Once Upon A Half-Time: A Secret Baby Romance (5 page)

This was just as good.

My knees wobbled.

Was he a man or made of magic? I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. I gasped in the heat, clutching at the wall, his hair, my breasts. My strength gave out, and I teetered, grasping the shower handle for support. It twisted, and a shock of cold water stung my back, my ass, my legs.

The sudden surprise ripped through me, zapping shivers and goose bumps and every last hesitation from my mind. I didn’t care who saw. Who heard. Who
knew
.

His tongue teased against my clit.

One. Two. Three quick swipes.

And I was gone.

I tensed. Lachlan caught me as I dissolved into the water itself.

I gasped his name as my body completely betrayed me. How could I give myself to him again? Sex with a stranger had been bad enough, but now Lachlan
knew
me. After three days of animalistic, remorseless fucking, he’d learned what I liked. Lachlan anticipated my body’s every desire.

And the bastard loved it. He gave me that playboy laugh, the carefree
arrogance
earned with dimples and a skilled tongue.

“I knew you’d want me again, Elle.” He made a show of licking his lips. “I knew you’d beg for me. That you’d give into it.”

“A mistake…” I whispered.

“It’s not a mistake to want me. Not when you know I’m the best you’ve ever had.” He grinned. “I thought it’d take a
lot
more chasing before I got to taste that pussy again.”

Wrong
thing to say.

“That’s it, loverboy.” I kicked his knee. He sprawled backward, landing on his ass. “You are the cockiest man on the face of this earth.”

Just to make the point, he waved a hand over his package, rock-hard and waiting for me to go deep.

My threat might have sounded harsher if my voice hadn’t trembled. “One of these days, Lachlan Reed, you’re going to find out that you aren’t the center of the universe.”

“As long as I get to be the center of yours.”

How could a man so
arrogant
sound so…genuine? I crossed my arms, but that perked my breasts and left the parts of me he had so thoroughly delighted completely exposed.

“It won’t happen,” I said. “You are rude, crude, and you think you’re God’s gift to women. You’ve never struggled a day in your life.”

Lachlan looked down to his hardened cock. “I’m struggling right now.”

“Poor baby.”

“I’m not asking for another night of sex.” He stood, his voice soft. “I just want a
chance
, Red. There’s a lot we have to talk about—a lot of stuff I don’t think you remember.”

“I remember plenty, thank you.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure.”

The shampoo was out of my hair, and the shower’s heat suffocated me with my own scorching desire. I stepped out of the water and faced him.

“It was fun,” I said. “But I rather stay out of trouble, especially the kind you cause.”

“If I can get with you, I’ll play by the rules.”

Yeah right. A man like him? “How can I be sure you’re not just another over-sexed, trouble-making superstar jock?”

“Maybe that’s why you like me?”

I walked away. Lachlan darted after me, taking my hand.

“Wait, Elle,” he said. “How can I prove that I deserve a chance…aside from using my tongue?”

I didn’t know if it were possible. “I’m looking for someone who knows the meaning of
humility
.”

“No problem, Red. I’m the humblest guy in the world!”

I poked his chest, wishing I hadn’t touched that hard pack of muscle. I hadn’t yet caught my breath, and I trembled so near his hands, his mouth, his straining cock.

“Anyone can be the loudest, the biggest, the baddest in the locker room,” I said.

“Not just anyone.
Me
.”

I rolled my eyes and slammed the shower off. He still didn’t understand.

“Do you know what separates the men from the boys?”

Lachlan nodded. “A weekend in Vegas with you.”

“Nope.” I grabbed my towel, rubbing the wetness from my arms as I walked back to the main locker room. “If you want me, you’ve gotta show me one thing.”

“I’m all ears.”

He was all cock, but I’d forgive it. I grinned and rounded the corner.

“Learn how to be
modest
—”

My words choked in my throat as the main doors opened.

The entirety of the team funneled into the locker room.

And I was completely and totally
naked
.

The team went silent, but the little voice in my head screamed a hell of a lot of words.

In a moment of panic, my towel dropped to the floor, crumpled in a tight ball with my pride, dignity, and every bit of respect I’d cobbled together.

I wasn’t sure what was worse…my nudity or Lachlan appearing at my side with an obscenely throbbing erection.

Jack was the first to speak, his voice hoarse. “Damn, rookie. Put that away before you poke someone’s eye out.”

Oh God.

Jack tossed me a towel and motioned for the team to avert their eyes while I tucked the terrycloth around my curves.

“Jesus Christ.” Cole grunted, rifling through his locker. He pitched his towel at Lachlan’s head.

Lachlan hadn’t moved. I groaned as the towel missed him, fluttered down, and tee-peed over his erection. The team collectively lost their shit, and the locker room echoed with laughter.

What were the chances I could melt into a puddle of my own humiliation and escape to a regular nightmare—the kind with monsters or missed math tests?

Cole swore. “I am not gonna be the one to tell Piper about this.”

That made two of us.

No one
had to know. Not agents. Not the press. Not the coaches—

“What the fuck is going on here?”

Fuck. Too late for the coaches.

Coach Thompson pushed linebackers and receivers out of his path, shoving his way to Lachlan. Jack shouted and pulled me back before Thompson launched Lachlan into Cole’s locker.

“What the hell are you doing?” He pointed a thick finger at Lachlan’s head. “Don’t fucking tell me we’ve gotta another goddamned assault case to cover up?”

Another
?

“
Whoa
!” Lachlan raised his hands. “No! It’s okay. I can explain!”

“You!” Coach Thompson turned to me, venom in his words. “Get the hell out of the locker room. Out of the goddamned facility! You’re—”

“Wait!” Lachlan stood as the team shouted. “I didn’t force myself on her! Honest to God.”

I found my voice, squeaking between my heart and stomach, both frantically attempting to escape my mouth.

“He didn’t,” I said. “It was an accident. I didn’t know he was showering too. I had to clean-up—”

“So you’re just fucking around, rookie?” Coach Thompson pitched him into the lockers again. “On
my
time? With
our
money?”

“No! Look. Three months ago at the scouting combine, Elle and I hooked up.”

This
delighted
the team. The applause and cheers were
not
helping.

“
Lachlan
!” I snapped. “That’s not going to help!”

The coach agreed with me. “And you think that makes this
okay
?”

“You don’t understand.” Lachlan gave me an apologetic shrug. “See…we’re kinda—”

“You’ve got
three
seconds before I cut your ass off this team—”

“We got married!”

Silence except for my panicked, enraged, utterly humiliated squeal.

I shoved away from Jack and nearly crashed Lachlan into the locker myself.

“Are you insane? What are you talking about? We absolutely did not get—”

The memory blitzed me from the blindside.

I gasped, hands over my mouth.

No, no, no.

It wasn’t possible. No one would let someone who had that many shots of every kind of alcohol into a wedding chapel.

We’d drank to get rid of the hangover. Fucked to work off the buzz. And then…

Oh no.

What he said rang a bell.
Wedding bells
.

Lachlan wrapped an arm over my shoulders and faced the team with a brilliant smile.

“I guess I should have told you guys,” he said. “Elle is my wife.”

E
lle looked
great when she was pissed.

That was good for me. I was pretty sure she planned to pluck off my balls, grate them into dust, and spoon feed the remains to me.

I didn’t have to knock on her door. Elle waited for me. Luckily, she didn’t answer armed…just dangerous.

I smiled anyway. “Hi, honey. I’m home.”

The door slammed shut.

So an afternoon at practice wasn’t enough time to start laughing about this. Good to know.

I knocked again. “Don’t put me in the doghouse already. We’re still newlyweds.”

She shouted through the door. “And we’re about to have our first domestic disturbance call.”

“As long as it gets me make-up sex…or am I supposed to sleep on the couch?”

Nothing. Not even a profanity.

I sighed. “Come on, Red. Lighten up.”

“
Lighten up
?”

The door opened, nearly torn off its hinges. Elle let me inside, but I couldn’t see if she hid a baseball bat anywhere.

“
Lighten-up
?” Elle’s growl was pretty convincing. “We’re
married
, Lachlan!”

“And I still owe you a ring.”

“You
owe
me an annulment!”

I pointed to the entryway. “At least let me carry you through the threshold first.”

“How ‘bout I just shove the bridal bouquet up your—”

“Whoa!” I wagged a finger at her pouted lip and that sassy hand on her hip. “Let’s save the rough stuff for the bedroom.”

She groaned. “When are you going to take this seriously?”

“As soon as you realize that this is pretty funny.”

Elle failed to see the humor.

To be fair, she’d had a rough day, but not
all
of it was bad. Sure, she got puked on. And, yes, everyone had seen her naked. But that only meant she was significantly more popular with the team now than she had ever been. And, as I was now associated with the most perfect set of tits on the team, I gained a shit-ton of respect with the guys.

Elle paced her apartment, stopping to fold and unfold a blanket over her couch. I followed, keeping my back to a wall in case she launched any or all of her hundreds of knick-knacks at my head.

Did she live in an apartment, a museum, or a tourist trap?

Her home was like a pack-rat with meticulous OCD set-up camp in an artist’s loft. She had about fifty percent windows, but every available space on the wall was lined with framed photographs—forests and beaches, cities and parks, stadiums and particularly photogenic Ironfield plays from the last championship game. The photos bordered the room, but the shelves took up most of the space.

This girl had a collection of
everything
tacky and bizarre from cities around the country. One curio stashed city-sponsored snow globes, most purchased from places with a football team. Another cabinet housed music boxes. A third cabinet kept more delicate knick-knacks of carved figurines and pretty pottery.

She had…
everything
. All organized, dusted, and spread throughout her apartment. No copies of
Catcher in the Rye
. That was a relief. And Elle didn’t seem the crazy cat lady. Her only pets were contained within a salt-water tank. A handful of brightly colored fish swept across a beautiful hundred-gallon aquarium.

Well…the cute girls were always a little weird. At least Elle hadn’t hosted a TLC special from her living room yet.

Elle swept her hair into a pony tail, but a lock of red-streaked curls caressed her dark cheek. I got lucky. Not many men could say they had such a beautiful wife.

And angry.

She was very angry.

“Until this very moment, I thought I had already attended the
worst
wedding of my life,” Elle said. “My sister, Edda, got married six months ago, and I went home for the first time in
years
.”

She pointed me to the couch before I could poke through a china cabinet.

“I only agreed to go because my sister, Emily, begged me.”

“You didn’t want to go to your sister’s wedding?” I asked.

“My family isn’t like most families. No dancing. No alcohol. No dresses that reveal too much shoulder. No lesbians.”

“What?”

Elle sighed. “My father disapproved of the
woman
Edda wanted to marry—”

“Oh.”

“And so
he
picked a man
he
thought would be a smart match for her.”

“Can he…do that?”

“That wasn’t the worst part of the wedding. The salad dressing went rancid, and half of the wedding guests got violently sick. My sisters, Estée and Evie, had to keep Edda’s girlfriend from crashing the party. My sister, Erica, snuck in alcohol, accidentally got drunk, and nearly set fire to the bridal table with a prayer candle. And then my sister, Erin, my father’s favorite, announced her pregnancy during her toast as maid of honor.”

“God damn. How many sisters do you have?”

“That is
not
something a husband should ask his
wife
.”

“I didn’t ask if they were
single
.”

“I have six sisters—Edda, Emily, Estée, Evie, Erica, and Erin.”

“Wow.”

“The last time we were all together was during Edda’s wedding, and everyone agreed it was a disaster. But now, that seems like a fairy tale in comparison to the
worst
wedding I’ve been a part of. Wanna take a guess at which
magical
night it was?”

I had a good idea.

“
My
wedding was the worst—and I don’t remember any of it!”

“I remember some of it.” I examined a tiny swan figurine carved from quartz on her end table. Elle slapped it out of my reach. “If it helps, you looked beautiful.”

She groaned. “Was I even dressed?”

“You might have vowed never to wear panties again.”

“Oh God.”

Elle brushed her hand through her hair, lovely waves of dark, teased with a bright, playful red. She licked her full lips, but the frown lingered. No scowl should have marred that beauty. Too bad my wife wasn’t the type to let her husband kiss away those worries.

“Why didn’t you tell me we were married?” Elle asked.

“You had no idea we’d eloped?”

“Not until you spouted it off to the entire locker room.”

“Yeah, you earned me a lot of points with the guys.”

“I’m so glad you scored.”

“I’d love to score twice—”

Elle pointed a finger at me. “Forget it, Charming. I’m not going deep with you anymore.”

I leaned into the couch, winced, and tossed aside a—what the hell was it? An unsmoked, ivory pipe? This girl had too many treasures.

“You’re not looking at the big picture, Elle,” I said. “This is a marriage, not a curse.”

“One—this is
not
a marriage. Two—you have no idea how
complicated
this is.”

“It’s only as complicated as you want to make it,” I said. “I wish you could have seen your face when I said we were married.
That
is a picture someone needed to take. You were so…”

Well,
then
she had been shocked.
Now
she was pissed.

Her expression twisted well beyond sassy and threatened to rip off my boys once more. I tucked my hands firmly in my lap.

“You know, you didn’t say goodbye when you left the hotel,” I said. “I figured you knew then. That you’d regretted it and bolted.”

“Didn’t then. Do now.”

I shrugged. “But you hadn’t contacted me about an annulment, so I thought you had a change of heart and wanted to give it a go.”

“Give it a
go
?”

“Yeah. What do you say?”

“To what?”

“Staying married.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Elle stalked the living room, hands in her hair. “I’ve known you for
three
days, Lachlan. I’ve had leftover Chinese in my fridge for longer than that!”

I loved Chinese. “And now that we’re married, I’ll eat the leftovers before you have to throw them out. Everyone wins.”

Elle rubbed her temples. “This isn’t happening. It can’t be happening. What the hell would possess us to get
married
?”

“A pretty substantial drinking binge.” I winked. “I think it was your first one. You don’t handle your alcohol very well.”

“You think?” Elle’s voice shrilled. “I guess I’ll have to practice when we celebrate our divorce.”

“It was innocent, Elle. We were just having some fun.” Probably too much. “We met up at the bar after we talked at the combine. You had taken a photo of me at the—”

“Forty-yard dash.”

That she remembered. “We’d flirted there, and then we met at the bar. You were trying to decide on what drink to order to fix a bad mood. I suggested them all.”

“Remind me never to take your advice again.”

“You talked a lot about your father.”

That triggered it. Elle’s eyes widened. She sunk onto the couch, and I dove away from her wayward elbow as she collapsed into the cushions.

“I was mad because Daddy called me…” She pointed at me. “And I told you about him after I almost dumped my phone in the margarita pitcher.”

“You said it’d be funny if we made him mad by getting—”

“Married.” Elle gasped and leapt off the couch. “Oh my gosh, my father’s gonna
kill
me.”

“I didn’t totally understand the joke at the time…” I said. “But you were a beautiful girl who wanted me, so I wasn’t gonna kill our buzz.”

“I sent the marriage certificate
home
so he’d see it.” She paced again. “Jesus, he’s going to flip out.”

“Why?”

“Because when you run away from home at sixteen and deliberately get married just to piss him off, it doesn’t exactly reinforce his family values.”

I stared at her. “Jesus. You ran away? Why?”

Elle made a face. “Again, probably something my
real
husband should know!”

“Well, I am your real husband, and I’d like to know.” I crossed my arms behind my head and kicked my heels onto her coffee table. “I’m all ears…or should I get popcorn first?”

“More like the whiskey.”

I grinned. “Can’t have that. Who knows what sort of mistakes we’ll make then.”

“Yeah. Maybe we’ll get divorced.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I’m staying sober. I want my marriage to last a little longer.”

“Better savor the hours, Lachlan. That’s all you’re getting.”

“All the more reason to learn what I can now.” I grinned. “Unless you’d rather skip right to the newlywed sex?”

“Sex is preferable to talking about my family,” she said. “Then again, so is a rusty nail through my foot or swimming in linebacker puke.”

“Can’t be that bad.”

Elle snorted. “Mine is pretty damn bad, but I guess every family is dysfunctional.”

“That’s not true. Mine’s great.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

I fished around for my phone, pulling out a photo of the rug-rat currently chasing all the girls on the kindergarten playground. “Hand to God. I love my family. You got sisters? This is Sebastian.”

I showed her the picture of the grinning kid, suited up in my college jersey and pads. She nodded.

“Your little brother, right? I think you mentioned him before.”

Didn’t surprise me. “What exactly did I say?”

“That you had a kid brother much younger than you, and you wanted to take care of him and your mom.”

“Anything else?”

“If I knew I’d drink so much, I’d have hired a stenographer.” She smirked. “He’s cute. Looks happy.”

“Should be. I just got him and my mom a house in Ironfield. They’re coming out this week.”

“And you’re…
glad
to see them?”

“Yep.”

Elle shook her head. “Great. My husband is a crazy person who loves his family.”

“I wouldn’t be where I am today without my mom. She’s the most amazing person I know, and Bast is a fantastic kid. I want to spoil them. I got her a huge house, and she’ll never have to work another day in her life. Plus there’s a whole arcade in the basement for Bast. And a swimming pool.” I grinned. “Also an X-box in
every
room, but that’s still a surprise for him.”

“You’re very sweet to them.”

“I told my mom it was my turn to take care of them. And I plan to do it.”

“I can’t imagine living that close to my family. The rules and discipline and Daddy constantly…” Elle caught my bewildered glance. “Let’s just say, my father is a bit overbearing. After my mom died, he lost it. Became someone different. Domineering. Unrepentantly strict. You know how dads can get.”

“Not really,” I said. “My dad split a long time ago.”

“Lucky.”

I wouldn’t say that. “Yours that bad?”

“Picked out our clothes every day. Wouldn’t let us have friends outside the family. Destroyed any
contraband
like secular music or books or magazines. Curfew was six o’clock every night, and we couldn’t participate in any extracurricular activities that distracted from our academics. Plus…” She hesitated. “He wouldn’t approve of us.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m…and your…”

“A football player?”

Her eyebrow rose. “A very
pale
football player.”

Oh
.

“He’s very…old-fashioned. Has a lot of views of the world that…well, I don’t see things the way he does, and I knew the world wasn’t as terrible as he said. So…I left when I was sixteen and found out for myself.”

Damn. “And?”

She pointed to her knick-knacks and collections. “I wanted to see everything in the world. Oceans and deserts and prairies and forests and busy streets. I didn’t have the money when I was young, but I took enough pictures of my travels to get a decent eye for photography. I had enough skill to impress Peter, and he hired me as his assistant. I get to travel the country with the Rivets, and it’s a great chance to see a lot of America.”

“And the junk?” I pointed to her mass of snow globes, touristy ornaments, and memorabilia.

“They’re
trinkets
.”

“Sure, they are.”

“I’ve been collecting things. Everywhere I go. Little memories.”

“What’d you bring back from Vegas?”

Elle snorted. “A lot of trouble.”

“Did you pick a shelf for me yet…or did you want to tuck me into your bed?”