Page 95 of Playing the Game

“I will do whatever you need,” he said quietly. “I won’t try to take over or anything like that. Just promise me one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Let me be a part of this,” he replied.

To his horror a tear rolled down her cheek.

“How would it work?” she asked, wiping it away. “The media will be all over us. I can’t face it, Adam. I’m scared.”

“Come here.”

She crossed the room and snuggled into his side.

“We made a human being,” he said. “That’s the main thing here. Everything else is details.”

“I can’t make any decisions at the moment,” she said. “My head is all over the place. Can we see how things pan out?”

Adam wasn’t happy with that approach. Yet he recognised he had absolutely no right to be dictating terms.

“Of course. But I’m falling for her.”

“I can see. And I would never stand in the way of that. A girl needs her daddy.”

Adam gazed down at Olive.

No matter what. She would always have a daddy.

EIGHTEEN

JONAS

Jonas stared out of the window at another drizzly day. When people had said it always rained up north, he’d dismissed them as exaggerating. Turned out they were pretty accurate.

Still, the weather matched his mood. He kept playing the conversation with Adam over in his mind.

Flu? Bullshit.

With a sigh he walked over to the couch and flopped down. He stared up at the ceiling. The developers had left the old beams from when the building had been a mill. They would have seen plenty of hardship over the years. As a millionaire footballer lying on designer furniture, he was acutely aware how shallow his problems were.

Even so, he was annoyed and couldn’t shake it. He grabbed his phone and connected a call to Heidi.

“Hey, handsome,” she said.

“Hey.”

“Oh dear. That doesn’t sound like a very happy voice. Tell Heidi what’s the matter.”

The words fell out of him like a purge. He told her aboutAdam wanting to cool things, then changing his mind. Now the pathetic excuse not to see him.

He found it all so confusing.

“We’ve been together two months next week,” he said. “I was going to be all romantic and do something in Stockholm. Do you think he’s got someone else?”

“Surely not.”

“Maybe he’s been waiting all this time for someone to give him a push to be open about his sexuality,” Jonas continued. “Now I’ve done that, he might want to play the field.”

Heidi groaned. “Can we do without the football puns? You said he’s been with a few guys in the past. It doesn’t sound like he was waiting for you to ride up on your unicorn and release him.”