His Baby Surprise

by Lisa Childs

  Brooks shut the door behind her and wearily leaned back against it. “I want you.”

  She released her breath in a shaky sigh and let her body sink into him. Her thighs pressed tight to his, and her breasts crushed against his chest. “I want you,” she said.

  His hands closed around her shoulders, but instead of pulling her closer, he eased her away from him. “I want you,” he repeated, “but you deserve more, Priscilla.”

  Her heart constricted. When was she going to learn that she couldn’t make someone love her?

  “I’m sorry,” she said, her face heating with embarrassment. “I thought you were starting to have feelings for me, too.”

  “I do have feelings for you,” he said. “That’s why I think you deserve more than I am. You were already married to one jerk. You shouldn’t get involved with another one.”

  And ever since she’d been that gawky girl in high school, she had struggled with low self-esteem. She never would have thought a man like Brooks would suffer from it, too.

  She cupped his face in her palms and looked straight into his eyes. “You are a good man, Brooks Hoover.”

  “No one’s ever said that to me before.” He moved away from the door and away from her. Then he reached for his wallet and pulled out a folded paper. “This is more like what I’ve usually been called.”

  Her fingers trembling, she took the note from his hand. Whatever was written on the paper had upset him. She read it to herself.

  “Daddy. It’s time for you to grow up and take some responsibility for once. You need to stop being a self-absorbed, selfish jerk and raise your daughter.”

  “Who wrote this?” she asked, studying the handwriting as much as the words. The curve of the letters seemed somehow familiar.

  “Obviously, Faith’s mother.”

  “It looks like a teenager wrote it.”

  Brooks snorted. “You think I’d have sex with a teenager? That’s why I didn’t show it to you earlier. I figured it would only make you think worse of me—but a teenager?”

  “I’m sorry,” Priscilla said. “It’s just that I see kids’ writing all the time. Besides, all this happened before you came home to Trout Creek.”

  “Trout Creek isn’t my home,” he said.

  “It’s where you grew up,” she reminded him with a smile.

  “I only came back because I had no place else to go,” he told her.

  “You have friends,” she reminded him. “I saw them all—your former teammates—at the game tonight. You have other places you could have gone.”

  “You know the first thing I saw when I woke up from that coma?”

  She shook her head. He hadn’t talked much about that time with her.

  “My dad. And this look on his face—” Brooks’s voice cracked. “This love…”

  “Your father does love you,” she said, bracing herself to admit her own feelings for him. She didn’t even care right now if he returned them; she just wanted to profess her love.

  “Then why the hell does he mess with my life like he does?” Anger flushed Brooks’s face. “I found out tonight that I could have been playing…. But my dad never let me know people were trying to get hold of me.”

  “I thought you were suspended for the season.”

  “Coach Stein got a second opinion from a neurologist who thinks I can play. He isn’t worried about another concussion causing permanent damage.”

  “What?” Her stomach knotted with fear and dread. “You told me you were fine.”

  “I am now. I guess I always was.”

  “But that’s not what you thought.”

  He shrugged. “I was told that I’ve had too many concussions. That if I took a hit like the last one, it might finish me.”

  An image of him lying lifelessly on the ice flashed through her mind. “No wonder your dad was worried.”

  Brooks pushed a hand through his hair again. “He worries about everything, mostly about losing me like he lost my mom.”

  Priscilla could identify with that. “But what if those first doctors were right, that playing again is too great a risk? Would you still play?”

  Did he love the game so much that he would risk his life for it?

  “I was going to get my own second opinion after I sat out this season. I intended to go back.”

  “Even if the risk was there?”

  “It’s all I know how to do,” he admitted.

  “No,” she said. “Look what you’ve done for those kids.”

  “But it’s all I’ve ever wanted to do,” he reminded her.

  She’d known that he would leave again, and she’d fallen for him anyway. “So you’re going back? You’re going to leave Trout Creek?” Leave her and Faith behind?

  “I never intended to stay.” And she had always known that.

  “Right.” She started backing toward the door.

  “Priscilla, I’m sorry—”

  “No, it’s okay,” she assured him. “You told me right from the beginning that this was just about having fun.” Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them away as she opened the door. Her voice cracking with emotion, she said, “I had fun.”

  “Priscilla—” His fingers brushed her shoulder as he reached for her, but she jerked away and ran into the hall, running past his brothers as the tears began to slide down her cheeks.

  She had been such a fool to think that Brooks Hoover, of all men, would ever come to love her.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Despite his sunglasses cutting the glare of the sun off snow, Brooks had to squint as he peered out the windows of the bus. His head pounded more painfully than it had since he’d first awakened from the damn coma. He needed to talk to Priscilla, but she’d settled next to Debbie in the seat right behind the driver. And he’d been relegated to the back of the bus with the rowdiest kids.

  Brad leaned over the seat in front of him. “Hey, Coach, what’d you do to Miss Andrews last night?”

  Ryan joined his brother. “Yeah, what’d you do to make her cry? Did you tell her you don’t have any feelings for her?”

  Telling her that would have been a lie. “What do you know about it?” Brooks asked.

  “We know you two have been going out for a while,” Brad said. “Everybody knows.”

  “Is it serious?” Ryan asked.

  His head pounded harder with regret and guilt. Brooks winced. “No.”

  At least it wasn’t supposed to have been. He’d been so blinded with anger over his father’s manipulations that he hadn’t understood what she’d been trying to tell him last night. She’d thought he was a good man, the man for her. How could such a smart woman have been so wrong?

  He wanted to be that man—the one she deserved. But if he went back to the game, he’d become the self-absorbed, selfish man Faith’s mother had called him. And Priscilla deserved more.

  “Then why was she crying?” Brad asked. “Tons of kids and parents, even teachers, have argued with her, but she never backs down.”

  Ryan nodded with respect. “Yeah, she’s really tough.”

  “So was it because you’re leaving?” Brad pressed.

  “What?” Brooks turned back to his youngest brother. Had Graham said something to him?

  “Was that what made her cry—that you’re going to leave Trout Creek?” Brad asked again.

  “What makes you so certain I’m going to leave?” Brooks wasn’t so sure himself. Graham’s news hadn’t filled him with the relief and joy he’d expected. Instead it had torn him in two, dividing him between his old life and the new one he’d built for himself in Trout Creek. He’d started making plans for a future he’d never thought he could have.

  Brad shrugged. “We watched the Eagles play last night. All the sportscasters were asking the team and the coaches about you. Your old coach said they were working on getting you back on board before the end of the season.”

  “Miss Andrews must have seen that, too,” Ryan added. “So are you leaving before we finish
up our season?”

  Brooks gave a halfhearted smile. “I thought you wanted me to go back to playing. You think I’m too tough of a coach.”

  Brad jabbed his elbow into Ryan’s side. “You don’t want him to coach us? We never would have won the tournament with Cook at the helm.”

  “Hey,” Brooks snapped, “how do you think I got to the tournament when I was at Trout Creek High? With Coach Cook guiding me.”

  “Yeah, like, a hundred years ago,” Brad said.

  Brooks laughed, then tensed as a female voice remarked, “That makes me feel old.”

  He glanced up at Maureen. “You have a tendency to age in the back of the bus,” he warned her over the din of conversation, singing and arguments.

  She dropped onto the seat next to him. “You do look like hell.”

  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he reminded her. “What brings you back here, anyway?” She had been sitting in the seat across from her sister and Debbie.

  She grabbed his hand and dropped a few aspirin into his palm. “Knowing about your concussion and the noise level back here, Priscilla thought you might need these.”

  He turned toward the front and met Priscilla’s gaze in the driver’s wide mirror. Even though he’d been a jerk, she still cared about him. He was right; he didn’t deserve her.

  Having drained his water bottle already, he swallowed the tablets dry. “Tell her thanks.”

  “You could tell her yourself.”

  “If she wanted to talk to me, she wouldn’t have sent you back with the aspirin,” he pointed out.

  Maureen chuckled. “Oh, maybe I’m not so old after all. Suddenly I feel like I’m back in junior high. ‘You bring him this.’ ‘You tell her that.’ You two need to talk to each other.”

  “Yes.” But first he needed to talk to someone else.

  BROOKS THREW OPEN the door to the sheriff’s office, then slammed it behind him. “You had no right!”

  The old man’s shoulders sagged, almost as if a weight had been lifted from them. “You know.”

  “That you’ve been messing with my life again?” Brooks nodded. “I know now.”

  “Messing? I didn’t think you felt like it was messed up anymore. I thought you were happy.”

  Brooks had been happy. A hell of a lot happier than he’d ever imagined he could be off the ice. Getting suspended wasn’t the worst thing that had happened to him. Neither was coming back to Trout Creek.

  “It’s not that I don’t like coaching…” He loved it. Watching those kids win had given him as much joy as playing himself ever had. “But I loved playing.”

  “Hockey?” Rex frowned. “I thought you were talking about Faith.”

  “Faith hasn’t messed up my life,” he said. His sleep, maybe, but it wasn’t like he’d ever slept that much before. And he’d gotten more joy from her gassy smiles than from drinking too much and hooking up with random women. “You’re the one who’s messed up my life.”

  “Brooks, you were the one who caused that fight that nearly got you killed,” his dad reminded him. “And when you interviewed for the coaching job, you didn’t convince Priscilla to hire you. I just stepped in to fix the things you’d messed up for yourself.”

  Brooks sucked in a breath, offended and hurt that the old man thought so little of him. “Let me fix it myself.”

  “It’s not broken anymore, son,” his dad said with a grin. “It’s perfect—or it will be once you settle down and get married. Priscilla is—”

  “None of your business.” Anger was gripping Brooks again. He wanted to throw things. Hell, if he’d been on the ice he would have thrown his stick and his helmet and then a punch. But he’d taught the kids better than that; he’d taught them control. Penalties only brought on power plays for the other team. He dragged in a deep, calming breath. “My life is my life. You have to stop trying to live it for me.”

  “It’s just that I know what’s better for you. I know what you need.”

  Brooks snorted, saddened as much as frustrated. “I know what I need.”

  “You didn’t.” The sheriff shook his head. “Until now. Until I got it for you.”

  Brooks couldn’t deny his father’s claim. Until he’d stepped off the bus at Trout Creek High tonight, he hadn’t been certain of what he wanted. The opportunity to go back to his former life, the one he’d thought meant everything to him, had messed with his head, distracted him from what meant everything to him now.

  “You got me the coaching job,” he admitted. “But I was the one who worked at it. I worked with those kids until they became winners. That was me.” Maybe Ryan was right; maybe Coach Cook couldn’t have done it. Trout Creek hadn’t won a district tournament in years. And next week they had the state tournament.

  But Coach Cook was probably recovered enough to take over now. His handshake had been firm and strong when he’d congratulated Brooks after the game.

  “And you weren’t even sure you wanted that job,” the sheriff reminded him with an amused grin.

  “But I stepped up,” Brooks insisted. “Just like I did with Faith. No matter how much you and Myrtle helped, it was ultimately me taking care of Faith.”

  Rex bobbed his bald head in agreement, and there was a pride in his expression that Brooks couldn’t remember seeing before. “You did.”

  “I could have walked away, just like Mom did—and believe me, I was tempted. But I’m not like her. Have I proved it to you yet?”

  “You didn’t have to prove to me what I already knew,” his father retorted.

  Just how many lies would the old man tell him to get what he wanted? “Yeah, right…”

  “I may not have acted like it,” his dad explained, “but I think I’ve always known. You had to prove it to yourself, though, that you’re not like your mother.”

  Brooks shook his head as that tight knot of dread he’d lived with for so long eased. “I’m not. I’m not like her.”

  “That’s right,” his dad assured him, rising from his desk and coming around to grab Brooks’s shoulders. “You’re a damn good man.”

  Brooks closed his eyes as emotion overwhelmed him. Those words coming from his dad meant a lot, but the voice reverberating inside his head was Priscilla’s. She’d said the same thing. And he hadn’t listened. He hadn’t believed her.

  “You’ve stayed,” his dad said, “for your team. And for a baby who isn’t even yours.”

  Brooks’s heart flipped, and he opened his eyes, stunned by his father’s admission. “What?”

  His father, always so fierce, stammered, “I—I thought you knew. I—I thought that was why you’re so mad.”

  “Faith’s not mine?” he asked. No, it wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true….

  Rex shook his head.

  “But that doesn’t make sense. You said the DNA results proved that she’s a Hoover.”

  His dad’s throat convulsed, as if he were choking on all the damn lies he’d told. Then he clarified, “She’s not your daughter.”

  “Then whose is she?”

  “Mine,” said a male voice, cracking with emotion. Ryan stepped inside the door. Priscilla stood behind him, hovering in the hall as if reluctant to intrude on this tense family moment.

  But as the betrayal burned like acid in his stomach, Brooks lashed out—at her. Pushing past his brother, he caught her wrist in his hand. “You knew?”

  Sympathy warmed her green eyes, which sparkled with tears. For him.

  “Everyone knew but me,” he realized. The child he had come to love as his own was his brother’s daughter.

  “I just figured it out,” she said, “after you showed me the note. The handwriting looked familiar.”

  “Like a teenager’s,” he said, recalling her remark.

  “Because it was a teenager’s. It was Debbie’s handwriting.”

  “Debbie?” The pain in his head pounded harder as he tried to process everything. He was reeling.

  Her voice a gentle whisper, as if she knew
how much he was hurting, Priscilla explained, “Debbie is Faith’s mother.”

  And his brother was her father. Brooks was only her uncle. Even though he loved her as if she were his, she wasn’t. Just as Priscilla wasn’t, either, no matter the fantasies he’d begun to have about them—about them all being a family. That was what he’d figured out he’d wanted when the bus stopped in Trout Creek.

  He’d wanted Priscilla as his wife, as the mother of his child. Now that nothing was as he’d believed it to be, his world shifted. He might as well have struck his head on the ice again, his brain was that addled. “I—I have to get out of here….”

  He’d feared this ever since he’d come back to Trout Creek—feared that this sensation of walls falling in on him would come over him again, the way it had back in high school. That he’d feel as if a casket lid was closing, dirt being piled on his grave. “I—I can’t stay….”

  Hell, he couldn’t breathe—couldn’t process that once again his world had been turned upside down. Except that it had actually been turned right side up again. He could walk away. He had even fewer responsibilities than he’d had when he left his dad alone with two toddlers.

  “SO YOU’RE LEAVING now?” Priscilla shouldn’t have been surprised. He had no baby, no suspension, no reason to stay away from the ice. She certainly was no reason for him to remain here in Trout Creek.

  “I have to…I need to get out of here.” He pushed his hand through his hair, and his fingers trembled slightly. He glanced from her to his dad, then to his brother, as if he could hardly stand to look at any of them.

  As if they had all betrayed him.

  While her heart ached for him, she couldn’t stop him. He had already been trapped in Trout Creek longer than he should have been. So she just held her breath until, with a groan of pain, Brooks turned and walked away.

  She wasn’t the only one who’d been holding her breath. Ryan gasped. And the sheriff dropped into the chair behind his desk and uttered a weary sigh. “I’m sorry about that, Miss Andrews. Brooks will come around. He’ll understand.”

  “He might,” she said, although she doubted it, “but I don’t. So you all knew?”