by Ava Ashley
“Lennox!!!” I called even louder. “Lennox Hardy! There’s something I have to tell you!”
“Miss Armstrong? Sloane Armstrong! Were you aware of what was going on with Lennox Hardy?” I swatted the reporters away.
“Yes. Of course,” I answer off-handedly, not realizing I’m not answering the intended question.
“Miss Armstrong? Will you continue your relationship with Mr. Hardy now that you know exactly what’s going on?”
This question I stop for, fully cognizant of what I’m answering. The bus pulls off from its stop down the block and heads in my direction.
“You’re damned right I am.” I look in Lennox’s direction. “If he’ll have me.”
I step off the curb.
Chapter 20
Lennox
My fingers of my left hand keep flipping the velvet box in my pocket. My heart’s beating so loud, I know the doctors and nurses walking past have got to hear it. It’s pounding louder than the entire Cougars’ defensive line tearing down the turf.
But this was nothing like football.
In football, they give you a playbook. You study. You learn the moves. You execute the plan. A fair percentage of the time, you succeeded.
This was so not in the playbook.
I had been livid. Had felt so betrayed. Finding all that stuff Sloane had gathered. How could I have been so stupidly blind? I was so angry, I couldn’t think straight. I had to get out. Had to go somewhere.
But, what could I do when the one place I really wanted to be was the one place I needed to get away from?
I had jammed a baseball cap down over my head and slipped out through the underground parking garage to avoid the leeches and head to the grill across the street. One of the reasons I’d bought this loft was the discreet connection from the garage to the basement of the Chinese restaurant next door. Mr. Ling let me use the entrance when I needed to. Ever since I signed that autographed football for his grandson. Anybody ever came in asking questions, he just started spouting off the daily specials. In Mandarin.
I hadn’t even made it inside the grill when I’d heard the prolonged screech as the bus’s brakes tried to grab the wet street. The noise had made me turn. I saw the bus...heading straight for Sloane, who had been too busy fending off reporters to realize what was happening.
What needed to be done hadn’t even been a question.
Save Sloane.
I had taken off at a full sprint. The baseball cap had flown from my head, exposing my identity to the snap-happy paparazzi. I didn’t care. I had to get to Sloane before the skidding bus.
I reached way down, breath burning in my lungs as I ran faster than I had for any stupid game. I could see the horror on the bus driver’s face as his vehicle started sliding and he knew he couldn’t stop it.
I full-tackled Sloane to the curb just as the bus skidded past. The flashes had gone crazy, but I hadn’t seen any of them. I had only been worried about one thing...Sloane.
“Sloane? Sloane? Baby, please. Please, please, be okay,” I had begged. I had stroked her hair back from her forehead, trying to urge her to open her eyes. She hadn’t responded. “Somebody call 9-1-1!”
Now, here I am, at the hospital, in the maternity wing...waiting. I had tackled her pretty damned hard to get her out of the way of that bus.
Had I fucked up...again?
And I didn’t care about the article. Sloane could write a whole fucking novel about me. The only story I cared about – this story – right here, right now, needed a happy ending. I needed Sloane and the baby to be okay.
A very stern-faced doctor steps from the room. I jump forward and grab his arm.
“Doc? How is she? How’s the baby?”
He looks up, still serious as a heart attack. “Are you related to Miss Armstrong?”
“Well, Doc. Guess that kinda depends,” I reply.
“Depends on what?” he asks suspiciously.
I pull the velvet box from my pocket.
“Depends on whether this is her size,” I grin sheepishly.
The doctor smiles back, the sternness in his features melting away. “I think it will fit her just fine.”
“So how is she?”
“Some minor bumps and bruises. She took quite a hit.”
I toe the ground. “Yeah, well, better me than a city bus.”
“Yes,” he mentions. “You’re quite the hero.”
I shake my head. “I’m no hero, Doc. I’m just a toad who got lucky enough to stumble across a princess.”
The doctor raises a curious eyebrow. “Well, we’re going to keep her overnight for observation, but she should be able to go home in the morning. She’s awake now, if you want to go in and see her. Just try not to get her too excited.” He starts to walk off, then pauses and turns back to me. “Or give her warts.”
I grin. “Will do, Doc.”
I quietly enter Sloane’s room. She’s laid back, propped on the bed, eyes closed. She has a few scrapes from our little tumble on the sidewalk. I’m having a hard time believing what the doc said, though. About her being okay. Wrinkles of grave concern fold my forehead. She’s hooked up to so many wires, it looks like Frankenstein’s lab. I can hear two distinct beeping patterns. My eyes follow the synchronized, glowing green blips keeping time on one of the scary-looking machines in the room.
One is slow and steady.
Must be Sloane’s heartbeat.
But, the second beep is quicker. More rapid.
What the hell is that?
“That’s the baby’s heartbeat.” Sloane’s raspy voice croaks behind me. I whip around. I rush to her side. I grab her hand in mine.
“Are you okay? I’ve been so worried.”
Her blue eyes blink slowly and stare into my own green ones. “Thought you were mad at me.”
“I was stupid,” I admit. “Too many hits with the football.”
She manages a weak smile.
“I shouldn’t have yelled at you,” I continue, resting my head on the bar of the bed.
She shakes her head. “It’s my fault. I should have been honest with you. I was trying to be honest with you tonight. You needed to know what Logan was doing to you. What he planned to do. Yes, when I first moved in with you, I was just trying to get a story. I’m not proud of it. But, I’m glad I did it.”
Both my eyebrows shoot up.
“Let me explain,” she rushes to tell me. “If I hadn’t moved in with you, I never would have discovered the wonderful, amazing man you are. I might have just gone on believing everything the tabloids said about you being a self-centered, womanizing jerk,”
I wince. She grimaces.
“I might not have found out how caring and understanding you were about other people. Or that you secretly like chick flicks, but will never admit it. Or that you don’t like your food to touch...unless it’s mashed potatoes and peas, which you never eat without mixing. I never would have discovered... that Lennox Hardy was a man worth loving.”
She gets incredibly quiet. “I had no right to invade your life like that.”
My head pops up. “Are you kidding?! Sloane Armstrong! You are the best thing that’s ever happened to me! In fact, I came home tonight to...to...”
“To what?”
I shake my head and growl at myself. The words just aren’t coming.
Sloane gives my hand a gentle squeeze. That’s when it comes.
“Sloane,” I squeeze her hand back. “For years, I’ve felt like nothing but a major screw-up. Like just my touch jacked-up anything and everything I’ve ever cared about. I thought the easy solution was just to stop caring. But, then you came along. Strong. Determined. You made me feel like I could conquer the world with just one hand.”
This time it’s my turn to give her hand a squeeze. “As long as you were holding the other.”
The quicker beeping pulse picks up a few notches. I turn my head toward the monitor.
“I think somebody approves,” Sloane smiles. I put
a hand on the hump in the blankets.
“He’s really in there, huh?” I ask. She nods.
“Except,” Sloane pauses. “He’s a she.”
My eyes widen to saucers. “It’s a girl?”
Sloane nods. “They did an ultrasound as soon as I got here.”
“You know what,” I shrug. “Doesn’t matter. I’m sure she’s going to be as beautiful as her mother.”
Sloane scoffs. “I look like a beached whale.”
I shake my head gently, then place a soft, lingering kiss on her lips. “No. You look like the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with.”
I open the velvet box that’s been burning a hole in my pocket all night. “Sloane. You deserve the world. And I know I can’t exactly give that to you. But, what I can give you is the next best thing...my world. If you want it, it’s yours. Along with my whole heart.”
A tear wells at the corner of Sloane’s eye.
Before I get an answer, a sudden whirlwind of balloons, flowers, a teddy bear and chocolates explodes into the room.
“I didn’t know whether to get you a ‘Get Well Soon’ balloon, or gender-specific balloons for the baby. You know since you’re on the maternity floor and all. What is the etiquette on that? I’ll have to look it up. Anyway, I thought you might be hungry, too, but the hospital cafeteria was closed, so I got you some chocolates. At the least, it’ll stave off the late night munchies. Then I started thinking, there was two of you in here, so I got the teddy bear...oh! There’s three of you in here!”
Sloane’s belly jiggles with a hearty chuckle, even as she’s wiping away the tears. I can only hope they’re tears of joy. She gestures with the hand that isn’t hooked up to a pulse monitor. “Lennox, this is my friend Emma.”
Emma looks at Sloane’s damp face, then at me and scowls. She deposits her payload and stations her hands firmly on her hips. She gives me a thorough going-over.
“So, you’re Lennox.”
“That’s what they say,” I reply dubiously.
“Not the only thing they say,” Emma states. She pulls out her phone and taps with mad speed. She holds it up to my face. There’s a photo of me tackling Sloane outside the loft. I read the headline and the picture caption out loud.
“Fools rush in. Cougars’ quarterback falls hard for new lady love.”
I chuckle. “Well, whaddya know?”
Emma cocks her head, confused. “What?”
“The press finally got it right.”
Emma suddenly spies the velvet box in Sloane’s hand. She claps her hands to her mouth. “Omigosh! We need glasses! We need champagne! Not for you, of course. Maybe sparkling apple cider. God! This is so exciting. I’ll be right back!”
Emma breezes out of the room just as quickly as she’d entered it.
I look back at Sloane. “So, Miss Armstrong. How do you feel about spending the rest of your life with a football player who’s madly in love with you?”
She looks up at me and smiles her reply.
“What a rush.”
Epilogue
Sloane
Six Months Later...
What an unbelievable rush!
Because that’s certainly what the hell I’m in as I tornado through the loft looking for the pack of wipes, the formula, the bottles, the security blanket...I just cannot believe how long it takes to get one small human ready to go from one destination to the other. It’s a ten-minute trip across town. You would have thought I was packing for a weeklong safari trip across the African savannah!
Just dressing Anna Brynne is an Olympic event unto itself. You get one leg in the footie of the onesie and start on the second, and the first one just pops right out again. It’s like she’s part octopus – there’s always an appendage flailing around.
She is a windmill of energy, always pumping her tiny little legs and arms in the air. She’d sent her pacifier sailing across the room on more than one occasion.
“Just you wait!” Lennox had laughed when he had caught one in the nose on the way out the door to the first game of season, leaving me to contend with Octo-Baby. “We’ll make a quarterback out of her yet!”
That’s it. I’m making him change the first dirty diaper of the day.
It’s a totally empty threat, though, I smile. Lennox loves Anna more than breathing. He’d do anything for her...including change a strained pea pooper.
I fasten the last snap at last and lift her up high above my head to blow her belly. “Come on, you little monster. We need to go pick up Grandpa Frank and get to Daddy’s game.”
Daddy’s game.
The thought swells my heart with pride. Lennox and I had gotten married just before Anna was born. I was very round and self-conscious in my white dress. Of course, there were a million members of the press there snapping a million more pictures.
One tiny little part of me worried, remembering Lennox’s former opinion of the press corps in general. But, he had just beamed madly, proud to show off his new wife and kept telling me how unbelievably beautiful I was.
We made it to the stadium...just in time. The wives gush and fawn over the baby. Angelina starts talking about how she and Aaron are still trying for number two.
I’ve stayed pretty busy being a newlywed, taking care of Anna and publishing my exclusive big exposé on Logan, which by the way, ruined his political aspirations and earned him a nifty little jail term for second degree assault for his part in the doping. Lennox has officially washed his hands of his brother.
“Family isn’t always about blood,” he had told me wistfully one night as the baby had slept on his chest.
He wasn’t wrong. Frank may not be my family, but he’s been a spectacular surrogate grandfather to Anna. And, it turns out, he’s a pretty decent football fan.
“It’s not hockey, but the way your boy’s playing out there, it’s sure as hell interesting to watch,” my old friend says.
My scathing Op-Ed piece on performance enhancing drugs in sports with Giselle’s magazine earned me enough money and ignited a surge of other high-quality assignments that helped me set Frank up in a more private, assisted-living facility. Lennox had offered to help, but some things I still just wanted to do on my own.
Speaking of doing things on your own...Lennox had put up some incredible stats at the end of last season, without the use of PEDs. He had even become a spokesperson against them and, in the off-season, had done speaking tours to warn of the inherent dangers. He also started some mini football camps across the country for underprivileged kids. He’s a real prince.
My fairytale had come true.
After the game, Frank holds Anna on his lap, cooing and explaining to her in a singsong voice what a button-hole defense is as I raise up on my toes and try to spy Lennox over the moving heads. He comes out of the locker room talking and laughing with Aaron and is almost flattened by Angelina who leaps onto her husband with wild abandon.
In the midst of some pretty passionate kisses, Angelina babbles. “Have you seen Lennox and Sloane’s baby? Kiss. She is so adorable! Kiss. Don’t you want one? Kiss. I mean, we’ve always said we wanted a girl. Kiss.”
Aaron manages a weak wave as he maneuvers down the tunnel.
“Guarantee they don’t even make it out of the parking lot,” I smile as Lennox bends down to kiss me, then Anna. He scoops her up into his arms and she giggles gleefully.
“Hm,” he grins slyly. “I dunno. This here munchkin is so damned cute. Maybe they’re onto something.”
He hands the baby back to Frank. “Whaddya say? Ready for the second down?”
A slow, wide smile breaks across my face. I shake my head. Lennox looks confused.
“What?” he asks.
“Let’s just say, that ball is already in play.”
It always makes me laugh how I can stop such a big guy with the right words.
Love. I’m telling you.
What a rush.
The End
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