Dirty Jock Page 8

Isabella shrieked as he reached out and grabbed her, swinging her up into the air and then catching her. My heart felt like it made the same motion as I watched, frozen in panic and fear. But the sound coming from Izzy was laughter. Unlike me, she’d apparently recognized the look on her father's face as mock anger. She continued to laugh as his fingers tickled her sides before he threw her up in the air and caught her again. "Give me my nose back!" he roared once more.

  Izzy could barely swing her hands around to his face, she was laughing so hard, but she finally pressed them against his nose. "Thank you," he said. Then he threw her in the air again.

  "Oh my god would you stop doing that," I finally reacted.

  "What? This?" Another throw, another catch, and another delighted squeal.

  "Yes!"

  Tanner put Izzy down and she ran back to me, still laughing hysterically. "See? Dada fun! De-ainy turn."

  "My turn? For what? Throwing me? No thank you, honey, I think I'm a bit too big for that."

  "Ah, c'mon Laney," Tanner taunted from the couch. "I'm game if you are."

  I turned to shoot a glare his way but he just winked. Izzy ran back over to him and leapt onto his chest, pulling him into a hug which he returned without hesitation.

  Okay, so maybe he hadn't been completely neglecting her.

  Once more I was filled with conflicting emotions.

  "Well Garrick, looks like you found another fan," I said flatly.

  The big man looked over at me and opened his mouth to reply, but then paused. "Kids are easy to win over," he finally said. "I've never met one that wasn't a sucker for a good tickle."

  Something told me that wasn't what he'd originally intended to say. Was Tanner Garrick trying to spare my feelings?

  That was... unexpected.

  And unnecessary. I really did want Izzy to be happy. True, I would rather she have been happy with me, but until and unless that came about, she should at least be happy here. This was her home. At least for now, but maybe forever, despite what Miss Myers seemed to think. I had to accept that it might always be this way. I’d expected disaster when I got here, but the truth was, Tanner wasn't failing as hard as I thought he would. Izzy seemed happy. Missing me was to be expected, but that would get better over time. Kids were resilient.

  It was the hole in my own heart I wasn't sure would ever get healed.

  But that didn't justify trying to sabotage Izzy's relationship with her father, if it was truly going well.

  If.

  The jury was still out. I wasn't naïve enough to let one laughing child and a tidied house change my mind completely just yet. Tanner looked exhausted. How long could he keep this up? What would happen when he reached the end of his patience? When the novelty wore off?

  Maybe that thought was unfair. Izzy was a handful, I knew that. And he was trying.

  "Why don't you go and take a nap?" I suggested suddenly.

  Garrick looked over at me with a raised eyebrow and a look of relief on his face, but then he shook his head.

  "Nah, I'm good," he said.

  "Yeah, right. You look ready to drop. And considering what you're holding, I'd rather you didn't."

  Izzy was still giggling in his arms and yelling to be thrown in the air again.

  "I can handle this, Laney."

  I let out a sigh. "Look, truce, okay? This isn't a trap. I know Izzy can be a handful, and this whole thing is new to you. Besides, I came here to visit her, not you, and I have no other plans anyway. I can watch her for a while. Go."

  He looked thoughtful for a moment and then shrugged, lifting the little girl off his chest like she weighed nothing and setting her down on the floor next to the couch.

  "Okay," he nodded, pulling out his phone and looking at it. "It's almost eight o'clock. Just give me an hour."

  Tanner kissed Izzy on the forehead and then got up and walked over to the stairs.

  His ass looked just as good then as it had last week, but I nearly wrenched my neck snapping my eyes away when he suddenly stopped and turned back.

  "Thanks, Laney," he said. A brief smile touched his lips and I nodded back with a smile of my own. Maybe I'd let him keep calling me that for now. It didn't sound that bad when he said it.

  15

  Tanner

  I hated having to accept Laney's offer, but I was about ready to collapse. My one biggest weakness has always been a severe lack of sleep. Some people can function on only a few hours better than others, and I could to a point, but once it really piled up it tended to fuck with my head a bit. That’s why the idea of having an hour of sleep without worrying about being woken up at any moment was too hard to resist.

  That didn't stop me from trying, of course, but then Quinn's voice echoed in my ears.

  It takes a mother fucking village.

  But with no village at my disposal, the gorgeous and eager woman downstairs would have to do. She may still hate my guts, but it was clear she at least cared about my daughter and that was the important thing. That kid had already managed to worm her way into my heart after only a couple of days, which made me feel even more guilty when I considered how Laney must feel after knowing her for two years.

  She was my daughter, though. I shouldn't need to apologize for not just handing her over to a complete stranger to raise.

  To Isabella, I’m much more of a stranger than Delaney.

  Not my fault.

  That was Laney's choice. Well, really it was Gia's. Laney was only following her friend's lead. She did eventually bring Izzy to me, something it sounded like Gia would have never done. Which meant that I couldn't really blame Laney for that. If anything, I should thank her.

  Fuck that.

  I must have been more tired than I thought to consider thanking her.

  I dropped down onto my bed just as my phone buzzed. Two quick sharp rumbles indicating a text message. I fished it from my pocket to see it was from Coop, asking me if I was going to "that thing" this weekend. I had no idea what he was talking about.

  Tanner: Huh?

  Cooper: You still haven't caught up on your emails?

  Emails. With all of this daddy shit going on, I'd started falling behind over the last couple of weeks. Since Izzy showed up I hadn't touched them at all.

  Groaning, I reached over to my side table and pulled over my laptop to quickly scan through them. The league was having some off-season event. Basically a meet-and-greet with celeb's and politicians. A standard affair that I normally always attended. It was always fun to add more celebrity pussy to my headboard count, and those events usually helped increase that tally. But I had no time for that now, so I quickly sent back a decline.

  Tanner: Pass. Have fun

  I tossed the phone onto a pile of clothes on my floor so that I wouldn't hear it buzz again. But since my laptop was still open, I quickly scanned through it to see if there was anything else I needed to deal with. There were the usual requests for interviews, especially after that minor blow up with Bullet, but I'd said all I cared to say about that so they were safe to ignore. There was also a message from Abbey wondering when we were going to reschedule our triple date, but I ignored that, too.

  Who had time to date? Not that I wasn't horny as hell lately. I couldn't remember the last time I'd gone this long without at least a blow job. But even if I had the time or energy, I wasn't about to bring girls like Abbey and Tessa back here now. Not with Izzy around. Those girls were a hot way to blow off some steam, but they weren't girls I'd want around my daughter.

  I closed my laptop and moved it back to the table, flopping down on my bed again.

  I needed someone more stable. More responsible.

  Like Delaney.

  Someone like her. Not her, obviously. She hated me. But she was damn hot.

  The way she pouted her lips every time I called her Laney, or turned pink whenever I said something even slightly off-color. She was sexy even when she wasn't trying to be. What would it be like to have those emerald green eyes stare at me w
ith something other than hatred or annoyance? I may never know, but just thinking about it made my cock stir.

  For a brief moment I entertained the thought of jerking off. I hadn't even done that in a few days, certainly not since Izzy moved in. Unless she was screaming, the little thing moved like a mouse and would appear beside me without me even knowing she was in the room. I couldn't imagine having her walk in on me while I was doing that, and I wasn't about to go lock myself in my bathroom just for some alone time.

  I wasn't that desperate. Yet.

  With Delaney watching her, now was probably the only opportunity I'd have for who knew how long. Yet despite the added juice of knowing that beauty was only a few feet below me, I couldn't work up the energy to even get started.

  The heaviness of my eyes outmatched even the stirrings of my libido, and I dropped off into the best sleep I'd had in a couple of days.

  When I woke, the room was bright with daylight and although I felt like I could continue to sleep for hours longer, I was feeling much more refreshed. Even a short nap could do wonders when you're completely exhausted.

  I slipped out of bed and grabbed my phone to check the time, imagining how surprised Laney would be to see me come down before she'd had to wake me up. Obviously I wasn't in as rough shape as she thought.

  I blinked twice at the screen.

  How could it already be after eleven?

  For fuck’s sake.

  "Laney," I bellowed as I stormed out of my bedroom. "You were supposed to wake me up a couple hours ago."

  It was surprising that Izzy hadn't woken me up for lunch, but then again, Laney was quite capable of feeding her. She'd done so long before I came along.

  I let my anger deflate a bit as I bounded down the stairs. I obviously did need the sleep after all, and Delaney was just trying to be nice by looking after Izzy long enough to let me have it. I needed to thank her, not yell at her.

  I really would have, too, if they had been in the kitchen when I went to find them.

  Or anywhere else I looked.

  "Hello?" I called out, helplessly racing around my empty apartment. Izzy's jacket, shoes and doll were gone. There was no note.

  I thought back to our earlier conversation. She was just going to watch Izzy for an hour. Hang with her while I got some sleep. She insisted that I go up to bed. She said she had no plans. She said she was declaring a truce, and that it wasn't a trap.

  My heart began to pound in my chest.

  But that's exactly what someone would say that did have a plan.

  Step one, act nice, pretend to care about how tired I was, tell me that she understood how difficult Izzy could be so that I'd trust her.

  Step two, send me up to bed, taking advantage of my exhausted state so that I didn't question her true intentions.

  Step three, wait until I was asleep before grabbing Izzy and disappearing forever.

  She must have realized that she couldn't live without the little girl in her life and knowing that she was out of legal options, had decided to kidnap her.

  She wasn't declaring a truce at all. She was declaring war.

  16

  Delaney

  The only thing I didn’t expect to miss about Izzy was carrying her around when she fell asleep.

  Then again, there was something comforting about having her little warm arms wrapped around my neck and face buried into the crook of my shoulder. But she was getting heavy.

  Given the way Tanner looked, I decided he needed much more than an hour-long nap. Besides, I wanted the time alone with Izzy anyway. There was a park nearby, so after a visit to that we went out for ice cream. For once, I wasn't the one that had to worry about spoiling her appetite before lunch. Although it was only a short drive back to Tanner’s building from there, she’d fallen asleep anyway – which was why I had to carry her up all the way from the parking garage.

  When I first knocked on Tanner's door, I worried that he would still be asleep and not hear it, but he answered immediately.

  "Where the hell have you been?" he demanded, even before the door had completely opened. His face was a mask of anger and something else. "Is Izzy okay?" He reached for her, snatching her out of my arms and pulling her to his own chest.

  Fear. That was what that other emotion was. It only disappeared once he had his sleeping daughter held in a tight embrace.

  "She's fine, what are you so worried about? We just went to the park." Now didn't seem like the best time to mention the ice cream.

  "Who gave you permission to take her?" he snapped. "You were supposed to stay here and wake me up in an hour. Not disappear to who the fuck knows where..."

  "I told you, we went to the park," I repeated. "You looked like you needed more than an hour's nap. And by your attitude, I'm thinking three hours may not have been enough either."

  That earned me a glare, but no immediate response. He did step back though, which I took as an invitation to actually come inside instead of continuing to stand in the doorway.

  "You could have left a note," he grumbled.

  True. I probably should have. I just didn't expect to be gone that long, the ice cream side trip had been sort of spur of the moment. I forgot how easy it was to lose track of time with Izzy, even if she spent most of that time talking about her new “dada”. It was amazing how much that child could say in only two and three word sentences and with such a limited vocabulary.

  "You're right," I conceded. "I apologize. I thought you'd still be sleeping by the time we got back."

  And I certainly didn't expect this sort of reaction.

  Tanner was walking in short little circles, lightly bouncing Izzy in his arms but still holding her close. He really had been worried, which made me feel guilty. I would have been the same, in his shoes. I just hadn't expected them to bond so quickly, or so closely. The way he was holding her now, though, made it impossible to be upset with him.

  "Maybe I should just go. She just fell asleep, so I imagine you have at least another hour if you want to go back to bed."

  He paused for a moment, looking at me with those startling blue eyes of his. I had to tilt my head to meet his gaze. He was so tall. It reminded me of the last time I noticed his height, back at the CPS office when he had been angry and towering over me. Powerful. Intimidating. If we hadn't been furious at each other, I would have added sexy to that list. For some reason it was the only attribute I was noticing now.

  "No," he shook his head. "Let me go put her down. Those few hours really did help, they'll tide me over until tonight. You can stay for a bit. If you want." Then he carried her away, up the stairs to her room, without waiting for an answer.

  It wasn't a question: did I want to stay? It wasn't an invitation: would you like to stay? It was a statement. You can stay if you want. Like he didn't care one way or the other. Like it was up to me because he was completely ambivalent.

  Except that when I offered to leave, he said no. Which was it, then? Did he want me to stay, or to go?

  Why the hell do I care?

  I hated this guy, didn't I? He was stealing away my Izzy, and if Miss Myers was to be believed, the only future in store for her now was as an abused prostitute.

  Maybe that was an exaggeration, but only a slight one. The CPS worker I had chosen was specifically known for being completely against men raising children on their own, and had a track record to prove she knew how to wrench custody away from any that tried. I'd called her the other day to tell her about how Tanner had seemed completely unprepared to receive Izzy and that he had no nearby support system to help care for her. She'd assured me that she’d make good use of that information and get back to me by the end of the week with a plan.

  But now I was wondering if I'd made a mistake.

  In only two days, Tanner had completely turned things around. The house was baby proofed and Izzy seemed to already adore him. Sure, she still missed me but that was completely normal given the situation. There was also no denying that he already cared for
her. If I'd been gone another hour, he probably would have had the police out searching for me.

  It was beginning to feel like the only complaint I still had left about the guy was that he wasn’t willing to sign away his rights to his own daughter.

  What a monster.

  "She didn't budge when I set her down," Tanner's deep voice came rolling down from the top of the stairs as he reappeared. "I think last night was as hard on her as it was on me."

  "I guess I should have warned you about that. Whenever she's really upset before going to sleep at night, she ends up waking up a lot. I think maybe she has nightmares."

  "Feed her candy before bed. Check."

  I laughed. "Not tonight though, I already gave her ice cream."

  Tanner raised an eyebrow. "Ice cream before lunch?"

  I shrugged. "I'm Aunt Delaney now, remember? It's no longer my job to worry about ruining her appetite. Aunts and grandparents are like James Bond, only we're licensed to spoil instead of kill."

  I hadn't realized how tense I was until I heard Tanner laugh and relief flooded through me. My body relaxed at the sound, as if I’d been waiting for confirmation that he was no longer angry.

  "I am sorry about taking her, though. You're right, I should have asked or at least left a note. I guess I just forgot that I'm not the one responsible and in charge of her life anymore."

  "No, it's okay. I over-reacted. I get a little crazy when I'm tired sometimes. You were right to let me sleep, and I was stupid to think you'd just disappear with her. You were the one that brought her to me in the first place, and you didn't have to do that. I know you didn't expect... well, anyway, thanks."

  I turned toward the door, unwilling to meet his gaze. I was still thinking guiltily about Miss Myers. Garrick wasn’t as paranoid as he thought.

  "I told you that you could be as involved as you wanted in her life, and taking her out to the park is hardly overstepping that offer," he continued. "Just maybe don't cap it off with an ice cream lunch every time?"