Chapter 14

Fourteen

W hen Harry heard that Alfie was going to take a martial arts class, Harry decided that he also wanted to take a martial arts class, as did three of his friends. Thank goodness Eis's BMW had seven seats. He'd also stuck an Uber decal on the door, the idiot.

Harry proclaimed the BMW "nicer than Dad's car," and I checked Alfie's pockets before he climbed inside. For once, they were empty. Guess he was so excited by the prospect of a gym class that he forgot to bring any of his little friends along for the trip.

For Eis, it was a day off from plumbing. Apparently, the pipes in Marigold Lodge were cheap ones made from thin copper, and impurities in the water had caused pinhole leaks to appear here, there, and everywhere. On Thursday, a guy had shown up and installed a water softener while Eis made him coffee and chatted as if he owned the place, and now Eis was pulling up floorboards and ripping out walls to replace every pipe in the house.

I'd given up arguing.

What was the point?

If I cared to dig into my psyche, which I didn't, I'd have to admit that I liked his constant, mercurial presence. It was only my wounded pride that wasn't happy about the situation.

Eis was quiet on the trip to Bristol. Pensive. The team at Four Rings knew he was coming, but he seemed almost nervous about seeing everyone after so long. I thought I understood. People talked. Rumours started. On my return to Engleby, I'd squirmed as people whispered behind their hands in the convenience store, and that was before Mum and her Rotary club cronies had started their matchmaking attempts.

"We're here!" Alfie bounced excitedly in his seat, and four not-quite-teenage boys rolled their eyes at him.

The gym was in what looked like a converted warehouse on a small industrial estate, and Eis drove around to a staff car park at the rear. The boys had come ready in tracksuits, but Eis was wearing jeans rather than his usual sweatpants. Business casual?

"All right, bro?" A member of staff greeted Eis with a man-hug when we got inside. His name badge said Darren, Manager , and his genuine smile said Eis was a friend as well as his boss.

Groups trained on padded mats, at punchbags, and in the half-dozen fighting rings that were scattered throughout the cavernous interior. A handful of men were lifting weights in the far corner, and up on a mezzanine, I spotted the kind of equipment I'd attempted to use in the days before I admitted defeat and accepted that a gym membership wasn't compatible with motherhood and working thirty hours a week. Treadmills, stationary bikes, stair-climbers.

I was busy working out the ratio of women to men, surprised when it was closer to fifty-fifty than I'd imagined, when one of Harry's friends piped up.

"Hey, our Uber driver's picture is on the wall."

"He's not really an Uber driver," Harry told him. "He's a plumber."

I hadn't paid much attention to the giant panels surrounding us, which were mostly action shots with a few motivational quotes mixed in, but now I realised that Eis was in a fair few of them. If I'd thought about it, I'd have realised it was only natural that he'd feature heavily in his gym's marketing material, but my brain was still futzed, and I was totally unprepared for a twelve-foot-tall sweaty Eisen brooding at me from on high. Did you know that in MMA, the competitors wear obscenely tight shorts? They showed everything. Ev-ery-thing.

His slight smirk told me that he knew exactly what I was looking at.

"Six and a half days," he whispered in my ear.

"Wait, so your plumber fights MMA?" another of the kids asked.

Now Darren looked more puzzled than my dad. "A plumber?"

"He's an uber-plumber," Alfie announced. "He's cleaning my mum's pipes."

My cheeks burned, and Eis just started laughing, the bastard. Please, somebody kill me now.

"Janie's a neighbour," Eis clarified. "I'm helping out with some DIY."

"Eisen was also the WPFL champion in the light-heavyweight category three years running," Darren told the boys, and Harry's expression changed. Unless I was mistaken, I saw something that looked a little like awe.

"Was that before your eye fell out?" my youngest offspring asked, and I facepalmed. Dammit, Alfie!

Harry nudged him hard. "You can't say that."

"But he has two eyes in the pictures."

"Alfie, please…" I started, but Eis shook his head and crouched in front of him.

"My eye was damaged in an accident last year. It's still there. It didn't fall out."

"Then why do you wear a patch over it?"

"When I was your age, I wanted to be a pirate. Now I'm living the dream." Eis bent lower to tie the lace on Alfie's trainer. "Ready for class, buddy?"

"Hear all those popping noises?" a voice asked from behind me as Eis and Darren led the boys to a square of mats. A female voice. I turned to find a pretty blonde in a staff T-shirt, Lisa, according to her name badge. "That's the sound of ovaries exploding."

"Mine already burst in a shower of confetti," I said without thinking, but Lisa just beamed.

"He'll make a great dad."

I froze.

A great dad.

I'd been so certain that I didn't want more children with Steven that I'd barely given the tubal ligation a second thought. And caught up in Hurricane Eisen, I'd somehow shoved the whole sterilisation procedure to the back of my mind. But of course Eisen would want kids. Little mini-mes to carry his perfect genes. Heirs to his fortune.

"Yes," I choked out. "Yes, he will."

"It's great to see him looking better. I went to visit him after the accident—you know, to take a card and stuff—and he was so depressed. Like, we were worried he might jump off a bridge or something."

Oh, hell. "I didn't realise things were that bad."

"We had a rota for phoning to cheer him up. You haven't known him long, then?"

"I knew him when I was a teenager, and we ran into each other again recently."

"Well, whatever you're doing, keep doing it. He deserves to be happy."

I hadn't expected Eis to teach the class himself, but he changed into a pair of shorts—not the super tight ones—and gathered the kids around him. There wasn't much actual fighting involved, just shadow-boxing and hitting the punchbags. Plus a lot of talk about how to be a good person with plenty of motivational words and encouragement. The three Bristol lads all wanted to sign up for weekly classes, and now I felt worse than ever because Harry and Alfie wouldn't have that opportunity.

Hell.

"How'd you guys like to watch Darren sparring for a bit?" Eis asked after the hour was up.

Harry's eyes lit up. "With you?"

"Nah, Lisa can kick his a— rear end."

"Eis was gonna say ‘arse,'" Alfie said. "I know he was."

"Sorry," he muttered as he herded me away from the mats. "I try to watch my mouth around the kids, but it's been a while. What's up?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"Bullshit." He led me into an office and closed the door. "You've been standing there chewing your lip for the past hour."

"You're great with the boys."

"And that's a problem?" He cupped my cheeks in his hands and tilted his head to one side. "Janie, talk to me."

"I can't have any more kids," I blurted.

That caught him off guard. He opened his mouth, then closed it again before eventually trying, "I'm sorry to hear that."

"And it's my fault. I had my tubes tied after Alfie, and I never thought I'd get divorced or meet another man or want more children, and…and…"

"Janie, shhh. Can't sterilisation be reversed?"

"Yes, but that doesn't always work. The doctor said I should be a hundred percent sure it was what I wanted before going ahead, and I thought I was because, honestly, my marriage was on the rocks before Steven ever cheated." Great, now I was crying again. "And then I watched you out there, and you're going to make the best dad. So if this is a deal-breaker, I need to know now before I fall any harder."

"Nothing in life is guaranteed." Eis used the bottom of his T-shirt to wipe my face. "I'm also going to make the best stepdad."

"You're…you're okay with it?"

"Whatever path life takes us on, I'm okay with it. You're my anchor, Janie. You have been since the day I met you."

I looked up at him through watery eyelashes.

"Also, my ovaries exploded."

He burst out laughing. "That's my girl. Want me to mind Alfie while you take the other boys to the cinema?"

"You'd do that?"

"He might cramp their style. They were talking about a twelve-rated movie."

"Harry's only eleven."

"When I was twelve, I was borrowing eighteen-rated DVDs from my cousin's collection. That's all part of what turned me into the horny jackass who stands before you today."

He was right on both counts. Eisen Renner was absolutely a jackass, and I could feel the evidence of his horniness digging into my stomach.

"How private is this office?"

"The door locks, if that's what you're asking."

"Then lock it."

I experienced my first Eis-induced orgasm in thirteen years pressed against a filing cabinet with a drawer handle sticking into my butt cheek. He got me off with his fingers quickly, expertly, the whole time whispering filth and promises into my ear. Oh, the promises… I planned to hold him to every single one. He swallowed my cry as I came, supported me as my knees buckled, and shook his head when I tried to slip a hand into his waistband, even though his cock was as hard as granite.

"So you're just going to walk out there like that?" I asked. "People will think you've shoplifted a can of Pringles."

"Fuck."

"I can take care of it if you'll let me."

"On Friday. I want our second time to be special."

"And it will be. But at this moment, I just…want it."

Eis looked furious with himself. "I don't have a condom."

"Do you have any communicable diseases?"

"No."

"Well, neither do I. That was another fun thing I had to check after Steven stuck his pencil dick somewhere he shouldn't have."

Eis cursed under his breath and then he was on his knees, peeling my trousers down and swearing some more.

"You should wear dresses," he told me. "Tight little dresses that I can slide up over your hips."

He finally got one of my legs free and gave up on the other. What did it matter if I was wearing a single shoe and half a pair of skinny jeans? I just wanted him, right here, right now. When he freed his cock and stroked himself a few times, my knees nearly gave out, but he quickly steadied me with one powerful arm.

"You okay?"

"Define ‘okay.' Don't tease me, you beast."

With no effort at all, he braced me against the nearest wall and slid inside on a long groan, stretching me until I gasped. It was delicious. I wrapped my arms tight around his neck and breathed him in.

"Janie…" he whispered. "My Janie."

Do you know the best part about being taken hard against the wall by a rabid cage fighter? There was no time to think. No time to worry. No time to overanalyse every detail of the situation. Who cared about cellulite or love handles or belly pooch?

Not Eisen.

He thrust into me hard, strong hands gripping my ass, that mesmerising blue eye boring its gaze into me. He fucked me like he meant it, not because it was Saturday night and he figured he might as well get his rocks off before he rolled over and went to sleep. Eis was hard strength and he was sweetness, he was passion with flashes of pain. Fingernails, teeth, the sheer girth of him. This man blew my mind. The impossible happened and another orgasm built, this one coming from deep inside. I spasmed around him as he came, our bodies perfectly in sync.

I was going to have bruises in the morning.

Hell, I'd be lucky if I could walk.

He lowered me onto shaking legs, one hand on the wall to steady himself because he was feeling it too. This exquisite, overwhelming rightness .

"On Friday, you're getting a fancy dinner and a bed," he promised.

"I'd settle for tissues."

His cum was leaking out of me. It was running down my leg and splattering on the floor.

"Shit, I'm sorry."

He pulled out, which only made matters worse, then set about cleaning me up with his T-shirt. Once he was done, he wadded it up and scored a three-pointer in the wastebasket in the corner.

"You're going to walk out the door without a shirt? What if people guess what we've been doing?"

"You think Darren doesn't already suspect?"

My turn to groan. "Are you kidding?"

"I've never brought a woman to the gym before, and he definitely knows I'm a horny jackass."

I sucked in a breath. "As long as the kids don't find out, that's the important thing. Not yet, I mean. Obviously, I'm going to tell them, but I just need to work out the right way to do that."

"You have lipstick all over your face. Might want to wipe that off."

"So do you."

"I'm tempted to wear it as a badge of honour."

I started laughing. Standing there with one bare foot and jeans around an ankle, with damp knickers and freaking bite marks on my shoulder, I giggled like the teenager I'd once been.

And it was the best feeling ever.