Playing Dirty (A Bad Boy Sports Romance) (33 page)

I had limited patience with privileged people feeling sorry for themselves.

“I guess that might be stretching a point,” Andrew admitted. “But in my own way…” he paused, obviously trying to order his thoughts, which was actually quite adorable. “You know how all kids rebel against their parents?”

“Sure.”

“Well, my mother is the symbolic embodiment of Great Britain. So to rebel against her—which all kids
have
to do—I rebel against my country. Or at least the part of it that expects me to follow a preset path my whole life.” He shook his head. “How did this happen?”

“You were born.”

“No, I mean: how did I end up talking about
me
?” He shook his head again. “I came here with such good intentions: to tell you how great you are and that if you want me out of your life, I’ll go, but if I can be a part of your life in even the smallest way, then I’d be the happiest man on the planet. And I end up talking about myself like I always do. I try, I really do, but there’s just something innately selfish about me.”

I had to smile. He
was
a bit selfish. But most people were, to a degree—selfishness seemed to be the natural human condition. At least Andrew was honest and self-deprecating about it, and it was nice to hear him talk without guile, without arrogance, and without agenda. For once, he didn’t seem like he was trying to get me back or get me into bed. He just couldn’t bear me hating him over a terrible misunderstanding, and there was something incredibly sweet about that.

My earlier anger faded away as I realized I really had overreacted to the whole situation—though not without reason—and I sat down and took a deep breath. Now was as good a time as any to tell him my news, and I had to tell him before it was too late.

“Andrew, I’m pregnant,” I said.

Before he could say anything in response, I hurriedly continued.

“I guess one of the condoms broke and we didn’t notice, so I know we didn’t plan it, but there it is,” I said. “And maybe the pregnancy hormones have been making me overreact to things, but I really should’ve let you explain your side of the story the other day. I’m sorry. I just…I was so upset because I really…”

My voice trailed off as Andrew stared at me with wide eyes. I wasn’t sure I’d meant to just blurt it all out like that, and I wasn’t sure that this was the best time to say it, but it was out there now. I kept looking at Andrew, wanting to see that first, honest, unguarded response when my words sank in.

His eyes remained wide, and a smile spread like a sunrise across his features. “I’m going to be a father?”

I nodded.

“Wait…it is mine, right?”

I threw a cushion at him.

“I was joking!” he said, ducking away from it.

“It wasn’t funny!” I said, preparing to launch another cushion.

“Sorry. I tend to deal with shocking news with humor, and you know I have an awful sense of humor…but…I’m really going to be a father?”

“Yes,” I said, a soft smile spreading across my face as I lowered the cushion back to the sofa. “You are. I know this will cause massive problems with your family, not to mention the tabloids, and I’m sorry for that, but I—”

Andrew sprang to his feet, dashed across the room and kissed me, cutting me off mid-sentence. After a second, he broke away and looked down at me, his eyes shining with emotion.

“Keira, I love you. I don’t know if you want me back in your life, but whatever you want from me, whatever you need, I’ll be there. You and this baby,” he said, laying his hand on my belly, “are all that matter to me. Screw everyone and everything else.”

My heart soared, higher and higher with each word that spilled from his mouth.

“Andrew,” I said softly. “I love you too.”

It was the first time we’d said it out loud.

Andrew leaned forward again, claiming my lips with his, and I kissed him back, our tongues meeting and clashing in a feverish embrace as all our problems from the last few days melted away. There was a whole mess to clear up that didn’t currently bear thinking about, but as long as we were with each other, then nothing else mattered for the time being.

We were finally together again, and we’d finally admitted that we were in love. That was all that mattered now.

Chapter 17

Andrew

First things first, I decided as I left my room the following morning. I had to speak to my mother and let her know once and for all that I would most certainly not be going through with her farce of an arranged engagement, let alone actually marrying Princess Alexandra, and then I’d tell her that I’d met someone else. Then Keira and I would probably have to spend a few months hiding out somewhere, possibly France—or Bermuda, if France did not prove distant enough—and wait for things to blow over before mentioning the pregnancy, seeing as the first bit of news might just be enough to make her heart give out.

Or perhaps everyone would take it really well. There’d been a time when she’d liked Keira. Perhaps I was building all this up for nothing and it would go really well. It didn’t seem likely, but a man could always hope.

I found her in her private office. She listened in stony silence as I began my little speech, first explaining that I would not be doing anything with Princess Alexandra under any circumstances.

“Why not?” she asked, her voice as level and unreadable as her face.

“Well,” I said, “leaving to one side that I don’t love her, I honestly thought this was just another one of your scare tactics for trying to make me realize I need to settle down. You know, like the last three girls you tried to tell me I had to marry? Those marriages never happened, and I assumed this was more of the same.”

“First of all, they were
ladies,
not girls, and secondly, none of this has ever been a scare tactic. You may have seen it that way, but I’ve been trying to find you a suitable wife since you reached your twenties. It may seem like a joke to you as you’re still so young, but it’s your royal duty to marry an appropriate woman and produce an heir.”

Well…I already had an heir on the way, not that she knew about it yet.

“I want to have a proper daughter-in-law and future Queen,” my mother continued. “The succession may not be important to you, but it is to me and many others. It’s basically your only real job. And left to your own devices, I don’t see you getting married anytime soon.”

I took this as the best cue I was likely to get. “Well, I can set your mind at rest on that front. I’ve met someone!”

I decided not to go further just yet—the fact that the succession was secure might be good news, but the fact that it had been secured out of wedlock with an employee of ours might not be the best news she’d heard today.

“Indeed?”  She raised a regal eyebrow. “What convenient timing.”

I was confused for a moment. “What?”

“I was just remarking,” she continued, voice thick with sarcasm. “On what an astonishing coincidence it is that, after years of sleeping with everything that would roll over for you, you happen upon the woman you wish to marry
just
before your engagement to someone else is announced. How convenient for all concerned! I’ll get on the phone immediately and cancel Alexandra’s visit. And when I’ve done that,
I’m sure
a wedding will take place between you and this other girl. There’s no chance that you might string it out for a month then say it’s all off—at which point of course there’ll be no getting Alexandra to marry you because no one likes to be jilted like that—leaving you off the hook and able to continue sleeping with everything that’ll roll over for you. No, I’m completely sure that that won’t happen. No chance
at all
.”

Sarcasm wasn’t usually something a queen used, but for an amateur, my mother made an awfully good stab at it.

“That’s not what I’m doing at all,” I said, although I had to admit that it did sound exactly like the sort of thing that I might have done in the past, before I met Keira.

I could tell she wanted to roll her eyes at me, but she refrained. “Fine. Does this girl have a name?” she asked.

I took a deep breath. “Keira Valencia,” I said.

Just having her name on my tongue reminded me of the sweetness of her lips, and my heart soared as I remembered what it felt like when she’d told me she was having my baby; our little piece of serendipity.

The Queen’s brow furrowed. “Valencia? Spanish nobility?”

“I rather doubt it.”

“Good, because you don’t want to get mixed up in that. Some of them are as bad as you are. Or very nearly.”

“She’s American.”

“American?” Her brow unfurrowed as realization struck. “
That
Keira Valencia?”

“Yes.”

“The maid.”

“I don’t think of her that way, but yes.”

She stiffened. “Enough of your ridiculous jokes. It’s about time you grew out of this awful sense of humor you have. Alexandra will be here shortly. We will have a pleasant dinner together, during which time you will treat her with a great deal more decorum than you treat most of your female friends. You will smile, you will laugh, you will compliment her dress and her hair, you will pay attention to her and have eyes only for her. An engagement will be announced at the end of her visit and the wedding will take place within the next six months. Is that clear?”

“No,” I said, holding up a hand. “That’s not happening. And I
have
met someone; it’s not a joke. Keira…”

“I’ve met Keira,” she said, interrupting me. “A pleasant and intelligent girl, I thought. Certainly not deserving of being dragged into this unpleasant deception you are attempting to perpetrate.”

“It’s not a bloody lie!” I said, my hands balling into fists by my side. I wanted to say far worse words right now, but this situation didn’t need to be made any worse by my mother fainting at the sound of me saying ‘fuck’.

“You know,” she answered me with an icy hauteur, clearly quite angry though holding it closely in check, “I have always deplored your lifestyle but I have taken some comfort from the fact that you did not bring it home—you left the staff unmolested. To find that even that civility has escaped you is at best disappointing. And to find that you would exploit the genuine feelings of a girl you have previously used, and would use her further to weasel out of your royal marriage obligations…there are days when I can barely even look at you. Get out.”

I narrowed my eyes and spoke, my voice steely. “Not until I’ve damn well gotten it through to you that I’m not using her. I’m in love with K—”

“I said get out! Now!”

My mother seldom raised her voice, but she had just then to cut me off, making it all too clear how upset she was. Her personal bodyguard, who’d been standing nearby, quickly came over and tapped me on the shoulder before gesturing for me to leave.

I wanted to explain the misunderstanding. I wanted to make it clear that Keira was not some passing fancy, but the love of my life. But to have my mother tear my selfish life apart like this, to hear what had remained unsaid for so long… I was used to being a disappointment and the black sheep of the family. I had always been rather proud of it and worn it as a badge of honor. I was a rebel. But until now, I hadn’t known just how much I’d hurt my mother in the process.

Shit
. I had to sort this out and make things right. Not just for me and Keira, but for my mother too.

***

Bentleys, Rolls Royces and other expensive cars began to converge on Wellington Castle at eight o’clock, bearing down on the place like sleek, black sharks on the trail of blood. At the doors they disgorged their noble cargo of tuxedoed men and gowned women, and I could practically smell the high-class breeding in the air.

In the Castle’s capacious hall, I greeted the guests, standing beside my mother, a forced smile making my face ache, but not as much as my heart. I still had no idea what to do. There was no way in hell I was going to form any sort of engagement with Alexandra at the end of this weekend, but in not doing so, I’d just be adding to the hurt I’d already caused my mother. I just couldn’t win either way. With time, perhaps, she would come to realize that I was serious about Keira and that we had a future together that I genuinely wanted to pursue, but that realization would take a while, and in the meantime I was simply twisting the knife.

It seemed that there was no easy road to follow, and for me that was a shock. Though I’d always liked to think of myself as a rebel, I’d recently realized that all I’d ever done was take the easy way throughout my entire life. Whenever two options presented themselves, I’d gone with the path of least resistance. State dinner or party? Party every time. Entertain visiting dignitaries or entertain cocktail waitresses? Not even a question. The more I thought about it, the less it seemed like a man kicking against the restrictions of his upbringing and the more like a man born into an easy life, too lazy even to do the minimum required of him to earn it.

I’d never even considered these things until Keira had come into my life. She was so smart and ambitious, and seeing her light up when she talked about her future art career made me realize just how much time I’d wasted doing practically fuck all with my life. I needed to change; needed to be a better man for her and our baby.

Now might not have been the best time to be having these personal revelations, but there it was. The frustrating thing was that they weren’t helpful in the slightest. In the past when I’d chosen the easy road of my own pleasure over duty, it had been the wrong thing to do. Now, for the first time, rejecting what was perceived as my duty was actually the right thing—marrying Keira instead of Alexandra was right from every angle. But, like the boy who cried wolf, I’d done the wrong thing too often for my good intentions to be believable now.

So what in the hell was I going to do?

Well, for starters, I was going to eat dinner, be polite, and hope that something went badly wrong with our international relations. With a bit of luck Britain might declare war on Sweden. Then I’d be able to get out of this bullshit Alexandra situation without completely and permanently destroying my relationship with my mother.

“Her Royal Highness, Princess Alexandra of Sweden!”

The liveried footman on the door bellowed the announcement to the room and I turned, almost unwillingly, to look at the woman my mother wanted me to marry. I remembered Alexandra as a very pretty girl my brother and I had played with on continental holidays, but that memory couldn’t have prepared me for how that pretty girl had grown up. Princess Alexandra of Sweden was, by any objective measure, stunning. Her skin was clear, her hair like spun gold, her eyes sparkled with girlish vivacity, and her whole face was as pretty as a picture. While wearing a royal gown, it wasn’t easy to look like anything other than an extravagant meringue-based dessert crossed with a fairytale castle on a cloud, and yet Alexandra managed to make it look good. Somehow that gown contrived to be appropriate to the occasion and yet also leave the viewer in no doubt that the body inside was spectacular. She radiated an angelic beauty and yet her every movement exuded a molten sexuality that had every man in the room adjusting his dress pants.

Right at that moment, I would’ve given her a two and a half out of ten. Maybe three as she’d clearly made an effort with her appearance. There was just no space in my mind for anyone but Keira, who was a perfect ten.

“Hi, Andrew!” There was an energy to Alexandra that made her seem to exclaim everything she said in bright, faintly accented English. “It has been too long!”

I nodded, privately wishing that it had been considerably longer. “Indeed. Are you looking forward to dinner?”

Alexandra leaned closer and the girlish energy in her voice was replaced by something more mature and husky. “I’m looking forward to
everything
.”

Jesus.

With that, and what might have been a wink, she moved on. I watched her go. It occurred to me that this would’ve been so much easier if Alexandra was just going through with it for the sake of duty, but that didn’t seem to be the case. She seemed to actually want me.

Shit.

***

It had been inevitable that I would be seated beside the Princess—I’d known that, and yet still resented it. Still, I knew that she was good company, or at least she had been as a girl. We’d really clicked as children, both filled with a boisterous desire to do everything we weren’t supposed to do: to climb the highest tree, to throw things at the greenhouse, to steal from the gardener’s shed. Sometimes I looked back on those halcyon days and thought about what a shame it was to have to grow up.

Which was perhaps why Alexandra hadn’t bothered…

“And then we ran out and they chased us, and we found a motorbike and they were still chasing us, and they caught us and we crashed the bike (don’t know whose it was) and they were all like ‘
oh my God, it’s the Princess
’ and we were like ‘
yeah bitches
’ and they were like ‘
whaaaat
?’. It was awesome! I’m sorry, what were you saying?”

“I asked how your fish was,” I said. I’d been sitting and listening in frozen horror for the last few minutes. Any lingering belief that I was some sort of royal rebel had now been well and truly dispelled—I couldn’t hold a candle to Alexandra’s insane antics. It had never occurred to me that I might be seen as a steadying influence on someone, but I guess that’s why the Swedish royal family had agreed to set something up with my mother. They wanted Alexandra to settle down just as much as my mother wanted me to settle down, if not more.