Gavin stared at me, saying nothing.
“Do you talk to your neighbors at all?”
“No.”
“Did you just move here?”
“No.”
Why was this like pulling teeth? I grasped at small-talk straws, but Gavin was more unnerving than he’d been last time. He maintained direct eye contact, barely blinked, and spoke in curt monosyllables. Well, unless he was defending the sacred art of football.
“Oh. It seems pretty empty.” Where the hell had he grown up again? I wracked my brain for the information I’d dug up online the night before. “Do you like Long Island better than New Jersey?”
“I hate them equally.”
Did Gavin Brawley not hate other things? It was a mystery.
“Are you remodeling?”
A glimmer of annoyance crossed Gavin’s face. “You’re the fourth person to comment on my interior design in the past week. Why does it matter?”
“Because it looks like you’re squatting in an empty mansion.” I winced. “Sorry. I’m not usually this sarcastic when talking to potential employers.”
“You should probably work on that. My fuse is short and burns fast.”
“So I’ve heard.”
Gavin pointed at me. “You did it again.”
“What?”
“Were a smartass.”
I spread my hands. “I don’t know what to say. I really want this job, but ever since that first interview . . . I don’t know. We got off on the wrong foot and I can’t seem to steady myself.” Because of your jerk manager.
Gavin sat back in his chair and propped his elbows on the arms. “Have you changed your mind about what I do for a living?”
“Not really. I’m not into sports.”
“Then we’ll always be on the wrong foot. Luckily, I don’t care about your opinions. If this goes according to plan, we will never talk to each other about anything other than what I want you to do for me.”
My thoughts zoomed to the dirtiest places imaginable.
Gavin Brawley was one of the most unlikeable people I’d ever met, and yet my brain had no problems conjuring images of us naked, sweating, and doing the unmentionable.
Fingers snapped in front of my face, and I blinked my way back to the real world. The one where Gavin’s mouth was tight and impatience exuded from every aspect of his body language.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“I want you to tell me why you want to work for someone you don’t respect.”
“I never said I don’t respect you.”
Gavin released a humorless chuckle. “Football is my life. If you don’t respect the game, you don’t think much of me. You see me as a man who signed a sixty-million-dollar, six-year contract to catch balls and run around slamming into other guys.”
I tried to school my expression, and failed. My jaw dropped. “How much do you make a year?”
“A lot.”
“So why isn’t the pay for this PA job more?”
Gavin’s brows flew up. Once again, I knew I should have kept my mouth shut, but it was impossible with Gavin dropping knowledge about wanting to pay me the equivalent, to a huge NFL salary, of pocket change.
“How much do you think you should get?”
“It depends on what I’ll be doing. So far all we’ve done is vaguely get on each other’s nerves without getting to the job responsibilities. Considering you’re locked down in here with nothing to do but work out or swim, I’m assuming I’ll be driving all over Long Island, or into the city, to do your errands.” I folded my hands together, squeezing them. “And you don’t seem to have any other help around the house, so if I’m also taking on those duties . . .”
Gavin nodded slowly, rubbing his chin. For the first time, his stone-cold expression cracked with a tiny twitch of his mouth. “Answer my question, and we’ll eventually get to that. Why do you want to work for me?”
“It would be a good experience.”
“How?”
“I told Mr. Carmichael—”
“I don’t want to hear the rehearsed line of crap you told Joe. I want you to tell me, in honest words, why you want to work for me? Be real.”
“Because I know I can do it,” I said. “I’m organized, I can multitask, I have good instincts and don’t need micromanaging, and I’ve been entrusted with sensitive material before. I know a lot of people would love this job just for the purpose of being in a professional athlete’s presence, but I don’t care about your celebrity. I care about doing a good job. If you called my references, you would know that I’m anal-retentive and a perfectionist. I don’t do anything half-assed, even if this job has nothing to do with my degree.”
“Not true. If you’ve got yourself a degree in social work, then you took courses in ethics. I noticed you didn’t ask me a single question about that confidentiality agreement, which means you understood why I was giving it to you and what everything meant.”
That was a good point. I felt like a dick for being surprised that Gavin was an analytical enough creature to make those connections. I needed to stop making assumptions about the intelligence of jocks, but it seemed unfair for Gavin to be athletic, attractive, and reasonably intelligent. There had to be a deficit. Oh wait, there was. His personality.
“You’re right.”
“So, what else?”
“What else . . . what?”
“You hate football. Why do you want to work for a football player?”
“I didn’t know you were a football player.”
“You did when I called you back,” Gavin said. “And you sucked up so hard I’m surprised there was any air left in your immediate vicinity.”
I had never been a blusher before meeting Gavin. Now, I felt like my face was almost always on fire when in the other man’s presence. Even so, there was no sign of the creeping nerves or icy-cold fingers of intimidation and dread that had crept over me while face-to-face with Joe. Gavin inspired . . . other feelings in me. Like rage. And embarrassment. Also attraction, but I was determined to ignore that.
“I wanted a second chance.” I stopped clenching my sweaty fingers together. “Look, I realize you want real talk, so I’ll give it to you. The main reason I want this job is for the money. I grew up in a tiny apartment in Elmhurst, applied for every grant imaginable to get into college, and still needed to borrow. Now, I’m drowning in student loans and credit-card debt. I’m also helping my father financially because he lost his job. So, unless something happens now, I’m screwed. Broke but also in debt. So broke to the millionth power.”
I swallowed the sour ball swelling in my throat. Gavin would never have my problems. He would never be able to understand. To him, my thirty thousand dollars of debt was the equivalent of a few careless fines in a couple of games. Even so, I pressed on. “Do I like football? No. I buried myself in books and make-believe worlds to escape my childhood. But do I understand why other people care so much about it? I guess you can say I do now. If I learned anything from meeting you, it’s that.”
***
Gavin