Playing Dirty (A Bad Boy Sports Romance)

by Avery Wilde

I smiled. “I’m pretty lucky too.”

  “Well yes, obviously,” she replied with a cheeky wink, returning to the paintings. “We both know that.”

  I laughed. I didn’t know what had made her change her mind and step up our plans to announce her pregnancy to my mother, and right now I didn’t care—when Keira was smiling, everything else in the world ceased to matter. It was a curious revelation for me, to be honest. In previous relationships (if that word could even be used to describe my encounters with women) my concern had been almost exclusively for my own pleasure—I wouldn’t have crossed a room to make any of them happy. But now I found that I would move heaven and earth to make Keira happy, and I wanted nothing in return other than to see her smile. She’d made me a better person, and I didn’t miss the one I’d previously been. That other version of me had apparently had more ‘fun’, but he could keep it as far as I was concerned.

  I’d found something better.

  “That one’s a rarity,” I said as Keira reached a particular portrait. “It’s early Tudor. From the time of Henry the Seventh. Very few portraits survive from back then.”

  I was pleased to see that Keira looked quietly impressed. “Do you know who it’s by?”

  “No one does,” I replied. “Or who it’s of, in fact. The style suggests a Dutch artist and I know some people see a similarity in technique between this and the portrait of Henry the Seventh in the National Portrait Gallery—also by an unknown Dutch artist—which would date it to the early sixteenth century.”

  This time Keira looked outright surprised. “Since when do you know anything about art?”

  Since yesterday was the honest answer. I’d been planning this little excursion, and like any boy trying to impress the girl he loves, I’d gone out of my way to find out as much as I could about the paintings.

  “I’m full of surprises,” I said in the most mysterious tone I could muster up.

  Keira cocked her head and grinned. “True or false—if I were to go to your room now, I would find a big stack of art history books.”

  “False,” I replied. “I put them back in the library.”

  She laughed. “Did you at least enjoy them?”

  “I did, actually,” I said, and I meant it. “It’s funny the things that you avoid learning about because your parents are interested in it and it’s ‘boring’, and then when you take the trouble to learn a bit for yourself, you find that it was interesting all along.”

  I wasn’t sure if Keira liked the fact that I’d developed an interest in her pet subject—something we could now talk about together—or if she liked the fact that I’d gone to this trouble on her account, but either way she was smiling, and that was all that mattered.

  She pulled out a larger canvas. “Tell me about this one.”

  The next few hours seemed to fly by, and I wondered if I’d ever said this many words to a woman without my final intention being to get her into bed. There was no woman in the world I found as attractive as Keira, and yet I was just as happy talking to her as I was doing anything else with her. I wished this afternoon could’ve lasted forever, but time passed and the light from the windows soon began to fade.

  “I guess we’d better be going,” Keira said reluctantly.

  “One more thing.” I crossed to a darkened corner of the room where a large object was shrouded by a dust-covered sheet. With a flourish, I pulled the sheet aside and revealed the item beneath.

  “What is that?” Keira asked. It was clearly a chair—ornately carved in wood so dark as to be almost black—and yet something about it suggested more.

  “It’s the old throne,” I replied.

  Contrary to what everyone, and especially everyone in other countries, wanted to believe, there was no such thing as the royal throne except as an idea. A royal heir accedes to ‘the throne’, but that just means they become monarch—the actual item doesn’t exist, because real life is not like a George R. R. Martin novel. There were several thrones scattered through royal properties, most famously the one on which the Queen would sit during the state opening of Parliament, but there was no ‘real’ throne as there was in fairytales and people’s imaginations. At one time there had been, but not now.

  “I think this was the last time we had a throne that was like a proper Throne,” I said, pronouncing the capital well. “Maybe not. But I think so.”

  “What’s it doing up here?”

  “Being safe,” I said. “Like all this stuff. The funny thing is, if you put all your valuables in a strong box then everyone knows where they are, and you’re just waiting for the right thief. But who the hell would look up here for this stuff? Not even the mice come up here. Nothing to eat.”

  Keira ran a hand over the carved wood. She was touching history, and the look on her face suggested that she knew it but couldn’t quite believe it.

  “It’s incredible.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “I’d have thought it would be…I don’t know; covered with gold, studded with jewels. All that royal bling.”

  I nodded. “I think it was made at a more practical time.” I caressed the woodwork, feeling the hard grain beneath my fingers. “I remember when my father brought me up here to see it. Wasn’t long before he died.”

  “I’m sorry,” Keira said. “I know you don’t talk about that very much.”

  She was right. It’d been hard when my father died, and I’d never really spoken about it all that much to anyone, but I somehow found it easy to talk to Keira about anything, especially family matters, seeing as we were having our own family soon.

  “It’s okay. This is a happy memory,” I replied. “Anyway, he brought us up here to look at it. I don’t think Michael was that impressed, but I…something about it just clicked with me. To be honest—and this is maybe going to make the whole story seem a bit dumb—I think it might have been because I’d recently seen the Indiana Jones films for the first time.”

  Keira laughed. “What?”

  “Well, you know that bit at the end of Last Crusade, when they have to pick the real Holy Grail, and there’s all these fancy gold ones, but the real one is just a plain wooden cup? That’s what it made me think of. This isn’t the chair of someone who needed to look like they had power, this is the chair of someone who actually had it.”

  “You have chosen wisely,” Keira murmured, quoting the film.

  I looked at her. “I certainly have.”

  The moment between us was broken by an icy blast of cold air through one of the little windows.

  “We should go,” I said.

  Keira nodded. “Thanks for this. It really made my day,” she said. “Maybe on another day you could show me your crown jewels.”

  “Oh, well, they’re kept on display in the Tower of London,” I said.

  Keira sidled up to me and kissed me, gently cupping my crotch and squeezing. “Not the crown jewels I was talking about, darling.”

  I grinned, letting my hands roam across her body. “I see. Well, those are on permanent exhibit in my bedroom.”

  “I remember.”

  “But you’re welcome to view them any time.”

  “Now?” Keira suggested, squeezing harder and getting the response she’d wanted.

  “Now is good.”

  “But not here.”

  I nodded. “Even I don’t think we should do it on the old throne. You’ve got to draw the line somewhere...”

  Chapter 22

  Keira

  Although the decision I’d made in the tower room about telling the Queen of my pregnancy had been made under the influence of Andrew’s sweet behavior, I still knew it was a good idea. The bottom line remained the same as ever: she had to find out sometime.

  “I think she’d be okay with us getting married,” Andrew said as he sat on my bed the following morning.

  I arched an eyebrow. “Well, that was a very romantic proposal....”

  He grinned. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant that I kn
ow my mother seems like a slave to tradition and all that, but she’s pretty progressive as monarchs go. And of course she likes you. It’s the pregnancy that might be a little bit of an issue, but a marriage would certainly help to smooth that over in her eyes. I realize that doesn’t exactly sound romantic at all, but there it is.”

  I nodded. It was the twenty-first century, but royalty tended to work about a century behind everyone else. More to the point; where royalty were concerned, everyone else suddenly started working a century behind as well. It was a strange thing about the British public that, while they were perfectly happy to have children outside the sacrament of marriage, the idea of a member of the royal family doing it could generate the sort of horror usually associated with declaring war. When the royal family were involved, common sense went straight out the window and a lot of people started caring about stuff that they usually didn’t care about. It was as if someone had decided that the price for living with royal privilege was that you had to live by a set of different rules to everyone else—rules that were probably considered a bit draconian in the nineteenth century, let alone the twenty-first.

  How the Queen herself might feel about her eldest son getting a maid pregnant was almost unimportant—her job was to represent the British people, and if they were pissed off, then she had to be. It was also her job to protect the institution and the succession, and these events might put both at risk. Our baby would be heir to the throne, but how could an illegitimate baby be a legitimate heir?

  On balance, everything would be so much easier for the family if I wasn’t around.

  “I could…” I started to speak before hesitating for a second. There’d been a dark thought clouding my mind for a while now, whenever Andrew brought up the idea of marriage, but I hadn’t wanted to voice it until now. “We don’t have to get married if you don’t really want to. I could just hide out somewhere.”

  “What?” Andrew looked horrified.

  “I don’t want to cause you or your family any problems,” I continued. “And I don’t want you to feel like you have to marry me one day because…” I laid a hand on my belly, “because it’s the right thing to do. The honorable thing to do. That’s not what I want.”

  Andrew silenced me with a finger pressed softly against my lips. “Keira, I love you, and there are a thousand reasons for that. I want to marry you; not just one day, but one day soon. Not because I feel like I have to, not because I think it’s the right thing to do, not because I think that baby needs a father, but because if I don’t then I know my life will always be incomplete. Without you in my life, there will always be something missing from it. It’s taken me years to find what I now realize has always been the missing part of me, the thing that made me a proper person, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let it go now for any reason. Listen,” he looked me dead in the eyes, “I have no idea what my mother’s going to say, how the media is going to report this or how the public are going to react. And I won’t say those things aren’t important, because, whether we like it or not, they’re going to have a big effect on both our lives. But just because they’re important, doesn’t mean they matter in the end—they can’t change how I feel and they won’t change two simple facts: I love you and I want to marry you. I don’t know the circumstances in which it’s going to happen or how hard it’s going to be, and I don’t know if it will be at St Paul’s or a registry office, but I want to marry you. And—in case I haven’t mentioned it already and because I can never say it often enough—the reason I want to marry you is because I love you.”

  My eyes widened, and a smile spread across my face as his words sank in. I’d been acting so silly. Of course I knew he loved me, and that was the main reason he’d brought up marriage; not just out of family duty or honor. I’d been experiencing some rather wild mood swings recently, brought on by hormone changes from my pregnancy, and they’d taken my mind to a dark place on occasion, but as usual, he’d reassured me, and I knew he’d always be here for me for all the right reasons.

  “Good speech,” I said.

  “Off the top of my head, as well.”

  “Really?” I smiled. “Sounded like you had it ready.”

  Andrew shrugged. “Well, I spend most days thinking about how much I love you so it comes pretty naturally.”

  I put my right hand on top of his. “I love you too, Andrew.”

  “Is that it? I don’t get a speech? What the hell?” he joked. “All the effort I went to, and I don’t even get a speech...”

  “I’ll show you what you get.” I kissed him.

  We broke apart, and Andrew grinned. “I suppose that’ll do instead.”

  He kissed me, and I felt my worries melt away. It was likely that all this was going to go badly; there would be arguments, shouting, angry people, accusations and ugly headlines. But we had each other. And right now it felt like as long as we had each other, we could face anything and everything that the world could throw at us.

  “How should we tell your mother about the baby?” I asked when we’d finally broken apart.

  “I’ll go and speak to her now,” he said.

  “I’ll come with you, if you want.”

  Andrew shook his head. “Best if I do it alone. I’ll see you afterwards and let you know how it went.”

  He stood up and smoothed down his shirt, and I anxiously picked at a fingernail. “Good luck,” I said, my voice shaking a bit.

  He leaned down and put his hand on my chin, tilting it up. “I don’t need any luck,” he said. “I already have you…and that means I have all the luck in the world.”

  I was about to respond when he opened his mouth to speak again. “Screw it. I was actually going to wait for a better moment to do this, but…well, I don’t think I can wait any longer,” he said.

  With that, he got down on one knee in front of me, holding out a small velvet ring box. My hand flew to my mouth, and he grinned up at me.

  “I know we’ve been talking about marriage a lot, even just a few minutes ago, and you already know I want to marry you…but I thought you deserved a real proposal. I actually arranged to have this made for you the other week, and they just so happened to finish it today,” he said. “I know now isn’t the best time to be doing this, but I wanted to officially ask—”

  I cut him off by practically leaping onto him. “Oh my god…yes!”

  “You didn’t even give me a chance to ask you properly!”

  “Oh. Sorry,” I said, my cheeks turning red as I sat down again, affecting a demure air. “You were saying?”

  “Keira Valencia…will you marry me?”

  “Hmm…I’ll have to think about it.”

  “Too late, you already said yes a moment ago, you cheeky minx,” he said with a cheeky grin, and my face felt like it might split in two from my own smile as I watched him slide the ring onto my finger.

  He was right in what he’d said earlier—maybe this wasn’t the most opportune time for this to be happening, given our uncertainty as to how his mother would react to my pregnancy, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t have a moment of happiness to share in the commitment we were making to each other. This ring on my finger symbolized something wonderful; it made it that much clearer that no matter what happened from this moment onwards, we were really in this together, and there was no going back now. I was his, and he was mine, and whatever the future held…we’d be here for each other.

  Always.

  Chapter 23

  Andrew

  I was officially an engaged man, and I’d never been happier.

  I wished I could shout the news from the rooftops, but there was still the matter of telling my mother about Keira’s pregnancy first. Although my mind was made up on what to do in any given eventuality, and although I was resolute in how this confrontation would end regardless, my stomach still felt a little weird as I headed down the hall. I wasn’t entirely sure what it was that I was worried about. What was the worst that could happen? No one liked to be
shouted at by their mother, but at the same time, no one had ever died from it. I was a grown man, and anything she said to me would just roll off me like water off a duck’s back. In the end, one way or another, I would be with Keira, and that was all that mattered.

  Except, of course, that it wasn’t.

  Being with Keira was my absolute top priority and nothing was going to dissuade me from doing so, but that didn’t mean that I didn’t love my family. I’d had my differences with them over the years—some their fault, many mine—but I still cared about them. We were an odd family, but that was sort of inevitable in the circumstances, and our oddness drew us together rather than forced us apart. I knew that since I’d met Keira, I’d become a different person. A better person. More to the point, I’d become the person my mother had wanted me to be all my life. But it had taken me so long to become that person that she’d obviously long since given up believing that it might ever happen. She wouldn’t believe that the decent, committed version of me actually existed, and she still saw this as just an act or a phase I was going through that would shortly be replaced by the more familiar womanizing jackass. I didn’t like to look back at that period of my life now, and I could understand my mother’s reticence in believing me, but I needed her to; I needed her to see what I’d become and be grateful that I’d finally got there. I wanted her to be proud of me.

  Of course, even if she was proud of me for the man I’d become, that didn’t mean that she’d be proud of me for the situation I was now in. Convincing her that Keira’s pregnancy was a good thing would be an uphill struggle, but again, it was one I wanted to make. I couldn’t wait to be a father, and I wanted her to be just as excited about being a grandmother.

  It had taken me far longer than it took most to out-grow my wild adolescence, but now I craved family life, even in the odd little family that I had. I’d be with Keira no matter what, but another thing that excited me was the tantalizing possibility of more—of us all being one happy family. I wasn’t afraid of what I might lose; I was afraid to dream of what I might gain, just in case it slipped through my grasp.