Baby's Daddy: An Enemies to Lovers Romance

by Aubrey Wright

  In the rearview mirror, I saw Anna biting into her ice cream cone. She liked to eat it fast. Totally immune to brain freeze. We made a pitstop, picking up my dad from church.

  For some reason, he refused to drive in Seattle. “It’s intimidating,” he said, “and there’s no way I can park your car anywhere. It’s too damned big for the regular parking spots.”

  I had a Range Rover. It fit in all regular parking spots. But Dad didn’t get it.

  He also refused to take the Lambo. So I drove him around like he was my kid.

  So many things had changed in my life. No. It seemed like I’d traded the old one for a nicer one. Now, I was ready for more.

  I’d returned from Madrid two days ago and decided that I was done waiting.

  Today was the day I was finally going to stop being a pussy and tell Liv what had been bothering me for months.

  I was so fucking nervous I could explode. My hands tightened on the steering wheel and as I flicked the indicator and turned into the curved driveway of my Bellevue home.

  Liv’s new Audi was in the driveway. She was home. My heart slammed against my ribs. I’d called her that morning to tell her I had a surprise for her. She had promised to come home from work early, but I was still freaking out.

  This is really happening.

  Liv’s new bakery-slash-café was located on Fourth Avenue. A cool, trendy place with the most colorful array of desserts. Everyone was talking about it.

  Funky Bake had made record sales in Seattle within a month of opening. I credited Liv’s genius and business sense for it all.

  The last ten months had been pretty crazy. My cold, empty house, a party-place for the Hollywood elite and my Redhawks teammates, had turned into a home. Liv had refused to redecorate, saying the place was amazing as it was.

  The only rooms we’d done over were our bedroom and Anna’s. But that’s not what had triggered the change in the energy of the house. It was Liv and Anna’s presence that made the house a home.

  My hands shook in nervous anticipation as I helped our housekeeper, Mrs. Hick, carry Anna’s shopping inside. Anna and Dad walked out of the living room, through the massive sliding doors, and settled into the chairs next to the pool. I stared at the curved staircase that would take me to the second floor, and Liv.

  It’s okay. You’re fine. It’s fine. Everything will be fine.

  Remember what Liv said when you kept screwing up your relationship with her?

  If you don’t ask, you’ll never know.

  I rubbed a clammy hand on the front of my T-shirt and went up the steps. I pushed the bedroom door open. Liv was out on the balcony, hopping on one high heel, pulling the second on. When she finished, she clutched the railing behind her with both hands, leaning against it.

  A smile lit my face as I joined her. “What are you doing out here?”

  I needed some fresh air. I drew in a deep breath. She looked a little pale, and scared. There’s no way she could know what I was about to say.

  “Dammit, you’re gorgeous.”

  Liv wore a pleated, dusty-pink dress with a deep V-neckline and short, flowy sleeves. I wanted to pull her straight into bed and peel that glorious dress off her.

  But today, there was something I needed done before I made love to Liv.

  She looked away. Her eyes darted to every spot around the balcony instead of at my face. She looked more nervous than I felt.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah!” She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes.

  Did she know? Fuck. She couldn’t. Impossible.

  You’re overthinking this. Just do it.

  She’s fine. You’re fine.

  She’s not acting strange. You’re acting strange.

  I tried to remember the speech I’d rehearsed a thousand times in my head since that morning. But looking at her flushed face, her wide green eyes, I couldn’t remember shit.

  Wordless and blank, I lowered myself to the ground, on one knee.

  She gasped in shock.

  “Liv, there’s so much I planned to say.” I pulled the velvet box out of my pocket and popped the lid open. “But unfortunately, I can’t remember a single thing right now. Except, I need to ask you something important.”

  She laughed, tears streaming down at her face in complete contradiction.

  My nervousness slowly subsided to be replaced by gratitude and joy.

  “Will you marry me? Please?”

  As I watched, her eyes squeezed shut and she sobbed like her heart was breaking.

  Oh shit. Something wasn’t right. She’s going to say no!

  “Hey, Liv?” Confused, I was about to stand up when something clattered to the ground at her feet.

  I stared at the blue and white plastic instrument. I knew exactly what it was. As I picked it up, the two bright blue parallel lines told me why Liv was crying.

  I looked up at her wide-eyed, and she sniffled through her tears.

  “I have a surprise for you too.”

  My sight blurred, and I got up. I wrapped my arms around her shoulders, pulling her to me. I knew I was holding her too tight, squishing her ribs. But she was clutching the back of my shirt in handfuls, squeezing herself into me. I didn’t have any words. I didn’t trust myself enough to speak.

  I held her, my jaws grinding together in fierce protectiveness.

  Her shoulders shook in short sobs. I pressed my mouth onto her fragrant hair, kissing it. Once, twice, three times. I couldn’t stop. I clutched her harder, laughing.

  I felt complete. I had so much to look forward to. So many milestones to look forward to. So much hope.

  I hadn’t felt any hope until Liv returned to my life. With her, I had somewhere to go. We were growing together. As individuals, and as a family.

  I released her only slightly, and her tear-stained face was the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen.

  She seemed to be waiting for something.

  “Can I see the ring?” She chuckled through her tears.

  “Oh yes. Of course. It is yours.” I quickly pried it out of the box and slid the square-cut diamond onto her finger. The yellow gold setting sparkled against her skin, and her eyes shone to match.

  “It’s a perfect fit,” I gushed, proud of myself for making the right guess.

  “I can’t believe you’re finally proposing.”

  “What does that mean?”

  She fought a smile. “It means I found that box in your closet six months ago. I didn’t open it, though! I wanted to be surprised.”

  “Shit. You’ve known for six months? Why didn’t you say something?”

  “What do you think I should’ve done? Begged you to propose? You need to stop waiting for me to do all the hard work.”

  “I…shit. I wasn’t sure you wanted marriage.”

  Her hand rested on the side of my face, warming me. My hands held the sides of her narrow waist.

  “I want you. And I want you to feel safe in the knowledge that you can ask me anything. Why’re you scared of me, anyway?”

  I choked on a laugh.

  “What?”

  I took her hand and spun her around to face the lake, and reverently clutched her lower belly. I couldn’t believe my luck. I was going to see Liv pregnant. Her belly growing with my second child.

  She held the back of my hands, pressing my palms onto the spot where our baby was growing.

  I kissed her ear. “I do have something I’ve been meaning to ask you. But I was—”

  “Scared of me?”

  I grinned as she leaned her head back against my shoulder.

  “Okay, here goes. I want three more.”

  Her head tilted sideways as she looked at my face. “Babies?”

  “You told me I could ask you for anything.”

  “Three more? That’s Anna, and this baby, plus three more? What do you want five kids for? Breeding our own NFL team, are we?”

  “No, no, no.” I drew back. “I meant besides Anna. I didn’t kno
w about this one when I planned to ask you for three more.”

  “So, four?”

  We stood facing each other, doing the math.

  “Yes. Four. Total.”

  She grinned. “You’re serious?”

  “Is there a problem?”

  A smile lit her face, brightening her eyes. She glided her hands over my chest and pressed her lower body to mine.

  “I’d love to have a bunch of kids with you. I’m all yours.”

  I drew in a deep breath and kissed her. A rush of love, wonder, and security wound tightly around me. I had roots again. Someone that gave a shit.

  As a result, I had started to care again. About people other than myself.

  Liv was the salve that cured me. I couldn’t imagine life without her.

  She really was mine, forever. Just like she’d told me once.

  “You’ve always been all mine.”

  Thank you for reading! You seem like a great person who loves to help others. Could you extend your greatness by leaving a review for this book? It will earn you good karma and many hugs and kisses :) Click here or go to

  Keep reading. There are some sneak peeks of other books on the next page!

  Ex’s Best Friend Sneak Peek

  An Amazon top 10 bestseller

  Introduction

  The cocky hottie is my ex boyfriend's best friend.

  He’s also my damn roommate.

  And he just caught me doing something... private.

  Living with him was my brilliant ex boyfriend’s idea.

  I needed a temporary place to crash.

  But me and the “EX” just broke up.

  Not that I minded.

  His million dollar smile had a way of making panties disintegrate.

  I was doing an OK job at keeping my dirty thoughts to myself...

  Until he walked in on me.

  I need a distraction.

  Something to keep my mind off of him.

  What’s the first thing you do when someone says “don’t touch”?

  Yeah, exactly what you’re thinking.

  Click here and get your copy now or go to https://geni.us/EBF-BOB-UL

  Chapter 1

  Michael

  She was temptation made flesh, and I was the lucky asshole who had to sleep down the hall from her.

  My best friend’s ex-girlfriend.

  Gorgeous, willowy, blonde, curves that melted my resolve into a puddle of nothingness.

  Emma Burk had been my obsession since college. My desire. And now that she’d broken up with my best friend, her living under my roof simply couldn’t continue. Not without collateral damage.

  But goddamn if I didn’t want her to stay.

  I’d gotten used to the sound of her around the apartment. The smells of her perfume and her cooking. Her laughter and conversation.

  Get your shit together, fuck head. She’s got to go. Or you’re going to do something you regret.

  I strode down the hall toward her room, which was opposite mine, grinding my teeth. It had been a long day and discussing this with her would only make it longer.

  I’d only let her move into my apartment in Manhattan as a favor to George. Because he hadn’t been ready to move in with her yet, and she’d had nowhere to stay.

  She paid her rent, she was a good friend, she kept to herself when the time was right, and she never made too much noise. A good roommate, but this shit didn’t make sense anymore, and her being a good roommate didn’t compare to the amount of distraction she brought to me.

  I hadn’t been able to think of anything but touching her since she’d broken up with George.

  I ran my fingers through my hair and stepped up to her bedroom door, raised my fist.

  A soft noise from within stalled me.

  The muscles in my arms tensed, and that tension spread upward and backward, through me, from head to toe.

  I listened hard, but there was nothing else. No further sound.

  “Emma?” I said quietly, and placed my hand on the doorknob. “Are you all right?” She had epilepsy, or a mild form of it at least, and I always worried about her when it came to that. “Emma?”

  She didn’t reply, so I turned the knob, cracked the door open. There was the off chance she wasn’t in, but that didn’t explain the noise I’d heard. “Emma?” I repeated, and stepped into her room.

  I halted just inside, my muscles turning to iron. My cock stiffened and tugged against the inside of my pants.

  She was on the bed, her eyes closed, her earphones in, linked to her iPhone. She was naked from the waist down, her panties around her ankles, her knees collapsed outward, and her fingers working her pussy. She moaned and tossed her head, bucked her hips in time to the movements of her fingers, little oscillations as she soared higher and higher.

  “Jesus Christ,” I muttered. “Oh fuck.”

  “Oh my god,” Emma moaned. “Oh, that’s so good. Oh god, Michael.”

  Michael? She’d just murmured my name. She fucking wanted me. That was it. The last fucking straw. How was I supposed to resist her? I had to get a grip on this situation before I made things worse.

  I opened my mouth to announce my presence but stopped. That was a dipshit idea. This was a fucking mistake, and she didn’t need to know about it. I took a step back, my dick stiff and aching for me to stay, to call out to her. To claim her.

  You’re fucking insane.

  I took another step back, my gaze still glued to her form.

  God, she was beautiful. She was lost in her rapture, her golden hair sweeping across the pillow, her breasts rising and falling, her moans catching in her throat. This would be burned into my memory for eternity.

  “Don’t stop, Michael,” she whispered. “Don’t stop. I’m going to come.”

  Fuck me. I could just close the door and go, and she’d never know, but my foot caught the rug, and the side table it sat on lurched. The vase of flowers atop it wobbled, tipped over, then crashed to the wooden surface.

  The noise brought Emma right out of her reverie. She snapped her hand up and opened her eyes, spotted me, and let out a shriek that would’ve woken the dead. “Jesus!” she screamed, drawing out the word.

  I put my hands up like she had a gun.

  “What are you—how are you—? Michael! What the hell?” She grabbed a pillow and covered herself, her cheeks pink. God, she was adorable, even in her mortification.

  “Sorry,” I said, because what the fuck else could I say? Sorry, not sorry. In truth, very fucking sorry, because this would be my fantasy for the next few years.

  “Oh my good god.” Her pink flush turned red, her embarrassment to anger. She tugged on one of the earphone cords and ripped it free. “Ow!” She rubbed her ear. “Oh god, ow. What the hell, Michael? Why are you in here? You’re just coming into my room now?”

  “I needed to talk to you,” I replied evenly, and lowered my hands. “I knocked. I heard a noise. I thought you were in trouble.”

  “Was that some kind of inappropriate joke?” She stared me down, one hand on her ear, the other holding the pillow over her crotch.

  “No.” But it was kind of funny now that I thought about it. Her moaning my name quietly, me believing she needed help.

  “Well, say, this is fun,” she said. “You—standing there while I’m still half-naked.”

  And covered in your own delicious juices. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  “But do you think you could, oh, I don’t know, give me some friggin’ privacy?”

  “Of course,” I said and immediately backed out of the room, shutting the door behind me. Christ, what a screw-up. If it had been bad before, it was worse now. I’d seen her naked. Not fully, but, Jesus, what I had seen would be imprinted on me for the rest of my life. My cock was still hard—thank fuck she hadn’t noticed that.

  I gave up the task of talking to her today and headed for my bedroom instead, my mind stuck on her hand, the touching, the moaning, the wetness, the bliss.

  This
was why I needed her out. My attraction to her was inappropriate. I had work to do. A new restaurant to open: one that wouldn’t rely on George, who just so happened to be her ex-boyfriend and my best friend. Well, technically my best friend. Sort of. And she was a distraction.

  You know she’s more than that.

  She was an unhealthy need. I slammed my way into my bedroom and shut the door behind me, fast. The urge to whip my dick out of my pants and get rid of this tension was still there. I stripped off my shirt and tossed it aside, then lowered myself to the ground and did twenty push-ups in a row, trying to force the thoughts away. Force Emma away.

  She was off-limits. Fuck, I wasn’t even into relationships. I hadn’t had sex in months, simply because I didn’t have the time for it, but with her… I got the sense that shit would go places I didn’t want it to go, and fast.

  “Quit,” I muttered, “It.” I did another five push-ups.

  A knock rat-tatted against my bedroom door. I licked my lips and brought myself up. I could handle this. My dick wasn’t raging against the inside of my pants anymore, at least. I walked to the door and wrenched it open.

  Emma did a little hop and squeak on the other side, then settled, flushing again. “Hi,” she said.

  She was fully clothed now, but no less beautiful for it. She’d tied her hair up to reveal more of her face: high cheekbones, bright blue eyes, and pouty, kissable lips.

  “Hello,” I replied.

  “Hi,” she repeated, and her gaze danced over my chest, lingered on my tattoos. “I mean—yeah.”

  “Look.” I raised a palm. “Look, I’m sorry about what happened back there. I shouldn’t have gone into your room, but I heard a noise and I thought you might’ve been in trouble. One of your seizures.”

  “Yeah, fine,” she said. “I get it. I—let’s just forget about the whole thing, OK? I mean, I don’t even know how much you saw.” She pressed her lips together, her gaze now on my face, measuring my reactions. Shit, she wanted to figure out if I’d heard her say my name. If I gave that game away, she’d be mortified. And it would open a can of worms between us.

  “Not much,” I replied, shrugging. “Just enough to know you were having a good time. A good private time that I shouldn’t have intruded on. Sorry.” Sorry never came easy to me. I’d come from a background where “sorry” meant weakness, and weakness was punished harshly. But with Emma, it just flowed out of me. It felt right.