7+Us Makes Nine: A Nanny Single Dad Romance (Baby Makes Three)

by Nicole Elliot

  By the time the pizza had been delivered, I was worried her friends were never coming. “This is so not like her.”

  “Who?”

  “My best friend and roommate. We always take care of each other when we go out. It just doesn’t make sense that she would abandon me. I guess I’m going have to take a cab home. She must be really wasted.”

  I took another bite of pizza. “Who is she with?”

  She clutched the beer in the plastic cup between her small hands. I could tell she was nervous. “These two guys. She was trying to set me up on a date.” She took a swig, liquid confidence. “I haven’t been out in a while. My last boyfriend was kind of a douche.”

  “Did he treat you badly?” I couldn’t imagine anyone treating Berkley any way besides perfect. A girl like her deserved to be treated well.

  “He was great at the beginning. But this last year had been rough, and in the end he broke up with me in a voicemail. Four years down the drain, all for nothing.” She sighed heavily looking back out through the window into the night, I could tell she was lost in her own thoughts and I gave her a moment of space. I ate the rest of my pizza until she spoke again, “What about you? I saw a lot of girls throw themselves at you tonight, but it didn’t seem like you paid any attention to them. What’s that all about?”

  “I’m focused on the fight, not the shit that goes with it. Girls always throw themselves at fighters, I guess there’s something in the dangerousness of it all. But they want the fighter. They’re not really interested in me.”

  She studied me carefully, her blue eyes sparkling under the fluorescent light. “I know all about that. But tell me what is interesting about you? What should a girl know?”

  I smiled mostly to myself. A girl should know how beautiful she is and how she shouldn’t waste her time with anyone who treated her less than a princess. A girl should also know how sexy she looked in those tight jeans and how much I wanted to get her out of them. But I couldn’t say that to her, no matter how much I wanted to. “There’s not much to know about me. I spend most of my days at the gym, my nights in the cage, and I don’t even have a dog.”

  She laughed, “Why would you have a dog?”

  “I don’t know. Big guy like me, it seems like I would have a soft spot for like a rescued pit bull or something. But I don’t have time for a dog. I don’t have time for anyone.” She flinched a little like the last part stung her, but it was the truth. It was the reason that I couldn’t tell her that I thought that she was beautiful. I didn’t have time to waste on a girl like her, not when every goal in my career was finally within my grasp. I was too focused on my job for love. Not that I loved this girl—I hardly knew her—but she seemed like the type that I could fall in love with, if I was able.

  But love was out of the question, regardless of any feelings I would ever have.

  “Now tell me something interesting about you.”

  She shrugged, “I go to BU, and my dad was a governor. That’s about it.”

  “You are a college girl?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  I laughed, “Let me guess, sorority?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Just a lucky guess. So do you have pillow fights in skimpy underwear?” I built the mental image in my mind. Berkley in sexy pink undies, her bouncing breasts as she messed around with her sisters.

  “No!” She protested. “That’s not how it is. I have a roommate, Naomi, and that’s it. No underwear parties, sorry.”

  “I can’t say I’m not disappointed.”

  “Why’s that?” She countered seductively.

  “I would have liked to see you like that.” I paused. “You’d probably be good with a pillow.”

  “Rude.” She gave me a playful scowl.

  Suddenly I heard a banging on the window next to me. A girl with brightly colored hair had her face smashed up against the glass and was pointing at Berkley. I looked across the table to see her smile and wave back.

  “Those are my friends. I have to go, but it was nice meeting you, Dillon. Thanks for the company.”

  I waved at her as she grabbed her wristlet and bolted out the door, hugging the girl that had just been pounding on the window. At least she was reunited with her friend. I watched as they put their arms around each other and walked away out the night. She turned around and looked at me once, those blue eyes catching my gaze immediately. But then she turned away and I knew I would never see her again. I sat and ate the rest of the pizza alone. I was the last one in the shop when they announced it was closing time. I grabbed my belongings and walked out into the night. I had twenty five hundred dollars sitting in my pocket, a wad of cash that could get me mugged on the streets.

  But I wasn’t worried.

  Only one thing plagued my mind: I hoped that Berkley got home okay.

  For some reason she was my only worry now.

  SIX

  BERKLEY

  “I can’t believe you just walked off like that. How drunk were you?”

  Naomi was grilling me for the third time since we got home from the fight. She asked me twenty questions at least before we went to bed last night and that had started up again as soon as we were eating breakfast the next morning. “I told you, I wasn’t drunk. I don’t know how I left my phone with you. I was congratulating that fighter and then all of a sudden I turned around and Josh was gone. And those two guys said that they knew where he went, he’d been talking to them earlier about a bet. I assumed they were telling the truth.” My naivety had surely gotten the best of me last night. There was something about all the chaos and the tension of the fight pumping through my system that put my guard down. Those guys could have beat me to a pulp or worse. I’d been so lucky that Dillon had found me when he did. I was completely indebted to him. Pizza and beer didn’t seem like it had been enough. But I didn’t have any way to get in touch with him to say thank you again. I had just left, like a complete idiot. I had an amazing conversation with the most attractive guy I had ever met in my life and yet I had nothing to show for it. Not even his goddamned phone number. I was a female failure.

  “Girl, you are so damn lucky I can’t even tell you. I asked Josh and Elliott about those guys and apparently they were trying to shake them down for some bets that they never made. They were thugs.”

  She had also told me that little piece of information about eight times. As soon as she sobered up last night and realized what happened, I thought she was going to call Josh and Elliott herself and ream them out for ever letting me out of their sight. When I left the pizza shop, she was hardly concerned with my absence, but by the time we grabbed cab and headed back to the sorority house she was a wreck. Completely annihilated after eight or more beers, and the guys were nowhere in sight. What assholes.

  “I guess you won’t be seeing Elliott anytime soon then?” I asked as I sipped on orange juice and picked out some fresh fruit.

  “Too loud,” she said, putting both of her hands on either side of her head. I couldn’t imagine her hangover was anything less than massive, and the only reason she was out of bed before noon was because we had a house meeting. First Saturday of the month, like clockwork.

  I lowered my voice to a whisper. “I said are you going to see Elliott again? Because you can leave Josh and I off the guest list. There was zero spark there. Besides the fact that he was hot, he had nothing going for him. And then he lost me! I’m a goddamn person. How do you just lose a person?”

  She put her head down on her folded arms. I was raising my voice again and killing her brain cells at the same time. “No, I’m not seeing him again.” I heard her mumble.

  “Good, I’m glad.”

  She raised her head just an inch. “What about you?”

  I scowled at her. “I just told you, Josh and I had no spark.”

  She sat up even further, grabbing a bottle of water and sipping it slowly. “I wasn’t talking about Josh. I was talking about that fighter guy. He was hot as fuck, and watching yo
u like you were a piece of meat. You have to call him.”

  I sighed, ready to admit my failure, “I didn’t get his number. I still can’t believe he saved me like that, like it was nothing. He just made me feel so… safe.”

  Naomi smiled at me. “Are you sure he didn’t also make you feel hot and bothered?”

  I blushed in spite of myself. “Yes, he made me feel that way too. But I know hardly anything about him.”

  She had a spark in her eye that meant that she was hatching a plan. I waited for her to drop it like a bomb. “Then why don’t we just accidentally bump into him again?”

  I raised an eyebrow at her, “I don’t think I’ll be hanging out in anymore creepy alleyways in the middle of the night for a long time. Not even for a guy.”

  “There’s another fight, Thursday night. We should go! You have got to see this guy again. I just have this feeling, it’s like a fate or something.”

  I didn’t think it was fate, but I wasn’t going to argue with her either. I was desperate to see Dillon again, to feel the connection between us. And if I got to see him with his shirt off, that was just a bonus.

  SEVEN

  DILLON

  I trained hard at the gym all that week. Every time I smashed a guy’s face I imagined it was one of those two thugs who had gone after Berkley. I was fighting better than I ever had, anger sitting deep in my belly that came out through my hands. I was just toweling off after another round in the cage with a couple of rookies when a man I had only seen at fights approached me. He was older than me but not by much and in a black suit with shifty eyes. I could tell right away that something was off about him.

  “You had a good fight last week. You won a lot of people a lot of money.”

  I looked at him, deciding whether or not he was even worth my time to talk. “I’ve had a lot of good fights, I win a lot of people a lot of money. People like that.”

  He smiled crookedly. “Yes they do. But fighters deserve a bigger cut, don’t you think?”

  He passed me his business card, and it was for a gym on the other side of town. I’d heard of it in passing, but the fighters there weren’t good enough for me. “What’s my fighting to you, anyway?”

  “When I see you, I see opportunity. I’m sure you’ve heard of the underground fights in town. My gym hosts them.”

  So that’s who this asshole was. The guy who got fighters so beat up in underground fights that they could never go legit again. There were no rules. That wasn’t the type of reward I was interested in.

  “Yeah, I’ve heard of them. But I’m strictly legit, man,” I attempted to hand the business card back to him. I looked over to my right and saw Leo eyeing me closely. I could tell he was preparing to intervene, chase this guy off.

  “I’m not saying you’re not. I’m just saying that there’s a ten grand payout on Saturday night if you’re interested.”

  He didn’t move to take the card back.

  “Ten thousand? What’s the payout for the fighter?”

  He lowered his voice to a whisper, “Eighty percent, bet that’s better than what you’re making here. You keep that card. Call me if you’re interested.”

  He turned and walked away just as Leo arrived next to me. I slipped the business card inside into my left hand. Eight grand was more than I made in a month, if I could make that from one fight that would set my mom up for the next few months. She could finally take a break.

  “Who the hell was that?”

  I rolled my eyes and played it off. “Nobody important. Just some guy who might want to do some advertising with me. I don’t need another sponsor, though. It’s just more time away from the gym. Nothing to worry about.”

  He studied me closely. He knew I was lying. He always did. “You listen to me son. You stay in this cage at this gym, you understand that?”

  I shrugged. “What happens when I’m too big for this gym, Leo?” I flashed a smile his way.

  He shook his head but couldn’t contain a small smile himself. “I swear to God kid, your ego is bigger than any gym. I’m surprised it can even fit in here. Go hit the showers, you smell worse than the locker room.”

  I walked away thinking about how dangerous the card in my hand was. And how I was a sucker for risk.

  EIGHT

  DILLON

  On Thursday night I couldn’t help but look for Berkley in the crowd. Even Leo could see that I was distracted after the fight. Media and girls were swarming me, but I looked over their heads and scanned the crowd for those piercing blue eyes. I didn’t see her anywhere. I guess that was the end of that.

  “How does it feel to be the number one fighter in the city?” A reporter asked me I sucked down some water before answering her.

  “Number one in the city? I’m the number one in the whole damn state. Soon the country. And don’t you forget it.”

  “Well that sounds like a winning attitude.”

  I spun around to see Berkley right behind me, her friend just off her shoulder. “Attitude is what wins fights.”

  “I thought it was fists and knees that did.”

  I waved off the media and grabbed her hand, pulling her along with me. I heard her call back to her friend that she would see her later, and I hoped that she understood how much later that was going to be. She’d shown up in a cute little cocktail dress, the black fabric hugging the tops of her thighs. I licked my lips as I thought about bending her over my lap, my hand touching her warm flesh covered by the thin fabric that restrained it. I couldn’t believe she had come.

  We walked back into the locker rooms. None of the rookies were here anymore and the place was empty. I turned and shut the door behind her with a loud crack.

  “What are you doing here?”

  She looked surprised herself. “I don’t really know. I just wanted to see you again.”

  “You know there’s a hundred girls out there who come to see me every fight.”

  “But how many of them have you brought back here? It looks pretty empty to me.”

  “You just left the other night. You hardly said thank you.”

  She looked embarrassed. “I wanted to, but I didn’t know how. What do you mean I just left? We were never supposed to be together in the first place.”

  “But I wanted you to stay.” I couldn’t believe the words coming out of my mouth. I never told girls what I really wanted, except in bed.

  She looked surprised. “You never said that.”

  I pushed my body against hers and lifted her hands up next to her head intertwining my fingers into hers. “I’m telling you now.”

  She chewed on her lower lip seductively, drawing me into her. I could feel my cock rising, desperate to get under that dress.

  “Don’t tell me, show me.”

  “You shouldn’t have said that.”

  Her blue eyes were filled with hungry lust—I could see myself reflected in them. “Show me.”

  Done.

  NINE

  BERKLEY

  Dillon shoved me back against the concrete wall, the scratches of the bricks giving me chills. He assaulted my mouth with his own, and his hands massaged my tits. He began kissing his way down my body, unzipping the back of my dress and blowing hot air onto my panties that shot heat straight through to my pussy. The dress fell to the floor and he licked a trail from my panty line up to my breasts, stopping only to circle his tongue in and around my belly button.

  Unclasping my bra, he put one of my taut nipples in his mouth.

  “Oh, Dillon,” I moaned.

  He chuckled slightly, his lips still on my breast, and I couldn’t take not touching him anymore. I ran my fingers over his head, but he pulled away.

  “I don’t think so, Berkley,” he said with a smirk. “I’m in charge here.”

  He flipped me round so that my breasts were against the wall, kneeled down, and began nibbling and licking my ass cheeks, running his hands all over me.

  Standing up, he pulled my hair to the side and attacked my neck,
sucking and kissing it until I was sure there’d be a bruise. He turned my head back towards him, and lightly licked my top lip to get me to open up and let him push his tongue in.

  Our lips met feverishly, and all the passion I had been feeling was unloaded into that kiss.

  He spun me back around so that I was facing him and ran his hands lightly down my legs, and lingering just a sec over my soaking wet mound.

  The teasing was pure torture. While my legs distracted him, I kneeled down and began tugging at his shorts, licking my lips as I went.

  “What did I say,” he began, but before he could finish his sentence, his cock was out and into my mouth.

  “Ahh!” he hissed.

  I slid him deeply into my mouth, to the point where his dick hit the back of my throat. I hummed a little, making his balls vibrate with pleasure.

  He put one hand behind me, gripping the wall, as I pulled him out of my mouth slightly, lightly licking and playing with the tip. I nibbled slightly on it, biting gently on his soft spot underneath before shoving him back inside my mouth and sucking hard and fast.

  “You have to stop or I’m gonna come,” Dillon nearly shouted.

  I began tugging on his balls and pulled him deeper and faster into my mouth. I could feel him tighten up, and then he emptied himself into my throat.

  I stood up, feeling pretty proud of myself, and scanned the floor for my dress.

  “You think this is over?” he growled.

  I looked over at him, and he was already half-mast again. He pulled me towards him and pushed my underwear down. His fingers were inside my pussy before I even had a chance to respond. He twirled them in and out of me, his thumb circling my clit the entire time. Just as I was about to climax, he pulled them out of me, and put them into his mouth.

  “Mm, you taste good.” He grinned before kissing me, hard, so I could taste my own juices on his lips.

  He put three fingers back into me, and began pumping them back and forth inside me. My wetness ran down his hand, and he moved his thumb from my clit to my ass, lightly running his finger around the hole. I had never done this before, but it felt forbidden and good.