“Do you want to know the best part?” Iris asks, her beautiful face aglow.
“There’smore?” I retort playfully.
Iris nods gleefully. “Both grandparents belly laughed at the little boy’s cute response, rather than chastising or correcting him. I love seeing a child being raised by people with an understanding of their child’s stage of development. Not to mention, by people with a fantastic sense of humor.”
“That’s not always the case, huh?”
Iris frowns. “Sadly, no. In my line of work, I see lots of parents and grandparents who tell their child to hush, or to stop being rude or sassy or ‘inappropriate,’ when the poor kid was sincerely answering a question. Kids that age are very literal and wholesome, you know? They’re not trying to be subversive, for goodness’ sake.”
I laugh at her word choice. The idea of Maverick trying to be subversive is genuinely hilarious to me.
Iris sips her drink and continues with, “I can always tell the kids who’ve been chastised one too many times at home for doing something they can’t help doing, versus the kids who live in an environment where they’re not afraid about saying the wrong thing. A big part of my job is to make sure all the kids in my class feel like they’re always in a safe space with me.”
I’m impressed. If Iris worked as a teacher at Maverick’s preschool in LA, I’d definitely want him to be assigned to her classroom. “The kids you teach are lucky to have you. You’re not only kind and bighearted, you seem really knowledgeable about your job, too.”
“Thank you so much. I’ve always loved kids, so I majored in child development.”
“How long have you been teaching?”
“Four years. I started right after college.”
For some reason, I suddenly remember the current lock screen on my phone is Maverick’s smiling face. Shit. I don’t want her seeing that. I touch the pocket of my board shorts and look around, but I don’t see or feel my phone. Did I leave it in the kitchen? “I’m gonna get myself another drink and some more fruit. Can I get you anything?”
“I’d love both. Thank you.”
I grab Iris’s plate and cup and mine and head into the kitchen. Thankfully, I quickly find my phone sitting on the counter, face down. Without delay, I swap out my lock screen of Maverickfor a sunset photo I snapped this week. When that task is completed, I refill both our glasses, slide the rest of the fruit onto our plates, and head back outside to Iris on the deck.
As I return to my seat, Iris asks, “So, what do you do for a living, Roman?”
Shit. I should have been prepared for that question, but I wasn’t. Probably because I can’t remember the last time a woman I’ve been hitting on didn’t already know what I do for work.
My brain quickly searches for an appropriate response—a believable profession for my vacation-time alter ego. In a flash, I’ve got my answer when my offseason trainer’s face suddenly pops into my head. “I own a specialty gym,” I say smoothly. “We train professional and soon-to-be professional athletes.”
“Wow. That’s so cool.”
I don’t like lying in Iris’s earnest, sweet face, but I’d hate giving up my anonymity with her even more. If this conversation eventually migrates into the bedroom like I’m hoping it will, I don’t want to have to pull out my standard NDA and ruin the sexy, easy, flirty vibe. True, if Iris somehow finds out later on she slept with Roman Maguire without there being an NDA in place, she’d have a juicy story to tell her circle of friends. But that’s a risk I’m willing to take, since the odds are low a preschool teacher would want to widely broadcast her sex life beyond that. Whenever I’ve pulled out an NDA in the past, it’s definitely not been a sexy moment. But at least, in those prior instances, whatever woman I’d been seducing already knew my identity, so the NDA didn’t feel like a bombshell the way it likely would for Iris.
Iris blissfully takes a bite of fruit. “It makes sense you own a gym. You look like a guy who knows a lot about working out.”
I sip my drink. “Thanks. Yeah, I played football in college.”
“That’s so cool. Where?”
Fuck.“UT Austin.” It’s yet another lie. A necessary one, though. I’m not planning to tell Iris my last name before sending her packing tomorrow morning. So, with this clever red herring, I’m hoping I’ve now ensured that if Iris were to search the internet using the clues she’s gathered about me thus far—Roman, college football player, gym owner, Delaware, and now, UT Austin—she won’t be able to find me. Instead, she’ll almost certainly get bombarded with a decade’s worth of news about the amazing Chad Roman, the famed tight end who was a star for UT Austin before going on to have a stellar professional career in Minnesota. Either that, or the internet will lead Iris to some random gym owner in Delaware who happens to have Roman as his first or last name. Either way, she won’t find me, and that’s all that matters.
Iris cocks her head. “UT stands for University of Texas, right?”
“Correct.” I hold up my index finger and pinky—the hand signal every Longhorn fan from UT Austin makes at every football game—and murmur, “Go Longhorns.”
Iris laughs. “I went to UCLA, but sadly, we didn’t have a cute little hand signal like that. I’m jealous.” She giggles at her own comment, and I chuckle along with her, simply because she’s so damned cute.
“The years you were there, you had a pretty good football team, though.”
“Did we?”
“You don’t know?”
Iris shrugs. “I only went to one football game in four years.”
