Crown's Chance at Love (22 page)

“Then what is it?” John presses on. I can see he is worried.

“I don’t know. I … I care alot about her,” I say pathetically. It even sounds stupid when I hear it back.

“You care about her?” he repeats, running his fingers through his hair leaning back in the leather chair. “Shit… talk about a mess,” he adds as he starts rubbing his face.

“I know. I tried dude. I tried to stay away. I wanted to meet her. Patrick…dude Patrick had been up my ass about getting information on her. Fucking begging me to talk to her, a little too much. I just wanted to make sure he somehow hadn’t got a hold of her.”

“What did you do?” he asks and I can tell he is trying to somehow find a way to fix all of this for me.

“I hired the same PI you recommended for the trial. He got me info. I kept staring at her pictures. Shit John, she lives in Pasadena. Ten fucking minutes from me. Her life seemed like a freaking routine. Something about her eyes in the pictures he gave me. Shit, I couldn’t fucking sleep, she was stuck in my head. I just needed to meet her. So I took a chance and started going to the Starbucks the PI had noted she frequented. I went there a couple of times, and watched her from afar.  Then I worked up the nerve to talk to her,” I tell him, stopping at what that day was like.

“Dude I bumped into her really hard. I didn’t mean to and she almost fell, and when I grabbed her so she wouldn’t fall back, it was, it was like something clicked when I touched her. We had coffee. I’m not even sure how I let this shit get so out of hand to be honest.” I am rambling. I am not a man who rambles. John knows this. This is why he is looking at me like I am crazy.

“How out of hand are we talking about Mike?” he finally asks slightly scowling as his body moves closer to the edge of the chair.

I stay quiet. I don’t want to tell him how completely invested I am in her. In them. Because if I do, he will know what I want from them. He knew me well enough. I wanted everything.

“Mike. Out of hand a couple of dates? Couple of late night booty calls? Or insanely and idiotically out of hand met her damn kids and family type out of hand?” he starts to ask as his voice starts to gradually get louder.

“John…” I try to warn him, but his eyes go wide in shock. Which in any other circumstance would have been funny, because John was not a man who was easily shocked.

“Shit. You have met her kids,” he says.

“They are good kids John,” I add.

“What once? Twice? More than that?” he asks and I stay quiet. I notice he closes his eyes, moving his head up to the sky as if he is looking for some kind of divine intervention, because he knows the answer already.

“They are incredible kids dude. The little one is obsessed with football. You should see his book shelf, I didn’t even know they wrote that many books about football and the NFL. Then the oldest is a pretty great baseball player, and so fucking observant. You think he’s your typical thirteen year old in his own little world, but he is soaking everything up around him, it’s like watching a future CIA agent in the making. Her daughter is freaking hilarious,” I start to say but he cuts me off.

“Fuck me dude,” he says both hands on his head, his dark eyes looking at me in a way he had never looked at me. “Mike… how do you even know what books this kid likes to read?”

“I read to him one night…”

“Fuck me! Do you know how bad this is?” he asks sounding seriously worried about me.

“How this shit could completely blow up in your face?” He keeps going.

“John…” I start to argue, but he cuts me off.

“Mike! You are reading bedtime stories to her kid! Next thing you are going to tell me is that you have met her best friends and double dating and shit.” I stayed quiet, I hadn’t met them yet. I was going to meet them tomorrow, but John didn’t need to know that. I watched as John covered his hands with his face almost as if he was trying to find some patience.

“John…”

“No Mike you need to listen to me. Have you slept with her?” he asks and I frown. It was none of his business, but I knew where he would be going with this.

“No,” I admitted and he almost looked relieved.

“Okay good. You aren’t completely fucked,” he says as he sits up. “Just call her and say you can’t go tonight. Tell her you don’t think its a good idea to continue whatever you two have going on. It’s not her it’s you, and for her to have a nice life, because I know you Mike. You feel guilty about what happened that day. That shit wasn’t your fault that was all on Pat. ALL Patrick’s shit. He has a problem. But that shit was never on you. I’ve told you this a hundred times. Now all that guilt has somehow transformed into whatever you are feeling for her.”

“That’s not true,” I say as anger starts to seep into my veins. I knew that what I felt for her was real.

“Bro…” he starts, but I cut him off.

“I genuinely care about her. I haven’t slept with her because I want her to get to know me before we go there. I’m going to tell her the truth before we take it there.”

He looks at me like I am crazy, probably because I sound like a girl talking about feelings and using that as an excuse not to sleep with her. But he is also looking at me like he’s worried. John Davenport is like a brother to me. Shit we are closer than I had ever been to Patrick. It had been tough not to tell him about Sabrina from the beginning. Even though his concern was clear, I was glad he knew. I was glad I finally had someone to talk to about this.

He dropped the subject of Sabrina by making me go with him to grab some food. Giving in, I join him for a late lunch for my birthday. I couldn’t believe I had forgotten my birthday. My parents had forgotten, but that was to be expected from Walt and Gail Crown. If it wasn’t something that somehow ended up in the society pages, they didn’t bother. Well she didn’t bother, and since my dad’s balls belonged to her, he did what she told him to do.

Mike

After dropping John off at his penthouse in downtown Los Angeles,  I headed to Sabrina’s where we had dinner and had laughed and joked with the kids. Then surprisingly the kids went to bed without a fuss. When I mentioned it, Sabrina said something about how long their day had been. They were also looking forward to swimming at Emmi’s tomorrow. Which only reminded me of John’s warnings and how close I was getting to her .

Now we were sitting in her living room. Sabrina’s been fidgeting since we got the kids to bed, but I have no idea why.

“I’m going to get something to drink, do you want anything?” she asks as she stands from the couch and looks at me.

“No I’m okay.” I look at her, not able to hide my smile because that was impossible.

She has a power over me. The usual cool exterior I was always able to keep without a second thought, almost like second nature, was completely diminished when I was around her.

I watch her stand and stretch a little before she walks away disappearing into the kitchen. My eyes follow the sway of her perky round ass as she leaves. She’s so fucking sexy. I had no idea how John could say she wasn’t my cup of tea. Sure she wasn’t what most considered my type. Holly lookalikes, my assistant Robin had once called them, tall blondes with mile long legs.

After Holly and I had split I had mostly dated women a lot younger than me. Mostly because I knew there was an expiration date with them. But now all those other women just paled in comparison in my mind. Watching her petite frame walk away barefoot. She was still in her work clothes and she was like a freaking wet dream to me. She was in a tight black pencil skirt and an emerald green satin sleeveless button down shirt that cupped her curves the way a satin sheet would fall on her in bed. Shaking my head, I willed myself to go back to watching the game the boys had left playing on the tv.

The lights go out in the living room, and I looked up towards the kitchen. Completely blown away at what is standing there.

Sabrina is walking towards me smiling brightly, her eyes completely filled with mischief as she holds a cake with white frosting and brightly colored sprinkles with a ton of candles. The kids are at her side wearing PJ’s holding presents, as they all start to sing happy birthday.

In the future when I think back on my life, I would know that was the moment I knew without a doubt I was not only in love with her, but the kids too.

***

Sabrina

We caught him completely off guard. Loving the priceless expression on his face when we had walked into the living room singing Happy Birthday to him, made me wish I would have taken a picture of the moment. I promised the kids they could have cake for breakfast, and they went back to bed after Mike opened the gifts each of them had picked out. They were small simple little tokens of affection, but the kids had made it a point of wanting to buy him birthday presents when I had brought up the fact his birthday was today.

I sat next to him, as he opened his gifts. A funny coffee mug from Mark. A really cool leather matted frame from Penny. A book about football that Chris said Mike absolutely needed. Watching how they interacted with Mike affected me in so many ways. One of those was that I pretty proud of myself for not having burst into tears.

They genuinely liked Mike, and from what I could tell he liked them. He always made sure to include them when we hung out. He made sure to ask them about their days, what activities they were in, and then would follow up asking how things had gone, showing the kids that he had really been paying attention.

“Come here,” he says smiling big, once the kids had gone back to bed.

I scooted closer to him and he pulled me on to him, sitting me on his lap, holding me close to him.

“How did you know?” he asked still looking surprised and completely off guard, and I loved it. I loved ruffling him up.

“Better question would be is why didn’t you tell me?” I answered back smiling.

“Honestly? I forgot. My friend John called me today.”

“The one in London?” I asked and he nodded smiling at me. He had mentioned John to me when he told me about all the crazy antics they had done in their college days. John was also the only man in the planning committee for the Gala and he had requested a video chat meeting where he had shamelessly flirted, making me laugh hysterically.

“Robin told me about it earlier this week when I was over at your office for a meeting,” I confessed.

“You didn’t have to do all this though babe,” he said, his eyes bright and happy as he smiled big for me, making my heart flip.

“I know, we wanted too.”

“Thank you. I seriously…” he clears his throat, “you don’t know what this means to me.” His voice was a little hoarse with emotion.

I could tell it meant alot to him, and he was a little embarrassed as to how much it had got to him. I wrapped my arms around him, burying my nose in his neck. I breathed in deep, the spiciness from his cologne enveloping me like a safety net. I felt his arms hold me back tightly. Mentally noting I needed to send Robin a huge thank you card for telling me Mike was turning forty.

“So forty huh?” I whispered into his neck.

“Yup. You’re dating an old guy… you okay with that?” he pulled back a little as he looked at me. His fingers played with the ends of my hair, I couldn’t help but smile.

“Definitely. Older men are sexy.” He chuckled and I couldn’t help but kiss him.

His mouth was sweet from the tiny bit of frosting he licked off with his finger earlier.  I licked his lower lip and heard him groan.

“So what are you looking forward to this year?” I whispered against his lips, his eyes warm.

“More of this,” he said smiling and I laughed, moving my head away from our kiss. Kissing Mike is dangerous. One moment to another it goes from sweet to completely passionate and the kids were still not completely asleep so I stopped it. Giving us space, I looked up at his face as I sat on his lap.

“You sure you are okay with meeting Emmi and Dan tomorrow?” I asked a little worried that I was somehow pushing or moving him too fast.

“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?” he asked curiously and I only shrugged.

“I just want to make sure I’m not pushing you into something you aren’t ready for or anything.”

“Babe… “ he started to say, his eyes full of emotions.