ADAM flicked off the stove and moved the sauté pan to an unused burner to cool. He gave the red onions still sizzling at the bottom another cursory toss with the wooden spoon before angling a glance at Bo. His new PA leaned against the counter a few feet to his left, with a notepad and pencil in hand, observing and taking notes as Adam prepared their dinner.
Bo had offered to cook, as part of his job description included meal prep, but Adam insisted he take a night to settle in before jumping into his duties. Plus, with Adam’s strict diet and the scarcity of food in the house, it would’ve been cruel to shove Bo into an unfamiliar kitchen and expect him to perform. Talk about starting off on the wrong foot.
Instead, Adam took the reins and suggested Bo make a grocery list for them while he scraped together a meal out of whatever he could find. As he cooked, Bo peppered him with questions about his diet. He scribbled notes as Adam told him about his favorite foods and recommended he check out the recipes his previous personal assistant had collected on a flash drive.
“Do you have any allergies I should know about? Or anything you don’t particularly like?” Bo tapped the pencil against the corner of his glasses. His eyes never left Adam’s hands as he mixed chopped raw spinach, the sautéed onions, fresh garlic, and an assortment of spices into half a pound of lean ground beef. “If not, I’m pretty creative in the kitchen. Maybe I can come up with a few new recipes that’ll fit your diet requirements. Just for, you know, variety.”
While Adam had gotten along well with Sasha, his previous PA, she’d never been one to go above and beyond the duties Adam asked of her. Hell, none of his PAs ever had. They stuck to the meal plan he provided and kept the refrigerator and cupboards stocked with the items he requested. There was no thinking outside the box. Already, Bo was proving to be a welcome change.
“No allergies, and I’m open to pretty much anything when it comes to food. As long as there’s a lot of it, I’m game.” Adam hid a grin as he formed the meat mixture into four similarly sized balls and placed them on a baking sheet. He slipped them into the preheated oven, set the timer for twelve minutes, and shifted his focus to the boiling water. “Could you grab the pasta?”
Bo snapped to attention, plucking the spinach noodles off the counter with such gusto they nearly went flying out of his hand. He fumbled the package a few times before handing it to Adam without making eye contact. He licked his lips and returned his rapt gaze to the pad in front of him, as if it held the answers to the universe’s most intriguing questions.
“Thanks, my man.” Adam chuckled under his breath and left Bo in peace to work through his awkward moment. Sure, he might be a little nervous, but his reactions didn’t fit the usual fear response Adam received from the public. It was refreshing as hell and deserved all the silent encouragement Adam could offer.
He let the pasta boil for six minutes, drained the noodles over the sink, then stirred in a handful of cherry tomatoes, spinach, and low-fat parmesan cheese. When the timer went off for the meatballs, he pulled them out of the oven and tonged them into the pasta bowl.
“Ta-da.” Adam cracked a grin and waved a theatrical arm toward his finished product. “Mr. Wilkins, I’d like you to meet my lean beef spinach meatball pasta. Hope you’re hungry.”
Bo’s nostrils flared as he sniffed the air and returned Adam’s grin with a shy smile. “Smells delicious.”
They doled out two helpings—Adam’s significantly larger than Bo’s—and sat down at the breakfast bar. Although he rarely drank, Adam offered to pop a bottle of wine with the meal and was pleased when Bo accepted.
Conversation was sparse at first, but as the alcohol worked its magic, Bo loosened up enough to answer a few of Adam’s casual questions. He even asked a few of his own. By the time they parted ways for the evening, after teaming up to put away the leftovers and do the dishes, Adam was thoroughly convinced Kyle had to die.
What had possessed him to bring a man like Bo into Adam’s life? Now, of all times? The pressure to focus and succeed was at its highest in ages, and his goddamn manager decided to introduce a distraction of epic proportions.
Yeah, Kyle needed his head pounded. Or at the very least, he was going to get one hell of an earful.
FOR Bo’s first official day on the job, Adam drove himself to the gym, as he’d been doing for the past few weeks. Eventually, he’d have Bo take him, but for now he left his new PA to familiarize himself with the house. After all, he had the ultimate challenge of tackling the disaster Adam had created since Sasha’s departure.
It wasn’t that Adam was a slob per se, but cleaning, laundry, and overall organizational skills weren’t his strong points. When left to his own devices, things tended to get out of hand. Fast.
The smell of fresh laundry mixed with strong cleaning chemicals assaulted Adam’s senses the moment he walked through the garage door after his morning training. He scrunched his nose in protest. The clean linen smell was pleasant, but what the hell kind of biochemical warfare was Bo waging on his home? The pungent scent of corrosive bleach and all manner of other caustic solutions burned his nostrils and left his head spinning.
He headed for the laundry room to drop off his gym bag and found Bo on his hands and knees in the hallway, scrubbing at the stone tile flooring.
“Fuckin’ hell, Bo, you’re gonna asphyxiate from all these fumes.” Adam tossed his bag down the hall in the general direction of the laundry room. “Why don’t you take a break? We can grab lunch somewhere and hit the grocery while we’re out.”
Bo sat back on his haunches and swiped a wrist over his brow. “I’m almost done here any—” His eyes bugged, and he scurried to his feet, the sponge dropping from his hand. “Holy crap on a cracker, what the heck happened to you?”
Adam froze when Bo’s soapy fingertips grazed his jaw. A jolt of electricity fired under his skin at the connection. He followed the tingling path of Bo’s touch with his own fingers, marveling at the intensity of the impression that brief contact left behind.
“Did you get jumped?” Bo’s brows pinched, his lips turning down at the corners. “Did you call the police? Are you hurt anywhere else?”
A laugh bubbled up Adam’s throat at the unexpected barrage of questions and the look of genuine concern twisting Bo’s face. When was the last time anyone cared he’d been hurt? Hell, unless they bordered on life-threatening, even he failed to notice his injuries more often than not. So was the life of a mixed martial arts fighter. Sparring was the best way to train, and sparring equaled wounds. Rarely as intense as those suffered at an official fight, but colorful and bloody nonetheless.
“I’m fine. Just a few scratches.” Adam tried to grin, but the act tugged at his already split lip and fresh blood trickled down his chin.
Bo gasped and clamped a hand over Adam’s wrist. “That’s more than a scratch. Where’s your first aid kit?”
“First aid kit?” Adam cocked a brow. He didn’t keep anything like that at home. If his injuries required mending, Eddie, his coach, would tend to him after he hit the showers. Today, the damage was minimal, so he’d left without patching up.
Gaping, Bo shook his head. “Don’t tell me you get beat up for a living and don’t keep basic first aid supplies around the house.”
Adam knuckled the blood off his chin and shrugged. “It’s a split lip. I’ll be fine.”
“A split lip, a black eye, and a gashed eyebrow. That is not fine.” Bo scowled and dropped Adam’s wrist with an adorable little huff. “I’m adding medical supplies to the grocery list. If you’re going to come home looking like roadkill on a regular basis, I’m going to need some necessities. In the meantime, will you at least let me put some ice on that eye?”
Biting back a grin that would worsen the bleeding and increase Bo’s worry, Adam allowed Bo to latch on to his wrist a second time and tug him toward the kitchen. He reveled in the soft warmth of Bo’s touch and the gentle care behind his fussing.
No one had ever clucked and cooed over Adam’s wounds the way Bo did now, least of all one of his personal assistants. Even his own mother had always taken a standoffish approach, far preferring to fret over her latest high-dollar antique purchase than anything transpiring in the life of her only child. Her lack of a mothering nature had gone a long way toward building up the tough exterior he relied on today, but it had also destroyed any chance of a future relationship between them.
After his father pulled him out of high school to focus full-time on prepping for his debut in the octagon, Adam had barely seen his mother. The last time was over five years prior, purely by happenstance when he ran into her at the airport, of all places. They’d exchanged cordial pleasantries and escaped to their respective terminals without sparing the other a backward glance.
Now, as a near-stranger held a homemade ice pack to his throbbing brow and offered a cool washcloth for him to press over his swollen lip, Adam’s heart skittered to a brief halt before doing a somersault and kicking back to life. He’d never been pampered before, but it was something he could get used to.