Don’t get me wrong. He had checked in from time to time to see how I was doing.
Well, more like inquired on how the final plans for the fundraiser were going. Giving him the opening to end our fuck-buddy arrangement had definitely been the smart thing to do.
I should have been relieved. I’d been getting too comfortable with him—letting my guard down when I’d known that what he and I had was nothing more than a fleeting moment.
A way to deal with my horny hormones.
That wasn’t to say I didn’t miss him.
It felt like a woodpecker had pecked a crater-sized hole in my heart because of how much I missed Logan.
Which meant we were doing the right thing, keeping our distance. In time, the pain and loneliness would fade away.
Or maybe I was just using it as an excuse to delay telling him the truth about Love Bug’s parentage.
I needed to tell him soon.
Preferably before Love Bug was born.
He had the right to know.
“You look adorable,” I told Cassie. “I think the rest of us should have painted pretty flowers on our cheeks, too. What do you think?” The toddler grinned at me, giggled, and returned to the living room.
I placed the hot cheese sticks on a plate and carried it to the coffee table, where we already had an impressive array of food spread over the wooden surface.
“So I’ve got some big news,” Ava said. She’d been beaming ever since Chloe and I arrived.
I ventured a hopeful guess. “You’re pregnant?”
Still beaming, she nodded. “I’m eight weeks. So we’re not telling everyone quite yet. But I’ve been dying to tell you two.”
As I hugged her, my phone rang from the end table by the couch. I checked the screen.
The number wasn’t familiar.
“Hello?” I said, answering the call.
“Hello, this is Lucinda Mathews. May I speak to Kiera, please?”
Shock passed through me, an electrical current kickstarting my heart. I had been counting down the days until Grayson’s grandmother called me, but when they passed without a word from her, I had given up hope of finding him that way.
“Hi, Lucinda. This is Kiera. Thank you so much for getting back to me. I hope you had a nice trip.”
“I did, thank you. There’s nothing more exhilarating than staying at a nudist retreat for a month.”
I’d have to take her word for that.
“Your sister said you would like my grandson’s phone number because you need to talk to him. Can I ask why you need to contact him?”
I could have told her the truth about the baby. I could have told her I wanted him to know that he was going to be a father. I could have even just told her I wanted to see how he was doing…but none of those words are what flew from my mouth.
“Grayson gushed about a squid recipe he had made.” Seriously? Squid? I didn’t even like squid. “I tried googling it but couldn’t find anything that came remotely close to what he’d described. So, I was hoping he could tell me where to find it.”
Shaking my head, I covered my face with my hand, as if that would magically snatch back the words.
“That wasn’t quite what I was expecting,” she said with a laugh. “I’ll let him know that you called, asking for the recipe.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, dear. Now, you’ll have to excuse me. I have an appointment with my masseuse.” She ended the call.
I looked up to find Chloe and Ava gawking at me.
“You seriously didn’t just tell her you need to talk to him because of a squid recipe, did you?” Chloe asked, clearly not sure if she should laugh or groan.
I cringed and nodded. “I hadn’t planned to say that. But my mind went blank, and the recipe excuse kind of came out.”
“What did she say?” Ava asked, appearing a little more sympathetic about my screw up.
“That she would tell him I called, asking about the recipe, and he would return my call.”
“You guys didn’t talk about a squid recipe or any recipe that night, did you?”
I figured my expression said it all. “What do I do now? He’s going to think I’m crazy. And he definitely won’t call me after his grandmother tells him why I want to talk to him. I can’t believe I lied to his grandmother!”
Ava handed Cassie her bunny from the couch. “You never know. He might call you. He might be curious why you wanted to talk to him but felt you had to lie to his grandmother about the reason.”
“Do you think he’ll be able to tell I’m pregnant because I lied?”
The corners of Chloe’s mouth twitched. “Because you lied about squid? I don’t think you have to worry about that. It just sounded like you were interested in him and wanted to talk to him again.”
Ava nodded in agreement. “But maybe you should have told her the truth. If he only thinks you’re interested in talking to him because you can’t stop thinking about him, he might not return the call. It’s been five months since the ball. That’s a really long time for you to suddenly get the urge to contact him.”
I slouched back on the couch. “Well, in my defense, I did attempt to contact him a month ago. I can’t help that his grandmother was hanging out at a nudist retreat for the past month.” Surely, I got credit for that time.
Right, that still left me four months before I contacted him.
Although, if you think about it, I was almost three months pregnant by the time I learned I was knocked up. So if you did the math, it was really only one month before I contacted Grayson.
And one month was a lot better than five.
“What will you do if he doesn’t call you back?” Ava asked.
“What can I do? If he doesn’t return the call, it means he’s not interested in talking to me. For all we know, he has a serious girlfriend now. He might not want to mess that up by talking to the woman he”—I glanced at Cassie, who was attempting to climb onto the couch with her bunny—“fire-trucked the night of the ball. He might have even forgotten all about it.” Who knew how many women he’d had sex with since that night.
“But what if he doesn’t return your call? Have you changed your mind about telling him about the baby?”
I picked up my orange juice from the coffee table. “What if he’s got a girlfriend now? Maybe he proposed to her on Valentine’s Day, and the news that he’s going to be a daddy will destroy them?”
Momentarily at a loss for words, Chloe and Ava simply stared at me. “Wow, you really do have all your bases covered when it comes to excuses,” Ava said, the first to recover from my romance-filled logic.
“I’ve had time to think.”
“You mean you’ve had a month to chicken out when it comes to telling him the truth.”
Yeah, that, too.
“Oh, look, the game’s started.” I nodded at the TV.
Chloe and Ava weren’t so easily distracted. They continued to regard me with worried expressions.
“Look, there’s nothing we can do about it for now. I just have to wait to see if Grayson contacts me to find out the real reason I called him.”
“And if he doesn’t?” Ava asked.
“I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”
“Have you told Stephen’s parents yet?”
“I’m working on it.” I grabbed a cheese stick from the plate and bit into it, preventing further discussion.
The truth? I was no closer to telling his parents about Love Bug’s father than I had been a month ago.
But I did have some new pretty paper that I hoped would soften the blow.
Right. Nothing was going to soften the blow.
No matter what I did or say, I would end up hurting them.
At that thought, I crammed another cheese stick in my mouth.
The five Rock players quickly gained control of the puck, and within the first minute, Logan scored.
The four of us jumped to our feet and cheered, although
I had a feeling Cassie wasn’t sure what she was cheering about.
An odd sensation fluttered low in my belly. I’d felt it before, but it was stronger now. My heart thudded in reply.
Grinning, I pressed my hand on the spot where I’d felt the sensation. “I think Love Bug just kicked me. Looks like I might be having a hockey fan after all.”
While the players on the ice celebrated their first goal, Chloe, Ava, and I celebrated something even more monumental.
But as the game resumed, a heaviness settled in my chest because Love Bug’s father wasn’t here to appreciate the moment.
Logan stepped onto the ice, and the heaviness expanded. Even he wasn’t here to share it with me—and wouldn’t have been even if the team hadn’t been on a road trip.
The days of us spending time together were long over.
35
Logan
The team’s plane landed at the San Francisco airport, and I turned on my phone the moment we were allowed to do so. A bunch of texts popped up on the screen, but instead of reading them, I re-read the ones that shouldn’t have meant anything to me but still did.
Because as much as Stacy had been right about putting distance between Kiera and me, I still missed being her friend.
Kiera: I felt Love Bug kick! He was so excited when you scored the first goal.
Kiera: BTW, congratulations on the big win!!!!
She had sent them after yesterday’s game, but that didn’t stop me from checking them again.
The news that she’d felt the baby kick, once more caused a bucket load of emotions to twist inside me: happiness for her, regret and relief I hadn’t been there with her when it happened, sadness that Stephen wouldn’t get to experience the moment either.
My fingers paused over the keypad as I tried to think of the best way to respond to her texts. I hadn’t been able to come up with the right thing to say last night either.
Next to me, Eli was talking on the phone to someone. I heard the word “wedding,” but didn’t hear anything beyond that. My phone rang.
Temporarily giving up on replying to Kiera’s text, I answered the phone. “Hi, Grandma. Let me guess, you were brushing up on your ESP while at the resort, and that’s how you knew I just landed?” No way in hell I was saying out loud that she’d been at a nudist retreat.
I was still having nightmares thinking about it.
That wasn’t to say I subscribed to the belief that elderly people weren’t allowed to go to nudist resorts or beaches. But this was my grandmother we were talking about. That was an image I didn’t want in my head.
Ever.
She laughed. “I’m your grandmother. I know everything.”
I really hoped that wasn’t true.
“So, you know my team won yesterday?”
“Of course. Did you think Edward and I and all our party guests wouldn’t be watching the game? Congratulations on winning the Campbell Bowl.”
“Thank you. But that’s not why you’re calling, is it?” I knew my grandmother better than that. There was something in her voice that had nothing to do with the Rock making it to the Stanley Cup finals.
“Do you remember that pretty girl from the Jingle Balls ball you spent most of the evening with? The one you were talking to about the squid recipe you liked?”
Huh? I don’t remember talking about recipes with any woman, period. Not at the ball, not anywhere.
“You mean Kiera Ashdown? The sister of the woman you’re friends with? Brittany?” I couldn’t remember Brittany’s last name.
“That’s the one.”
“What about her?”
The plane pulled up to the airport terminal. We would be disembarking at any moment.
“Her sister called while I was away. Kiera is excited to try out that recipe herself, but she couldn’t find it online.” Undeniable laughter sat squarely in my grandmother’s tone. I wasn’t sure why she was so amused, other than she had seen right through Kiera’s farce of a lie. “She asked if you could call her so she could get it from you. She made it sound so good, I wouldn’t mind trying it out myself.”
“Kiera wants me to call her?”
Why the hell would she want Grayson to call her?
The last she’d heard, he was living in Chicago. I knew she wasn’t interested in some fictitious recipe she was claiming I’d told her about.
“Did you tell her I now live in San Francisco?”
“No, that’s not my place to tell her. That’s up to you. Do you want me to text you the number?”
“Sure,” I told her even though I already had it.
Fuck. What was I supposed to do? Kiera hadn’t figured out I was Grayson when she and I first bumped into each other at Livi’s school.
My secret had been safe.
When things first progressed in the direction of us having sex together after I was traded to the Rock, I had thought there was a slim chance she might recognize I was Grayson.
But that hadn’t been the case.
I’d even been close to telling her about that night several times. But either something prevented me from saying anything (like Livi vomiting on my shoes), or the timing wasn’t right, or the words failed me because I didn’t want to risk our friendship.
Except in the end, I’d walked away from our friendship anyway…all because I was worried she wanted more from our relationship than I could give.
As far as I could tell, there was no reason for her to suddenly want to talk to Grayson. She’d never mentioned him to me. She hadn’t even mentioned attending the ball.
The only possible reason for wanting to contact him was because she’d discovered the hotel had erroneously sent her pendant to him, and she wanted it back.
Everyone in the plane stood, the signal we were ready to exit the aircraft. “I have to go, Grandma. Thanks for letting me know she called.”
“You’re welcome. I’m looking forward to trying out that recipe.” The laughter had returned to her tone.
I ended the call, silently cursing Kiera because now I had to find a squid recipe to send to my grandmother.
“Mom, I swear you’ll like my girlfriend,” Eli said next to me, earning a double take from me. Seeing my expression, he shrugged. “Yes, she’s looking forward to the wedding and meeting you. I’ve gotta go now. We’re getting off the plane. Yes, I love you, too.” He ended the call and groaned.
“So when do we get to meet your mysterious girlfriend?” Travis asked. “And why is this the first time I’ve heard about her?”
Good question. The last I’d heard, he was looking for a fake date for his cousin’s wedding.
“I don’t have one.” Eli shoved his phone into his trouser pocket. “And I’m running out of time to find one for my cousin’s wedding.”
Travis laughed. “So what, you’re claiming you have a girlfriend because you need a date for your cousin’s wedding?”
“Yep. That about sums it up. If I want to avoid my matchmaking mom and aunts from making my life miserable, I need a fake girlfriend for the wedding. Maybe I’ll have to contact a call service and hire someone.”
“Yes, but if that gets out, it could cause you all kinds of nightmares,” I pointed out. This was the kind of thing that the media and social media would’ve loved to get their hands on.
“I guess my only solution is to take whoever wins the date with me to the wedding.”
Travis and I exchanged glances, then burst out laughing.
“You’re not seriously thinking of doing that?” The corners of my mouth twitched in unsuppressed laughter.
“What can I say? At this point, I’m desperate.”
“You must be. It’s not like you’re guaranteed that a hot woman your age will win the date. You could end up on a date with someone your grandmother’s age.”
Eli laughed, looking none too worried at that possibility. “Then I’d say I would be the talk of the wedding.”
“I bet the bride and the groom wouldn’t be too thrilled with tha
t,” Travis said.
“I thought finding a fake girlfriend would be easy. But so far, the women I’ve talked to haven’t been interested in being my fake girlfriend. They’ve only wanted to date me for real.”
“So date them for real,” I suggested. “I’m assuming you’re not allergic to dating since you’re giving away a date with you in the auction.”
“Not allergic, but also not interested in dating. Hence my need for a fake girlfriend.”
“Well, you might change your mind when you see who wins the date with you.”
Eli lifted his shoulder. “Hopefully not, because I’ve run out of options.”
“Here’s a piece of advice from someone who’s been there.” Travis smacked him on the arm. “Sometimes, those fake girlfriends can turn into something real.” With a smug look, he walked toward the exit.
“That’s not going to happen,” Eli called after him. Travis just laughed.
I checked my phone and typed a quick text to Kiera: That’s great about Love Bug. Clearly, you’ve got yourself a future hockey fan.
As for Grayson—as far as Kiera was concerned, he was just a masked stranger she’d met at the ball.
Someone from her past.
Someone who had moved on.
36
Kiera
June
The first day that went by without me hearing from Grayson?
I brushed it off that he was busy with work.
Same with the days two, three, four, and five.
By day six, I was convinced that Grayson was on vacation.
With his hot girlfriend.
A girlfriend who wasn’t pregnant with the product of a one-night stand.
By day twelve, I came to a firm conclusion: Grayson wasn’t going to contact me.
He would never know he was going to be a father—unless Ava’s husband was able to track him down.
Which leapfrogged me back to my original dilemma: did I want to do that, or was it better to let people believe Love Bug was the result of Stephen’s Popsicle sperm?
Pros:
1. My son would have two loving sets of grandparents.
Decidedly with Luck (By The Bay Book 6) Page 24
