Page 5 of Baller's Surprise Baby

“What do you mean by that?” I grit out at his insinuation.

“I just mean, you don’t seem like your head is in it. You seem nervous.”

And that’s all it takes for me. I’ve known this man for more than half of my life, and I may not have seen him much lately, and maybe we’ve never been close, but in this moment I couldn’t care less. I stride up to him, and step right into his space, lowering my voice so only he can hear.

“Ryder Jones, I don’t know what the hell has gotten into you today,” I remark. “Maybe you think that you don’t have to treat people with basic civility because you’re some bigshot, but I’m here to tell you right now, this isn’t going to fly. So, how about you focus on shooting hoops, and I’ll focus on doing my job, okay?”

He glares down at me while I stand rigid as steel daring him to defy me, but his next words hit hard nonetheless.

“I want you off the project.”

My heart sinks in disbelief. He is joking, right? Tell me he is joking.

“What? Because you think I was five minutes late from a break?”

But I know that’s not the issue here. I just can’t bring myself to speak about what happened in the dressing room.

I’ve always thought brown eyes were so warm and welcoming, but his gaze is hard and cold.

“You know, I never realised that you’re such a big dick,” I say in a low tone, but as soon as I say it, I regret the words because a vision springs unbidden to mind, and I know from the look in his eyes he’s thinking the same thing.

“I mean - ! That’s not what –,” I splutter as I try to back pedal, but everything I say seems to make it worse. “I’m not saying you have a big dick! I mean it is, but I’m saying... Argh! I wasn’t thinking about it!“ But I can see in his eyes he knows. He knows I’ve been thinking about it all day long.

“You’re such an ass! Shit!” I can’t stop thinking of sexual body parts, and it’s messing up everything I say. He glances up over my head – not hard for him to do since he’s easily a foot taller than me. Then he purses his lips and lowers his unyielding gaze back to mine.

“I think you should leave.”

4

Ryder

Iwake up with a familiar ache in my muscles, and the taste of sawdust in my mouth. I feel like shit, and not just because we’ve been running endless drills in training. It’s because I’ve never been the kind of guy to screw with others, and I hate that I did it to Everly yesterday.

Taking a minute to stretch and shake off the stiffness, I proceed to go through my morning routine while only half awake. My protein- and carb-packed breakfast sits waiting for me in the fridge thanks to Ms. Lopez, my parents’ housekeeper, who was kind enough to help manage my staff when I moved out on my own. I make my way to the breakfast nook where I sip coffee and fuel up on an egg sandwich full of tomato, cheese, spinach, sausage and avocado on a whole grain bun. Outside, the sun is just peeking over the horizon and Dallas is already bustling with early morning traffic. Meanwhile I ponder how low I’ve sunk in the world.

Sure, I’m a national star playing as a starter for the Dallas Mavericks, so life is, generally speaking, fast and hard while simultaneously awesome. Now, somehow I’ve gone from respectable basketball playboy to “insatiable fiend” who struggles to keep his dick in his pants and also runs people off of the job to compensate for it. I set down my coffee mug and lean back in my chair to stare at the pink sky while wondering how this happened.

I mean, Everly came out of nowhere. I haven’t seen her in years, haven’t thought about her. But suddenly she’s there, and she’s holding my dick, and just thinking about it I’m dying to strip down and let her finish the job.

Maddie was someone to play with, a model I’d known and dated in the past, so a quick hookup on the job when both of us have been single for a bit made sense in the moment. But the second I laid eyes on Everly, no – the second she laid hands on me - the universe shifted. It’s like Maddie no longer existed. She was part of the photo shoot, but I didn’t pay her a second thought after Everly arrived. I don’t even know when Maddie left.

I lean my face down into my hands and groan. All night long I endured wet dreams of Everly’s green eyes and that perfect “O” of her gorgeous wide mouth as she visually took all of me in. God, I want to do it again!

And that’s exactly how I got here. I spent the entire photo shoot trying to hide the fact that my manhood was stiff as a plank. With the models around it probably looked normal - I mean, they were for the most part naked, and in extremely close proximity to me. But when it was just down to Everly and me, there wasn’t any way to hide the fact that she was the only one around, and I was still aroused.

I was a complete jackass, but I’d do it again because there’s no way in hell I was going to come onto my little sister’s best friend. I feel like I’ve just hit puberty all over again and don’t know how to handle it. Heaving a last sigh, I get up from the table to prep for morning practice. Today we’re running drills in the morning, weights in the afternoon, and then more photo shooting for me after training.

Six hours later I pull up to the location for the photo shoot. It’s a private facility several stories high with parts of the building built out into warehouse-like extensions. In essence, it’s huge and has a number of different parking areas, but this is the one closest to the locker room privately reserved for the Mavericks players.

I pull through the security gate and circle around only to find Everly standing in my parking space. Shit. What does she want? The only thing worse than having her fired off the set yesterday is having to see her and talk about it now. I haven’t yet figured out how I’m going to face Rachel, and I’m kind of surprised she hasn’t called me yet to give me an earful. I’m going to have to do something big to make up for this.

For the moment though, Everly is still there, and I pump the breaks of my sedan and consider just backing right out of the parking lot. Maybe I could park somewhere else?

“Hey Ryder, can we talk for a minute?” she calls as she approaches my car.

Shit! So much for leaving inconspicuously. I can’t quite disguise the wariness in my voice when I answer with false bravado, “Sure, what’s up?”

“Look, I know things got heated between us during the photoshoot, but I wanted to apologize….”

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