Playing Dirty (A Bad Boy Sports Romance) (38 page)

Chapter 23

Andrew

I was officially an engaged man, and I’d never been happier.

I wished I could shout the news from the rooftops, but there was still the matter of telling my mother about Keira’s pregnancy first. Although my mind was made up on what to do in any given eventuality, and although I was resolute in how this confrontation would end regardless, my stomach still felt a little weird as I headed down the hall. I wasn’t entirely sure what it was that I was worried about. What was the worst that could happen? No one liked to be shouted at by their mother, but at the same time, no one had ever died from it. I was a grown man, and anything she said to me would just roll off me like water off a duck’s back. In the end, one way or another, I would be with Keira, and that was all that mattered.

Except, of course, that it wasn’t.

Being with Keira was my absolute top priority and nothing was going to dissuade me from doing so, but that didn’t mean that I didn’t love my family. I’d had my differences with them over the years—some their fault, many mine—but I still cared about them. We were an odd family, but that was sort of inevitable in the circumstances, and our oddness drew us together rather than forced us apart. I knew that since I’d met Keira, I’d become a different person. A better person. More to the point, I’d become the person my mother had wanted me to be all my life. But it had taken me so long to become that person that she’d obviously long since given up believing that it might ever happen. She wouldn’t believe that the decent, committed version of me actually existed, and she still saw this as just an act or a phase I was going through that would shortly be replaced by the more familiar womanizing jackass. I didn’t like to look back at that period of my life now, and I could understand my mother’s reticence in believing me, but I needed her to; I needed her to see what I’d become and be grateful that I’d finally got there. I wanted her to be proud of me.

Of course, even if she was proud of me for the man I’d become, that didn’t mean that she’d be proud of me for the situation I was now in. Convincing her that Keira’s pregnancy was a good thing would be an uphill struggle, but again, it was one I wanted to make. I couldn’t wait to be a father, and I wanted her to be just as excited about being a grandmother.

It had taken me far longer than it took most to out-grow my wild adolescence, but now I craved family life, even in the odd little family that I had. I’d be with Keira no matter what, but another thing that excited me was the tantalizing possibility of more—of us all being one happy family. I wasn’t afraid of what I might lose; I was afraid to dream of what I might gain, just in case it slipped through my grasp.

As I headed towards the private office where I knew my mother would be, I imagined her potential reactions and arguments at each point, and I mentally answered them until I thought I’d covered every potential scenario and had a response for anything that might go wrong.

In the event, I was about as wrong as it was possible for a person to be.

“Andrew.”

I turned at the voice from behind me and found my brother there, smiling an unpleasant smile. It was possible that Michael was one of those unfortunate people who always looked evil when they smile, whether they were evil or not, but I knew this particular smile very well: it meant that Michael had won. What he’d won, I had no idea, but given my current mission, Michael’s presence was a profoundly disconcerting one.

“Hi, Michael. I’m just going to see Mother, so if you don’t mind…”

“I was on my way to see her too.” The smile remained fixed on his face.

“Would you mind if I go first?” I asked. I was sure this conversation was going somewhere, but I was determined to keep it light and casual if I could.

“I think she’ll be more interested in what I have to say,” said Michael, with the sly demeanor of a James Bond villain. “Unless you’d like to stop me, that is.”

This game-playing and pussy-footing around the point was fast becoming wearing for me. “Look, do you want to stop acting like a cock and say what you have to say?”

Michael looked a little irritated to have had his moment stolen, but he recovered himself admirably and reached into the pocket of his jacket to produce a handful of photos. He’d obviously seen us and taken them from a distance when we thought we’d been sneaky enough to not get caught, and the pictures featured Keira in her maid uniform, skirt hitched up around her waist as I pounded into her. Seeing as the pictures had been taken from a distance, they were a bit grainy, but they were still clear enough to identify exactly who it was in them.

Michael grinned as he saw my face. “We already know you’ve been sleeping with the maid, seeing as you told us about your little ‘relationship’. But the public doesn’t know yet…”

“And?”

“You got her pregnant, didn’t you?”

That
he wasn’t supposed to know, and my face must have betrayed my shock because Michael’s smile widened to a leer of satisfaction.

“I knew it. The future ruler of Great Britain conceived outside of wedlock with a servant—disgraceful. What would Mother make of that? What would the press? What will the public?”

I said nothing. There was a lot that I wanted to say, mostly of the four-lettered variety, but I knew that Michael was building to something. In the event of him ever needing another career, Michael had a great future as a super-villain, stringing out his taunting of the good guy for long enough to allow him to concoct an escape plan.

“How did you find out about the baby?” I asked through gritted teeth.

He waved one of the photos at me. “I’ve been following you two to get pictures like this, and I overheard you talking about it yesterday. So how much would it be worth for that information not to reach the press?” he asked. “After all, you can’t exactly deny it; not when I’ve got these photos.”

“What the hell do you want, Michael?”

Michael’s eyes flared. “What I deserve, dammit!”

“A kick in the nuts?”

“Very funny,” he replied. “You never deserved to be King. You’ve always squandered the opportunities that were yours simply because you happened to be born first! You’ve neglected your duties, treated the people with contempt…”

“I know.”

Michael was brought up short by the unwanted and unexpected interruption. “What?”

“I said: I know.”

“I know what you said!” he snapped. “The ‘what?’ was supposed to allude more to ‘what do you mean by that?’”

“I mean that you’re right. I’ve done all that you said and more, and I probably don’t deserve to be King. But that’s the way the system works. And, for the record, I know you fulfil all your ‘duties’, but I’m not sure you’re that much better of a person than me. Neither of us is worthy to succeed our mother.”

“Well, one of us is going to, and it’s going to be me!” Michael said, getting back on track. “You’ll give up your right to the throne in favor of me. If you don’t, then I will be going to our mother with these pictures and with some information pertaining to you and your little trollop. Then I’ll be going to the press with the pictures, and I’ll inform them of her pregnancy. Imagine what the tabloids will say about her for years to come. It’ll ruin her. So what do you think of that, big brother?”

I burst out laughing.

“Why are you laughing?” Michael asked. He’d clearly had a picture in his mind of how this confrontation was going to proceed, and now that picture was being irritatingly warped by my reaction.

“I’m laughing,” I said, struggling for a breath, “because it’s funny! You actually think that I would care about becoming King?”

Michael’s face made it clear that he couldn’t imagine anyone
not
caring about being King.

“I never cared about being King!” I said. “I’ve never cared about anything much until recently. And now that I’ve finally found something that I actually care about, you think I’d suddenly start caring about the thing that I never cared about in the first place? You can’t see why that’s funny?”

Michael jumped, now clearly worried that he’d somehow broken my mind.

“I’ve found someone I love, Michael!” I continued. “There’s only one thing I care about as much as I care about Keira, and that’s what’s inside of Keira. You think I’d want to keep this from the press? That I’d be ashamed? That’s the funniest thing of all! I’m proud, you little idiot! I’d shout it from the rooftops if I could! In fact—this afternoon I might do just that. I’m in love with a beautiful, brilliant woman and she’s pregnant with my baby, and I couldn’t be happier or prouder! And if there is anyone in this castle, in England, in Britain or in the world who doesn’t understand that, then I pity them. And that’s the funniest thing, Michael, although also kind of sad. You’re threatening me with something that makes my life worth living. I really hope one day you get to understand that. Happiness isn’t in a crown, little brother.”

“You’re just saying that because you lost already!” By now, Michael was furious. He obviously thought that he was the one who was in the right; he was the one who held all the cards, he should be the one dictating terms. Instead, I’d owned up to my shortcomings and then proceeded to instruct him on why love was more important than royalty. Most frustrating of all was the fact that Michael seemed to have got exactly what he wanted, but I’d taken the fun out of it.

“I’ve lost nothing,” I said. “Don’t you get that?”

“People have fought wars to get what you’ve lost!” Michael snapped back.

“Well more fool them!” I replied. “Take it from me, they’d have been a damned sight happier if they’d stayed at home, found themselves a nice girl and had some kids. Trust me, every king who spent his life clawing his way to power over the bodies of others, once he got to the throne, he found himself wondering what happened to the girl he left behind in the little village he grew up in and wishing he could trade his kingdom for her.”

“Nonsense!”

“One day that’ll be you.”

“I’ll happily take the Kingdom,” Michael said. “That’s what
matters
. That’s what makes a person matter.”

“What makes a person matter is how they are, not who they are.” The sentiment was my mother’s, but it had never meant more to me than it did now. I laughed again as I realized that in not wanting the crown, I’d become so much more worthy of it, because I’d realized how little it mattered when held up next to the people whom it symbolically represented.

“You think the crown matters? You think we matter? We don’t! We’re just…we got lucky,” I continued. “I don’t want any part of this crown if it’s going to ruin Keira’s life, or our baby’s life. I don’t want any part of it at all. It’s toxic. I want out. I came here to speak to Mother, to tell her that I would give up my birthright if I had to, because that’s how much I want to be with Keira. Now? I’m giving it up either way. I don’t want it. I don’t want to be King, I don’t want to be royal, and I don’t want to be any part of this hateful tradition; this classist bullshit that looks down on decent people and drags down its own!”

“Is that right?”

For a single, stupid moment, I wondered how my brother had spoken without moving his lips and how he’d made his voice change. Then the more likely explanation dawned on me, and I turned to see our mother, standing in the open doorway to her office.

“The walls of this castle are extremely thick, built to withstand cannon-fire I believe, but they are not quite thick enough to soundproof them against the raised voices of idiots.”

“Sorry, Mother,” Michael said.

“It doesn’t sound like you should be the one apologizing.” Her eyes turned to me, one eyebrow raised in question.

Shit. Had I meant to say all that? I’d gone far beyond what I’d wanted to say, and what I’d planned to say—but did that mean it was untrue? I’d never really felt royal. I’d enjoyed the privilege because a person would have to be an imbecile not to, and I’d enjoyed the opportunities that my birth had given me. But the stuff I’d enjoyed was the stuff I wasn’t meant to be doing. The stuff I was supposed to be doing was the stuff that I spent my life avoiding, and I didn’t enjoy being royal; I simply enjoyed the easy life that being royal afforded me.

How could such a person be cut out to be King?

My brother had done everything right. He’d done his duty and picked up the slack for me, and it had turned him into a bitter and hate-filled individual. Perhaps I took some of the blame for that, but it was too late to do anything about it now. Look at what being Queen had done for my mother; she was a hugely intelligent woman with opinions of her own that she was most often unable to express because protocol forbade it. What could she have been, what contribution could she have made to the world, if she had renounced her birthright?

“Is everything I just heard true? Did you really get Keira pregnant with a bastard child?” my mother said when I hadn’t responded yet. Her eyes were cold, and her tone was even colder.

“The fact that you just called my unborn child a bastard pretty much makes up my mind about what I need to do next,” I finally said. “The final straw, if you will.”

I’d been prepared to take this step as a last resort if my mother tried to say that she would never approve of my desire to marry Keira. Now it seemed like a last resort of a different kind.