Warning Track: The Callahan Family, Book One

by Aarons, Carrie

  There should be no mystery about why I don’t feel connected to children, or having any of my own.

  “Well, it’s beautiful. Better than any birthday I ever had, though there was that one where The Wiggles sang.” I chuckle, thinking of the very famous kid’s quartet my grandfather managed to snag off their American tour.

  “That party was epic. I ate so much candy, I puked in the back of Dad’s beamer. He was furious.” Walker joins us, sipping what looks like a cocktail, and I kind of want to know where he got one.

  “Oh, crap, Becky Feist is about to go toe-to-toe with another class mom. I have to break this up. See you guys later.” Whitney rushes off in the direction of an angry looking blonde who is two seconds away from tossing her lemonade on another woman.

  “And the world says that our baseball team has its hands full with drama.” Walker shakes his head, smirking.

  My head nods emphatically. “I have enough to worry about with you lot of infants in the locker room. Good thing I don’t have actual toddlers to deal with.”

  “You ever think we’ll be family people?” Walker asks me, squinting around at all the little kids swirling around the lawn.

  His question has my mind wandering back to Baltimore, when Hayes pulled me into that garden and kissed the daylights out of me. When he kissed me, I questioned everything. From my career choices to my stance on dating to what the heck I’m doing with my life if this man isn’t in it.

  I shrug. “I guess I never really truly considered it. But being here, with a birthday coming up, I can’t say it hasn’t crossed my mind.”

  “You have more time than I do,” he says.

  “Biologically, I think my clock would disagree. You’re only thirty, Walker, just a short year in front of me.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t want to be one of those old-ass dads whose knees crack every time he gets down on the floor to wrestle with his kids. I want to be the cool, hip father who can throw them around in the pool and show them how to field a grounder.”

  “Ah, the things that truly matter when it comes to raising kids.” I grin.

  “You know it.” He takes a sip of his drink. “I mean it, though, Col. You can choose to be two things; happy and professionally successful. I know I’m one to talk, I haven’t dated seriously in ages, but I want more for you.”

  “Why, because I’m a woman?” My voice is steely.

  “No, because you seem lonely. Especially as of late.” Walker gives me a pointed eyebrow, as if to say don’t try that sexism game with me, you know it’s false.

  I know he didn’t mean it the way I’m spinning it, and that he knows me better than almost anyone. “I’m just choosing to focus on work right now. It’s not like there isn’t a crisis to be dealt with every other day.”

  “Speaking of drama, my dad went to see Jimmy today.” Walker bulldozes right over the casual part of easing into this conversation.

  I blink, digesting what he just said. “Why?”

  My cousin shrugs. “He sees him once or twice a month, as far as I know. We haven’t talked in depth about it, but they’re brothers, Col. I know they’re different men, both cold but very different. But they grew up together. Were each other’s closest confidants for years. If Sinclair did that to me, I’d want to know why.”

  A snort, harsh and sarcastic, works its way up my nostrils. “Except the thing you’re forgetting is that your own brother doesn’t have a malicious bone in his body. Sure, he’s a royal idiot, but he’d never betray you like that. I have no idea why anyone in this family would have any inclination to entertain my father’s behavior. Especially after all he’s said about us in the media as of late.”

  Walker nods. “Your father is a dick, no denying that one. He always has been. But I worry about you. You have no obligation to forgive him, to see him, or to communicate, but I think you need some sort of closure. Do you think that talking to him would help? You seem two seconds away from the edge of burnout, Col. And don’t bother denying it, the night security at the ballpark keeps me well-informed of how late you’ve been staying.”

  Anger blooms in my cheeks, because he shouldn’t be checking up on me. “If I have no obligation to him, then why are you pushing this? I’m in the role, I’m doing my job, I think it’s going pretty damn well with all the shit that was piled on my plate from day one of me stepping into that office. If I talked to him, went to see him, it would be playing right into his hand. Like giving a toddler throwing a temper tantrum attention. It’s exactly what my father wants. Why would you even suggest that?”

  I can feel how ruddy my face is, and how much my temper is spiking on the inside points of my wrists.

  Walker gives me a sad smile. “I just … I only say it out of love, Col. You know that. I want him to rot in prison, too, but not at the expense of your mental sanctity. Maybe it’s time you … I don’t know.”

  The letter buried at the bottom of the junk drawer in my kitchen comes to mind, and not for the first time, I’m deadly curious as to what it contains. I go back and forth between wanting to know why my father has betrayed and abandoned me this way and not wanting to confront it at all. Part of me thinks that there can only be more ugliness and spite at the end of that tunnel, and it will only destroy me further.

  As if conjured by a miracle, Sinclair walks in, holding the leash of a camel in one hand and a beer in the other. Where he got either in such a short amount of time, I’ll never know. But neither of the things in his hands can be a good idea when my black sheep of a cousin is involved.

  At least I don’t have to talk to Walker about my father any longer.

  “Lord, help us all. Whit, don’t let him in the house, he’s bound to burn it down!” Walker cups his hands around his mouth, shouting to Whitney.

  The kids are sprinting up the lawn to him, all of them wanting a good look or pet of the camel. I hope to God that thing isn’t nasty or diseased, and that no parent here trusts that Sinclair could keep their child safe if anything was to happen in the next split second.

  But when the children get close, Sinclair is so easy with them, talking and maneuvering so that the animal feels comfortable. The kids are enraptured, not only with the camel, but with what my cousin is saying.

  “If there is anyone who should never reproduce, it’s my brother. And yet, I think he’d be the best parent out of all of us.” Walker tilts his head, studying his brother.

  As I watch my other cousin with the kids, I can’t say I disagree. “That’s if he could actually grow up and stop being a child himself.”

  24

  Colleen

  July Fourth is an all-out celebration at the ballpark.

  This holiday has always been a favorite of our fans, with our marketing department implementing games, free T-shirt raffles, and the grand prize of a brand new red car from the dealership we sometimes partner with in Packton. It’s an all-out fun fest, and one of my favorite days at the park.

  It’s especially nice to admire the players in their specialty uniforms, with red and blue stars on tight white baseball pants. Especially since I get a view of Hayes’ butt in them this year. My lord, that man has assets for days. I’ve never really ogled the opposite sex before; sure, I’ve found men attractive and maybe lusted after one or two in high school or college. But it’s never been this intense. My eyes can barely be dragged from his tall drink of water stature, and I notice things on Hayes that I would have completely overlooked before. The taper of his waist, the indent of his ass cheeks in his pants, so sculpted and globed in a way that should be criminal. The way his biceps flex and curl when he throws the ball. I’ve even memorized the way his pants mold to his thighs and calves when he bends to field a ground ball.

  My lips have been tattooed with his taste since that night in Baltimore, and we’ve picked up our texting right where we left off before his date interrupted the flow of our connection. I have to try to keep my focus, not let it affect me too much, but I’m finding that my girlish guilty pleasure
is rearing its ugly head at the exact wrong time. I’ve never been boy crazy, never spent hours doodling in my notebook or following a guy around the college bars just to get him to notice me.

  I’m not really doing those things now, but I find myself nodding off into daydreams about Hayes far too often. And right now, I’m in the best place I’ve ever been in my career. The scandal news has died down a bit, even with my father still trying to hock his story for a buck. We’ve gotten a lot of the indiscretions in terms of contract or bribe money cleared up. We’re in talks with players who were brought here under false pretenses and constantly checking in on their mental state and comfortability with the team.

  Those are only my post-Jimmy Callahan responsibilities. The regular duties of a GM are always on my checklist, being written and crossed off almost weekly, with each new opponent and game.

  All in all, I have absolutely no time for a relationship or to be thinking about the taste of Hayes Swindell’s tongue in my mouth. Doesn’t mean my heart, and the tingling bud between my thighs, are listening to my brain.

  I decided to come up to my office just before the fireworks start. We have them every year, a colorful, all-out bloom of pyrotechnics over the ball park for the guests and players who stay until after the ninth inning. Watching them from up here, where you feel like you can almost touch them, is something I’ve always wanted to do.

  The rest of the executive offices are dark, quiet, most of my employees or coworkers have long gone home. But this is my home, even more than my ranch house. And I could use a couple quiet moments of wonder.

  With a big Pistons-red clap, the fireworks start, painting the sky above the stadium a rainbow of colors. I watch in awe, seated in my white velvet desk chair facing the wall of windows that are usually at my back.

  Someone clears their throat, and I whirl around in my chair to Hayes, leaning one gorgeous bicep against my doorway. Clad in dark jeans that accentuate every muscle in his legs and a soft gray T-shirt, his blond Thor-hair is damp and hanging to his shoulders. Stubble dots his cheeks and jaw, and he looks … dangerous. Like the kind of man who could make a woman’s clothes fall off from a single snap of his fingers.

  Low in my belly, fire simmers, causing a snarl of tingles to float both up to my heart and down between my legs.

  “I had it on good intel that you were up here. Alone.”

  There is something in his presence that feels lethal, that alerts me to the fact that we’re no longer flirting with the line of no return. I’m pretty sure we’ve passed it.

  I stay seated. “You found me.”

  He walks into my office, closing the door behind him, and I audibly gasp when he flicks the lock closed.

  We’ve been messaging for days, probably a week now, and it’s gotten increasingly more intimate. The other day, Hayes asked me what I wore to bed. And then I had the nerve to ask him if he preferred going out to dinner or spending the night at home when on a date. We were all but coming out and saying the whole damn enchilada, but I have a feeling that stops now.

  Not that he’s talking much. He isn’t even halfway across the room and I’m sweating, a single trickle falling between the cleavage of my breasts.

  “Good game tonight,” I say, trying to infuse some cooling agent to the fire that is starting to burn out of control between us.

  It had been, for everyone, but especially for Hayes. He’d gone four for five in the batter’s box, hitting two home runs and driving in a grand slam during one of those.

  “I can’t not do this anymore.” His voice is thick with raw sex, and it’s a miracle I’m not a puddle on the floor.

  “Hayes …” I warn, but my voice is weak.

  With no idea where his sudden lust is coming from, or why it has to be brought up in my office, I stand anyway. I shouldn’t play into this, I should tell him to leave. But my body is already buzzing with the anticipation of his hands on it, and maybe it’s the magic of the fireworks painting the dark walls of my office every color under the sun that has me capitulating.

  Wordlessly, he reaches me, and we’re standing toe-to-toe. I can feel the rapid rise and fall of my chest, and then he licks his lips. Slow and so painfully hot in that one tiny motion, and I’m a goner.

  I’m pretty sure I lunge for him first, but he catches me, our hands snagging in hair and on clothing. My fingers are met with the wetness of his shower as they dive into his hair, our mouths sealing over one another. The kiss is sloppy and fueled with desire, our bodies forced together by something magnetic. It’s like I can’t get close enough to him, and in one fell swoop Hayes is picking me up and carrying me over to the built-in cabinets on one wall of my office.

  Strong hands dig into my butt as my legs circle his waist, and I rub myself against the massive erection bulging against his zipper. Oh good God, I could combust right here. I’m vaguely aware as he sets me down, our kiss never stopping while skilled fingers shove my dress past my hips and pull my thong down my legs.

  Then they’re stroking me, testing my wetness, teasing the swollen bud at my core. Suddenly, I can’t breathe, the reflexes in my back sending my eyes rolling to the ceiling with a guttural moan.

  “I could come from that sound alone.” Hayes growls, green eyes sparking with need.

  And I could come just from the look he’s leveling at me. Possessive, driving with domination. This is not a man who will go quietly into the bedroom, make love kindly, or whisper sweet nothings. He’s an animal, one who takes until he’s had his fill.

  Right then, my mind spurs to action, causing my hands to go to his belt. Two of Hayes’ fingers pump inside me as I race to pull his cock out, unbuckling and unsnapping until I can finally get his jeans sliding past his hips.

  When his erection springs free, it’s weighty, the veins pulsing when I take it in my palm.

  “I’ve dreamed about seeing my cock in your hand for too many nights.” He breathes reverently as I stroke him.

  I pull him by it, gently, so his hips line up to where I’m positioned on top of the cabinet. Spreading my legs wide at the same time he removes his fingers from my dripping slit, my heart hammers at what is about to happen.

  There doesn’t need to be a discussion, we’re not teenagers. We’re both fully consenting adults, we know the risks; we trust the other.

  So in one fluid thrust Hayes buries himself deep, and tangles his tongue with mine, swallowing the scream I let out at the invasion. He’s enormous, and it’s been a very long time since I’ve been with a man. The sensations of pleasure and pain melt together until I can’t make out which one is winning, and my clit throbs for release.

  His sculpted arm is wrapped behind my back, around my waist and gripping one of my ass cheeks. He’s holding me by one arm, in place, while the other set of fingers is planted deeply at the roots of my scalp. It’s barbaric, the way he’s using my body to sheath himself, but it’s the best kind of primal pleasure.

  Hayes is not gentle or considerate, like the other men I’ve been with. He doesn’t fumble or ask permission, this is a man who knows what he wants and will take it. Make no mistake, he’s after my pleasure too, fulfilling that need, but the wild look in his eyes makes this encounter more thrilling than any I’ve ever had.

  That dirty blond hair falls in front of his face as he tips me back, not far enough to lay me down on the counter, but enough to hit an angle inside of me that has me muffling screams. It’s a good thing those fireworks are so loud, because I can’t be held accountable for the sounds I make right now.

  “You’re fucking beautiful like this. Hair down, wild and uninhibited.” He’s pumping his cock into me with reckless abandon. “I want to hear you say my name.”

  At any moment, someone could walk by and see us through the slim glass cutouts that bracket my office door. Or they could hear my loud moans or Hayes’ gruff growls between the boom of the color show lighting up our faces just outside the wall of windows. That’s what makes this even more scintillating, as wrong as that s
eems. I’m getting off on the forbidden nature of sex with this man; we’re two people who should definitely not be having intercourse, especially inside the building we both work in. Especially with the roles we occupy, with me being his boss essentially.

  But that only adds to the passion of it. We’re not even undressed, just certain garments have been shoved aside so we can mate like animals in heat.

  “Yes. Oh … yesss …” My response is careening, one of his thumbs coming to press down on my clit as he thrusts.

  “Say my name, Colleen. When you come on my cock, you say my name,” he demands, and I combust from his dirty words.

  “Hayes.” I feel adrift, the tremors of my orgasm shaking my entire body.

  Distantly, I hear some of the frames fall off the cabinet I’m positioned on, probably because my limbs are shaking with the seizure of my release. I can pinpoint the carnal sensation to one spot, and then it’s all over, rippling through my muscles.

  “Look at me.” Hayes grips the back of my neck, squaring my eyes with his.

  I see it, the exact moment he lets himself go and spills into me. Those emeralds take on an even darker green hue, and his jaw clicks. I watch as he loses himself to the climax, and it’s possibly the hottest, rawest thing I’ve ever seen.

  Outside, the grand finale of fireworks is still booming, sending cracks of light through my office as we pant in unison. Hayes stays inside me for what feels like a long time, his lips tracing my neck as my hands smooth up and down his back. It’s the best form of post-coital cuddling we can do, since we had sex on a cabinet in my office.

  And even though we’ve opened up Pandora’s box, a can of worms we can’t close, part of my heart feels sated.

  Because now I know that I haven’t been avoiding relationships or am just uninterested in most men. No, I’ve been waiting for this man.

  25

  Hayes