“Which is?”
“Family.”
Made sense. She never did make time for the holidays, especially since that was peak traveling season and she could pick up overtime. It’d been a while since either of us spent Thanksgiving or Christmas with our families. The game and her work always came first.
It’s why we got along—we easily forgave our absences.
“So…what do you want from me?” I asked.
Clover didn’t hesitate. Her smile was bright enough to light the plane.
“I want a baby.”
My stomach crashed to my balls.
And I didn’t trust the twitch of interest hardening my cock.
“I want to have a baby.” She held my hand close to her chest. “And, Adrian…I want you to be the daddy.”
2
Clover
An oxygen mask tumbled out of the compartment above Adrian.
“Huh.” I reached over him, shoving the yellow mask back into its hold. “That’s never happened before.”
Adrian didn’t laugh.
Didn’t speak.
Didn’t even move.
I debated leaving the mask down in case he stopped breathing too.
Whoops. I’d broken the starting center and team captain for the Ironfield Forge, and that was a one hundred-million-dollar mistake.
He’d probably need a minute.
It was a pretty big ask. But it was out there now—for better or for worse. Couldn’t take it back, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to regret it.
I’d made my decision. I only hoped he’d understand.
Adrian’s widened eyes were dark, the color of a 3AM espresso after a grueling two-day stint across the country. The shock chased away the little worry crinkles which had recently appeared over his brow.
For a moment, he looked like the carefree Adrian before the gruesome injury. Not that the lines had marred him. Just the opposite. It’d turned him older, wiser, and somehow…sexier?
Then again, the man could take a puck, stick, or fist to the face and come out the other end with a grin that’d melt the damned ice under his skates.
His nose was crooked, his left front tooth not his own, and his jaw as sharp as a stick blade. A neatly trimmed beard framed his square chin, and his thick eyebrows softened eyes as dark as flint and as intense as the fires they sparked.
Surprise was a good look for him. His lips parted as if to swear, though only a confused croak rolled from his throat.
What was I thinking, giving him pretzels?
This was definitely a cookie conversation.
I rubbed his massive shoulder. The t-shirt stretched taut over the bulk of his muscles. The man had all the money in the world now, but he still couldn’t find clothes that fit a hockey player’s body. While most athletes struggled with snug shirts and tight collars, Adrian had a monstrous form that bulked in all the right spots.
I’d learned early in life that hockey required some serious glutes. It was a good thing I’d managed to squeeze Adrian into First Class. The man was practically all legs and ass.
What was the saying? The bigger they were, the harder they took the prospect of impregnation?
This wasn’t going to be an easy conversation.
“I’ll give you some time to consider my proposition,” I said. Adrian nodded, though I feared his head would loll off his shoulders. “I’m going to check on the other passengers and find you something to drink. How about Ginger Ale?”
Not that it’d do him any good. The man had forgotten how to swallow, and I couldn’t let him drown before I’d had a crack at his swimmers.
I slid out of my seat as he struggled with the basics—breathing, blinking, forming words.
That was to be expected though. I hadn’t just dropped a bomb on him—I’d blindfolded the man, bound him to the wall, and then drew a bulls eye over his crotch. It was a wonder he was still alive after I’d sling-shotted my ovaries at him.
But was it that bizarre a request, really?
Well, yes.
And no.
Adrian might’ve made a perfect father…had he spent any time outside of the hockey rink. Given the right motivations, I was sure he’d be good at both making the baby and raising one. After all, the man skated every damned day and night, sacrificing everything for his team. His body. His health. His time.
And when it came to me? Adrian was the most devoted and compassionate I’d ever met. How would making a baby be any different from the times he’d groggily stumble to my house in the middle of the night to kill the mustache-looking creepy crawlies with too many legs that skittered across my wall?
Both tasks were done at night.
Both would be handsomely rewarded with breakfast pancakes.
And both would result in a much happier me.
Adrian was already my bug-killer, top-shelf-reacher, car-fixer, jar-opener, snow-shoveler, and furniture-mover. Becoming my baby daddy was the natural progression of these things.
He just needed a little time to get used to the idea.
I busied myself in the galley, checking to ensure everything was clean, neat, and orderly for the rest of the flight. I cracked open a bottle of water and sipped. As usual, it had no character. Just flat, flavorless liquid.
It’d taken me way too long to learn that no water tasted as good as what came from Ironfield.
In fact, I’d traveled the entire country specifically to taste-test the local taps. New York. Miami. San Francisco. Seattle. I’d even joined the flight crew for international trips to sample the water from Paris.
Turned out, it tasted like how the city smelled.
And that’s when I realized the problem. For the first time in my life…I’d been homesick.
Which was ridiculous because I hardly had a home. Sure, I’d bought a cozy house. Stayed there occasionally. Slept in the bedroom. Ate over the sink like an uncivilized beast. It was as much a house as any other.
Or, at least, it might’ve been.
A few weeks after Adrian’s injury, I returned to work and flew out from Ironfield, but my heart wasn’t in it anymore. It’d stayed on the ground, playing hooky with a fanciful dream, silent wish, and deep dark fantasy of a different life—one that wasn’t measured by airline miles and layovers.
It was then I realized that sometimes a girl just wanted to shake up her life and see how much of a future she could cram inside her uterus.
Nothing wrong with that.
Besides, Adrian was nothing if not resilient. After five minutes, he shook off the shock like a minor concussion.
The sudden appearance of a towering, 6’5, 240-pound rampaging monster storming into the galley alarmed my fellow crew.
Gladys, the senior flight attendant with thirty years of experience and only thirty seconds of reserved patience, contorted her thin, smoker’s lips into a sour smile and shooed the mountain of a man from her path.
Adrian had spent his life barreling into snarling, spitting, rabid defensemen—angry brutes armed with sticks and multi-million-dollar contracted hits masquerading as legal agreements.
Gladys wasn’t moving him. And she knew it.
“Wow…” She craned her neck up to study Adrian’s face. “You are a big boy.”
To his credit, he did look gorgeous for one o’clock in the morning. Simplicity suited him. He wore a white t-shirt, black jeans, sneakers tied with knots instead of bows, and a dark-faced watch with only the 12 labeled in gold—a gift from his grandfather at our high school graduation. Sure as hell didn’t look like a millionaire crash landed in the galley.