“It should be me,” he said, his dark eyes boring into her. “Not a stranger.”
“What should be you?” Had she missed the first part of this conversation?
“The father of your child.”
She had to take a moment to play back the words he’d just spoken, because they didn’t make a whole lot of sense. “What do you mean?”
“I want it to be me,” he said simply. “We were going to have a family. We can still do that.”
Her blood pressure kicked up several notches in a big fat hurry. And since avoidance had been her go-to response to all things Mike Beacon these past two years, she tried to cut off the conversation. “I don’t remember asking for your opinion. If I wanted you to weigh in, I would have let you know.”
He winced. “I know you didn’t ask me. But you don’t have to turn to a stranger. I want to give this to you.”
As if it were as simple as a gift he could drop off on her doorstep. “Seriously? That would just be so awkward!” she yelped, her voice getting high. “And you are a stranger, by the way. By choice.” She hated the sound of hysteria that was creeping into her voice.
He held her eyes, though his looked remorseful. “Let’s not be strangers, then. Let’s not be awkward.”
“You want to have a child with someone you used to date?”
He shook his head. “Not at all. I want a second chance to have a family with you. Together.”
If exploding heads were a real thing, hers would have just detonated. “And you came to this realization just recently because you spotted a fertility drug in my purse.”
Mike did something very unexpected then. He smiled. The corners of his mouth turned up, and the smile was slow and sweet. “No, baby. I already knew we needed a second chance. But what I didn’t know was that you were in a hurry. So I’m saying this now instead of waiting until the season is over.”
Lauren stood up suddenly. Her heart was still galloping, and her hands felt twitchy. She hated all the anger that tightened her chest. It was all well and good to tell yourself to give up on the bitterness, and it had worked just fine on a yoga mat. But when some macho athlete sat down in your hotel suite and informed you that you should have his baby, it was a little harder to keep a cool head.
“I can’t discuss this with you,” she said, walking toward the door. “You can’t just walk in here and tell me I’m making a mistake with my life.”
“We’ve already established that I make all the big mistakes.” He stood up slowly. He stalked toward her, his dark eyes serious. And when he reached her at the doorway, he took one of her hands and squeezed. “Let me do this with you.” He kissed her palm, and the play-off beard he was sporting tickled her palm. “Please. I caused you pain, honey. And I want to fix it.”
But that was the wrong thing to say. If she was going to have a child with someone, it shouldn’t be with a man who was acting out of guilt. “The consummate goalie,” she whispered. “Always taking responsibility for the whole field of play.”
“No.” He shook his head. “I love you, and I want to be with you. It doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that.”
She pulled her hand out of his grasp. “I can’t, Mike. I gave you everything once already. And look how that turned out? I can’t do this again, and I need you to stop asking me to.” She jerked the door open, the instructions very clear.
He gave her one more long look. And then he walked out.
Lauren closed the door behind him and then stomped over to the leather sofa where she promptly curled up into a ball on its expensive surface. Every time Mike Beacon opened his mouth, her life became more confusing. Not a half hour ago she’d been fantasizing about him during yoga. But when he offered to do the very thing she’d always dreamed about, she’d thrown him out.
But of course she had. You had to trust the father of your child. And her trust in him was already shattered.
She lay there replaying the past month in her mind, trying to decide if he was even serious. She made a list of events, because lists helped to organize her thoughts.
1. They hadn’t spoken in two years until the play-offs were clinched.
2. She put on the blue dress, which led to a night of wild sex.
3. Then he offered to get back together and have a kid.
Who does that?
Letting out a groan, Lauren flopped onto her back. Then she let herself wonder what would happen if she actually agreed to his crazy idea. What would he do if she just turned up at the front door of his Brooklyn townhouse with several suitcases and announced she was back?
Lauren snickered to herself. It would almost be worth it to see the startled expression on his face. He’d always been a shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later kind of guy. It would serve him right.
She was the analytical one. The planner. She’d always told herself that the contrast made them a good fit. He could keep their relationship a little wild and unpredictable. She would keep all the details straight for the both of them.
But then he’d done something utterly unpredictable, and she’d never gotten over it. There wasn’t a spreadsheet in the world effective enough to predict Mike’s effect on her heart.
Her reverie broken, Lauren sat up on the sofa in a hurry. She grabbed her bag off the floor and dug out her very last dose of the fertility medication. It was madness to even ponder his flights of fancy. She had a plan, and she was sticking to it.
She took the pill, and then a shower. Then she dug into her e-mail inbox and double-checked Nate’s travel plans for arriving in Tampa tonight, and verified with the hotel that his room would be ready.
Her head was back in the game, and she worked through lunchtime, only glancing up at three P.M. to realize she was starving. She called down to room service to order a salad.
A knock came just ten minutes later, and she was impressed by the kitchen’s promptness. But when she opened the door, it wasn’t a salad that was rolled on a cart through her door, but rather a giant arrangement of blue hydrangeas. She’d never seen anything so large. In fact, it might be an entire hydrangea shrubbery.
“This isn’t a salad,” she muttered to the porter who had brought it.
“Are you Lauren Williams?”
“Yes.”
“Sign here.”
After he left her the flowers, she opened the note which was taped to the vase.
I love you, and I’ll never stop. —M
Her hand paused over the wastepaper basket, where she almost tossed the note in.
But then she set it on the desk instead, wondering how everything had become so confusing.
TWENTY