Dirty Baller: A Secret Baby Sports Romance (15 page)

I look at his face and appreciate that this is why Sandra chose him as a subject. If the image of his rugged, five o’clock shadow face and sparkling green eyes doesn’t sell magazines,
nothing
will. I feel a little flutter of anticipation as I stare at it.

“Final boarding call for flight ten ninety-seven to Heathrow. Paging Hayley Childs to gate forty-two B. Gate forty-two B. Paging Hayley Childs.”

I grab the magazine with Ryan’s face on it and throw a ten-dollar bill on the counter. “Sorry! Gotta run!” I say to the alarmed shopkeeper.

I make my flight right before they close the doors. “Sorry,” I say apologetically to the gate agent.

She raises an eyebrow and adjusts her Pilgrim hat. “I’m only giving you a pass because it’s Thanksgiving.”

“Thank you again,” I say. I rush down the jet way and onto the plane. My stomach does a little somersault in displeasure at the smell of jet fuel. I’m not a huge fan of planes and flying.

I shove my overnight bag into an overhead bin, the last one that’s still open. It barely fits.

It’s just my luck that I’m shoved between two overweight, middle-aged businessmen in cheap suits. They don’t look too pleased that I’ll be taking up the middle seat; they already assumed that the seat was going to remain empty and placed their laptops there.

I pull my light-blocking eye mask out of my purse and pull it on, shoving my headphones into my ears and listening to an audiobook by my favorite romance author. In this one, my favorite, the heroine meets a handsome European prince. I’ve listened to it a thousand and one times. It’s my good luck charm.

The plane rumbles beneath me and I pinch my legs to keep myself from shaking.

This is it.

I’m headed to London.

I’m getting my man back.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

HAYLEY

The train from Heathrow takes forever but I finally make it to Ryan’s neighborhood. I pull my light jacket closer around my body. I can’t zip it up because my stomach is
just
too large for the jacket to accommodate it.

I make a mental note to pull it off and hold it balled up over my stomach when I ring Ryan’s door. The last thing he needs is for me to show up
looking
pregnant. I want him to find out when I
tell
him, not when I
show
him.

I pass a group of moms taking their kids to the park. The leaves are orange and flutter in the stiff, chilly breeze. London smells like it always does, of petrol and cigarettes and food carts mixed with the scent of damp earth. The sky above me is a light, stainless-steel grey and I feel lighter on my feet here than I ever do in New York.

I see Ryan’s teal front door and have a flash of when Terence walked me back here that terrible, awful night of the gala. I’d practically had to shove him away from me so I could get into the house without him. He wanted sex. I wanted nothing from him but a safe escort.

I’m so nervous I’m shaking. My weekend bag still on my shoulder and my purse in my hand, I take a deep breath and rap the heavy brass knocker three times. I wait.

A woman answers the door. A pretty woman. With blonde hair and green eyes and a smart business suit on. Her wool skirt comes to just above her knees and her thin legs end in high heels.

My stomach sinks.

Ryan has another woman here.

Already.

It
has
been five months, Hayley
, Alison’s voice says in my ear.
If you’d only come sooner he might still be yours.

I gape at the woman.

“May I help you?” she asks, a quizzical look on her face.

“Um, yes. I’m looking for Ryan,” I say weakly. “But I’ll just go, actually.”

She looks down at my stomach and I realize with a lurch of dread that I forgot to take off my coat to hide it. She calls back into the house before I can stop her. “Ryan!”

But Ryan’s already at the door. His face turns from elation to dread as his eyes wander down to my midsection. “Oh my God. Hayley.”

“I’m pregnant,” I whisper. The words fall out of me without being summoned. He already knows, anyway.

I turn and I run.

That’s the only thing I can think of to do.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

RYAN

My mind can’t do the math fast enough. How many months does it take until a woman’s showing? I don’t know. But why would she be on my doorstep if she weren’t pregnant with
my
baby?

There’s no time to think.

Hayley’s gone and running before I even have a chance to register shock.

“What in the bloody hell is going on?” Megan asks me, a look of thorough confusion on her face.

“I’ll tell you later,” I say, leaping the three steps to the sidewalk and running after Hayley. She’s faster than I thought she would be, but she’s no match for a professional footballer. “Hayley! Stop running!”

But she doesn’t. So I grab her by the elbow and pull her backwards, catching her in my arms. She’s panting and tears are flowing down her face.

“Hayley. Please,” I say.

She stands up and looks away from me. “I didn’t mean for you to see my stomach,” she says. “I wanted to have a conversation with you, honestly.”

“Come on,” I say. “Let’s go back to the house.”

She follows me. Megan is still standing at the door watching us. I brush past her and take Hayley’s bags.

“I’ll make some tea,” Megan says, clearly at a loss.

Hayley looks at her with venom in her eyes that I don’t understand.

“Let’s sit up here,” I say, taking Hayley into the front sitting room. Once Hayley is perched awkwardly on the formal sofa and I’m back in the armchair, I realize this was a mistake. This feels like a business meeting between strangers.

And we’re certainly not strangers.

“I was hoping – “ I start to say. But Hayley interrupts me.

“Who is that woman? Your girlfriend, I presume?” Hayley asks.

I look at her, totally confused. “Who? What woman?”

Hayley laughs. “Don’t play the fool with me, Ryan. The woman in your kitchen. How long have you been together?”

I guffaw loudly. “You mean Megan?” I laugh even harder, which does not go over well with Hayley. “She’s not my girlfriend. She’s my
sister
. My half-sister. My dad’s daughter with another woman who wasn’t my mum.”

A look of recognition dawns over Hayley’s face. “Your
sister
. She’s your sister.”

“That’s right,” Megan says, walking into the room with a tray of tea and biscuits. She sets the tray down with a small thud. “I’ll leave you two to catch up. You clearly have a lot going on that you need to work out.” She walks over and pats my shoulder. “I’m off to work. We still on for dinner tonight?”

“Yeah, of course,” I say to her. She walks out of the house and shuts the front door. Hayley and I are left in silence together.

“How have things been going-“

“What have you been up-“

We speak at the same time. We both laugh awkwardly. “You go first,” I say to her. “Since you certainly seem to have the um, bigger news.”

Hayley fidgets with her jacket sleeves. “I’m about five months along. The baby is healthy.”

“Do you…know the sex?” I ask her tentatively.

She looks at me. “No. I’m waiting to find out.”

“And the baby…it’s mine. Right?”

She nods once. “Of course it is. I think one of the condoms broke. I missed a day of birth control, too, right when I got to London.”

And there it is. I feel a surge of anger. Seeing her made me forget, but that forgetting doesn’t last long. “Right. When you came here to get your story out of me.”

“Ryan, I wanted to talk to you about – “

“What do you want from me, Hayley?” I’m forgetting everything that I learned in rehab. The breathing. The way to take control of my emotions.

Everything.

Everything.

Everything.

It’s all flying out the window and down onto the high street.

Tears come into her eyes. “I just wanted to tell you that I’m sorry about the story. I wanted you to know that you’re going to be a father. And I wanted to tell you – I love you. I love you, Ryan. I wanted you to know. You have a right to know.”

The word
father
pings my ears and I’m back in full anger again. I don’t want to hear this. I can’t be somebody’s father. I can’t. “I think you should leave. Your little story is being published soon, right? So I can read all about my own life along with the rest of the world, all the way from the time I was born to the time I was in foster care and beyond.” The words are pouring out of me now. All the hurt I was feeling before, all of it – it’s taking control of me. “I’m guessing you can put a nice little cherry on top of the story, too. Fatherless boy has daddy issues. What an original tale of woe.”

“Ryan, please, let me explain.” Hayley stands up along with me.

“You should leave,” I say to her. “You should get out now.”

Hayley pushes past me and grabs her bags. She reaches into her purse and fishes out a rolled-up magazine. “Here’s the story if you want to read it.”

And with that, she leaves the house and runs down the street out into the cold, late November day.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

RYAN

“I would have ordered half this amount of take away if I had known you weren’t actually going to
eat
on our dinner date,” Megan says to me, pulling my untouched box of curry towards her.

“I need a drink,” I say, rubbing my face.

“I’ll bet you do. Anyone would after the day you’ve had,” she says. “Of course, I could give you better advice if you would just
tell me
what it is that happened after I left today. You don’t seem too eager to talk about it.” She pauses and wipes her mouth with a napkin. “I’m not leaving you here to fall into a bottle of vodka, Ryan. You need to let it out. Let it all out.”

I start at the beginning. “I met this girl, Hayley, in a bar the night before I joined the team here. We had sex. It turned out that she was a reporter sent to research my team and make a story about us. And we tried to stay away from each other, but we couldn’t. We just kept falling back into bed together, over and over and over again. I was in love with her.” I pause, letting the words sit there for a moment.

Megan’s expression is unchanged. She’s listening as attentively as anyone as has ever listened to me. It’s a little unnerving. “Did you tell her that? Did you tell her that you were in love with her?”

It’s amazing how little time I’ve known my half-sister and how well she understands me at the same time. She’s gotten to the heart of my intimacy issues with one question.

“Yes. I did tell her.”

“Wow. Must have taken a lot for you to do that. To actually open up to her and let her know that.”

“What are you, Dr. fucking Phil?” I joke.

She stirs the curry with her fork. “I know that because Dad was the same way. Sorry, Scott.” I don’t let her call Scott ‘dad’ in front of me. “Sorry. But you’re really a chip off the old block in some ways.”

I ignore this. Those words are not the ones that I’m interested in hearing. At all. “I told her that I loved her and then she went behind my back and wrote a story about me. With all of my secrets. With everything that I told her about my childhood. About Scott. About my mum.” I put my head in my hands. “She betrayed me. I opened up and she betrayed me.”

Megan nods. “That must have been terrible. I’m so sorry that happened.”

“And now she shows up here today, after five, nearly six months with absolutely
zero
contact, and she’s pregnant with my baby.” I take a big drink of water, slamming the glass onto the granite countertops. I stare at the artfully painted white cabinets with purposely worn edges. “I can’t be a father.”

“And why is that?” Megan asks.

“You already said it. I’m a chip off the old block.”

Megan makes a noncommittal noise. “So what’s your plan, then?”

“My plan?”

“Yeah. The plan. Your former girlfriend is pregnant with your baby and you’re going to do what, now?”

“Nothing. I’m going to do nothing.”

Megan surprises me by laughing.

“What in the bloody hell is so funny?” I ask her, feeling angry.

She’s laughing so hard now that tears of mirth dance in her eyes. She dabs at them with a clean napkin. “It’s just that we’re sitting in a house that was
clearly
built for a family. You rented it what? Seven months ago? And you’re telling me that you don’t want to be somebody’s father.”

“I don’t understand –“

“Ryan, look around you,” Megan interrupts. “This place has three bedrooms and a little patch of green grass in the back. You have granite countertops and two living rooms. This place isn’t for a bachelor. I know you went flat hunting when Hayley was with you, you implied as much last week when I asked you why you picked this place. You didn’t say
who
, exactly, was with you. But I know it was a woman and I can connect the dots. You rented this place because you were planning for a future. Even if you didn’t realize it.”

I open my mouth to protest but I know it’s no use. Because she’s right. She’s utterly, completely, and entirely correct. “I still can’t be a father. I’m too much like Scott. I’m too much like Dad.”

Megan nods slowly. “I’ll tell you about Dad and what he was like. He was a better father to me than he was to you. I think he was trying to make up for what he did to you and your mum. He never hit my mother. He never laid a hand on me. He drank a lot. But mostly he drank out of sadness. Regret. I’m not excusing what he did. He never reached out to you and that’s unforgiveable.” Megan takes a deep breath and puts on a serious face. “You think you’ll turn out like Dad if you decide to be a father. But you’re wrong.”

Megan leans forward to emphasize her next words. “You’ll be like Dad if you abandon your child. Don’t do that. We aren’t fated to some destiny, Ryan. You’ll only be like Scott if you
choose
to be like Scott. And I know you won’t make that choice. I know you won’t. You think I don’t know you, but I do. You can
choose
to be different. You can choose to be better. You can choose to be a father.”