Fair Game: A Football Romance (112 page)

Chapter Thirty

Lourdes

The week following my first round of chemo was rough, but not because of the chemo. Liam and I talked for nearly eight hours the day after Amira came home. We learned a lot about one another that day. Liam told me about his childhood, his little brother and his mother’s abuse. Liam can’t forgive himself for nearly loosing it with Amira, even though I think she deserved a good slap for being so vile. They have been in contact, but she hasn’t come back to the house. I need to figure out a different living arrangement. I’m always worried she’s going to come barging in at any moment, and she has every right to. It’s her house, not mine.

Liam has been talking to Blake about paternity testing. Amira won’t tell him exactly how far along she is, and that seems shady to me. He says it’s possible that he’s the father if she got pregnant in January, because he was home from his tour for three days and they were together. He offered to go to her OB appointment this week, but she said no. On the flip side, she’s all about them taking Lamaze together. I don’t get it. One thing is clear to me, however: She wants to keep Liam, and she’s not giving up without a fight.

“Do you feel up to doing something today?” Liam asks while pouring juice for Toby.

“Yeah, I actually feel pretty good today. What are we doing?”

“It’s a surprise,” he says with a wink. I don’t know if I’m up for a surprise. We’ve had a lot of those lately, but he seems excited for the first time in a week, so I’m down for it.

“Yeah, okay. Can Toby come with us?” I ask.

“Of course. You wanna go on an adventure today, Toby?” Liam sits down next to Toby, and they give each other a high five.

“Vencher,” Toby says.

“An adventure, huh? Am I dressed appropriately for this adventure?” When I got dressed this morning, I wasn’t planning on going anywhere today, and I don’t feel like changing out of my comfy muumuu.

“You’re perfect, as always.”

Liam could make me feel beautiful if I was covered in leaches and sunburned to a crisp. I love that he’s not obnoxious about it. He knows exactly when and how to compliment me so that it feels genuine.

“Thanks, Boo.” I don’t have a nickname for him, so I try one out every once in a while . . . but that one just didn’t feel right, and Liam agrees.

“Nope, I don’t think I’m a Boo,” he says, taking a bite of eggs.

“Yeah, me neither, but I had to try.” I shrug my shoulders, and we finish our breakfast and pack up to go on our adventure.

Liam is checking his text messages again. That’s three times now since we got into the car.

“Everything okay?”

“Oh yeah, sure. We have to meet with somebody, and he was just telling me he’s already there.”

“Who is he, and where is there?”

“It’s a surprise, babe. Are you having pregnancy brain? I read that’s a thing, you know.”

“Oh, stop. I don’t have pregnancy brain. I just thought I could trip you up.”

He laughs. “It’ll take more than that to trip me up.”

We ride along for a bit, chit chatting with Toby and teaching him colors of different things in the car and counting on our fingers. He’s just old enough to start pre-school, but I want to keep him with me a little longer, and he’s learning plenty from Liam and me for now. When I turn to face the front seat, a flutter tickles me from the inside out, and my hands fly to my belly.

“What’s the matter? Are you in pain, did something happen?” Liam’s wide eyes dart between the road and my baby bump.

“No.” I laugh. “I think I felt the baby move.”

“You did? Really? Let me feel,” he says, reaching across to lay his hand with mine.

“I don’t know if you’ll be able to. It was so slight, but—oh, there it is again! Did you feel that?”

“No. Where?” he says, moving his hand around. I place it where I just felt the small flicker of life, but he frowns.

“I can’t feel anything.”

“It’s early still. I bet you will be able to feel him in a week or two,” I say, reaching over to cradle his cheek. He smiles a sad smile and turns into my palm to kiss it quickly before returning his attention to the road, where he is now turning off onto a private drive.

“Liam, this is a private drive. Do you have friends here?”

“Nope.”

“Why are we turning down here then? This is somebody’s beach house, Liam. We can’t be here.”

“Yes we can.”

“You’re not making sense.”

We pull into a circle drive in front of a beautiful Spanish colonial beach house, where a shiny black Mercedes is already parked. A man is standing outside, leaning against the car and talking on the phone.

“Wait just a second. I’ll be right back,” Liam says and kisses me on my nose before jumping out of the car. I watch him saunter over to the middle aged man, who ends his call right away to greet Liam. They shake hands, and after exchanging a few words, the man hands something to Liam. Liam trots back to the car, opening the back to get Toby out.

“Liam, what’s going on? What are we doing here?”

“You’ll see. Come on.”

The man in the Mercedes is pulling away from the house as we approach the front door. Liam slides a key into the lock and opens the door wide for me to go inside.

I dip my head down and look at him sideways, “We’re going inside? Is anybody home?” I ask.

“Yep and yep.
We’re
going inside, because
we
are home.”

“What? But we already have . . .” The pieces are starting to fall into place now. We don’t really have a place to live. Not one of our own, anyway.

“You’re gonna love it here, Lourdes. The beach is just outside our windows and we have a pool and a big closed-in patio so Toby and the little butterball will be safe. It’s big enough for all of us, but not so big you feel like you’re in a museum. Come in, let me show you.” He takes my hand and all but yanks me over the threshold. I’ve never seen him this excited.

When the door is closed, he sets Toby down in the living room of what is apparently our new house. The room is dimly lit and only has one window that faces the front of the house, where we just entered, but it’s decorated beautifully with a mixture of Mediterranean flair and laid back California comfort. It feels like home already.

“This is just a little sitting room. Come see the back. It’s much better,” he says, leading the way down a hall where I can see sunlight pouring into the rooms at the rear of the house. French doors with rounded tops line the back of the large room. They’re all open, and a heavenly breeze flutters through the house. It’s an open concept with the kitchen, dining area and living room flowing from one to the next, from right to left. The patio he mentioned has a stucco wall all the way around, with intricate wrought-iron gates that lead out to the beach and the ocean. There is indeed a pool, with a safety cover already installed and pulled over the surface of the water.

I can feel Liam’s eyes on me, watching for my reaction, but I’m so mesmerized by the tropical paradise around me that I can’t speak. Instead, I walk along the kitchen island, trailing my fingers on the granite as I go. A gust of wind ripples my dress around my ankles. My hair flutters on my shoulders. It’s grown out so much during my pregnancy that it’s sad to know it will all be gone soon. No negative thoughts today, though. Not in this moment, not when I’m falling in love with our new house.

“You’re quiet.” Liam is standing directly behind me. His words were just spoken directly into my ear, causing a shiver to run up my spine. I turn into his arms and rest my cheek against his chest.

“I’m just trying to take it all in. This is some surprise.”

“And an adventure,” he says, nodding when I tilt my head up to look into his eyes.

“Everything with you is an adventure.”

He covers my mouth with his without warning. His kiss is urgent, insistent. He needs reassurance, and I’m going to give it to him. I thread my fingers through his hair behind his neck and kiss him with more passion and desire than I have in weeks. We have had so much on our plate lately that it feels so good to just let go and be happy. But it’s not long before I feel a tug on my shirt, reminding me that now is not the time to quench our desires.

“Mommy, we sim?” Toby says, looking up at us with his big, hopeful eyes.

“I told him we were going swimming.”

“Is that the adventure part of our day?”

“You could say that,” he says, trailing his finger along my jaw and down my neck to the edge of my dress that covers my breasts. I take his hand and kiss the inside of his fingers.

“I have a feeling there’s more adventure to come later.”

He leans in to whisper in my ear, “There will definitely be some coming later.”

He dips down and kisses my neck, and then even farther to kiss my bump.

“Come on, Toby, let’s go look at your new room.” He takes Toby’s hand, and they wander off down another hall.

As hard as I try, I can’t shake that damn feeling I get whenever things start to look up. It starts in the pit of my stomach as soon as the smallest hint of happiness creeps into my heart, and it festers there until I all but throw my hands up in surrender.

Not this time. I’m going to have my damn happiness, even if I have to go to war to get it. Amira is going to give Liam that fucking divorce. I’m going to kick cancer’s ass and have a beautiful, healthy baby, and all four of us are going to live happily ever after in our house by the ocean.

Chapter Thirty-One

Liam

Lourdes and I spent the night christening our new bed, and I’m about to slide in for a round of sleepy lazy morning sex when my phone vibrates on the nightstand.

“You should get that,” she says against her pillow.

“No way. I’m trying to get this,” I say, pushing my cock against her ass.

“Liam, you can have this” —she presses back into me— “anytime you want. Get the phone. It might be important.”

I groan and reach back blindly to snatch the phone, and I punch the answer button on the screen so hard, my thumb could have gone through the glass.

“Hello,” I bark into the phone.

“Mr. Wild?”

“Yes, I’m Mr. Wild.” Who the hell is calling me on a Sunday morning at six a.m. calling me Mr. Wild?

“This is Carrie Williams. I’m a nurse here at St. Mary’s hospital. I’m calling for your wife, Amira. She’s being admitted for pre-term labor and you’re listed as her emergency contact.”

I sit up in the bed, pulling the covers off Lourdes. “Sorry, babe,” I say, covering her back up as she rolls over toward me.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

“It’s Amira. Just a second.”

“Mr. Wild? I’m sorry, was I supposed to call you, or is there another family member I should have contacted?”

“No, she probably listed me. I’m her husband. Is she having the baby right now? I mean, it’s too early. She’s only—”

“Thirty-five weeks, and yes, it’s early. We’re doing all we can to stop her labor, but it doesn’t look like anything is working. I’m afraid she’s probably going to deliver. Can I tell her you’re on your way?”

“Yes. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

“Okay, thank you. I’ll let her know.”

Fucking Amira put me down as the father of the baby and her emergency contact. Truth is, she probably doesn’t have anybody else who would give a shit enough to come and be with her unless she paid him or her to. Now I have to go and play like I’m her loving husband, rushing in to see the birth of my baby. My baby . . . I quickly do the math in my head since I tricked the nurse into telling me Amira’s gestation. Thirty-five weeks. That puts her getting pregnant in February, not January when I was in town, but it’s possible for a due date to be off by a couple of weeks in both directions, so there’s still a slim chance I’m this kid’s dad.

“Liam.” Lourdes is sitting up next to me now, shaking my shoulder. “What’s happening? Is Amira having her baby?”

“Yeah, and she’s listed me as her emergency contact. She’s in preterm labor.”

I slide my arm around her waist and pull her into my lap so that she’s straddling me, and I pull her close.

“Am I a bad person because I don’t want to go?”

“Oh, Liam,” she says, pulling away and placing her hands on my shoulders to look me square in the eyes. “You’re not a bad person. This is just a very bad situation. A bad man wouldn’t even consider going to the hospital right now, and I know you’re going to be there. If there’s any chance that child is yours, you shouldn’t miss the chance to see it come into the world.”

I slide my hands up and down her sides, tracing every luscious curve of her body as I do. She’s so fucking amazing. Here she is, encouraging me to go be with my wife while she delivers a baby that might be mine, while she’s pregnant with our child and fighting cancer.

“I fucking love you, LK. You know that, right? Nothing will ever change that. You are always my first priority. You and the butterball and Toby come before anything, no matter what happens with Amira, okay?”

“Okay, now go, make sure she’s all right.”

“Not yet,” I say, pressing my cock against her damp crease.

“Liam, there isn’t time. You have to go to her.”

“What did I just get through saying to you? You’re first, no matter what.”

I slide my hands under her ass and lift her just enough to slide the tip of my cock to her entrance. She looks at me with uncertainty, but the power of the moment takes control of her, and she lowers herself down around me until I’m buried deep inside of her. I watch her eyes roll back in her head as she rides me slowly at first, and then we simultaneously pick up the pace, knowing that I need to be gone already.

I cup her breasts in my hands and frantically kiss and nip a path from her ear to the sexy spot where her neck meets her shoulder. Her fingernails dig into my shoulders when I take her nipple into my mouth and suck it hard and roll it around my tongue.

“Liam, I can’t. I can’t wait.”

Neither can I. I flop back against the pillows and wrap my hands around her hips while I thrust into her hard until we both hit a wall and explode around each other. When I open my eyes, I’m blessed with the tail end of Lourdes’s climax expression. The one where her lips are parted, her eyes are closed, and her brows are knit together in a way that it might look like pain to someone who didn’t know we were having sex. But I know it’s pure, unadulterated bliss. I want a picture of that someday.

When she opens her eyes, she smiles down at me, and I slide my hands from her hips to the little bump that’s always between us now.

“Think the butterball’s awake?”

“Oh yeah. I’m pretty sure that’s got him thinking.” She laughs but her laugh turns serious.

“You need to go, Liam. You’ve proven your point, and I love you for it, but you’ll never forgive yourself if you miss this and the baby turns out to be yours. Hey, do you know what’s she’s having?”

She slides off me and shoves me to the edge of the bed with her feet. Man, there’s nothing like a
wham, bam, thank you, ma’am
to take you down a notch or two.

“You’re literally kicking me out of our bed, aren’t you?”

“Yep, now go.”

“All right, all right, and no, she never told me. Hey, we get to find out next week what we’re having, don’t we?” I say, pulling on my jeans. No time to shower now.

“Yes, but I think it’s a boy.”

“I’ve noticed you call him a him.”

“Force of habit I guess.”

I pull my shirt on and look around for my shoes. I have to wear a pair of shoes twice, because we didn’t really pack to spend the night. It just sort of happened.

“You’ll live,” she says, reading my mind. I roll my eyes and slide into the day-old shoes.

“I still don’t get that. You’ll have to explain it to me better someday.”

“Okay, I will. I’ll keep you posted on what’s going on. Shit, are you okay staying here with Toby today? There’s food in the kitchen and you can swim some more if you want. If you have an emergency, just call me and I’ll come right back, okay?”

“Yes, yes, we’ll be fine. Get out of here,” she says, fiddling with her necklace. She does that when she’s really nervous. Now I don’t want to leave her. She catches me looking at what’s she’s doing and drops her hand.

“I’m fine, Liam.”

I kiss her hard and fast on the mouth and grab my keys and phone. I can’t believe I’m going to watch Amira have a baby. Please, God, it may be wrong to pray for this, but please don’t let this baby be mine.