Bad Boy's Bridesmaid (49 page)

Chapter Twenty – Leah

I made the worst
mistakes of my life.

And I
knew
it.

I never, ever
made mistakes. I had no room in my life for them, not when every decision I
made came with a list of pros and cons that tangled me in so much uncertainty I
was afraid to take a step in case I made a choice that was…
wrong
.

I’d lived my
life carefully and methodically. Now I was pregnant, carrying the child of a
man who thought a kid would help him to look more like an upstanding, moral
gentleman.

But the baby
wasn’t a mistake. Even if he or she exhausted me, ruined my favorite foods, and
caused me a bit of discomfort, I loved the baby. Jack did too.  And I knew we
could handle whatever complicated mess we caused if only to provide the little
one with a life of love and happiness.

I didn’t follow
Jack. Instead, I hid in the one room we shared. The nursery wasn’t finished, at
least, not to Jack’s specifications. But the room thrilled me, so peaceful and
waiting
for the excitement to come. The pregnancy wasn’t how I planned it, but at least
I had control over that aspect of my life.

The rest of my
life?

The complication
I never should have let into my heart just slammed the door and walked out. But
I had no idea what I’d say if I chased and caught him.

Don’t go.

Let’s talk.

You have no idea
how much you mean to me, and it scares me to admit it
.

“Any of those
would have worked.” I sighed, but the tightness inside me didn’t go away.

I sat in the
rocking chair and held one of the dozens of stuffed animals dressed in Rivets’
gear Jack bought. We had too much
stuff
for the baby—furniture and
gadgets, pillows and blankets, so many onesies they were multiplying into
twosies. But a child only needed one thing.

Love.

And so did I.

It was time to
make some decisions.

Real
decisions.

Not just where I
was going to sleep at night or what we would do for dinner. We hadn’t even
thought of
names
yet. We just…existed. Together. In the moment.
Stationary.

I should’ve made
the first move. How many real relationships did Jack ever have? He didn’t know
anything about a functional romance.

Did we even have
a romance?

So far it had
been nights curled together. Sex. Gentle smiles. Teasing. More sex. The
occasional flirty glance and promise of more.

Sex.

Passionate,
unbelievably heated love-making.

No.

What we had was
real. It had to be. I wasn’t just imagining how his hands felt or the words he
murmured or the way he looked at me. When Jack took me to his bed and entered
me with a cock so big and powerful and
loving
, we became more than two
people in the heat of desire.

How long could I
deny that I needed him? We had a
peace
together. Comfort. We offered
ourselves to each other and earned so much more in return.

And yet…we never
took it.

It scared me.
And there was a reason for it. A
big
reason. One that lodged in my
throat every time I went to admit it.

Jack had to feel
it too. God, I hoped he did.

Or I was about
to make an even bigger fool out of myself.

My phone rang. I
lunged at my purse to grab it, hoping it was Jack. It wasn’t. Worse, I didn’t
like the sudden twinge in my tummy when I moved. I took a deep breath and let
the discomfort pass.

Was that a
normal pain?

I hesitated to
answer the phone. Jolene didn’t have any reason to bother me, and I braced
myself before I greeted her.

“Leah?” Jolene
spoke in a rush, too busy to call without spilling her coffee and banging her
keyboard. “Oh,
Leah
, I am so glad to talk to you. Do you have a minute?”

The rocking
chair was comfortable enough, at least. The only real crisis was that the Rivets’
bad boy quarterback was pissed off, rogue, and determined to find trouble to
prove how much he had
changed
. Sure. It was a great time to take a call.

“What’s up,
Jolene?”

“First…how are
you?”

I didn’t really
want to deal with pleasantries. “Fine.”

“And…the baby?”

Now
she cared about
the baby? I remembered her last words to me, a chastisement for my recklessness
and disregard for my own life. Apparently, I’d let Jack
ruin
me.

I disagreed.

But I rested my
hand on my tummy, stroking the little bump. I shifted, but the weird discomfort
still ached through me. I really needed to take it easy. Probably spent too
much time in the heat today.

“The baby’s
good,” I said. “Everything’s normal.”

“Know the
gender?”

“Not yet. We
wanted it to be a surprise.”

“You?” Jolene’s
voice cracked. “A
surprise
?”

I glanced over
the sunshine yellow walls and neutral green blankets and toys. “Jack’s
suggestion.”

“And you went
along with it?”

“Well…” I
smiled. “Yeah. He thought it’d be sweet if we found out together.”

“I can’t believe
that works with your…plans.”

Oddly enough, it
did. Everything about the baby made sense with Jack. “So long as he or she is
healthy, that’s all we want.”

“Wow.” Jolene
hesitated. “So you and Jack…?”

Wasn’t that the
question of the evening? “Yes?”

“Leah, you know
he isn’t the one for you.”

“Jo, stop—”

“Just listen to
me. I know he’s handsome, and it’s fun, and now there’s a baby involved, but
this isn’t the life you wanted. I worry about you.”

“You worried so
much you fired me.”

“I want you
back.”

The rocking
chair went still. I nearly burst out of it. “
Back
?”

“At the agency.
It was wrong to fire you.”

“It was probably
illegal too.” Except I knew better than to challenge a PR team and a good
friend to a legal dispute.

Jolene sighed.
“Jack’s reputation isn’t something we can fix.”

I bit my lip.
“He’s really trying to change.”

“It’s too
little, too late. You want to believe he’s a different man—”

“He is.”

“Come on. To
anyone else, he’s still the trouble-making womanizer skirting the law and now
having illegitimate children.”

“I know what you
think happened, and you’re wrong. The baby wasn’t an accident.”

“That’s even
more concerning. Do you really want to abandon everything you worked so hard to
achieve for Jack Carson?”

“Maybe I was
working towards the wrong things?”

She snorted.
“Oh, knock it off, Leah. You’re not getting married. You’re out of work. And
you’re having a baby with a man you never imagined you’d be saddled with.”

“I’m not
saddled
with him.” In fact, I was supposed to be keeping him on a leash. It was my
fault for letting that chain break. “I like my life. I can handle myself. I
promise.”

“I want you to
come back to work for me,” Jolene said.

“You mentioned
that already.”

“I’ll give you a
raise and a company car.”

I sighed.
“That’s great, but you realize I only have five and half months I can work.”

“You’d get
maternity leave. Come on, Leah. I’m trying to help you.”

“I don’t need
help.”

She lowered her
voice. “And when he leaves you?”

“He won’t.”

“This is Jack
Carson. He’s a walking, talking liability. A risk. I want to make sure you’re
taken care of, and you know he’s not dependable. Hell, we spent day after day
thinking of photo ops and events to make him
seem
responsible, and the
two of us together couldn’t make it realistic.”

“That was
before
.”

“You need to
plan for what comes
after
.” Jolene hesitated. “The offer for your job
stands, but I can’t allow the scandal into my office. If you come back to work,
I want you to be alone.”

“What?”

“Break it off
with him before it gets too complicated and you’ll have your old job with a
raise and perks. Leah, I chose you to be my assistant because you’d be a
partner one day. Have the baby, and after he or she is born, we’ll make the
arrangements for you to get that promotion.”

My heart
fluttered, thudded, and crushed. This wasn’t happening. My dream job floated
within my grasp, and all I had to do was reach out, take it, and seize
everything I ever wanted. The baby. The career. The prospects.

But no Jack.

Tears prickled
my eyes. I couldn’t turn on him. Not now, not for a raise or promotion or offer
that would give me a
comfortable
life. I would never trap myself in a
passionless existence again. Before him, I hadn’t understood what I needed in
life. I did now.

He gave me
passion, excitement, and romance. He taught me to take one day at a time
instead of scheduling life fifteen years into the future. He took care of me.
Made love to me. Fought so hard for to me to see that he had changed and wanted
that commitment.

Jack pleaded
with me to be honest. He wanted to know what I thought of him.

The answer was
easy. He was everything I needed to make my life whole.

“Jolene, I can’t
accept this,” I said.

“Christ, Leah.
Why not?”

I smiled as I
said it, my heart fluttering as I finally admitted it out loud.

“Because I’m in
love with Jack Carson.”

“Leah—”

I gripped the
phone but hugged one of the baby’s stuffed animals. “I’m sorry, my answer is
no.”

“I hope you’re
sure about this.”

As sure as I was
ever going to be about anything.

I ended the
call. I told her, but someone else deserved to know how I felt. Somewhere, out
in the world, Jack drowned in his own solitude and misery. No man I loved
should ever have felt so alone when I was here waiting for him.

When me and his
baby were waiting for him.

I set the stuffed
animal on the ground and pushed from the chair.

The sharpness in
my womb stopped me. It wasn’t just discomfort. Standing caused a spike of pain
through my body. I clutched my tummy. I took a step and felt it again.

Tears blurred my
vision, but, as always, I had a plan, and it didn’t include panicking.

I held my phone
tight and gripped the baby’s crib, my heart beating entirely too fast and
terrified for the littlest trouble-maker. Jack’s phone went straight to
voicemail. I steadied my voice as I left the message, hoping he’d get it before
anything bad happened.

“Jack…it’s me. I
think something’s wrong.” I held back my tears, but I hic-upped when another
step pinched the pain inside me again.  “Please call me. I have to go to the
hospital.”

Chapter Twenty-One – Jack

Bryon was always
down for a drink…or a line, though even I wasn’t that stupid.

One call and he
had the crew assembled at his house, each person hauling a case of something
more potent and expensive than the last. Beer. Wine. One particularly
good-looking bottle of scotch.

We met in his
living room because, as the rest of the team had so recklessly experienced,
when a majority of Rivets met in public, it usually caused problems for both
the establishment and the idiots inside who picked fights.

But tonight
wasn’t about reliving old mistakes. Tonight was for making new ones.
Apparently, that was all I was good for.

Jack
Carson—trouble-maker, womanizer, delinquent.

Father
?

Oh, not yet. I
still had five and a half months to ruin my own life, let alone screw up the
kid’s.

At least the
baby had Leah. She had enough common sense and conviction to get what she
needed out of life, even if it wasn’t me.

But why didn’t
she want me? Didn’t she realize how much I
fucking
cared? What I’d do
for her? What she and the baby had
done
to me?

And it was all
for nothing. She didn’t even know that I…

Fuck it.

Bryon clapped my
shoulder and shuffled me to his living room. His place was ten thousand square
feet of a sty because he couldn’t stop harassing his maids long enough to let
them clean the damn house. He puffed a cigar and pointed me to the couch.

“What the hell
is wrong with you?” he asked.

I didn’t grab my
crutches on the way out of the house. I regretted it now. At least they gave
the impression that I was hurt. With a limp, I looked like some heroic war vet
to the three women Bryon had called specifically for our gathering. The
women—two blondes and a girl with skin as dark as Leah’s—hurried to cuddle at
my side. Bryon grinned. They crawled over the leather couch in miniskirts with
nothing underneath.

Just the sort of
trouble I liked.

Used to like.

Why did I once
like this?

I couldn’t cast
Leah from my mind, and the whores crowding me didn’t help. Leah had been the
last woman to sit in my lap, and she turned my world upside down with the bump
of her hips and the sexy smile she gave when I caressed her tummy.

She didn’t have
a clue how amazing she was, and she got more beautiful by the day. I couldn’t
wait to see what else the pregnancy did for her. She thought I wouldn’t be
attracted to her once she grew too big. Christ, she’d be lucky if I could keep
my hands off of her.

Had I ever told
her that?

Did I ever tell
her anything? I know what I’d felt in bed. Every time I took her was a more
meaningful and romantic experience than the last, but I never thought to say
the words that crushed me from the inside out.

Fuck, was I that
stupid?

The blond
snuggled too close and tried to whisper in my ear. I pushed her away.

 “Jack, what the
hell is wrong with you?” Bryon handed me a tumbler filled with something that
was sure to burn my throat. “Drink, man. Get your dick sucked. Stop moping.
You’re freaking me the fuck out.”

“Sorry.” I
stared into the tumbler. Bryon took the couch across from me, my two loyal
offensive lineman, Orlando and Marcus, on the other side of the room. “It’s
just...Leah.”

“The bitch?”

“She’s not a
bitch.” My voice rose. Bryon apologized. “She went to the doctor without me.”

Bryon shrugged.
“Baby okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Then what’s the
problem?”

“I didn’t go.
She didn’t want me there.”

“Fuck man,
sounds like she did you a favor. Who wants to spend their time in an
OBGAGA-whatever the fuck it is. Fucking baby shit everywhere and ovaries.”
Bryon shuddered. “Gives me the willies.”

“Yeah, and how
many women ended up there because of you?”

“Ain’t no one
suing me for paternity. You fucked yourself up there, son.”

No, I hadn’t.
That baby and its mother were the greatest things in my life. I sipped the
alcohol. It was a cheap scotch, but it did the job.

“You need to
bust outta that relationship,” Bryon said. “That bitc—lady’s got you collared.”

“Don’t mind it.”

“Yeah, well, you
don’t seem too happy now. Hell, we haven’t seen you out at all. Not a party
unless Jack Carson makes an appearance, baby.”

I shrugged.
“Been busy.”

“Dump her ass
and get your life back.”

“It’s
complicated.” Just the thought of losing Leah pitted my stomach. “She’s helping
me. If I’m with her, it looks good to the league. You got me? And since they’re
looking for any reason to fuck me over…”

Bryon glanced to
the linemen. His lips twisted into a smile. “Jack, you worried about your
position?”

“Wouldn’t you
be?”

“Dude, fucking
relax. Look.” His voice lowered as he gestured to our friends. “Matt’s doing
okay
,
but you say the word, and we can make him a little less comfortable in the
pocket.”

It was like he
sucker-punched me. “What?”

“Just sayin’.
Maybe some blocks get missed. Maybe he’s gotta hurry a couple passes. Matt
ain’t got the skills you do. We made him look good. If you think it’ll help, we
can make him look…not as good.”

“Jesus
fuck
,
listen to yourself!”  I nearly leapt off the couch. My knee didn’t cooperate,
or I’d have split right then.  “Christ,
no
! I’m not gonna let you
throw
the games
because you want me under center. I want my position because I’m
the
best
at it, not because—”

Bryon held his
hands up. “Okay, okay. Just sayin’, Jack. Offer stands.”

“I don’t need
it.” I set the glass down too hard, spilling the liquid. “And if I
ever
think one of you assholes isn’t putting in a hundred percent—”

“No one’s doing
anything, Jack. Fucking calm down.” Bryon grinned. “We’re all friends here.”

He snapped his
fingers, and one blonde slunk away to entertain Orlando and Marcus. They
retreated to the corner of the room. Bryon kept the second blonde for himself.

The third woman
waited for me, brushing ebony fingers along my chest.

“Thought she was
more your type.” Bryon winked.

She wasn’t. Leah
was. This girl was a poor imitation.

Her skin wasn’t
Leah’s rich cocoa softness. Her touch on my shoulder wasn’t the timid tickle of
Leah’s hand. I always had to tell Leah she was allowed to touch me, especially
to hold on as I fucked her into oblivion every night in my bed.

Our bed?

Fucking,
a
bed. It didn’t matter whose. It just mattered that
she
was in it.

“You seem tense,
baby,” the woman whispered. “Can I help?”

Bryon nodded. I
wasn’t in the mood and I certainly wasn’t looking for anyone else.

I wasn’t sure
when it happened, but the revelation wasn’t a surprise. I wanted
Leah
and
Leah
alone.

“Don’t…” I
pushed the woman away. She pouted, and I shrugged. “Nothing against you.”

“But…”

“No buts. Not
interested.”

“But you’re Jack
Carson…” The girl laughed. “I thought tonight would be fun.”

Since when did I
have to explain myself or my cock? Was my reputation that bad? Did people
really think I’d hump anything that talked?

I reached into
my pocket and pulled out the sonogram. I wasn’t sure what I was doing with it,
but the image still made me smile. I showed the woman.

“That’s my
baby,” I said. “He’s got my squiggles, right?”

“Oh.” The woman
didn’t even look at the picture. “You do need some attention.”

“What?”

“You
know...Momma’s at home all sick and moody. And Daddy?” She licked her lips.
“Daddy needs some extra love. I can help.”

“I don’t need
help.”

“Come on. What
are you worried about? Just one night, Jack. Just me and you. No strings. No
babies
or
wives
.”

“She’s not my
wife.” Why the hell hadn’t I offered to marry her?

“Even better.
What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her...”

The woman licked
her lips and tugged her shirt low, revealing the plump flesh of her breasts.

Was this what I
once wanted? Meaningless, casual,
forgettable
sex? It used to feel good,
and it got me off. No questions. No leashes. I always made a quick escape
before the girl wanted something stupid like breakfast or my number.

Or to present me
as someone respectable to the world.

To make me think
of someone other than myself.

To have my baby.

Jesus. I never
used to want commitment and family and all the shackles that came with it, but
now? It was the only thing that made sense.

I’d pissed Leah
off. I needed to talk to her before she made good on her threat and left. And,
once I found her, I wasn’t letting go. No more
chances
.  None of this
hesitant, uncertain bullshit. Leah was the only woman for me—for now and
forever. For the first time in my life, I needed something other than the
championship to prove my worth.

I wanted someone
to love.

I pushed the
woman off of me and waved to Bryon. “I gotta go home.”

Bryon grunted,
forcing the blonde’s hand back to his jeans. “Let her cool down. Those pregos
get worked up all the damn time.”

“Yeah, I don’t
want her worked up. I gotta make sure she’s not imploding. Thanks for…”

For showing me
how hollow everything had been. For proving Leah right and me wrong and finally
accepting that I had more in my life than superficial bullshit.

I nodded to him.
“See ya tomorrow.”

I let myself
out, sucking in a breath of fresh air as the night choked the world. I used to
like that too. No one could see what or who you did in the dark. But tonight
just felt too…alone.

I hopped in my
car and pulled my phone. I’d turned it off in my rage like a jackass. Didn’t
surprise me to see Leah’s name pop up on a missed call. At least she had the
sense to call like a rational adult when times got tough.

I pulled onto
the street and checked the message, but my fingers clenched over the wheel as
Leah’s voice whimpered over the phone. The voice mail was from an hour ago. The
fear in her words transferred to me, chilling my blood and slicing through my
flesh in a raw agony.

The message
played once.

I thought
hurting my knee was terrifying. This was worse.

This was hell.

This was every
terrible nightmare come to life because I was too goddamned selfish to consider
the world beyond myself.

I jammed the
brake and spun the car one hundred and eighty degrees in the middle of the
intersection. The car squealed and peeled out, racing towards the city’s
hospital.

Her words
scalded my mind, replaying over and over.

“
Jack…it’s
me. I think something’s wrong. Please call me. I have to go to the hospital
.”