Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 119005 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 595(@200wpm)___ 476(@250wpm)___ 397(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 119005 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 595(@200wpm)___ 476(@250wpm)___ 397(@300wpm)
Hopefully.
Hitting his number on my phone, I waited as it rang out. It went to voicemail. “You’ve reached Keen. Leave a message.”
I smirked at his no-nonsense voicemail message. “Callan, it’s Beth. I’ve decided I’ll get you that meeting with my dad, but I need something from you first. Call me back when you can.”
An hour later, as I lay in bed watching a comfort show on my laptop that always helped me forget my worries, my phone rang.
It was Callan.
I answered on the third ring. “You got my message, then?”
“Aye. Look, I don’t have much time. What do you want?”
So brisk and surly. “Like I said, I’ll arrange that meeting. But … here’s the thing. Samuel’s mother, the big-time client I need to impress, just called and basically accused me of lying about being in a relationship with you. She knows who you are and knows your reputation for manwhoredom.”
“Man-what-dom?”
“Anyway, she can pretty much destroy everything I’ve been working my arse off to achieve in the last three years by blackballing me. She’s invited me to a launch party two weeks on Saturday, and she said that if I bring you along and prove to her I’m not lying, we’re all good. If I don’t, she’ll hurt my business.”
“Are you kidding me? Who does that?”
“A mother who has way too much interest in her spoiled son’s love life. Now I’m starting to see why Samuel is the way he is.”
“So you’re telling me because her son didn’t get to shag you, she’s going to blackball you?” He scoffed in disbelief.
“Pretty much. Though she’s pretending it’s about the lie, not the shagging part. Unless I can prove you’re really my boyfriend, I’m done, Captain. So I’m going to need you to pretend to date me so my career doesn’t blow up in my face. In exchange, I’ll get you the meeting with my dad.”
Silence greeted me. I couldn’t even hear him breathe.
“Captain? Callan?”
Nothing.
“Callan, are you there?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CALLAN
“You and Kaito destroyed Perth yesterday down that right-hand side. In many people’s opinion, your speed, crossing, and free kicks are winning the games. Would you agree?”
It took me a minute to focus on what the sports radio host asked. Since last night, I’d had Beth’s ultimatum running through my mind.
“So I’m going to need you to pretend to date me so my career doesn’t blow up in my face. In exchange, I’ll get you the meeting with my dad.”
“Callan?”
I cleared my throat and my head. “We’re a team,” I forced out. “We wouldn’t be winning at all if there weren’t ten other players out there with me.”
“A diplomatic answer.”
“No, just a fact.”
Yesterday, I’d done what I’d always been able to do my whole life: compartmentalize. No matter what was going on in my personal world, as soon as I stepped onto the pitch, it all disappeared. It was about me and my team and keeping control of a ball.
It centered me.
However, despite my exhaustion after the game in which we’d trounced Perth United 3–1, I hadn’t been able to sleep. Beth’s offer kept playing over and over in my mind. I was stunned at first, then angry at her proposal, and then considering. No matter our history, I could see how hard she worked and hated the idea of someone holding her career over her head like that. If all she needed was me to show up to a party, pretend to be her boyfriend for a few hours, then wasn’t I the prick if I said no?
Still, I wasn’t sure she’d thought her proposal through, which was why I’d suggested we meet after my radio interview in Glasgow.
Thankfully, the interview wrapped up quickly when they realized I wasn’t going to be critical of players on other teams or offer insight into who I thought was our competition outside of the top two teams, Glasgow’s Dalmarnock Thistle and Kingston United. The interviewer attempted to steer us back to rumors that were five years old, about how it was said Dalmarnock had offered to buy me from Caley United, and I’d refused.
No one believed it.
But the rumor was true.
Aye, I’d have won more championships with Dalmarnock and competed every year in the world’s biggest football tournaments instead of only the few times I had with Caley. When I was selected to play for Scotland a few years ago, I’d played side by side with the best our country had to offer, including those from Dalmarnock. We’d performed well. We might not have won as a team, but I knew if I’d moved to Dalmarnock, it would have been a good fit.
However, I’d never leave Caledonia United. Not for all the money or glory in the world. Caley had given me a home, and I’d never turn my back on family.
I suppose that’s what Beth had been thinking when she’d turned her back on me all those years ago. She’d chosen her family. And we were teens. She was only a kid, afraid of causing trouble with her parents. It was time I got over it.