by Annie O'Neil
She had to tell him. At the very least it was his right to know. Especially since she was going to see this through. She was going to have the baby.
As the thought paraded through her brain a whole new set of nerves sent a fresh course of adrenaline through her. She’d have to go to yoga tonight after work—not hot yoga...that wouldn’t be good for the baby. But yoga—the calming sort—was a must if she was ever going to rein in her composure enough to tell Aidan. Which she would. When she found the right time. If she found the right time.
Oh, golly, gosh—and a Moses basket to boot!
She was simply going to have to find a time.
She tried to picture what his face would look like after she told him—said the words We’re having a baby. Or I’m having a baby. Maybe that would be better. No. Then it might sound like someone else could’ve been in the picture. As if.
There is a baby.
No. Too scientific. And vague.
Remember at the airport, when we were pretending we didn’t care it was Valentine’s Day, decided to skip dinner and went straight to the great sex part? We ate ice cream after. Choc chip mint. With fudge sauce. Which I licked off your—
No. Inappropriate for a baby-reveal.
Then again... Maybe it hadn’t been that night after all. It could have been that night they’d each got rug burns. Or...
Aaaaaargh! No, no, no, no, no, noooooooooo!
She plonked her head down on her desk with a clonk. Her speech needed work.
“Lockhart?” Coach Stone gave the doorframe of her office a quick knock before entering. “You all right to do the skinfolds this morning? Tate’s off doing X-rays with Rory.”
“Absolutely.” She smiled and grabbed her caliper. “Be there in a mo.”
Work. The perfect distraction. It had helped her get through tough times before. But this time it was going to be much harder to put the blinkers on and block out the obvious. She was in love with Aidan Tate and she was going to have his baby—and those weren’t things Aidan wanted in his life: a relationship, a baby. A family. The sooner she got that through her thick skull, the better.
She pushed into the locker room and as the fug of sweaty man scent, dirty towels, smelly rugby cleats and fifteen different varieties of deodorant hit her she found herself trying to knock back another powerful wave of nausea.
“You all right, Harty?” one of the players asked as she barely stopped herself from swooning at the sensation. “You’re looking a bit green around the gills.”
“Did you guys run out of shower gel or something?” She cracked a smile but had to hold on to the doorframe to help her collect herself before entering the locker room. It had never seemed this rank before. What had these guys been doing all morning?
“You didn’t go and get yourself pregnant at one of our away games, did you, Harty?”
Her stomach turned again. “Ha-ha. Very funny.” She forced herself to let go of the doorframe.
Must remember to mouth-breathe. That should just about get her through the next half hour in here.
“Come on, Mack. You’re up first, fatty!” She opened the calipers in an evil scientist clamping motion and left the doorway. She could do this.
As she tried to stride into the center of the room a huge waft of tropical heat hit her when one of the players came out of the steam room. Unsteadiness began to work its way through her, as if she were a huge bobble woman. The players and the lockers began to spin around her. She could see but not hear Mack as he approached her, arms outstretched, and then—darkness.
* * *
Aidan gave the coach an incredulous look. Ali? His Ali had fainted?
“I don’t know what happened, Aidan. She just came into the locker room to do the caliper tests, and next thing you know was out like a light in Mack’s arms. One of the boys found some salts and she was back up at work as if nothing had happened a few minutes later, but it was strange.”
“What? She fainted because Mack was holding her?” That didn’t sound like Ali—and he didn’t like the idea of her being in another man’s arms.
“No, no. She fainted and he caught her because he was on his way to her to get his skinfold test.” Coach Stone gave him a sideways glance. “What does it matter, anyway? Point is, Lockhart fainted for no apparent reason, and you need her on top form tomorrow for the final or you need to get someone new in here. Stat. Are we clear?”
“Absolutely, Coach. I’ll go speak with her.”
“You do that. We need absolutely no diversions tomorrow.”
The coach was serious. The team had done incredibly well this season, and he had all but cleared a prime spot in the display cabinets of the North Stars’ trophy room. They were all in the same place—on the same mission. Fainting doctors weren’t really a goer at this point.
Strange, though. When he’d last seen Ali she’d been perfectly... No, she hadn’t. She’d been distracted. Very distracted. Maybe she had some sort of bug. There was always something going around this time of year as the seasons shifted. If that was the case he didn’t want her anywhere near the team. It wasn’t how he’d been hoping to see out the last day he had with her—but if he had to ban her from the game, he would. He’d chosen work and he needed to stay true to that.
Aidan pushed out of the locker room’s double doors and headed for her office. They’d barely spoken since his father had arrived. Everything between them was the opposite of how he’d imagined their final days together would be. If he had been a wall-puncher his apartment would have been riddled with holes.
This was just the sort of scenario he should’ve pictured before he’d let himself get carried away with—with what, exactly? Falling in love with Ali Lockhart? That was about the size of it. He just didn’t know how to picture it, though. Never had. Marriage to the girl of his dreams and living happily ever...? Didn’t he give himself an annual reminder as to why that was never going to happen?
He stuck his head round Ali’s office door. She was wholly engrossed in finishing up some paperwork and he stole the few moments to soak her in. Ebony hair falling down her back and over her shoulder in thick waves. Long fingers playing at her lips while she chose what to write on the forms. He narrowed his focus to the pads of her fingers, tip-tapping along her lips—lips he knew he could never tire of kissing.
He straightened and abruptly cleared his throat. This sort of mooning wasn’t going to get him anywhere.
“Hey, there.” Ali turned round in her chair, eyebrows slightly raised in expectation.
“Mind if I come in?”
“Please.” Ali indicated a chair—not the one closest to her desk, he noticed. Fair enough. It wasn’t as if he’d been unleashing a welcoming parade of late.
“Coach wanted me to check on how you were feeling.”
She tilted her head to the side, as if she were considering what to say, then gave a dry laugh. “I’m fine.” She looked him in the eye. “Anything else?”
“Are you sure? You don’t think you’ve got a bug or something? I heard about the fainting.”
Ali pressed her lips together. Hard. Then let them scrape past her teeth before allowing herself to answer. She’d left it too long to tell Aidan now. The day before the final. Destroying his focus when he needed it most Was not really the plan of action she’d been going for. She would tell him directly after the final. And then she’d leave.
“I’m fine, Aidan. Just putting together the team’s final set of health stats before the big day.”
He nodded, rubbed his hands along his thighs and gave his hands a clap, as if he was gearing up to saying something big. “Good, good. Anything interesting?”
Uh... I’m pregnant with your baby.
Out loud, voice—please! Otherwise Aidan’s going to keep hovering, and the longer he stands here the more you�
�re going to want to slip into his arms and be held for one lovely, long, Aidan-scented last time before you have to say goodbye.
“Mack seems to have the most consistently low resting heart rate of the lot,” she mustered, in her bright-as-a-bluebird voice. “And...” She ran her finger along the chart she was currently working on. “Looks like Jonesey wins on the skinfold test—although they’re all really in peak condition. I would say there’s not much more than a hair’s breadth between them.”
“Great. As well they should be. Coach has been working them hard.” Aidan moved to the doorway but didn’t seem to be making much of an effort to actually leave the room, which would’ve been the ideal outcome.
“That he has!” Ali smiled at him, hoping her expression said We’re done now. Her veneer of cheer was about to crack, so his departure would be good.
“You wouldn’t...?” Aidan’s voice trailed off.
For the sweet love of an ending! Spit it out, man! There are not so many hours left in this day, and that means there are fewer than twenty-four more before you hear you’re going to be a father.
“Wouldn’t what, Aidan?” Ali was finding it hard to mask her exasperation.
“You wouldn’t like to come out to dinner with me tonight? To meet my dad and his wife,” he added hastily.
Unexpected.
He gave her one of those pretty-please smiles of his that she found virtually impossible to resist.
“There’s a lot to do before tomorrow...” she stalled.
“C’mon Ali. You’ve got to eat.”
Aidan sat down in the chair next to her desk and took her hand in his. Her nerve endings shot to attention and it was all she could do not to climb into his lap, wrap her arms around his neck and tell him everything.
“Help me out here.”
“What? By having dinner with your dad and your new stepmum?”
She knew the word would rankle. Which was precisely why she’d said it. He pulled his hand away from hers—just as she’d predicted.
“She’s not that bad, actually.” He rested his hand on his chin and began to draw rugby-ball-shaped doodles on a notepad. “I know it’s not what we’d planned for tonight.”
Ali sat back in her chair. This was interesting. They had, over the past weeks, made a very distinct point of not having any plans. Ever. They’d “just happened” to end up in one or the other’s kitchens, or sofas, and just about always beds every single night since “That Night” a few months ago.
“And what exactly was it we had planned for tonight?”
“Hanging out with my dad didn’t really top the list.”
Aidan’s face lit up with one of those irascible smiles of his, and despite her best intentions Ali’s tummy went all effervescent in a way that had nothing to do with her pregnancy.
“I really need to pack tonight, Aidan.”
She tried to look aggrieved at the choice she had to make, but dining out as a family when she knew there was a whole lot more “family” on the cards than anyone else knew was not a chart-topper for her.
“C’mon, Ali. We both know you only have enough things to put in a run bag.” His eyes met hers. “I know it’s weird, but I’d like you to come. You know me. I’m hardly the king of lively conversation and I promise to be really irritating. It’ll make your forget-about-Aidan campaign much easier.”
“I don’t think anything will make that easier.”
Ali wished she could swallow the words back down her throat. She would never, ever forget Aidan Tate. Not in a million years.
“Hey... C’mon...” Aidan’s fingers crept across the desk toward hers. “It hasn’t been all bad, has it?”
“You know it has been the total opposite of that, you barmstick.”
“Easy on the language, Lockhart. You’ll get yourself kicked off the field tomorrow if you don’t watch it.”
Ali didn’t reply. She just gave him a sad smile. She could feel the choke of tears begin in her throat. This was going to be so tough. Harder than anything. Why did he have to carry on being so nice? If he could go back to being the irascible, arrogant, know-it-all she’d first met this would be a whole lot easier. But if he really had been that haughty guy she knew she wouldn’t have fallen in love with him as deeply as she had.
“Look. I’m not going to take no for an answer. We’ll eat early. They’re still jet-lagged, and you and I both need an early night.” Aidan put his hands up in the air as if he was showing her his final card. His ace. “Besides, you’ll need your energy for tomorrow and it’s not like you’re going to eat well at home.” He pulled a face. “I’ve tasted your cooking.”
“What are you saying, exactly? I make delicious bowls of cereal!” Ali was laughing now. He had that way with her. Always teasing away the protective layers and unveiling one of her unabashed smiles when she least expected to give it.
She felt her smile fade and had to look away from those dark eyes of his.
She’d wanted change when she came up here to Tealside, and she had received the super-deluxe treatment.
“So, I’ll pick you up around six-thirty?”
Aidan rose from his chair as if it were a done deal. Then he smiled again, the little crinkles by his eyes doing their cute little dimple thing.
It was only dinner. And she was a grown-up. Might as well meet the future grandparents of her child!
“Great. See you then.”
CHAPTER TEN
“AIDAN TELLS US you work with dancers?”
Richard Tate was definitely a man who liked to keep the flow of conversation moving. Not that he had much work on his hands tonight. He and his wife were great fun, and Ali would’ve been hard pressed to recall a single awkward moment. Even Aidan, whom she’d thought might easily revert into “annoyed son mode,” seemed on good form.
“Most of the work I do—did—was with dancers. But En Pointe does a lot of work with gymnasts, as well. They have similar injuries. It’s mostly women, so working up here has been quite a change.”
Understatement of the universe!
“Ali’s made some great alterations to the team’s training.”
Aidan jumped in with details of all the changes they’d made since her arrival. In fact all night he’d been on some sort of mission to put all her plus-points on display. It was flattering, sure. But not what she was used to. Particularly after having worked with shut-down, grim-faced Aidan for the past few days.
It felt as though she’d grabbed on to an enormous emotion-laden pendulum and was holding on for dear life. He was acting like a young man showing off his new girlfriend to his parents—not someone who’d brought her along just to keep the chitchat lively. Talk about a sea change.
“I’d like to make sure Ali’s work here stays in play.” He gave her a wink before taking a bite of his steak.
He liked it medium rare: super-seared on the outside with a dark seam of rare in the center. With chips. And a mountain of salad. Not that she had been getting to know everything he liked over the past three months or anything. Nothing like that at all.
“In fact,” he continued after a moment, “we might start calling the exercises ‘Lockharts.’”
Everyone at the table laughed apart from Ali, who just managed not to choke on her wild mushroom gratin. Classy.
Lockharts? Really? All that was going to remain of her time here were some ankle-strengthening exercises? Or was all of this just Aidan’s way of trying to sugarcoat the truth? He was looking forward to her departure. He liked being in charge. That much had been clear when she’d arrived.
Her hand slipped onto her belly for a protective rub. All she had to do was make it through this dinner and the game tomorrow, and then she would be done. Oh! And tell Aidan he was going to be a father before she hopped on the train. Other than that�
��she had just about wrapped everything up.
“Are your plans to return to London straight away?” Marianne asked.
“That’s the idea,” Ali quipped, grabbing her water and fastidiously avoiding eye contact with Aidan.
Her mouth had gone dry about a thousand times already that night and this moment was no different. Until she told Aidan about their baby, and that he was off the hook in the responsibility department, everything was going to be off-kilter. Time to steer the conversation off of her.
“How did you and Richard meet?”
If Ali could’ve opened her mouth and stuffed her foot directly into it she would have. Aidan stared at her in disbelief until Marianne and Richard broke the silence with near-hysterical giggles.
“I thought Aidan would’ve told you!”
“Well...” Ali desperately started backpedaling. “He did mention something about—about your profession.”
“Don’t worry, dear.” Marianne reached across the table and patted her arm comfortingly. “I like to look at our introduction as a sort of primer into The Full Richard Tate Package.” She gave her new husband a warm smile. “I knew what I was getting into when I agreed to marry this man—and I also knew exactly what sort of woman he didn’t want.”
“What’s ridiculous,” Richard jumped in, “is how long it took me to figure it out. They do say women are smarter than men. I can assure you, Ali, that is definitely the case in this scenario. Truth be told, I’m grateful for my past. If I hadn’t made so many mistakes, hit rock-bottom, I never would’ve ended up at this one’s doorstep. I’m just annoyed it took me so long to realize Cupid was pointing his big neon arrow right over her cute little head.”
He gave Marianne’s hand a squeeze and lifted his glass of wine.
“A toast.”
Ali raised the glass of wine she’d been fastidiously avoiding all night.
“A toast,” Richard repeated, making eye contact with each of them. “To finding ‘The One.’”
As Ali raised her glass to the chorus of “Hear! Hear!” her stomach dropped, then catapulted up to her throat.