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“You’re putting words in my mouth.”
“Nothing you didn’t imply.” He rose to his feet, his agitation apparent as he paced a circle around his vacated chair. “And I can assure you that you were not the most obvious choice to work with me in this capacity. There aren’t many assistant coaches who bring an administrative aide with them when they take a new job, but I did it just the same because you needed a job at the time. And I’m the only coach in the league with a female personal assistant, so I’m breaking all kinds of ground there.”
“You can’t honestly suggest that you created the job for me to further my career. I wanted to be an artist.”
“Yes. An artist. And your work led you to a studio in an even worse part of town than where we grew up. A place I warned you not to take. I offered to rent another space for you. But then—”
“The break-in.” She didn’t want to think about that night when gang members, high on heaven knew what, had broken into the studio and threatened her.
They’d destroyed her paintings when they’d realized there was nothing of value in the place to steal. Then they’d casually discussed the merits of physically assaulting her before one of them got a text that they needed to be elsewhere. The three of them had disappeared into the night while she’d remained paralyzed with fear long afterward.
“Those bastards threatened you. And I suggested every plan under the sun to help you, Addy, but you were too stubborn and proud to let me do anything.”
Crickets chirped in the silence that followed. A log shifted in the fire pit, sending sparks flying.
“You wanted to build me a studio in the country.” She recalled a fax from an architect with the plans for such a building, including a state-of-the-art security system. “How on earth could I have ever repaid you for such a thing? I was barely out of college.”
“Like I said. Too stubborn.” He spread his hands wide. “I was just a few years out of college myself and I was dealing with a lot of family expectations. The studio would have been easy for me to give you and I was happy to do it, but you wouldn’t hear of it.”
“I’d never take something for nothing. And don’t you blame me for that, because you wouldn’t either if our positions were reversed.” Maybe she hadn’t let herself remember that time in detail because it had taken a long time to recover from the emotional trauma of that night.
Seeing her canvases hacked to bits had been different than having her computer stolen or her phone smashed. Her art was an extension of her, a place where she poured her heart.
“So I gave you a job. That, you would accept.”
“And now, years after the fact, I’m still supposed to kiss your feet for the opportunity?” She shot out of her chair, a restless energy taking hold as she closed the distance between them.
“Absolutely not.”
His quick agreement didn’t come close to satisfying her.
“I worked hard in an industry I knew nothing about,” she pressed. “I left my home and everything I knew to go to Atlanta with you.” Her first task had been finding housing for them.
Relocating to a new city had been so simple with Dempsey’s seemingly limitless resources and connections.
Unlike starting over in New Orleans, which had seemed impossible after her sense of safety had been shredded and her body of work reduced to scraps.
“Yes. And you proved yourself invaluable almost right away. My work was easier with your help. You never needed direction and understood me even on days I was so terse and exhausted I could only snap out a few words of instructions for you.”
“I had a long history of interpreting you.” A wry grin tugged at her lips, but she wasn’t going to let nostalgia cloud her vision of him. Of them.
“But we’d scarcely seen each other for a decade.” He reached toward her, as if to stroke her cheek, but he must have thought better of it when his hand fell to his side. “I was surprised how well we got back into sync.”
“You might be more surprised to know how much more in sync we could be.” The words leaped from her mouth.
One moment they were in her head. The next they were in the air, with no way to recapture them.
She saw the instant that full understanding hit him. The instant he heard the proposition underlying those words. His gaze shifted to her mouth, the heat in his eyes like a laser in its intensity.
“Of course it would not surprise me. That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to tell you.” He focused all his attention on her. “You’ve occupied every second of my thoughts today. You’ve got me so damn distracted, I can hardly think about football.”
