Playing Dirty: A Bad Boy Sports Romance Read online

  Copyright 2016 by Mickey Miller

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations and incidents are products of the authors imagination. Amy resemblance to actual person, things, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Playing Dirty

  Edited by: Katie Ekvall

  Cover designer: Sylvia Frost Cover Designs

  Interior Formatting by Elaine York, Allusion Graphics, LLC/Publishing & Book Formatting

  Chapter 1 – Andrea

  Chapter 2 - Andrea

  Chapter 3 – Jake

  Chapter 4 – Andrea

  Chapter 5 – Andrea

  Chapter 6 – Jake

  Chapter 7 – Andrea

  Chapter 8 – Andrea

  Chapter 9 – Jake

  Chapter 10 – Andrea

  Chapter 11 - Andrea

  Chapter 12 – Jake

  Chapter 13 – Andrea

  Chapter 14 – Andrea

  Chapter 15 – Jake

  Chapter 16 – Andrea

  Chapter 17 – Andrea

  Chapter 18 – Andrea

  Chapter 19 – Jake

  Chapter 20 – Andrea

  Chapter 21 – Andrea

  Chapter 22 – Andrea

  Chapter 23 – Andrea

  Chapter 24 – Jake

  Chapter 25 – Andrea

  Chapter 26 – Jake

  Chapter 27 – Andrea

  Chapter 28 - Jake

  Chapter 29 - Andrea

  Chapter 30 - Andrea

  Chapter 31 – Jake

  Chapter 32 - Andrea

  Chapter 33 – Andrea

  Chapter 34 – Jake

  Chapter 35 – Andrea

  Chapter 36 – Jake

  Epilogue – Andrea

  Dear Readers

  Note from the Author

  My boss was a world-class dick.

  I could think of a million things I’d rather be doing other than attending a mandatory work event, but he’d made me come. Even if we were in the owner’s section at State Farm Field. Even if it was perfect weather for a game—hot but low humidity, barely any wind, and partly cloudy. I adjusted my sunglasses as I watched the packed crowds start to settle back down.

  At least the beer was cold and they had nachos—cheesy nachos. Our seats were just to the left of home plate, giving us a clear view of the Jaguars’ star pitcher, Jake Napleton, as he pitched a shutout. To my right was my boss, Steve Hanford, one of the top managers of Green PR. Because this was an important meeting, everyone was dressed business professional, but my sheath dress was sticking to me like plastic wrap. I wiped my brow then took a drink of cold beer, hoping it’d cool me off.

  “He’s the best ball player we’ve had in this organization in ten years. A shame he’s such an insufferable playboy.” Mr. Yerac was the owner of the Chicago Jaguars. For half the game he’d been droning on about Jake Napleton. I wanted to tell him, We get it. He’s a top talent with behavioral issues. Not like he’s a special case. Most big talents are head cases.

  It was only my third week on the job, and I was quickly learning that these old-school male types didn’t take the comments of a twenty-three-year-old woman very seriously, so I kept my mouth shut.

  Besides, Jake’s tight gray pants provided the perfect outlet for me to space out.

  “It is certainly a shame that he can’t behave better off the field,” said Steve, nodding his balding head. “The guy has thrown two perfect games this season, and he’s a shoo-in for Pitcher of the Year. But his off-field antics might turn the public against him if he’s not careful.”

  Jake’s face glistened in the sun as he stood on the mound, taking the signal from the catcher. He nodded, wound up, and threw. The ball came in high and inside, and the batter was forced to jump back to avoid being hit. The crowd roared as the batter lost his balance and hit the dirt. The noise made my ears ring. I turned in my seat and looked back for a second, noting that most of my co-workers seated behind me didn’t seem to feel the heat. Then again, several of them were on their third round of beers.

  “This,” Mr. Yerac continued, shaking his head and gesturing in the direction of the batter, “is exactly what I’m talking about. He’s a dirty player, and the Jaguars are a family organization. We need to put a stop to that. That isn’t such a tall order, is it?”

  My boss furrowed his brow and glanced over at me like I was supposed to do something. Steve was in his forties but had never settled down. He was the opposite of a family man, and came off to most women in our company as borderline sleazy, so I was pretty sure he couldn’t understand the family organization bit. I merely mustered a supportive smile then let my gaze wander.

  “Well, uh, yes, we can, uh, certainly relate to your family values,” Steve stuttered. A keen observer would have heard the shake in his voice and that he was lying just to go along with what could be his biggest client to date.

  Mr. Yerac looked over at Jake, eyeing the batter as he dusted off the dirt. “Oh really?” he went on. “Do you have a wife and kids, Steven?”

  I had never heard anyone call my boss Steven. Mr. Yerac was just one of those guys who called you by your full name. Like some grandpas always did.

  “Oh, um, well, no, er,” Steve stammered, sweat rolling down his face. Even though he had ten years more experience than I did at our sports PR firm, he was surprisingly bad at saying things off the cuff. In contrast, I was shy but always appeared calm. It was one of the benefits of having grown up a middle child with several bothers. I was skilled at mediating and appearing agreeable stressful situations.

  Steve’s gaze darted to me again, and I saw the lightbulb go off behind his sunglasses.

  “Andrea here is from Tennessee,” he said, deflecting. “Talk about family oriented. She’s a small-town girl with just those kinds of values. I mean, not that she’s a small girl, obviously.”

  I kept my calm smile but ground my teeth and ran my tongue along my gums inside my mouth. After being at Green PR for two weeks, I’d noticed how Steve always took an opportunity to push attention on to me, even when it meant making fun of me.

  “Is that right, Andrea? You look just fresh out of college. Where did you go to school?” Mr. Yerac asked, but in that distracted way used by rich and important people when talking to people like me.

  “Tennessee State. I played softball there.” I smiled, dropping in that golden conversation thread, the one that had gotten me the job at one of the best sports PR firms in Chicago. Meanwhile, in my mind’s eye, I pictured myself giving Steve a dirty look for calling me the opposite of a small girl. The way he had mentioned it was so nonchalant, which was even worse.

  “Yeah,” Steve continued, way too enthusiastically. Had the guy taken something before we arrived? “She really has the softball player body type. It’s hard to tell sitting down, but she’s quite tall. Six feet.”

  “Steve likes to exaggerate,” I said through a gritted smile. “I’m just a hair over five eleven.” I pictured slapping Steve in the face. Jackass.

  Mr. Yerac either didn’t notice our little passive aggressive fight, or chose not to acknowledge it. “Five eleven? Well, that’s tall. What position did you play?”

  “Third base,” I answered.

  “The hot corner,” Steve interjected. “She’s so t
all she could stop anything.”

  Mr. Yerac and I made eye contact for a moment, his expression quizzical. I raised my eyebrows and shrugged, conveying that yeah, I didn’t know why Steve couldn’t get over my height, either. We both turned our attention back to the field.

  Distracted, Mr. Yerac tore his gaze away from Jake back to Steve. “Anyway, it’s already the sixth inning, this game’s almost over. Let’s get to the crux of why I’ve brought you here today—”

  There was a loud roar from the crowd as Jake struck out the batter at the plate and let out a primal, cavemanish yell, pumping his fist. They replayed the strikeout on the big screen and added music and lights, which set the crowd off again.

  Mr. Yerac shook his head. His icy blue eyes were sharp as he gave Steve a long look. He had that air of a man who came from money—someone who always got what he wanted. “I need someone from Green to work with Jake on his image. I like that your firm is small, that you make it personal and you treat your clients like a member of your family. More importantly, you get results.”

  We all looked over at the hooting man. Although his raw displays of emotion were somewhat over the top, if anyone had a right to carry on such types of celebrations, it was Jake. He was arguably the best player in the League, next to his archrival, the New Jersey Bulldogs star hitter, Grant Newman.

  A shudder went down my spine just thinking about him. The Jaguars played the Squirrels next week, and it was the showdown every paper couldn’t stop talking about. All the speculation was about how Jake would handle the pressure and the press of a huge game looming over him. It was the reason we were here.

  Mr. Yerac continued, “As talented as Jake is, we’re a clean-cut group here, and he refuses to fall in line. When we traded for him last year, his agent assured me he’d clean up his act. But no one—not his teammates, not the club manager, his agent, not even me—has been able to get through to him. He flat out refuses to listen to anyone.”

  Steve sneered. “What do you mean, precisely, when you say he won’t listen? You’re the owner. You sign his paychecks. What’s he making? Twenty million this year alone? He’s got to listen to you. I mean, that’s written into his contract, is it not?”

  Mr. Yerac shook his head again, clearly irritated by Steve’s tone. “Of course it’s in his contract. But every time I try to stop him after a game, he puts on his headphones and storms out, ignoring me.”

  “And then he shows up on game day and throws another shutout. What does TMZ have to say about that?” I added smugly.

  The two men looked over at me with arched brows, shocked that I would exercise my own opinion, no doubt. But it was true. Talent trumps a bad attitude in this game. Anyone who didn’t admit that was an idiot.

  I worried I was about to get mansplained, but our eyes turned back to the field and we watched as Jake wound up and threw another pitch. The batter swung and whiffed badly on a curveball. Another yell and Neanderthal pump. More importantly, the crowd ate it up. They roared every time, which only encouraged Jake “The Big Unit” Napleton.

  “I don’t know,” I resumed, trying to soften but prove my point. “I grew up with several brothers, which may have hardened me to screaming men. It’s just part of the game process.”

  “This whole constant fist pumping on the mound isn’t necessary,” Mr. Yerac mused, “but I can deal with it. What I find unacceptable is his public image. I’m sure you’ve seen his Instagram page. His Twitter feed. The things he posts there—inappropriate things. The boy needs to grow up. He’s twenty-six now, he’s not a rookie anymore. He needs to learn the difference between a private and public life. Or maybe just stop having a private life.”

  I knew where Mr. Yerac was going with this. Jake’s social media presence was abysmal. He had been photographed in every bar in Chicago after games, before games, and, in one case, even during a game. He had posted #baberuthstyle on his Instagram, along with a photo of himself drinking a Budweiser in O’Dool’s Pub across the street from Jaguars Field in Wrigleyville. That post of him shotgunning a beer had gone viral instantly. Jake had become an instant favorite of frat bros everywhere, much to the chagrin of League officials, who now had to deal with the outcry from mommy blogs that he was glorifying drinking.

  What a great role model.

  And now, I was being forced to listen to Harry Yerac drone on about how we needed to fix Jake’s image. The uncontrollable bad boy of baseball. Mr. Yerac’s mouth was still moving, but I was no longer hearing the words he was saying. I just smiled and nodded as my gaze drifted off to look at Jake.

  The green bill of his hat was low on his face, barely revealing his sharp brown eyes. Tussled strands of light-brown hair escaped the sides of his cap, and his stubbled face indicated that he hadn’t shaved in a couple of days. His right forearm hung free as he stared intently toward the catcher, and his left hand massaged the ball behind his back as he decided on the grip for his next pitch. The man’s shoulders were some of the broadest I’d ever seen, and his legs were equally large and muscular. And then there was, of course, the large bulge between his legs. I wondered if that was natural or if he was wearing a cup. Most players did, but some chose not to.

  Had to be a cup. No way that’s natural.

  I bit off a big cheesy nacho and licked my lips. The beauty was that thanks to our appointment with Mr. Yerac, we had the best seats in the house, and I was fully allowed to ogle Jake. But since I was in the stands, he’d have no idea that I was even there. I was just one in forty thousand. It was like I was peering at him through a two-way mirror.

  Jake brought his hands together to get ready for his wind-up, and his eyes, even from fifty or so feet away, stared in our direction in our front row seats behind the dugout.

  Maybe I was crazy, but I swore he was looking right. At. Me.

  I wriggled in my seat and felt a chill go down my spine. Jake wound up and threw a fastball right down the middle that the batter whiffed at badly, probably expecting something off-speed. He threw his arms apart and grunted.

  “Fuck yeah!” His words reverberated as he walked off the mound, victorious after having struck out the side.

  “Andrea. Earth to Andrea!” Steve was yelling at me, snapping his fingers in my face.

  I had been daydreaming, like I was a seven-year-old out in right field watching the dandelions grow. A surge of adrenaline went through me, and I zipped back into the conversation. “Uh. Sorry. Yeah, he’s definitely got some image issues out there. Sportsmanship, for example. I can tell you that kind of language wouldn’t have flown on the softball team in Tennessee. And his Instagram account seems like it’s run by a twelve-year-old. I’m pretty sure my teenaged cousin could run a more effective social media campaign for him.”

  Steve seemed dumbfounded by my response. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again.

  What? I wanted to ask. Surprised that your twenty-three-year-old summer intern actually has a brain?

  “That is an exceptionally concise analysis of Jake’s PR needs,” Mr. Yerac said, looking at me as though seeing me for the first time. “And you feel like you’re the person to help him run his account?”

  Steve was about to speak again, but this time I cut him off. The summer internship only went through the end of September, and I needed to show some unique value to give him a reason to keep me on.

  “Absolutely. My senior research thesis was on the effects of viral social media on public opinion. When it comes to PR, social is my specialty.”

  Mr. Yerac turned to Steve in his seat. “Dammit Steven, why didn’t you say you had such a fine young talent on your team? And with a background in softball? Just talking to her today, I can tell she is smart as a whip. Look, I’m giving this job to Green PR, and I know it’s a big one, and I know you won’t let me down.”

  A fake smile flashed across Steve’s face. Apparently I was showing up the boss.

  Mr. Yerac gave Steve a big hearty slap on the back. “Well, now that it’s settled, I
have to be going.”

  “That, uh, sounds good, Harry. We’ll get started on the campaign on Monday.” Steve extended his hand for a shake.

  “Monday?” Mr. Yerac furrowed his brow in a confused manner. “Nonsense. This is a very important job, and there are only a couple months left in the season to turn him around. You’ll start today.”

  “Uh, well, today is kind of busy…” Steve muttered.

  Mr. Yerac stood up and ignored Steve’s outstretched hand. “That’s not the answer I want to hear. I need you to be proficient on this job. You got that?” Mr. Yerac’s eyes went from Steve’s to mine, and back to Steve’s.

  “That doesn’t sound like a problem at all, Mr. Yerac,” I chimed in. Steve was acting shady, and I couldn’t exactly tell why. Landing this account was why we were here, and me being part of that would look good on me. I wasn’t going to let it slip away because Steve was acting weird.

  “Perfect. I’m very happy you’ll be taking on this project for us,” Mr. Yerac said with a satisfied nod. “I’ll get you the credentials to enter the locker room today so you can introduce yourself to Jake. You can take it from there, I assume?”

  A surge of panic went through me as he said those words—to me. I swallowed. “Excuse me? The locker room?” I paused. “You mean…me?”

  “Yes, you, the locker room,” Mr. Yerac repeated, now frowning at both of us. “It’s already the seventh inning, so you might as well make your way down there now. I want you to meet with him this afternoon. Is that a problem?”

  I looked at Steve, but he was keeping his silence. “No problem,” I finally quipped, feigning confidence.

  “Wonderful.” He gave me and then Steve a firm look. “Don’t let me down. At this point, Jake’s image is the team’s image. Bad publicity for him is bad publicity for the Jaguars. And bad publicity means lost money in sponsorships. Millions of dollars. Millions. Understood?”

  Steve and I nodded in agreement.

  “I’ll have my team contact you to get a signed contract in place.” With that, Mr. Yerac took off walking up the rows, off to do whatever millionaire sports team owners did on Saturday afternoons.