Lady and the Champ(17)

“How would you know I’m staring at your ass? Do you have eyes in the back of your head?”

“I assume a guy who signs his texts with heart emojis is probably staring at my ass any chance he gets.”

You’re not wrong. “Can I point out the obvious? You kissed me back.”

“It was an accident!”

“What, like you tripped and fell?” I try a shit-eating grin, but she’s not budging. “Why are you so stubborn about this?”

“I need my job. And frankly, I don’t like football players. At all.”

“Oh, come on. You can’t just dismiss everybody who’s ever touched a football.”

“I can and I do. Okay, I don’t hate football players. But I’m not dating one ever again. And that includes you.”

I jump on that little revelation. “Oh, so you—”

“—I explained this to you. If I date you, or do anything unprofessional with you, my boss could fire me, and he’d be right. I’m a professional, and I need to act like one. That means no flirty text messages with a dozen different fucking heart emojis, no impromptu lunches, and definitely no sex.”

“How am I supposed to express myself if I can’t use emojis?”

“You’ve done plenty of expressing yourself.” Red spots rise high on her cheeks again.

“I don’t think so. For starters, I haven’t told you that your librarian outfit is smoking hot.”

Her mouth parts. “Austin.”

“Why do you hate football players?” I break in, then, before she can protest the interruption. “Or maybe the better question is why do you do PT for football players if you hate us so much?”

She’s quiet for a moment, playing with the edge of her napkin. “It was an ex-boyfriend.”

“Ah. Well, that makes sense.”

Her gaze meets mine, half hard, half sad. For a second I regret pushing her, but only for a second. I need to know what’s going on with her.

Finally she blurts, “I used to date Mason Carter. Is that enough information? Or do I need to go into details?”

“Oh. Wow.” Yeah, I recognize the name. He used to be pretty hot shit. “That must have been…a few years ago?”

“Yeah. I was his physical therapist, too.”

She’s looking me dead in the eye now, and I know she’s going to hit me as hard as she can with this story. Fine. Let her get it off her chest.

“And he damn near destroyed my career.”

“I know he got hurt…”

“Yes. He did. And I worked on his rehabilitation. I was his PT for that entire season. We worked together so well, and we ended up dating, and then when he really got hurt, he refused to follow my regimen. He blew his knee to hell and back, and then he blamed it on me.”

She stops dead, blinking hard. This time I don’t say anything at all. I remember Mason’s retirement, and I saw the press conference where he threw his PT under the bus. Of course, I had no idea that was Chloe. A few things start to make sense now.

“But…you’re still a PT. You’re doing great, right?”

“It took me a long time to recover from that. Personally and professionally. I thought I was never going to get a job in the sports field again. So I had to start over from scratch. If he hadn’t had that car accident, I’d still be fighting to get my credibility back.”

“The one where he was over the limit?”

“Yeah. Booze and pot.” She shakes her head. “He never did anything halfway, that’s for sure.”

I reach over and take her hand, and surprisingly, she lets me. Her fingers squeeze mine lightly.

“After that, people didn’t believe him as easily, and some of the hubbub around me died down. A couple of the team doctors even spoke up for me when I was looking for work after that, and I finally got back on an even keel.”

“I’m glad you did. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here, right?”

She pulls her hand back a little sharply. “Come on, Sherwood. You’re refusing to do what I tell you, and you’re coming on to me like you think I should just crawl right onto your dick. Because of course you do. You’ve got women in every city, just like he did. And if anything actually happened between us, you’d go right on to the next game and call the next name out of your little black book, just like he did.”

“Chloe, not everybody’s like that. Believe it or not, some football players aren’t Neanderthal-like hunchbacks with shit for brains. Some of us know a good thing when we see it.”

I wonder if I told her a little too much there. I decide I don’t care. I do know a good thing when I see it, and Chloe’s one of the best things I’ve seen in a long time.

“I can’t risk it, Austin.” She actually sounds a little regretful. Maybe I’ve gotten to her, after all. “Not professionally, not personally.”

“So just because one guy was an asshole to you, you’re never going to allow even a little bit of fun into your life? You’re what, going to take a vow of chastity?”

Her mouth turns up, almost into a smile. “I can have fun. Just not with you.”

We’ll see about that.

At that point, we’re interrupted when Emma starts wiggling and trying to sit up. I have to divert my attention since I don’t want her to roll off the booth and hurt herself. She’s fussy—pretty natural after a good long nap. I try to get her to settle in my lap, but she’s having none of it.

“Can I take her?” Chloe asks, holding her arms out.

I hesitate. Not because I’m afraid Chloe won’t know how to handle Emma, but more because I’m afraid if she realizes what a chore babies really are, she might double down on her irrational desire to not date me. Then Emma looks up, sees Chloe, and her little arms shoot out. It’s like there’s a magnet pulling her across the table. If she gets any wigglier, she’s going to wriggle right out of my hands and into the eggs Benedict.

I get awkwardly to my feet and pass Emma across the table. Chloe takes her, and Emma immediately calms down, laying her head on Chloe’s shoulder and playing with her hair while she says, “Ba ba ba,” over and over again. I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean, but from the way she’s acting it must be a compliment.

The waitress comes by just then, bringing our bill. She takes one look at Emma and gets googly-eyed, as many women tend to do when they see babies.

“Aww, she’s precious!” she says. “The two of you must be so proud.”

“We’re—” Chloe starts, then she stops, smiles a little, and instead says, “She’s a great kid. Really.”

Emma reaches a hand out to the waitress, grinning wide, and the waitress takes hold of one finger and shakes solemnly. “It’s very nice to meet you.”

She drops our bill on the table. “I hope you guys have a great day.” She gives us another adoring look. “What a beautiful family.”

Again, Chloe looks like she might be about to say something, but in the end she doesn’t. She just smiles and says, “You have a great day, too.”

I can’t help but smile. They look perfect together. Almost like mother and daughter. Something warm moves in my chest. I’m pretty sure it’s not a heart attack, so it must be sentiment.

Or something stronger. I shake that thought aside. The one that follows isn’t much less intense. I want this woman in my family. And so, apparently, does my daughter.

I pay the bill, overriding Chloe’s insistence that we go Dutch. She’s occupied enough with Emma that she doesn’t put up much of a fight. While I’m signing the credit card slip, my phone dings.

I glance at the message—it’s an alert from my daily calendar. “Shit,” I mutter.

“What’s wrong?” Chloe asks.

“I just forgot I’m supposed to meet Emma’s nanny. She’s expecting me back at the hospice.”

“Oh. We’d better get going then.”

“Yep.”

I think about asking for Chloe to hand Emma back, but she seems content, so I just grab the carrier and we head out. Chloe plays with my baby, pointing out the trees and birds, a cloud that looks like a hippopotamus. I’ve never seen Emma so engaged with a woman before other than my mom. Emma likes my sister, but it’s nothing like this. And with Megan—well, it’s like my baby already knows Megan isn’t all that invested in being her mom.

It’s amazing to me that this woman could come out of nowhere and become important so quickly, not just to me, but to my daughter. I have no idea what I’m going to do about that.

As we approach the nanny’s car, Genevieve gets out and comes to meet us. She’s French, in her mid-twenties, and came very highly recommended. She’s also expensive, but that’s fine with me as long as Emma’s well taken care of.

Emma loves Genevieve. But now, when she sees her, Emma’s lower lip starts poking out.

“Oh, honey, it’s okay,” Chloe says as Genevieve reaches to take the baby.

“She likes you very much,” Genevieve says, giving Chloe an approving glance. Then she looks at me, and the expression in her dark eyes is inscrutable. I don’t really speak French, but it seems to me like that look is telling me I need to man up and do something about the fact that my daughter has bonded with an adult woman who cares about her.