Royal Baby (A British Bad Boy Romance) (43 page)

Chapter 24

Allison

Saturday came quickly, and I was horrified to find myself running late. That wasn’t like me. It just went to show how strung-out I’d been recently—but this would do me some good. I’d texted my Dad a few minutes ago to let him know, and my ticket had been left at the gate so I was able to run straight in, up the familiar stairs and down the familiar corridors towards the familiar hum and buzz of an excited crowd.

The seats that my father and I always got were good. Not the best in the place—we couldn’t afford that—but good enough, and I could’ve found my way to them blindfolded.

But when I arrived at them, there was a surprise waiting for me.

Liam.

“I guess you had to be the one who turns up late at least once,” he said, smiling hopefully at me from my father’s seat.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked. I wanted to storm away, but dammit…it was good to see him. Those sinful eyes of his were almost irresistible.

Almost.

“I need someone to explain this game to me,” he replied. “I thought it was essentially cricket with a different shaped stick, but I don’t know what the hell’s going on down there.”

“You can’t compare baseball to cricket!”

Liam grinned at me. “So I’m learning.” He looked around the stadium. “I’m loving America, though. No one knows who I am here. Although it would be nice if one person could recognize me. You know—for the ego.”

I rolled my eyes. “Your ego is fine. Where’s my Dad?”

Liam held up his hands. “Please don’t be mad at him…”

“I’m not mad at him, I’m mad at you! Where is he? Tied up in the trunk of your car or something?”

He chuckled, which only made me angrier. “Look, I told your father what happened between us…” he began.

“You what?” I hissed in anger, but I sounded more like a drunken cat than anything threatening. Liam had always had a funny effect on me. “If I’d wanted him to know, I’d have told him myself.”

“Well, I sort of assumed you had,” Liam said. “And by the time I realized you hadn’t, it was rather too late for me to backtrack. Really fucking awkward conversation, if I’m honest. Anyway, he thought that I should have a chance to talk to you.”

“Then you told him the wrong story.”

“I told him the truth.”

“I don’t think you even know the meaning of the word!” I said, crossing my arms.

Liam shrugged. “I don’t know if your Dad believed me either—nice guy by the way, I should’ve said—Bobby Charlton fan, which you’ve got to respect. Anyway, as I was saying, I don’t know if he believed me but he thought you ought to hear my version and make up your own mind, because you’ve obviously been upset since you got back.”

“I haven’t been upset!” I practically squawked. Even with the noise of the ballgame around me, I was aware of how shriekingly loud that had been. “I’m going.”

I turned on my heel and stalked towards the doors. I just couldn’t talk to this man who’d betrayed me, lied to me and broken my hea…no. I wouldn’t allow him the satisfaction by even
thinking
that right now.

“Allison!” Liam chased after me. “Just let me give you my side of the story.”

“Seen it,” I said bluntly, walking briskly on without breaking my pace. “It’s all over the papers. You say you were set up by Brian. All
very
believable, and not at all like a bullshit soap opera…”

“You see, I knew you’d take that attitude, because it really does sound like something out of a bad telenovela. Evil villain manager and all,” said Liam, struggling to take something out of a bag he was carrying as he continued to chase me. “But look! Toxicology reports from the hospital confirming the presence of barbiturates in my blood that night.”

I snorted. “Like that couldn’t be faked. There’s gotta be a lot of doctors who’d be happy to do that in return for a cut of your fortune.”

“A court of law accepted them as real just two days ago, which I suppose you haven’t heard, as that little fact hasn’t hit the papers yet,” Liam replied. “And I’m going to win the case, you know. A jury of unbiased people is going to say that Brian mismanaged and drugged me.”

“Gullible Englishmen.”

Liam ran around to face me, but I walked on so he was forced to walk backwards in front of me. “For fuck’s sake, Allison. Can you just stop for one second?”

I felt a pang of guilt for being such a bitch and refusing to listen to a single word, so I stopped in my tracks. He’d come all this way; I owed him at least a conversation.

He sighed with relief. “Look, I don’t care if you forgive me or take me back, I just need you to know my side of the story. Actually, that’s a lie, I’ll never be happy again if you don’t forgive me and take me back, but I would live with it, very fucking reluctantly. What I
can’t
live with is you thinking that I would do something like this to someone like you. I can’t bear the idea of you thinking that three girls—or five or ten—could possibly be worth one of you. You are the single most wonderful woman I have ever met, and whatever happens here and now, you will remain forever and always the best thing that ever happened to me in my life. I know I’m a screw-up, and I don’t and never could deserve you, but you’re perfect, and it’s really important to me that you know that, because I don’t want you to take any personal negatives away from this.”

I didn’t speak yet. I couldn’t.

“I love you,” he added. “I flew all the way here just to tell you that.”

Tears sprang to my eyes.  “I love…” I trailed off for a second. I couldn’t let him know how I still felt about him, deep down. “I mean, I loved you too! And then it all got ruined. I have no idea what to think, but I just feel like I can’t trust you. I feel so stupid because I
did
trust you, more than once, and both times I was made to look like a complete and utter fool.”

Liam tried to hug me, but I pulled away.

“Will you give me one last chance to convince you? Please. Just trust me that much,” he said.

And, though I couldn’t imagine why, I did.

Liam led the way to a private room. “I knew you might not believe me, and I get that my shitty past is against me. Then there was that debacle with the blonde model at the car show, which made it even harder for you to trust me. But maybe if I can prove to you that I’m telling the truth, then you can start to trust me again.”

He opened the door, and I did my second double-take of the day. Seeing Liam in my father’s seat earlier had been a surprise, but seeing Mikey in here, watching the game through a window, was an absolute shock. He looked around at me.

“Hello, love. This is a turn up, eh? The wife and kids are loving it, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out the rules of your baseball. Bloody ridiculous game.”

“Mikey?” I said. I was now wondering if this was all some strange dream.

“He flew me over,” Mikey said, pointing at Liam. “And the wife and kids. Put us all up in a swanky hotel. Very nice. Chocolates on the pillows and everything.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Well, when I last saw you…” Mikey sat down, his most comfortable position for storytelling. “You were upset as hell, and I know you told me not to, but I thought I’d settle the man’s hash.”

My hand flew to my mouth. “Oh my god. You were actually going to beat up Liam?”

He nodded. “Seemed to be the thing to do. You’d mentioned the name of the nightclub where he was and I drove over there, planning to hang about outside until he came out and then…”

“Settle his hash?”

“Exactly!” Mikey grinned. “Not a subtle plan, I’ll grant you, but it seemed to suit the demands of the situation. Anyway, long story short—I arrived and ducked down in an alleyway by the club entrance and there, from behind me, was a noise. I looked around and there was a body lying by the wall—spark out, but with eyes still open. I thought he was dead for a second, because you see the odd corpse as a London cabbie, but he was still making noises so I thought: ‘
hospital, quick smart’
. It was only when I got him into the cab that I saw who he was and I thought to myself…I thought
: ‘Hello, he’s the one whose hash I’m supposed to be settling’,
which you can’t do when the man’s unconscious, unless he’s really big. Then I thought: ‘
isn’t he supposed to be having a foursome with three young women right about now? The state of him, he’s not doing anything with anyone’.
Anyway, by the time I was done thinking, I got to the hospital and dropped him off. But I waited around because I wanted to know what had been going on—some mischief, I was thinking—and if he came around and sobered up I thought I could still settle his hash that night; save myself another journey. Then the doctor comes out and says, ‘Are you family?’ Now, I must have misheard because I thought he said ‘Are you the cabbie?’ Terrible error on my part, because I said ‘yes’, and he gave me all the juicy details. Anyway, long story short…he’d been drugged.”

I absorbed the information with quiet equanimity, aware that Liam was watching me closely.

“I pushed my luck a bit then,” Mikey continued. “I said, ‘Can you tell me if he’s been having it off with anyone?’. Doctor gave me a bit of a funny look but he confirmed, ‘no sexual activity’. In fact, he said with the amount of drugs in Mr. Croft, he’d be lucky to raise a smile, let alone anything else, if you catch my drift.”

I kept listening, and Mikey finally finished up his story. “I didn’t have any way of getting in touch with you, love, so I stuck around till Mr. Croft here woke up and told him my side of things. He asked if I’d help him track down the woman he loved. I said, yes—provided I can bring the wife and kids for a nice little holiday.”

It was hard to keep track of the thoughts in my head. Liam
had
been telling the truth, and I’d been so dead-set on thinking the worst of him that I’d failed to listen to him when he told me the truth. I was a grade-A bitch, and I couldn’t believe he’d come all the way to my home country just to pursue me. I didn’t deserve it. A decent person would’ve trusted him, no matter how much evidence there was to the contrary.

But one thought overwhelmed all that, and that was that it all barely mattered, because I loved Liam, and clearly he loved me too.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said quietly, as if he’d read my mind. “And I get it. Don’t feel bad. Anyone else in your position would’ve thought the same and figured I was an asshole. It doesn’t make you a bad person. And if you think it does….well, I forgive you, and I really hope you can trust me from now on.”

I nodded. It was suddenly that simple. Just a few words, and our earlier issues seemed to fade away like shadows in the evening.

“Bloody hell, would you take a look at that!”

Mikey was pointing out of the window to the scoreboard at the far end of the stadium, and I turned to look. It read: ‘
Allison, will you marry me?”

Holy crap.

I wheeled back around to find Liam on one knee, holding out a ring. His face was desperately hopeful; a far cry from the bad boy smirk I was so used to, although there was still that same old twinkle behind his eyes.

“In the circumstances, this is probably pretty dumb, given that for all I know, you may still hate my living guts, seeing as you haven’t said a word in the last three minutes. But one thing I’ve learned in my life is that when you have a chance for happiness, you take it, because you don’t know what tomorrow might bring. I’ve never been as happy as I am with you. I don’t want to wait to see what happens, I want to be happy now. And if you feel the same way, then I’ll do everything I can to make you as happy as you make me. This ring is made from a medal I won when I played youth football…”

“Well, that explains why it looks a bit cheap,” Mikey interjected.

“Since I won it, it’s been a symbol of everything that’s been good in my life. I want you to have it, because you’ve made it practically obsolete by being the very best thing in my world. So what do you say…marry me?”

My hand went to my mouth again as he spoke, and I considered his words.

It turned out that I didn’t even need to. I already knew what my answer would be, despite the fact that I’d just been yelling at the poor guy only ten minutes earlier.

Back when I’d first met Liam, I’d been torn by the confusing feelings I’d had for him. I’d disliked everything about him and wanted him at the same time, but now…now I was head-over-heels in love with him, despite all the crap we’d been through. I knew that I’d been totally wrong when I’d distrusted him and run away from him, but he’d chased after me and forgiven me without a second thought, because that was the sort of person he was.

He was the best. The absolute best.

He’d been a bad boy in his earlier days, but it was damn near impossible to resist a bad boy who was also a good man, and that’s exactly what Liam was. He was a great man, and he made everything in the world better just by being in it—a billion times better.

I stared at the ring, thoughts running crazily through my head. “You know, I lied to you too,” I finally said.

Liam’s face fell. “Oh…you did?”

I smiled and gently took the ring. “Yes. I promised you something if you won the cup final, but I never gave it to you. I think it’s about time I delivered….”