"My knee is fine. He didn't need to go poking and prodding at it without being asked."
"And the new assistant?"
I was clenching my teeth so hard they had to be close to cracking. "I didn't mean to hit him in the head with the ball, obviously."
Declan sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "McAllister, you have about ten seconds to tell me what your problem is so you can stop taking it out on the rest of us. We've got enough to deal with right now without you making it worse."
I sank against the wall and stared at the glossy blue and white paint opposite me. I'd spent the best years of my career walking this hallway, staring at those colors and a logo that defined me. No matter what else was happening in my life, I knew who I was the moment I entered this arena.
And today, I didn't recognize any of it. Hardly recognized myself.
He groaned. "This is going to take longer than ten seconds, isn't it?"
"Probably," I admitted with a sideways glance. "You sure you want to hear this? We're not exactly best mates."
"We're not." His massive shoulders shrugged lightly. Declan was big for a goalie and took up so much bloody space, but he still managed to be quick enough. "But we've got a young team this year, and they look up to you. You're the one with your name in the lights, the one who gets to stand in the corner, arms spread wide, listening to the screaming fans when you score. They want to be you, but they'd also take your spot away from you in a heartbeat if you fuck it up for yourself."
The look I gave him was dry, but after five years of playing with him, I knew Dec's style of encouragement pretty well.
"My point is, if you've got something bleeding into your performance, you better figure it out. Because the second you take it onto the pitch, you've got a problem. And you are too valuable to this team for that to happen. I never thought it was something I'd need to worry about prior to today."
"It was one bad practice after a pretty ... life-altering evening."
"Tell me."
I cut him a look. "Can you pretend to have manners for two seconds?"
His steady gaze was what I got in answer, rather than a please tacked onto his gruffly spoken command.
Someone on the coaching staff passed us with a murmured greeting, and after he passed, I gestured to an empty pressroom so we could have some privacy. Declan preceded me in, sprawling out in a black desk chair.
"Oh, bleeding hell, he's shutting doors and everything," Declan murmured. "That bad?"
Bracing my back against the door, I stared blankly at the opposite wall for a minute. What I saw there was Lia's face, drained of all color, when I responded to her bombshell with ... well ... not very much tact.
"A few weeks ago," I started slowly, "I was in London to meet with my agent and stopped at my brother's pub. Met a girl." Closing my eyes, I tried to imagine again how easy it had been between us that night. How easy it had been those first few moments she was at my place. "American, studying at Oxford for Michaelmas. Had no idea who I was."
"You sure?"
I nodded. It was a fair question, and one I'd asked myself more than once since Lia stormed out of my house the night before. "It was one night. She left her number, and we messaged a few times but couldn't find time to meet up again until last night."
Declan's chest expanded on a deep inhale. He knew something was coming. Something was always hanging in the balance when guys in our positions slept around indiscriminately. We'd seen various types of fallout for years. Men cheating on wives, or girlfriends with groupies or prostitutes, the women going to the paps with their sordid tales.
"She came over last night for dinner, and we made no plans beyond that. Everything was fine—better than fine—at first. Then she told me she was pregnant."
That brought his chin up slightly, his eyes carefully assessing. "And what did you say?"
"I …" My throat worked on a hard swallow. "I asked her why she was telling me."
Declan pursed his mouth.
I held up a hand. "I know, not my best moment, but clearly, I wasn't expecting her to say that. We used protection. I'm not stupid."
"It might not have beeen particularly well-delivered, but it's a fair question in our position. People lie about all sorts of things for money."
What a diplomatic answer. Which was why I winced when I told him what I told him next.
"I don't think that's why she blew up at me," I said, scratching the back of my neck.
"She doesn't like money?"
"More like, I don't believe she needs it." My hand dropped from my neck. "Know the name Logan Ward? American football."
His head tilted. "Sounds familiar, but I can't place it."
"Won a championship with the Washington Wolves about ten years back, give or take. Now he's the defensive coach."
Declan nodded. "And?"
"Lia, that's her name, is Logan's younger sister."
Understanding dawned. "Please tell me you didn't know that before you said what you said." The loaded silence answered for me, and Declan cursed under his breath. "McAllister, you arsehole."
"I didn't know anything about him, about their family, when she dropped this bomb on me. So no, I shouldn't have said what I said, but it's not like I ever expected her to say that. I met her once, spent half a dozen hours around her, and most of those were spent sleeping." It felt like the weight of the entire building was pushing my shoulders down. Kids, a family, a wife were all things I'd thought about in the abstract. Always coming below the rest of the priorities I had in front of me.
When I win a league cup and hoist it up in my hands ... then I'd think about settling down.
When I prove I didn't waste my life on something frivolous and shallow, like my parents always believed ... then I'd focus on my own private life.
When ...
When ...
When ...
A dozen things came before it because it wasn't something I missed. I didn't lay awake at night wishing for someone beside me. I laid awake at night thinking about how I could keep my life and my career going in the right direction.
Staying away from women who only wanted me for my money, for my job was easy.
"When she said she was pregnant, all I could see was headlines and solicitors and DNA tests and soap opera bullshit I never signed up for. And how bloody angry I'd be if we came to the end of it, and she lied because I was a better target."
Declan studied me quietly. This was part of how he worked, though. He listened well, and he listened to what we didn't say. Those were the best listeners, weren't they? They were the ones who heard all the important things in the spaces of silence.
"It's not like I had time to think through exactly what it meant that she was raised in the world of sports. That the man who raised her was an elite athlete. All I thought—at the time she told me about her brother—was she understands this crazy. And right on the heels of that, she tells me she's preggers. It being mine, Declan, it didn't even register at first."
He grimaced. "And her reaction?"
I exhaled. "She told me to get fucked, started crying, then stormed off. The way she slammed my front door gave my performance today a run for my money."
"So you both have a temper then."
"Apparently."
Declan leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his thighs, hands clasped together, and pinned me with a serious look. "Do you think she's lying about it being yours?"
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I closed my eyes tightly and conjured an image of her face.
Nerves first, as I tried to kiss her.
Resolve next, as she pushed me away to say the words.
Disbelief. The widening of her eyes.
Hurt. The pinch of her brows.
Then rage. I'd seen fireworks explode with less glittering anger than I saw behind Lia's blue, blue eyes.
In the span of only a few moments, I saw so many different sides to her—this woman who was still a stranger for all intents and purposes. A str
anger in a country that wasn't her own, by herself.
I dropped my hand and looked at Declan. "No. I don't think she's lying."
"Then fix it, you git." He stood. "See what she needs and take care of it."
I must've had a blank look on my face because he rolled his eyes.
"Does she need to see a doctor? Does she have the vitamins she needs? Is she living in a safe place? Does she want to keep it? Bloody hell, McAllister, you're thirty-one years old. Grow a pair, call her, and make it right."
He slapped me on the back and shoved me sideways, so he could leave the room.
I pulled out my mobile.
Me: I'm sorry. I was an arse. I'm done with practice, and I'd love to chat if you have a minute.
My phone started ringing in my hand, Lia's name appearing in large letters across the screen. My heart leaped into my throat as I answered.
"Hello?"
She was quiet.
"Lia?"
"Yeah. I'm here."
I sank against the wall again. "I need to apologize for how I reacted last night. I was a total arse."
"Yes, you were." She sighed heavily. "But ... I shouldn't have stormed off either. I guess the insinuation that I was lying didn't ... sit well with me." Before I could open my mouth, she interrupted. "And I know, I know why you're cautious. But that's why I told you about Logan first. I'd never ever take advantage of someone because of what they do."
"I know," I told her. "The truth is, Lia, we don't know each other. At all."
"We're kinda going about this backward, huh?"
I smiled. "A bit."
"Can we, I don't know, meet for coffee? Or tea?"
"That sounds like a very smart, adult decision for us to make."
Lia laughed, and the sound of it, after the past twenty-four hours, finally felt like I was doing something right. It was okay to have my priorities shift, no matter how the conversation went with her or how she wanted to handle it.
"I'm open tomorrow, if you are."
"Why don't we meet somewhere in London? Bit of a happy medium for both of us."
"You can do that without being ... I don't know ... mobbed?"
It was my turn to laugh. "Yes. In Shepperton, I get recognized far more often than I do when I'm in London. Sometimes a fan will approach, but it's not common."
"That's kinda how it was for my brother too," she said. "We actually had a pretty normal life growing up, considering what he did."
She was an anomaly, and I found that I quite liked it.
Not only that, but I still had to wrap my head around the fact she was pregnant, and it was mine.
Suddenly, I wanted to tell her that. Offer some olive branch to this woman who I didn't exactly know very well.
"I can't get over it," I admitted quietly. "To be honest, Lia, I've never given it much thought. Having kids."
She exhaled audibly. "I know what you mean. I'm only twenty-two, Jude. This wasn't in the cards for me for a very long time."
I closed my eyes. Young, especially compared to me, hardly past the cusp of truly feeling like an adult.
"Lia," I said, "we'll figure this out together, yeah?"
Through the speaker, she sniffed quietly. "Yeah."
Chapter Ten
Lia
The things I knew about Jude Michael McAllister could fit on my pinky finger. At least, for the time being.
You're going to be a baby daddy- take two was already off to a better start as I sat across a tiny table in a tiny cafe, watching him wolf down that English breakfast thing I loved.
Add that to the list of things I knew:
-Jude could eat an entire meal in four bites.
-He looked great in a black knit hat.
-He took his tea with one sugar.
And so far on take two, he hadn't accused me of trying to pass off another man's baby as his.
"Are you not hungry?" he asked, eyeing my plate. "Do you feel all right?"
It was a graveyard of the poor croissant that I'd picked at, and the scone that had gotten similar treatment.
Which was a sad thing, because carbs were my jam in pregnancy.
I sat back and gave him an appraising look. "I feel okay. Morning sickness tends to hit me in the afternoon, but it's only happened a couple of times. When it did, I kinda thought maybe I hadn't eaten enough or wasn't drinking enough water."
He nodded.
The owner of the cafe ducked under the counter and swept away some of the trash from our table. "Will you loves be needing anything else?"
"I'm fine, thank you," I said, smiling up at her.
"Thanks, Sheila," Jude told her. "Maybe just a bit of privacy while we chat, if you don't mind."
He slid her some cash, and she patted him gently on the shoulder before dashing off to flip the closed sign on the door. "I'm just going to pop over to the market for a few things. Be back in a tick."
As she slid out of the door and jogged down the steps, I watched her tuck the cash Jude had given her into the cup of a vagrant sleeping curled around his dog at the end of the block.
"She's nice."
Jude nodded. "She gave my brother, Lewis, his first kitchen job years ago."
"Is that your only sibling?" I thought of the picture in the flat, the man who looked so much like Jude.
"It is. The pub where we met, I helped him buy it after I started playing. He wanted a place to call his own."
My eyebrows popped up. "That's a generous gift."
Jude shot me a rueful smile, showing just the slightest hint of a dimple in his scruff-covered jaw. "It was. We grew up on a sheep farm, actually. And neither of us particularly warmed to that life, so I thought I'd help him take a different path." He took a sip of his tea. "What about you? Brothers or sisters?" At my immediate, wide smile, Jude laughed. "Is that a loaded question?"
"No. Well, maybe." I set my chin on my hand and took a deep breath. "Claire is my twin sister. Isabel is two years older than us. Molly is two years older than Isabel. Logan, who is actually my half-brother, is the one who raised us from the time I was ten. And his son Emmett, with his wife Paige, is technically my nephew, but he also feels like my brother, because I'm closer in age to him than I am to Logan."
Jude's jaw was all but unhinged by the time I finished. "That's not a family, that's a bloody army."
I laughed. "It's ... chaos. I love it."
"Do they know?" he asked quietly.
The laughter dried up in my throat, an ache welling immediately behind my chest, like he'd turned on a faucet with his words. "Just Claire. I wanted to talk to you first."
"I'm so sorry I reacted the way I did, Lia." He leaned forward and pinned me with those green eyes. So green that I felt that same swirly feeling in my belly that I did when I met him. When he started kissing me in his kitchen before his stupid mouth and my stupid temper ruined the moment. "It's not an excuse, but it was one of those moments where—because I'd never even given it much thought, having kids, you know—my reaction caught even me off guard. If that makes sense," he added.
"It does. I think I suffered from the same problem." I covered my hot cheeks. "I've never told anyone to get fucked in my entire life."
He laughed, a large, booming sound born from somewhere deep in his broad chest. Oh, that sound set off a series of sparks that should have worried me. Lack of chemistry was not our problem.
It was part of why I reacted the way I did in his kitchen, I came to realize later. The flame between us had simmered the entire time I was separate from Jude. All it took was being in the same room, and my skin went incendiary. It's a terribly helpless feeling, if you think about it. When someone has the power to make you feel that way simply by existing, it's deeply unsettling at first. And my reaction to it—that tidal wave crashing over my head—was to draw my weapons as quickly as he'd drawn his.
He folded his big hands on the table. "What do you want to do next, Lia? Where can I help?"
What I wanted to do next was ask him no
t to say my name like that, all British and hot. Despite all odds, and some patchy birth control taking, he'd impregnated me with his super sperm, so hearing my name on his lips made me feel like warm putty.
"I guess ... I guess I need to know if you want to help. If you want to be in this with me."
It was the last thing I wanted to ask, but parental abandonment issues were a bit of a hot spot for me. For all my sisters.
Our dad, much older than our mom, died of a heart attack when we were young. I hardly remembered him; other than pictures I'd seen. But our mom decided one day that being a single parent of four after her golden meal ticket was gone just wasn't something she wanted anymore. Brooke had dumped us on Logan's front porch, and in truth, it was the best thing she could have done for me and my sisters. Logan, and later, his wife, Paige, gave us the family we had now. They were my people—the small army, as Jude had put it—who would always have my back.
And just like me, they'd never allow for a child—my child—to be treated as a prop for someone's vanity.
So, if Jude didn't want to play Daddy, he better speak the hell up now before this kid came out.
"I do want to be in this," he said. "I reckon I've got time to wrap my head around it, eh?"
I gave him a smile. "Yeah."
Neither of us brought up the fact that my life was on the opposite side of the world. Or that we'd need legal agreements up the wazoo, due to the nature of his job. That someday, we'd need custody agreements and child support discussions.
All the thoughts made my stomach seize up uncomfortably.
With two hands, I mentally shoved all that shit down.
"Do you need to see a doctor?" he asked.
I blinked. "I don't know, actually. I did some googling, but I can't tell if I qualify for the NHS free coverage since I'm only visiting for a semester."
"I'll make a call."
His calm assurance was enough to steady my stomach and bubbling nerves at all the unknowns. And when we said our goodbyes outside of Sheila's cafe, he walked me back to the Tube station with a promise that someone would contact me.
It set the precedent, a small step in the right direction of how the next couple of weeks unfolded. I didn't see him because his game schedule was packed (apparently they had like ... forty different cup tournaments they played in outside of regular league play. Don't even ask me because I was still trying to understand).
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