“She good?”
“Yeah, I just forgot to put a burp cloth on and she got me.” I smiled ruefully because this was truly a rookie mistake. I’d thought she was a dainty little diva but apparently she had a little hellion in her too.
“Oh, uh yeah.” He took a tentative step forward and instead of letting him overthink it, I laid her gently in his arms. Aldrich immediately supported her head and held her securely despite the little wiggling she was doing.
“Let me just wipe this off—”
“Nah, go ahead and change. I know you don’t want to be smelling like half-digested milk all day. You're not a prisoner here, Sterling.”
I nodded but I still went swiftly into my room and changed my shirt as fast as I could.
I paused seeing him staring at her far more intently than he had before. It wasn’t the look of curiosity she’d been getting from him. It was almost as though he was cataloguing everything about her. Maybe trying to parse out what features of hersbelonged to him and what were her mother’s. But then he had to mess up the sweetness of the moment by smiling.
Immediately, a sharp pang of lust tore through my body and I felt like a creep for thinking of this man like this. It was one thing to note he was attractive; it was another to wish that he was smiling over me like that as he stroked me.
I braced myself and shook the lust-filled thoughts out of my head. I wasn’t about to go down that road and end up a cliché. I wasn’t about to become fodder for the headlines or have my mother feeling like she needed to put a conservatorship on me like she’d threatened many times before so she could access my trust funds.
“Thank you for being so understanding.”
“She’s a great baby.”
I smirked at how he was defending her. “Let’s see if you would say that at 2:00 a.m.”
“Umm, yeah I’m sure that’s tough. I’ll have to listen out for her around then. Maybe I can help some more before camp and the season starts.” The offer was genuine but it still felt like it had cost him something to give it. I wasn’t going to deny him the chance to work through his feelings so I just smiled graciously at the offer.
“Whatever you’re comfortable with, Aldrich. Your schedule was rigorous when I took this position so don’t feel as though you need to do anything outside of what you already are.”
“But that’s just it. I’m not really doing anything am I? I’m moving like nothing has changed when it really has.” Aldrich looked as though he’d been thinking hard about this and how he hadn’t shown up for his daughter.
“I’m…I’m not sure I’m the best person to talk to about this.”
“Why? You think we can’t be friends? I mean, you live here.”
I wanted us to be professional, but I knew that would be impossible with our current setup. “No, I have no problem withus being friends but I don’t know if you’re wanting to talk to me about this.”
“Ain’t nobody else here.”
“I mean…you don’t have friends?”
His face broke into that smile again and I swore that I was going to need to change my panties if he kept this up. I needed to have a normal, hands-off professional relationship with the people I worked for. I didn’t think that working for a young, Black, attractive athlete would be a challenge for me when I accepted the job. But damn if this attraction wasn’t going to become a problem I didn’t need if I didn’t get it together.
“My friends are my family and the folks on the team. Of the few I still talk to from college who didn’t switch up on me because I made it but wasn’t funding their lifestyles like a fucked up version ofEntourage, theydon’t have kids. And if they do, they actually fuck with the person they had them with.”
“You said a lot without saying exactly what you meant to say.”
He smirked again, as if he knew he was being evasive and had no issue with that. Again, he wanted friendship but also wasn’t giving any information. So professionalism would stay firmly in place. “We’ll call it a talent. So what’s up? You can live in my house and shit but we can’t be homies?”
“I work for you—”
“Do I have to put that shit in the job description? ‘Cause you know Billy will make it happen.”
I laughed because he was constantly using her to threaten me. “You should leave that lady alone.”
“You don’t think she could do it?”
“I’ve seen her in action, I know she can. It’s just unnecessary. You don’t have to pay me to be your friend, Aldrich.”
“Swear to God I will give you a hunnid dollas every time you call me something other than Aldrich.”
