Page 141 of The Blame Game

Shea had taken a risk when he’d made the suggestion about Travis Rogers’ knee instability but Vince had been impressed by both Shea’s knowledge and initiative rather than offended.

Truthfully, Shea had kind of been the golden boy at the clinic since then—a fact that Myles loved to give him shit for—but Shea had a sinking feeling that today he wasn’t going to be getting a gold star from his boss.

“Yes?” Shea prompted when Vince fell silent.

“You’re dating Dominic Olson.”

Shea tightened his grip on the Fisher Cats mug that Dom had given him. “I am.”

“I don’t like to, uh, give these sports gossip sites insinuations any credence but …” Vince’s cheeks were a little red and he tugged at his polo shirt.

“You’re worried about their claim that I’m an escort,” Shea filled in.

Vince cleared his throat. “Yes. You understand, right? Our clients might feel uncomfortable. They’re vulnerable on our tables. They have to trust that we would never be … inappropriate with them.”

Shea’s stomach dropped to his toes. Was he about to get fired? They couldn’t do that, could they? They’d have to give him notice and cause, right? God, he’d thought he’d read his contract reasonably thoroughly but maybe there had been some morality clause or loophole he’d missed …

“Right,” Shea said, gripping the mug even harder, both worried about his career and pissed off at the insinuation that he would ever be inappropriate with a patient just because he was a sex worker. But he was supposed to be pretending that he wasn’t one, so …

Shea sighed. There was nothing he could do now but push forward with the story they’d created and hope for the best. “I understand why rumors like that might make you concerned, Vince, but Dom and I—we’ve been involved since before I was hired here.”

Vince blinked. “You have?”

“Yes.” Shea leaned forward, sensing an opening. “We met before I went to grad school, actually. He hired me as his stylist and I helped him pick out suits and revamp his wardrobe. Look, I’ll be honest, when it first started out it was, uh, pretty casual, if you get my drift.”

Vince nodded, managing a small smile.

“I’d never dated men before but by the time I graduated, neither Dom nor I were seeing anyone else. He’s a very private person so we haven’t splashed the news of our dating around but we’ve been edging toward this going public thing for a while now.”

Which was all quite true in the strictest sense, so Shea pressed on.

“Audra is my best friend. We’ve been roommates for years. I felt a little under the weather the other night so Dom took Audra as his plus one to the event.”

Vince frowned. “Okay. That all makes sense. But what about this Mark Goodwin situation?”

“Truthfully, Mark Goodwin is kind of a creep. Audra worked as his stylist for a short while before he started to cross the line and make her uncomfortable. He didn’t back off even when she told him she wasn’t interested. At the gala, he approached her again and continued to push. I know that photo looks like they’re in an intimate discussion but he was actually grabbing her arm while she was trying to get away.”

“Well, shit.” Vince looked appalled. “I guess I shouldn’t have assumed anything. It just looked …”

Shea nodded. “It’s understandable. You look at the photos and read the rumors and things start to seem suspicious, right? I don’t know where sites like JockGossip get all their wild theories from, but the truth is, as much as I hate Dom being forced out of the closet before he was ready to take that step on his own, I’m a little relieved. Because now we’re living together and we don’t have to hide our relationship.”

He took a sip of his coffee, desperately hoping that Vince would buy his story.

“Well, I am happy for you,” Vince said slowly. “Congratulations to you and your, uh, boyfriend. And I’m sorry I leapt to conclusions about this. I never read those sites personally but some friends were talking about it at dinner last night and I started to worry about the clinic’s reputation.”

“I understand that,” Shea assured him. “But I don’t want to jeopardize the clinic’s reputation any more than you do. I want to do my work, live with my boyfriend, help him get through these issues that have him on IR, and hopefully cheer the team on as they head into the post-season.”

“Well, that’s all perfectly reasonable.” Vince sat back, looking satisfied. “Thanks for clearing that up. I feel a lot better now.”

“Sure, no problem.”

“I think we’ll ignore the insinuations and if anyone comes to me with concerns, I’ll tell them that everything’s on the up and up.”

Shea smiled weakly and thanked him.

Okay, well, he didn’t love the idea of his boss having to lie for him.

But the truth was, the public did have a lot of ideas around sex work that were horribly out of touch and awful.

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