Dirty Jock Read online

  I forced my breathing to return to normal now that the meeting was back on track.

  "To that end, last week we provided you with the papers necessary for you to make that happen, Mr. Garrick. It seemed, at that time, that you were interested in pursuing that path. I trust that you've had time to have your lawyers look at the documents. Is everything in order with those?"

  "Yeah, they're fine," Tanner mumbled. I chanced another glance his way, grateful to no longer be under his accusatory glare. He wasn't looking at Miss Myers, either. Instead, he was just gazing at some undetermined spot on her desk. Distracted and no longer paying as much attention to the meeting.

  From this angle, the sharp contours of his face seemed dark and more pronounced, and the artist in me took a moment to admire the lines.

  The curve of his jaw.

  The closely trimmed dark hair that framed his ear.

  The downward slope of his perfectly sculpted nose.

  It was possible I had more than just an artist's interest in his looks. In that moment, I could see why women practically swooned at his feet, and I suddenly remembered Roxie’s request that I take special note of his ass. I tried to think of something else as I felt my cheeks redden.

  Still, those thoughts also gave me a better understanding of Gia's decision to sleep with him that night. In fact, after seeing pictures of Bullet, it was more of a surprise that the Quarterback had been her first choice.

  When no one spoke for a few seconds, the CPS worker continued. "Alright, then. So if you have no concerns over the contract, are you still prepared to sign away your parental rights and allow Miss Delaney Chase to go ahead with the planned adoption of Isabella Marcelo?"

  I held my breath as I turned to face the football player directly. He still had a faraway look in his eye and I wasn't even sure he heard the question.

  But I did.

  It's the question I'd been obsessing over since I first admitted to knowing the identity of Isabella's father.

  There were only two possible answers, but either one would profoundly change my life in completely different ways.

  A yes would certainly change my entire world.

  A no might completely destroy it.

  Yes meant I would become a single mother, devoting my life to raising my best friend's child as my own. It meant giving up many of my own dreams and desires as I worked to make sure she achieved hers. It was a tradeoff I had been willing to make since Gia passed away.

  But a no meant giving the child I'd grown to love up to a complete stranger. He might be her biological father and able to take care of her financially better than I would probably ever be able to, but he didn't love her. Not like I did.

  Sure, as her father he had every right to want to get to know her, to be given a chance to love her. But Tanner said himself that he'd already done his time raising kids. He'd left home years ago to finally live his own life, and having a child would mean giving a lot of that freedom up again - even with the financial means he had at his disposal.

  And he just said out in the lobby that he would sign.

  Why isn't he signing?

  9

  Tanner

  When I got up that morning, I had every intention of signing my name to the papers if the tests proved I was the father.

  When I walked into the room with Laney, I had the same intention.

  A few strokes of my pen in exchange for leaving the whole mess behind me seemed like a great deal.

  But when it came right down to doing it, I hesitated.

  Why?

  For some reason, finding out that Delaney hadn't told anyone about me until recently set me off. At first my anger was directed at her but I quickly realized that was undeserved.

  Her belief that I wouldn't want anything to do with the kid was completely justified. That image of who I was had been built up in the media for years, and I’d never done anything to try and correct it.

  The parties.

  The women.

  The drinking.

  The fighting.

  No, she was completely justified in believing I would be a terrible and uninterested father. Just like my own old man. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

  It wasn't her I needed to be mad at.

  It was me.

  I hated my father. I hated how he'd left without ever looking back. How could he walk away from a wife and four young boys?

  At the time, I resolved to never be like that, which is why I helped my mother raise my brothers and didn't leave until they were old enough to fend for themselves. And even then, I knew that by signing with the Stars I would be able to help them even more.

  And yet here I was, about to walk away at literally the first chance I got after finding out I had a kid of my own.

  It would be one thing if she still had a mother, but if Gia hadn't died, we wouldn't be here in the first place. I'd still be completely in the dark about Isabella.

  "Tanner...?"

  Delaney was looking at me expectantly, but there was more than just impatience behind those beautiful emerald eyes.

  There was fear.

  She might not be Isabella's mother, but she obviously loves her and is the closest thing to family the kid has beyond her grandparents. And me.

  Isabella and I don’t even know each other, though. I certainly don't owe her anything.

  My father already knew his kids when he left. He'd raised us and we loved him, despite his flaws. He left anyway.

  This wasn't the same situation.

  Isabella didn’t know a thing about me, didn’t love me or rely on me. She already had Delaney in her life, probably already loved her, and would likely eventually end up thinking of as more than a mother than anyone else anyway.

  Wasn't it worse for me to take that away than to force myself into her life just because we shared some DNA?

  Or was I just looking for a way to justify the decision to bail.

  It wasn't like Delaney would never see the kid again if I didn't sign away all my rights to her. I wasn't a monster, despite what she might already believe.

  Ironically, if I don’t sign, she’ll definitely think of me that way.

  She'll hate me for sure, but I couldn't let that influence my decision. Plenty of people hated me, and I'd never cared what they'd thought, either. I needed to do what was right, no matter what anyone else said or believed.

  I just had no idea what the right thing to do here was.

  "Tanner?" her voice was more insistent now. Alarmed. "You said outside that you'd sign—"

  "I know what I goddamn said," I snapped. I wasn't angry at her, but I couldn't keep the tone of my voice from betraying the conflicted emotions that were boiling through me.

  "Your life—"

  "Dammit, just shut up for a minute," I growled. I wasn't interested in another lecture from her on my lifestyle.

  The look on Delaney's face twisted my gut. Her normally beautiful features were contorted with expressions of hurt, fear and confusion. She eyed me like I was a vicious animal guarding the door of a cage we were both trapped in. We both knew I was standing in the way of what she wanted, but she wasn't sure if I'd let her come get it or maul her as soon as she tried.

  "I know what you think of me," I said, forcing my tone to soften. I could still hear the roughness, though. "And I don't blame you for it."

  But that's not all of who I am.

  It isn’t.

  "I'm sure the media blows things out of proportion," she conceded. The lines of pain in her voice smoothed somewhat, but there was still an uneasiness in her eyes. Was she being honest or simply patronizing me in the hopes that it would calm me down enough to sign the papers?

  It didn't matter. I'd made up my mind.

  I turned back to Miss Myers. "I grew up without a father." Of the three of us, the CPS worker was the only one still in the dark about my past. "I helped raise my three brothers when he left. I was twelve."

  "That must have been difficult." Her eyes
were tight, her words clipped.

  "Yeah, it was. It sucked, actually. But I'm not telling you because I want sympathy."

  The older woman said nothing, letting me speak. I had a feeling even if I'd wanted any, sympathy was the last thing she was planning to offer.

  "I still had my mom, though. And even though she needed to work, it helped to know that she was there. My brothers, too. I was the oldest, so I took on the role of father for the most part, at least for Cullen and Kingston, but Quinn wasn’t quite ready to take care of himself, either. But it helped to have them because it meant I still had family to support me. I still had blood."

  A soft sound came from Delaney’s direction but I forced myself to ignore her. She must have known right then what was coming, and I wasn’t sure I could look her in the eyes and still go through with it.

  "Isabella has no mother. She has no brothers or sisters. She has to go all the way up to her grandparents to find blood, and like you said, they're already in their sixties. They won't be around forever. But she still has a father."

  "She doesn't know you." Delaney's voice was just short of being a scream.

  "She will. In time."

  "She has me now. I love her like a mother."

  "But you aren't her mother. Not by blood."

  "So what? Why the fuck does that matter?"

  Guilt and doubt pounded against me, causing me to pause and turn back to her for the first time. There was cold fury in her face, and tears welling in her eyes. They distorted their color, turning them darker, like the skin of an overly ripe avocado. The redness in her cheeks seemed even darker than her hair, if that was possible.

  "Maybe it doesn't," I conceded. "But I don't think it's fair to make her lose both of her natural parents before she's even out of diapers. Not if I can help it. Not if I'm still here. I won't abandon her."

  "So because you have daddy issues, you're going to keep Izzy from being with the only family she's ever known. Tell me again how you're not selfish?"

  "I'm not saying you have to disappear from her life."

  Delaney opened her mouth to retort but Miss Myers cut in.

  "So just what are you saying then, Mr. Garrick?"

  The older woman was staring at me with a hard, grey gaze. I wasn't sure what she thought about any of this. I suspected she wasn't one of my biggest admirers.

  "I think I'm saying that I can't sign these papers right now. I can't agree to give up all my rights to Isabella. I'm her father, and I need to take some responsibility for that."

  She knew it was coming, but I still heard a gasp come from Delaney.

  Still, there was no way she could possibly be as shocked about what I'd just said as I was.

  What the hell am I doing?

  10

  Delaney

  My world was destroyed.

  This man. This football player. This media hungry party animal who is essentially the male equivalent of Paris Hilton in her prime, picked now to suddenly become responsible?

  With my Izzy?

  This couldn't be happening.

  "You think you can't sign them right now? What does that even mean, Tanner? This isn't a game. Izzy is a two-year old that needs stability in her life. You aren't even sure what you want. Ten minutes ago you were telling me you were going to sign the papers. Now you think maybe you kinda sorta don't think it's the best idea right now but perhaps you'll change your mind in an hour or two? Or tomorrow? Or when she's four?"

  The words tumbled out of me so quickly I was practically hyperventilating when I finally paused to take a breath.

  "I'm not going to... that's not what I meant. I am sure about this."

  "You don't sound sure. Outside you were ready to walk away, now suddenly you want to play daddy after all. Maybe having all the money in the world and everyone around you calling you fancy nicknames and kissing your ass has distorted your reality, but I have news for you. Life isn't like a comic book, Flash. Everything doesn't come to a happy ending no matter what. This is a little girl's life you're playing with."

  "You think I don't know that?" Tanner leapt to his feet so violently his chair flipped over and slid away until it crashed into the wall behind him. He towered over me, the all too familiar blue fire lighting up his irises. "I have a fuck-ton more experience raising kids than you do, Laney."

  I wasn't going to let his gesture intimidate me, so I rose from my chair as well. He was still a foot taller than me, but I made up for the difference by poking him in the chest as I yelled my reply.

  "Raising a two-year-old daughter is a hell of a lot different than helping to raise half-grown brothers."

  "Yeah, it's easier."

  "You think so? Just when do you think you're going to fit her in, Mr. Football? Would that be right after you fly off to play a game half a country away, or right before your post game orgy—excuse me—ménage?"

  He opened his mouth but I kept right on going.

  "Do you really think you can continue pulling that crap with a two-year old girl around? Do you really think your lifestyle sets a good example for her?"

  "How I chose to live my life when I had no responsibilities or reason to act differently doesn't mean shit."

  "I disagree. It means you have no respect for women, and you have no business raising one."

  "Why? Because I have a healthy sex life? Because I'm not a stuck-up prude like you?"

  I gasped in surprise at the accusation. "Oh, I see. I don't have sex parties in my apartment, so that makes me a stuck-up prude. Right."

  "No, Laney, you're a prude because you think that I'm a misogynist just because all my sex isn't missionary. You're stuck up because you think you're better than me. You can’t imagine the possibility that some dumb jock can ever be a good enough father to his own daughter. Certainly not better than you – an artist." The fact that he made finger quotes when he said artist infuriated me, which was very likely why he did it. "What was your grand plan for raising her again? Oh right, you're going to just leech money from Gia's parents. At least until one of your masterpieces makes you rich and famous, that is. I’m sure you’re due for that any time now."

  I really wanted to slap the sneer right off his face, but I clenched my fists instead. Only, that just gave me the urge to punch him in the nose instead. I could feel my body heat rising with my temper.

  "Oh right, I forgot, you have all the money in the world. That's what's going to make you a great father, right? Well I have news for you, Garrick, there's more to raising a child than writing a check."

  "Of course there is,” he agreed, “but money sure helps. But okay, I’ll bite – what the hell do you think makes you so qualified to raise a daughter? Because you were one?"

  "That alone makes me infinitely more qualified."

  "Tell that to all the fathers of the world."

  "I'm not talking about all the fathers. I'm talking about you."

  Tanner's face was beat red, and a vein was throbbing in his neck. He looked for a moment like he wanted to throttle me, but then he paused and took a step back. He took off his jacket and went to toss it onto his chair, only then noticing that it was all the way across the room. Instead he threw it onto my chair and started to roll up his sleeves.

  My outfit didn't afford the same opportunity to let out the same heat I was feeling, so I just stood there and glared at him.

  "Are you two done?" Miss Myers' voice startled me. I don't know about Tanner, but I'd forgotten she was even still here.

  "No," I shook my head. "Not as long as this asshole thinks he's going to take away my Izzy."

  "She's not your Izzy."

  In a perfect world, the glare I shot Tanner at those words would have turned him to ash instead of making him take a half step back. But then hot tears began to burn along the edges of my eyes, blurring my vision. When I took a breath, it was almost a sob.

  He's right. She's not my Izzy.

  It wasn't like I didn't already know that, but even still the sudden realization a
lmost knocked me back down into my chair. Instead, I grasped the back of it to steady myself, hoping no one noticed.

  Miss Myers once again attempted to take back control of the meeting. "Whether or not we believe it is in the best interest of the child, the law in this case is on Mr. Garrick's side." By the way she was glaring at Tanner, it was clear how she felt about the matter, but I don't think he even noticed. His eyes hadn't left me and I hadn't a clue what he was thinking. "If he is determined to press the issue, as Isabella's biological father, he is within his rights to retain custody of her.

  "But that's not to say we aren't going to be watching you carefully," she continued, in a warning tone. "It's one thing to father a child, but quite another to raise one. While I cannot deny that you are within your rights to seek custody, I also share Delaney's concern about the example you'll set for an impressionable young girl. And to that end, you and I will need to schedule regular visits where I will ensure that she's being raised in a suitable environment."

  Tanner still ignored the older woman, instead stepping forward to address me, as if she hadn't spoken at all. His movements weren't menacing anymore. Even his tone had softened. Maybe he recognized the significance of the blow he'd landed and figured it wasn't going to take much more to finish me off. "Look, I get that you're upset. You had your heart set on adopting Isabella and now I've decided not to let her go. But I meant what I said about not wanting you to disappear from her life – you can be as involved as you'd like. You'll just be more like... an aunt. But I promise you that I'll take care of her, you don't need to worry about that."

  I shook my head slowly, his words echoing in my ears. "You don't understand. Gia made me promise... she made me promise to take care of Izzy. Me. Not you. She never even told me to find you, that was all my stupid idea. I thought I was doing the right thing..." It was hard to speak through my sobbing breaths, and I didn’t even try to hold back the tears anymore. They burned a trail down my face.