Illegal Contact (The Barons 1)

This was the first year I was without family, and I missed it. I missed them.

I wondered if that yearning would have been as strong if I’d been able to spend the day alone with Gavin. Sometimes this place felt like home to me, especially when he dozed off in the bed with me. But now, with a chef and a staff of helpers scurrying, and with Mel and Joe talking shop in the living room with Gavin, it was clear I didn’t belong. This wasn’t my home.

So I stayed in the kitchen with the cooks and tried to help. Unfortunately, they seemed irritated by my presence so I banished myself to the office and wondered if I could get an airline associate on the phone. With Joe willing me to sink into a hole in the floor, it was a better idea to stay the hell out of the way.

Or was it?

Every time I pictured Gavin’s face when he’d admitted to never spending his holidays with someone who’d just wanted to be with him, I felt like an asshole for hiding. For letting Joe run me off. And for being ashamed to have been in the bed with him. Was it really so bad? Was I really so fucking awful? Was liking him something to be ashamed of, just because I was his employee for a few months? My head said yes, but the way my pulse raced when we were together made it plain as day that every other part of my body wanted to scream no.

I went back into the living room. Joe glared, but Gavin smiled. It was a little-boy-on-Christmas-morning smile. Surprised and happy.

God, what the hell was he doing to me? He’d gone from growling every time I walked in the wrong direction to looking at me like I’d hung the moon. And it was only my guardedness and paranoia that kept me from looking at him the exact same way.

“Noah, take the day off from working, for God’s sake,” Mel said after setting eyes on me. “You’re missing the game.”

I looked at the available seats. Joe and Gavin were on opposite ends of the same part of the sectional, and Mel had perched on the loveseat. It seemed wiser to sit next to her.

“What’s the score?”

“0-7. Marcus just scored a touchdown,” Mel said. “Rushed sixty yards.”

“Holy shit. Did they already show a replay?”

“Yeah, but it will come on again. It was a damn good moment.” Mel shook her head. “His athleticism is awesome.”

“Too bad Tony Donahue snapped him up before you did,” Joe commented between giving me side eyes. “You’d have been able to represent the Three Musketeers.”

They started talking business, and I tuned them out. For all that I had developed a passing interest in football in the last couple of months, discussing players’ salaries still made me uncomfortable. Especially since I was starting to view professional football as a trade-off between their health and money. It was something Gavin talked about more than he probably realized, and it’d slowly become my concern as well.

In five years, when Gavin was in his early thirties and had no choice but to retire, what would he do? He’d have money . . . but what would he do with it?

My eyes went to him. He was sprawled on the couch lazily, not unlike the position he’d been in the first time I set eyes on him, but this time he was doing nothing to hide the fact that he was checking me out. Doing a slow circuit of me in my grunge-era outfit, and absently rubbing his thumb against his lower lip.

I swallowed hard. Gavin smirked.

He was going to get us in so much trouble. It felt like we were sitting there flirting across the room with our parents nearby. Parents who very much did not want us together.

The next quarter wasn’t as exciting as the first, but in the third I found myself leaping to my feet and screaming as Phil, Gavin’s backup, scored a touchdown with an eighty-yard kick return. After my initial excitement my eyes flew to Gavin, wondering if seeing his replacement burned, but he was ecstatic. And when our eyes met, his face lit up further.

Without warning, he pulled me into a monstrous bear hug that took my feet off the floor. I laughed, unable to help it.

“I can’t believe you like football after all that shit you talked,” he said after putting me down. “Simeon and Marcus called it.”

“They did. But I don’t know if I’d care if anyone else was playing.”

Gavin thumped his chest. “Don’t matter as long as you root for me, baby. Next thing you know you’ll be tailgating.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“I know, but listening to you come up with dumbass possibilities would be funny.”