Stealing Home (Callahan Family Book 2)

by Carrie Aarons

  A taunting voice inside my head calls me weak in this exact moment.

  “Then I’m staying,” my sister says, as if she wants no argument from me.

  “I can’t ask you to do that, Dahl.” I bury my head in my hands.

  “Well, it’s a good thing you didn’t, and I’m just offering. I’m between gigs, it isn’t harvest season, and you need all the help and support you can get. Don’t fight me over this, you’ll lose. Just nod and say, ‘okay.’”

  My sister was a bit of a free soul, bartending seven nights a week or not at all. Most years, she made her way back to Hawaii to help our relatives on the coffee farm during harvest season. I have no idea what her financials look like, but I can’t afford to add one more person to my docket when I am already someone else’s charity case.

  The thing is, I need her more than I need to argue about this. If I find a job, I have to find a daytime care option for the girls. Letting them out of my sight nearly caused me to faint, given the situation I’ve just gone through. The thought of passing them off to strangers at a daycare is only slightly less nauseating. If Dahlia stays, they’ll be with family. With someone I can trust.

  I’ve fought too many battles for one week, so I’m not even putting my dukes up for this one. “Fine. But I can’t look after you, too.”

  Dahlia shoots me a stern look. “As if I’ve ever asked anyone but me to take care of me.”

  Her words are like a gunshot through my heart, because us two sisters are so very opposite. Dahlia would never end up in the situation I am in now, and my expression must have betrayed that vulnerability.

  “Shit, Han, I didn’t mean it like that.” She reaches out to hug me.

  I back away, gun-shy of any kind of human contact, aside from my kids, even if I know that person is a safe place. “It’s fine. I’m fine. Just … the girls need that bath. I’m going to apply to a few more jobs and then I’ll be in, okay?”

  “Whatever you need.” Dahlia rubs my arm as she passes, and I hear laughter down the hall when she enters the bathroom.

  Now that the girls are back under my roof, I can breathe a little easier.

  But only a little. My life is still in shambles, I have no source of income, and I’m about to wage war against my husband, a celebrity in his own right.

  If breathing easy means an entire stampede of elephants sitting on your chest, then that is me.

  4

  Walker

  While the rest of the team is gathered down in the upscale steakhouse restaurant that VIPs typically occupy during games, I sneak up to the general manager’s office to try to pry some information out of Colleen’s desk.

  It’s been three days since we won the World Series, the high of victory and adrenaline only lasting half that amount of time for me. Yes, it feels fucking incredible for a hard season’s worth of work to pay off. I feel like a god in some sense, to be able to add a second ring to my championship collection.

  But now that it’s over, I’d expect my cousin to give me the details of where Hannah Giraldi is staying. It has been almost a month since I’ve seen her since that night in the hospital, and I’m like an addict. The itch to see her face agitates me every second of the day, the uncertainty of knowing if she’s all right taunts at my mind.

  So, I’m taking things into my own hands. While my family, teammates, and all the hangers-on rub elbows downstairs and party at the expense of the team, I’m up in her office, snooping.

  Colleen forgets that I’m much craftier than her. In high school, I was the one who facilitated the prank during my senior year, and I was also the guy who strung up the jock strap of the douchiest player on the college baseball team on the flag pole located in the center of campus. All without being caught, might I add.

  In fact, I have always been the one out of the two of us who could keep a secret better and sneak around more easily. My cousin is way too honest and sometimes naive when it comes to trusting people, usually two great things in a personality, but they could be her downfall. Like last year, when her father, and my uncle, were arrested on multiple blackmail, bribery, and extortion charges.

  Uncle Jimmy was the general manager to my father, his own brother, the owner of the Packton Pistons. They’d grown up watching their father, grandfather, and uncles manage the team, and then it had been their generation’s time. My dad had taken on the role of owner, while Colleen’s father was the general manager. Except one of them got too greedy. Jimmy ended up bribing agents, making illegal deals for contracts to bring players here that otherwise wouldn’t have been on our team, and was just generally an evil bastard. He exchanged dirty money, blackmailed people, and went against everything the Pistons and the league in general stand for.

  Currently, he’s still serving his jail sentence, and Colleen is finally getting her footing and confidence back again. It has taken a lot of struggle, a lot of growing, but I am so damn proud of how my best friend has come out as a stronger woman and manager on the other side.

  Also, my uncle’s scandal hasn’t taken away from what our family has built, this year all but proved that. It also hasn’t tarnished the Callahan name, at least not in the community of Packton. Our hometown, the place our family decided to set up shop, is a safe haven for my blood relatives and me. Although it might not be a fancy city or some exotic locale, I love it here. I love that I get to experience all four seasons, that I get to play ball in my small town backyard.

  Growing up, it was my dream to play the sport I love for my family’s team. It was the chance of a lifetime, one I’d worked tirelessly to achieve. Now that I am almost halfway through the career I’ve always wanted, I can honestly say that most days, I am damn happy to be here. Most days, I am as chipper and charmed as Michael Scott after a meeting with Jan Levinson.

  But the World Series is over now. We are champs, I’ve done my job. And all I want is to find out where Hannah is. It feels a little stalkerish, to be honest, that I have to track her down. That Colleen is avoiding my calls and texts, having locked herself away with a now-retired Hayes to have their honeymoon phase. He shocked the hell out of me when he announced it just after the championships, but I’m pleasantly surprised that he had enough balls to give up the sport we mutually love for my cousin. It shows just how much he loves her, and I couldn’t ask for a better man to be the one she chose.

  It seems to go against respecting Hannah’s privacy and giving her space that I’m rooting around in Colleen’s files for any clue of where she might be, but I’m at the end of my rope here. I just want to know she’s okay.

  “What are you doing in here?” my father’s voice filters past Colleen’s door, and I stop with my fingers stuffed deep into a filing cabinet, caught red-handed.

  “I … uh … was just trying to look for the name of an advertiser. My agent wanted to set up some shoe deal, and I wasn’t sure …”

  It’s the lamest excuse ever, one that makes absolutely no sense, and I can see that my shrewd old man isn’t buying one word of it.

  “That’s utter bullshit. What are you doing?” Dad’s eyebrows shoot up suspiciously.

  The man is like a bloodhound when it comes to lies; my entire life, he’s always been able to sniff them out. Daniel Callahan is the almighty, the patriarch of our clan and the owner of the team. There are not many people who say no to him, and even less who outright defy him. I’ve always managed to stay on his good side, but I wouldn’t say we’re particularly close. It’s difficult to be affectionate or loving to a man who doesn’t seem to grasp the meaning of either word.

  Granted, my father was never the evil bastard type, like my Uncle Jimmy. He never belittled my brother and me or discouraged us from going after our dreams. He showed up for our mother, his wife, and tried his best to play the family man. But my father is just a distant person, a man without much capacity for warmth. He functions best in the office, a facet of his personality that has benefitted the organization beautifully during his reign. So while he’s not father of the
year, he also isn’t malicious or calculated.

  “Nothing.” I shrug, still not wanting to divulge anything.

  “Don’t get involved any further in this.” There’s a note of finality in his voice.

  “I don’t know what you mean.” Trying to play dumb with my father has almost never worked, but I’m a grown man. I don’t need to explain my motives to him.

  He walks farther into Colleen’s office, a space we’re now both invading.

  “Oh, Walker, come off it. I know you went with Hannah Giraldi in that ambulance, that you sat by her bedside. Do you forget I have eyes and ears everywhere? I want you far away from this mess. It’s bad enough Shane has a contract with the team, that we’ll lose a chunk of his promised money, and that the Piston name is being dragged through the mud once again with this trial. I don’t need my son, and the face of this ball club, being swept up in this media circus, too. There are plenty of women out there, Walker. Ask your brother, I’ve had to pay dozens of his fuck buddies to keep from going public with graphic pictures or ridiculous stories. Pick one of them.”

  Fury throttles down my spine. Not only does my father not know what he’s talking about, but comparing me to Sinclair is low. My younger brother has never worked for anything in his life; he’s lived off the trust fund and unlimited bailouts my parents provide. Meanwhile, I’ve done everything they’ve ever asked, and apparently going after something that would truly make me happy is too much to ask.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I grit out through my teeth.

  “I know she’s a married woman who still hasn’t filed for divorce from her abusive husband. I know that in a lot of cases like this, the wife will end up taking him back.”

  His words sting like a motherfucker, but they’re not untrue. It’s been almost a month, and if he’s saying Hannah hasn’t filed for divorce, then it must be true. The thought of her going back to Shane makes me want to be physically ill, so much so that I can’t even open up my mouth to argue with my father.

  I walk to the wall of windows that comprises the back of Colleen’s office. My domain lays before me, and I feel kind of like Simba. The setting sun touches points of the ballpark, my home for all intents and purposes, and I know that someday, this kingdom will be mine.

  Father approaches, and his voice is closer as we look out over the crimson red seats, the bright green grass, murky orange sand of the diamond, and glinting white bases. I’ve never loved any place more than this stadium, and while it’s my sanctuary, it’s also my prison.

  “You are going to own all of this someday. When your career is up, you’ll start training under me. I won’t be able to do this job forever, Walker. This is your future, your destiny. You don’t need scandals and court battles on your shoulders when you already have enough to handle.”

  The thing is, I don’t want to own the team. Sure, I’ll take some cushy office or consulting job within the organization when my time is up. Maybe I’ll coach, or start a clinic for youth baseball through our nonprofit organization. But being the owner of the Pistons has never been my dream; just the one Dad has for me.

  I’m here because of my love for the game. I love the sport of baseball, more than I’ve ever loved anything else. I’m great at it, still enjoy it just as much as I did in little league, and it pays the bills handsomely. When that love dries up, which it probably never will but my body will go eventually, I’ll find something to do.

  Being a businessman, rifling through numbers and spreadsheets and corporate bullshit? That is so far from anything I actually want to do. My father can wax poetic about handing me the keys to the kingdom all he wants, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to take them. We’ve only had that argument twice, each time ending in him calling me immature and not knowing what I should be building for my life after baseball.

  You’d think that following the program my entire life—attending the prep school he wanted and becoming the youth poster boy for the Pistons and making every elite travel team and going to the right college and then moving up the ranks of the minors until I was a starter—would be enough to get the goddamn monkey off my back. But no dice. He still wants more blood, more of my soul.

  I still can’t speak, every part of me vibrating with some kind of furious, anxious, frustrated energy.

  “Now, let’s go back downstairs. Your teammates are counting on you.” Father wipes his hands together, as if cleaning us both of a mess he never wanted to deal with in the first place.

  Talk about laying down the law before I even step over the line. That’s my Daniel Callahan, though, always one to nip it in the bud.

  I follow him out, clutching a piece of paper in my right fist. He may have taken my promise at face value, but he neglected to see the sleight of hand I was pulling.

  Because I found a condo brochure for a nearby Pennsylvania town in my cousin’s drawer. And now I won’t stop until I got to see Hannah with my own two eyes.

  5

  Hannah

  The girls, Dahlia, and I are just finishing up dinner when the doorbell rings.

  My blood runs cold at the sound, and Noelle looks up at me, spaghetti sauce dotting her cheeks, chin, and shirt.

  “Who’s here, Mommy?” my five-year-old asks.

  I try to keep the panic out of my eyes as they flit to Dahlia, who is now half-standing and half-sitting in her threadbare white kitchen chair.

  “Could just be a package. Or maybe a neighbor.” Dahlia is trying to calm me, but my heart is already in my throat and sweat trickles down my spine.

  Trying to take one deep, calming breath, I move to the front hallway. Calling over my shoulder, I try to convey how serious I am to my sister in one look.

  “I’ll just go check.” My tone is airy, for the girl’s sake, but my glare says, if it’s Shane, hide them.

  With each step toward the plain front door with its, thank God, peephole, my breath becomes more and more ragged. I could very well be walking into a trap, into a fight, into another beating. Flashes from that night come back to me in pixelated, blurry memories, and I steady my hand against the front door and try to breathe.

  But when I finally collect myself enough to look through the peephole, relief floods me like a tsunami. I unlock it hastily and step out onto the front porch.

  “Walker, my goodness, I’m relieved it’s you ringing that bell.”

  The six-foot-five bronzed god standing in front of me, holding a bouquet of daisies, blinks down at me with confused, but gorgeous, sapphire blue eyes.

  It’s hard to stand in Walker Callahan’s presence and not stare. The man is a literal centerfold, one of those beautiful people you expect to see riding a horse in a Ralph Lauren ad or modeling underwear in some exotic cologne commercial.

  He’s so tall that I have to crane my neck, and when I do, I’m hit with the most dazzling gaze I’ve ever seen. Cerulean blue mixed with seafoam green, his irises are like the waters of Hawaii. As a shortstop, Walker is built for speed and strength rather than the stocky build of my husband. His arms are ropey and lean in a simple teal T-shirt, and the way his jeans mold to his sculpted thighs is pulling my eyeline down way too quickly.

  But what draws women the most to Walker, I’m sure since I personally wouldn’t know, is his aura, if you will. There is something effortlessly charming and intriguing about the man, like you want to pull back the layers and nestle you and only you in between them.

  “Oh, crap, I’m sorry, I didn’t even realize that it would probably alarm you to show up unannounced. But I don’t have your new number, and …” he trails off, and I realize that he’s looking me up and down.

  Shame burns my cheeks as I realize I enjoy him checking me out. “It’s all right, I just … things have been very chaotic here. As you can imagine.”

  Walker nods, and I can’t stop staring at those ocean blue eyes. “That’s why I wanted to come see you.”

  “How did you … did Colleen tell you I was here?” I question, not mad
but just curious.

  Not that I care if Walker knows where I’m living, but I don’t need Colleen providing that information to just anyone. Especially since I know there are probably teammates of Shane’s who are on his side in this entire thing.

  Walker rubs the back of his neck, a guilty expression on his face. “Well, you see, not exactly. She wouldn’t fill me in on the way to find you, and I just … I had to see you were okay with my own two eyes.”

  He looks so worried and sheepish at the same time, that I don’t even feel my hackles rise. So, he found some alternate way of figuring out where I was. Am I surprised that anyone could do that, with enough digging? Probably not. But it does sound the bells in the back of my head warning me that Shane could always take that route, too.

  “Now you see me.” I shrug, realizing that the end of that cliché is, and now you don’t.

  How close had I come to not being seen anymore? It’s one of the questions that plagues me late into the night. There was a very real possibility, if this never went public, that at some point, I would have ended up dead. Unseeable to all of those around me.

  “You look good … better.” Walker looks like he might reach out and touch me, and my entire body goes rigid. His hand drops in midair, as we both register that I just flinched at the thought of a man touching me. “Not to say you don’t always look good. You’re …”

  This conversation gets more awkward by the second, and now not only has he tried to touch me, but I’m pretty sure that would have been a compliment if he hadn’t cut himself off.

  Something between us changed during that ambulance ride, where he held my hand and pressed his forehead to mine the entire way. I’d curled into him, as if he was the only lifeline I had in the entire world.

  “Thank you.” I don’t know what more to say.