The Surprise (Secret Baby Bad Boy Romance)

by Faye, Amy

  “Come on, Mom, I’m not a little kid.”

  She smiled and a laugh bubbled out of her lips before she can suppress it. My own smile widened. “I know you’re not, Charlie. Why don’t you show Mr. Collins your Playstation?”

  He looked up at me, like he’s weighing the decision. He had a standoffish attitude to him, and I liked that. But he thought things through before he reacted, and I liked that better. It’s something I wish I’d gotten some practice with at his age. Maybe it would have helped to avoid all the problems that I ran into later on in life.

  I decided to try and tip the scales. “A Playstation?”

  He pursed his lips. I guess that was a little too forward. Or I sounded a little too stupid. One of those.

  “I guess,” he permitted finally. “Come on.”

  I followed along behind as he stepped inside, and I got my first look around at Laura’s stuff. A child is a surprise. She wasn’t married, but maybe she had a live-in boyfriend? But that didn’t fit either. Where was he if that’s the case?

  A look around at the photos on the wall didn’t give me much help. There are a lot of photos of Charlie, and photos of Charlie and Laura, but none that give some hint about who the father is.

  He turns back and waits for me like I’ve inconvenienced him by taking too long. Maybe I have.

  “Sorry,” I say, trying to sound sheepish. “I’m coming.”

  To his credit, he waited patiently, even giving a slight nod of acknowledgment. I wasn’t that polite when I was a kid. Then again, maybe I’m judging him too gently. I don’t know how old he was, and I know that at five, my mom had me on such a tight leash that I probably never showed any signs of having a wild streak in me.

  “This is my room,” he said. Then he shrugged, like it wasn’t that impressive. For an adult, it probably wasn’t. But for a kid?

  “Wow.” I didn’t have to pretend very much. “I never had a room half this nice when I was a kid.”

  When I was a kid, they’d still been working on renovations. My room was a six-by-nine that could barely fit more than a bed and a dresser, until I was fourteen. At that point, my dad finally decided I was old enough to help out with the construction, and the number of people actively working on what was supposed to be my bedroom increased from zero to one.

  “It’s not that great,” he said, keeping his voice flat.

  “No,” I say. “It definitely is, man.”

  I leaned against the bed. It was a loft, which is to say that it looked like a bunk bed, and of course, everyone always wanted the top bunk when I was a kid. Which is why it was perfect for just one kid. You got the top bunk, and there’s no bottom. Underneath that was a desk, with a little seat. Sized for a kid. The frame didn’t sag under my weight, which means that whoever put it together knew what they were doing.

  He picked up a controller from the table and pushed the button. I’d used these things before, in stores and stuff. Just to kill a few minutes. When you’re moving around, it’s hard to justify buying something like this and only being able to use it sometimes. So I never really took the plunge. So then he hands me one of the controllers and I took a moment to orient myself.

  “You two settling in?” I looked at the door. I’d almost forgotten Laura was still here. I guessed that she had left when we’d gone inside.

  “Looks like it,” I answered. “Anything specific I should do for supper, or…”

  She looked at Charlie. I glanced in his direction to gauge the silent conversation that they’re having with their eyes. Then she made a tentative smile before I could figure out what was going unsaid, and said “You can order pizza, if you want.”

  Charlie’s lips pinched together to hide a smile. They didn’t succeed very well, but he made the effort. I couldn’t help smiling at the attempt.

  “You got it,” I heard myself saying. She reached into her purse and pulled out a twenty.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ll get it. Go have your night.”

  Offering to spend money on some kid I don’t even know? Something must be off with me. But I don’t say anything about it. Instead I waited while she left. The Playstation made a series of quiet musical ideas and then finally decided that it was all the way on.

  There’s only one account; the name on it said ‘Charlie’ on it, and the account picture was of him smiling. He was missing a tooth in the picture, but he wasn’t missing it any more.

  He pushed the button to move on as soon as it appeared. His expression showed that he didn’t like that it had come up with the picture, and I suddenly realize what it is with him. Surly or not, he was trying to look tough in front of me. I didn’t know how I was supposed to feel about that.

  “So what are we playing?”

  He looked at me like he was thinking hard about it, but then he looked back at the console and scrolled one to the right. It said ‘Madden NFL 17’ on it.

  “Madden,” he intoned, as the game started loading.

  It’s a good choice. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought that it was intentional. I’d played this when I was his age. Though it didn’t look anywhere near as good.

  “Go easy on me,” I said. “I’m a little rusty.”

  Six

  Laura

  I haven’t ever wanted to get out of a date faster than tonight, and I haven’t ever had one last longer after I was ready to be done with it. It was an unpleasant mixture, and one that I don’t intend to repeat if I have any choice in the matter going forward. In fact, if this is what I’m left with for the local dating scene, maybe it would be wiser of me to just stop trying altogether. I hear that nunneries are lovely this time of year.

  I took a breath before I left the car, because there’s going to be a lot of potential for a whole separate can of worms to open up when I get inside. What was I going to do if Charlie was still up, for example? He’d be ready to get a whipping. But she wasn’t supposed to do that. Everyone said so, and she knew it, and most of the time she had the self-control not to.

  But then again, it wouldn’t just be Charlie’s fault, would it? After all, there were two people in that house, and one of them was supposed to be the adult. In spite of the fact that he was probably the one more suitable, Charlie wasn’t the adult of the two of them.

  “I’m not going to get mad,” I said to myself out loud. “No matter what I find. What’s done is done, and I don’t have to worry about it. I just have to worry about correcting it. It’s my own fault anyways.”

  I pushed myself out of the car and stand up. My legs were sore and my face was hot and I stumbled a little as I came all the way up. I didn’t think I’d drank that much, but between that and standing up so suddenly, maybe I wasn’t as good as I thought that I was.

  There was one thing that immediately stood out to me. The bright yellow pizza box sticking out of the recycling bin was new. Charlie might actually be learning.

  I took a deep breath and checked my phone for the time. I said eight thirty, but it’s well past nine, almost to ten o’clock and I was just getting home. Well, I’d make all my apologies and then move on.

  The door was locked when I got up to it. I started to fuss with my keys when it opened. Dave had a can of soda in his hands, a can that certainly wasn’t in the house when I left.

  “Hey,” he said. He looked a little tired. And now that he was tired, he did a much poorer job pretending not to notice my body.

  “How did things go?”

  “They went fine. He’s been asleep since eight thirty.”

  I stepped inside, past him, and slipped my shoes off. He stood off to the side and let me take my time, which I was thankful for. I wish there were more men who were willing to back off a little, and let me take things at my own pace. Then again, the times that I’ve met men like that, they lacked a certain something in other areas.

  I didn’t need someone with me in the bedroom. I’m able to get by with a few nights a month of keeping myself entert
ained, and otherwise not thinking about it. But if I was going to date then it was going to go into the bedroom, too. Eventually. And I wasn’t interested in having to drag someone into it like they were doing me a favor.

  “How was he?”

  “He was great,” Dave answered again. He took a sip from the can. It sounded empty.

  I pressed the door open, and peered inside. The light spilled into the room in a thin narrow strip, but I could see that Charlie was down. Whether he was asleep or not was a matter that I didn’t want to think about. There were a thousand problems that people had to deal with; the idea that a boy would be sitting in the dark doing nothing but not being asleep was the least of my worries.

  “Yeah?”

  “You raised him pretty good.”

  I turned and looked at him. Did he know? Had he guessed? I didn’t want to think about it.

  “Thanks.”

  “You look good. I hope you had a good time.”

  “I didn’t,” I said. “You got any of that pizza left?”

  “In the fridge,” Dave answered. “Just two slices, though.”

  “Two is enough. God. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough, and he just wouldn’t let me get away.”

  “I don’t know who would,” Dave offered.

  I stared at him. What was that supposed to mean? I could understand what he probably meant by it, but it was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard him say. If he wouldn’t let me go, then why, eight years ago, had he done just that?

  “I’m glad you think so,” I said instead. “But sometimes that’s what you want.”

  “I understand that, trust me.” Dave’s face had darkened a little bit. I pulled the plate out, a pair of slightly-cold pizza slices placed side by side on it.

  “I just wish someone would come along who wasn’t a complete waste of my time.”

  Dave shifted his weight awkwardly. I don’t know what he’s thinking, but it’s probably something that he shouldn’t be. It’s probably something that I shouldn’t be. There were a lot of things I shouldn’t think about Dave. Like how he was in bed after all these years.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Are you seeing anyone? Wherever you’re living?”

  “I’m in London right now,” he said vaguely. “And I’m not really seeing anyone.”

  “Living there, or just passing through?”

  “I’ve got some stuff there, but I probably won’t be staying much longer once I get back.”

  “Where are you off to then?”

  Dave shrugged. “I don’t know. Wherever.”

  “Not back to the army, though?”

  He let out a long, low breath. “No, not back to the army. Never back to the army, if I can help it.”

  “That bad?”

  He shrugged again. “I don’t know. Just not my thing, maybe. I don’t want to live like that any more.”

  “You almost sound like you’re thinking about settling down.”

  I saw his lips twitch, as if there were something he weren’t saying. “I don’t know. Maybe. If I found someplace.”

  “What kind of place?”

  I watched him think about it. Or at least, I watched him stare impassively at my wall, while his lips pursed themselves awkwardly as if he were mimicking speech without ever opening his lips.

  “I don’t know,” he said finally. “Someplace that felt right.”

  I knew better than to say anything at all. I knew better, and I’d rehearsed this whole conversation in my head a hundred times. But I had finished most of a bottle by myself, and I wasn’t exactly in my right mind, and I’d stand by that in court.

  “How does it feel here?”

  “Different,” he said.

  “What’s so different about it? Not that much has changed.”

  “Everything’s changed.”

  “Like what?”

  I don’t know what answer I expected, but the way that he looked at me had me thinking that I could guess one of the possibilities, and I didn’t want to have to tell myself that he wasn’t going to say it. I wanted to believe that he was going to, and I let myself.

  “You’ve changed.”

  I shivered, even though it wasn’t cold. “Oh?”

  “You’re more mature, for one thing.”

  I barked a harsh laugh. “Yeah, Dave. That’s the problem, apparently. When I was fresh out of high school, guys were lining up, but…” I bit off the sentence before it went somewhere it shouldn’t have. “Well, whatever. I guess I’m used product, now.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Used, huh?”

  “Like an old furnace filter,” I said. “Nobody really wants it.”

  He seemed to think about how to respond to that. It was the most I’d ever seen him seriously consider something in his entire life, and it was because of an off-hand joke.

  “And what if I said that someone did want you?”

  “I’d want to see some I.D,” I joked.

  “What if I told you that I wanted you?”

  I shivered in spite of myself. This was a mistake, a voice in the back of my head screamed. The wine made it scream very quietly, and made ignoring it seem very tempting. So instead of taking the very good advice I gave myself, I made a mistake for the second time in my life.

  “Then why don’t you do something about it?”

  Seven

  Dave

  I shouldn’t have done anything at all. I should have walked away. But there was no way I was going to be able to do that. Not with her looking like she did, and not with her saying what she was saying. A man shouldn’t be asked to have that kind of self-control no matter how much he ought to know better.

  So I stepped closer and wrapped my arms around her. I knew better. I was going to be gone soon. Just another few days, and then I’d be leaving her behind. She knew that, too, but sometimes people make bad decisions. Sometimes I make bad decisions, too.

  I pressed my lips into hers, and she pulled her body tight against mine, kissing back. I pulled away, my pulse thumping in my neck, adrenaline starting to pump in my gut.

  “I shouldn’t.”

  “Shut up and fuck me,” Laura growled. I only had the one protest in me. When she said those words I knew that I wasn’t going to stop myself a second time.

  My lips dropped below her jaw and started to press kisses against the sensitive skin of her throat. I could hear Laura’s breath growing harsh and fast. I wanted to hear more of her, hear her moans, hear her really let loose. But that wasn’t going to happen, and we both knew it.

  So instead, I did something that was a much worse idea: I sucked on her neck until I knew that it was going to show. I don’t care what other people are going to think. When I pulled away there was a soft red mark, one that I didn’t think was going to fade with an hour’s time.

  She may not be mine in ten days, but for the time that I’m here, she’s going to be marked by me. Everyone will know that she’s owned.

  Her hand pressed against my stomach, pressing into hard muscle. She started to ease it lower, her fingers walking a line down my middle until she reached the top of my jeans, and then walking lower still. Down my body ‘til she was feeling me through the thick fabric.

  Even through a zipper and several layers of denim, folded up to make a nice, heavy-wearing garment I could feel her touching me, and I could feel the electric sensation of pressure driving me up a wall.

  “You like that, don’t you?”

  It was my turn for my breath to catch in my throat, to sound ragged and needy and demanding. “Don’t tease me.”

  She looked up at me and batted her eyelashes demurely. “No? Why not?” Then she started to drift down to her knees, her hand still rubbing the front of my jeans.

  “God… I just… don’t.”

  “After all those years that you teased me?”

  “Don’t hold high school against me.”

  “I’ll hold whatever I want to against you, David Collins. And if that means…�
� She paused to bring her face dangerously close to my crotch without ever making a real move to take my hardness out of them. “If that means that you get teased, then you get teased.”

  I sucked in a breath. “You sure that’s what you want?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “You might end up regretting it,” I say, trying to make my voice sound vaguely threatening.

  “Who says I’d regret it?”

  She let the question hang in the air a moment before reaching up to undo the button of my jeans, and then worked the fly until I was standing proud of the opening of my jeans, my hardness straining against the fabric of my boxers.

  “God,” I growled. “I should have done this years ago.”

  She didn’t respond to that, just pulled the boxers down a little bit, enough that my cock sprung loose and stared her in the face.

  “You think so, huh?”

  I took a deep breath in and leaned back against the counter. It didn’t creak under my weight.

  “Yeah,” I said softly. An image flashed in my mind, halfway remembered. Something about the smell and the sensation of her hand gripping my shaft aroused a memory, faint even in focus.

  Then she took me into her mouth and I lost my mind and the memories it held. The only thing that existed was the feeling of her lips wrapped around my shaft and giving me the pleasure that I needed. Pleasure that was all-encompassing and impossible.

  “God, that’s good,” I growled. It was an effort not to take her hair in my hands and force her to move faster.

  I let her move at her own pace for a minute. But the temptation grew, and grew. I pulled her away and looked her in the eyes.

  “I’m going to move, now,” I said.

  She didn’t respond except to start sucking again. I grabbed her head and thrust my hips. It caught in her throat and she made a soft choking noise as I pulled back. My body wanted to keep moving, keep going deeper and deeper until I was practically all the way to her stomach. But I forced myself to stay to a slow, controlled rhythm.