It’s like we’re speaking the same language.
I’d almost go so far as to stamp this as too good to be true.
“Just the three of us,” she adds.
“Perfect.”
“Is this your cell? I can text you my address. Where are you staying?”
I pace the hotel suite, one hand in my pocket. “In the city. West of downtown.”
“So you’re about an hour away from me then. Lucia goes to bed around eight. Would six work?”
“Lucia?” I ask. “Is that her name.”
I’m met with deafening silence on the other end. Followed by a small, “Yes.”
Lucia.
I have a daughter and her name is Lucia.
That one little detail does nothing more than add weight to the gravity of this situation, to make the reality of all of this a little more … vibrant.
I let it sink in for a few seconds, and then I pull my shit together.
“Six o’clock?” Pulling the phone from my ear, I check the time. It’s four thirty now. “I’ll make it work.”
We hang up and a minute later, my phone chimes with a text containing her address. I copy and paste it into a search window to make sure it’s legit—because stranger things have happened—and I’m met with an expired real estate listing for a three-bedroom bungalow. White with a lacquered yellow door, bright like daffodils and sunshine—not quite the electric color of a tennis ball, but close enough. With a deep front porch, hanging ferns, and flower bushes lining the driveway and sidewalk—just like my parents had at my childhood home.
I scroll through fifteen listing pictures. The house was built in the seventies, but the inside has been completely updated. White kitchen. Pale gray walls. Light wood floors. There’s a fireplace in the family room and a little covered deck off the dinette. The back yard is encased with a wooden picket fence painted in a shade that matches the fluffy clouds in the blue-sky background.
Clicking away from the movie-scene house, I shoot Taylor a text. I’d brought her along on the trip in case I needed someone to run errands to handle any miscellaneous inconveniences that might’ve come up, but tonight she’s off the clock.
She responds within seconds, asking where I’m going.
Heading to the en-suite bath, I brush my teeth, comb my hair, and freshen up. While we’re past the first impression phase, making myself presentable is a part of who I am.
I don’t reply to Taylor—where I’m going tonight is a private matter, and since she’s off the clock, it’s no longer her concern.
Grabbing my keys, I make my way to the elevator, grab my SUV from valet, type her address into the nav and start my journey.
An hour later, I’m pulling into the floral-encased driveway of the same little white house from the pictures—but before I so much as shift into park, I’m overtaken by the very same wild, adrenaline-fueled frenzy that normally fills my chest right before a match. A sensation so strong, it pulls me out of my body for a second, to somewhere else completely.
Strange.
This has never happened outside the court before.
Shoving it down, I kill the engine, put my best game face on, and climb out so I can meet my daughter. The sooner I do, the sooner I can put this entire thing to bed and get back to life as it was always meant to be.
Chapter 7
Rossi
* * *
Two bright headlights flash into the sidelights of my front door three minutes before six.
“Okay, baby girl. He’s here.” I don’t say Fabian. And I certainly don’t say Daddy. Honestly, I don’t know what to say, not that she’d understand any of it anyway.
With the baby on my hip, I check my reflection in the mirror above the console table, tucking my hair behind one ear before placing it back.
My heart gallops, inching up the back of my throat before settling in my ears.
“Is it hot in here?” I ask my daughter, despite the fact that she can’t answer. A nervous dampness collects at the back of my neck, along my hairline. Sniffing my shirt, I ensure I smell just as lovely as the rose bushes outside, and then I fan my warm cheeks. It’s too late to open a window or change from this sweater to a t-shirt. It’s also too late to talk myself out of this weird little frenzy because the sexiest man alive is strutting up my walkway.
Six more steps and he’ll be ringing my doorbell.
Sucking in a long, cool breath, I close my eyes, gather myself, and let it go.
It’s not like I need to impress him …
It’s not like it matters that he’s the most beautiful human I’ve ever laid eyes on—second only to my daughter.
Smoothing Lucia’s shiny onyx hair aside, I make sure her pink satin bow is straight, and that her outfit is stain-free. As soon as I got off the phone with him earlier, I changed her from the spit-up scented onesie she was wearing into a flower-and-duck covered romper. Nothing frilly or Sunday best-ish, but a serious improvement nonetheless.
He’s so close I can hear his footsteps on the other side of the door.
I try to swallow, but I can’t.
The doorbell chimes.
Lucia claps in my arms.
I take one last cleansing breath, tell myself this is going to go wonderfully no matter what, and then I reach for the knob.
“Hey,” I answer with the feigned confidence of a woman who isn’t at all uneasy about this. Stepping aside, I say, “Come on in.”
“Hi there.” His voice is velvet smooth, and his casual infliction is the kind you’d use with an old friend. His dark eyes lock onto mine, holding them captive for a single, endless second. A heady rush blows through me, a spine-tingling burst of air that came out of nowhere.
“You find us okay?” It’s a dumb question to ask, especially given this GPS day and age, but my mind is spinning so fast I can’t come up with something better.
“Yeah.” He slides off his pristine tennis shoes, placing them perfectly on my door mat alongside three pairs of my own. “Nice neighborhood you’ve got here. Reminds me of the one I grew up in. Same kind of houses.”
“It’s adorable, right?” I motion for him to follow me down the hall and to the living room where I’ve already spread out Lucia’s blanket and favorite toys. “You can sit wherever you’d like. I usually hang out on the floor with her …”
His gaze drifts from me to the baby, and his expression straddles the line between intrigue and the way I looked when I used to window shop for rescue cats knowing I was deathly and tragically allergic. There are few things worse than being a cat person but not owning a cat—except for maybe being a baby person and not having a baby.
But I remind myself Fabian isn’t a baby person—he’s said so himself.
I’m imagining things, and reading into every nuance is going to do me no favors.
Keeping a careful distance, he perches on the center cushion of my gray sofa, elbows resting on his knees as he watches his daughter play with a Baby Einstein radio.
“So,” I say with an awkward chuckle. I’ve never formally introduced a baby to anyone before. “This is Lucia.”
“Lucia,” he says her name under his breath. “That’s a beautiful name.”