Page 16 of A Surprise for the Holidays
“You’re a cocky git, aren’t you?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t find me amusing and charming.”
Snorting, AJ shook his head, but Bailey noticed that he couldn’t quite hide the upward quirk of the corners of his lips.
“Oh, you do,” he pressed teasingly, well aware that he was openly flirting but unable to stop himself. “Youlikeme.”
“Shut up,” his coach shot back. “I tolerate you. For Ava’s sake.”
“Uh-huh.” Bailey’s grin was wide. “Sure thing, coach. I believe you. Thousands wouldn’t…”
“Daddy, I wrote Santa a new letter and—oh!” Ava rushed over to where the tree was starting to resemble a proper tree, at least in Bailey’s estimation. “It’s so tall!”
“Not as tall as me,” Bailey couldn’t help but observe.
“It’s tall enough,” AJ interrupted.
“Where are the decorations?” Ava asked, already switching gears like most five-year-olds Bailey knew.
Bailey gestured in the direction of the front door. “I left the bags in the car. I wanted to get the tree set up first. Once I’m done, you can help me carry them in.”
“Can I help set up the tree?”
He couldn’t deny her big, pleading blue eyes anything, not that he wanted to. On top of wanting to make sure that she had a good first Christmas with her dad, Bailey was determined to prove that an Aussie Christmas was every bit as enjoyable —if not more so— than a freezing European one.
“Hell yeah you can help,” he said, then squatted down to show her how to properly separate out the branches and their limbs, and then ‘fluff’ them for maximum effect. Her little fingerscopied his movements with less coordination, but he still praised her efforts, declaring her a natural. “Now that you’re helping, we’ll have this tree looking perfect in no time.”
Chapter 11
August
AJ wasn’t entirely sure what the strange feelings he was experiencing meant. While watching Bailey dress the Christmas tree with Ava, he felt almost attracted to his striker. His heart squeezed and something in his stomach fluttered, and he was altogether thrown off kilter.
It made no sense to him. None whatsoever.
He had never felt like this before. Not with a woman and certainly never with a man. He’d fleetingly acknowledged when other men were fit, and he’d obviously been attracted to women, but he’d never…felt thingslike this before.
It was overwhelming. He loved his daughter, and he loved his family, but he had never experienced this similar stirring of affection for someone he wasn’t related to.
That was kind of pathetic to admit, really, and he knew it. He was staring down forty and he’d never been in love.
Not that he was in love with Bailey.
But…fuck. He was attracted to him. He knew what that felt like and, as much as he wanted to convince himself otherwise, there wasn’t anything ‘almost’ about it. He was attracted to his striker. And when he watched the younger man so sweetly interacting with his daughter, his cold, dead heart actually yearned for the guy.
He’d neveryearnedfor anyone before.
This strange welling of affection and attraction and —of all things— desire to explore a future not unlike the scene playing out in front of him had AJ confused and panicked.
It wasn’t so much the notion that Bailey was a man. When his niece had first come out, he had read whatever advice he could about sexuality, wanting to support her in every way he could, and so he knew that sexuality could be fluid. On top of that, he had fooled around with a couple of other boys back when he’d been at the Academy, and he’d thought that was something everyone did…but maybe that wasn’t the case. Maybe his curiosity and hormones at the time had been trying to tell him something about himself that he hadn’t been able to understand at the time.
So, no, it wasn’t that Bailey was a man. It was that he’d never had serious feelings for anyone in his life, and the timing for this revelation was absolutely shithouse.
Not to mention how inappropriate it was for him, as Bailey’s coach, to be having these feelings at all.
But how could he not have them? Bailey had become his closest friend over the past month. The man had even ditcheda date to come and deal with his vomiting kid. He was even ensuring that AJ didn’t cock up his first ever Christmas with his daughter.
In the face of all that, AJ was powerless to avoid feelings. The fact that they were romantic and sexual in nature was still a bit of a surprise, though.
