“Good morning, Adel,” I say to Phil Carlton’s administrative assistant, stepping off the elevator that leads right off from the third floor into the main lobby of The Hawkeyes corporate offices.
I walk up to her massive bar-height desk and grab a butterscotch candy, flashing her my signature grin, sure to get her to giggle.
Adel is in her early fifties, happily married, with shoulder-length auburn hair and kind eyes. She’s on the lower end of five-foot, which is probably why she wanted this massive desk during the massive remodel a few years back, and no more than a hundred and ten pounds dripping wet, but don’t get on her bad side. If you don’t have a scheduled meeting with Phil Carlton on the books, your ass isn’t getting anywhere near him.
Adel has Security on speed dial, and I’ve heard she uses it at the drop of a hat. She’s a force not to be reckoned with, or so it’s been said, which is why I try to keep on her good side.
Plus, the woman makes some delicious homemade butterscotch candies to keep me coming back for more. I don’t want her to decide to cut off my supply, and now I know how she caught her husband. The easiest way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, although… I know another way.
“Mr. Carlton is in conference room number one to the right. He’s expecting you. Go on through, Mr. Conley,” she says, referring to the largest of three conference rooms in the upstairs corporate offices and down the long hallway past her desk.
“I’ve told you, Adel,” I say as I round her desk and head for the owner’s office, “call me Briggs.”
“Yes, sir.” She smiles back sweetly, but I know we’ll have this same conversation the next time I’m up here.
Nothing will change, but I like that I can look forward to something when I come up. Usually getting called up to corporate isn’t a good sign unless, of course, you’re here to meet with Legal and sign your brand-new contract with extra zeros. Something that looks like I’ll be doing here next season.
Unofficially, of course. It’s not a done deal, so I can’t talk about it yet.
I smile and shake my head as I head down the long hallway passing by several corporate offices.
The offices up here are the polar opposite of the feeling of the stadium.
Where the stadium illuminates with the bright blue-ish hue of the massive ice rink and the stadium seats are painted in a light turquoise blue with black numbers to match our team colors, the offices up on the third floor have an expensive, darker theme. The floors are covered in dark espresso hand-carved wide wood planks, while the walls are painted in turquoise, black, and white geometric shapes.
The hallway is lined with massive glass-framed jerseys of The Hawkeyes’s most memorable retired players, along with old photos or memorabilia in other frames.
Each and every time I come up here, I see something I didn’t catch before. A detail on an old photo or a piece of memorabilia hidden in one of the glass boxes that I didn’t see tucked in a corner or something.
I wish I could take a few minutes to try to uncover yet another treasure hidden in this hallway, but Sam Roberts called yesterday saying that they need to meet with me about the plans that they’ve made with Legal about the accusations against me. I’m sure they came up with a way to tell her to kick sand for trying to blackmail me with false accusations. They probably need an official statement from me.
Even though I hate coming in on my one and only day off this week, I can’t exactly say no. They are handling this nuisance for me. It’s not as if they have a choice, though. I’m one of their most valuable players. I bring in a large fan base, a significant amount of the jersey sales, and the most fan mail… well, actually, Lake Powers, our left-wing, probably has me beat on the love letters from women and men alike. But even still, I doubt I’ll be here long, anyway. I’m sure our legal team made her realize what a mistake it was to try to fabricate this story.
I knock quickly on the eight-foot espresso-stained wooden door with a metallic ‘one’ screwed into it. This is the room Adel told me to use, but why they picked the largest conference room in the office seems odd. We usually just meet in Phil’s large office that has an entire sitting area and six TVs with news sports going on 24/7 and a booze cart.
So why the massive conference room?
“Come in,” I hear Sam’s voice while I’m already pushing through the door. He knew I was coming. I’m sure Adel called to tell him over the intercom.
When I walk in, I’m surprised to see the big conference room holding more than the two people I expected to see.
I quickly look around at the faces looking up at me. I notice a couple of them are from our in-house legal staff. I’ve had enough encounters with them to remember who they are. Head of Social Media and Public Relations, Tessa Tomlin, is here too, along with Sam’s assistant and daughter, Penelope Roberts.
But then there are three newcomers I’ve never seen before. One of them is a woman in her mid-forties, good-looking and dressed like she owns something important. A man sits next to her, probably a few years older than me, with dark hair and a well fitted suit, who’s looking at me like I took the last Krispy Kreme donut in the break room. But it’s the young woman sitting next to him that I have a weird feeling that I know her from somewhere. I can’t quite make out her entire face since it’s mostly hidden from view, but I must have been staring too long because Sam clears his throat to get my attention.
“Briggs, come on in and shut the door,” Sam says, sitting to the right of Phil Carlton, who is sitting at the head of the conference table at the other end in the large high-back black leather conference table chairs.
Neither Sam nor Phil seem too pleased as they are sporting frowns and worry wrinkles across their foreheads.
What also concerns me is that Sam isn’t wearing his Hawkeyes baseball cap. I rarely see him without it on. He’s also dressed in slacks and a button-down instead of his usual dark jeans and a Hawkeyes-branded polo. The same polo that all the physical therapists, dietitians and coaching staff usually wear day to day at work.
I do as he asks… with hesitation.
“Did I miss something? I thought I was just meeting with you two,” I say, gesturing to Phil and Sam.
Phil is older than Same by about twenty years and unlike Sam’s roughly six-foot stature and mostly in-shape build beside the last couple pounds he’s put on, Phil Carlton is shorter by several inches, with a beer belly and a slight comb-over in an attempt to mask the thinning of his grey hair.
“A few things have changed since the last time we talked,” Sam says, standing out of his leather chair and walking closer to me. He sees my eyes dart back to the people I’m not familiar with for a moment.
When my eyes lock back on his, he starts again, “Briggs, we’re all here to solve a problem, and we need your full cooperation to make this work.”
“Sure, Boss, whatever you need.” I nod.
“Good, that’s the kind of attitude you’ll need.”
What’s that supposed to mean?
“I’ll need for what?”
“The woman making a claim against the franchise is still persistent even with the evidence being provided, but now you are the only one on the chopping block. She’s now saying that Kaenan Altman and Lake Powers weren’t there. So, we’ve offered her a deal in order to make this go away.”
“Excuse me? You did what?” I bark. “She’s lying. We have proof. Why won’t you just let me talk to her? Something isn’t right. I can fix this, just give me a chance.”
Phil looks at me. “Briggs, we believe you and the evidence speaks for itself.” He glances at everyone in the room, gaining nods from just about everyone. “We all know. But the faintest hint at this scandal could throw too much of a shadow on you and on this franchise, even if the allegations are false. And I’ve already told you, Legal doesn’t want you to make a bad situation worse by speaking with her.”
“Even if?! You saw the pictures. Altman wasn’t even there! He was at his daughter’s ballet recital. And Powers left early. This is horseshit, and it makes no sense why she’s doing this.”
“Why did you pay for a lap dance when you were never planning on using it, and why was it ten times the normal amount that the club usually charges?” a bald man from Legal asks, his pen ready to jot down whatever I say on the legal notepad sitting on the almost black wooden stained conference table with The Hawkeyes logo sealed under a layer of thick lacquer.
I turn to him, taking in the suit he’s wearing that probably costs more than most Americans’ yearly salary, “That’s between her and me, and if you’d let me talk with her, I could figure out why she’s blackmailing us,” I scowl.
Sam takes a few steps toward me until he’s standing right in front of me, his blue eyes softening. “I know it doesn’t feel good to handle it this way, but we can recover the loss easily as long as we keep fans paying for tickets. This isn’t the first time that the franchise has had to pay for frivolous lawsuits. Last year we had to pay someone for slipping on a piece of ice in the parking lot of a hockey stadium… after it had snowed all day. It’s the price of doing business. In the end, it will cost us less to pay this than to go to trial.”
“It doesn’t matter that I’m innocent?” I say, looking around at all the faces in the room. How many of these people still believe her over me, even with photo evidence?
I look over at the woman who had her face tucked into her notepad, and now she’s looking up at me. Full beautiful lips, warm, hazel-colored almond-shaped eyes, chestnut brown hair that stops just after her shoulders with strands of honey highlights throughout.
She’s fucking beautiful, and I wish we were meeting under different circumstances, because damn.
Wait.
My eyes widen, and my heart practically stops beating. Holy shit… it can’t be.
Isaac Daughtry’s little sister, Autumn?
It’s been years since I’ve seen her in person, even though her family lives in the same neighborhood as my parents in Walla Walla, but we’re not kids anymore. Birthday parties and sleepovers aren’t a regular occurrence anymore with Isaac and I grown and out of our parents’ houses.
In the off-season and holidays, my parents come to visit me at my house on Orcas Island in Puget Sound. The last time I remember seeing Autumn, it was at The Hawkeyes stadium when her and her parents came to watch me play. She was still in college back then. It’s been years since I saw her last, but somehow, she looks completely different. Nothing like the little girl who used to chase Isaac and me around the neighborhood, trying to keep up with the boys.
Once in high school, I gave Autumn a hug when she and her parents came to one of me and Isaac’s hockey games. She congratulated me on a win, and I didn’t think anything of it. She was still in middle school… a child compared to my eighteen years, but when I bent down and wrapped my arms around her shoulders, Isaac smacked me upside the head in front of her and told me never to lay a finger on his sister again.
“Touch her again, and you’re a dead man,” I think were his exact words.
It was an easy rule to follow since she was a kid then, and we left for college three months later, both getting full rides for hockey at different colleges.
Now, here I am, having one of the ugliest lies that’s ever been told about me, said to someone who knows my adolescent years. She knows the man before the money… before the fame. She knows about the Nerf gun wars and the atomic wedgies, and everything in-between. Somehow it’s unnerving that someone who knows me at that level is seeing me at my lowest. A pro athlete who makes his money entertaining thousands of fans every game night and lives for the glory of it all. I’m used to eyes on me… just not hers.
And not that look of pity as she seems to sit there feeling sorry for me.
Don’t feel sorry for me. That’s the last thing I want.
My eyes shift back to the man sitting next to her, who’s still giving me a look like I stole something from him. Also not an uncommon reaction from people I’ve never met before. Whether they’re fans of another team we’ve beat, fans of our team that don’t like the way I’m playing, or anyone on this damn planet that found something I said offensive. But I don’t have time for his resting asshole face. I’ve got bigger problems.
All of a sudden, I realize Sam has been talking, and I got lost in the past. “So that’s the game plan.”
My head snaps back to Sam trying not to look like I forgot he was talking.
“Hold on, what?” I ask, shaking my head.
One of his eyebrows dips in confusion. He didn’t see me get lost in the past and ignore every word he was saying. Thank Fuck.
“What part did you want me to go back over?” he asks, a little annoyance in his voice and his eyes slatting a little towards me. Maybe he did see that I got distracted.
“Better go back over it all,” I say.
I didn’t catch a damn word, and there’s no point in hiding it. He already knows.
“We’ve hired a PR team to improve your image.”
“What’s wrong with my image?”
“That’s a longer conversation…” Phil pipes up from a leather chair at the head of the conference table, tapping his fingers against the table impatiently.
Sam looks back at Phil and then back to me. “Legal is trying to make a deal with Dixie’s lawyer, but in the meantime, we need to help boost your public image… just in case.”
“In case of what?” I ask. “Just come out and say what you mean. Stop beating around the bush about it.”
I feel a little guilty for snapping at Sam. He’s the best damn GM in the league and he always going out of his way to protect his players, but this whole thing has me pissed off and on edge.
“In case we pay her off and she decides to spread the lie anyway.”
She still decides. What the fuck?
“Isn’t that what paying her off is supposed to accomplish? We’ll sue the shit out of her. She’ll be penniless.”
I flash a quick look at the legal team, but they aren’t nodding like I feel they should be. I know that Dixie can’t afford this to happen to her. What I don’t understand is that if she needed this kind of money… why didn’t she ask?
“Not exactly. The story could fetch a decent amount of money. Especially if they spin that we paid her hush money.”
“It’s not fucking hush money! She’s blackmailing me.”
And if you’d let me speak with her, I could find out why.
“Well, technically, she’s blackmailing us,” Sam says, “and we pay your contract salary, so it’s in your best interest to let us sort this out; however, our legal team considers the best of a shit situation.”
I lay my hands on my hips and shake my head, breaking eye contact with him, “This is bullshit.”
“Well then, you’re not going to like this next bit,” Sam says.
I look back over at Sam, and then he gestures toward Autumn. “Meet your new girlfriend for the next couple of months.”
My mouth drops open as my head turns to look at Autumn. Our eyes lock.
“My what?!”
