Page 1 of Wild Hit
CHAPTER 1
AUDREY
LATE MARCH
Sometimes life is like baseball—in that it can suck.
But as every fan of a team who is playing worse than pee wees in desperate need of a nap, sometimes you just have to sit there and endure until the last inning. Even if you know that what awaits is a big L.
This is one of such occasions. I know it as well as I know my legal name, what with the fact that I changed it and all. The assistant of Charlie Cox, owner of the Orlando Wild team, is missing from his desk, which makes this all the easier for me. Without warning, I push the door of team owner’s office open.
There is no one else in this building who would dare to barge in on the man upon whose whims hinge all our salaries. I have seen people actively cow away when he walks down the hallways, among them my roommates. It’s probably a result of how he wiped half of the workforce the second he bought the team just five years ago. Unlike Hope and Rose, though, I have full immunity from getting fired.
The truth is that Charlie Cox is my father. However, Charlie isn’t the protective kind of father, wanting to get his spoiled daughter a big present that will make her happy.
Baseball was supposed to be my refugefrom him.
I thought going away to an ivy league college would put enough distance between us. After everything we had gone through at that point—losing my brother, followed by my parents’s inevitable and very expensive divorce—I figured he would be better off living his alcoholic billionaire life without me in the picture.
It worked out for a while. I graduated from college, found my dream job at a professional baseball team without any connections, and even got a loan to buy a nice house and start fresh by my own, honest means.
Then five years into my new life as Audrey Winters—Mom’s maiden name—Dad showed up again as the new owner of the team I worked on.
We’ve kept a careful truce since, consisting of pretending like we don’t personally know each other while at work, and me blocking him from every other form of communication.
This is the moment all that is going to end.
Hope and Cade’s relationship came out to light yesterday, and Rose is about to risk her entire career to help them. I can’t just stand by doing nothing when I hold the figurative keys to the kingdom.
It just means that I’ll have to give something up—something I’ve been getting quite comfortable with in the past few years.
My peace of mind.
Dad turns around at my entrance, cutting an impressive figure for someone who is sixty-three-years-old and has personally met the bottom of many a bottle. His phone is in his hand and Airpods in his ears, which makes me guess I’minterrupting a phone call. He may be negotiating the purchase of an entire country for all I care.
“I’ll have to call you back,” he says to whoever is on the other end of the line, a smirk growing on half of his face. “I’m afraid I have a very interesting visitor to take care of.”
Like in all dealings with him, I can’t help but feeling like a little bird hopping willingly into the mouth of a cat. I fold my arms and widen my stance, pretending like my heart isn’t about to escape from my throat with how fast it’s beating.
“Audrey,” he says as a greeting, finally removing the Airpods from his ears. “To what do I owe this honor?”
“I’m here to make a deal with you,” I respond, cutting to the chase because he and a panel of other powerful men in the organization are about to go into a conference room with Cade Starr to decide on the fate of his girlfriend, my roommate and friend, Hope Garcia, and whether dating a player is a violation of her employment contract.
I have zero confidence that panel’s better judgement will prevail. Since when do men judge women fairly? And as much as Rose’s fingers have the magic to make viral hits for the team’s social media page, I doubt that public opinion alone will be enough to sway my dad, a man who doesn’t even care about his family. The only thing he responds to is power, and no one but me has any semblance of it over him.
“Is that so?” His bushy, white-blond eyebrows rise, giving him the same air of cynicism from a robber baron of the Gilded Age. And yes, I’ve been watching a lot of historical shows. Anything to escape my reality.
Dad is old,old, and yet even older money, and has always conducted himself like it puts him above the entire plane of existence called the twenty first century. The worst part is that it’s true, his rules of the game are completely different to anyone else’s. I’m here to play by them, even at the cost of losing.
I take a deep breath. “I want you to guarantee Hope and Rose’s jobs.”
“Who?”
It’s not easy, but I manage not to snark at him. I don’t know if he asked the lil question to be annoying, or if he truly doesn’t know.
“Hope Garcia, the training staff member who was found to be dating our starting pitcher, and Rosalina Mena, the social media manager who is about to blow it up publicly.”
“Audrey, that’s not how you make a deal. You have to make me care and also give me something in return.” He shakes his head in mockery. “I thought I taught you better.”
