“Jesus, Uncle Bry,” I mutter. “Doesn’t the general manager of a whole entire football team have something better to do than hang around the office lobby?”
“In fact, I had nothing at all better to do than this,” he says, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. “When it’s my niece’s first day working for my football team, you better believe I’ll be hanging out in the lobby. You’re lucky it’s just me. I had to talk your dad, Asher, Gabe, and Ben out of showing up too. Jordan was even making noise about coming in from Boston and bringing his brothers. He and Cooper said they wanted to visit Sarah and Emmy, but I could see straight through that ruse.”
I roll my eyes at his mention of my dad and their other best friends who act less like men in their fifties and more like overgrown frat guys half the time. “Thanks for that. I think they may have forgotten that I’m thirty years old, and starting a new job isn’t that big of a deal.”
In fact, starting this particular new job is a major deal, and now that I’m here, my entire body is jittery like I downed six espresso shots instead of half a cup of iced coffee. But I’ll be damned if I let anyone see it.
Dr. Maddy Wright is the kind of woman who tells nerves to fuck right off. Or, I wish I was that woman. I’m trying to be that woman, but I fear that, instead, I’m the kind of woman who shoves those nerves as deep into my gut as I can and covers them in caffeine, chocolate, and quirky charm. But today could also be the day I change all of that, so I toss my hair back and straighten my shoulders, my body language givingbring it on, instead of what I really feel, which is terrified as all fuck.
“Give them a break, Mads. You’re their first kid. You’ll always be their baby. That’s just the way parenthood works.”
I eye him. “That’s not the way you are with your kids.”
“Oh, it definitely is. Ask him how he feels about Jake startinghis senior year of high school next week. He’s havingfeelingsabout it.”
Grinning, I look up at Brian’s wife, Olivia, who is striding through the lobby in a summer dress, her hair pulled up into a high ponytail. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Brian’s eyes light up. Even after almost two decades together, and raising two kids, he still looks at her like she’s the center of his whole entire universe. I wonder, not for the first time, what it would be like to have someone look at me that way.
Without warning, my traitorous brain serves me up another image of last night—and the sex god with the bright blue eyes who looked at me exactly that way. My entire body tightens in response, but I shove the memory away before it can take hold again.
That was wild, fuck-the-consequences Maddy.
Today I’m professional, cares-about-all-the-consequences Maddy who is starting her dream job and definitely does not have hot, dirty sex with nameless men she meets in bars.
As soon as Olivia is within reach, Brian grabs her hand, pulling her in and wrapping an arm around her waist, bending to kiss her. “I don’t know about that, but I’m definitely having feelings about you in that dress right now. Whatcha doing here, Liv?”
She laughs and kisses him again. “I have a meeting with one of your players.”
“Which one?”
“Cameron Lowry. He called me last week to see if I had room in my schedule to do meals for him this season. Apparently, his regular chef quit suddenly, and there was something about his thirteen-year-old deciding to try out for the school play and his ten-year-old declaring that he can’t live without hockey. He sounded desperate. I remember what it was like to have a ten- and thirteen-year-old, and doing it alone would have been impossible, so here I am.”
I flip through the names that I’ve spent the last two weekscommitting to memory. In retrospect, it probably would have been helpful to be a football fan before taking a big important job with the team. Or have looked at pictures instead of just stats. Cameron Lowry, veteran offensive lineman and single dad of two who lost his wife when his youngest, now ten, was a baby.
“Thanks, Liv,” Brian says. “I know he can use the help.”
She waves that away like it’s nothing, and for her, it probably is. Liv is a caterer and private chef whose client roster reads as a veritable who’s who of the Pittsburgh business and sports world. “I’m happy to do it. And it gives me an excuse to come see our girl on her first day.” Turning to me, she grins again and wraps me in a hug. “How are you feeling, Dr. Wright? Ready to face the gauntlet that is digging inside the minds of professional athletes?”
I hug her tightly. When Liv first moved to Pittsburgh to live closer to her brother, Sophie’s dad, Gabe, she was my babysitter for a year or so before she started her business. She married Brian when I was fourteen, so technically she’s my aunt, but she’s always been more of a big sister to me. “I’m so ready. I wish I could have started earlier—gotten my bearings before pre-season—but one of the professors on my dissertation committee had a death in her family and it delayed my defense.”
“I told you that you could have started before your defense,” Brian says, wrapping an arm around Olivia’s shoulders.
I narrow my eyes at him. “Would you say that to any other psychologist who was about to come in here and head the department?”
He shrugs, looking unbothered. “You’re not any other psychologist.”
“No,” I say, pointing at him. “That’s exactly what we’re not going to do here. We are not going to pretend like I’m special just because I’m related to you or because my dad is a former hockey star and my brother is a current one. Or because one of my pseudo-uncles is Asher Hansley who still holds passing records for this very football team. Or because his son, who iscurrently in the process of breaking all of Asher’s records, is one of my best friends. No one will take me seriously if they think I got the job because of who I know, instead of who I am.”
“She’s right, Bry,” Olivia says, elbowing him.
I give her a grateful smile. Her older brother, Gabe, who raised her from the time she was eight after their parents died, is a billionaire tech genius. He invented the smartphone that most of the world’s population has carried for almost the last three decades, so Liv knows a thing or ten about people assuming you got where you are because of your famous relatives.
“Fine,” he says, holding up his hands and giving me a wink. “Can I at least walk you to your office, or is that too much nepotism for you?”
I shrug. “Considering I have no clue where I’m going in this maze of a building, I think that’s the perfect amount of nepotism.”
He laughs and leans down to kiss Liv again. “Where are you meeting Cam?”
“Right here actually,” she says, just as the lobby door opens.
