The Wall Of Winnipeg Me

Chapter one

I was going to murder his ass.
One day.
One day long after I quit, so no one would suspect me.
“Aiden,” I grumbled, even though I knew better.
Grumbling only got me the look—that infamous,
condescending expression that had gotten Aiden into more
than one fight in the past. Or so I’d been told. When the edges
of his mouth turned down, got tight, and his brown eyes went
heavy lidded, all it made me want to do was stick my finger up
his nose. It’s what my mom used to do to us when we were
little and would pout.
The man in question, who was on the verge of either a
bloody, imaginary death or a carefully crafted one that
involved dish soap, his food, and a long period of time, made a
noise from behind the bowl of quinoa salad in front of him,
which was big enough to feed a family of four. “You heard me.
Cancel it,” he repeated as if I’d gone deaf the first time he’d
said it.
Oh, I’d heard him. Loud and clear. That was why I wanted
to kill him.
Which basically showed how amazing the human mind
was; how you could care about someone but want to slit his or
her throat at the same time. Like having a sister who you
wanted to punch right in the ovaries. You still loved her, you just wanted to sock her right in the baby-maker to teach her a
lesson—not that I knew from experience or anything.
The fact that I didn’t immediately respond probably made
him add, with that same facial expression aimed right at me, “I
don’t care what you have to tell them. Get it done.”
Pushing my glasses up the bridge of my nose with my left
index finger, I lowered my right hand so that the cabinet could
hide the middle finger I aimed right at Aiden. If his facial
expression wasn’t bad enough, the tone he was using annoyed
me even more. It was the voice he used to warn me it was
pointless to argue with him; he wasn’t going to change his
mind right then, or ever, and I needed to deal with it.
I always needed to deal with it.
When I’d first started working for the three-time National
Football Organization’s Defensive Player of the Year, there
had only been a few things I wasn’t a fan of doing; haggling
with people, telling them no, and sticking my hand into the
garbage disposal because I was both the cook and the cleaning
lady of the house.
But if there was something I hated doing—and I mean
really, really hated doing—it was cancelling on people last
minute. It got on my nerves and went against my moral code. I
mean, a promise was a promise, wasn’t it? Then again, this
wasn’t me letting his fans down, technically. It was Aiden.
Freaking Aiden, who was busy inhaling his second lunch
of the day without a care in the world, was oblivious to the
frustrations he was going to make me face when I called his
agent. After all the trouble we’d gone to schedule it, I was
going to have to break the news that Aiden wasn’t going to be
signing anything at the sporting goods store in San Antonio.
Yippee.
I sighed, guilt niggling my belly and conscience, and
reached down to rub my stiff knee with the hand that wasn’t
busy expressing my frustrations. “You already promised them
—
“I don’t care, Vanessa.” He shot me that look again. My
middle finger twitched. “Have Rob cancel it,” he insisted, as
his giant forearm went up so he could shovel what looked like
eight ounces of food into his mouth at once. The fork he was
holding hovered in the air a moment as he flicked that dark,
stubborn gaze to meet mine. “Is that a problem?”
Vanessa-this. Vanessa-that.
Cancel it. Have Rob cancel it.
Boo.
As if I loved calling his asshole agent to begin with, much
less so he could cancel an appearance two days before it was
supposed to take place. He was going to lose his mind, and
then direct his frustrations at me as if I had some kind of pull
over Aiden “The Wall of Winnipeg” Graves. The truth was,
the closest I’d ever come to helping him make any kind of
decision had been when I recommended a camera for him to
buy, and that was only because he “had better things to do than
camera research” and because “that’s what I pay you for.”
He had a point of course. Between what he paid me and
what Zac chipped in from time to time, I could manage to put
a smile on my face—even if it was a forced one—and do what
was asked of me. Every once in a while, I even did a little
curtsy, which Aiden pretended not to witness.
I didn’t think he really appreciated the amount of patience
I had exercised when dealing with him for the last two years.
Someone else would have already stabbed him in his sleep for
sure. At least, when I went through plans for how I’d do it, it
was usually in a painless way.
Usually.
Since he’d ruptured his Achilles tendon barely a month
into the season last year, he’d turned into something else. I
tried not to blame him; I really did. Missing nearly three
months of the entire regular season and being blamed for your
team not making it to the post season, or the playoffs, was
hard to deal with. On top of that, some people had thought he
wasn’t going to make a full comeback after having to take six months off to recover and rehab. The kind of injury he’d
sustained was no joke.
But this was Aiden. Some athletes took even longer than
that amount of time to get back on their feet, if they ever did.
He hadn’t. But dealing with him on crutches, driving him to
and from rehab and appointments, had taken a toll on my
patience more than once.
There was only so much cranky little bitch you can handle
in a day, even if it was called for. Aiden loved what he did, and
I had to imagine he was scared he wouldn’t be able to play
again, or that he would come back and not play up to the same
level he’d been used to, not that he would ever voice any fears
out loud. That was all understandable to me. I couldn’t
imagine how I would feel if something happened to my hands
and there was a chance I might not ever be able to draw again.
Regardless, his crankiness had hit a level not previously
documented in the history of the universe. That was saying
something, considering I’d grown up with three older sisters
who all had periods at the same time. Because of them, most
things—most people—didn’t bother me. I knew what it was
like to be bullied, and Aiden never crossed the line into being
unnecessarily mean. He was just a jackass sometimes.
He was lucky I had a tiny, itty, bitty crush on him;
otherwise, he would have gotten the shank years ago. Then
again, just about everyone with eyes who happened to also like
men, had some kind of a thing for Aiden Graves.
When he raised his eyebrows and looked at me from
beneath those curly black eyelashes, flashing me rich-brown
eyes set deep into a face that I’d only seen smile in the
presence of dogs, I swallowed and shook my head slowly as I
gritted my teeth and took him in. The size of a small building,
he should have had these big, uneven features that made him
look like a caveman, but of course he didn’t. Apparently, he
liked to defy every stereotype he’d ever been assigned in his
life. He was smart, fast, coordinated, and—as far as I knew—
had never seen a game of hockey. He had only said ‘eh’ in
front of me twice, and he didn’t consume animal protein. The man didn’t eat bacon. He was the last person I would ever
consider polite, and he never apologized. Ever.
Basically, he was an anomaly; a Canadian football-playing,
plant-based lifestyle—he didn’t like calling himself a vegan—
anomaly that was strangely proportional all over and so
handsome I might have thanked God for giving me eyes on a
couple of occasions.
“Whatever you want, big guy,” I said with a fake smile and
a flutter of my eyelashes, even as I still flipped him off.
“They’ll get over it,” Aiden said casually, ignoring his
nickname, rolling back two immensely muscular shoulders. I
swear they were wide enough for a small person to drape
across comfortably. “It isn’t a big deal.”
It wasn’t a big deal? The promoters wouldn’t feel that way,
much less his agent, but then Aiden was used to getting his
way. No one ever told him no. They told me no, and then I’d
have to figure things out.
Despite what some people thought, the defensive end of
the Three Hundreds, Dallas’s professional football team,
wasn’t really an asshole or hard to work with. For all his faces
and grumbling, he never cussed and hardly ever lost his
temper without good reason. He was demanding; he knew
exactly what he wanted and how he liked every single thing in
his life. It was honestly an admirable quality, I thought, but it
was my job to make those requests come true, regardless of
whether I agreed with his decisions or not.
Only for a little bit longer though, I reminded myself. I
was so close to quitting, I could feel it. The thought made my
soul rejoice a bit.
Two months ago, my bank account had finally hit a
comfortable number through sheer willpower, penny-pinching,
and working long hours when I wasn’t Aiden’s
assistant/housekeeper/cook. I’d hit my goal: save up a year’s
salary. And I had. Finally. Halle-freaking-lujah. I could
practically smell freedom in the air.
But the keyword there was ‘practically'.
I just hadn’t gotten around to telling Aiden I was quitting
yet.
“Why are you making that face?” he asked suddenly.
I blinked up at him, caught off guard. I raised my
eyebrows, trying to play dumb. “What face?”
It didn’t work.
With a fork hanging out of his mouth, he narrowed his
dark eyes just the slightest bit. “That one.” He gestured toward
me with his chin.
I shrugged in an ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’
expression.
“Is there something you want to say?”
There were a hundred things I wanted to tell him on a
regular basis, but I knew him too well. He didn’t really care if
there was something I wanted to say or not. He didn’t care if
my opinion was different from his or if I thought he should do
something differently. He was just reminding me who the boss
was.
AKA not me.
Asswipe.
“Me?” I blinked. “Nope.”
He gave me a lazy glare before his eyes lowered to focus
on the hand I had hidden on the other side of the kitchen
island. “Then quit flipping me off. I’m not changing my mind
about the signing,” he said in a deceptively casual voice.
I pressed my lips together as I dropped my hand. He was a
goddamn witch. I swear on my life, he was a freaking witch. A
wizard. An oracle. A person with a third eye. Every single
time I had ever flipped him off, he’d been aware of it. I didn’t
think I was that obvious about it either.
It wasn’t like I gave people the middle finger for fun, but it
genuinely bothered me that he was cancelling an appearance
without a legitimate reason. Backing out because he changedhis mind and didn’t want to take an afternoon off from
training, didn’t seem like one. But what did I know?
“All right,” I muttered under my breath.
Aiden, who I was pretty sure had no idea how old I’d
turned this year, much less what month my birthday was, made
a face for a split second. Those thick, dark eyebrows knit
together and his full mouth pinched back at the corners. Then
he shrugged, like he’d suddenly stopped caring about what I’d
been doing.
What was funny was, if someone had told me five years
ago that I’d be doing someone else’s dirty work, I would have
laughed. I couldn’t remember ever not having goals or some
sort of a plan for the future. I had always wanted something to
look forward to, and being my own boss was one of those
things I strived for.
I’d known since I was sixteen at my first summer job,
getting yelled at for not putting enough ice into a mediumsized cup at the movie theater I’d worked at, that I would one
day want to work for myself. I didn’t like getting told what to
do. I never had. I was stubborn and hardheaded, at least that’s
what my foster dad said was my greatest and worst personality
trait.
I wasn’t shooting for the stars or aiming to become a
billionaire. I didn’t want to be a celebrity or anything close to
that. I just wanted my own small business doing graphic
design work that could pay my bills, keep me fed, and still
have a little extra left over for other things. I didn’t want to
have to rely on someone else’s charity or whim. I’d had to do
that for as long as I could remember, hoping my mom would
come home sober, hoping my sisters would make me food
when my mom wasn’t around, and then hoping the lady with
social services could at least keep me and my little brother
together…. Why was I even thinking about that?
For the most part, I’d always known what I wanted to do
with my life, so I’d naively thought half the battle was in the
bag. Making it work should have been easy What no one tells you is that the road to accomplishing
your goals isn’t a straight line; it looks more like a corn maze.
You stopped, you went, you backed up, and took a few wrong
turns along the way, but the important thing you had to
remember was that there was an exit. Somewhere.
You just couldn’t give up looking for it, even when you
really wanted to.
And especially not when it was easier and less scary to go
with the flow than actually strike out on your own and make
your path.
Scooting the stool he was sitting on back, Aiden got to his
feet with his empty glass in hand. His Hulk-sized frame
seemed to dwarf the not-exactly-small kitchen every time he
was in there… which was always. Big surprise. He consumed
at least 7,000 calories a day. During the regular football
season, he bumped it up to ten thousand. Of course, he was in
the kitchen all day. So was I—making his meals.
“Did you buy pears?” he asked, already pushing our
conversation and the middle finger incident aside as he filled
his glass with water from the refrigerator’s filter.
I didn’t feel guilty at all about getting caught flipping him
off. The first time it had happened, I thought I was going to die
of embarrassment and then get fired, but now I knew Aiden.
He didn’t care if I did it, or at least that was the impression I
got since I still had a job. I’d seen people come up to him and
try goading him, calling him all sorts of names and insults that
made me reel back. But what did he do when people did that
kind of stuff? He didn’t even twitch; he just pretended not to
hear them.
Honestly, it was a little impressive to have that kind of
backbone. I couldn’t keep it together when someone honked at
me while I was driving.
But as impressive as Aiden was, as much as his perfect
butt made women double-take, and as dumb as most people
would think I was for resigning from a job with a man who
starred in commercials for an athletic apparel company, I still
wanted to quit. The urge got stronger and stronger each day. I’d busted my butt. No one else had done the work for me.
This was what I wanted, what I had always wanted. I’d kept
my eye on the prize for years for the opportunity to be my own
boss. Having to call assholes who made it seem like I was an
inconvenience, or folding underwear that clung to the most
spectacular ass in the country, wasn’t it.
Tell him, tell him, tell him right now you’re planning on
quitting, my brain egged on almost desperately.
But that nagging little voice of indecision and self-doubt
that liked to hang out in the space where my non-existent spine
should have been, reminded me, What’s the rush?
The first time I met The Wall of Winnipeg, the second thing he
said to me was, “Can you cook?”
He hadn’t shaken my hand, asked me to sit down, or
anything like that. In retrospect, that should have warned me
of how things would be between us.
Aiden had asked me my name when he first let me in the
front door and led me straight into a beautiful, open kitchen
that looked like something straight out of a home renovation
show. Then he’d gone straight for questioning my cooking
skills.
Before that day, his manager had already interviewed me
twice. The position was in the income range I’d been aiming
for, and that was all that had mattered to me back then. The
employment agency I’d signed up with, had already called me
into their offices on three separate occasions to make sure I’d
be a good fit for ‘a celebrity’ as they called him.
A bachelor’s degree, a wide range of jobs I’d worked at
that varied from being a divorce lawyer’s secretary for three
years while I went to college, summers spent doing
photography for anyone who would hire me, a pretty
successful side business selling makeup and stuff from a
catalog, and excellent references, had gotten me a callback. I was pretty sure that wasn’t what really got me the job
though; it was my ignorance when it came to football. If there
was a game on TV, chances were I wasn’t paying attention to
it. I’d never even seen Aiden Graves before my first day. I
didn’t exactly walk around telling people the only games I
ever watched were the ones I’d been to in person during high
school.
So when his manager had mentioned the name of my
potential employer, I had stared at him blankly. I would more
than likely never know for sure if it was my lack of excitement
that scored me the position, but I had a feeling it was.
Even after Aiden’s manager offered me the job, I hadn’t
bothered looking him up. What was the point? It wasn’t like
anything the Internet said about him could change my mind
about becoming his assistant. Really, nothing could have. I
wasn’t ashamed to say he could have been a serial killer and I
would have taken the job if the pay were right.
In the end though, I thought it had been a good thing that I
hadn’t done a search for him. As I would later learn when I
was busy sending out promotional pictures to fans,
photographs didn’t do him any justice.
At six foot four, just a quarter inch shy of six five,
sometimes weighing up to two hundred and eighty pounds in
the middle of the off season, and with a presence that made
him seem closer to some mythological hero than an average
mortal, Aiden was a beast even fully clothed. He didn’t have
cosmetic muscles. He was just plain massive. Everywhere. I
wouldn’t be surprised if X-rays showed his bones were more
dense than normal. His muscles had been honed and crafted
for the specific purpose of as-effectively-as-possible blocking
passes and tackling opposing quarterbacks.
An extra-extra-large T-shirt that morning of our first
meeting didn’t hide the massive bulk of his trapezius,
pectorals, deltoids, or much less his biceps and triceps. The
guy was ripped. His thighs strained the seams of the sweat
pants he’d been wearing. I remembered noticing his fists
reminded me of bricks and the wrists that held them to the rest
of his body were bigger than I’d ever seen. Then there was the face I would be looking at for the next
chunk of my life. Where his features might have been bluntly
shaped like so many big guys were, Aiden was handsome in a
way that wasn’t aesthetically beautiful. His cheeks were lean,
the bones above them high, and his jaw lantern shaped. The
deep set of his eyes highlighted thick, black brows. Short,
trimmed facial hair which always resembled a five o’clock
shadow even after he’d immediately shaved, covered the lower
half of his face.
A white scar along his hairline, from his temple to below
his ear, was the only thing the short bristles couldn’t hide.
Then there was that mouth that would have seemed pouty on
any another man who might have been smaller and who didn’t
glare half as much as he did. He was brown haired and olive
skinned. A hint of a thin, gold chain had peeked out from the
collar of his shirt, but I’d been so distracted by everything else
that was Aiden Graves, it wasn’t until months later that I
learned it was a medallion of St. Luke he never went anywhere
without.
Just his size alone had been intimidating enough for me
initially. His piercing brown-eyed gaze only added to the
massive amount of intimidation he seemed to bleed out of his
pores.
Regardless of that though, my first thought had been: Holy
shit. Then I had shoved it away because I couldn’t be thinking
things like that about my brand new boss.
That day of our first meeting, all I had managed to do was
nod at him. I’d gone in convinced I’d do whatever was needed
to keep the job. His manager and the agency had made sure
during the interview process that I knew cooking was part of
the job requirement, which wasn’t a big deal. When I was a
kid, I’d learned the hard way that if I wanted to eat, I was
going to have to do something about it because my older
sisters weren’t going to trouble themselves, and I never knew
what kind of mood my mom would be in. During college, I’d
mastered the art of cooking on a contraband hotplate in my
dorm room. Aiden had simply stared at me in response before laying
the bomb on me that no one had prepared me for. “I don’t eat
any animal products. Will that be a problem?”
Did I know how to make anything without eggs, meat, or
cheese in it? Not that I could think of. No one had even
mentioned that stipulation beforehand—and ignorantly, it
wasn’t like he looked like most vegans I’d met in my life—but
there was no way in hell I was going back to working three
jobs if I absolutely didn’t have to. So, I’d bullshitted. “No,
sir.”
He’d stood there in the kitchen, looking down at me in my
navy khakis, cap-sleeved, white, eyelet blouse, and brown
heels. I’d been so nervous I even had my hands clasped in
front of me. The agency had suggested business casual attire
for the job, and that’s what I’d gone with. “Are you sure?”
he’d asked.
I had nodded, already planning to search for recipes on my
phone.
His eyes had narrowed a bit, but he didn’t call me out on
what was obviously a lie, and that was more than I could have
hoped for. “I don’t enjoy cooking or going out to eat. I usually
eat four times a day and have two big smoothies, too. You’ll
be in charge of meals, and I’ll handle anything I eat between,”
he said as he crossed his arms over what seemed like a threefoot-wide chest.
“The desktop computer upstairs has all of my passwords
saved. Read and respond to all my emails; my PO Box needs
to be checked a few times a week, and you’re in charge of that
too. The key is in the drawer by the refrigerator. I’ll write
down the post office it’s at and box number later. When I come
back, you can go make a copy of my house key. My social
sites need to be updated daily; I don’t care what you post as
long as you use some common sense.”
He’d definitely made sure to meet my eyes when he added
that, but I hadn’t taken it personally.
“Laundry, scheduling…” he went off to include more tasks
that I filed into the mental vault. “I have a roommate. We talked about it, and if you’re up for the task, he might want
you to make him food too sometimes. He’ll pay you extra if
you decide to do it.”
Extra money? I never said no to extra money. Unless it
required a blowjob.
“Do you have any questions?” my new boss had asked.
All I had managed to do was shake my head. Everything
he said was common for the position I was taking, and I might
have been too busy gaping at him to say much else. I’d never
seen a pro football player in person, though I’d been friends
with someone back in college who played for our school. Back
then, I hadn’t thought people could be built on such a large
scale, and I might have been trying to figure out how much
Aiden had to eat to get in the amount of calories he needed in
his diet.
His brown gaze had swept over my face and shoulders
before returning to my eyes. That hard, unrelenting face stared
right at me. “You don’t talk much, do you?”
I smiled at him, a little one, and lifted a shoulder. I wasn’t
a big talker, but nobody could say I was shy or quiet either.
Plus, I didn’t want to mess this up until I figured out what he
wanted and needed from me as an assistant.
Looking back on it, I wasn’t sure if that was the greatest
first impression, but tough shit. It wasn’t like I could take it
back and do it over again.
All Aiden, my new boss at the time did, was tip his chin
down in what I’d later find out was his form of a nod. “Good.”
Not much had changed over the last two years.
Our work relationship had progressed past me calling
Aiden “sir”, and using more than two words at a time when I
talked to him.
I knew everything I could about Aiden, considering how
pulling personal information out of him was like yanking teeth. I could tell you how old he was, how much money he
had in his bank account, what spices made him cringe, and
what brand of underwear he preferred. I knew his favorite
meals, what size shoe he wore, what colors he refused to wear,
and even what kind of porn he watched. I knew the first thing
he wanted when he had more time on his hands was a dog—
not a family. He wanted a dog.
But that was all something a stalker could learn, or
someone really observant. He held on to the details of his life
with both of his dinner-plate-sized hands. I had a feeling the
number of things I didn’t know about him could keep me busy
for the rest of my life, if I were to try to pry them out of him.
I’d tried being friendly once I realized he wasn’t going to
go Incredible Hulk on me for asking questions, but it had all
been in vain. For the last two years, my smiles were never
returned, my every single “How are you?” went unanswered,
and other than that infamous look that made my imaginary
hackles rise, there was that tone, that almost smug tone, he
took sometimes that just asked for an ass whooping… from
someone much bigger than me.
Our boss and employee roles became more and more
pronounced each day. I cared about him as much as I could
care for someone who I saw a minimum of five days a week,
who I basically took care of for a living, but who treated me
like the friend of a pesky little sister he would rather not have.
For two years, it had been fine doing duties I wasn’t a huge
fan of, but the cooking, the e-mails, and all things related to
his fans were my favorite things about being his assistant.
And that was half the reason why I kept talking myself out
of putting in my notice. Because I’d check his Facebook
account or go on his Twitter and see something one of his fans
posted that made me laugh. I’d gotten to know some of them
over the years through online interactions, and it was easy to
remember that working for him wasn’t so bad.
It wasn’t the worst job in the world—not even close to it.
My pay was more than fair, my hours pretty good too… and in
the words of almost every woman who had ever found out
who I worked for, I “had the sexiest boss in the entire world.”So there was that. If I was stuck looking at someone, it might
as well be someone with a body and a face that put the models
I put on other people’s book covers to shame.
But there were things in life you couldn’t do unless you
stepped out of your comfort zone and took a risk, and working
for myself was one of them.
That was why I hadn’t actually gone through with it and
told Aiden “Sayonara, big boy” on the eighty different
occasions my brain had told me to.
I was nervous. Quitting a well-paying job—a steady one at
least while Aiden had a career—was scary. But that excuse
was getting older and older.
Aiden and I weren’t BFFs, much less confidants. Then
again, why would we be? This was a man who didn’t have
more than possibly three people he spent time with when he
managed to tear himself away from training and games.
Vacations? He didn’t take them. I didn’t even think he knew
what they were.
He didn’t have pictures of family or friends anywhere in
the house. His entire life revolved around football. It was the
center of his universe.
In the grand scheme of Aiden Graves’s life, I was no one
really. We just sort of put up with each other. Obviously. He
needed an assistant, and I needed a job. He told me what he
wanted done, and I did it, regardless of whether I agreed with
it or not. Every once in a while, I tried futilely to change his
mind, but in the back of my head, I never forgot how pointless
my opinion was to him.
You could only try for so long to be friendly with
someone, and have them shut you down with their
indifference, before you gave up. This was a job, nothing more
and nothing less. It was why I had worked so hard to get to the
point where I could be my own boss, so that I could deal with
people who appreciated my hard work.
Yet here I was, doing the things that drove me nuts and
putting my dreams off for another day, and another day, and another day…
What the hell was I doing?
“The only person you’re screwing over is yourself,” Diana
had told me the last time we’d talked. She’d asked if I’d
finally told Aiden I was quitting, and I’d told her the truth: no.
Guilt had pounded my belly at her comment. The only
person I was hurting was myself. I knew I needed to tell
Aiden. No one was going to do it for me; I was well aware of
that. But…
Okay, there was no ‘but.’ What if I crashed and burned
once I was on my own?
I had planned it out and built up my business so that
wouldn’t be the case, I reminded myself as I sat there watching
Aiden eat. I knew what I was doing. I had money squirreled
away. I was good at what I did, and I loved doing it.
I’d be fine.
I’d be fine.
What was I waiting for? Every time I’d thought about
telling Aiden before, it just hadn’t seemed like the perfect
moment. He had just gotten cleared to start practicing again
after his injury, and it didn’t feel right laying that on him then.
I felt like I’d be abandoning him when he’d barely gotten back
on his feet once more. Then, we’d immediately left for
Colorado for him to train in peace and quiet. On another
occasion, it hadn’t been a Friday. Or he’d had a bad day. Or…
whatever. There was always something. Always.
I wasn’t staying on because I was in love with him or
anything like that. Maybe at some point, right after I’d begun
working for him, I might have had a giant crush on him, but
his cool attitude had never let my heart get any crazier than
that. It wasn’t like I’d ever had any expectations of Aiden
suddenly looking at me and thinking I was the most amazing
person in his life. I didn’t have time for that unrealistic crap. If
anything, my goal had always been to do what I needed to do
for him, and maybe make the man who never smiled, smile.
I’d only succeeded at one of those things.Over the years, my attraction to him had dwindled so that
the only thing I really mooned over—correction: appreciated
in a healthy, normal way—was his work ethic.
And his face.
And his body.
But there were plenty of guys with amazing bodies and
faces in the world. I should know. I looked at models almost
every day.
And none of those physical traits helped me in any way.
Hot guys weren’t going to make my dreams come true.
I swallowed and clenched my fingers.
Do it, my brain said.
What was the worst that would happen? I’d have to find
another job if my customer base dried up? How horrifying. I
wouldn’t know what would happen until I tried.
Life was a risk. This was what I’d always wanted.
So I took a breath, carefully watched the man who had
been my boss for two years, and I said it. “Aiden, I have
something I need to talk to you about.”
Because really, what was he going to do? Tell me I
couldn’t quit?

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