On Loverose Lane (Return to Dublin Street #1)

23. Callan

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CALLAN

“ Y ou 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.

By the time I returned to Edinburgh, I was running late for our meeting, which I guessed wouldn’t go over well with Beth. She seemed to always have something to do or somewhere to be. It surprised me that she wasn’t waiting outside her flat door as I climbed the stairwell.

Then I heard an echoey, “I’m up here.”

Tilting my head back, I found Beth leaning over the railing from my floor, looking down at me.

“You’re late.”

“Train was late.” I’d taken public transport because, despite the fact the Edinburgh Fringe was hosted throughout the entire month of August, it was still quicker than attempting to drive from Edinburgh to Glasgow in rush-hour traffic.

“How did your interview go?” Beth asked as I climbed the last steps.

She stood waiting for me, wearing the same flowery, strappy summer dress she’d worn that morning she befriended the brunette I’d slept with.

“It was fine.” I shrugged, taking out my keys.

Beth rolled her eyes and turned, heading toward my flat door.

My eyes betrayed me, traveling down her long legs. She had great fucking legs. I suddenly imagined them wrapped around my back as I thrust into her, her features straining with pleasure as I watched her take me.

All my blood rushed south.

Damn it.

The gaffer in the shower. The gaffer in the shower.

That helped a bit.

Don’t look at her legs. Don’t look at her, full stop.

“How is the … Scottish Series Cup thingie going?” Beth asked politely.

My lips twitched as I let us into my flat. It was a miracle I’d managed to get her to come to a few of my games back in high school. “You mean the Scottish Professional League? The Scottish Series Cup Thingie is a different tournament, and we don’t play in that again until the quarter finals at the end of September.”

“Oh.” Beth followed me inside, closing the door behind us. “I didn’t realize there was more than one tournament.”

It seemed incredible to me that anyone could be ignorant to how football worked because it was my whole life, but I also enjoyed explaining it. “There are three cup tournaments, more if you count junior and amateur. Then you’ve got the divisions within that. There’s the Scottish Professional Football League”—I gestured to myself—“then the Champion Title, Division One, and Division Two. Teams are constantly trying to move up through those three divisions so they can compete in the Professional League.”

“So, you’re telling me, all I have to do to get you to say more than one sentence is ask you to explain Scottish football?”

Amusement flickered through me at her sarcasm, but I ignored the comment. “Want a drink? Coffee?”

“Oh my God, yes, please.” Beth crossed the room into my living space. She glanced down at the infamous sofa everyone hated. “I have to try it and see what all the fuss is about.” She moved to sit but then hesitated. She shot me a look. “You haven’t had sex on here, have you?”

I snorted. “I thought you said I’d never get laid with a sofa like that?”

“Well, that was until I saw the women coming out of your flat.”

“The only sex that’s been had on that sofa was with my right hand.”

Beth gaped at me. “Please tell me you’re joking.”

I turned to make her coffee. “Of course, I’m joking. That so-called ugly sofa cost a fucking fortune. Milk? Sugar?”

“Both, please. And it’s not so-called. There is no opinion here, Captain. The sofa is ugly.”

A glance over my shoulder told me Beth had sat down on the couch. Her dress camouflaged her against it. Turning away with a smirk, I made us both a coffee with my fancy, expensive Italian coffee maker.

My guest didn’t say another word until I approached her with a cup. “That smells like heaven.”

“It is,” I promised her, reluctantly taking a seat on an armchair opposite my favorite sofa.

I watched as she sipped at the hot drink, her eyelashes fluttering as she licked foam off her lips. Beth had naturally full lips, the kind women I’d previously slept with paid good money for. I couldn’t remember how any of theirs felt, but I could still remember how soft Beth’s lips had felt against mine.

When she moaned, I shifted uncomfortably in my seat.

“This is amazing coffee.”

I nodded, swallowing hard as she took a sip and followed it with another moan.

Bloody hell, was she trying to kill me?

“So … what do you think of the sofa?” I tried to distract her from making sexy sounds.

Beth grinned, a flash of a mischievous, glamorous smile that made my heart pound faster. “You’re right. It’s very comfortable.”

“Told you.”

She shook her head. “It’s still the ugliest sofa ever.”

“Says the woman whose dress matches it.”

Beth glanced down at herself and frowned. “This fabric looks better on me.”

Since it was true, I didn’t argue. “Right. So … about this ultimatum …”

“It’s not an ultimatum.” Beth took another sip of coffee and again licked the foam off her lips. It was fucking distracting. “It’s a ‘you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours’ proposal.”

The woman was killing me.

Ignoring the image that popped into my head at her words, I shrugged nonchalantly, “Tomahto, tomato.”

Beth narrowed her eyes. “Does that mean you’re not interested?”

“I didn’t say that. But I’m not sure you’ve thought this thing through. I mean, I’m not famous beyond the sport. If you’re not a football fan, you’re unlikely to know who the fuck I am?—”

“Not true. You’re on drink ads everywhere.” She referred to the ad campaigns I’d done for our national soda drink company.

“Even then … my point is, I’m no Messi, but I’m still recognized, and I’m still talked about in the tabloids. That email you sent with the details of the party … you didn’t mention it was a launch campaign for Aura Beauty. If we pretend to date at a launch party with that much press around it, they’ll take pictures of us and they’ll talk about it … and there’s a big difference between getting me a meet with your dad and your dad being comfortable that the son of the bloke who shagged his first wife is ‘dating’ his daughter.”

She blanched. “Right.”

My gut twisted, because even though I’d brought it up, I kind of wanted her to defend me. It wasn’t my fault, after all, that my dad was a prick.

“Well … we’ll need to deal with it. Because … I think it might take more than the party. I think we’ll maybe need to go out on a few dates and be seen. Just in case. All you have to do is meet me for a drink or dinner a couple nights a week while Sheera is interviewing social media managers. She says she’ll have a decision by September, so if we could just be seen around until then … Only a few dates scattered here and there. I promise not to bore you to death.”

Like she could.

“And in exchange, I’ll talk to my dad next Sunday. I’ll explain that you have no relationship with Gavin and that you can be trusted. I’ll get the meeting.”

Leaning forward, I asked, “And when they find out about us ‘dating’?”

“I … I’m a grown-up. I can date who I want. Right?”

The uncertainty in her eyes pissed me off.

“So, Captain … do we have a deal?”