Never Have A Baller's Baby

She drew in a deep breath. “Well, we have this fantastic… bond… together, but it’s only when I’m here. We never go out together anywhere. We don’t do anything outside of your home.

Every time we’ve ever been together, it’s been right here. I feel like we should be exploring more together outside of your house… outside of your bed.” She held what was left of her breath and waited, watching him, hoping to gauge his response.

He sighed heavily and looked away from her, curling his fingers into hers. “I understand what you’re saying, and I get that. I do. It isn’t really as easy as just going out, though. You and I can be ourselves here; we have no one watching us, or judging us… there’s no one in our way. We can have each other with no repercussions or problems.

Out there… well, it’s different out there. I’m constantly in the public eye. I’m constantly in the media. I don’t know if you really understand that, but everything that I do is subject to public scrutiny. If I was a regular guy, then yeah, we could go out and be together, and no one would really care or pay any attention to us.

Unfortunately, that’s not who I am. I have a duty to the team and to the public to uphold a certain kind of image. You and I don’t really fit into that image together as a couple in public. Do you see what I mean?” He looked at her imploringly.

She frowned and knitted her brow. “So what’s the problem? Are you ashamed of me? Are you just trying to hand me some kind of excuse because you don’t want to be around me in public?”

He shook his head and his tone grew serious. “No! No, it’s not that at all. It’s nothing like that. I wouldn’t really care what the public thinks, as far as I’m concerned for my own self, but it isn’t just me that I’m thinking of. I’m part of something bigger than myself. I’m part of a team. I’m a public figure. Of course I’m not ashamed of you. I wish I could take you out and be in public with you. It’s just not that easy, though. There’s a lot more than just the two of us to consider. Can’t you understand that?”

She pushed herself up and leaned on her hand, looking down at him through narrowed eyes. “So I’m just good enough for you to have in your bed and in your house, and I’m good enough to do all of this work here for you, but because I don’t fit the mold of what everyone else thinks you should have or do, then I’m just not good enough to have on your arm in front of everyone. I get it.” Her voice went dangerously sharp.

With another sigh, he sat up beside her and looked directly in her dark eyes. “You’re wrong about that. That’s not how it is, and I don’t want you to think that. Please don’t think that. I’m not using you!” He sounded adamant.

“Yes you are!” she snapped at him with a shake of her head. “I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation! All this time I thought you really cared about me! I thought I mattered to you and that we were actually building something together here! Now I can see what’s really happening, and I just can’t believe this.

You don’t want me for anything more than just some fun in your sheets!” She launched herself up from the floor and snatched her clothes up with her. “I’m not doing this. If you think for one minute that I’m going to sit around here and let you use me behind closed doors while you parade around in your pretty little life, and then act like you don’t even know who I am, you have another think coming. I’m worth having, Scott. I’m worth being with and being taken seriously; worth being cared about. I’m sure as hell nothing to be ashamed of!”

She pulled her clothes on as he scrambled to his feet. Raising his voice, he scowled darkly at her. “That’s not what’s happening here! You’re turning this around! You’re turning all of it around! Don’t start a fight that doesn’t need to even happen! I do care about you, and I love what we have together, all right? I’m just telling you that we can’t take it public, and that’s all! You have to try to understand!”

Naomi didn’t say another word, and she refused to look at him. Closing the button on her skirt, she stomped over to the dresser and grabbed her purse before going to the door. With a sharp turn, she glared hotly at him over her shoulder.

“Scott Thompson, this is the last time that you and I are ever going to be together. I’m not about to put up with all your games. I don’t care what you call it, but that’s what it is. That’s what you’re doing with me. I’m not one to play games. We’re done. This isn’t going to happen with us ever again.

As far as the work that I’m doing here, I’ll finish it as fast as I can, but I’m going to insist that as a professional courtesy, you let me finish all of it when you aren’t home, so that I don’t have to see you. After it’s all finished, that will be it for us, and you’ll never have to see me again, or worry about anyone in your precious public seeing us together, because there won’t be any chance at all of it happening.”

With that, she turned and marched out of the room, slamming the door bitterly behind her. Scott grumbled angrily and planted his hands on his bare hips, standing alone in the room staring at the door, wondering how such a beautiful afternoon had suddenly turned into a disaster.

He cared a great deal for Naomi, and he didn’t want to see her go, but there was no way that he could take her into the public as a partner in a relationship with him. He wished deeply that she could understand that, but he knew that it was something she wasn’t ever going to be able to comprehend. Frustration burned through him, and he leaned down to pick up his clothes, telling himself that it was probably for the best that she was gone, and wishing that he could believe it.

Naomi closed her car door hard behind her as she sat in it, and struggled against the emotions that were welling up in her. As she drove down the winding streets out of Beverly Hills, she tried to hold back the torrent of anger and shame that threatened to overtake her.

The further she got from his home, the more the pain in her heart swelled, until at last she could no longer hold it in and hot tears spilled over her thick black

eyelashes and down her dark cheeks. She wiped at them, pushing them away, just as she was trying to push away the ache in her heart, telling herself that she was better than what Scott was trying to do to her; she was not a woman to be used and tossed aside like trash, worthless and discarded.

Naomi hadn’t even thought about where it was that she was going, and before she realized it, she found herself in a parking lot at a hidden area of beach on the Pacific Ocean. It was a place that she went to in her childhood and in her college years when she needed some peace and a safe place to heal hurts that life extolled to her.

Blinking back more tears, she climbed out of her car and headed for the golden sand and the big swelling waves that crashed in to shore among scattered rocks and boulders where the earth met the sea.

It had started simply with Scott. She’d been referred to him by the mother of one of his old friends, and she had been excited enough when he had come into the design firm and talked to her about hiring her to redecorate his home. She’d known that he was a sports celebrity, but she didn’t follow football, and she had no real concept of just how famous he was when he had decided to hire her.

He’d told her once that her professionalism with him was one of the reasons why he had chosen her above other firms to decorate his home. That professional relationship had changed swiftly when she had begun working for him in the privacy of his home.

At first it went the way that all of her jobs had gone; she was in the home, she decorated and worked, and he came and went as she did so. Things changed when he began to spend a good deal more time around her when she was working; they talked and got to know one another.

In what had truly been a short time he had talked her into staying over at his home for dinner a couple of nights a week until one night when dinner and wine became blazing passion in his bed and that was followed by breakfast and coffee.

She had felt a little guilty at first; it was always of the utmost importance to her to maintain a professional rapport with her clients, but there was no denying the attraction between them, and there was no denying the desire that they were both overwhelmed with, and wanted more than anything to give in to.

One time with him and it changed everything between them. Neither of them could stay away from the other, and both of them wanted each other in so many ways, all of the time. She had believed as her physical desire for him grew so much stronger, and her heart began to feel so much for him, that he wanted her just as much, and that he was growing to care for her as much as she was for him.

She realized, as she walked slowly through the warm afternoon sand down the beach, that he had never had any strong feelings for her; they had never been there. If they had been there, she told herself, she would never have had to ask him about going out in public with her. It would have happened naturally. He would have wanted to take her out with him.

He would have wanted to be a couple with her, he would have been proud enough of her to share his relationship with her so that everyone knew about it, and it was public. He’d never have been ashamed of her. He’d never have wanted to hide her from the world, no matter what the world thought.