“He started as a football physio, okay?” I laughed.
“No excuse.”
When Michaels went to set down the bags, Miles slid his arm around my waist and pulled me close again. “Football,” he scoffed. “You don’t even mean therealsport, do you?”
“You take that back. Aussie Rules deserves the name far more than your weird American shit where you pass it around with yourhands.”
Tina sighed. “Right, I’ll leave you two to your flirting. Just remember, I need you downstairs at seven, yes?”
“Yes,” Miles said in a voice of long suffering, but before she could even roll her eyes, his phone rang. Loosening his hold on me, he glanced at the screen. “Damn, I have to take this.” With an apologetic grimace my way, he ambled off across the room lifting the phone to his ear.
“Catch you later, Matteo,” Tina said, heading for the door.
With Miles occupied, I took the opportunity and hurried after her as she reached the hallway. “Hey, can I have a word?”
Tina’s fine brows made an arch of surprise and she glanced around to be sure we were alone. “All right. How serious? Do I need a chair? Pen and paper? A stiff drink?”
“Hopefully not, though I could be wrong.”
“That’s ominous.” She gestured along the stretch of plush carpet. “Here, let’s walk so we look like we just happen to be going the same way.”
Letting Miles’s door close behind me, I fell in beside her, strolling toward the lifts. “It’s about Emily.”
Tina’s expression slid from surprise to sympathy. “I know that whole situation must be hard for you, Matteo, but surely you went into this understanding he’s not out. Most of the time it doesn’t matter, but sometimes we have to employ a little—”
“It’s not that.” It was, but not entirely, so I wasn’t going to admit it. “Is she in love with him?”
“Oh. Um, no?” Her brows knitted. “At least not that she’s ever said or that I’ve noticed beyond what’s naturally part of the job. Are you thinking she was clingy in Cincinnati? That’s just how she is when she’s playing for the cameras. And since anyone can snap a pic with their phone at any time, there arealwayscameras.”
“I hope you’re right, but I still think you need to talk to her.”
Tina stopped and shot me a cautionary look. “I like you, Matteo, and I like how happy you make Miles, but I hope you aren’t going to make a habit of telling me how to do my job. I’m his agent and social media manager, not yours, which means I only take orders from him. If he wants me to—”
“I’m not trying to throw my weight around, I just—” I broke off, heaving a sigh. “He’s already dealing with enough shit with the team thing, and I know there’s stuff going on with your parents that he isn’t telling me. And the pressure for him to win the tournament is huge, not helped by the fact that he might have to fight throughme to get there. So, I thought this was one thing I could handle without having to worry him about it.”
“And this thing is that you think Emily is in love with him? I admit it could prove troublesome if she is, though I assure you she’s well aware he’s—” She paused, and seeming to recall where we were, lowered her voice to go on. “Gay and he’s never done anything to encourage her to think there was anything in it.”
He wouldn’t have to. That was the problem. Miles leaked charm, and beneath the occasionally bratty persona, he had a natural instinct for being kind and generous and what more could anyone want? My belief that I disliked him immensely had lasted barely hours beneath the strength of that magnetism.
“Have you seen the pictures she posts of him?”
Tina frowned, glancing down at her phone as though passing on the question. “Yes? I mean, I don’t look through every photo, but it’s almost always the three of us hanging out when we go places, so I figure I’ve seen it all.”
“Perhaps you should look a bit closer. Swipe beyond the first few and they are . . . uncomfortably intimate. I thought so even when I wasn’t his boyfriend.”
“Oh.” For the first time she looked troubled. “All right, I’ll do that. Thanks for letting me know. Just so long as you understand this is how it has to be.”
I swallowed the urge to argue, because for all I had been let in, for all Miles smiled and slid his arm around my waist and introduced me as his boyfriend to his new physio, I was the newcomer here and still had no sense of just how much control his parents really had.
“Yeah, I know,” I said. “And so long as you understand that while I’m not trying to change anything, I am going to fight for him. For whatheneeds and whathewants, not what other people think he should do.”
“A warning?”
That hadn’t been my plan when I’d followed her out, though it was best she knew. “I guess, but moreforyou rather than to you. I won’t make trouble, but I won’t hold my tongue either.”
Tina nodded, no smile on her face. “I appreciate it. I wish I could say I appreciate you, too, but . . . I worry. The older sister thing, you know.”
“I know.”
