The Baby That Changed Everything

CHAPTER SEVEN

BAILEY SLEPT REALLY badly that night. Every time she closed her eyes, all she could see was Jared in that wretched suit, looking totally edible. Worse, her mouth tingled in memory of the way he’d kissed her.

OK, she’d admit it. She was attracted to Jared Fraser. Big time.

But, after the way her marriage had imploded, she wasn’t sure she could risk getting involved with anyone again. Letting herself be vulnerable. Risking the same thing happening all over again. After the ectopic pregnancy she’d ended up pushing Ed away—physically as well as emotionally—because she’d been so scared of getting pregnant again.

So, as much as she would like to date Jared—and to take things a lot further than they had at the wedding—she was going to be sensible and keep things between them just as colleagues. Because she didn’t want to hurt him, the way she’d hurt Ed.

Do you like kids?

And he’d said yes. She could imagine him as a father, especially after she’d seen him with the children at the wedding. And that was another sticking point. She wanted children, too. But the ectopic pregnancy had shredded her confidence. What if it happened again and her other tube ruptured, leaving her infertile?

She’d been terrified of getting pregnant again, and that had made her scared of sex—a vicious circle she hadn’t been able to break. Technically, Ed had been unfaithful to her; but Bailey blamed herself for it, because he’d only done it after she’d pushed him away and refused to let him touch her. She knew that the break-up of her marriage was all her fault.

Since her divorce, until Jared, she hadn’t met anyone she’d wanted to date. But how could she expect him to deal with all her baggage? It wouldn’t be fair.

So, the next morning, she sent Jared a text to clear the air—and also to make it very clear to him how she felt. And hopefully it would ease any potential awkwardness at work.

Sorry. Too much champagne yesterday. Hope I haven’t wrecked our professional relationship.

Jared read the message for the fourth time.

Too much champagne? Hardly. He’d been watching Bailey. She’d had one glass, maybe two. With a meal. Most of the time she’d been drinking sparkling water—as had he.

It was an excuse, and he knew it. She’d looked so scared. As panicky as he’d felt. But why?

Next time he saw her, he decided, he’d get her to talk to him. For now, he’d try to keep things easy between them.

Medicinal recommendation of a fry-up for the hangover, he texted back. See you on the pitch later in the week.

Facing Jared for the first time since the wedding made Bailey squirm inside. In the end, she decided to brazen it out. Hadn’t he said she was sparkly? Then she’d go into super-sparkly mode. So she chatted to all the players, gave Archie a smacking kiss hello on the cheek—while making quite sure she was out of grabbing reach half a second later—and gave Jared a lot of backchat about being too old and too stuck in his ways to do yoga with the boys in the team.

To her relief, he responded the same way, and things were back to the way they used to be. Before he’d kissed her.

Almost.

Because during the training session she looked up from her laptop and caught him looking at her; those amazing blue eyes were filled with wistfulness.

Yeah.

She’d like to repeat that kiss, too. Take things further. But she just couldn’t take the risk. She knew he’d end up being just as hurt as she was. She couldn’t destroy him, the way she’d destroyed Ed.

‘Can we have a word?’ Jared asked at the end of the training session.

‘Um—sure.’ Bailey looked spooked.

He waited until the players and Archie had gone into the dressing room. ‘Are you OK?’ he asked gently.

‘Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?’

‘You and me. Saturday night,’ he pointed out.

‘Too much champagne,’ she said swiftly.

‘I don’t think so.’ He kept his voice soft. ‘I think you’re running scared.’

She lifted her chin and gave him a look that was clearly supposed to be haughty, but instead he saw the vulnerability there. ‘I’m not scared.’

‘That,’ he said, ‘is pure bravado. And I know that, because this thing between us scares me, too.’

The fight went out of her. ‘Oh.’

‘So what are we going to do about it?’ he asked.

‘I’m not looking for a relationship. I’m fine being single.’

‘That’s what I’ve been telling myself, too.’ He paused. ‘Maybe we could be brave. Together.’

‘I …’ She shook her head. ‘I’m not ready for this.’

‘Fair enough.’ He held her gaze. ‘But when you are …’

She swallowed hard. ‘Yeah. I, um, ought to let you get on.’

He let her go. For now. And he could be patient, because Bailey Randall was definitely worth waiting for.

Everything was fine for the next week, until Bailey’s system picked up a marked problem. Maybe it was a glitch in the system, she thought, and decided to keep it to herself for the time being. But when the same result showed after the next session, and after she’d caught the tail end of the lads gossiping outside the dressing room, she knew that she was going to have to do something.

‘Jared, can we have a quick word?’ she asked quietly.

He frowned. ‘Is something wrong?’

‘I think so.’ She gestured to her laptop, so he’d know that it was to do with the monitoring system and one of the players.

‘Hadn’t we better talk to Archie if you want to pull someone from the team?’ he asked.

She shook her head and kept her voice low. ‘This is a tricky one, and you’re the only person I can talk to about it.’

‘OK,’ he said. ‘I assume you mean somewhere quiet, away from the club.’

‘Definitely away from the club,’ she said. ‘Yes, please.’

‘Are you free straight after training?’

She nodded.

‘We’ll talk then.’

‘Thank you.’ And just knowing that she could share this with him and he’d help her work out what to do made some of the sick feeling go away.

After the session, Jared took Bailey to a café not far from the football club. ‘Sit down, and I’ll get us some coffee.’ He remembered what she’d drunk at the gym. ‘I take it you’d like a latte?’

She smiled. ‘I’m half-Italian. You only drink lattes at breakfast. Espresso for me, please.’

He smiled back. ‘Sure.’

‘And can I be greedy and ask for some cake, too?’ she asked. ‘I don’t care what sort, as long as it’s cake.’

‘It’s not going to be up to your brother’s standards,’ he warned.

‘Right now, I don’t care—I need the sugar rush.’

Worry flickered down Jared’s spine. Whatever she wanted to discuss with him was clearly something serious if she needed a sugar rush. And he’d noticed that she’d been much quieter than normal during the training session.

He came back with two coffees, a blueberry muffin and a double chocolate muffin. ‘You can have first pick.’

‘Thank you.’ She took the blueberry one.

He sat down opposite her. ‘Spit it out. What’s worrying you?’

‘You know how my system picks up if someone’s underperforming?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m worried about one of the players. I’ve heard the rumours that he’s in danger of losing his place on the team because he hasn’t been playing well for a while.’

‘Darren,’ Jared said immediately.

She nodded. ‘And I heard the boys talking. He’s not coping with the pressure.’ She sighed. ‘It’s hearsay and I don’t want to accuse him of something when he might be perfectly innocent, but …’ Her eyes were huge with concern. ‘I think he’s drinking. Apart from it making his performance worse, he’s not even eighteen yet—he’s underage.’

Jared blew out a breath. ‘I’ve known a few players over the years who started drinking to handle the pressure, and it finished their careers.’

She looked miserable. ‘I don’t know what to do. If I tell Archie, then Darren will definitely lose his place. He’ll be kicked out.’

‘For breaking his contract,’ Jared agreed.

‘But if he is drinking, then it needs to stop right now, Jared. He’s going to damage himself.’

‘Agreed.’

‘Maybe I’m being a bit paranoid and overthinking it. Have a look and see what you reckon.’ She opened her laptop and drew up the graphs. Darren’s performance had been very near his average in every session apart from the last two, where there was a marked difference.

‘So you suspected it last time as well?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘I wanted to monitor a second performance, just in case the first one was a one-off—a glitch in the programme or something.’

‘No, I think your analysis is spot on. We need to tell Archie and Lyle Fincham.’

‘But they’ll kick him out.’

‘Not necessarily. We can both put in a good word for him. He’s not a bad kid—he’s just made a mistake and he needs some help.’ Jared shrugged. ‘Extra coaching might make things easier for him, and I can design a workout programme tailored to his needs.’

‘You’d do that for him?’ She sounded surprised.

‘Everyone makes mistakes. And everyone deserves a second chance,’ he said. ‘A chance to put it right.’

He hoped she’d think about it. And that she’d give them a second chance, too.

Mr Fincham wasn’t available, so Jared and Bailey tackled Archie.

‘So there’s a problem with one of the players?’ Archie asked.

Bailey nodded and talked the team coach through the computer evidence.

Archie frowned. ‘So you think he’s drinking?’

‘You know as well as I do, some players do when they can’t cope with the pressure,’ Jared said.

‘And it only makes things worse. Plus he’s underage. If he can’t cope, then he’ll have to leave the team,’ Archie said with a sigh. ‘I can’t have him being a bad influence on the rest of the lads.’

‘Or,’ Bailey said, ‘you could give him another chance. We could talk to him and tell him what damage he’s doing to himself—in graphic enough terms to make him stop.’

‘And I can give him an extra training programme to help him brush up his skills and make him feel that some of the pressure’s off,’ Jared said.

‘If the papers get hold of this, the muck will really hit the fan,’ Archie said, and shook his head. ‘No. He’ll have to go.’

‘Archie. It’s happened twice. That’s not so bad—he’ll be able to stop. Give the boy a chance to come good,’ Bailey urged.

‘And what message does that give the others? That I’m soft on the kind of behaviour that destroys a team?’

‘No. It tells them that you understand they’re still very young and some of them need a bit more guidance than others,’ Jared said.

‘Lyle won’t be happy about it,’ Archie warned.

‘But you can talk him round. You’re the team coach. He’ll listen to you,’ Bailey said.

Archie didn’t look totally convinced. ‘And what if Darren does it again?’

‘Then there are all kinds of disciplinary options,’ Jared said.

‘But if we all give him the right support,’ Bailey added, ‘he won’t do it again.’

Archie went silent, clearly thinking about it. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll square it with Lyle. But I’m going to read young Darren the Riot Act and make sure he knows that if he puts a single toe out of line from now on, he’ll be out.’

‘Thank you,’ Bailey said.

‘Everyone deserves a second chance,’ Jared added. ‘I think he’ll make the most of it.’

Everyone deserves a second chance.

Could that be true for them, too? Bailey wondered.

Jared had clearly been thinking about it, too, because later that evening he called her. ‘Are you busy?’

‘I’m studying,’ she said.

‘Have you eaten yet?’

‘Yes.’ A sandwich at her desk. But it counted.

‘Oh.’ He paused. ‘I wondered if you’d like to have dinner with me.’

Was he asking her on a date? Adrenalin fizzed through her veins. Strange how Jared made her feel like a teenager. ‘As colleagues?’ she asked carefully.

‘No.’

So he did mean a date. Excitement was replaced by skittering panic. ‘I’ll think about it.’

‘Is my company really that bad?’ he asked.

‘No—no, it’s not that, Jared. Not at all.’ She sighed. ‘It’s complicated.’

‘I can take a hint.’

She would like to have dinner with him; it was just that the whole idea of dating again scared her. How could she tell him, without dumping all that baggage on him? Telling him what had happened to her, and why her marriage had ended? She couldn’t. She just couldn’t. ‘I, um, haven’t dated in a while,’ she said.

‘Me, neither,’ he said, surprising her. ‘I’m seriously out of practice, too.’

Something else they had in common. Who, she wondered, had hurt him?

‘I was thinking,’ he said, ‘we were a good team, this afternoon.’

‘Yes.’

‘And I was thinking,’ he said, ‘maybe we should give ourselves a chance to see if we could be a good team outside work.’

‘Maybe,’ she said.

‘I could,’ he suggested, ‘cook dinner for you.’

‘You can cook?’

He coughed. ‘Don’t be sexist. Especially as your brothers are both chefs.’

She smiled wryly. ‘Yeah, I guess.’

‘So—how about it?’

‘If I say yes,’ she said, ‘then it’s just between us?’

‘You want to keep it a secret?’ He sounded slightly hurt.

‘I want to keep life simple,’ she said. ‘Can I think about it?’

‘It’s just as well I’m a sports doctor. My ego could really use some liniment right now,’ he said dryly.

And now he’d made her laugh. He was the first man to do that in a long while. Maybe, just maybe, she should give this a try. Maybe everyone was right and it was time she learned to live again. And Jared might just be the man to help her do that.

‘All right. Thank you, Jared. I’d like to have dinner with you. I don’t have any food allergies and I’m not fussy about what I eat.’

‘That was a quick decision.’

And she still wasn’t sure it was the right one. Part of her really, really wanted to do it; and part of her wanted to run. ‘When do you want to do it?’ Oh, and that sounded bad. She felt her face heat. Worse still, that was a definite Freudian slip. Because any woman with red blood in her veins would want to go to bed with someone as sexy as Jared Fraser. ‘Have dinner, I mean,’ she added hastily.

‘Tomorrow night?’ he suggested.

‘That’s fine.’ Big, fat lie. Now they’d actually set a date, the panic was back. In triplicate. ‘I’ll need your address.’

‘Got a pen?’

‘Give me two seconds.’ She grabbed a pen. ‘OK, tell me.’ She scribbled down his address as he dictated it. ‘What time?’

‘Seven?’

‘Seven,’ she confirmed. ‘Can I bring anything? Pudding, maybe?’ She could get Rob to make something special. Then again, Rob would tell their mother, and Lucia would go straight into interrogation mode. OK. She’d cheat and buy it from a top-end supermarket instead.

‘No, that’s fine. Just bring yourself,’ he said.

And how scary that sounded.

Bailey was feeling antsy the next morning, and she was really glad that she was busy all day in clinic. There were the usual sprains and strains, although she did feel a bit sorry for the middle-aged woman who’d managed to give herself tennis elbow from taking her weightlifting training too hard and was horrified to learn it could take several months of rest before the tear in her ligament healed.

‘Rest, ice it every couple of hours, take painkillers and use a support bandage when you exercise and whenever it’s really sore,’ Bailey said. ‘And when you do go back to using weights, you’ll need to drop the weights right down and take it very steadily. And don’t do anything above your head before it’s healed fully, or your rotator cuff in your shoulder will overcompensate for your elbow and you’ll have to get over the damage to that, too.’

Mrs Curtis grimaced. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have done that last set. I just wanted to finish the last few reps, but I should’ve just admitted that I was tired and stopped there.’

‘You’ll know next time,’ Bailey said. ‘Come back and see me if it’s not any better within a couple of weeks. It should heal on its own, but if it doesn’t then a corticosteroid injection could help.’

‘Thank you.’ Mrs Curtis smiled wryly. ‘That’ll teach me to remember how old I am, not how old I feel.’

Bailey patted her shoulder. ‘We all do it. Don’t beat yourself up about it.’

She bought wine and chocolates on the way home, and changed her outfit three times before deciding that smart casual was the way forward—a little black dress would be way too much. Black trousers and a silky long-sleeved teal top would be better. She added her nice jet earrings to give her courage, put on a slightly brighter shade of lipstick than she would normally and then stared at herself in the mirror.

How long had it been since she’d gone on a first date? Or since someone had cooked for her? How did you even behave in these sorts of situations? She thought about calling Joni and asking for help—but, then again, it would make Joni think she was really serious about Jared, and … No, it was all too complicated. She had no idea how he made her feel, other than that he put her in a flat spin.

‘It’s dinner. Just dinner,’ she told her reflection. ‘Treat him as a friend. A colleague. And then everything will be fine.’

Except she knew she was lying. Because since that kiss, she hadn’t thought of Jared as a colleague—or as a friend. And he hadn’t asked her to dinner as a colleague or friend, either.

Would he kiss her again tonight?

And she wasn’t sure if the shiver down her spine was anticipation or fear.

CHAPTER EIGHT

BAILEY’S PANIC GREW as she walked up the path to Jared’s door. She almost didn’t ring the bell and scuttled home to safety instead, but she knew that would be unkind and unfair. He’d gone to the effort of cooking her a meal, so the least she could do was turn up to eat it—even if she did feel way more jumpy than the proverbial cat on a hot tin roof.

She took a deep breath and rang the bell.

When he answered the door, she was glad she’d opted for smart casual, because he’d done the same. He was wearing black trousers and a dark blue shirt that brought out the colour of his eyes. She could feel herself practically dissolving into a puddle of hormones, and her social skills had all suddenly deserted her.

How had she forgotten just how gorgeous the man was?

And his biceps.

Don’t think about his biceps, she told herself. Concentrate. Friends and colleagues.

She handed him the wine and chocolates. ‘I forgot to ask you if I should bring red or white, so I played it safe—and I should’ve asked you if you like milk, white or dark chocolate.’ Oh, help. Now she was gabbling and she sounded like a fool.

‘These are just fine, and you really didn’t need to bring them—but I appreciate it,’ he said.

And, oh, that smile was to die for. The butterflies in her tummy went into stampede mode.

‘Come in.’ He stood aside and gestured for her to enter.

How come he didn’t look anywhere near as nervous as she felt? How could he be so cool and relaxed when she was a gibbering wreck?

She followed him inside, her tension and anticipation growing with every step.