,”
our
manager Chris Glover says to his assembled squad, clapping me on the shoulder.
He and Tucker dragged me into the locker room to meet my new teammates the
second I got off the plane. They stand flanking me even now, like they’re afraid
I’m gonna bolt or something. To be fair, they might be right. “I want you to
meet the latest addition to The Empire, Mr. Maddox Walcott.”

Tucker
claps his meaty hands together enthusiastically, and the rest of the team
begrudgingly follows suit. There is one notable exception—team captain Hadrian
Barlow. He’s apparently a big deal over here, and Tucker somehow managed to
drag his bearded, ginger arse all the way over from the West Coast. Barlow
stands with his feet rooted into the ground, glowering straight at me with his
arms tightly crossed. Looks like someone’s grumpy about having some competition
for best player on the squad.

Ah,
who am I kidding. As if there’s any competition between me and this
motherfucker. I could wipe the pitch with that crusty-arse beard of his.

“Maddox
here will be joining us at practice first thing tomorrow,”
Glover goes on in his
slight New Jersey accent. He’s a real hometown hero, here. One of the first big
MLS players to come out of this state, back when the league started in the
’90s. So far, I’ve got nothing against him. As long as he gives me plenty of
room to do whatever the fuck I want, we won’t have any problems between us.
It’s when people try to handle me that things go south.

“You’d
better rest up tonight,”
Hadrian
Barlow calls to me from his place in the pack, “We won’t go easy on you
tomorrow just because you’re new.”

“All
right, then,”
I
reply, grinning back at my new captain, “Then I won’t go easy on you just
because you’re an American.”

A
laugh goes up from my new teammates, bouncing off the locker room walls.
Everyone loves to watch a tight-arse get his own shit lobbed back at him. And I
can tell just by looking at him that Barlow’s sphincter is a goddamn vice grip.
He glares back at me as the team disperses, and I shoot him a wink while the
manager’s back is turned. Oh, man. Fucking with this guy is going to be way too
much fun.

“Got
everything you need to settle in here, Mr. Walcott?”
Tucker asks as he and
Glover trail me out of the locker room. “Found a place to stay and everything?”

“Sure,”
I tell him, “I’ve got a
room at the Tangier. Ocean views.”

“You’re
staying at…a casino?”
Glover
asks, stopping in his tracks.

“Yeah,”
I reply, “What of it?”

“Doesn’t
seem like a great place to focus,”
Glover says sternly, “Or keep out of
trouble.”

“Can’t
focus in anything but chaos, mate,”
I grin, “And as for trouble, I’ve given up
trying to keep it away from me. It always finds a way back, doesn’t it?”

“I’m
sure what Mr. Walcott means,”
Tucker
cuts in, smarmy as shit, “Is that he’ll we too busy training to do much else
but order room service and hit the hay! Isn’t that right?”

“Oh
yeah,”
I
nod solemnly, “Scout’s honor.”

Glover
gives me a long, hard look, his thick black brows furrowed. “Make no mistake,
Walcott. This isn’t college. Just because you’re back in the States doesn’t
mean you’re going to be this team’s Crown Princess. If you fuck this up, you’re
out. And good luck finding another league after that…”

The
manager rambles on with his lecture, but my attention has already been snagged
by something over his shoulder. Down the hall from the locker room, lingering
at one of the staff office doorways, is one of the finest bums I’ve seen in
recent memory. It’s wrapped up in dark wash skinny jeans, only halfway trying
to hide in plain sight. But I’ve got an eyeful of it, all right. And I’m having
trouble tearing my gaze away. By sheer force of will, I make myself zoom out
and take in the big picture.

There’s
a woman standing at the end of the hallway, talking to the Head Athletic
Trainer. Her back is turned, so I can’t see her face, but her layered
light-brown hair is cropped just past her shoulders, and a well-cut blazer is
stretched across her wing-like shoulder blades. She’s shorter than the women I
usually go for, and way too young to be here for our Athletic Trainer. Maybe
it’s take your fine-as-fuck grown daughter to work day? That would be one way
to make an impression on the coaching staff—bedding all their eligible
offspring. I’ve always been a man who’s known how to make an entrance.

“I
said, do we have an understanding?”
Glover’s voice cuts through my sexed-up
reverie.

“Sure
thing, boss,”
I
reply, glancing back over at the surly Italian-American.

“Good,”
he grumbles, walking past
me toward his office, “I’ll be holding you to that.”

“Glad
to have you here, Mad Man!”
Tucker
drawls happily, practically skipping off after the manager. I swear, that man
is like a real-life Winnie the fucking Pooh, only much slimier. I guess that
makes Glover that brooding donkey that Pooh hangs out with. Eeyore. Yeah, that
fits.

With
the fat teddy bear and grumpy arse off my back, I turn back to the hot piece I
just had my eye on. But she’s already disappeared, like some kind of bodacious
mirage. I’m more disappointed than makes any damn sense that I didn’t get to go
up and introduce myself to her…
and
her grade-A assets. I shake off the feeling and head for the exit. I’m back in
America now, after all. And unlike the last time I was here, I’m a world-famous
troublemaker and professional athlete. No use getting hung up on a single
minge-piece these days. The world is my bucket of oysters, now. And I’m gonna
lick up as many as I can.

Chapter Four

Poppy

Barry
O’Leary, the Empire’s Head Athletic Trainer, stares blankly across his desk at
me, as if unsure of how to proceed. Something tells me that good ol’
Barry is unaccustomed to
holding full conversations with women. Or even conversations that go further
than, “Make me a damn sandwich, woman.”

That’s not fair,
I chastise myself
internally, shifting in my chair,
you don’t know anything about this guy.
Don’t jump to—

“So
what’s a pretty girl like you doing hanging around a bunch of sweaty young
bucks for a living?”
O’Leary
smirks, “There are easier ways to land a husband, Miss Abrams.”

Would
you look at that? I’ve never had a conclusion jump to
me
before. There’s
a first time for everything, I guess.

“I’ve
wanted to be a trainer since I was in high school,”
I inform my new boss, “I
actually played soccer myself up until I got a nasty injury. The trainers and
PTs who helped put me back together were a huge inspiration to me.”

“That’s
sweet,”
O’Leary
chuckles, “But I hope you understand that these are no little girls with
boo-boos you’re going to be dealing with, here. These are full-grown,
testosterone-pumping men. And they’re not going to appreciate being coddled by
a young, attractive woman. At least, not outside of the bedroom.”

“Mr.
O’Leary, I’ve been treating professional athletes for years now,”
I snap, “And I assure
you, none of
them
have had any problem respecting me just because I
happen to be a young woman.”

“Hey,
whoa. Don’t get all Femi-Nazi on me,”
O’Leary laughs, holding up his hands, “I’m
just being straight with you. You’ve only ever worked with athletes one-on-one
before, right?”

“I
worked in a team setting during my doctorate program,”
I tell him.

“So
you know that things can get a little more…personal, when you’re right up close
to the action?”
O’Leary
presses.

Unbidden,
a memory of Maddox Walcott’s cock hardening against my eager tongue bursts into
my mind’s eye. I cross my legs a little tighter and try to collect myself.

“I
can handle it,”
I
tell O’Leary shortly, “Trust me.”

“We’ll
see whether you’re trustworthy or not,”
he says, leaning back in his chair, “
I
didn’t hire you. I don’t know you from Eve. Tucker wanted to make sure we added
some diversity to our coaching staff. Didn’t want the Internet getting in a
tizzy on account of there being too many white guys on our payroll. When being
white and male became a crime, I do not know…”

“Are
you implying that I only got this job because I’m a woman?”
I ask him heatedly.

“I’m
just saying, it didn’t hurt your case,”
he smiles condescendingly.

“Well,
I’ll be on my way, then,”
I
tell him, standing up to leave, “I still have a lot of unpacking to do.”

“You
girls. Always over packing,”
Barry
chuckles, following me out the door and into the hallway beyond.

“I
did relocate my entire life for this job,”
I remind him, “So, yes. I do have a few
things I need to—”

“Oh,
look at that!”
Barry
cuts me off, glancing over my shoulder, “It’s the other last-minute recruit.”

“What?”
I reply, glancing over my
shoulder. I spot the club’s manager and owner standing at the end of the
hallway talking to a tall, broad-shouldered man. He’s facing away from me, but
even so it only takes a second for my brain to put the pieces together. His
stance, his cropped umber hair, the sleeves of tattoos trailing down his incredibly
cut arms. Not to mention the fact that O’Leary called him the “last
minute-recruit”. I knew that this moment would come around sooner or later, but
I fooled myself into thinking that I could work up to it. Soften the blow of
seeing Maddox again after all these years.

No
such luck. The second after my brain recognizes my long-ago lover, my body
senses him, too. A wave a heat washes from my core to the tips of my fingers
and toes, gathering at last between my denim-clad legs. He’s just a few yards away
from me, a fact of which every cell in my body is keenly aware. Before I can
rush down the hall and jump Maddox’s bones right then and there, my brain
manages to rein in my hormone-crazy body. I force myself to turn back to
O’Leary, who’s been gushing about Maddox Walcott the whole time I’ve been
quietly losing my damn mind.

“Mark
my words, that boy is gonna be a game-changer for us,”
Barry says.

“Oh.
Yeah,”
I
agree, grinning manically. “So. Anyway. I really gotta run. But I’ll see you
tomorrow OK bye!”

And
with that I all but sprint out of the training facility, nestled deep in the
underbelly of our new stadium, desperate for some fresh sea air. I burst
through the front doors, drawing huge breaths into my lungs. Leaning back
against the exterior of the building, I’m amazed at what an insanely powerful
effect one glance of Maddox had on me back there. I’m gonna need to rethink my
strategy for how to deal with him, starting tomorrow. O’Leary clearly already
thinks of me as nothing more than a frivolous little girl. I can’t give him a
single scrap of evidence to back up that hypothesis, or he’ll never learn to
take me seriously. And if there’s one thing I absolutely hate, it’s not being
taken seriously because I’m a woman.

Shaken
but standing, I head around the huge, new stadium toward my car. An old friend
of mine from college is letting me crash at her beach house here in Atlantic
City, since it’s the off season and all. Hopefully, there’s a liquor store or
two on the way home. I need a drink after my close encounter with the most
dangerous Mad Man around.