Page 26 of Mad Rivals (The Bradley Legacy #1)

Scrambled

When I wake in the morning, I glance at the clock to see it’s after nine.

I don’t typically sleep in quite this late, but we were up late and then up again in the middle of the night.

The other side of the bed is empty, and my first thought is that I hope I’m not being a rude guest overstaying my welcome. I wonder how long he’s been awake.

I force myself up, and my entire body feels deliciously achy after he put me through the wringer last night.

I pad over to the bathroom and do my thing, and I spot a T-shirt on the counter. I wonder if he left it out for me, and as I pick it up to bring it to my nose to smell it, I spot a pair of boxer shorts under it.

I slip the shirt over my head since I feel weird walking out into his condo buck naked. What if he has guests? I pull the shorts on, too. He thought of everything, and I can’t help but think how romantic even this small act is.

I walk into the kitchen to find him standing at the counter stirring something in a bowl. I stand on the other side of the counter and stare at him .

“Good morning,” he says, and he’s more chipper than I am after the amount of wine I drank last night. “Do you prefer your eggs scrambled or fried?”

“My eggs?” I repeat stupidly, and he chuckles.

“Yeah. I’m making you breakfast. Scrambled?”

Scrambled? He means, like, my brain right now. Right?

“Sure,” I murmur. He’s making me breakfast?

“I have sausage links ready to go in the pan. I was just waiting for you to get up. And I’m whipping up a batch of my special protein-packed chocolate peanut butter pancakes. Unless you have food allergies. Do you?”

I shake my head, still a little stunned he’s doing all this.

“Do you want anything else?” he asks.

“Sounds downright gourmet compared to my usual breakfast.”

He laughs. “What do you usually have?”

“A cup of yogurt. Sometimes just a protein shake,” I admit.

“Well, that won’t do at Casa de Bradley,” he says. “The coffee pot is full, and there’s cream in the fridge and brown sugar syrup in the cabinet above the pot. If you want orange juice, there’s some in the fridge.”

“You didn’t have to go to all this trouble.” I’ve never had a man cook me breakfast after a night like last night.

Okay, fine. Full disclosure, I’ve never had a night like last night.

“It’s no trouble at all. I actually enjoy cooking, and I try to make a batch of pancakes every Sunday so I have breakfast ready to go all week. In the offseason, anyway.” He shrugs, and he pours the batter onto a prepared sheet pan sitting beside him on the counter.

“You use a sheet pan for pancakes?”

He nods. “And get this, I cut them into squares instead of circles . Weird, right?”

“I can honestly say I’ve never had a square pancake. Bring it on, Bradley. ”

“Bradley? No more mule?” he asks.

“After last night, I don’t think I can call you a mule anymore.”

“I can still call you a tiger,” he says, and he raises a brow as my cheeks turn bright pink.

“Can I do anything to help?” I ask, changing the subject as I think about what I could call him after last night. Sex god?

He shakes his head. “You can help yourself to coffee, but I’ve got this under control.”

I go ahead and do that, and I perch on one of the stools at the counter so I can watch him do his thing.

Once he gets the pancakes into the oven and sets a timer, he walks around the counter and drops his lips to mine for just a quick kiss.

He rounds the counter to wash out the batter bowl, and he dries it and puts it away before he gets started on the sausage.

He’s meticulous in everything he does, and I could literally sit here sipping coffee and just watching him all day.

“When do you have to go to San Diego?” I ask.

“Midway through next month is when OTAs start, but I’ve got a trip booked for a long weekend this week, and I should get there a little more often to start bonding with my new teammates,” he says. He doesn’t turn to face me as he answers, instead keeping his focus on the food.

“OTAs?” I ask.

“Organized team activities,” he clarifies. “The ones in May are voluntary, but they’re sort of the unofficial kickoff of the season. My first chance to work out and start drills in the actual facility instead of at off-site gyms.”

It’s too soon to ask how that’ll affect whatever it is we’re starting. It’s too awkward to ask if we’re actually starting anything at all or if last night was an anomaly. It doesn’t feel like it was.

It feels like something passed between us last night that bonded us in a new way, and to be honest…I don’t want him to go to San Diego. I want to have the time to explore whatever this is, even if we have to explore in secret because of our fathers and business and all the other crap in our way .

He sighs as he turns to face me. “My father said he’s opening a branch of Bradley Group in San Diego so I can work on my days off.”

My brows shoot up. “In San Diego? When?”

He shrugs. “I didn’t ask. I don’t know, but it’s just another way for him to keep tabs on me.”

I tilt my head thoughtfully. “VBC has a branch in LA, you know.”

“Really?”

I nod. “It’s not in LA itself. I forget the town. Aliso Viejo, maybe? It’s in the southern part of the greater Los Angeles area, so we all just call it the LA office.”

He tilts his head, too, as we both think that one over.

Neither of us says it, but the distance between LA and San Diego isn’t really all that far. Especially if he’s in the northern part of the San Diego area and I’m in the southern part of Los Angeles.

We could try to make it work. But it might be hard to sell my father on why I want to move to the LA branch considering I don’t have any work there when I do have a big project here.

“Do you get many days off when you’re in season?” I ask, changing the subject before we go down a road neither of us might be ready to tackle.

He shakes his head. “Tuesdays. Sometimes Mondays. That’s it apart from our bye week.”

“Is real estate development what you want to do with those days?” I ask.

“Fuck no. It’s my one chance to reset and recharge, to bond with teammates off the field, to participate in community events or charity or do whatever the fuck I want. Going into the office is not part of that plan,” he says.

My brows dip. “What about the SCS project?”

“I figure by the time the season starts, we’ll be on the permit phase, and that always takes forever.

” He shrugs. “I’m hopeful I can get through the season without having to do much because all the plans will be in place, and we’ll just be working on the backend stuff that isn’t really part of my job description anyway. ”

“So you’ll pawn it off on someone else?” I demand. “Who am I going to be working with?”

He chuckles. “Me. But, yes, I’ll pawn a certain extent of it off on someone else because I physically won’t be able to make certain quick decisions. I’ve already pegged Margot and filled her in on the basics.”

I note that Margot is most definitely a female name. So either she’s the best choice, which is logically a possibility, or he doesn’t want me working with another man.

Sort of like I didn’t want to hand the project off to Sara.

Is Margot pretty? I want to ask. I don’t. I’m not ready to show my insecurities to him, and it’s a petty thought to have anyway. It doesn’t matter. He’s not making her breakfast this morning.

“My trip to San Diego this weekend is to pick out a place to live while I’m playing there,” he says.

“Are you renting?” I ask.

He nods, and his brows dip together. “Would you want to come with me and help me decide where to live?”

I physically reel back a little in my seat at his surprising question.

“No, forget it. Sorry. It’s too soon to be asking questions like that.” He shakes his head and turns back toward the food, and we’re both quiet for a few beats as he cracks some eggs into a bowl. “You hated me until last night. I shouldn’t have asked.”

“I didn’t hate you,” I say softly. Silence moves between us, and it turns nearly awkward when I finally break it. “What if I was about to say I’d love to?”

His head whips up, and his eyes meet mine. “Were you? I mean… can you?”

I shrug. “Why not? I can check out the LA office while I’m there.” And we can have loads of that addictive sex, though I refrain from actually mentioning that .

He stares at me as we both consider it, and eventually the sausage starts to scream and sizzle in the pan, so he turns his attention back to it. And then, to my total shock, as he stares at the sausage, he says, “I’d love that.”

And I melt just a little more as I find myself attaching to someone I’m not supposed to, scrambling me just a little more.

His phone starts to ring, and he answers it. He listens for a second, and then he says, “Yeah, you can send it up.”

I don’t ask because it isn’t my business, but a few minutes later, there’s a knock at his door, and he comes back carrying a fairly large box.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“A welcome package from the Storm.”

“That was nice of them.”

“It’s pretty standard.” He sets it on his counter, and he gets back to cooking.

“Don’t you want to open it?”

He shrugs. “Not really.”

“You didn’t want this trade,” I muse.

“I didn’t. Not really. But it’s my reality. I like the guys in San Diego, and eventually it’ll be home.” He clears his throat. “You can open it while I finish up breakfast if you want.” He pulls a box cutter out of a drawer and sets it on the counter for me, and I grab it and slice the box open.

I open it and find a note on top. I pull it out and hand that to Madden since it might be personal, and then I pull out a Storm baseball cap, joggers, a sweatshirt, a bunch of T-shirts, some other gear, and finally, at the very bottom of the box, a jersey.

I pull it out and hold it up. “Bradley eighty,” I read off the back. He glances over at me, and he lets out a small breath. “Try it on,” I say quietly.

He sighs, but then he turns off the burners and relents. He pulls his shirt over his head, and I allow my eyes to fall on those sweet abs of his. I hand him the jersey, and he pulls it over his shoulders .

It falls into place, and I stare.

I gawk.

I swoon.

I get even more scrambled.

I get hot and need some water.

Holy hell, this guy’s hot. Business attire, naked, in a jersey…they’re all great looks, and I can’t decide which I like best. I’ll take them all.

Did I really just think that?

“That looks good on you, Madden,” I say, my voice a little shy.

“It’s not Bears, but I do feel a sort of new energy having all this shit. It’s becoming real, and I guess I’m starting to get excited.”

“Have you made friends out there?” I ask.

“I’m starting to. The other wide receivers are all pretty good guys.”

“I bet none of them look like that in the jersey, though,” I muse.

He laughs, and then he takes it off and trades it for his shirt.

But I will definitely allow my dreams to be filled with Madden Bradley and all his different looks going forward.