Page 16 of The Scrum-Half (Lincoln Knights #3)

Harper

“Harper, over here!” Hannah waved at me through the crowd, her pink summer dress making her instantly visible, Jack beside her in a tiny Lincoln Knights shirt and fire engine red shorts. I almost wanted to keel over from how freaking adorable he looked.

He waved as soon as he spotted me, bouncing up and down on the spot. “Harper! It’s me!”

“Hey,” I said as I slid through the throng of fans heading for the stadium. I barely had time to greet Hannah before Jack threw himself at me, his whole body practically fizzing with excitement as I scooped him up. “Hey, Jack, how’re you? Have you had a fun weekend?”

“Yes! We went to the zoo and saw giraffes! And penguins! There was penguins, Harper!”

“Penguins? That’s so cool. I love penguins.”

“Penguins are Mummy’s favourite,” Jack said in a stage whisper. “She said they’re cute and have wobble.”

“They waddle. But they are very cute,” Hannah said. She looked a little more tired than she had on Friday, but since I didn’t look much better due to my two-in-the-morning bedtime, I couldn’t judge. “And you got your face painted, didn’t you, pumpkin?”

“You got your face painted?”

“Yeah! Like a tiger,” Jack said, following it up with his best tiger roar as he made little claws with his hands.

“Don’t worry, I took pictures,” Hannah said. “I meant to send them last night but I crashed as soon as Jack went to bed.”

“I can totally understand. I don’t know how you do it with the jet lag.”

I was pretty sure she was alluding to the exhaustion of keeping up with Jack’s energy levels, but one thing I’d learnt as a nanny was that sometimes you needed to lie or twist the conversation slightly so parents didn’t feel bad.

I’d once hidden the fact a child had started walking until his mum saw it herself over the weekend because I hadn’t wanted her to be consumed by guilt that she’d missed it.

I think she’d figured what I’d done, but she’d never said anything.

But she had given me some lovely Christmas presents with a handwritten thank-you note for everything I’d done for her.

“You get used to it after a while, but it still catches up to you when you least expect it, especially if you’re busy,” she said, smiling fondly at Jack. “Shall we go in? Did Matty get you a pass?”

“Yes and yes,” I said and produced the required ticket from my pocket, ignoring the nerves simmering in my gut.

I’d not been to a lot of large sporting events and never a rugby match, and going to one with the mother of the child I nannied and whose ex-partner I’d spent a considerable amount of time making out with last night was not how I’d envisioned my first experience of the sport.

“Perfect. We’ll go up to the family lounge and get a certain someone a sausage sandwich.”

“Me,” Jack said, wiggling out of my arms to grab my hand. “I want gogagges.”

“We don’t actually watch a lot of rugby, so I hope you weren’t planning to enjoy the match,” Hannah said as we walked towards the gate we’d need.

“Confession time, I don’t know anything about rugby, so I doubt I’d know what was going on anyway. The closest I’ve come to watching it are clips on Instagram. And I think those are Sevens? But I had to look that up too.”

“I’ll explain as much as I can, but my grasp on the rules is tenuous at best.”

“We can figure it out together,” I said, making sure Jack stayed close beside me as we went through security. The guards all seemed to know Hannah and Jack, and several of them gave him little high fives or fist bumps.

My nerves bubbled up again as we climbed the stairs to the lounge.

I didn’t know who’d be here and while Matty had given me a few names, I hadn’t wanted to bother him for more details when he was deep in pre-match preparation.

Hannah must have been psychic, though, or seen the worry on my face because she paused at the top of the stairs and said, “Have you met anyone from the Knights yet?”

I shook my head. “No, not yet.”

Hannah muttered something under her breath, her mouth setting into a firm line. “Stick with me and I’ll introduce you to everyone. They’re all lovely, but I have to warn you that people will be nosy and come and ask questions, especially if Matty hasn’t mentioned you to anyone.”

“Hasn’t mentioned me?” I knew he hadn’t introduced me to anyone but that was natural—not acknowledging my existence hurt more than I’d expected.

Sure, we’d had a bit of a rough start with Jack being ill and Matty being an overbearing prat, but everything had been so much better recently.

Why did it suddenly feel like I was a dirty secret hidden in the back of his wardrobe?

“Don’t take it personally,” Hannah said, waving her hand as she used her sunglasses to push her hair back.

“I think after last year he closed up and didn’t want everyone to know how chaotic things got.

He’s the captain and sometimes I think he believes that means he should be infallible.

But good leadership is about more than pretending you’ve got your life together. ”

“Mummy stop talking! We need gogagges,” Jack said, letting go of my hand to walk over and tug hers.

“Jack, I am talking to Harper,” Hannah said. “Telling me to stop isn’t very kind. What do we say instead?”

Jack thought for a second, his face screwing up and tongue poking out. Then he sighed. “Please, Mummy, I want a gogagge sandwich. You can talk inside.”

“Thank you,” Hannah said with a wry smile. “Okay, we can go inside. But please don’t go running off. There are lots of people including people carrying heavy things and we don’t want them to drop anything.”

“Why?”

“Because those heavy things might be trays of sausages. And if they drop them on the floor, you’ll have to wait even longer for your sausage sandwich.”

Jack gasped dramatically, putting his hand to his chest, and I had to fight back a laugh because he just made me think of an ageing Hollywood diva. “No gogagges? How rude!”

“And that’s why we don’t run,” Hannah said as she gently shepherded him towards the door, which swung open and released a cacophony of excited noise. Matty had mentioned that quite a few of the other guys on the team had kids, so I assumed I was about to meet all of them.

I took a steadying breath, put on my best smile, and followed Hannah and Jack through the door.

The lounge was at one end of the stadium with huge windows that overlooked the pitch, the spring sunshine shining through and lighting up the space.

There was a selection of chairs and tables scattered around, with a bar at one side next to a buffet where hot and cold food was laid out, and at the back near the door was a cluster of sofas where several women with babies were sat chatting happily.

It was busy but not overwhelmingly so, and nobody had stopped to stare as I walked in. Jack had made a beeline for the buffet with Hannah in tow, so it made sense to follow them. A few heads turned, but there was no movie-style sweep of silence, so I pushed away my awkwardness.

Jack practically had hearts in his eyes as he asked one of the staff for a sausage sandwich, and Hannah chuckled.

“Please don’t think he doesn’t get fed when he’s at mine.

He’s already had breakfast, lunch, and two snacks today,” she said as I joined her.

“But sausage sandwiches on rugby day are his favourite thing in the world. He never wants them at home, only here. The last time I tried to make him one, he had a full-on screaming meltdown for twenty minutes. Apparently, I don’t make them properly. ”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s not just you.

Most kids are particular about one thing or another.

It’s just a way to feel in control,” I said, scanning the buffet to see if there was anything I fancied.

There was everything on offer from full meals to salads and sandwiches, accompanied by a selection of sweet treats, and I was impressed at how good it all looked.

“I’m glad it’s not just me then,” Hannah said as she picked up a bowl of fruit salad and a large gooey-looking chocolate brownie.

“Definitely not just you, I promise.”

“Thank God for that.” She gestured at the buffet. “Get whatever you like. I’m paying. I’ll get us some drinks too.”

I’d had lunch but the brownies were calling my name, and they had bowls of strawberries and cream too.

So I followed Hannah’s lead and took both, putting them on the tray she’d grabbed beside Jack’s sandwich and his carton of apple juice.

After she’d paid, I picked up the tray and carried it over to a spare table near the windows, which gave us the perfect view over the pitch where the players were coming out to cheers and applause.

“Number nine, if you’re looking for Matty,” Hannah said as she helped Jack up onto a chair and grabbed a knife to cut his sandwich into triangles.

“Orange boots. He’s usually wearing a scrum cap too.

It’s like a soft helmet—stops his cauliflower ears from getting worse. And means people can’t pull his hair.”

I looked down at the line of players in their blue shirts, trying not to let my eyes bulge out of my head. I’d known rugby union players were big, but I’d never imagined anyone making Matty look as small as he did.

His legs looked delectable in shorts, though. Not that I should have been looking, but it was almost impossible not to.

“Harper,” Jack said, his face already smeared with ketchup.

“Yes.”

“Do you like rugby?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never watched it before,” I said as I stabbed a cream-covered strawberry. “Do you?”

“No. It’s boring and Daddy is slow.” Jack shook his head as behind him the game kicked off, the players immediately slamming into each other with a force that made me wince.

Hannah bit back a smile as she took a bite out of her brownie. “Poor Daddy, he’s not slow.”