Playing House (Sydney Smoke Rugby)

by Amy Andrews

  “Why wouldn’t I want to be involved in my kid’s life?” he demanded.

  Eleanor blinked at the harsh edge to his voice. “Because I know how hard you guys work to get to where you are and stay there. Playing at such an elite level, the game becomes your whole life and distractions can be harmful to your career. I’ve grown up with Ryder, so I understand probably better than most.”

  He visibly relaxed as she spoke, the white at the angle of his jaw disappearing, the tension in his neck and shoulders dissolving.

  “Your work, your life is here in Sydney. And, well…let’s face it…we were just a one night stand with consequences. I don’t expect you to disrupt your whole life for me.”

  She was trying to be sensible and practical. And fair. She wanted to be reasonable. Give Bodie an out. She wasn’t stupid enough to buy into some knee-jerk happily ever after with him.

  “I wouldn’t think less of you because of it.”

  He covered the distance between them, a hand sliding onto her face, cupping her jaw. “I’d think less of me.” He dropped his head and kissed her, soft and sweet, and her body leaped to the call of his.

  He pulled away, his gaze fixed on hers, his lips wet. “I don’t want a scenario where I live here and you live there and I see my kid at the end of every footy season.”

  The pad of his thumb stroked lazily along her cheekbone, and Eleanor fought the urge to shut her eyes.

  “I watch Donovan do that, and even though he knows it’s the most stable thing for his kid, it kills him every time his daughter gets on a plane and heads back to New Zealand. I want to be able to kiss my kid goodnight, every night.”

  The passion and intensity in his gaze and his voice slid into her heart like a stiletto. She didn’t want to deny him, she just couldn’t wrap her head around his easy acceptance of it.

  “I thought this would be a bombshell,” she whispered.

  He gave her a half smile. “It is.”

  “A bad bombshell.”

  He shrugged. “It’s done. All that remains is how we fix it. So…what do you say? Wanna get hitched?”

  Eleanor blinked. Ever since she picked up her first Georgette Heyer at the age of eleven, she had been dreaming of this moment. The moment a man asked her to marry him.

  It was a far cry from the romantic idyll she’d pictured. But then she hadn’t been twenty-six and knocked up in her fantasies either. She knew it was stupid in the circumstances to mourn the death of a silly childhood dream but a pang of loss caused a cramp in the centre of her chest anyway.

  Not that it meant she was resigned to this fate, though.

  The decision to marry shouldn’t be a snap one, particularly when the groom was a virtual stranger. “Bodie…” She slid her hand onto his palm and gently eased it off. “We hardly know each other. This is…too much.”

  In twenty minutes, he’d yelled at her for being a virgin, fucked her for being an evil temptress, and proposed to her for being pregnant.

  Her head was spinning, even if his wasn’t.

  “Right, yes…of course.” He nodded, very businesslike all of a sudden as he stepped away from her a safe distance. “You need time to think. You’re here for five days, you said?”

  Eleanor blinked at the rapid change. “Yes. I’m heading home on Monday. But I’m not sure I’ll be ready to—”

  He held up his hand to silence her, and she obliged. “Just promise me you’ll think about it?”

  Was he crazy? How was she going to think about anything else? “As long as you promise me you’ll think about it.”

  He gave her a grudging smile, a little bit sheepish and a lot sexy. “Deal.”

  He looked like a guy who was holding all the cards. Every inch the decisive rugby player weighing her up for any weaknesses just before he mowed her flat. His gaze dropped to her pantaloons and made its way slowly over the corset, his smile fading.

  Maybe he didn’t hold all of them.

  “I’m leaving now. While I still can.” His hungry gaze took another tour of her body and goose bumps flared from her shins all the way up to her scalp and she wanted him again. But she could hardly reject his proposal of marriage then ask him to stay.

  “I’m going to ring you in a couple of days—” He held up his hands as she opened her mouth to object. “Just to check in. But if you need anything in the meantime…anything… Buttons undone. Petticoats untied. A completely, no-strings-attached, no-need-for-reciprocation-orgasm or two—” Bodie grinned. “Call me. I’m your guy.”

  Eleanor choked out a laugh. She’d forgotten with the baby and the sex and the out-of-the-blue marriage proposal how fun he’d been that night in Bungindally. How they’d laughed into the night. “My hero.”

  He grinned. “They don’t call me Spidey just because I look hot in a Lycra suit.”

  He left then and Eleanor threw herself down on the bed, suddenly wobbly-kneed and light-headed. It was madness to be grinning like a loon, considering her predicament.

  But she was.

  …

  Bodie knew he shouldn’t feel so happy about the pregnancy, but he couldn’t help it. If any other woman had landed a baby daddy bombshell on him, he would have freaked out.

  Hell, he should be freaking out regardless.

  As Eleanor had said—distractions could be deadly to a career in elite sport. But he wasn’t.

  His outlook on life had been kind of dark since breaking up with his ex. He’d lost faith in the order of things—in being rewarded for good and working hard and doing right. Cynicism had started to infect his thoughts and his actions.

  Rugby, his team, had been the one bright light in it all.

  But now there was Eleanor. And his baby.

  He’d hardly slept a wink all night thinking about it, and he was paying for it today as Griff put the Smoke through his usual punishing training regime. But Bodie didn’t care how much his body ached, he felt like fucking Spider-Man.

  Sure, he wouldn’t have chosen this particular hurdle at this time of his life. But he refused to see the baby as any kind of burden. Being an only child, he’d always wanted kids—a whole tribe of them—and Eleanor’s calmness had been the prism he’d needed to see that it could work out.

  It made him feel guilty for his initial reaction, though, and he was infinitely pleased she hadn’t been looking at him when she’d told him. Years of being Conrad Webb’s son had taken their toll. Growing up in an environment where everyone’s motives were suspected was a lot of baggage to overcome, and he was ashamed to admit his first thoughts had been to wonder if Eleanor had planned it all along.

  To trap him for his money. Or his fame. Or whatever.

  But he’d dismissed the dark whispers as they’d formed in his head and her I’ve only ever been with you had clutched a big handful of his gut and squeezed. They’d used condoms, she’d tried to absolve him of responsibility, and she’d rejected his marriage proposal.

  If Eleanor Davis was some gold digger after his trust fund, then she was really bad at it.

  The truth was, he was going to be a father and she was the mother of his child. A vision of Eleanor, a baby suckling at her breast, hit him square between the eyes and almost brought him to his knees.

  A football to his solar plexus actually did.

  “Spidey,” Griff barked. “What the fuck is your problem today?”

  Bodie smiled despite not being able to fully catch his breath. “Sorry, Coach.” He rubbed his chest. “Distracted.”

  Thinking about being a daddy.

  “We don’t pay you to be distracted.” Griff glared at him, hands on his hips. “Go and run that shit off. Come back when you’re ready to concentrate on rugby.”

  He pointed to the track circling the outside of the footy oval and Bodie, breath regained, hit it without protest. It didn’t matter. He could run around it all day. He was going to be a daddy.

  He was fucking indestructible.

  His father, who hadn’t yet forgiven him for breaking it
off with Anna, was probably going to have a stroke. Ryder, who probably wouldn’t ever forgive him for sleeping with his sister, was definitely going to kill him. And when he was done, Ryder’s father and probably every other man in outer woop woop would no doubt send out some kind of posse to string him up to the nearest tree.

  But he was going to prove them all wrong. And marrying Eleanor was step one.

  Bodie had surprised even himself last night by blurting out the proposal, but once it was done it had made absolute sense and he’d gone for it. He’d learned from the best about acquisitions and mergers—strike while the iron was hot. Don’t give your opponent time to regroup.

  Fortunately, Eleanor had reminded him she wasn’t a string of numbers on a spreadsheet. She wasn’t a piece of property or a tasty blue-chip stock and he’d snapped the fuck out of it, but it didn’t mean he’d given up.

  If his father had taught him anything, it was to go after what you wanted. And rugby had taught him not to wait for it to come to you.

  Chapter Eight

  Eleanor checked the bedside clock as her phone rang at six the following night. Expecting it to be Miriam confirming the time for the fashion parade, she snatched it up without checking.

  “I have a proposal.”

  Not Miriam. Not even close.

  Eleanor gripped the handle. Was she always going to melt a little when she heard Bodie’s voice or was it just a new thing? A novelty. She hoped so. Otherwise she was going to spend a lot of her life like a marshmallow on a stick over a roaring hot fire—gooey in the middle one moment, bursting into flames the next.

  “Another one?”

  She had to play this cool, show him she wasn’t going to be bullied or railroaded, no matter how much her breath hitched at the word proposal.

  God, was it only twenty-four hours since he’d first come to her hotel room last night? So much had happened in such a short space of time.

  He chuckled low in her ear, and it sent shivers skating across her skin. She sat on the bed as her knees threatened to give out. “Don’t go home on Monday. Move into my apartment with me, Miss Davis.”

  Eleanor’s pulse fluttered madly. “Bodie.”

  How dare he? Did he know how tempting it was to use such a formal address? Yeah. He totally did.

  “No, wait…hear me out.”

  Hear him out? His low, sexy Miss Davis was giving her ear an orgasm. She’d sit and listen to the man recite the bloody phone book.

  “I can apply for a notice of intended marriage tomorrow after training at the registry office in the city, and thirty days later we can be married.”

  Thirty days. In thirty days, she could be Mrs. Bodie Webb. Her head spun. This was crazy. She couldn’t marry him.

  “But…we don’t know each other.”

  “So…come and live with me for thirty days. Let’s get to know each other. And then at the end, if you think you can stand looking at my face every morning, we can go down to the registry office and make it official.”

  Eleanor quashed the well of disappointment at the thought of a quickie marriage at City Hall. No heart-thumping courtship, no romantic proposal, no asking her father for her hand in marriage, no Victorian-inspired wedding dress she’d always dreamed of making for herself, no local church with her nearest and dearest as witnesses.

  No I love yous.

  Even women in Victorian times who found themselves in the family way out of wedlock had a proper, if somewhat hastily arranged, wedding.

  “C’mon, Eleanor. Let me show you how it can work, how good we could be together.”

  Eleanor had no doubt they’d be very good together. But being together for a month with them both on their best behaviour and a lot of sexy times wasn’t exactly a courtship.

  “I’m not talking about sex. It’ll all be completely above-board. You can have the spare room.”

  Eleanor blinked. Did he mean that? “You…don’t want to have sex?”

  She’d tried to keep the incredulity out of her voice but it had crept on in anyway. Really? Just sitting here talking on the phone with him, his voice all low in her ear, was making her wet.

  “Christ, Eleanor.” His laughed sounded more than a little strangled. “I want to have sex with you on every surface in every position in every room of my apartment. I want it to be so plastered with our DNA, my whole place will glow like a fucking Christmas tree under one of those black lights those forensic dudes use. I want you to come so loud so often the neighbours will always be calling the cops on us. And I want to fuck you so bad right now my cock is about to go all Incredible Hulk on me and bust right through my jeans.”

  He paused and she heard the ragged tempo of his breath despite the ragged tempo of her own. After twenty-six years of no sex, Bodie had just waved nirvana in front of her face.

  “But I won’t,” he continued, “if you don’t want to. Because I need you to know getting married isn’t just about a steady supply of sex for me.”

  Eleanor couldn’t speak for a beat or two. She could barely see straight, let alone form a coherent thought. “And if I wanted to? With the…you know…black light thing?”

  “I am at your service.”

  She didn’t need to see him to know his lips had curved into a wicked smile. It was present in the rich lilt of his voice.

  I am at your service.

  Eleanor knew words. She’d read a lot of them. She knew they could amuse, infuriate, inspire. Titillate. But she didn’t know until right now they could reach inside underwear and insert themselves inside vaginas.

  His wicked smile arced from the phone into a wicked whisper inside her head—or maybe it was coming from areas a little further south. Why not do something outrageously reckless for once? Why not finish what she’d put in motion when she’d slept with Bodie in Bungindally? Why not go the whole hog and do something completely and utterly irrational?

  Completely unpredictable. Completely freeing.

  Why not shack up with a guy for a month and have so much sex she’d never quite walk the same way ever again? People back home already thought she was kooky. What was one more oddity to add to the mix? One more thing for them to gossip about?

  Bodie was right, they couldn’t have a marriage based on sex alone. Not when a child was in the mix. But how would she know if they were at all compatible with her in Bungindally and him in Sydney?

  “Eleanor?” The rough burr of his breathing stroked the shell of her ear. “Say yes.”

  “I…” She wasn’t sure when she was going to be capable of anything more.

  His laughter stroked her nipples to tight points. “You need a moment.”

  A moment? She needed a slug of whiskey and a vibrator.

  “Okay, Miss Davis.” His voice buzzed over her skin. “How about this? I’ll ring you on Sunday and ask you again. Give you some time to think about it, okay?”

  She somehow managed a squeaky, “Okay.”

  “Have you got some function you’re going to tonight?”

  Eleanor blinked to clear the sexual fog from her brain. He wanted to talk about normal things now? “Ah…yes. A Victorian-era fashion parade. A couple of my gowns are being shown.”

  “More pantaloons?”

  She smiled at the wry amusement in his voice. “There could be. It’s unladylike to talk about such things to a gentleman, however.”

  Not quite as unladylike as exposing them to his view, or straddling his lap whilst wearing them.

  “Is that a fact?”

  Eleanor put on her best prim-and-proper voice. “It is.”

  “But I’m not a gentleman.”

  “Then it’s definitely inappropriate.” His laugh told her he was completely unconcerned, and she squeezed her thighs together tight. “What about you, what are you up to tonight?” It seemed only polite to ask, given he’d shown interest in her activities.

  “I’m thinking of hitting the shower after this.”

  Of course he was. She shut her eyes to stop the images but it was
too late. Her brain already had him naked, water running over his torso. Running lower.

  “You’re already thinking about me naked, aren’t you?”

  Eleanor’s eyes blinked open. “Absolutely not.”

  “Liar.” He chuckled, and it was like honey over gravel. “You know what I’m going to do in there?”

  His voice was a dirty whisper inside her head. “Get clean?”

  “Oh no, baby. I’m going to get very, very dirty. You want to know how?”

  “No.” But it was the saddest, weakest, most reluctant no that had ever been spoken in the history of the world.

  “I’m going to stroke my cock and think of you. You want to hear more?”

  “No.” Okay… That was the saddest.

  Another gravelly chuckle told her he didn’t believe her for a second. “I’m going to imagine you in front of that big picture window in your hotel room, your hands up high on the glass, your gorgeous soft breasts—have I told you how much I love your breasts?—bouncing in that corset, your back arched, your ruffled ass—God, those ruffles—presented to me, and all of Darling Harbour watching as I fuck you.”

  She could just hear the saw of his breathing over the thud of her heartbeat and something else—the slow metallic give of a zipper…

  Her breath roughened to match his. “Are you—” She stopped abruptly and blushed. Do not ask him that. She couldn’t ask him that.

  “Am I masturbating?”

  Eleanor’s heart lurched in her chest. The word had always sounded ugly and furtive to her but he clearly wasn’t ashamed. He made it sound natural.

  Hell, he made it sound like a noble art.

  “Yes,” he said, no hesitance, no embarrassment in his deep definitive voice. Just pure male pride.

  Sure, babe, I got my cock in my hand, what about it?

  “I couldn’t wait for the shower. Is that okay?”

  Okay? Gracious. Her heart tripped at the question. It shouldn’t be. It felt like it should be…illegal. But an ache had taken up residence between her legs. “Yes.”

  His groan was like sandpaper in her ear. “I’m so fucking hot for you.”