The Wall of Winnipeg and Me: A Novel
The Wall of Winnipeg and Me: Chapter 1

I was going to murder his ass.

One day.

One day long after I quit, so no one would suspect me.

“Aiden,” I grumbled, even though I knew better. Grumbling only got me the look—that infamous, condescending expression that had gotten Aiden into more than one fight in the past. Or so I’d been told. When the edges of his mouth turned down, got tight, and his brown eyes went heavy lidded, all it made me want to do was stick my finger up his nose. It’s what my mom used to do to us when we were little and would pout.

The man in question, who was on the verge of either a bloody, imaginary death or a carefully crafted one that involved dish soap, his food, and a long period of time, made a noise from behind the bowl of quinoa salad in front of him, which was big enough to feed a family of four. “You heard me. Cancel it,” he repeated as if I’d gone deaf the first time he’d said it.

Oh, I’d heard him. Loud and clear. That was why I wanted to kill him.

Which basically showed how amazing the human mind was; how you could care about someone but want to slit his or her throat at the same time. Like having a sister who you wanted to punch right in the ovaries. You still loved her, you just wanted to sock her right in the baby-maker to teach her a lesson—not that I knew from experience or anything.

The fact that I didn’t immediately respond probably made him add, with that same facial expression aimed right at me, “I don’t care what you have to tell them. Get it done.”

Pushing my glasses up the bridge of my nose with my left index finger, I lowered my right hand so that the cabinet could hide the middle finger I aimed right at Aiden. If his facial expression wasn’t bad enough, the tone he was using annoyed me even more. It was the voice he used to warn me it was pointless to argue with him; he wasn’t going to change his mind right then, or ever, and I needed to deal with it.

I always needed to deal with it.

When I’d first started working for the three-time National Football Organization’s Defensive Player of the Year, there had only been a few things I wasn’t a fan of doing; haggling with people, telling them no, and sticking my hand into the garbage disposal because I was both the cook and the cleaning lady of the house.

But if there was something I hated doing—and I mean really, really hated doing—it was cancelling on people last minute. It got on my nerves and went against my moral code. I mean, a promise was a promise, wasn’t it? Then again, this wasn’t me letting his fans down, technically. It was Aiden.

Freaking Aiden, who was busy inhaling his second lunch of the day without a care in the world, was oblivious to the frustrations he was going to make me face when I called his agent. After all the trouble we’d gone to schedule it, I was going to have to break the news that Aiden wasn’t going to be signing anything at the sporting goods store in San Antonio. Yippee.

I sighed, guilt niggling my belly and conscience, and reached down to rub my stiff knee with the hand that wasn’t busy expressing my frustrations. “You already promised them—”

“I don’t care, Vanessa.” He shot me that look again. My middle finger twitched. “Have Rob cancel it,” he insisted, as his giant forearm went up so he could shovel what looked like eight ounces of food into his mouth at once. The fork he was holding hovered in the air a moment as he flicked that dark, stubborn gaze to meet mine. “Is that a problem?”

Vanessa-this. Vanessa-that.

Cancel it. Have Rob cancel it.

Boo.

As if I loved calling his asshole agent to begin with, much less so he could cancel an appearance two days before it was supposed to take place. He was going to lose his mind, and then direct his frustrations at me as if I had some kind of pull over Aiden “The Wall of Winnipeg” Graves. The truth was, the closest I’d ever come to helping him make any kind of decision had been when I recommended a camera for him to buy, and that was only because he “had better things to do than camera research” and because “that’s what I pay you for.”

He had a point of course. Between what he paid me and what Zac chipped in from time to time, I could manage to put a smile on my face—even if it was a forced one—and do what was asked of me. Every once in a while, I even did a little curtsy, which Aiden pretended not to witness.

I didn’t think he really appreciated the amount of patience I had exercised when dealing with him for the last two years. Someone else would have already stabbed him in his sleep for sure. At least, when I went through plans for how I’d do it, it was usually in a painless way.

Usually.

Since he’d ruptured his Achilles tendon barely a month into the season last year, he’d turned into something else. I tried not to blame him; I really did. Missing nearly three months of the entire regular season and being blamed for your team not making it to the post season, or the playoffs, was hard to deal with. On top of that, some people had thought he wasn’t going to make a full comeback after having to take six months off to recover and rehab. The kind of injury he’d sustained was no joke.

But this was Aiden. Some athletes took even longer than that amount of time to get back on their feet, if they ever did. He hadn’t. But dealing with him on crutches, driving him to and from rehab and appointments, had taken a toll on my patience more than once.

There was only so much cranky little bitch you can handle in a day, even if it was called for. Aiden loved what he did, and I had to imagine he was scared he wouldn’t be able to play again, or that he would come back and not play up to the same level he’d been used to, not that he would ever voice any fears out loud. That was all understandable to me. I couldn’t imagine how I would feel if something happened to my hands and there was a chance I might not ever be able to draw again.

Regardless, his crankiness had hit a level not previously documented in the history of the universe. That was saying something, considering I’d grown up with three older sisters who all had periods at the same time. Because of them, most things—most people—didn’t bother me. I knew what it was like to be bullied, and Aiden never crossed the line into being unnecessarily mean. He was just a jackass sometimes.

He was lucky I had a tiny, itty, bitty crush on him; otherwise, he would have gotten the shank years ago. Then again, just about everyone with eyes who happened to also like men, had some kind of a thing for Aiden Graves.

When he raised his eyebrows and looked at me from beneath those curly black eyelashes, flashing me rich-brown eyes set deep into a face that I’d only seen smile in the presence of dogs, I swallowed and shook my head slowly as I gritted my teeth and took him in. The size of a small building, he should have had these big, uneven features that made him look like a caveman, but of course he didn’t. Apparently, he liked to defy every stereotype he’d ever been assigned in his life. He was smart, fast, coordinated, and—as far as I knew—had never seen a game of hockey. He had only said ‘eh’ in front of me twice, and he didn’t consume animal protein. The man didn’t eat bacon. He was the last person I would ever consider polite, and he never apologized. Ever.

Basically, he was an anomaly; a Canadian football-playing, plant-based lifestyle—he didn’t like calling himself a vegan—anomaly that was strangely proportional all over and so handsome I might have thanked God for giving me eyes on a couple of occasions.

“Whatever you want, big guy,” I said with a fake smile and a flutter of my eyelashes, even as I still flipped him off.

“They’ll get over it,” Aiden said casually, ignoring his nickname, rolling back two immensely muscular shoulders. I swear they were wide enough for a small person to drape across comfortably. “It isn’t a big deal.”

It wasn’t a big deal? The promoters wouldn’t feel that way, much less his agent, but then Aiden was used to getting his way. No one ever told him no. They told me no, and then I’d have to figure things out.

Despite what some people thought, the defensive end of the Three Hundreds, Dallas’s professional football team, wasn’t really an asshole or hard to work with. For all his faces and grumbling, he never cussed and hardly ever lost his temper without good reason. He was demanding; he knew exactly what he wanted and how he liked every single thing in his life. It was honestly an admirable quality, I thought, but it was my job to make those requests come true, regardless of whether I agreed with his decisions or not.

Only for a little bit longer though, I reminded myself. I was so close to quitting, I could feel it. The thought made my soul rejoice a bit.

Two months ago, my bank account had finally hit a comfortable number through sheer willpower, penny-pinching, and working long hours when I wasn’t Aiden’s assistant/housekeeper/cook. I’d hit my goal: save up a year’s salary. And I had. Finally. Halle-freaking-lujah. I could practically smell freedom in the air.

But the keyword there was ‘practically.’

I just hadn’t gotten around to telling Aiden I was quitting yet.

“Why are you making that face?” he asked suddenly.

I blinked up at him, caught off guard. I raised my eyebrows, trying to play dumb. “What face?”

It didn’t work.

With a fork hanging out of his mouth, he narrowed his dark eyes just the slightest bit. “That one.” He gestured toward me with his chin.

I shrugged in an ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’ expression.

“Is there something you want to say?”

There were a hundred things I wanted to tell him on a regular basis, but I knew him too well. He didn’t really care if there was something I wanted to say or not. He didn’t care if my opinion was different from his or if I thought he should do something differently. He was just reminding me who the boss was.

AKA not me.

Asswipe.

“Me?” I blinked. “Nope.”

He gave me a lazy glare before his eyes lowered to focus on the hand I had hidden on the other side of the kitchen island. “Then quit flipping me off. I’m not changing my mind about the signing,” he said in a deceptively casual voice.

I pressed my lips together as I dropped my hand. He was a goddamn witch. I swear on my life, he was a freaking witch. A wizard. An oracle. A person with a third eye. Every single time I had ever flipped him off, he’d been aware of it. I didn’t think I was that obvious about it either.

It wasn’t like I gave people the middle finger for fun, but it genuinely bothered me that he was cancelling an appearance without a legitimate reason. Backing out because he changed his mind and didn’t want to take an afternoon off from training, didn’t seem like one. But what did I know?

“All right,” I muttered under my breath.

Aiden, who I was pretty sure had no idea how old I’d turned this year, much less what month my birthday was, made a face for a split second. Those thick, dark eyebrows knit together and his full mouth pinched back at the corners. Then he shrugged, like he’d suddenly stopped caring about what I’d been doing.

What was funny was, if someone had told me five years ago that I’d be doing someone else’s dirty work, I would have laughed. I couldn’t remember ever not having goals or some sort of a plan for the future. I had always wanted something to look forward to, and being my own boss was one of those things I strived for.

I’d known since I was sixteen at my first summer job, getting yelled at for not putting enough ice into a medium-sized cup at the movie theater I’d worked at, that I would one day want to work for myself. I didn’t like getting told what to do. I never had. I was stubborn and hardheaded, at least that’s what my foster dad said was my greatest and worst personality trait.

I wasn’t shooting for the stars or aiming to become a billionaire. I didn’t want to be a celebrity or anything close to that. I just wanted my own small business doing graphic design work that could pay my bills, keep me fed, and still have a little extra left over for other things. I didn’t want to have to rely on someone else’s charity or whim. I’d had to do that for as long as I could remember, hoping my mom would come home sober, hoping my sisters would make me food when my mom wasn’t around, and then hoping the lady with social services could at least keep me and my little brother together…. Why was I even thinking about that?

For the most part, I’d always known what I wanted to do with my life, so I’d naively thought half the battle was in the bag. Making it work should have been easy.

What no one tells you is that the road to accomplishing your goals isn’t a straight line; it looks more like a corn maze. You stopped, you went, you backed up, and took a few wrong turns along the way, but the important thing you had to remember was that there was an exit. Somewhere.

You just couldn’t give up looking for it, even when you really wanted to.

And especially not when it was easier and less scary to go with the flow than actually strike out on your own and make your path.

Scooting the stool he was sitting on back, Aiden got to his feet with his empty glass in hand. His Hulk-sized frame seemed to dwarf the not-exactly-small kitchen every time he was in there… which was always. Big surprise. He consumed at least 7,000 calories a day. During the regular football season, he bumped it up to ten thousand. Of course, he was in the kitchen all day. So was I—making his meals.

“Did you buy pears?” he asked, already pushing our conversation and the middle finger incident aside as he filled his glass with water from the refrigerator’s filter.

I didn’t feel guilty at all about getting caught flipping him off. The first time it had happened, I thought I was going to die of embarrassment and then get fired, but now I knew Aiden. He didn’t care if I did it, or at least that was the impression I got since I still had a job. I’d seen people come up to him and try goading him, calling him all sorts of names and insults that made me reel back. But what did he do when people did that kind of stuff? He didn’t even twitch; he just pretended not to hear them.

Honestly, it was a little impressive to have that kind of backbone. I couldn’t keep it together when someone honked at me while I was driving.

But as impressive as Aiden was, as much as his perfect butt made women double-take, and as dumb as most people would think I was for resigning from a job with a man who starred in commercials for an athletic apparel company, I still wanted to quit. The urge got stronger and stronger each day.

I’d busted my butt. No one else had done the work for me. This was what I wanted, what I had always wanted. I’d kept my eye on the prize for years for the opportunity to be my own boss. Having to call assholes who made it seem like I was an inconvenience, or folding underwear that clung to the most spectacular ass in the country, wasn’t it.

Tell him, tell him, tell him right now you’re planning on quitting, my brain egged on almost desperately.

But that nagging little voice of indecision and self-doubt that liked to hang out in the space where my non-existent spine should have been, reminded me, What’s the rush?

The first time I met The Wall of Winnipeg, the second thing he said to me was, “Can you cook?”

He hadn’t shaken my hand, asked me to sit down, or anything like that. In retrospect, that should have warned me of how things would be between us.

Aiden had asked me my name when he first let me in the front door and led me straight into a beautiful, open kitchen that looked like something straight out of a home renovation show. Then he’d gone straight for questioning my cooking skills.

Before that day, his manager had already interviewed me twice. The position was in the income range I’d been aiming for, and that was all that had mattered to me back then. The employment agency I’d signed up with, had already called me into their offices on three separate occasions to make sure I’d be a good fit for ‘a celebrity’ as they called him.

A bachelor’s degree, a wide range of jobs I’d worked at that varied from being a divorce lawyer’s secretary for three years while I went to college, summers spent doing photography for anyone who would hire me, a pretty successful side business selling makeup and stuff from a catalog, and excellent references, had gotten me a callback.

I was pretty sure that wasn’t what really got me the job though; it was my ignorance when it came to football. If there was a game on TV, chances were I wasn’t paying attention to it. I’d never even seen Aiden Graves before my first day. I didn’t exactly walk around telling people the only games I ever watched were the ones I’d been to in person during high school.

So when his manager had mentioned the name of my potential employer, I had stared at him blankly. I would more than likely never know for sure if it was my lack of excitement that scored me the position, but I had a feeling it was.

Even after Aiden’s manager offered me the job, I hadn’t bothered looking him up. What was the point? It wasn’t like anything the Internet said about him could change my mind about becoming his assistant. Really, nothing could have. I wasn’t ashamed to say he could have been a serial killer and I would have taken the job if the pay were right.

In the end though, I thought it had been a good thing that I hadn’t done a search for him. As I would later learn when I was busy sending out promotional pictures to fans, photographs didn’t do him any justice.

At six foot four, just a quarter inch shy of six five, sometimes weighing up to two hundred and eighty pounds in the middle of the off season, and with a presence that made him seem closer to some mythological hero than an average mortal, Aiden was a beast even fully clothed. He didn’t have cosmetic muscles. He was just plain massive. Everywhere. I wouldn’t be surprised if X-rays showed his bones were more dense than normal. His muscles had been honed and crafted for the specific purpose of as-effectively-as-possible blocking passes and tackling opposing quarterbacks.

An extra-extra-large T-shirt that morning of our first meeting didn’t hide the massive bulk of his trapezius, pectorals, deltoids, or much less his biceps and triceps. The guy was ripped. His thighs strained the seams of the sweat pants he’d been wearing. I remembered noticing his fists reminded me of bricks and the wrists that held them to the rest of his body were bigger than I’d ever seen.

Then there was the face I would be looking at for the next chunk of my life. Where his features might have been bluntly shaped like so many big guys were, Aiden was handsome in a way that wasn’t aesthetically beautiful. His cheeks were lean, the bones above them high, and his jaw lantern shaped. The deep set of his eyes highlighted thick, black brows. Short, trimmed facial hair which always resembled a five o’clock shadow even after he’d immediately shaved, covered the lower half of his face.

A white scar along his hairline, from his temple to below his ear, was the only thing the short bristles couldn’t hide. Then there was that mouth that would have seemed pouty on any another man who might have been smaller and who didn’t glare half as much as he did. He was brown haired and olive skinned. A hint of a thin, gold chain had peeked out from the collar of his shirt, but I’d been so distracted by everything else that was Aiden Graves, it wasn’t until months later that I learned it was a medallion of St. Luke he never went anywhere without.

Just his size alone had been intimidating enough for me initially. His piercing brown-eyed gaze only added to the massive amount of intimidation he seemed to bleed out of his pores.

Regardless of that though, my first thought had been: Holy shit. Then I had shoved it away because I couldn’t be thinking things like that about my brand new boss.

That day of our first meeting, all I had managed to do was nod at him. I’d gone in convinced I’d do whatever was needed to keep the job. His manager and the agency had made sure during the interview process that I knew cooking was part of the job requirement, which wasn’t a big deal. When I was a kid, I’d learned the hard way that if I wanted to eat, I was going to have to do something about it because my older sisters weren’t going to trouble themselves, and I never knew what kind of mood my mom would be in. During college, I’d mastered the art of cooking on a contraband hotplate in my dorm room.

Aiden had simply stared at me in response before laying the bomb on me that no one had prepared me for. “I don’t eat any animal products. Will that be a problem?”

Did I know how to make anything without eggs, meat, or cheese in it? Not that I could think of. No one had even mentioned that stipulation beforehand—and ignorantly, it wasn’t like he looked like most vegans I’d met in my life—but there was no way in hell I was going back to working three jobs if I absolutely didn’t have to. So, I’d bullshitted. “No, sir.”

He’d stood there in the kitchen, looking down at me in my navy khakis, cap-sleeved, white, eyelet blouse, and brown heels. I’d been so nervous I even had my hands clasped in front of me. The agency had suggested business casual attire for the job, and that’s what I’d gone with. “Are you sure?” he’d asked.

I had nodded, already planning to search for recipes on my phone.

His eyes had narrowed a bit, but he didn’t call me out on what was obviously a lie, and that was more than I could have hoped for. “I don’t enjoy cooking or going out to eat. I usually eat four times a day and have two big smoothies, too. You’ll be in charge of meals, and I’ll handle anything I eat between,” he said as he crossed his arms over what seemed like a three-foot-wide chest.

“The desktop computer upstairs has all of my passwords saved. Read and respond to all my emails; my PO Box needs to be checked a few times a week, and you’re in charge of that too. The key is in the drawer by the refrigerator. I’ll write down the post office it’s at and box number later. When I come back, you can go make a copy of my house key. My social sites need to be updated daily; I don’t care what you post as long as you use some common sense.”

He’d definitely made sure to meet my eyes when he added that, but I hadn’t taken it personally.

“Laundry, scheduling…” he went off to include more tasks that I filed into the mental vault. “I have a roommate. We talked about it, and if you’re up for the task, he might want you to make him food too sometimes. He’ll pay you extra if you decide to do it.”

Extra money? I never said no to extra money. Unless it required a blowjob.

“Do you have any questions?” my new boss had asked.

All I had managed to do was shake my head. Everything he said was common for the position I was taking, and I might have been too busy gaping at him to say much else. I’d never seen a pro football player in person, though I’d been friends with someone back in college who played for our school. Back then, I hadn’t thought people could be built on such a large scale, and I might have been trying to figure out how much Aiden had to eat to get in the amount of calories he needed in his diet.

His brown gaze had swept over my face and shoulders before returning to my eyes. That hard, unrelenting face stared right at me. “You don’t talk much, do you?”

I smiled at him, a little one, and lifted a shoulder. I wasn’t a big talker, but nobody could say I was shy or quiet either. Plus, I didn’t want to mess this up until I figured out what he wanted and needed from me as an assistant.

Looking back on it, I wasn’t sure if that was the greatest first impression, but tough shit. It wasn’t like I could take it back and do it over again.

All Aiden, my new boss at the time did, was tip his chin down in what I’d later replace out was his form of a nod. “Good.”

Not much had changed over the last two years.

Our work relationship had progressed past me calling Aiden “sir”, and using more than two words at a time when I talked to him.

I knew everything I could about Aiden, considering how pulling personal information out of him was like yanking teeth. I could tell you how old he was, how much money he had in his bank account, what spices made him cringe, and what brand of underwear he preferred. I knew his favorite meals, what size shoe he wore, what colors he refused to wear, and even what kind of porn he watched. I knew the first thing he wanted when he had more time on his hands was a dog—not a family. He wanted a dog.

But that was all something a stalker could learn, or someone really observant. He held on to the details of his life with both of his dinner-plate-sized hands. I had a feeling the number of things I didn’t know about him could keep me busy for the rest of my life, if I were to try to pry them out of him.

I’d tried being friendly once I realized he wasn’t going to go Incredible Hulk on me for asking questions, but it had all been in vain. For the last two years, my smiles were never returned, my every single “How are you?” went unanswered, and other than that infamous look that made my imaginary hackles rise, there was that tone, that almost smug tone, he took sometimes that just asked for an ass whooping… from someone much bigger than me.

Our boss and employee roles became more and more pronounced each day. I cared about him as much as I could care for someone who I saw a minimum of five days a week, who I basically took care of for a living, but who treated me like the friend of a pesky little sister he would rather not have. For two years, it had been fine doing duties I wasn’t a huge fan of, but the cooking, the e-mails, and all things related to his fans were my favorite things about being his assistant.

And that was half the reason why I kept talking myself out of putting in my notice. Because I’d check his Facebook account or go on his Twitter and see something one of his fans posted that made me laugh. I’d gotten to know some of them over the years through online interactions, and it was easy to remember that working for him wasn’t so bad.

It wasn’t the worst job in the world—not even close to it. My pay was more than fair, my hours pretty good too… and in the words of almost every woman who had ever found out who I worked for, I “had the sexiest boss in the entire world.” So there was that. If I was stuck looking at someone, it might as well be someone with a body and a face that put the models I put on other people’s book covers to shame.

But there were things in life you couldn’t do unless you stepped out of your comfort zone and took a risk, and working for myself was one of them.

That was why I hadn’t actually gone through with it and told Aiden “Sayonara, big boy” on the eighty different occasions my brain had told me to.

I was nervous. Quitting a well-paying job—a steady one at least while Aiden had a career—was scary. But that excuse was getting older and older.

Aiden and I weren’t BFFs, much less confidants. Then again, why would we be? This was a man who didn’t have more than possibly three people he spent time with when he managed to tear himself away from training and games. Vacations? He didn’t take them. I didn’t even think he knew what they were.

He didn’t have pictures of family or friends anywhere in the house. His entire life revolved around football. It was the center of his universe.

In the grand scheme of Aiden Graves’s life, I was no one really. We just sort of put up with each other. Obviously. He needed an assistant, and I needed a job. He told me what he wanted done, and I did it, regardless of whether I agreed with it or not. Every once in a while, I tried futilely to change his mind, but in the back of my head, I never forgot how pointless my opinion was to him.

You could only try for so long to be friendly with someone, and have them shut you down with their indifference, before you gave up. This was a job, nothing more and nothing less. It was why I had worked so hard to get to the point where I could be my own boss, so that I could deal with people who appreciated my hard work.

Yet here I was, doing the things that drove me nuts and putting my dreams off for another day, and another day, and another day…

What the hell was I doing?

“The only person you’re screwing over is yourself,” Diana had told me the last time we’d talked. She’d asked if I’d finally told Aiden I was quitting, and I’d told her the truth: no.

Guilt had pounded my belly at her comment. The only person I was hurting was myself. I knew I needed to tell Aiden. No one was going to do it for me; I was well aware of that. But…

Okay, there was no ‘but.’ What if I crashed and burned once I was on my own?

I had planned it out and built up my business so that wouldn’t be the case, I reminded myself as I sat there watching Aiden eat. I knew what I was doing. I had money squirreled away. I was good at what I did, and I loved doing it.

I’d be fine.

I’d be fine.

What was I waiting for? Every time I’d thought about telling Aiden before, it just hadn’t seemed like the perfect moment. He had just gotten cleared to start practicing again after his injury, and it didn’t feel right laying that on him then. I felt like I’d be abandoning him when he’d barely gotten back on his feet once more. Then, we’d immediately left for Colorado for him to train in peace and quiet. On another occasion, it hadn’t been a Friday. Or he’d had a bad day. Or… whatever. There was always something. Always.

I wasn’t staying on because I was in love with him or anything like that. Maybe at some point, right after I’d begun working for him, I might have had a giant crush on him, but his cool attitude had never let my heart get any crazier than that. It wasn’t like I’d ever had any expectations of Aiden suddenly looking at me and thinking I was the most amazing person in his life. I didn’t have time for that unrealistic crap. If anything, my goal had always been to do what I needed to do for him, and maybe make the man who never smiled, smile. I’d only succeeded at one of those things.

Over the years, my attraction to him had dwindled so that the only thing I really mooned over—correction: appreciated in a healthy, normal way—was his work ethic.

And his face.

And his body.

But there were plenty of guys with amazing bodies and faces in the world. I should know. I looked at models almost every day.

And none of those physical traits helped me in any way. Hot guys weren’t going to make my dreams come true.

I swallowed and clenched my fingers.

Do it, my brain said.

What was the worst that would happen? I’d have to replace another job if my customer base dried up? How horrifying. I wouldn’t know what would happen until I tried.

Life was a risk. This was what I’d always wanted.

So I took a breath, carefully watched the man who had been my boss for two years, and I said it. “Aiden, I have something I need to talk to you about.”

Because really, what was he going to do? Tell me I couldn’t quit?