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But I didn’t dwell on it. Things ended up okay.
My dad and me were close, we were all happy, and overall, there wasn’t a single thing I had to complain about.
Conleigh, who must have slipped her shorts on while I was lost in my thoughts, walked up to me and placed her hand on my face. Looking at me with concern in her eyes, she asked, “Are you okay?”
I nodded, pulling her into me. “Fine.”
“Are you sure? That was just supposed to be a joke,” she admitted. “I would never want that to happen.”
But it could happen, which was why it was a fairly big fear of mine.
Football had always been there, even when my dad had not.
I wasn’t bitter or anything, but the thought of not having it because I was injured scared me a little more than I was willing to admit.
“Can you wait for about twenty more minutes?” I asked.
She was seconds away from replying when the door to the supply closet opened and Joe said, “Can we finish?”
Joe looked pissed, and I had a feeling that had more to do with the athletic trainer than because I’d asked for some time during the middle of a workout.
“Yeah,” I agreed, placing a chaste kiss on Conleigh’s forehead before letting her go.
When she went to pull away completely, I caught her hand in mine and guided her into the hallway, making a short stop to pick up the rag that she’d used to clean up and drop it into the closest trashcan.
Conleigh promptly blushed scarlet but didn’t say another word.
Joe stalked in front of us, his hands clenched into fists, and I had no choice.
I had to know what had happened.
“Joe?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”
Joe sighed and loosened his fists, but the tension was still in every muscle of his body.
“That goddamn woman drives me insane,” he admitted. “It doesn’t matter what I do. Talk to her nicely? Tease her? Bug the shit out of her? None of it affects her. It’s like she’s a cyborg or something.”
“Who?” Conleigh whispered into my ear so that only I could hear.
“Joe has a crush,” I whispered back. “And she doesn’t reciprocate.”
Conleigh made an ‘ah-ha’ motion with her head but didn’t reply, which was good, because Joe and his crush were not a good topic of conversation when he was acting like this.
Joe didn’t get in a bad mood very often, but when he did, he usually had the athletic trainer on his mind.
We arrived in the weight room and it was no longer empty, but the newcomer didn’t bother me.
I was more than used to working out with an audience. Hell, it was my job to athletically perform in front of a very large audience. One more person in the weight room wasn’t much of an audience at all when compared to the tens of thousands of screaming fans that were normally there for games.
“Let’s do this,” Joe growled.
I looked over my shoulder at Conleigh and gestured to the mats that were set up for us to roll out our muscles with the roller once we were done lifting weights.
She went, but not before she delivered the parting comment from hell.
“I’ll just sit here and do some Kegels while you do your thing.”Chapter 13If you wear a condom, it’s not cheating.
-Things you hear as a nurse
Conleigh
Linc was sexy as hell on a good day. Adding a baby to his arms? Yeah, that was just asking for my vagina to implode.
The sheer number of fans that this man had was downright amazing, and honestly, humbling.
Not to mention that Linc was so good with them. All of them.
From the oldest to the youngest—like the two-week-old little girl that someone had just placed in his arms.
“We named her Jamie,” the proud father said. “After James, your last name. I tried to get my wife to go with Lincoln, but she wasn’t sure that it was a good girl name.”
I wasn’t, either.
I also wasn’t sure that I’d be thrusting my two-week-old baby girl into the arms of a man they didn’t even know, but that might’ve been just me.
It was week two of Linc moving in with me, and there hadn’t been a single thing that had gone wrong since the night that Hoax was hurt.
Hell, Tyson hadn’t acted out of character even once.
Then again, he barely looked my way half the time while we were working, and I was beginning to wonder if maybe my stepfather had overreacted. But, then I went back to the fact that Steel wasn’t the type to overreact. Not even a little bit.
I assume that was why it was so baffling to me.
It was a really odd feeling to know that something was wrong while everyone around me acted like everything was fine.
Hell, Tyson hadn’t so much as looked at me again other than to address me when we were both looking after the same patient.
