ROMANCE: SPORTS ROMANCE: Bad Boys of Sports: A Complete Collection (Alpha Male, Football, Hockey Secret Baby Romance) (Contemporary Sports Romance) (22 page)

Chapter Three

Callum

The pounding in my head was almost as painful as the sunlight in my eyes. I groaned, slamming the blaring alarm next to me into silence. It clattered off the edge of my bedside table and tumbled onto the carpet.

What a great start to a Wednesday. A half-empty glass of water with a bottle of aspirin survived the alarm clock fall. I thanked my wasted foresight and downed four pills with the rest of the water. My mouth tasted sour. I swore, pulling myself out of bed.

What happened last night? I drank. A lot. I dragged a hand over my face, trying to push away the dull throb of pain in my skull. Whiskey was a bitch, but it usually didn’t mess me up this badly. I tried to recall the memories. They came back blurry, slowly, and jumbled.

I remembered going to the bar and then…

Oh, shit. And then she walked in.

I could’ve slapped myself for forgetting a firecracker like that, but my hangover warned me not to make things worse. That woman, what was her name? The memory of smoke billowing up into the hot night struck me. Oh, that’s right. She left with that little smirk, and all I got was a nice view of those blissful jeans as she hauled ass away from me. A whistle escaped my lips.

Her bike was bad too if I remembered correctly. It might’ve been as nice as mine. Who was she? It’s not often that a babe like that shot liquor in a piss-boring place like this. I should’ve gotten her number, but it was too late to lament that. I stood and glanced at myself in the mirror. I looked like hell in a hand basket.

The VA hospital was going to eat this up. A headache was fading, but not nearly fast enough. A hangover wasn’t something I was used to. Maybe I was getting too old to drink like this.

After a quick hot shower, I pulled on decent clean clothes. If I was being forced to go, I wasn’t going to look as bad as this hangover made me feel. My Harley was waiting faithfully for me in the garage. I climbed on, debated stopping at the coffee shop, and rode off into the street.

It was good weather. The kind of weather that everybody loved, except when you were hung-over on your way to a forced doctor’s visit. I tried to drown out my thoughts by humming a few bars of an old blues song as I flew down the road. The open road in a stretch of country that separated my neighborhood from the outskirts of the city was a welcome distraction. The trees stretched far above me, wishing me good luck as I whipped past. They were nothing but green blurs.

When I arrived, the front desk woman told me to fill out some paperwork. After finishing, she directed me over to a stack of magazines with a dozen chairs spread throughout the waiting room. Some other patients were there. This thought made me feel an ounce better, but my eyes stayed glued onto a morning newspaper someone had discarded. I didn’t want to see anyone I knew here or anyone who knew me.

Why is it that doctors get to be as late as they want, but we get charged for being five minutes late when traffic is bad? I glanced at my watch with a frown; it was ten minutes past. I could tell my commanding officers that I tried.

A voice called out my name: “Callum Hall?”

A
very
familiar voice. My back stiffened as I lifted my head up to stare at the voice’s owner.

If there’s a God up there, then he’s got a twisted sense of humor.

Her eyes grew as wide as headlights when she saw me. I saw her lips mouthing a curse word. I didn’t blame her because I was doing the same damn thing.

Chapter Four

Samantha

I ran through every curse word I knew. Twice. On my third time, I realized the administrative assistant was staring at me. The air heated up in the room as panic crawled up my neck, but I was a trained professional, and this wasn’t about to be my first mistake.

“Hall?” I asked in a firm voice. The assistant went back to her typing and the other patients returned to their magazines. I breathed a sigh of relief as he stood and then immediately wished I hadn’t. He was taller than I remembered. The kind of man a woman would beg for a moment alone with. The initial shock on his face seemed to be melting as a coy smile crossed his sharp face.

“Dr. Oliver,” he said in a rumbling voice. My grip on my clipboard tightened. “How nice to meet you for the first time.”

“Nice to meet you too. You can call me Sam, short for Samantha.”

I didn’t hold out my hand, afraid of his touch. The casual greeting tasted sour in my mouth, but nobody was paying attention to us anymore. I led the way to my office. The large window that let sunlight filter in through sunshine yellow curtains seemed to make him wince. He sat in the darkest corner on the edge of the couch opposite of my overstuffed armchair.

I shielded my face with his psychiatric medical file and cleared my throat. He leaned back, perfect posture finally breaking as he sunk into the cushions. His shoulders, I noted, were stiffer than ever, though.

“While I’m sure that this is a shock for both of us, I’m confident that we can handle this like two grown adults.” I straightened the paperwork on top of my desk, and folded my hands over my lap.

“Handle what?” His wicked smile told me that we weren’t exactly on the same page. I felt heat crawl up my neck.

“Tell me why you're here, Callum.” A flash of something dark crossed his handsome features. His face had nearly cracked, but it was back to its cool exterior in a second.

“I told you that you wouldn’t want more of me,” he drawled. “You know, commanding officers are always looking for someone to pull some BS on.”

I frowned as my eyes skimmed across a notation I’d made earlier. It was about the death of a fellow soldier.

“Callum, I was told that your friend, Will, passed away earlier this year.”

His expression shifted, but it was buried by a feigned mask of indifference. He shrugged his broad shoulders, a movement that sent tingles through my core.

“Listen, Dr. Oliver,” he said, drawing my name out in a near purr. “I want to talk about other things.”

“Oh,” I steadied my voice in a professionally cheerful tone. “Okay.” It was something.

His eyes twinkled. “How many times do you think I touched myself thinking about you bent over my bike this morning?”

I leaned back in my chair, face burning with heat. “That’s inappropriate, Callum.”

He wiggled his eyebrows. “Is it? I don’t remember you complaining when you pulled down your pants–”

“That was an entirely different situation and you know it.”

“Do I? You should teach me a lesson.”

His sexy lips were begging to be ravaged, but I managed to hold myself back. I took a deep breath and his grin grew cockier.

“Callum.”

“I like it when you say my name.”

The memory of how good it felt with him sliding inside me flashed in my mind, making me blink a few times to focus. My fingers dug into the arms of my chair. I tried to steady my breathing as he flexed his chest subtly, crossing his arms with a victorious smirk all over his face. The rugged five o’clock shadow from last night was doing wonders for accentuating his sharp features. My mouth was a desert; I eyed the bottle of water sitting on my desk.

“Look,” I said in a stern voice. “If you’re not quite in the mood for a session today, then I will see you next week. For therapy. Only therapy.”

He chuckled. “Sure thing, doc.”

“I can’t help you unless you want it,” I reminded him. “You should know that if you expect this to work.”

I watched him run his tongue over his bottom lip, causing my core to throb.

“I want it, and you can help me anytime you like.”

With a smooth movement, he was out of my office with a sexy wink. The door shut behind him, swinging and clicking back into place.

I groaned loudly and buried my face into my arms on my desk. This wasn’t happening. I fiercely snatched the water bottle off the desk and downed it in a minute.

Still, my desire wasn’t satisfied.

Chapter Five

Callum

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Firing off a few rounds into a paper target was the only interesting thing I had left besides my bike. The bullets drove into their marks, neat holes that were dead center in the middle of the paper target’s head. The feeling of the grip underneath my hands sent an excited rush through me, and a rare feeling of peace followed. This is where I belonged, doing what I did best.

My muscles needed to stay used to firing. I’d be back out in action soon. I had to; there was no choice in it.  It was where I belonged, but still, the feeling of peace quickly vanished, and I scowled all the way back to my bike. When I come back tomorrow, I’d be sure to watch my thoughts more carefully. They were drifting away from me too much lately, especially when I thought about Sam. I felt the smirk sneaking up on my face thinking about how sexy she looked whenever she did the same. Seeing her was a shock, but watching her get riled up was priceless. The iron woman who’d left me in the dust the other night was nowhere to be found when her cheeks turned brighter than the red trim on my bike. I laughed, deep and loud, as the wind rushed past me. That was something I hadn’t done in a while.

My eye stared at the “E” warily, and I stopped by a gas station. It was better to stop before getting too far. With my current attention span, who knows how long it’d been low.  That’s one of the many ways I’ve changed in recent years. There were three gas stations on the way back from the range, and the cheapest was a block away.

As I swung into the station, a shock of blonde hair caught my eye. My breath caught in my throat as I ducked behind a sign. Shit. Was that Claire?

I dared another look, and sure enough, it was. There was no way that the three toe-headed brats circling her were not the spitting image of her and Will. My chest squeezed. She was bent over, struggling with the air pipe, dirt smudged on her knees. The kids were shouting and playing tag, but she was swatting at them to get back.

Fuck. I found my reflection in a sliver of metal on the fueling pump. Try as I might, I couldn’t hide the guilt in my eyes. There wasn't an ounce of a real man inside them, I thought as a rush of self-loathing struck me hard. I was supposed to help her, supposed to stop by and check on the kids after Will after it all happened. He’d been the best damn father, and I’d been nothing but a son of a bitch.

I never made it over. And there was no way that I could stroll up to her, struggling and sweating on the asphalt, without looking like a rat bastard. A hard lump settled in my throat. The gas pump hovered beneath my hand, but I got back on my bike. Without another glance towards her, I sped off.

The trees and buildings were a blur as I rode. The splotches of color did nothing to soothe the beast raging inside my body. I would stop for gas tomorrow. The bike could make it. Maybe. If it didn’t, it served me right.

Home was like I’d left it: the remnants of a sad bachelor. Military memorabilia were scattered around the walls and desks, but there were a few pictures I’d yanked down two weeks ago–pictures with Will in it.

My hands automatically found the bottle of whiskey I’d bought the other night. I poured a massive glass, slammed it down, and poured another. When I reached the third, I stomped upstairs to run a blistering hot bath.

The water reflected me, haggard and clutching onto a glass of liquor.

Coward.

Chapter Six

Samantha

He smelled like pine and campfires.

His record didn’t say that; it was knowledge from my own field research. I bit my lip, hard. As his doctor, it was entirely ethical to look at his file and know all of the darkest parts of his life, but something about it made me feel like I was violating his privacy.  It couldn’t be helped, though–it was sitting like a ticking bomb on my desk. My lunch, abandoned after two bites, sat beside it. It was either I read the file entirely through or attempt to choke down more chicken salad.

I went for the first option.

My fingers flicked the folder open too easily. Guilt tugged at the back of my neck, but I couldn’t stop myself. I was a train coming off the tracks and headed straight towards surrendering to every maddening thought of Callum.

He was decorated with medals–lots of them. My eyes widened as I ran over a long list of his accomplishments. It seemed odd that a pretty young thing hadn’t snatched him up for marriage yet, but then that didn’t seem like his style. But really, how did he keep them off him? I finally reached the end of the list and sighed. The next tab was entitled: Case Reports.

His last tour greeted me with a dismal looking stack of papers. I caught the words “ambush” and nearly snapped the folder shut, but my eyes were transfixed. I scanned the report once and then again.

I closed my eyes and sighed deeply. Damn. A drink would be nice right about now.

He was the only one to survive. Snipers were ambushed at his site. The second page detailed conflicting testimony that Callum had given, but someone had made a footnote about the neurobiology of trauma and opposing points being expected after such a traumatic event. It was the third page scared me the most.

“Hall took him down.”

That was reportedly what the second survivor from the tragedy had said to a medic, but he passed away right after that statement. His internal bleeding had finally taken him. The medic noted that he might’ve misheard, as the wind was blowing strongly that day.

Hall took him down. Took him down. Down. Was the man implying that Hall had been the one to kill Will Downing or was he referring to one of the other men? I scowled, resting my chin in my hand. A cord of frustration wrapped around me in a painful tight knot that sat right above my heart. My gut clenched painfully.

Could Callum have lost it completely? I slept with him, and he could’ve been his best friend’s murderer. I slept with a murderer. No, no, no. That couldn’t be–he couldn’t have done that.

A chill ran up and down my arms, and I rubbed them frantically. The fact that I was covered in a sweater wasn’t helping in the least.

There was no way that Callum would be cleared for any action unless I said he was okay. Two previous clinicians had made notes, arguing back and forth in the margins, about whether the patient might actually be unhinged. It was no wonder they’d stuck me with this case.

Could he truly have gone mad out there?

My gut said no, but only time would tell what Callum Hall might be hiding.