Bad Boy's Baby: A Second Chance Secret Baby Romance (Boardwalk Bad Boys Book 1)

by Samantha West

  “It was not a problem at all,” she says, perching her reading glasses on the end of her nose, “Dylan here was able to grease the wheels a little bit.”

  “What does that mean?” I ask, looking over at him.

  He rubs his thumb against his middle and index fingers in the air.

  “You bribed Dr. Monroe?” I say, dumbfounded.

  “Kidding!” Dr. Monroe interjects as Dylan laughs, shaking his head with a smile. “Just kidding. I was happy to squeeze you in. I know you were very eager to get this appointment.”

  I exhale and nod, looking over at Dylan.

  “Yes,” I say, “very.”

  “Well, I do have the results here,” Dr. Monroe says, flipping open the folder in front of her.

  “Wait,” Dylan says, “just wait. Please. Dr. Monroe, I’m sorry to do this, but can we have the room for just one more second?”

  “Certainly,” she says, giving us a small smile.

  “Wait,” I say, “Dylan, can’t it wait a minute?”

  “No,” he says, “Amanda, I have to talk to you about something right now. It will only take a moment.”

  I watch Dr. Monroe leave the room and then my eyes find Dylan, tears nearly bursting from my eyes. I am confused and frustrated and I was very anxious to get this conversation with the doctor over with, but now, looking at Dylan, I feel my heart beating faster than ever.

  “What is it?” I ask, “you know I get nervous when you use my full name.”

  “Then let me set your mind at ease, princess,” he replies, reaching over and tucking a loose strand of hair behind my ear.

  I exhale shakily as my mind goes in every direction possible - my mind goes to every single bad thing that he might have to say to me.

  But then my anxiety begins to melt as he reaches for my hands and takes them in his, gently rubbing his thumbs over my knuckles.

  “Amanda,” he starts, “I mean princess. I want to tell you that I love you. And I wanted to tell you this before we find out who Jacob’s dad is. Because whether I’m his biological father or not, I don’t care. I mean, of course I hope I’m his dad, but it doesn’t matter if I am or not, because I’m going to love him as my own kid either way. He is my kid either way, because I love you, princess. I loved you from the moment you came into my shop. I loved you from the moment I saw you on the beach. I’m just lucky enough that you and your girlfriends had the drunken idea to command some random guy to give them all tattoos.”

  I feel my eyes well up with hot tears and I don’t even try to stop them. I feel all my fears and hopes wash away like my inhibitions washed away on that beach. I feel like I have nothing to fear and nothing to want. I feel so damn content and happy that I could burst.

  “I love you too,” I say, throwing my arms around Dylan, “I love you too. We’ll figure everything out.”

  “Yes, we will, princess,” he says, kissing my cheek, holding me tight.

  I hear a soft knock and see Dr. Monroe reappear from behind the door.

  “Everything alright in here?” she says, taking a few steps inside.

  “We’re good,” Dylan says, beaming at me, “come give us the news, doc. We’re ready.”

  “We’re ready,” I say, wiping my tears away with the back of my hand. Dr. Monroe plucks a couple of tissues from the box on her desk and leans over to hand them to me.

  “We get lots of tears in here,” she says, “sometimes they’re happy tears and sometimes they’re sad tears.”

  “Give us the news, doc,” I repeat Dylan’s words with an impatient smile, “I want to know if these tears are going to stay happy.”

  She opens the folder gently on her desk and scans its contents.

  My heart is in my throat, but when I look over at Dylan, he looks excited. I’d always wanted Jacob to be Dylan’s - of course I did. I looked for evidence in the flecks of gold in his eyes, I looked at baby pictures of myself to try to identify ways in which Jacob and I differ so that I could try to pinpoint traits that Dylan and Jacob share. But Dylan doesn’t seem concerned at all. I know he would be overjoyed to learn Jacob is his, but I believe him when he says he would love Jacob either way.

  Dr. Monroe closes the folder and looks across the desk at us, the dim pink and gold early evening sunlight painting the office in cotton candy hues. Her expression doesn’t look promising, but I suddenly feel calm wash over me.

  “Jacob is Dylan’s child,” she says, a smile spreading across her face. “Congratulations.”

  I exhale, not realizing I’d been holding my breath, and turn to Dylan.

  “I’m so happy,” I say as he pulls me in for an embrace. My heart is beating so hard that I think he can probably feel it inside him. They can probably feel it in the subway thirty stories beneath us and buried deep underground.

  I never planned this, but it’s all I ever wanted. In fact, it’s better than anything I could have ever wished for.

  Dylan’s arms are strong around me and his chest rises and falls steadily with his breathing as I let a fresh set of tears soak into his shirt. He’s my rock, my anchor, and I know he will never let me feel lost again.

  Dylan

  Two Months Later

  “Last ride of the season,” I say wistfully, looking out over the end of the pier. It’s late summer, nearly early fall now, and the needles of the big pine trees are falling. The leaves on the mighty maples are turning bright yellow and orange.

  It’s a time for change. It’s a time for a new beginning.

  The change of the seasons always made me melancholy. The guys I work with used to tell me I was depressed as though it was an accusation, as though it was something I brought on myself.

  That doesn’t matter anymore, though.

  The change of the seasons always made me melancholy for one big reason. The people who passed through this town left for good at the end of the summer. It’s always a long winter when you don’t have anyone or anything good to go home to.

  But that doesn’t matter anymore. I don’t care anymore that the summer is ending and the sand on the boardwalk won’t get between my toes anymore.

  It just doesn’t matter.

  The water of the Atlantic will be cold but the ocean will never freeze over. It’s too vast. It’s too fucking big.

  I close my eyes and breathe in the cool, salty air.

  I’ve been here all along, but for the first time in my life, I really feel like I’ve come home.

  “Big D,” I hear someone say, feeling a hand come down gently on my shoulder.

  I smile and turn around. It isn’t just anyone. It isn’t the girl from the boardwalk demanding a tattoo. It isn’t Princess Mandy. It’s Amanda Keane and our baby.

  “Hey sweetheart,” I say, turning around and giving her a kiss on the cheek. I take our baby and give him a big raspberry on his belly.

  “Da-Da!” Jacob coos, with a raucous giggle and a now better-coordinated clap of his little hands.

  It’s actually been easier than I thought it would be. When I realized I might be Jacob’s father, my heart felt full in a way it never has. I felt renewed. I wasn’t afraid. But more overwhelmingly wonderful than the possibility I might be Jacob’s father was the realization that I wanted to be part of his life even if the paternity test revealed I wasn’t his father. And it’s all because I realized I love Amanda.

  “Alright baby,” I say, giving Jacob a big kiss on the cheek, “I’ve got to bring your mom somewhere for a minute.”

  Sarah’s sitting on a bench on the other side of the pier, eating a funnel cake and watching as I put Jacob down and help him as he totters over to her. Sarah has continued to be a huge help with the little guy. I’ve scaled back my hours at the shop and Amanda’s done the same at her firm, but on the nights that we need a date night just for us, Sarah is just as reliable as she was when Amanda was a single mom.

  “Get over here,” she says as she takes Jacob from me.

  This kid is going to grow up loved. It doesn’t matter who h
is dad is. It just makes it all the more fucking awesome that his dad happens to be me.

  I jog back over to Amanda and grab her by the hand.

  “Where are we going?” she asks with a giddy laugh in her voice.

  “I thought I could finally give you that tattoo,” I say, winking.

  “Really?” she says, “now? But I don’t even know what I want yet.”

  “Fine,” I say, wrapping my arms around her hips, “then I have something better. Let’s go for a ride, baby.”

  I take her hand again and lead her over to the big, rumbling roller coaster. There’s no line and there’s already a train waiting for us, so we hop into the last car. That trusty metal bar comes down on our laps and the train jolts forward with a start, and we embark up the first incline.

  “Scared?” I say, looking over at her.

  “A little,” she breathes, “but I’ll be okay. You know the last time we were on here, I almost blurted out that I had a son.”

  “That would have been okay with me,” I say, draping my arm over her shoulder gently. I look down at the ground and see Sarah and Jacob pointing up at me and Amanda.

  “That would have just scared you,” she says, “it would have been too fast.”

  “Too fast?” I say, scrubbing the side of my face. “Most of the time a successful relationship will lead up to a kid. Ours started with a kid. I’d say we are the king and queen of fast.”

  “Yeah, but we did have that whole time where I refused to call you,” she says with a roll of her eyes.

  “Yeah,” I sigh, “we did. I could have done without that.”

  “Me too,” she says, “but it’s okay because I’m here now.”

  “No,” I say, “it’s not okay. Not yet.”

  I swallow hard and I feel my heartbeat quicken as she looks over at me.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I won’t be okay until you’re my wife.”

  I am so damn focused on Amanda that I nearly forget to retrieve the ring from my pocket - an antique diamond my father presented to my mother when he proposed. Amanda’s eyes are big and clear and bright in the moonlight and those delectable lips part slightly, and the beginnings of tears appear in the corners of her eyes.

  When I finally have the box containing the ring in my hand, I open it quickly because we’re almost at the apex of the roller coaster track.

  “Amanda, you have completely turned my life upside down in the best possible way. No one has ever seen me the way you have. And I feel like you’re the first person I’ve really ever been able to see. And having Jacob connecting us forever is just the most incredible feeling I’ve ever had. So please marry me, princess, and let’s start forever right now.”

  Amanda looks down as I slip the ring onto her finger, and she looks back up as the bright, multi-colored lights of the amusement park below us turn off one by one. The park is closing for the last time this summer, and one by one, the bright pink and blue and green lights reflected in her eyes go dim, until all that is left is the color of her eyes - the color of the vast, perfect ocean on a calm day.

  “Yes,” she says, wrapping her arms around my neck. I hold her tight until we hear the rapid clicking of the metal belt below the roller coaster car snap into its final position. We both turn to face forward before giving each other one final look.

  And then we reach down to the metal bar across our laps, and hold on tight.

  The End

  Double Wood - Excerpt

  Mark

  “I’m glad I talked some sense into you, Elliot,” I say, rubbing my hands together slowly.

  We are outside Scarlett’s apartment, waiting for her to come down.

  I haven’t been this fucking hard before a date in...well, ever. And I haven’t been this excited for a date in a long time, either. That’s because I don’t usually plan dates in advance. I’m not the guy who gets to know you and asks you out. I’m the kind of guy who makes eye contact with you from across the bar and then has you in the bathroom on your knees twenty minutes later. It’s not classy, but that’s me. I’m a little dirty sometimes.

  “I still don’t understand how this is going to work,” Elliot says.

  He’s the worrier of our little duo. He’s such a smart guy, and sometimes it can get the best of him. He’s a perfectionist, and sometimes that holds him back from making a move. He wants everything to be perfect before he acts. And nothing is ever up to his high standards. It makes me immobile, paralyzed by indecision.

  That’s why he and I are such a good team.

  “Did you see the way she looked at us? Trust me, she wants this,” I say. I don’t want my buddy to see, but my pants are tenting with the pressure of my hardon pressing into them. All I can think about is Scarlett’s ass swaying in that curve-hugging little sin of a dress of hers.

  “Remember the time you had that disastrous meeting with the guy from Collins-McGovern?” Elliot asks, looking past me up to Scarlett’s apartment. “I remember being so fucking proud of you for telling that guy to kiss your ass.”

  I laugh at the memory. He’s talking about this time we had a junior partner from a similar kind of firm at our offices where we interned and then were offered jobs after the summer completed. This guy asked if he could speak with someone with more experience, and I tried to be cool at first, and I was actually succeeding, until he excused himself to call his dad and asked why he wasn’t meeting with one of the more senior partner. I heard every word, and I told him that I was actually the one who was meeting with someone below my level, and I did it in a polite fucking way, and that he shouldn’t run to his dad every time something doesn’t go his way. Told him it was unbecoming for a boy his age.

  I was prepared to get fired, and instead I was offered a promotion, skipping right over the junior analyst position I’d be given just a month earlier, and instead had a team of four analysts working under me.

  “Yeah,” I say, “of course I remember. How could I forget?”

  “I just remember being so fucking happy for you. The way you took charge of the situation and the way you just said what was on your mind. And that promotion, man, you deserved it just based on the leadership and control you showed over the situation. And I remember a couple guys in the office thought you didn’t deserve it. But I did. And I was fucking happy for you when I saw you succeed. I don’t know what the hell it is, but I’ve never felt any jealousy toward you. I feel like your victories are my victories, in a strange way.”

  “I don’t think it’s strange,” I say, smiling at my best friend.

  He looks past me out the window, and I know what he’s looking at.

  Or who he is looking at.

  I turn to see Scarlett walking toward the car, and I swing the door open to get out.

  “Good evening,” she says sweetly.

  Her hair is now flowing around her face in loose, pretty waves like it was last night, and all I want to do is lace my fingers through it and do what I’ve wanted to do since the very first moment I saw her.

  I get out of the car and kiss her on the cheek, and guide her into the backseat. She slides in next to Elliot and crosses her leg toward him, sexy as all hell, and looks over to me like she’s just waiting for me to get in there with the two of them.

  “Nice to see you again,” Elliot says as he motions for our driver to start off.

  “Have you given any more thought to our proposition?” I ask, putting my arm across the back seat of the car. She shifts in her seat, and her smooth, milky thighs rub together, making me imagine spreading them open right here and now.

  “I have thought about it,” she says, “but is this a business dinner? Are we going to be discussing the deal this evening? Because I have to admit that I haven’t come to a decision yet. You know how hard these things are. There is so much to consider.”

  “We don’t want to rush you,” Eliot says softly, “we were just wondering where your head was at with everything.”

  “And no
,” I add, “for the record, this is not a business dinner. Not exactly. We wanted to take you out to show you a nice time. You work hard. You deserve it. And there’s no rule that says you can mix a little bit of pleasure with business.”

  “If it was a nice time you were looking for, you should have asked me to show you around the town. Elliot, I know you are familiar with it, but as you mentioned earlier, a lot has changed. I could have shown you a nice time at the bowling alley,” she chirps brightly.

  “I don’t know if I’ve ever actually bowled,” I laugh.

  “Man, you have to,” Elliot says. “You’d like it. Scarlett, he likes to think he doesn’t get all hyper-competitive, but he does. You’ll just have to wait and see.”

  “Anyway, we aren’t taking you out for dinner out here. We are actually on our way to the City. I hope you don’t mind going a little bit farther than you might have assumed.”

  “Oh,” she says, smiling at me, “I don’t mind at all. Things can definitely get a little old here, with the same bars and the same people. I’d love to take a trip to the City. I don’t to go as much as I’d like.”

  “Then you’re in for a treat,” I say, “and we promise we will get you home before bedtime.”

  “Before bedtime,” she laughs. “I haven’t been sleeping much lately anyway. Maybe you two could tire me out, make me nice and ready for a good night’s sleep.”

  She says it so sweetly, and I’m not sure if she knows she is teasing me. Teasing us. Elliot flashes me a look, his jaw tensed up, and bites his lip as his eyes trail from Scarlett’s eyes and lips down to her perfect, round breasts and hips inside that scandalous dress she has on.

  “Why haven’t you been sleeping well?” I ask, letting my fingertips tease her shoulder. She looks up at me with her lips parted and absolute desire swimming through her eyes.

  “Stress,” she says, “and last night I couldn’t sleep because I had something on my mind.”