One Perfect Night: A Sports Romance by Bec Amber Read Free Book Online Page A

“I guess I messed up dinner plans, huh?”
    Logan shook his head, setting his jaw. This was a miracle, a gift, and he would look at it as such. “You did nothing of the sort. We’re having a baby….we’re having a baby.”
    “I’m having our baby.” She emphasized the “I” and “our”.
    He wasn’t sure he liked the implication there. It was breaking his heart that she didn't want him involved. Did she really feel nothing for him?
    “What do you mean?” he asked.
    “We’ll work it out,” she assured, but he wasn’t sure he believed her and that idea terrified him.

Chapter 8
    Fourteen Months Later…
    Julie rubbed her back and blew her hair out of her face, sweaty little tendrils still clinging to her cheeks. It was unseasonably warm in Los Angeles, and her air conditioning was off for the season. It would come back on in May, but who had expected the city to hit ninety degrees in winter?
    Julie wasn’t the only one struggling, wasn’t the only one cranky and miserable. Little Gregory Logan had been crying for hours. The doctor suspected colic, but Julie thought maybe he missed his father, as strange as that seemed. Greg was so little that Julie didn’t figure that he knew Daddy from Grandpa and Pop, but she couldn’t deny that he seemed to have a connection with Logan that he didn’t have with the other men in his young life.
    Logan would be on TV later, not that Greg had any idea what his father did or where he was. Maybe there would be a package video on Logan, possibly an interview, but did that really matter? Why did Julie hang on for any little glimpse she could get of him in his public life? Why did every glimpse of him still make her heart flutter and body respond with need? Why weren’t his visits and time with Greg enough?
    Very few people knew Logan was Greg’s father. Julie’s parents knew, of course, as did Logan’s, and his sister and niece. But nobody else, not even Belle, knew who the father was. If Belle chose to get out of her own little self-centered bubble for a moment, she might be able to do the math and figure out a timeline, but as it was, in the “All Belle, All the Time” show that was her life, she didn’t care beyond saying she thought Greg was cute.
    Logan had insisted on taking care of many of Greg’s individual needs, despite what Julie had wanted. He’d wanted to do a lot more, but Julie wouldn’t let him. It was too important for her to provide for her son, first and foremost. She’d taken the crib and clothes, the afghan his mother had made, the needlepoint birth announcement hanging just over his bureau.
    But she refused his cash handouts. He phrased them as child support, but she refused to consider that, thinking it as charity whether than actual funds for the raising of their son. He was the most stubborn man she’d ever met, but then again, he’d met his match in her. And with Logan in Des Moines most of the time, one woman or another on his arm, she couldn’t run the risk that he would be involved in their son’s life only when he had the time. Or when he was between girlfriends. She’d seen too many people go through that to want a life like that for her son.
    She didn’t restrict Logan’s access to Greg, but she was very wary and very watchful. She had to keep her son’s needs first and foremost in her mind.
    There was no way for Logan to be the father Julie—and Greg—needed him to be. He was in a different world, he was away too much. He was…
    She rocked Greg, half her attention on the pre-show for the football game, half her attention on her son. He was beautiful, with his chubby cheeks, his curly brown hair and his big green eyes, just like his father’s.
    Her heart ached—their connection still resonated in her head as one of the most beautiful moments in her life. He’d insisted on paying child support and she’d insisted on him putting it into a college fund. He called every week, asking her to consider a future with him. But