Lady and the Champ(12)

He spares me about half a glance, as if he doesn’t want to make direct eye contact.

“You were expecting someone?” I say dryly, annoyed. He looks at me sidelong.

“No. Pretty definitely no.”

I watch him stalk toward the door, not sure what I should do. It’s not like I should just traipse out to greet whoever has just invaded our privacy. It’s not my house, after all.

“I’m not in the habit of inviting people over during my physical therapy appointments,” Austin throws back over his shoulder. He leaves the door partially open. I wipe the oil off my hands onto a towel and look out into the hallway.

He jerks the door open and a woman barrels her way in. She looks like she’s in her mid-twenties, and she’s carrying a baby.

A baby? What the fuck?

Quietly, like I’m eavesdropping on something that isn’t my business—because I’m totally eavesdropping on something that isn’t my business—I slip a little farther down the hall so I can hear.

“What the fuck?” Austin echoes my unspoken sentiment, and for a second I think he’s as much in the dark as I am about the identity of the woman and her offspring. Then he continues, “What are you doing here, Megan?”

“I need you to take Emma,” she answers.

“I can’t take Emma.”

However, as he says it, Megan shoves Emma into Austin’s chest, and Austin takes her automatically. She’s probably no more than six or eight months old, and she holds her hands up to him, smiling. There are a couple of teeth on her lower gums, and I barely hold back an “awwwww.” Which is good, because if I “awww” over baby Emma, I’ll get caught eavesdropping, and we can’t have that.

I’ve got to know what’s going on. It looks like Austin Sherwood is somebody’s baby daddy, and if that isn’t the biggest gossip scoop I’ve ever seen in my entire life, then I don’t know gossip. This Megan woman is petite but curvy, with long black hair and eyes that flash up at Austin as she speaks.

“Don’t you walk out of here, Megan!” Austin snaps, because Megan has turned and has a hand on the door. “You can’t just dump her off here any time you want.”

“You always tell me you’d like to see her,” Megan says dismissively. “I don’t see why it’s a problem.”

“It’s not my scheduled day,” he shoots back. He’s still cradling Emma against his shoulder, and she’s playing with the curls of hair at the back of his neck.

I envy her a little as he strokes her back with his big hand. She seems happy enough, oblivious of the verbal warfare going on between her parents. Her parents. Good God, I still can’t get my head around this.

“So? You’re her father—take care of her.” Megan tries again to pull the door open, but Austin slides a foot forward and shoves the door back shut with a sharp kick.

“You need to at least call me first, Megan. I have shit to do. I have work. I have…” He glances down the hallway and I jump, flattening a little against the wall, but he just continues, “…physical therapy. You’re interrupting. And if I don’t get this knee sorted out, I don’t play, I don’t get paid, and you don’t get paid.”

Megan also glances toward the hall, but she doesn’t seem to see me, either. “I see. Physical therapy.” Her gaze rakes over him, taking in the robe and his state of undress. “Is that what you’re calling it these days?” She tosses her hair back, glaring up at him. “Don’t be doing any of that shit in front of my baby.”

“Oh, now she’s your baby?” He shifts a little, pointing Emma in Megan’s direction. “I can take her tomorrow. Not today.”

“Tomorrow doesn’t work for me. I’ve got an appointment in fifteen minutes. It’s either leave her here or take her to Mom’s.”

Whatever “take her to Mom’s” means to Austin, it’s obviously something undesirable. “Fine,” he says through gritted teeth. “But you need to start planning this shit ahead of time, or we’re going back to the mediator.”

She just makes a face. “Whatever.”

This time when she pulls the door open, he lets her go. After the door falls shut behind her, he turns his attention to the little bundle of adorable in his arms.

“It’s okay, honey,” he says in an ultra-sweet voice. “Mommy doesn’t mean to be a raging bitch.” Then he looks up, and this time his eyes meet mine.

“You have a daughter?”

He gives me a proud smile. “Yeah.” Then he glares at the door where Megan disappeared moments before.

I lean against the wall just inside the living room, crossing my arms over my chest. “What happened?”

“She wasn’t planned, that’s all.” He strokes a hand over Emma’s round head. “Well, I have my suspicions.”

She seems content, not flailing or crying or acting like she needs something. Her big eyes are a dark blue-gray, and there’s a string of drool hanging from her chin. She’s adorable, and utterly alien to me.

“So you think Megan got knocked up on purpose?”

He rolls his eyes. I realize I’m making light of the situation, but I still haven’t gotten over the shock. Austin Sherwood as a daddy. It’s not the kind of thing that’s easy to get your head around. Especially when you were damn near having sex with him not five minutes ago.

“Considering how she’s acted since Emma was born, yes, I suspect that’s what she was after.”

He moves toward the living room, where he takes a seat on the couch. I can’t help but notice the flash of the insides of his thighs as his robe flaps.

He’s not just holding her now. He’s got her propped in his lap while she plays with his face, her little fingers grabbing at his nose and his lips. She pulls at them, then he crosses his eyes at her and she bursts out in peals of giggles. God, she’s cute.

I settle onto a corner of a recliner on the other side of the room. “She’s adorable.”

He gives me a smile that tugs at my heart. “Thank you.”

“How come you never talk about her? From everything I’ve read about you, you’re footloose and fancy free and fucking your way through most of the city.”

Austin claps a hand over Emma’s ears. “Don’t talk like that in front of the baby.”

Both my eyebrows shoot up, and it’s all I can do to keep from laughing at him. “Coming from the guy who just said b-i-t-c-h.”

Emma makes a sound, sort of a grunt but also something like an attempt at vocalization, and it sounds so much like “Uck” that I can’t hold back the laughter anymore.

“Look what you did!”

“Oh, come on. That wasn’t really a word. And she’s precious.” I reach out, wiggling my fingers, and Austin hands Emma over to me with a sigh. “Does she need to eat or anything?”

“Yeah. I’ll go get her dinner ready.”

Emma and I sit and play on the couch while Austin goes to prepare a bottle and some rice cereal. After a few minutes, the baby starts to get restless, so I get up and meander over to watch Austin, balancing Emma on my hip.

“Is that all she eats?” I ask.

“At the moment.” He carefully tests the temperature of the bottle, then the cereal. “I think it’s getting close to the time where we can try some vegetable baby food, but I’m going to check with her doctor first.”

Emma starts wiggling, hands reaching toward the food.

“I think she’s hungry.”

Austin fetches a high chair and sets it up next to his table. I slide Emma into it, buckle her up, and watch while Austin spoons cereal into her mouth. I can’t believe it’s really happening. Austin Sherwood feeding a baby right in front of my eyes. And he’s good at it. Emma burbles and coos, eating her cereal, mooshing it out of her mouth until it runs down her chin, then wiping at it with her hands and painting abstract rice cereal art all over the high chair tray.

When she’s done eating and painting with the cereal, Austin cleans her up and takes her back to the living room, where he sits on the couch and gives Emma her bottle. She’s getting sleepy, eyes drooping shut as she sucks happily.

I can’t resist. “May I?”

Austin gives me a small smile and eases Emma over into my arms. I’ve never given a baby a bottle, and it feels nice, with her heavy little body growing progressively heavier in my arms as she drifts closer to sleep.

“I can’t believe you have a baby,” I say after a few minutes, keeping my voice low.

Austin, sitting next to me on the couch, smiles over my shoulder down at his daughter. “Neither can I, really.”

“She’s so perfect. I don’t understand how you’ve kept her a secret all this time.”

He shrugs. “I just want her safe. I want all my family safe. If people knew I had a kid, the press would be all over her, taking pictures, following us around, harassing me about her mom, you name it.”

“And what’s the story with her mom?” I tell myself I don’t want to know, but I actually do want to know.

“The usual story, I guess you could say. Football groupie, very stupid wide receiver. I don’t think I would have even known Emma existed except Megan decided to basically ask for hush money.”