He chuckles and nuzzles his nose into my hair. “Beauty tames the savage beast, I suppose.”

My heart glows at hearing him call me Beauty, but I hate the thought of him being unhappy. My maternal instinct wants to hug him close to my chest and fight off the wolves for him, but another instinct tells me that his wolves are all on the inside, not out.

“Awkward segue alert.”

His chest shakes with suppressed laughter. “Okay. Go.”

“The lawsuit you’re in, the one I overheard you talking with someone on the phone about. Is it related to the pregnant teenager?”

He nods. “She’s suin’ me for paternity.”

When I gasp, he’s quick to add, “I’m not the father, lass. I might not be a pillar of morality, but I know enough to steer clear of adolescents.”

“I know. I believed you before when you told me it wasn’t true. How old is she?”

“Sixteen.”

“Oh my God! She’s a child!”

His voice turns dry. “You wouldn’t say that if you saw her picture. Or got a look inside her mind. She’s a cunning little thing. Wants attention, knows how to get it.”

“I think you’d better just tell me the story, because I’m cooking up some really scary scenarios in my mind right now, Cam.”

He absentmindedly combs his fingers through my hair as he speaks. “The story, to put it in a nutshell, is that I’m a target. A big dumb bulls-eye. I’ve done myself no favors with the way I act—drunk and disorderly, my ‘dating’ history, so to speak. My barrister thinks it’s a miracle I haven’t seen more of these kinds of accusations.” His laugh is chillingly dark. “Lucky me.”

I wait, holding my breath, until he continues.

“I had a party at my house. I was always havin’ parties. Havin’ people around makes me feel better. Less . . . antsy. My house was always filled with people. Friends—if you could call them that—teammates, strangers, whoever.”

I think of the strip poker party he had the first night we met, the anonymous girl he picked up in a bar, and shudder to think what would’ve happened if I lived on a different floor and we’d never met. He might have some random woman accusing him of fathering her unborn child here, too.

Maybe truthfully this time.

“One night over the summer, this guy brings his sister. She looks twenty, at least. Full makeup, high heels, the works. The party gets wild. By three a.m., I’m passed out on the lawn in the backyard. When I wake up in the mornin’, the place is a wreck and everyone’s gone except this girl, who I find cryin’ in my kitchen, lookin’ a mess. I ask her what’s wrong, she says her brother left and she has no way home. So, idiot me, I offer to drive her. And that’s it. That’s all I did: drove her home. The next week I got a visit from the police, who wanted to discuss how I’d like to plead to sexual coercion under the Sexual Offences Act.”

I’m queasy. Maybe hearing this story wasn’t such a good idea after all. “So she claimed the two of you had sex?”

“Aye. I was drunk, but I bloody well wasn’t drunk enough to forget that. I never saw her after she first came in. So my legal team interviews everyone from the party, and it turns out no one can corroborate her bein’ near me at any time. Because there was no physical evidence, either, and she had no witnesses to back up her story, the charges weren’t filed. But by then the news had picked up the story. I was called everything from a child molester to a rapist.”

He pauses to draw a breath. The tension in his body radiates off him in waves. “That kind of stink doesn’t wash off.”

“Oh, Cam. That’s awful.”

“That’s not even the worst part. Two months later, she finds out she’s pregnant and files a paternity suit against me.”

“But all it would take would be a DNA test to prove you’re not the father!”

“Aye. Which she won’t submit to, claiming it can hurt the unborn child. So I’m stuck waitin’ until she gives birth so we can get the bloody test done and prove I’m innocent. In the meantime, she’s all over the news, cryin’ about how I took advantage of her.”

I’m furious on his behalf. “But that’s not fair! She’s lying!”

He sounds weary when he replies. “That’s the price I have to pay for refusin’ to settle the suit. Her barristers offered me a deal to keep her quiet, but I refused because that’s blackmail. It’ll all come out in the wash once the baby’s born, but until then, it’s a circus with me in the center ring.”

“But can’t you countersue her for defamation of character?”

He says gently, “If anyone’s to blame for my character assassination, lass, it’s me. And she’s a child who’s obviously messed up in the head. What good would it do in the end?”

This is all very depressing. “I wish there was something I could do to help. I hate that you’re going through this.”

He turns his face to my hair, inhaling deeply. “You’ve already helped, lass. You have no idea how much.”

His voice is husky with emotion, deep and raw, and it brings the hot prick of tears to the back of my eyes. We lie quietly for a few moments, just breathing, until he starts to speak again.

“This is gonna sound so fucking weird.”

“I’m already worried.”

He draws a breath, then blurts, “You remind me of my mother.”

“Speaking of awkward segues! I’ll just be here trying not to be icked out by that, thanks. You couldn’t wait to lay that gem on me until we weren’t naked in bed?”

He chuckles. “I know. Sorry. What I mean is . . .” He struggles for a moment to find the right words. “How you’re a natural caretaker. How you know how to make people feel good about themselves without tryin’. How you’re always honest.” His voice drops. “How you feel like home.”

I close my eyes and breathe deeply in and out, which doesn’t help my voice breaking when I say, “You’re killing me here, prancer.”

He pulls me tighter against him, hugging me hard with those muscle-bound arms. “Are we gonna talk about the elephant in the room?”

I know what he means, but I make a joke to avoid it, because if nothing else, I’m an expert at avoiding tough conversations and uncomfortable emotional moments with bad humor. “Do you have a name for that thing? Because I’ve secretly been calling it Godzilla.”

“I’m not talkin’ about my dick, lass, and you know it.”

I scrunch down a few inches, hiding my face in his pecs. “Have I ever mentioned that you have beautiful breasts? Because you do. Man breasts are highly underrated.”

Cam’s deep sigh stirs my hair. “I have to go back to Scotland on the third.”

He lets it hang there, a loaded gun pointed at our fledgling relationship, just trying out its shaky newborn legs. When I don’t say anything, he adds, “Trainin’ for the new season starts on the sixth or I’d stay longer—”

“No,” I interrupt, my voice muffled against his skin. “You can’t stay. You have to go back to your life.”

And I have to figure out mine. What’s left of it. I wonder whether a job at McDonald’s or Starbucks would be better suited to my skill set?