Samuel: Second Chance Romance/Secret Child (Cooper Brothers #2) Read online

  Copyright © Nikki Ashton 2019

  All Rights Reserved ©

  Samuel

  Published by Bubble Books Ltd

  The right of Nikki Ashton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form or binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. A reviewer may quote brief passages for review purposes only

  This book may not be resold or given away to other people for resale. Please purchase this book from a recognised retailer. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Samuel

  First published July 2019

  All Rights Reserved ©

  Cover design – JC Clarke from The Graphics Shed

  Formatting by—JC Clarke from The Graphics Shed

  Proofed by – Brooke Bowen Hebert

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  To those of you who learned to love and trust again

  Samuel

  “I am hers, she is mine and he is who we created”

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Epilogue

  Playlist

  Acknowledgments

  Nikki’s Links

  Book Links

  Samuel

  the past

  Out of breath, I pushed on the buzzer for the maternity ward, desperate for them to answer.

  “Come on,” I muttered to myself, putting the small, pink bear under my arm pit, I squeezed anti-bac liquid into my hand from the pump next to the door.

  “Hello,” a voice echoed as I was just about to press the call button again.

  “I’m here to see Alison Carmichael,” I replied, one hand on the door ready to push it open.

  There was a pause for a few seconds. “Okay, come on in.”

  I heaved a sigh of relief as it buzzed to indicate it was open. I pushed through and ran down the short corridor to the main part of the ward.

  “End bay,” the nurse on the desk said, giving me a huge smile.

  With a tight hold of the teddy bear, I rushed off with a quick ‘thanks’, desperate to see Ali and the baby. I couldn’t believe I’d missed the birth. She’d promised to call me as soon as she went into labour, but for reasons only she knew, she’d not texted me until half an hour ago insisting I get there as soon as I could. Admittedly, I’d been in college all afternoon and she’d have known I’d have gone to the pool afterwards, but she’d promised, so I was pretty hurt that she hadn’t called. I knew we were keeping everything quiet, shit I hadn’t even told my parents I was going to be a dad, but I still should have been the first person she called. I knew I couldn’t go into the delivery room with her, her mum was doing that, but I could have been on the ward waiting.

  Excitement swilled in my gut as I approached the bay the nurse had directed me to. I was going to see my baby – mine and Alison’s baby.

  When I rounded the corner, Alison was the first person I saw amongst all the other women propped up in bed or sitting in chairs feeding their babies and she looked beautiful, considering the amount of pain she must have gone through.

  Her blonde hair was piled on her head and her cheeks were pink as she lay back against a mound of pillows, her eyes directed at the Perspex cot next to her.

  Picking up my step, I moved to stand at the end of the bed and reached down to touch her foot under the cover.

  “Hey,” I said quietly, not sure if the baby was asleep.

  Alison’s head shot around to look at me and her eyes widened. “Sam,” she gasped. “Where have you been, I texted you ages ago?”

  “Sorry.” I held up the pink teddy bear. “I wanted to get this.”

  I grinned and moved to the side of the bed without the cot and bent to kiss her cheek. I was desperate to see my daughter, but I wasn’t so much of a dick to ignore the mother of my child.

  “God, you look beautiful,” I said, cupping her face. “How was it?”

  She shifted on the bed and winced a little. “Okay, as I expected; painful.”

  My eyes darted to the cot and I took a step, but Ali caught hold of my hand, her eyes looking over toward the door.

  “No, Sam. I need to talk to you.”

  She flattened her lips against each other and I saw tears in her eyes as she squeezed my hand.

  “Why?” I asked. “What’s wrong? Is there something wrong with her?” I glanced over at the cot, but could only see a tiny, pink woollen hat peeking out from the top of a white blanket.

  “No,” Ali replied, swallowing hard. “Nothing like that.”

  “What then?” I dragged the chair that was behind me closer to the bed and flopped down onto it. “Alison, what’s wrong, tell me?”

  She took a deep breath and glanced at the baby and then back to me. “I’m sorry, Sam, but she’s not yours.”

  I felt as though someone had punched me in the stomach as it lurched, and my heart stopped. A shiver ran over me as I followed Ali’s gaze to the baby. I pulled my hand from Ali’s and slammed it against my chest.

  “Nope. No way,” I hissed, shaking my head. “She’s mine. She has to be.”

  My voice broke as I said the words that I was desperate to be true. She had to be mine. I loved Alison and she loved me. She’d been my coach since I was fourteen, but things had changed when I reached sixteen, our relationship had become sexual and had been that way for over two years. The last eleven months had been the best of those two years because things between us had become more intense - she’d left her husband and we’d begun making plans for the future.

  “But-.”

  Alison shook her head and silently cried. “She isn’t, Sam. I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t understand. You told me she was mine. You let me pick her name, we’re going to call her Sadie. You said, Ali.”

  My words and eyes implored her, needing her to tell me she’d got it wrong or that it was all a sick joke, but she simply swiped at the tears on her cheeks.

  “Who’s the fuck is
she then?” I hissed, trying to regulate my breathing. “Tell me.”

  I pushed up from the chair, almost sending it toppling and rushed around to the cot, needing to see for myself whether she had my olive complexion and dark hair. As I pulled back the blanket, Ali and I both gasped at the same time.

  A perfect, pale brown face peeked out at me and I felt the ground fall from beneath my feet. Every hope and dream I’d had of starting a family with the woman I loved flashed before my eyes and disappeared in a puff of air.

  “She’s Roger’s,” I gasped, thinking of her Jamaican husband whom she left a year ago.

  Alison let out a quiet sob and nodded. “I’m sorry.”

  “So you keep fucking saying,” I growled, not caring how loud I was. “But you haven’t explained how she’s his baby, when you’ve been separated for eleven fucking months. You said you left him. You told me you couldn’t stop the feelings you had for me, so you left him a month before we got together.”

  The woman in the next bed gasped, but went back to reading her magazine when my hard gaze landed on her.

  “I-.” Alison stopped abruptly as her eyes widened in horror at something behind me.

  I swung around to see Roger, her fucking husband, strolling in. He had a huge bouquet of flowers in one hand and a teddy bear in the other. I looked down at the small pink bear that I still had clutched in my hand and felt bile rise in my throat.

  I wanted to puke. I wanted to run. I wanted to stay and tell him everything. I wanted this gorgeous little girl to be mine.

  “You’re back?” Ali said, her voice rising in pitch as Roger looked over at me.

  “Couldn’t keep away. Hey, Sam,” Roger cried, giving me a huge grin. “Great to see you man. You just come from practice?”

  I heard Alison whimper behind me as her hand moved to rest on top of the sleeping baby. “Sam just came to give Abigail a teddy bear, and tell me about practice. He almost did a personal best, didn’t you Sam?” she asked, her voice high pitched and anxious.

  My throat prickled and my chest tightened as the baby’s name registered. She wasn’t mine, she hadn’t got the name that I’d picked.

  “Well, that’s really nice of you, Sam. Not many swim coaches get that sort of treatment baby, do they? And almost a personal best, great going man. That guy you’ve got standing in for Ali must be cracking the whip.”

  Laughing, Roger moved to the other side of the bed and leaned down to kiss Ali, just as I’d done only minutes before. It was the simple act of a man kissing the mother of his child, yet it felt like a knife to the fucking heart. When he pulled away, Ali stiffened and stared at me as she worried her lip.

  “Hasn’t she done well, hey?” Roger asked, nodding towards the baby. “I told her the day she did the pregnancy test it was going to be the most beautiful baby in the world, didn’t I babe?”

  She’d been with him when she took the pregnancy test.

  The same pregnancy test I’d found when her bag fell off the seat one night at the pool, when we’d been the only ones there, practicing late into the night as we’d always done. The same fucking pregnancy test she’d shown me with tears of joy and a huge smile on her face and said ‘surprise’.

  Looking down at the baby, I thought back to that night. I’d just reached eighteen and Alison was my thirty-three year old coach, but I’d hugged and kissed her and told her how happy I was that she was having my baby. We’d had sex in the changing room and then gone back to her house that she used to share with Roger. That was the one and only time I’d stayed the whole night, but after that Alison had said we needed to be careful in case the neighbours saw and put two and two together once she started to show. She’d said, if anyone found out about us she could have her coaching license taken away and I’d end up with some shit community coach who had no idea what my potential was.

  “She’s perfect,” Alison said, painfully dragging me back to the present.

  I looked at her and felt my jaw tighten as her eyes silently begged me not to blow up her life, like she’d made mine implode with her lies.

  “She’s gorgeous, Roger,” I replied before clearing my throat to rid the thick emotion from my tone. “Looks just like you.”

  Alison drew in a jagged breath but Roger’s deep laugh drowned out the noise of her discomfort.

  “Nah,” he said, shaking his head with a huge grin. “She’s all her mummy. My eyes maybe, but the rest of her beauty all comes from Ali.”

  “H-how did practice go?” Alison asked.

  I raised my brows, wondering how she could ask such a mundane fucking question after ripping my damn heart out.

  “Fine,” I bit out.

  “Not the same without coach, I bet,” Roger said, laughing. “God knows I missed her like mad those four months I was in Jamaica.”

  “You were in Jamaica?” I asked, realising why she’d risked taking me to her home just the once and why since that time we only ever had sex with the smell of chlorine around us.

  “Yeah man. My dad was ill and then died, so I had to sort things out. I went the week before Ali found out she was pregnant. That was one hell of a Skype session, when you told me and showed me the test, wasn’t it baby?”

  Roger grabbed Ali’s hand and leaned in to kiss her forehead, his eyes closing as he did, and I knew at that moment I couldn’t break his fucking heart, it wasn’t his fault. As much as I wanted to and have him feel as shitty as I did, it wasn’t fair to him or the baby. She’d played us both.

  “I’d better go,” I said, taking in a long breath. “I just wanted to say congratulations.”

  “Hey thanks man, appreciate it,” Roger said, sitting in the chair I’d vacated earlier. “Come again, any time.”

  I nodded but didn’t say anything. I knew I wouldn’t be going back. I wouldn’t be seeing Alison, Roger, or their baby ever again.

  “We need to talk about your training,” Ali said tentatively.

  I narrowed my eyes and curled my lip as though I’d just smelled shit in the air. There was so much I wanted to say, so much I could say, but the man sitting holding tightly to his wife’s hand didn’t deserve it, so I just nodded and left.

  As I moved down the corridor to the exit, I couldn’t stop the tears from flowing. I’d loved her, as much as an eighteen year old heart could. I’d been willing to be a father and a partner at a young age because she was the woman I loved. She’d helped me be great at the sport that I loved, she’d taught me how to be a generous lover and had given me dreams of a future full of her and our baby, and now it was all gone, ripped to shreds.

  Reaching the exit door, I realised I was still holding onto the teddy bear. I didn’t want it. I didn’t want any reminder of the day my heart had been crushed. I looked around and seeing a waste bin, threw it in. I then went to my car and seeing my swim gear on the passenger seat, threw it into the back, knowing I’d never visit the pool again. I was going to start living my life like every other teenager and I’d make sure I’d never fall in love ever again.

  Samuel

  the present

  I let out a long breath and gave my sister-in-law a look that most definitely said ‘I fucking hate you at this minute’. Amy, the cocky little shit, just grinned at me.

  “You’re going to love it,” she said, bouncing on her feet like a demented toddler.

  “No I’m not,” I ground out. “How the hell did I let you talk me into it?”

  “You love me, but most of all you love Bella and you hate to see her upset and she’d be really upset if she had to give up her swimming lessons.”

  I stuck out my tongue at my niece in Amy’s arms, making her giggle. “She’s two fucking years of age Amy, she’s hardly being trained for the Olympics.”

  Amy’s face fell as she kissed Bella’s soft dark curls. “Don’t say that, she’s really good.”

  “She splashes around doing the doggie paddle, so unless they’ve decided to include it as one of the strokes in the four by two hundred meter medley,
I think she’s got a way to go.”

  “She might have inherited your genes,” Amy grumbled. “Hopefully, the only ones of yours she has, but she still might end up being really good, and if you don’t do this and she isn’t able to come to Water Babies, we may never find out.”

  I rolled my eyes and looked over Amy’s shoulder at the pool which was filled with kids playing with floats until their swimming lessons started – lessons that fucking Amy had talked me into taking when the regular teacher broke his leg.

  I’d been a good swimmer in my youth, actually better than good, I was a county champion and according to Alison, my coach, I was on the edge of being picked for Team GB. In hindsight though, I didn’t think so. If I’d been that good one of their top coaches would have picked me up, or at least wanted to know why I gave it all up at eighteen. The thought of why I hadn’t carried on caused a shiver to run over my body and a little bit of bitterness to seep through my veins. The consequences of having an affair with your coach were harsh, because aside from ripping my heart out and shredding it, Alison Carmichael had taken away my desire to carry on in a sport that I loved. It didn’t matter whether she’d over exaggerated my chances of being a top swimmer or not, that’s what coaches often did to get the best out of you, but I’d been sixteen years of age when she took my virginity and the thought of it made me feel sick. She’d taken advantage of me and my stupid teenage crush and rush of hormones, so the thought of stepping inside a pool again was abhorrent to me. My need to swim was soon replaced with a desire for girls and booze, which definitely did end any chances I might have had.