Royal Baby (A British Bad Boy Romance) (25 page)

That was one of my reservations about Liam Croft, but it wasn’t the whole story. Not by a long shot.

“Liam, what’s your prediction for tomorrow’s game?” a reporter asked.

He shrugged. “The usual. I’ll score, we’ll win, I’ll get ‘man of the match’—that’s getting a bit inevitable now—then we all head round to mine for a party. You can come if you like.”

He winked at the reporter who had asked the question, and I rolled my eyes. God, his arrogance was astounding. Why did women love him so much? With that attitude, he was about as appealing as a moldy sandwich covered in burnt hair.

Okay, okay, so he was attractive—sexy as hell, in fact—I could admit that, at least. But was that really enough to make all these women see past his personality? I guess it was, given his extensively-covered history with women, but I still failed to see how.

The next question picked up where Liam’s last answer had left off. “On the subject of partying: do you feel it’s getting bit excessive? Everyone celebrates after a match, but in your case, you seem to pre-emptively start the celebrations the night before.”

Liam shrugged. “If you know you’re gonna win, why not start celebrating early?”

“Don’t you feel it’s unprofessional?”

He scoffed. “Tell you what…when I stop winning, then you can tell me to go easy on the beers. But if I can do both, why wouldn’t I?”

“So what you’re saying is, you don’t feel it hurts your performance?”

Liam leered at the pretty young news anchor who had asked the question. “I’ve had no complaints about my ‘performance’ so far, if you catch my drift, love.”

This sleazy retort apparently gave the reporters license to change the subject to Croft’s personal life and the names of all the women with whom he had been seen—actresses, singers, supermodels, one member of the royal family and so on. The questions always fell short of actually asking ‘How many? How often? Where? What positions?’ but it was forever implied, and Liam seemed to enjoy giving teasingly salacious answers that hinted at much whilst saying nothing. They were all ‘just friends’, which inevitably led to the one question which Liam seemed willing to give a straight answer to.

“Is there anyone special in your life?”

He shrugged, and that cocky grin he was so well known for spread across his face. “No. And I’ll tell you why. Dating is like football—just playing is fun, but what you really want is someone who challenges you. There’s a hell of a lot of players out there, and I haven’t found anyone who’s a match for me, on or off the pitch, and I don’t think I will anytime soon.”

The reporters quickly raised their hands for follow-up questions, but Liam was already on his feet. “Sorry, but I’ve got a big match tomorrow, and if I don’t get a bit wasted the night before then it’s just not fair on the other team. I mean, I’ll beat them, but I don’t want to embarrass them.”

With that, he winked at the camera and swaggered off the podium, and I switched off the TV and threw the remote across the room. Was there, I wondered, some correlation between talent and being a dick? Or had the luxurious lifestyle afforded to Liam Croft by his tremendous talent turned him into a dick? It was hard to say, and the only thing that could be said for certain was that he was unquestionably a dick.

And this was the man I’d been sent to interview….yay for me.

Worse than that, this was the man with whom I’d been sent to
get
an interview. One thing that Liam Croft—or at least Liam Croft’s management—had forever refused to grant was an exclusive interview. Not some busy, hurried pre or post-game press conference, but a lengthy, in-depth, one-on-one interview. Now the opportunity had become available, and it was a free for all competition amongst the reporters of the world to get that exclusive, which meant that I would not only have to speak to the odious Liam Croft, but I would have to schmooze him beforehand. I would have to ingratiate myself to him and persuade him to choose me. That was why Alan Granger had felt that my ‘rack’ was relevant to the job description, and to be fair, he wasn’t wrong about that.

It wasn’t a task I was looking forward to, partly because I was in this business for the love of sport and this had nothing to do with sport, and partly because I had a hunch that asking Liam Croft for something
lengthy, in-depth and one-on-one
would get a certain type of response. Then I would probably be tempted to slap him—or knee him in the family jewels—and that would certainly hurt my chances of getting the exclusive.

I sighed. Rivalry, competitiveness, even a bit of baiting your opponents—these were all part of sports and I accepted them. They made it exciting. Arrogance and bragging I was less comfortable with, and at the levels produced by Liam Croft, I felt they just degraded a sport I loved. He was the best in the world—he had a right to be proud of that—but why did he have to treat that gift with such contempt?

I gazed out across the city once more, but found its beauty had been given a bitter edge by the thought that tomorrow I would be forced to ‘make nice’ with a man who represented everything I despised.

How fun.

Well, at least I got to see London, right?

Chapter 2

Liam

I awoke with a hangover, which was a little bit like saying a giraffe awoke and was tall—some things go without saying. A hangover for me was business as usual. The ‘awoke’ was not entirely accurate, though— ‘was woken’ would’ve fit better. I had no need of an alarm clock, because I had a brother, and he was currently looming over me.

“Fuck…what time is it?” I grumbled.

“Time to get up,” he said, smiling brightly down at my bleary eyes. “You look like shit, by the way.”

“Thanks, Dean. Always appreciate the compliments.”

“Good night, I assume?”

I finally managed to sit up and look around. “Am I alone?”

Dean checked the bathroom. “Seem to be.”

“Well, it was a good night then.”

I sighed and rubbed my eyes, trying to recall exactly what had happened last night. I knew I hadn’t picked up a girl for once, but not much else was clear in my mind.

When I was younger and used to go out partying, picking up girls had always been the ultimate goal for me, just like any other young man filled to the brim with raging hormones. Now, though… now it was different. I still liked women, and I still liked chatting a girl up and other associated activities, but it just was no fun anymore. When I’d been young and out on the pull, I’d thought that the fun bit came later in bed (or the backseat of a friend’s car depending on circumstances), but now I realized that what I’d really enjoyed back then was the chase.

And that just didn’t exist anymore for someone in my position.

Whenever I walked into a club, there was no longer any question over whether or not I could pick up a girl—the whole female population of the room just threw themselves at me. I could leave with whoever I wanted. In fact, I could probably leave with all of them if I wanted.

On one occasion, when pretty drunk, I’d tried being as obnoxious and offensive as I could to a group of girls, just to see what happened, and it made no difference; I could say what I liked about their badly-penciled eyebrows, choice of drinks and general appearance, and they still just giggled and continued to bicker amongst themselves over who got to take me home.

Why would they still want me after I behaved like that? I had no idea, but they did. There seemed to be nothing I could do to stop myself from being attractive to women, or at least a certain type of woman. And in the world in which I now moved there only seemed to be the one type.

I was well aware that this was all a bit ‘poor little rich boy’. Whining about the fact that I could have any woman I wanted, and every woman other men wanted, without putting in any effort at all was the sort of thing that would make other men rightly hate me. I didn’t want to be one of those assholes going on about, ‘oh, it’s so hard being rich, handsome, successful, and having gorgeous women constantly throw themselves at you’, but it
was
hard in some respects. There were no doubt people with much, much bigger problems in the world, and I
did
like being rich and successful and having women throw themselves at me, but still…though it would’ve seemed utterly inconceivable to an outsider looking in, there seemed to be something missing from my world, and I had no damn idea what it was. I had everything I’d ever wanted, everything I’d ever dreamed of as a kid, and yet somehow it still wasn’t enough.

I almost hated myself for that. Every man in the country would have traded places with me in a heartbeat and I still wasn’t satisfied? I really was a fucking wanker.

“Are you sober?” Dean asked, passing me a glass of water.

I drank deeply and considered the question. “Maybe not quite. Not far off but…not quite.”

“Let’s head out.”

“Sure. Just let me grab some shoes.”

Running off a hangover was definitely not everyone’s first choice, but I’d gone for morning runs for as long as I could remember. When I was a kid, a morning run meant sprinting away from my father’s belt or from truant officers, but despite that bad start, a love of running had somehow become ingrained. One day Dean and I had run into a youth football team training and decided to give it a shot. Dean could take it or leave it—football was fun to him, but no more than that. I, however, felt as if I had come home. And for a kid who’d been raised the way Dean and I had, ‘home’ was a precious thing to find.

“How are you feeling now?” Dean asked as we jogged through the park ten minutes later.

“Good,” I replied. “Thanks for getting me up.”

“Just a light one today, you don’t want to push it before the game.”

I nodded—I took my training seriously. I glanced around the park: not a member of the paparazzi in sight. Pictures of me were big business for the media, but they only wanted a certain type of picture; the type that matched the image which they wanted to project of me (although I had to admit that I’d been complicit in forging that image). Last night I hadn’t been able to move without a flash going off and I knew that the papers would once again be full of images of me partying before the big match. But none of them were here now to see that I also trained hard before the big match—that wouldn’t suit the character or the narrative they’d decided for me. For now I was Liam the Invincible: able to outplay anyone and everyone despite my wild lifestyle. There might be a vaguely admonishing tone— ‘are these antics really worthy of the beautiful game?’ and so on—but overall it would be ‘Jack-the-Lad makes good’.

Over time, of course things would change: the games would get closer and the tone would become more censorious as my partying lifestyle led to my team almost losing. And then, inevitably, as no one can go on forever, the losses would come and with it the moral outrage: what sort of way is this for a sportsman and a role-model to behave? Think of the children! As long as I was winning I was just the cheeky chappie, the bad boy player, and the finger wagging was just a cover for envy. But the time would come when they all blamed me and hated me.

I knew all of this, and there were times when I wondered if I should change. But why? It was my life; didn’t I have a right to enjoy it? If I could win at the game I loved whilst having the sort of social life that every red-blooded man craved, then why shouldn’t I? I was having fun when I went out, and where was the harm in that?

All of that sounded pretty reasonable, right up until I remembered that, in fact, I
wasn’t
really enjoying it. Or at least I was, but still felt something major was missing. I partied because it was expected of me, because I was supposed to enjoy it, and because it helped me to bury the fact that with the world at my feet I still felt empty and incomplete. If nothing else, the partying did help me to forget.

And there were some things I really needed to forget.

The jog ended, and my brother and I sat in the kitchen, sharing the bacon sandwiches and coffee that Dean had made upon our return. When it was just the two of us together, Dean always cooked, a throwback to when we’d been kids and he’d looked after me, his little brother.

“Meet anyone interesting?” Dean asked after swallowing a mouthful of crust.

“Interesting?”

“At the club,” he said. “Did you meet anyone? And by anyone I’m thinking maybe a lady.”

I shrugged. “Define interesting.”

“Someone with whom you might want to share more than bodily fluids?”

I furrowed my brows. “Trying to eat here, so less talk of bodily fluids would be nice.”

He held up his hands. “I’m just saying, if you’re not meeting interesting women—and by that I mean women who might like you for more than who you are and the size of your wallet…”

“It’s not my wallet’s size that they like, if you know what I mean,” I said with a smirk.

Dean rolled his eyes. “Save that sleazy bullshit for the press. As I was saying: if you’re not meeting interesting women, then perhaps it’s because you’re not looking in the right places.”

“Perhaps it’s because I’m not looking at all,” I suggested.

“Which begs the question: why not?”

I shrugged. “I don’t need a woman to talk to, I’ve got you.”

Dean arched an eyebrow. “Well, that’s disturbing. What are you going to do when I’m not around, eh? You may not be looking for an interesting woman, but I am.”

My eyes lit with mischief.  “You’ll never find one,” I said, gesturing at his face with my half-eaten bacon sandwich. “Too ugly.”

“I’m serious, Liam.”

“So am I. Have you seen a mirror lately?”

He knew I was only kidding, and he flashed me a good-natured grin, then sighed. “I really think you’d be happier with a woman.”

“Right now I definitely would. Nice little after-breakfast romp never hurt anyone.”

Dean shook his head and went to top up his coffee.

“You honestly think there’s a shortage of women in my life?” I asked. “Really? Personally I could do with less.”

“I don’t think there’s a single
woman
in your life,” he said. “In so many ways. For one thing they’re not women, they’re all girls. And I don’t mean their ages.” He held up a hand to silence me as I opened my mouth to speak. “I mean the way they act around the big football hero. It’s like being in a playground. Plus, you always talk in the plural: ‘women’. I said: a woman. Single. More to the point: singular. Someone special.”

“It’s not like I’m not looking,” I said, defensiveness creeping into my tone.

“That’s exactly what it’s like,” Dean countered. “You spend your life surrounded by women—try talking to them for once. And I mean really talking, not just sweet-talking your way into their pants.”

“Look, it’s easy for you. Trying to find a special woman when you’ve only got five to choose from: anyone can do that. I’ve got to find one out of a hundred thousand. It’s not a needle in a haystack, it’s a specific needle in a pile of other needles.”

Dean shrugged. “Make whatever bullshit excuses you want. It’s not like this is something that happened when you got famous. You couldn’t commit when we were in our teens, either.”

I snorted. “Who commits when they’re in their teens?”

Dean eyeballed me a moment before continuing with what he felt had to be said. “Mum and Dad made relationships look like a living hell and you’ve never been able to shake that image—that’s your idea of a relationship.”

“What are you, a psychiatrist?” I said, rolling my eyes.

But Dean continued unperturbed. “They took so much from us, Liam. Stuff we’ll never be able to get back. I’m sorry if it feels like I’m pushing you, but I don’t want to let them take this from you as well. I couldn’t bear to think of you alone all your life because of them.”

I smiled at him, my face softening. “I’m never alone.”

Dean managed a rueful smile back. “I guess not.”

It was an old argument, one we’d had before and which we would have again, but we had been through too much together in our lives to let such things fester for too long.

But, although the argument was done for another day, I couldn’t suppress a curious sensation as I headed for the shower. It wasn’t something I could put my finger on, nor to which I could put a name. The closest I could come up with was an ‘imminence’—it felt as if something was going to happen, and soon. I wasn’t a big believer in signs or omens, considering that was just so much nonsense, but the sensation was hard to ignore.

Perhaps it was something that came from inside myself. Or perhaps my big brother’s words were starting to have an effect. Perhaps I was ready.

Ready to meet the one.

I quickly dispelled the thought with a shake of my head:
don’t be ridiculous
—
you’re Liam Croft
. There were only two things for which I was ready: winning and partying. That was all I needed.

Right?