His for One Night

by Sarah M. Anderson

She shrugged, but he felt the tension ripple through her body. “It’s me and Mom. I don’t know who my dad was—Mom refuses to talk about him.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said, slumping back against the bed. “She won’t tell me a damn thing about my father, but yet she’s been pushing me to sign off on a big baby reveal. Plus, she refuses to see how much of a hypocrite she’s being about it. All she can say is it isn’t the same—because why? Because I’ve got a music career? It’s BS. Mom is very...focused,” she explained. “She pushed me into a singing career from when I was in kindergarten. Which wasn’t bad,” she added, maybe a little too quickly.

  Flash was getting a mental image of her mother that was anything but flattering. The woman sounded domineering, controlling and more than just a little mean. “Are you sure about that?”

  She nodded. “I love what I do and I’ve had some great friends.”

  “Like Kyle Morgan?” Flash hadn’t forgotten the way the older man had given Flash a mean look.

  “Yeah, Kyle’s been a great mentor. But even the best mentor isn’t a replacement for a father. I don’t even know if my dad knows I exist and I hate it. I’ve always hated it. I can’t help wondering if he didn’t want me.” She leaned against him as she said it.

  Flash’s mind reeled even as he held her tight. True, he’d always butted heads with his father—but he’d always known how much he was loved. His heart hurt for Brooke, for the pain in her voice.

  “That’s on him,” Flash said, furious with this random sperm donor. “Not you, babe. And I would never do that to my child. Even if this doesn’t work out between you and me, I’m not abandoning my kid. He’s a Lawrence no matter what.”

  She exhaled heavily. “Good. That’s good. You know, I’d made peace with it, with her and with him,” Brooke went on, her voice small. “Or I thought I had. Then you happened and I got pregnant and it brought it all home—how much Mom kept hidden from me. I love her, but I don’t know if I can ever forgive her. Does that make sense?”

  Flash felt like she’d punched him. “Yeah,” he got out in a strangled voice. “I understand completely.”

  Because he felt exactly the same way. He cared for Brooke, more than he probably should. And he felt such a powerful, instinctual love for James that he couldn’t even put it into words.

  But how would he get past the fact that Brooke had kept that baby boy a secret from Flash? Was forgiveness even possible?

  “And it was so hard not to call you up and tell you then,” she went on, seemingly unaware that she’d just blown Flash’s mind. “You’ve got to believe me, Flash—I always meant to tell you. I never intended to keep you from Bean or him from you. Because I know it’s not right. I was just...”

  “Waiting for the right time,” he said softly after she’d trailed off.

  “Yeah.” She swallowed. “I wish I’d realized that the right time was actually a few months ago.”

  That made two of them.

  “I’m not going to be like her,” she said, her voice stronger as she sat up straighter. “I want Bean to know you and your family. I want us to get to a point where we can make some version of this work.”

  Flash had to swallow a few times. “Yeah, me too.”

  She tapped a pattern on the tea mug. “The question is, how do we make that happen?”

  He scratched a hand through his hair. “The general consensus is that me telling you we had to get hitched was the dumbest thing I’ve done in a long, long time.”

  “So why did you do it?”

  He kept his gaze locked on her face. “Because. Which—” he added with a chuckle when her lips twisted off to the side in disapproval “—is a bad answer. I’ve learned that. But the truth is, you mean something to me, Brooke.”

  He felt, more than saw, the eye roll. He tried again. “From the moment I laid eyes on you, I haven’t looked at another woman—and that’s not just a figure of speech. There’s something between us, and it’s got the potential to be something good. Something great, even. But,” he went on before she could tell him where he could shove all his potential, “that doesn’t mean we make sense married. We both have careers that require near-constant travel, and there’s a lot riding on us doing our jobs well.”

  “That’s true,” she admitted, sounding almost regretful about it. “I’m not giving up my music.”

  “Which is absolutely fair. You’ve been the front line for a year. More than a year,” he said. “Have you done it alone?”

  She didn’t meet his gaze. Instead, her fingers continued to tap out a rhythm on her mug. “I’ve got Alex. And my mother. She’s with Bean now. I may not agree with all of her choices, as you put it, but she loves him completely.” She winced, her fingers stilling as she shot him an apologetic look. “She’ll like you even less than Alex does.”

  Every single time, Brooke’s statements about her mother had been couched in worry and maybe a little bit of fear. If Mrs. Bonner was James’s primary babysitter, that probably meant Brooke had needed the time between when she’d left the Bluebird and when Flash had shown up at her house to get her mother out of her house.

  Mrs. Bonner was a problem.

  Oliver had made it clear why Flash needed to establish paternity immediately, if not sooner. For once, Flash and Oliver had been in agreement about something—marriage would make everything smoother.

  Smoother for the Lawrences, yeah. But for Brooke? She needed more than that and, by God, Flash wanted to be the one to give it to her.

  “I’m not worried about your mom. I’m worried about you.” He stroked his thumb over her cheek. Unexpectedly, her eyes began to water. “You impress the hell out of me, you know? You toured while pregnant and had our baby and still wrote a bunch of kick-ass songs. You’ve done such an amazing job, and I couldn’t ask for a better mother for my son.”

  “Damn it,” she sniffed, pulling away from his touch and swiping at her eyes. “Don’t be charming, Flash. I’m too tired to cope with you being perfect.”

  “I’m not being charming,” he told her as he put her almost empty mug on the nightstand and then lifted her into his lap. “I’m being honest. I’ll always be honest with you. Just be honest with me, too. That’s all I ask.”

  Crying, she settled into his lap, her arms around his neck. This wasn’t sexual, although there was no missing the fact that there was little more than a sheet between their nude bodies.

  No, this was him taking care of her. He wrapped his arms around her, and relief coursed through him when she rested her head on his shoulder. Leaning back against the headboard, he let his body take her weight while he stroked her back and kissed her forehead and let her get it all out.

  Long minutes passed, and he didn’t think about her mother or his family or songs or rodeos or anything but this woman.

  He wanted her.

  It really didn’t make sense, except it did. He’d wanted her a year ago and he wanted her now. Would he still want her in another year?

  Would she still want him?

  It was a huge risk. But, hell, he was Flash Lawrence. Everything he did was a risk.

  “Anything between us has to start from trust, and I...” He swallowed hard. “I understand why you did what you did. But I don’t trust you as much as I need to right now, and you probably don’t trust me as much as you need to, either.” She gasped, but he didn’t stop. He couldn’t. “I’m not going to get it right all the time. I didn’t last night. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop trying.”

  Another tear trickled down her cheek and he wiped this one away, too. “You’re being perfect again,” she said in what might have been a scolding voice if it hadn’t been so choked with emotion.

  “Trying to be, anyway,” he said. She laughed, and she was so beautiful, a smile on her face even as tears clung to her eyelashes, that he kissed her. His b
ody surged to attention as he held her tight.

  He could get lost in the honeyed sweetness of this woman, and that thought made him realize something—he did want to marry her. It might be a disaster and it’d definitely be messy but...

  His father still talked about how he’d taken one look at Trixie Cunningham and that’d been it for him. In the years since her death, he’d never dated, never taken a lover. He was still in love with his wife. She’d been the only woman for him.

  How was that different from how Flash had reacted to Brooke? He’d laid eyes on her at the All-Stars Rodeo in Fort Worth and he hadn’t stopped thinking about Brooke, hadn’t touched another woman, since then.

  What if this was the same thing?

  What if this was forever?

  Thirteen

  She pulled away, resting her head on his shoulder again. “We don’t have much time.”

  “Right.” Damn it. He tried to get his mind back on track. “Okay. We need a plan.”

  “Yes. Definitely a plan.” But then she gave him a dreamy smile and kissed him again.

  She was absolutely killing him, but what a way to go. “First things first—what do you want to do?”

  That dreaminess faded, replaced by a worried furrow between her brows. “You know, I don’t think anyone’s ever asked.”

  Flash winced. Yeah, he’d skipped that step last night. “We need to find a workable solution. And that may or may not involve marriage. So be honest.”

  She was quiet for a long time, but Flash held himself still, and finally she began to talk. “I don’t want to use my child as leverage. I want people to see him as a person in his own right instead of a marketing tool. I want to take him to parks and the zoo and introduce him to my friends—who’ll all be mad that I’ve lied to them for the last year. I don’t want to lie anymore. I want to feel like I’m in control of at least some part of my own life.”

  “That all sounds good to me,” he said softly. He didn’t want to interrupt her.

  “I don’t want to be forced into anything, like I was when my mother and my record company made the executive decision to hide my pregnancy,” she went on. “I don’t want to be made to feel ashamed of who I am or who Bean is. I want my new album to do well, and I want to do a smaller, more manageable tour that won’t be so exhausting. I want to keep my son with me and I want...” Her gaze cut to him and he hoped like hell he saw desire there.

  He leaned forward, hoping to catch that last word, hoping it was you.

  As her words trailed off, she rolled onto her side and stared at him. “I want to be friends with you, because I like you, too.” Her tone was suddenly diplomatic. Was she being honest? “I want to know you better, and you’re right—I want to trust you more than I do now. I want Bean to know his whole family. I want everything to be perfect.”

  She didn’t say not like this, but Flash heard it anyway.

  “That’s quite a list.”

  She swiped at her eyes again. “Yeah. Not going to apologize for any of it.”

  He could sense the frustration underneath every request—the long nights, the loneliness, the worry that underscored her every moment, and it wrecked him that he hadn’t been here for her.

  The truth was that he’d nearly ruined his entire life because he’d had some dumb-ass idea that attacking another guy for daring to talk about her was protecting her, but it wasn’t. Truly protecting her would’ve been standing by her side for the last year, backing her up when she’d needed to push against her mother or her record label, holding her hand during labor, being there for the sleepless nights.

  He couldn’t change the past. The important thing was that she didn’t see herself on opposite sides of him or his family. Everything else, he could work with. He wanted her to keep writing, keep singing, and if she wanted to tour, he’d make it work.

  Mrs. Bonner was definitely going to be a problem, though. Because if there was one thing Flash understood, it was being an adult who everyone still treated like a kid.

  He leaned over and pulled the ring box out of the drawer where he’d stashed it when she’d called. “Brooke.”

  Her eyes went wide as she scrambled into a sitting position—one where she wasn’t touching him. “Flash, don’t do this.”

  “I’m not proposing—promise,” he corrected quickly. He set the box down in the no-man’s land between them. “Let’s call it a...business partnership.”

  She eyed him warily. He hated that look, hated that she still felt she had to guard herself against him. “What kind of partnership?”

  “Several things need to happen.” Things he’d discussed with Chloe and Pete last night and again with Oliver this morning. At least Oliver had only yelled for a few minutes, although there had been that threat of permanent dismemberment...

  “We need a paternity test, for starters. Not because I doubt you,” he said, which made her roll her eyes. “Anyone who looks at that boy knows he’s mine.” Chloe had said as much.

  “You do have the same smile,” she said quietly, giving him a grin that was almost shy.

  “We need the test, because I’m not on the birth certificate and I don’t want anyone else to question the fact that he’s my son.” Anyone like her mother, specifically.

  Brooke blew out a long breath. “Yes, of course. There’s no question about that.”

  “Good.” The next part, however, was trickier. Chloe had told him what she and Brooke had talked about—including how Chloe had gotten distracted by the baby and started thinking out loud about how they were going to sell this to the public. Flash had called her because he wasn’t good at big-picture thinking like that, but he also completely understood why it’d overwhelmed Brooke.

  “Have you thought about what Chloe mentioned last night? Before the cushion incident?”

  Brooke slumped back onto the bed, her fingers tapping a rhythm only she could hear. Flash was sure she didn’t know she was doing it.

  “Yes,” she said quietly, not looking at him. “It’s not a bad plan. It’s definitely the kind of thing the record label will sign off on, especially when your name gets out there. But I don’t want to get married, you know?”

  “Okay. Got that.” He’d have to be dead to miss it.

  “So what is this?” she asked, nudging the box. “How is a ring—it is a ring, right?” Flash nodded. “How is a ring a business proposal?”

  He thought back to that list of things she wanted out of their relationship. The good news was she wanted to be friends with him. Friends spent time together. They hung out, went out, called and texted and sent pictures. Sometimes, friends even stripped each other naked and had extremely satisfying sex.

  But she’d also didn’t want her choices taken away, and she didn’t want to feel ashamed. “Chloe said she could spin our relationship so you’re in the driver’s seat. We were dating and you got pregnant and then I screwed up and you gave me an ultimatum to shape up or ship out, which I did. Right?”

  “Basically...” She crossed her arms and stared at the jeweler’s box as if it held the Ring of Sauron or something.

  “So we could get engaged.” He opened the box, the huge diamond surrounded by sapphires, all catching the light. Brooke gasped in what he hoped was approval.

  “Holy crap—look at the size of that rock!” she whispered. Then she looked up at him, her eyes huge. “Engaged? Are you asking me to marry you again?”

  Flash took that to be a sign that he’d chosen well. “Nope.” She snorted, but her gaze fell back to the ring. “We don’t have to set a date, much less book the band and send out invitations. Chloe said we’d tell people we’d be keeping it quiet, like our whole relationship. Then, in a year or whenever, we could break up, ask for privacy during our difficult time, and promise that we would continue to put our child first. And none of that would be a lie, necessarily.” Although the th
ought of her moving on, falling in love with someone else who’d get to spend time raising his son—yeah, that rankled.

  “You’re serious,” she said, sounding breathless. She stretched out a finger toward the ring before she snatched it back, like the ring might burn her.

  “Yep.” Months of a friendly fake engagement gave Flash room to work. He could take her—and James, of course—out. He could demonstrate he had the chops to be a good father and, most importantly, that he was trustworthy—all without screwing up his big championship year.

  Hopefully, during that time, he could get to a point where he could trust her, too. He knew that was a ways off, but he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life questioning her every statement or action, either.

  And if they were together, it only made sense that they might spend some time in bed, right?

  “You can tour for your new album, I can still ride the rodeo on the weekends and, when we can, we make time to work on this parenting thing.” He laughed nervously. “I need more work than you do, I reckon.”

  “And I could call it off whenever I wanted?” she asked softly. This time, she did pick up the ring, studying the huge round-cut diamond.

  Yeah, he’d made the right choice. “Of course. You could do that even if it were a real engagement.”

  “You won’t ask me to marry you again?”

  He chuckled. “Nope. The offer stands, though.” He took the ring from her. “I guessed on the size.” He held out his hand for hers.

  She made him wait for it, which he probably deserved. “This is the last moment before everything changes. Again,” she murmured. “After this, it’ll be out of our hands.”

  “No, it won’t,” he promised, pulling her into a hug. “I won’t let anyone run you down. We’re in this together.”

  “What about sex?” she murmured against his bare shoulder.

  His pulse stuttered at the thought. “I’m not about to step out on you. The only thing I ask is that you do the same. And...” He had to dig deep to get the words out. “And if we go our separate ways, I want to meet whoever you date before you introduce him to our son.”