Page 44 of Merrily Us

In fact, starting a new job as the Director of Sports Psychology for an NFL team is a major deal. The thought of it has my stomach buzzing with nerves, my entire body jittery like I just downed six espresso shots instead of the single cup of coffee my anxious stomach let me drink. 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. 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.

Fake it until you make it, right?

“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 starting his senior year of high school next week. He’s havingfeelingsabout it.”

Grinning, I look up to see Brian’s wife 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 an image of how I spent my night last night,and a tall, gorgeous stranger with 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.

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 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 nine-year-old declaring that he can’t live without hockey. He sounded desperate. I remember what it was like to have a nine- and thirteen-year-old, and doing it alone would have been impossible, so here I am.”

I flip through my mental roster of names. Cameron Lowry, veteran offensive lineman and single dad of two who lost his wife when his youngest, now nine, 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 toface 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, she was my babysitter for a year or so before she started her business. She married my Uncle Brian when I was fourteen, 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 started—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 or because another one of my pseudo-uncles still holds passing records for this very football team. 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 the medical facilities and show you your office, or is that too much nepotism for you?”

I snort out a laugh. “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. “Where are you meeting Cam?”

“Right here actually,” she says, just as the lobby door opens.

All three of us turn in unison, and suddenly I’m not standing in the lobby of the Renegades practice facility anymore. I’m in a fancy suite on the top floor of a downtown hotel. The room is dim, lit only by the glow of a single bedside lamp. And the man. Oh my god, the man. He’s tall and broad, with dark, disheveled hair and the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. Eyes that look at me like they see straight to the core of me. He’s over me, under me, everywhere, mapping my body with lips and teeth and tongue and hands, over and over again until all I could see was him. He didn’t know me, but it was like heknewme. What I wanted. What I needed.

He was a stranger.

It was supposed to be just for one night.

Except my one night just walked through the door of my brand new workplace, and it’s definitely not night anymore.

“You must be Cameron,” Liv says, holding out a hand.

“Cam,” he says, sliding his hand into hers to shake. His deep, rumbly voice has the hairs on the back of my neck standing straight up. “Everyone calls me C?—”

The rest of his name is cut off when his gaze lands squarely on me. His eyes widen, then they heat, his lips tipping up in a smile I feel everywhere.

Holy fucking fuck.

I am so screwed.