Game On (A Bad Boy Sports Romance)

by Olivia Lancaster

  I had a feeling I knew why Janet’s secretary was hesitant to let me see her right now, and as I stepped into the dimly-lit office, my suspicions were confirmed.

  Even through the dim light, I could see Janet’s dilated pupils gleaming from the glow of the nearby lamp, and the whites of her eyes were a little bloodshot, as if she had been scratching at them too much. She sniffed hard as I entered, and she adjusted her blonde hair hastily as I made my way in.

  “Hi, Kieran,” she said quickly, “come in, sit down. I wasn’t expecting you. Do you need something? I have a busy day today.”

  Her voice, already high, was a little shaky, and her words came quickly, as if she were jerking them out of her mind in a flurry. I bit back a frown as I gave a polite nod and took a seat in front of her.

  It was Paul who’d gotten Janet hooked on blow. I assumed he had started using some time back in the 80s and just never got off the stuff. Living in Las Vegas in the lifestyle of a sports team owner didn’t offer much in the way of discouragement from drug addiction. From everything I’d heard from the older players and managers, Janet hadn’t always been like this. She met Paul when she was in her thirties, starting to fall into a mentally unhealthy place over her signs of aging, the looks she’d had in high school starting to visibly change. Maybe she’d seen in Paul her last chance of being found attractive, and she gave him a kind of trust she never should have given a man like Paul.

  It made me sad in a way I couldn’t fully express. Growing older was a natural thing, and no woman should be ashamed of showing her maturity and enjoying it. If it weren’t for men like Paul, maybe Janet could have seen that, but she was too far into her cocaine dependency to see that. They were both ill.

  “Hey, Ms. Walker,” I started, “I wanted to talk a little about the contract renewal that’s coming up.”

  “Oh, yes!” she said, suddenly brightening up. “Did you get the email of the draft we sent you? It’s all ready to go, all we need you to do is sign your little name where it says, a few initials here and there, and you’re back on track where you’ve been before.”

  “Yeah, I got the email,” I said, “and that’s what I wanted to talk about a little. There were a few things that didn’t totally make sense to me in it, and I’m pretty sure some of the wording isn’t like it was on the last contract I signed.”

  “Pssh,” she rolled her eyes, waving a dismissive hand with what I took as a pretty condescending smile. “don’t worry your little head about that now, darlin’. You see, we administrators have to change some of the terms and conditions every renewal to account for the changing market around us. Sometimes we find loopholes in contracts we have to fix, extra protections for our players, exclusions, termination conditions, this and that, you know how it goes,” she finished with a wolfish smile. “Nothing’s really going to be changing for you, though, I can tell you that much.”

  “I understand,” I said cautiously, trying to sound less suspicious than I really was. “Still, since my career has been going on so far without a lot of my involvement on that side of things,” I proceeded, and already, I could see the smile on Janet’s face fading, “I’d like to get the contract looked over by a lawyer before committing to anything.”

  I’d said the magic word.

  “Lawyer?!” Janet suddenly spat back at me, slamming her palm on the table with a loud slap as she stood up, but she caught herself immediately, taking a deep breath and running her fingers through her hair as she turned around to shut her eyes and presumably silently count to ten. After a moment, she turned back around, trying her damnedest to put a sunny smile back on. “Well Kieran, that breaks my heart to hear--haven’t we done good by you all this time? Lawyer, that’s a pretty hefty accusation to imply, darlin’.”

  “Of course, I don’t mean to imply anything,” I said hastily, putting on my best impression of my usual, well-meaning self, but Janet’s outburst had convinced me that this was necessary. “I just feel like I need to get a better idea of what the contractual side of my career is, you know?”

  Janet didn’t seem to be buying it, glaring at me with pure hatred in her eyes and tight lips. After a few moments, she took a breath, her hands almost shaking with anger as she opened the drawer in her desk, and for a moment, I thought she was going to pull a gun on me and force me to sign her contract right then and there, the look on her face was so palpably furious.

  Instead, she drew out the contract--the original copy, I could tell by the seal on the back page. “Fine,” she said, pretense of niceness dropping from her voice. “If you want to insist on being difficult about this, you do have a legal right to have your terms of employment reviewed by a legal counselor--a long and expensive process, I might add,” she noted with a bite to her voice as she slid the papers across the table to me.

  “I appreciate your being understanding,” I said, maintaining as much politeness as I could muster, but it was difficult to hold, the way she was talking to me.

  As I left the room with the documents in hand and closed the door behind me, I heard the sound of something being thrown across the room, followed by a string of swearing that made the secretary cringe as I passed her. I gave her an apologetic look as I walked by. “Might be a good time for a lunch break,” I advised, and she sighed, taking out some aspirin from under her drawer.

  ***

  The law offices of Jayda Washington & Associates were relatively small, but there was a peculiar sense of cozy professionalism in the building. I thought I’d have to wait a few days to be able to get an appointment with the attorney, but the secretary said there was a cancellation this afternoon, so I could come talk to Ms. Washington before lunch if I hurried.

  So a few minutes later, I was sitting across a mahogany desk with my hands folded as Washington reviewed the documents through metal-framed glasses. Her expression was stony, unreadable as her eyes scanned page after page with intense scrutiny. I was impressed--even after first meeting me, she seemed to be taking my concerns with great seriousness. Might have been a symptom of my fame, I thought, but it didn’t make a difference to me. Whatever got results.

  After a few minutes, she took her glasses off and sat back in her chair, drumming her fingers on the table thoughtfully. “Well, I won’t lie to you, Mr. Michaels,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone, “to say this is a bad contract would be an understatement. I’ve seen a fair share of simple carelessness in all my years, and I can say with some degree of confidence that this is not a carelessly written contract. If you sign this, you’re being taken advantage of, in my legal opinion.”

  I frowned, leaning forward and clasping my hands on the desk. “I was afraid of that. How so?”

  “Well, for starters,” she said, thumbing through a few pages, “the money you’ll be getting out of the contract is practically nothing compared to the average for players of your caliber. The team owner will be raking in the vast majority of the profits--which is already the case for professional football, I’ll admit, but what I’m looking at here is a gross abuse of manager privileges, among other things.”

  “Like what other things?” I said, slowly becoming more angry and feeling more hurt by what I was hearing. I knew Paul was crooked in some ways, but to hear it coming from a legal advisor was the kind of proof I had been fearing would be out there for a long time.

  “Your rights, mostly,” she said simply. “Some of the stipulations in this contract make it very hard for you to do anything but carry out the contract to the very end, with some very steep penalties for trying to break the contract. It’s already difficult for a player to jump ship to another team,” she restated in layman’s terms, “but it looks like your team owner and manager want you to essentially forfeit the right to even try something like that. In my experience, con artists include things like this in their contracts in order to trap their victims once they realize they’re being conned. Of course,” she added as my eyes widened, “what we’re looking at here is completely legal, I’m afraid.”
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  “Shit,” I said, running my hands through my hair. “Pardon my French,” I added, and Washington only smiled with a dismissive wave. “Alright, so the next question is a given, as long as I hire you--which I will, at this point,” I noted. “Can you help me write up a counteroffer?”

  She nodded, moving to her computer and typing a few things in. “I’ve worked with sports players in this city many times before, Mr. Michaels. You wouldn’t believe the kinds of abuses people in this city try to pull on their players. But I should warn you,” she said, turning back to me with a frank expression, “if your team owner and manager are trying to pull something this deliberate, and the manager was that incensed when you brought the contract to me, I highly doubt they’ll be willing to agree to a fair counteroffer.”

  “I know,” I said, pulling out my phone. “I’ve worked with both of them long enough not to expect them to go down without a fight, if they go down at all. But it’s important to me that we confront them with something fair. I don’t want it to be able to be said that I can’t be reasonable--not while I’m reaching out to the other team managers in town to talk about getting hired on with someone else,” I said, holding up my contacts list, which boasted the personal numbers of some of the more influential managers and owners in Vegas.

  Washington smiled at me, standing up along with me and extending her hand for me to shake. “I like the way you think, Mr. Michaels. I think your administrators underestimated you severely.”

  I took her hand and shook it firmly, giving her a nod in return. “It’ll be a pleasure working with you, Ms. Washington. Looking forward to being in touch.”

  “I’ll give you a call as soon as I have a counteroffer drawn up, and we can get it submitted through my offices. I don’t advise going to see them in person while this is in dispute.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and as she nodded to me, I made my way out of the office, feeling confident. I was not a legal-minded person, but if there was one type of people I knew how to talk to, it was sportspeople. As I stepped down the stairs of the offices and headed towards my car, I hit the ‘call’ button for the first team manager on my list and put the ear to my phone.

  If Paul and Janet wanted a fight, I was going to bring the best ammo that I had.

  CHAPTER 7 - DANIELLE

  I was already halfway through a box of stale crackers, curled up in bed with a face mask on, wearing a thrift store terry cloth robe and watching game show reruns. As usual, I hadn’t had the time to go proper grocery shopping, so I was just nibbling on whatever I happened to have in the house. This time it was crackers and some peanut butter hidden toward the back of the cabinet. Last night with Kieran had been my first proper meal in quite awhile. It was a wonder I managed to survive on scraps stolen now and then, scooping up handfuls of dry cereal and granola on the go. It wasn’t that I didn’t care about what I ate-- it was just that I cared a whole lot more about my career than anything else. I was too busy to eat right. Too busy to take care of myself. That’s the way I built my life, everything balanced on top of the towering, precarious structure of my ambitions.

  But last night, Kieran had taken me to a real restaurant for the first time in ages. Normally, even when I met up with subjects for interviews at restaurants, they were pretty low-key, cheap establishments. Just a place to get chips and salsa while I hammer some guy about his inner strength and favorite childhood memories. I generally spent much more time asking questions and scribbling down answers than I did eating. Priorities. But when Kieran texted me the instructions for our totally professional and definitely not personal date last night, my jaw had dropped. He’d gotten us reservations at a swanky Italian place near the strip somehow, at the last minute.

  Part of me wondered if he’d actually made the reservation a week ago, just planning quietly to rope me into going last night. Either way, I was begrudgingly impressed. He was doing a lot to keep me interested, which was bizarre to think about considering the fact that Kieran was a superstar football player who could literally have just about any woman he wanted. But for some reason, he chose to spend his time with me. I told myself he probably had a bunch of other girls he hung out with, too-- that I wasn’t special. And the truth of the matter was, we were still just professional acquaintances. Just because I had exclusive rights to his interviews didn’t mean I had exclusive rights to his heart.

  Not that I wanted that or anything. It would be foolish to want something like that. No matter how much attention he gave me now, I told myself it was probably just the way he was-- cocky and borderline rude in the public eye and overly affable and generous in closed quarters. Maybe he was just buttering me up as a sort of bribe to make me cast him in a more positive light, since my status as his interviewer set me up to control how people perceived him. So perhaps his kindness toward me was just a ploy to keep his image clean and pretty. Just a business move.

  I couldn’t even really blame him if that were the case. I’d had subjects try to bribe me before in more subtle ways. And sometimes less subtle, too. One time an ad rep for a Utah team tried to pay me twenty bucks to gloss over some shady stuff he let slip during an interview. He’d gotten a little drunk and said more than he should have. But since the shady information was still pretty damn boring, I kept his dirty laundry out of the article anyway. Without accepting his pitiful bribe.

  Kieran, though, was a different story. He was an enigma to me, still. I couldn’t quite figure out what his plans were for me, what he really thought of our dynamic together. Sometimes when he was answering my questions it pretty much felt just like any other interview, albeit with an easier, more natural banter than usual.

  But then at times he would stop and give me this thousand-watt grin, beaming at me like he’d never been so happy or relaxed in his life. I wondered what it was about me that put him so at ease. Maybe it was just the fact that I wasn’t after his money or fame. There was no expectation of a relationship after the interviews ended. We were just two people thrown into a professional obligation together who just happened to get along really well, at least after that first rocky encounter at the cafe.

  And he asked me questions, too. Asking what my daily life was like, how I felt about my career, how I managed to juggle all my responsibilities at once. Kieran seemed genuinely intrigued by my boring, hectic life. I couldn’t understand it. I wrote it off as just his ability to be very charming and charismatic, his skills at making people trust him and feel comfortable with him. In some ways, he would have been well-suited to working as a reporter himself: he was dedicated, determined, friendly, and awfully nosy.

  Last night he’d admitted to me, “I’m sorry for all the questions, I just like to remind myself that life goes on outside the football stadium sometimes. I kind of miss it.”

  That had shocked me more than anything. Here was this guy who had it all: money, publicity, enormous talent, and a sure shot straight to the top of his field. Not to mention the cocksure attitude he displayed in the public eye. He was the last person I would have ever expected to miss the dull comings and goings of we normal folks.

  Our dinner together had gone so well that I even allowed myself to break one of my own rules I’d set for myself a long time ago-- I had a glass of wine. Normally I would sit there, totally stone cold sober, while my subject drank and got sloppier and sloppier, slurring the answers to my probing questions. I knew that when I drank sometimes my journalistic edge got a little, well, fuzzy. It was too much of a risk to drink while conducting an interview. But last night… I let myself enjoy the night for once. The food was phenomenal, Kieran looked good enough to eat, himself, and we were getting along so swimmingly that I went ahead and let him order me a glass of merlot. Of course, once I started drinking my interview questions sort of flew out the window, but we had a good conversation anyway.

  Finally, after dodging the topic all night, Kieran let me explain to him the conversation I’d overheard in the parking garage yesterday. He listened intently with his brows furrow
ed as I described Paul and Janet’s exchange. I watched the smile fade from Kieran’s handsome face as he realized that perhaps this was more serious than he’d thought. I hated to be the bearer of bad news, but he needed to know. And he was thankful for my intel, assuring me that he would look into it today and do some digging into alternative contracts.

  So now I sat in bed, trying to eat crackers and peanut butter, watch game shows, and edit an article all at the same time. All of this was scarcely enough to keep my mind off of Kieran. He was all I could think about. His smile, his laugh, his muscles…

  I sighed heavily and shut my laptop, flopping back against my pillows. There was very little chance of my getting anything done tonight. I was already ahead of the game with work anyway, so it wouldn’t hurt to give myself a night off for once. I stared at my phone, willing it to buzz. I wanted to hear from Kieran about how his day had gone, how much he’d found out about what Paul and Janet were planning. I wanted to know if he was okay.

  Which was definitely outside the realm of a professional relationship.