I sighed. I’d been trying to get her to call me James since day one, but she refused. Apparently, it “simply isn’t the way things are done.”
Mrs. Watson had been trying to teach Harper to stay seated until she’d finished her meal, but whenever she heard the Rover, she bounced off her seat and half-ran to the garage. Just as she had that day.
“How’s my girl doing?” I cooed as I took a seat next to her, accepting my own lunch from Mrs. Watson. One of the perks of having a full-time nanny who had three children and six grandchildren of her own was that she cooked like a real mom and loved cooking for us.
Of course, when I’d first started shopping for a nanny, I had been inundated with girls in their 20s with big tits and fine asses throwing themselves at me. Ryder and I had some fun during the process, but I quickly realized it would never work, hiring one of them.
Enter Mrs. W. She was perfect in every way. She loved Harper like she was her own, and at 55, she had zero interest in fucking me. If anything, despite her formality, she treated me like a son and called me out when I was full of shit.
Needless to say, she’d had to call me out often. Especially in the early days. I’d barely been 22 when a girl who had looked vaguely familiar had rocked up on my doorstep with a ratty car seat and a baby with my hazel eyes peering up at me.
“Her name is Harper,” the girl had said. “She’s yours.”
A ton of bricks dropped on my head out of nowhere while a freight train crashed into me and cartoon birds circled my head.
One look at those hazel eyes though, flecked with gold just like mine, and I knew that she was telling the truth.
“I, uh, I guess you’d better come in then.” I’d said stupidly after eternity had passed, and my voice box had started functioning again.
The girl stepped into my bachelor pad, a modern penthouse overlooking the ocean that I’d been renting at the time. She thrust the handle of the car seat into my hands and proceeded to tell me exactly what had happened on my 21st birthday.
Ryder had hosted one of his epic parties for my birthday, and I’d woken up the next morning with hazy memories of a brunette with a rocking body and an eager tongue. She had been gone by the time I hauled my ass out of bed after noon the next day, and I’d never heard from her again.
Until that day.
As it turned out, I’d conceived myself a life-altering little gift for my 21st birthday. The girl’s name was Ashley. She had calmly sipped some water as she spun the tale that had my whole life come crashing down around me.
She told me she’d always been opposed to abortion on principle, so when she discovered her pregnancy, it was never an option for her. She said she wanted to raise the baby by herself and couldn’t bring herself to give her up for adoption.
Having had Harper though, she realized that babies didn’t come cheap, took up a lot of your time, and didn’t stick to your schedule. And also, that she didn’t have a maternal bone in her whole damn body.
After saying her piece, she had smoothed her skirt, pushed a thick brown envelope across my coffee table, and told me she’d taken the liberty of having some papers drawn up by a lawyer friend. Harper was all mine.
With that little golden nugget, she’d swept from my apartment, never to be seen or heard from again.
The next couple of days were next-level chaos. I was an only child who’d never even held a baby. I mean, fuck, I didn’t even know how to get her out of the ratty old car seat when her mother slammed the door behind her and Harper started crying.
I briefly considered giving her up for adoption, fully believing that it would be best for her, but paging through portfolios of prospective parents and trying to imagine my Harper living with those strangers was impossible.
A couple of blackout drunken nights and more than a few tantrums and rants later, I realized that I had to step up. So, I did. With a lot of help
from Ryder and the guys.
I’ve come a long way since then, I realized as I sat eating my lunch next to my baby. My heart swelled with pride as I listened to her babble about her morning.
Chapter Four
Gabrielle
I hated going to my father’s office. Everything about it annoyed me. Nothing more so than his receptionist peering at me over rimless fashion glasses and asking me to take a seat.
“I’ll let him know that you’re here, Gabrielle,” she said.
I sighed and flopped onto one of the ridiculously uncomfortable couches in his waiting room and did what was required. I waited for my appointment with my own damn father.
The halls around me bustled with people laughing and talking while others barked into their Bluetooth headsets. No one took any notice of me, so I took my time studying my father’s little worker ants. I couldn’t imagine working for him, but they looked happy enough. They probably all shared his borderline obsessive love for watching a bunch of grown men chasing a ball around for a couple of hours every Friday.
Don’t get me wrong; I grew up around football. I knew there was a lot more to it than that. I’m not stupid. Or blind. I just had a deep-seated resentment for the game and everything about it.