Happily Ever All-Star: A Secret Baby Romance (74 page)

Whispered her
love
.

It was a balance I never knew was possible. She understood me—every part of me, even the darkness I tried to hide. That monstrous aspect worshiped her, fucked her, but it abandoned the violence and rage and aggression in the comfort of her arms.

I offered everything that was me to her, and she accepted it.

So did I. For the first time. Not the last time.

I lost myself in her, and we clutched at each other in sweaty, perfect bliss.

“
Cole
…” Piper’s body tightened, and she squeezed her eyes shut. “Please…”

She didn’t have to ask. I was there with her, in perfect sync as our bodies slammed, crashed, and surrendered to each other.

She came for me, whispering her love.

I came for her, but my words choked in my throat.

I had to prove it instead, thrusting hard and deep until that pulsing crest paralyzed my body and slammed me completely against her.

Usually my mind blanked when I came.

Not this time.

This time, I pumped inside her, and I imagined a life where this
bliss
happened every day.

Where I could have Piper. Hold her with me. Take her every night. Wake with her every morning. Let her soothe the beast. Live with her. For her.

Marry her.

Build a bigger family with her.

Live
happily ever after
with her.

She kissed me as I gasped for air. I didn’t pull from her—couldn’t, not while everything in life revealed itself to me in such simplicity and passion I had no idea what was real or fairy tale.

But I knew I wanted it.

All of it.

I kissed her, earning her smile as she brushed her fingers against my cheek.

“I love you,” I whispered. “Stay with me.”

“You asked me that once before. Are you sure?”

“You tell me.” I kissed her again, softly. “Do you think you can handle living with a beast?”

“I don’t see any beast here.”

“No?”

“I only see the man I love.”

M
y phone rang
for the fifth time since I put Rose down for her nap.

I answered it with a growl. “
Lachlan Reed
, I swear to God—”

“Just one last question.”

There was never just
one
last question with Lachlan. He was worse than my toddler.

No wonder Dad pawned the rookie off on me. It was like he
knew
the first-round draft pick to the Ironfield Rivets would be as easy to manage as a puppy in a mud puddle.

“The contract says no motorcycles…” I could hear his grin through the phone, like he tried to sell me on his next latest and greatest death-defying idea. “What about dirt bikes?”

“
No
.”

“Really?”

“Your contract is explicit. If you want your ten million dollars; you’re going to behave. No crazy sports. No dangerous vehicles. No extreme activities at all. Believe me, Lach. It’s boilerplate.”

“Okay…what about—”

“
No
, Lachlan.”

“Lemme finish.” He presented the next idea like he expected me to join him in his quest for idiocy. “A jet ski.”

“
No
.”

“Oh. So I guess snowmobiles are out too?”

“
Yes
.”

“Damn. Fine. I’ll sign it.”

“
Thank
you. Goodbye, Lachlan.”

I ended the call but kept the phone in my hand. I gave him fifteen seconds, just enough time for the baby to decide I hadn’t peed enough today.

“
What
?” I answered with all the patience a woman in her third month of pregnancy who hadn’t eaten for a day with a toddler who refused to take longer than a ten-minute nap could muster. “Lachlan, they aren’t trying to stop you from having fun. They just don’t want you to crack your skull open anywhere but the football field.”

“I know, I know!”

He was lucky he was cute—that pesky, swat-him-on-the-forehead brother type.

“Okay,” he said. “What about paragliding?”

I sighed. “And how high off the ground would you be?”

Lachlan thought for a second. “Like a hundred feet?”

“And how high is your vertical jump?”

“…About thirty-six inches.”

“Okay, I’ll make this easy.” I forced a smile. “If I see you higher than thirty-six inches off the ground,
I’m going to eat you.
Are we clear?”

“…
Okay
.”

I sighed. “If you want something to do, why don’t you just find a nice girl to date?”

“Damn, Piper. I’m looking for an adrenaline high, not a castration.”

“Goodbye, Lachlan.”

I hung up again. This time, he didn’t call back.

Crisis averted.

And I once thought I couldn’t be a good agent. All it took was a tough hand, a couple threats, and Rose teaching me everything I needed to know about managing temper tantrums.

Marrying my biggest client helped too.

Our new house in Ironfield wasn’t as big as Cole’s old castle, but I still couldn’t hear the garage when he came home. He said he liked it that way—more room, more space.

It didn’t make much sense to me. After working-out at night, the big teddy bear spent most of his time cuddling on the couch with me and Rose.

I didn’t mind.

Cole dropped his duffle bag in the kitchen and pulled me close.

“Hey, beautiful.” He kissed me, his hand pressing against my yet-flat tummy. “How’s that baby?”

“Doing good.”

“Did you miss me?”

“I’m still not used to you spending all day at practice…” My eyes fluttered closed as he kissed my neck. “But I don’t mind the way you say hello when you get back.”

“I can think of a better way.”

“Oh, really?”

“
Daddy
!”

Cole grinned. “Hold that thought.”

He spun and knelt to catch Rose. She flew at him, but my now two-year-old toddler still hadn’t mastered her brakes. That was fine. Cole scooped her up, kissed her cheek, and earned her squeal.

“
Daddy! Here
!” Rose handed him a book she’d swiped from her bedroom. “
My story
?”

“But I just got home, meatball.” Cole took the book anyway. “Let’s read after dinner.”

Rose gave him a pout—a masterful and calculated look. “
No. Now
.”

“Daddy doesn’t want to read now,” I said.

“
No
.” Rose slammed her little hands on her hips. “
Story
.”

“She’s just like you, beautiful,” Cole sighed.

“We just know how to play you.”

He glanced at her. “Hugs now, story later?”

He drove a hard bargain, but Rose couldn’t resist a hug. She giggled and regaled him with the happenings of her day.

“
A B C D E
—” Rose chattered at him, twisting the alphabet into a rendition of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star before pointing at me with a winkled nose and wicked laugh. “
Lock-In! No
!”

Cole laughed. “Dealing with Lachlan again?”

“
Uh-oh
!” Rose shook her head and mimicked me. “
That
boy
.”

“You guys got a great tight-end,” I said. “But, one day, that man is going to make some lucky woman very…
dizzy
.”

Rose squirmed off of Cole. She gripped his duffle bag.

“
Mess
.” She scolded him and amused herself by trying to drag it across the kitchen. When it proved too heavy for her, she surrendered to the clutter and unloaded his clothes and shoes onto the floor. “
Mess mess
.”

“Never used to have so many people reprimanding me before,” Cole said.

I welcomed him close again, loving the feel of his arms around me. “Never used to have a family before.”

“Got two now, at home and with the team.” He kissed me, his words still possessing that feral edge. “I couldn’t live without you beautiful.”

“You don’t have to. This is our
happily ever after
.”

“No, it’s not.”

He didn’t let me pull away. Instead, his hand rubbed my tummy.

“I finally have you. Rose. The little one on the way.
Happily ever after
means this has to end.” His words warmed, and he held me closer…

“And this is just the beginning for us.”

T
he End

T
he idiot was about
to get hit by a car.

I could see the headline now.

Ironfield Rivets’ Tight-End Rear-Ended By Speeding Vehicle.

And the quote from the scene:
Who needs rims when you have a fine-looking hood ornament like Lachlan ‘Charming’ Reed
?

Sure. I’d concede the gorgeous football player might have made a one-of-a-kind decoration for any rusted out Hyundai that chose to drive on the sidewalk instead of the street. But it was equally likely that his hard head would have done more damage to the car and surrounding cement.

Lachlan neither saw nor heard the car. Then again, he chose to dance through the crosswalk separating the Ironfield Rivet’s practice facility from the parking lot. He bobbed to the beat blaring through his headphones, shimmied across the parking lot, and stopped to moonwalk over the curb.

Even at his most reckless, Lachlan was entertaining.

At least he’d be the sexiest roadkill in all of Ironfield.

He gyrated onto the road—one of the busier streets in the city, the party central strip of nightclubs, restaurants, and colleges. Just stepping foot into the street tempted fate in the form of a frazzled sorority girl blowing either her boyfriend or a red light on her way to class.

Lachlan slowed his two-step to toss his Tinkerbell backpack over his shoulder. He then cha-cha slid directly in front of the car.

He’d owe me for this…if he even survived.

I dropped my camera bags and burst from my hiding spot in the bushes outside the practice facility. So much for escaping the first day of training camp without anyone seeing me.

I slammed into Lachlan, throwing my weight against the six-foot-five behemoth of muscle.

If he weren’t breaking into a whip and
nae-nae
in the middle of the street, I’d have bounced off the pack of muscles that was his chest and landed in the gutter. Fortunately, the big lug wasn’t expecting to get blindsided by his one-night stand.

That made two of us.

He grunted as he crashed into the sidewalk. The car veered just in time. The driver slowed to ensure she hadn’t pulverized the Rivets’ newest multi-millionaire. The first-round draft choice was merely scraped, not smooshed. Satisfied, she sped off into the city. Her illegal left turn was the least of her crimes today.

Lachlan had smacked the sidewalk ass first, but he didn’t have much cushion to soften the blow.

Snips, snails, puppy-dog-tails, and two-hundred and fifty pounds of solid muscle—that’s what Lachlan Reed was made of.

At least his head had bounced off the sidewalk without leaving a dent.

I tumbled over him, scraping my hands and knees on pebbles and road debris. His elbow connected with my gut, and I coughed and sputtered as every bit of air fled from my lungs. We stumbled across the sidewalk and crashed hard between a puddle of something that
wasn’t
water and a glop of spitting tobacco.

I’d have rolled around in the muck—twice—over what was going to come next.

Three months
.

It had been
three months
since I last saw Lachlan—naked, sleeping, sprawled in a Vegas hotel bed that probably should have been burned after what we did that weekend.

I never thought I’d see him again, let alone save his life or work for the same team that had drafted him. The humiliation was almost poetic. That weekend was the type of experience I promised I’d look back on as an experiment, something
fun
, something
crazy
, something I’d never regret months later in the shower as I revisited the memories with delighted shivers and absolute mortification at the things we said, did, touched, and…used.

Maybe once, in a moment of utter weakness, I’d considered calling Lachlan again. Fortunately, I knew better than to proposition the prince of the rookies for a second read-through of the
Kama Sutra
.

But I was strong. I hadn’t thought about him…outside of the bedroom. Hadn’t imagined him…without the detachable shower head in my hand.

The only force in the world capable of propelling me back into his lap was an out-of-control Hyundai Elantra.

God bless irresponsible college students.

I hoisted myself to my elbows and prepared for the worst. I couldn’t hide from him forever. He was officially a Rivet, and I’d probably have to take
some
pictures of him for the team. The assistant photographer job was great, but sometimes the best part of the gig turned into the worst—the players.

I pinched my eyes shut and greeted him with as much confidence as I could fake. It was time to blurt out everything, right then and there. I’d admit my indecency during the one-night stand and, like a Band-Aid covering up every licentious moment of our weekend, I’d rip off the shame in one fluid motion.

…Or fling it off like one of the
many
condoms we’d used.

“Lachlan, before you say
anything,
I know I haven’t called you back.” I didn’t look at him or give him a chance to deter me from this apology. “And that was a horrible thing to do, but it was for the best. Now that you’re drafted and signed and training camp is starting, we should talk about what happened at the scouting combine, but we should never, ever do it again.”

Lachlan didn’t say anything. Hell, he didn’t
move
.

Well…that was a problem.

What was worse? Our first-round draft choice getting hit by a car…or the Rivets’ soon to be offensive superstar knocked-out cold during the world’s worst rescue attempt?

“Lachlan.” I poked his chest. “Are you okay?”

Nothing.

No blood had spilled. I took that as a good sign. Still, this man was about to spend his first full-day at training camp getting rolled by hulking monsters, intimidating coaches, and hundreds of pounds of free weights. Who’d have thought the street would be more dangerous than a football field?

Now it was official. I
really
shouldn’t have been at the practice facility.

But I couldn’t escape now, not with Lachlan potentially hurt. This was a disaster. I’d be caught.

Peter, the head photographer, was the only other Rivets’ employee with a key to our office. He’d see that I’d tampered with the computer. He’d know the SD card was gone.

He’d fire me.

My career would be over, but God only knew what would happen to the Rivets’ reputation if the media ever found those pictures.

First I’d taken every scrap of incriminating evidence I could find. Then I rendered unconscious the
one
player Jack Carson specifically petitioned the coaches to draft.

Banner day for me.

I patted Lachlan’s cheek. “Charming…can you hear me?”

He grunted. Good sign. But his eyes stayed closed. Not great.

The street had emptied of cars, and no players crossed the parking lot. At least I was still
technically
in hiding, but I couldn’t leave Lachlan, groggily fading in and out of consciousness.

Hell, that was how I left him the last time we were together. At least then he was freshly-fucked and exhausted after our one-night stand.

Though…it had been more than
one
night. I probably should have called it a one-weekend stand, though some head-stands were involved too. The alcohol stole most of my memories, but the remaining flashes were shamefully explicit and astoundingly lewd.

Also good. Very, very good.

But I was never doing anything like that again. Like a camel crossed with a puritan, I’d store up my sexual inhibitions in those couple humps we had.

The day I’d returned, missing all of my panties as well as every photograph I’d taken of the rookie scouting combine, I’d vowed never to think of, speak of, or indulge Lachlan Reed ever again.

Until the moment I’d knocked him out.

“Come on, Charming.”

I couldn’t easily move his bulk, so I straddled him in the middle of the sidewalk, my knees on either side of his hips.

An all-too familiar position.

“Let’s get you up.”

An all-too familiar saying.

“Don’t make me blow a whistle, pretty-boy.” I sharpened my voice. “
Huddle up
!”

Lachlan’s eyes opened, and the sea-foam green intensity of his gaze crashed through me like white caps against a jetty.

God, I’d almost forgotten how beautiful this man was.

Almost
.

Every part of him angled hard—his cheekbones, his brow, the fierce strike of his nose, the solid authority of his jaw. But what might have seemed severe was warmed by the playful quirk of his lips. Lachlan always donned a panty-melting grin. The charming, wicked kind that lured girls like me a little too close.

He packed a smirk for every party, a laugh for every fight, and a sleeve of condoms for luck.

And he got lucky.

A lot.

Those green eyes blinked once, twice, and unfocused once more. I sat back, puffing the hair from my face. Maybe the new bump on his blonde head would blend in with the old lumps he suffered from practices and games?

But he seemed to be coming around. A little. He licked his full, dangerous lips and hissed a word. I couldn’t make it out. I leaned close just as he sat up.

Mistake.

Lachlan seized me, tangling his fingers in my hair and pulling me close.

I squealed. “
What are you—
”

His kiss blindsided me.

Soft.

I’d forgotten how soft his kisses could be. Either he was tearing through my clothes with his teeth, or he kissed warm and sweet, little nibbles of dew-dropped gentleness that shivered me in all the right places.

My heart lurched into my throat, skipping a couple of beats and deciding then and there to skip town, skedaddle back to Vegas, and lose myself with Lachlan in the best suite the Bellagio could offer.

I
almost
parted my lips for him.

Which one of us had the head injury?

What in the world was I doing? What was
he
doing? Maybe this pig
should
have been roadkill!

I pulled away, slapping his chest. Lachlan rested once more against the sidewalk.

His satisfied sigh was thoroughly inappropriate.

“Easy there, Sleeping Beauty.” I warned him.

What good was scolding him? My lips still hummed with excitement.

No man should have kissed that well, especially one potentially suffering from a multitude of internal injuries.

I ignored the fluttering in my chest and resolved
never
to acknowledge the desperate tingle warming other parts of me.

“A concussion doesn’t give you the right to kiss me,” I said.

Lachlan laughed. His chuckle still good-natured, the kind of carefree nonchalance of a man who never sweated the little things—like being rendered unconscious.

He squinted into the light, his eyes unfocused. “You tackled me. So…I kissed.”

“A word of advice before you take to the field?” I shook my head. “
Please
don’t kiss everyone who tackles you.”

Lachlan’s eyes fluttered closed. “Don’t often get tackled by a princess.”

Fantastic. I broke the first-round draft choice. There went my raise.

“I’m not a princess, Lachlan.”

“Fucking A.” He grinned. “I’m glad. A princess would be too prissy to go bad.”

“Bad?”

“Fucking dirty. Need a bad girl. Someone naked. Writhing. What kind of girl are you?”

I stopped him before he tried to get up…or demonstrated his preferences. “I’m the kind of girl who should probably get you medical attention.”

“Oh. A naughty nurse. Like that too.” His words almost slurred. “Sponge baths. Physicals.”

“MRIs. Neurological assessments.”

“Yeah, talk sexy to me.”

“Oh, good Lord. Just sit still.”

I placed a hand on his chest. He immediately covered it with his—huge, hot, and five claws short of a paw. He enveloped my dark fingers with his far paler hand and grinned.

“Do you taste like brown sugar?”

Yes. We had determined that in Vegas. Multiple times.

I ignored him. “How’s your head?”

“I don’t give, I receive.”

And we were getting nowhere. “I had no idea you could flirt even with moderate to severe head trauma.”

“Second nature.”

“Undoubtedly. Do you think you can sit up?”

Lachlan narrowed his eyes, staring hard at me. He grinned. “Hey…I think I love you.”

“Okay. Time to go to the hospital.”

Lachlan shifted too quickly. That only made it worse. He swore and dropped to the concrete, smacking his head once more.

Couple more of those and he wouldn’t remember me rescuing him.

Which was good.

If I had it my way,
no one
would know that I had been to the practice facility today.

I patted my pocket. The SD card was securely tucked into my jeans. The photographs were safe, but the team wasn’t. The pictures might have destroyed every accomplishment, record, and win the Rivets’ organization had achieved in the past year. And if I didn’t get away from the practice facility quick, if
anyone
saw me, they’d know it was me who had taken it.

And this was why I never came into work early. Lack of sleep, possible media firestorm, endangering my job. Just wasn’t worth it.

“Okay, you have to listen to me, Lachlan,” I said.

“Yeah, say my name.”

I gritted my teeth. “Mr. Reed, are you hurt?”

“Aching for you.”

“Do you hit on everyone who saves you?”

“Only if they’re as beautiful as you, Red.”

He reached for a lock of my hair. The Rihanna red streaks worked well against the ebony locks. He twisted the hair between his fingers as dimples dotted his cheeks.

Dangerous dimples that possessed a unique ability to pop the hooks on a bra from across a room.

His eyes focused, but I didn’t let him up.

“I can’t be here,” I said. “You never saw me, okay?”

“See you in my dreams every night.”

What a sweet-talker. “I’m sorry, but I have to go.”

“Haven’t even bought you a drink yet.”

I was still hung-over from the binge three months ago. “A good deed is its own reward.”