Page 36 of Marring an Athlete

“How am I being weird?” he asked.

She brought her gaze up to meet his and then moved to grab a few of what looked like tiny purple onions. She held them in her hand as she continued studying the card.

“Well, you’re acting strange about Javier and now Pierre. Are you jealous of foreign guys?” She put the card down and picked up a knife and cut into the onion thing.

Michael leaned his hip against the counter and watched her as she peeled off the skin. “What are you doing?” he asked, hoping that turning the attention to her would help dispel the feeling of awkwardness that had settled in his gut.

“These are shallots. We need to chop and sauté them.” She glanced over at him. “I thought you were this cooking guru. You seemed confident enough to commit us to making two sauces.”

He shot her a sheepish look as he picked up a shallot and started copying her. He hadn’t meant to do that. Sometimes situations just got away from him. “Yeah, sorry.”

Anna shrugged. “I’m used to it. You can be rash when it comes to decisions you make.”

He wanted to respond. To tell her that it wasn’t true. But the more he thought about it, the truer it became. He was rash. He’d always been. It was his lack of thinking things through that had gotten him into the Daisy situation.

“I’m sorry,” Anna said. Her tone had softened.

He glanced over at her. What did she have to apologize for? He was the idiot, not her. “Don’t say you’re sorry when you’re right.” He pushed the knife into the shallot, and it clinked when he hit the cutting board. After both ends were off, he peeled the skin. The shallot was tiny.

Anna was watching him when he glanced back up. She shrugged and returned to dicing. “Well, I could be nicer about it.”

“Yeah. You could. But sometimes us boneheaded men wouldn’t pick up on that.”

She giggled as she dumped the shallot pieces into a bowl. She was quiet, so he peeked over at her. There was a contorted look on her face as she stared at the pieces he was cutting.

“Am I doing this wrong?” he asked, glancing down at the mangled mess on his cutting board.

“No,” she said and then shook her head. “I mean, yes. You’re pulverizing that poor shallot.”

She moved over to him and grabbed onto his hand. “You need to cut it so the pieces are uniform.” She glanced back at him, and her expression was serious, like she felt the zaps of electricity that raced up his skin from her touch.

“Uniform?” he asked. He swallowed, hoping it would return his voice to normal.

“Yes. This piece?” She held up a section that was the size of half his pinkie finger. “It’s too big.” She brought it back down to the cutting board. Then she reached over and touched his hand.

He tried to ignore how good it felt to have her standing so close to his body. To feel her warmth cascade over him. He knew that he should step back. But he was finding it hard to do that when every part of him ached to hold her.

As much as he wanted to enjoy the feeling of her pressed against him, he couldn’t. So he dropped the knife onto the counter and then took a step to the side. “Show me, Ms. Picky.” Joking seemed about the only thing he knew how to do.

Anna’s eyebrows rose as her gaze met his. After a moment, she picked up the knife. And began cutting the shallots. Michael busied himself by reading the recipe card in front of him.

Every so often, he glanced over to McKenna and Sam who seemed to be working together. He detected a few stolen glances and hopeful smiles as they chopped and sautéed together.

He felt happy for his sister. She deserved this. Even though they were both hurting inside, he knew that they wanted to work on their marriage. That they weren’t going to give up—no matter how much hurt they needed to work through.

Anna was pushing the shallots around in the pan when he glanced over at her. In many ways, this was how he felt about Anna.

She was important to him. She always would be. And as hard as it was to be next to her—feeling her close and not being allowed to do anything about it—she was his friend.

He wasn’t going to push her away no matter how much he wanted to. She deserved better than that.

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