Bad Boy's Cinderella: A Sports Romance by Alexa Wilder, Raleigh Blake

this?”
    “I want a second chance,” he said without hesitation. “I know I was an asshole to you that morning, and I’m not going to make any excuses.” He raised his hands, a pleading gesture, and added, “Nothing like that will ever happen again. Promise.”
    It wasn’t what I needed to hear. I didn’t care about how he’d spoken to me that morning, his attitude in the face of his company’s crisis. Well, I did, but that wasn’t the point. I’d gotten over that within minutes, and had the whole thing erased from my mind entirely by the time I’d made it home and found myself confronted with the less pleasant members of the Lennox family. “You’re not the problem, Reade,” I said on a heavy sigh, and with my heart picking up speed, I reached into my purse and retrieved the money. Five thousand dollars. I only had it in there because Jazz had come home that fateful morning and startled me into hiding it in the first place I thought of, and I hadn’t yet removed it. At no point did I expect the next time I saw it would be when throwing it on a table in front of Reade, confronting him with the truth of it.
    “Do you know anything about this?” His expression said it all—clouding over as he stared at the money, making my breath catch. “You do.”
    “My mother,” he said, nodding. His tone was angry, so he took a few deep, measured breaths and added, “She did it once before while I was in college. I didn’t think she’d ever stoop that low again.”
    “What happened to that girl?”
    “She took the money and ran.”
    He didn’t say anything else, but I could hear the undertone there—challenging me to do the same, if I wanted. That he was prepared to hear the worst.
    “I don’t want this money,” I said, and watched his throat roll with a heavy swallow, his eyes brightening.
    “I’ve dealt with her,” he said. “She’s gonna back off, I swear.”
    As if it was that simple. If my only concern was his mother, I would’ve rushed forward into his arms the moment I saw him. I would’ve answered his calls. What I wouldn’t have done was sit at home in my pit of misery, despairing over the end of something I’d wanted so badly, but didn’t think I could have.
    “It’s not just that,” I said, and drew in a deep breath of fortitude, gathering the courage to express my thoughts to him, lay my heart at his feet. “You and me—we can’t be casual. I have to face your family, the press, so many people judging me, just so I can have the honor of calling myself your girlfriend. I can’t put myself through that if this is just a fling. Because this my life,” I said, voice going tight with the strain of keeping my emotions at bay. “It’s not a game to me.”
    He licked his bottom lip, took a step forward, as if subconsciously wanting to get closer, drawn in by my words and needing to feel the realness of me. I understood, because I felt the same.
    “What do you want me to say?” he asked. Something in his tone of voice made me believe that he’d do anything to make it work.
    I squared my shoulders, made the effort to meet his eye and hold it. “I want you to tell me what this is to you,” I said, and he sagged a little as if I’d filled him with some kind of relief.
    “Tell you what you are to me? You’re it, Kylie,” he said immediately. He came around the table and walked towards me as he spoke, footsteps confident and eyes shining. “I knew it from the moment I first met you, and this has never happened to me before. I’ve had plenty of women before you, as you probably know, and never has any of them made me feel like this. I look at you now and I see my wife,” he added quietly, making my breath catch in my chest, my heart thud wildly against my ribs, “the woman I want to get pregnant with my baby, and the one I will love until the day I die. I’m so in love with you, Kylie.” He smiled, stopped in front of me. Took my hands and brought them up to press them flat