Calling the Play

Calling the Play
is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

A Loveswept eBook Original

Copyright © 2015 by Nancy Kattenfeld

Excerpt from
A Seditious Affair
by K. J. Charles copyright © 2015 by K. J. Charles

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Loveswept, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

L
OVESWEPT
is a registered trademark and the
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OVESWEPT
colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming book
A Seditious Affair
by K. J. Charles. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.

eBook ISBN 9781101883617

Cover design: Georgia Morrissey

Cover photograph: Studio10Artur/Shutterstock

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Tyler Oakes walked into the most disreputable bar he could find in Birmingham. It was a place called Kitty Licks, out near the airport. He just couldn’t resist it. First time he’d seen the name he’d known he was going to have to go there someday. Today was the day. As the quarterback for the Birmingham Rebels, one of the NFL’s newest franchises, he had to come back to town a week ahead of the rest of the team. They wanted him in on some of the brainstorming sessions before preseason training kicked in next week and the rest of the team showed up. So he was lonely, bored, and looking for trouble. His checkered past was proof he ought to resist the urge, but he’d never been good with that sort of thing. Better to go out and choose what kind of trouble he was going to get in than let trouble find him like it usually did.

He could have called around to see if anyone else was in town already. Or he could have gone to hang out with Cass Zielinski, the Rebels’ center and team captain. He and his boyfriend Beau Perez, Rebels’ tight end, had moved in with their girlfriend, Marian Treadwell, the Rebels’ assistant offensive coach. The three had hit the news outlets with a great big bang. It seemed to be all anyone was talking about these days, and not in a good way. Two of the most notorious players in the NFL involved in a ménage à trois with a coach? Hell yeah, the press was eating it up. Ty felt kind of sorry for them. They were just trying to be happy, like everyone else. But when you were in the NFL you weren’t allowed to do that sort of thing. Trust Cass to just say fuck ’em and do what he wanted. Or who he wanted.

Ty had a feeling this wasn’t the only time the Rebels would make the news like that. After all, most of the players were here because nobody else wanted them. Sex, drugs, behavior issues, bad attitudes—the Rebels had it all on the roster. Ty was here because he had two strikes against him: he was openly bisexual and had been since college, and he’d been busted for drugs the year after he’d been drafted. Which was so stupid he was still kicking himself. He didn’t even do drugs, unless you counted alcohol. Back in the day, that had been his vice, and the reason he’d been stupid enough to agree to “hold” someone’s stash for them. It had taken three years in the Canadian Football League, and a Grey Cup, to get him back in the NFL’s good graces.

When he walked into the bar and looked around, his thoughts went back to Cass, Beau, and Marian. They would have welcomed him over and fed him and laughed with him. But when you already had three, four was definitely a crowd. Months ago, Ty had gotten up close and personal with Marian and the guys, but that had been a one-time deal and there was still a little awkwardness. Probably mostly on his part, since he was jealous as hell of what the three had together. But he was used to being used, he supposed. Ty always seemed to be an expendable commodity.

And damn, he needed to get laid. When he got the poor-me’s he knew he needed some pussy or some dick, ASAP. Which was why he was here. It was Friday night and he figured a place named Kitty Licks had to have some clientele who were looking for the same thing. If not, well, Birmingham had lots of bars. But from the looks of it Ty was going to have to do some fast maneuvering just to get out of there without getting fucked up, and not in a good way. This might not have been his brightest idea.
Note to Ty
, he thought,
do some research next time you go looking for trouble.

Several pairs of eyes were trained on him as he tried to nonchalantly sidle up to the bar. The place seemed to be divided down the middle. On the left were several tables full of Hispanic tough guys. Neck tats, slicked-back hair, and not so hidden bulges that were clearly guns in their pockets, because they did not look that happy to see him. The other side of the bar was redneck hell. Tom Kelly, a young running-back rookie and one of his best friends on the team, had told him that, in the South, a cracker meant a wannabe, those dudes who wore their ball caps sideways and their pants so damn low they had to hold them up over their asses. His knee-jerk reaction was to tell the whole right side of the bar to pull their pants up.

The bar itself didn’t live up to the name. It was dank and dark, and stank of spilled beer, vomit, and sweat. The carpet looked like it had seen at least twenty years of bodily fluids. Thank God the lighting sucked and the disco ball spinning over the dance floor wasn’t bright enough for him to see it better. Ty cracked his neck and grew a pair and walked up to the bar with a swagger he wasn’t feeling. “Give me a beer. In a bottle. I don’t care what kind, as long as it’s cold,” he told the bartender. The bartender’s eyes shifted to the right as if looking for permission, and then he leaned down and pulled a Budweiser out of the cooler. He popped the top off and handed it to Ty.

“Thanks.” Ty turned and surveyed the crowd.

After his initial entrance it looked like most of the people there had gone back to business. The dance floor was almost empty, just a few girls dancing, no guys. No surprise there. None of the male patrons looked like the dancing type. The music was some pop shit from the nineties. Even he didn’t want to dance to that.

The girls weren’t too promising, either. Redneck girlfriends for the rednecks. There were no Hispanic girls anywhere. He surmised the bar belonged to the crackers, then. As he stood there sipping his beer—which was at least cold—he got even more depressed. Somehow this shit bar was a metaphor for his life. Yet another bad choice. Had the Rebels been a bad choice? He hadn’t thought so at the time. He’d been here for two years. The team still sucked. He wasn’t happy with his performance at all. And he’d become a monk. Seriously. There was a time he could get laid seven days a week by seven different people, men and women alike. But that just wasn’t his thing anymore. He was getting old.
Shit
. That was it. He couldn’t fuck and he couldn’t play football because he was old. Twenty-nine in the NFL was old.

Suddenly one of the redneck girls peeled herself away from a guy in a back booth and stood up. She had to shimmy a little to get her tight, little, short skirt down enough to cover her ass. Ty nearly choked on his beer. How had he missed her? She wasn’t tall, just average height, but she had killer curves packed into a little corset top and that wicked skirt. Her legs were as curvy as the rest of her and ended in dangerously high heels. She walked across the dance floor, through the middle of the bar, exchanging some sharp words with one of the girls shaking her ass out there. The conversation ended with the curvy one flashing the finger at the other girl as she kept on walking. Straight at Ty.

As she got closer, Ty could see she wasn’t classically pretty, at least not the way most people thought of it. But there was something about her that caught his eye. She looked to be mixed race, with light-caramel skin, freckles all over her face, and generous, kissable lips. She had wildly curling, shoulder-length hair. Little, copper, spiral curls framed her face perfectly. For some reason, that hair sealed the deal. Ty had to have her.

“Give me a Wallbanger, Harvey,” she told the bartender. She cracked up laughing as the bartender slammed a Bud down in front of her. She winked at Ty. “That joke never gets old,” she said.

“My name isn’t Harvey,” the bartender told her.

“I know,” she said. “But ‘Give me a Wallbanger, Mike,’ just doesn’t sound the same.” She turned to Ty. “Right?”

“No ma’am,” he said with a grin. “Just not as funny.”

She tilted her head to the side and looked him up and down with a slight frown between her eyebrows as she took a sip of beer. She had soft-brown eyes, like melted chocolate. “Okay,” she said after she lowered the bottle. “I give. What the hell are you doing here? You looking for some smoke?”

“No,” Ty said. “I was looking to get laid.”

She laughed out loud again. It was a big, boisterous laugh, the kind confident girls made; the ones who knew who they were and didn’t give a fuck what you thought. The kind of girl he liked, but didn’t meet very often. Those curves, that laugh, her sexy Southern accent. All he could think was,
Damn
. “Another time, another place,” she said. “Let me give you some advice. Go. This is not the place for you. Don’t even finish that beer.”

“I can’t,” Ty said, taking another sip.

She looked at her bottle, identical to Ty’s. “I know the beer isn’t that good,” she said. “So why not?”

“I can’t leave without you,” he told her.

“I am not the lay you’re looking for,” she said, as if she were Obi-Wan Kenobi. She pointed with her bottle at the booth in the back. “See that guy there? Tonight I’m his. And he doesn’t take kindly to guys hitting on me.”

“Then why’d you come over here?” Ty asked. He wondered what she meant by “Tonight I’m his.” Was she a hooker? She didn’t act like one.

“To save your sorry ass,” she said smartly. “I’m starting to think I’m wasting my time.”

“Now,” one of the Hispanic guys said, standing up and looking at his watch. Suddenly half the bar got up and moved toward the back. Ty’s drinking companion put her beer down on the bar. He noticed it looked like she hadn’t had any even though he’d watched her sipping it.

“Got to go, honey,” she said to him with a wink. “When we go out the back, you go out the front.”

“Why?” Ty asked. He was confused as hell by this girl. She didn’t seem at all what she ought to be.

“Because I said so,” she told him, suddenly serious. “I really am trying to save your ass, okay?”

“Sissy,” the guy in the back called out. He was average height, white, wannabe clothes. Kind of reminded Ty of Vanilla Ice back in the day. He was waving the girl over. “Git your ass over here. And bring your new boyfriend.”

“Shit,” she said under her breath. She glared at Ty. “You’re in it now, boy,” she said. “You stick close to me and follow my lead, you hear me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. His stomach had kind of bottomed out when he’d been singled out by her date for the night, and her crazy intense attitude wasn’t helping. When it came down to it, Ty was a lover, not a fighter. But he might bust up his knuckles over her if he had to. Which surprised the hell out of him. He hadn’t given two shits about a woman in ages.

“Comin’, honey,” she called out. She grabbed Ty’s arm and dragged him after her. “I am not gonna let you ruin two long months of work,” she muttered under her breath. Ty didn’t think she knew he could hear her. He had to have good hearing when he did his job in stadiums full of fifty thousand screaming fans.

They mingled with the crowd and Ty got some curious stares, as well as some scary blank ones. In about two seconds he was flanked by a couple of crackers with those blank stares. He’d watched enough bad TV and movies to recognize gang muscle when he saw it. They ended up out back in the parking lot, the two groups still separated, by mutual agreement it seemed. Sissy had maneuvered them up to the front, next to her boyfriend. She let go of Ty and latched on to the cracker’s arm just as a big box truck pulled into the lot.

“What ya got for me, baby?” she said in a sexy little voice.

“Not for you, bitch,” he replied absently. “This is all for me.” He turned and gave her a cold smile. “Then Daddy’ll give you what you’re asking for.”

Well, Ty did not like the sound of that. He was about to say something when she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and stomped on his foot. Her look clearly said “Shut up.” He frowned at her but kept his mouth shut.

The truck stopped and two guys jumped out of the cab. They looked like clones of the Hispanic dudes from the bar. Sissy and her boyfriend walked toward the truck, along with the muscle that had been flanking Ty and several of the Hispanic bar patrons. Ty had an itch between his shoulder blades that usually indicated he was about to get sacked. That didn’t bode well.

The back doors of the truck opened and one of the cracker muscleheads jumped inside. There were some low murmurs around him, and Ty was pretty sure he heard the word heroin.
Holy fucking shit.
He’d walked into a drug deal. That officially made his visit to Kitty Licks one of the worst decisions of his life. The urge to grab Sissy and run for it was almost too much to resist.

Before long, the guy in the truck came to the open door and crouched down to talk to Sissy’s boyfriend. As soon as he did, Sissy let go of the guy’s arm and backed off. No one else seemed to notice as one of the Hispanic guys came over to talk to the guy she was with. Suddenly a big duffel bag appeared out of nowhere and was passed from the cracker to the Hispanic dude.

Ty was torn. He didn’t want to leave the girl he’d met in the middle of this shit. But there was no way he could get caught here. He was barely clinging to the edge of the NFL with his fingernails as it was.
Fuck, fuck, fuck
, he thought, looking around. He could see his car from where he was, parked in the glow of one of the only working parking-lot lights, first row. He inched his way closer, keeping his eyes on Sissy, who was walking a little too casually back toward the crowd.

“Party on, now,” one of the guys behind him said. “Tater always throws a kick-ass party after a good deal.”

“I’m a-gonna have me that girl of his,” another one said. “Shit, if she ain’t the hottest thing he’s fucked in ages.”

“I think he’s giving her to the SUR,” the first guy said, as if it was no big deal to give a living, breathing human being as a gift to some gangbanger.

“Well, I don’t want none of that shit after,” the second said with disgust. Ty nearly turned around and punched him.

Just then her eyes found Ty in the crowd. With a subtle move of her head she indicated the parking lot. Ty slid through the crowd as she veered, walking toward the cars. As if on cue, sirens cut through the night and there were suddenly cop cars spilling into the parking lot behind the box truck.

“This is the police. Drop your weapons,” a disembodied voice blared over a loudspeaker.

Pandemonium broke out as everyone began running for cars or the surrounding dark. Ty joined the melee, running for his car with a sinking feeling. There was no way he was going to get out of this clean. He yanked out his remote and unlocked the car. Just as he was pulling open the driver-side door, Sissy came running up, out of breath. “Give me the keys,” she demanded.