Quarterback Baby Daddy (A Secret Baby Sports Romance)

by Claire Adams

  "Yeah, yeah, I get it," he said nodding impatiently as he looked at me and rolled his eyes dramatically. "I will. New York will be the shit, I promise, Big Guy. Okay, gotta run! Yeah, you, too. Bye!"

  He sighed heavily as he slammed the phone down then raised his hands over his head declaring, "Touchdown!"

  "What was that about?" I laughed as I watched him pull a can of lime seltzer water out from the small refrigerator he kept under his desk and then pop the top.

  "The boss is riding my ass about the Mija-WalCo merger," he said before taking a long drink from the can. "He's worried that Mija and company are going to walk away from the deal unless we come up with something to knock their socks off with. I keep telling him that we are solid, but he's been listening to those useless wankers on the board again."

  "That must be frustrating," I said as I tossed the file of papers toward him. The folder made a satisfying thwack on the desk as it landed. "Here are the numbers for Mija Oil. Jess and I stayed late, running them twice. They look good on paper, and their investment portfolio is impeccable, but when we look at their current technology, there's a problem."

  "Oh, and what's that?" Mike asked as he grabbed the file and began thumbing through it. His cell phone went off and he pulled it out of his pocket, glanced at it, and tucked it away again before looking up at me expectantly.

  "We're not sure yet, but there's something off," I said shaking my head. "We're going to pull it apart today and check everything before we make any recommendations. I don't want to draw the wrong conclusions based on sketchy evidence, but I don't want us okaying them if there's something wrong."

  "Good thinking," he nodded as he continued reading the report. "Will you be ready by the time we meet with them?"

  "Next month? Yes, we should have had more than enough time to track it all down and figure out what's going on," I nodded. "Jess is going to head out on the road this week and interview a few of their subsidiaries. I think that will give is a well-rounded picture of what we're looking at."

  "Great job, Grace!" Mike said as he looked up from the file and smiled at me. At fifty, he was an attractive man with a thick head of black hair, a tendency to stylize his facial hair so that it looked like he had a perpetual five o'clock shadow, and a penchant for wearing wild colored shirts under his Brooks Brothers suits. He was tough, but kind and had looked out for me since I joined the company six years before. I considered him my mentor, but if I was honest, I also had a bit of a crush on him, too. "By the way, nice dress! You've developed good taste, kiddo!"

  "Thanks, Mike," I said blushing slightly as I looked down at my watch and saw that I was late for my meeting with Jess and the director. "Oh shoot! I have to go!"

  "Okie dokie!" he said as he winked at me and motioned to the door. "Go get 'em, champ! Check in with me later; I might have some feedback about this report."

  I nodded and rushed out the door. Back in my office, I grabbed a second copy of the Mija file and headed down to the director's office for my second meeting of the morning. We spent an hour hashing out how to divide up the research and by the time we were done, both Jess and I had been assigned a list of tasks ranging from important to urgent. I passed on Jess's invitation to have lunch together and headed back to my office where I ate my sandwich at my desk while I organized the tasks on my list and prioritized my plan of attack.

  By the time I looked up again, the sun was beginning to sink as the last rays of light hit the windows of the buildings on Wacker Drive. I thought about how much I loved living in the city, and how alive I felt every time I walked down the city streets and mingled with the thousands of people who inhabited the offices and apartments here.

  I had never felt this way back in Corner Grove, Indiana where my family had lived and worked for generations. In fact, despite the vast acreage that my family owned and farmed, growing up I had often felt trapped. The Amish traditions and expectations were a heavy mantle for a young girl who wanted to explore and experience. There were so many things I read about in the books and magazines I checked out from the public library, but when I'd ask my parents or my teachers about them, they would direct me back to the scriptures and remind me of the importance of patience, obedience, and living a life of devotion to God and the community.

  When I finally packed up my few belongings and headed to Chicago for college, I felt like I could finally breathe. The adjustment to college and city life was enormously difficult, but after a year of living in the dorms, I'd shed my skin and adjusted to college life. I'd bought new clothes and cut my waist length hair into a fashionable bob so that I wouldn't stand out as much. But what had been most freeing was the ability to move around the city anonymously.

  In Corner Grove, I was Eli and Rebekah Miller's oldest daughter, Bishop Amos Miller's niece, "that nice Miller girl who works at the grocery store," and Gabe Yoder's sweetheart. In Chicago, I was Grace Miller, college student. No one knew anything about me unless I told them. There was absolute freedom in anonymity.

  At times, it was painfully lonely, though. There was no way to contact my parents unless they made the trek down to the phone booth at the end of the dirt road where we lived, but the difference in my schedule and theirs often made it difficult to arrange, so I had to be content with a monthly letter that summarized everything that was going on. Once a year, I would go home and visit, but the minute the train pulled into Corner Grove, I would start to feel homesick for the city.

  When I finally graduated, no one from my family was there to share in the joy of my accomplishment because they couldn't get away from the farm or the store. Dat offered to send Gabe up to sit with me while I received my degree, but I couldn't think of anything more humiliating than having an Amish man sticking out like a sore thumb when very few of my friends knew about where I came from and what I'd left behind.

  I ran my fingers through my hair and inhaled deeply as I tried to shake the memory of that very lonely day. After graduation, I had landed an entry level accounting position with Riser Tech, and after six years I was making enough to be able to afford a down payment on a small but comfortable condo just north of downtown. I had a wardrobe that made me feel good myself, and only one of the plain, ugly Amish dresses tucked in a drawer for when I went home. Mamm and Dat were happy to have me come home, but their one rule was that I had to dress Amish while I was there. It seemed like a small price to pay for the time I got to spend with them, so I followed the rules and wore the hated dress.

  It was dark now, and most of the people in the office had gone home, so I packed up my things and headed for the L. Out on Randolph Street, I stopped at the bridge and looked out along the river. Lights were coming on in the buildings that lined the waterway and the street lamps cast a golden glow on the water. I sighed as I took a deep breath and said a small prayer of thanks for the beautiful life I was living.

  Chapter Two

  Adam

  "Mr. Wallace, your father will see you now," the young woman behind the desk said as she flashed me a smile that told me if I stopped and asked for her number after the meeting, she'd definitely give it to me.

  "Thanks, Miss.." I grinned as I trailed off waiting for the curvy brunette to fill in the blank.

  "Carson. Kimber Carson, Mr. Wallace," she said as she stood up and prepared to usher me into my father's office.

  "Please, call me Adam," I said offering my hand as I gave her the once over and then flashed an appreciative grin to let her know I liked what I saw. "Why haven't I noticed you before, Kimber?"

  "I'm new here, Mr. Wa—Adam," she said with laugh. "It's been about a month now."

  "Ah, I see, he got rid of what's-her-name," I said nodding knowingly. My father had a reputation for hiring and firing secretaries more often than most people changed their bed sheets. Some speculated that it was because my mother would get wind of the newest pretty-young-thing and then storm into the office demanding the he get rid of the girl. I knew it was because my father was a miserable, self-righteous bas
tard who was unforgiving when it came to mistakes and often used other people as scapegoats for his own.

  "I don't know who was here before me, but your father has been quite lovely to me since I arrived," she said with a wide smile. I couldn't tell if she was lying or just naïve; either way I knew she'd figure it out sooner or later.

  "That's wonderful," I said smiling as she turned and walked toward the office door. I watched the sway of her hips, encased in a skintight dress, as she walked and imagined what it would be like to push that dress up over her hips and take her hard and fast against the door to my father's office. The image of being buried deep in Kimber made me hard, and the idea of flipping my father the bird by screwing his secretary made me smile.

  "Here you go, Adam," she said as she pulled the door open and motioned me in. "Have a good meeting."

  "Oh, I wouldn't go that far," I said as I stepped inside my father's office and looked over to find him on the phone yelling orders into it before slamming the receiver down hard enough to make the desk vibrate. I looked at my father and said, "I'm not marrying that Vasquez girl."

  "Don't get smart with me, Adam," he growled. "I'm in no mood."

  "Are you ever?" I asked knowing that this would push him a step closer to the edge. My father, Gordon Wallace, was known for, among other things, having an extraordinarily short fuse. Unfortunately, this was something I'd inherited from him, so when we butted heads, it tended to be explosive. This morning my mother had called me and broken the news that she was planning my wedding to Veronica Vasquez, and that I needed to go see my father at his downtown office to secure the large ring I'd be offering the girl at the dinner my parents were throwing at the end of the month. I'd laughed loudly at my mother before hanging up the phone and felt fairly sure that my father might be on my side in this one, but now I wasn't so certain.

  "What the hell do you want?" he shouted as he dropped down into his enormous leather chair and leaned back staring at me. "Why the hell are you here?"

  "I told you: I'm not marrying that Vasquez girl. Also, I've come with a proposal for something that will require an investment, but has the potential to make you an enormous amount of money," I said invoking the magic word. When it came to making money, my father would listen to anything that had the potential to make him a profit.

  "Is this another one of your harebrained schemes that is going to lose me more than it makes?" he asked as he shifted his attention to the computer on his desk and began tapping the keyboard. "Aren't you happy with your little job in R&D? It'll set you up nicely for that nice girl your mother has chosen for you."

  "No, this is one of those ideas that is going to revolutionize the market," I said ignoring his reference to the girl and my mother. I felt my phone buzzing in my pocket and pulled it out so I could see who was calling. It was my best friend, Bugsy Wiseman. I hit the button to send it to voicemail before I responded. "The job is boring; it's not what I want to do and you know it. You knew it when you forced me to take the position."

  "You should be grateful that you have any job—put that goddamn thing away," my father ordered in an irritated tone as he sorted through the paperwork on his desk. "The whole world has gone insane over those damn things. If this is another one of your ridiculous ideas, I'd rather you kept it to yourself."

  I stood stock-still and fumed as I waited for him to stop fussing with his computer. What I wanted to do was walk around the desk, grab the computer, and toss it out the window. I knew he'd never actually agree with anything I proposed unless he could take full credit for it, and I already had the feeling that this wasn't going to be something he'd want to take credit for.

  "Bugsy and I want to sell our idea for individual renewable energy turbines to farmers in the Midwest," I began. "We've started Agape Resources to work on establishing the wind farming program. It's a renewable energy source that has the potential to feed millions of kilowatt-hours back into the electrical grid and generate profits unlike anything we've ever seen before. We've researched the market and we think that we can make a killing in the Midwest states that big turbine companies have ignored. "

  "Over my dead body," he said without looking up. The hard tapping of his fingers on the keyboard let me know just how angry my father was. For a moment, I stood looking out the vast expanse of windows that ran floor to ceiling across one side of his office contemplating how I could get this stubborn man to listen to me when he spoke again. His voice was entirely too calm as he asked, "What in the hell is wrong with you?"

  "Nothing's wrong with me," I replied as I felt the knot in my stomach twist. With my father, no conversation that began this way ended well. I continued, "Bugsy and I want to help create opportunities for renewable energy and make a lot of money doing it. If you look at our financial projections—"

  "The hell you do," he said as he raised his head and finally looked at me. His meaty hands were clenched in tight fists and I could see the color rising in his cheeks as he fought to keep his rage contained.

  By no stretch of the imagination was my father a calm person, and I learned this lesson very early on. As teenager, I'd had several run-ins with him, but none as bad as the one that had marked my sixteenth birthday. He had raged out of control over my failure to show up on time for mass and rained holy hell down upon me for failing to put God first in my life. I ended up confined to my room with a broken arm and two broken ribs and missed the first month of the next semester.

  No one had reported him because he'd made it clear that the price of disloyalty would be extremely high, and after seeing what he would do to his own son, no one dared test the waters. My mother had been traumatized by the incident, but we'd never spoken about it, and from then on, I made it a point to steer clear of my father unless there was a large audience of potential witnesses present. I had even gone so far as to make sure that I'd been invited to spend all school breaks with classmates or relatives, and although she never said anything about it, I always thought my mother had had a hand in those arrangements.

  I'd been away from him for the past six years working on my degrees at MIT, and in that time, I'd grown taller and worked to develop the kind of bodily strength that would give me a fighting chance against the man. I was now 6'4" and a triathlete who could bench-press more than four hundred pounds. At sixty-seven, my father had lost some of the muscle that had made his 6'2" body seem so intimidating.

  "Son, I am an oil man," he said, looking up at me with his steely, gray eyes. "I have worked my entire life to provide you with the resources and opportunities that would ensure your success. I have run myself ragged building this company and keeping it running smoothly knowing that someday my son would take over and run it even more successfully. I have gone to church every Sunday and prayed to God our Father that you would grow up to be the man you need to be in order to run the business successfully. Your mother and I have ensured that you will marry a girl who is rich, educated, and beautiful, and whose connected to a Venezuelan oil business will ensure the continued success of the company I've poured my blood, sweat, and tears into. And now you walk into my office and feed me this bullshit about some hippie-dippy, little startup that wants to harness wind?"

  I clenched my jaw and looked straight at him feeling my own anger and resentment begin to rise.

  My father angrily slammed papers onto his desk as he muttered under his breath finally looking up. "What son-of-a-bitch put you up to this? Tell me and I will have him hunted down like a dog and shot!"

  "No one," I replied through clenched teeth. I tried to remind myself of all the reasons why it was a bad idea to lose my temper with my father as I explained, "I worked on a project like this at MIT and I can see the potential for wind power. It's my idea."

  "Bullshit; you're not smart enough to come up with something like this," he scoffed. "Someone is putting you up to this. How much are they paying you to betray your family?"

  "Is that what you think?" I asked as I realized that my father's anger at me was patholog
ical. He hated me and his paranoia about a hostile takeover of his company was his primary focus. My value was only in what I could do for him: how I could run his company, carry on his legacy. I was irrelevant. The realization felt like a physical blow and I inhaled sharply as it hit me.

  "Damn right that's what I think!" he shouted as he stood up and pushed his chair back before striding around the desk to stand inches away as he continued. "I think you've enjoyed all the benefits of my money and that your education has made you a weak-minded, little weasel who would sell out to the highest bidder. You have been nothing but a disappointment to your mother and me. I told her we should have had a second child just in case the first one was a loser, but she assured me that you would be the perfect son. What a joke. You're the exact opposite of everything I wanted."

  I felt my pulse racing as the accusations and insults flew. It was one thing to think your father hated you, but quite another to have him openly and aggressively confirm it. I clenched my fists at my side, trying to remind myself that he was just a mean, old man who hated everyone and everything. I was nothing special in that area, but as he continued to pile on the insults, I felt my resolve weakening until finally I couldn't hold back anymore.

  "Wow, you really have a low opinion of me, don't you?" I sneered. "I'm choosing work I believe in—unlike what you did, Father. You're the weak-minded fool who trusted God and his father to guide him in the right direction, and look where you ended up: Old and mean and angry at the world because you didn't get to do what you wanted to do with your life, isn't that right? I mean, how pathetic are you that you didn't even get to marry the woman you actually loved?"

  "Son, you're pushing the outer limits of my patience," my father said as his face turned pale. I'd brought up history that he thought he'd buried and even though he felt free to dig deep into my life, he didn't like it when the tables were turned.