Dating the Defensive Back (The Nash Brothers Book 1)

Marrying the Defensive Back

I look around at the transformation this place has made over the last two months. It’s unrecognizable from how it was when I first found it, but a lot about my life is unrecognizable from how it was as little as a year ago.

Coach Nash led the Vegas Aces into the playoffs for a second year in a row, and that means we’re preparing for another game in a couple weeks. Because of our record during the season, we get a bye while the wild card games are played this weekend. It also means we get a week off from practice, and I have to admit, as excited as I am to make the playoffs, I’m incredibly excited for a week off.

Soon I’ll have to announce my decision regarding next season. I know what I want to do now, and I’ve discussed it at length with Ava.

“I can’t believe the first batch in my bakery is almost ready,” she says, and the excitement in her voice is pretty much everything I dreamed of when I paid for the lease on this place.

These cookies aren’t for the bakery, though. They’re for a party she’s catering tomorrow. We finally got the kitchen in working order, and she’s been itching to test out the equipment ahead of our opening.

We’re not having our official grand opening until the first of March. It gives us almost two months to make sure we’re ready to roll. We still have employees to hire and a few more decisions to make about equipment and seating, but we’re close to ready. She wanted to wait until I was out of season so we could have a good couple weeks to focus on something aside from football.

I know where my heart is, though, and it’s no longer on the field. It’s planted firmly in Ava’s hands.

“Can you cut more of my super-secret ingredient?” she asks.

“Only if I can eat some.” I pop a Tootsie Roll into my mouth, and she giggles.

“Stop, or I’m going to have to make more.” She decided to make homemade Tootsie Rolls rather than using the store-bought ones like she always had in her kitchen sink cookies at Cravings, and I have to be honest…her homemade ones are even better than the original.

Maybe because she made them with love.

I set the rope onto the cutting board and make the slices just like she told me. We’re not calling them Kitchen Sink Cookies here. Instead, the special title she gave them was Nash’s Nibbles since she loved the name but didn’t want to use it for the bakery. And also since she already knows it’ll be our number one seller, and she wanted my name—her future name—attached to it.

For the bakery, she went with Cookie’s Cookies and Cakes.

This is our future, and I see her in every detail as I look around. She went with a polka-dot wallpaper made up of pastels, and the result is cheerful and happy—two adjectives I’d definitely use to describe my Cookie. Instrumental dance music plays softly in the background, and occasionally she dances around the kitchen with pure abandon and glee. I feel like she’ll do that thousands of times in the future.

What a road it has been. Sometimes I can’t believe it as I glance around, but this is it. This is our future.

I had no idea that when I looked beyond the game, I’d be the owner of a bakery with my future wife.

And it’s not just the bakery that’s different. It’s also the fact that our wedding is a little over two and a half months away.

She’d always dreamed of a May wedding, so the first weekend in May—two months after we open our bakery—we’ll be saying I do right here in Vegas.

And I can’t wait for the bachelor party the week before. We’re having a weeklong celebration, and Spencer and Beckett are both flying out for the whole week with their fiancée and wife, respectively.

Nobody ever would’ve guessed that I’d be next after Lincoln, but here we are. And as nervous as I was about marriage before Ava and I got together, now I see that just because my parents made mistakes doesn’t mean that we have to repeat them.

And we won’t. I lost her once. I’m not stupid enough to ever do it again.

“Where are we at on those Tootsie Rolls?” she asks.

I chuckle. “Coming right up, ma’am.”

“Thank you, sir.”

I glance up, and my eyes connect with hers at her use of sir.

“Say that again,” I dare her.

She giggles. “No!”

“If you think I’m not about to fuck you right here on this counter…”

“Grayson Michael Nash, that is so unsanitary,” she scolds.

I roll my eyes. “You’re no fun.”

“Excuse me? I was debating between bending over the counter or just going to my office, but if I’m not fun, then I guess both options are off the table.”

My jaw drops as I glare at her.

She laughs. “I’m teasing. I’m totally down for bending over. You know, once we get the next batch in.”

I wiggle my eyebrows and get to cutting a little faster.

I’m just about to make my way over to ravish my sweet little baker when my phone starts to ring. “Dammit,” I mutter under my breath. I see it’s Spencer calling, so I pick it up.

“Sup?” I answer cheerfully.

“Wedding’s off and I don’t even know if I’m staying in Minnesota,” he blurts.

“Wait…what?” I ask, completely confused by his announcement.

“You heard me. I’ve got more calls to make.” He hangs up.

My brows dip together.

“Who was that?” Ava asks.

“Spencer. He said the wedding’s off and he’s not sure if he’s staying in Minnesota.”

“What?”

“That’s what I said. He said he had more calls to make and hung up on me.”

“What the hell is going on?” she asks. She walks around the counter over toward me, and she slips her arms around my waist.

“No idea,” I murmur, pressing my lips to her temple. “But I’m sure we’ll find out more soon.”

“Hopefully it’s just a misunderstanding,” she says.

I nod as a bit of worry fills me for my brother. He’s the most logical out of all four of us. He’s strategic. He’s smart. He’s cautious and unimpulsive. Calling me out of the blue to let me know his wedding is off seems…out of character for him.

But I guess opening a bakery with my best friend’s little sister might’ve seemed out of character a year ago for me, too.

Yet here I am with all these new dreams coming true—dreams I didn’t even dare to dream as little as a year ago.

“Hey, I have a surprise for you,” I say as I try to push Spencer out of my mind for now.

“What is it?”

“Instead of bending you over this counter, which, please believe is going to happen multiple times over the next forty or fifty years, what if I take you to the place where it all started?”

Her brows crinkle together. “The Gridiron?”

I shake my head. “I was thinking dinner at that little café at the Palms before I bring you up to that same corner suite and fuck you right up against the windows. And I have it booked for tomorrow night, too.”

Her jaw slackens. “Are you serious?”

I raise a brow.

“Because that café has the best nachos.”

I laugh as I pull her into me, and I drop a kiss to her lips. “Oh, it’s not the nachos you’ll be thinking about all day tomorrow.’

‘You’re right. It’s the cheese pretzels.” She giggles, but then I stick my tongue in her mouth, and she’s not giggling so much anymore.

She pulls back. “Whew. I am one lucky girl. I went from fake dating the defensive back to owning a bakery with the defensive back to getting banged against a window by the defensive back.”

“And pretty soon you’ll be marrying the defensive back.”

Her lips tip up in a smile. “And I can’t wait to get started on our happily ever after.”