Free Infamous: A Bad Boy Sports Romance Novel by Arabella Abbing

as I said, “There’s not a good way to tell your wife that you cheated on her and fathered a child.”
    Jared shook his head. “I agree, but it’s not what I meant. He doesn’t know how to tell his wife that he wants a divorce. For some fucking reason, the moron fell for Brittany. The whole thing is just ridiculous, if you ask me.”
    “And yet you let yourself be involved.”
    “I owed him a favor,” he said grimly, his tone implying that he wasn’t willing to elaborate. Then he sighed and scrubbed a hand over his jaw as he admitted, “But I didn’t know it would be this bad. I wouldn’t have agreed to take the heat if I had.”
    Regardless of my personal opinions about the situation as a whole, I had to admit that learning the truth gave me a whole new respect for Jared. I now knew that he wasn’t the type of guy to take advantage of a severely drunk woman, but he was the kind of man who would take the fall for a friend. Two pieces of information that seemed small, but felt rather large.
    It just proved to me how little I knew the real Jared. Maybe I had been right all along—there was a normal guy under all that persona. Okay, maybe not normal , but decent. A good man.
    It was just a matter of digging through all the bullshit to find him.
    The realization was like a kick to the stomach. Now it would be twelve times harder to get rid of my crush on him and it was made worse by my agreement to just be myself and drop the professionalism between us. I was desperately hoping he was going to continue behaving like he had the past two days because I was terrified of the possibility that I may give in to him if he started up the flirting again.
    “Thank you for telling me all that,” I finally said when I realized he was staring at me expectantly. “I appreciate that you trusted me enough to tell me the truth.”
    Jared shrugged, trying to coolly play it off. “No big. Least I can do for you agreeing to house me for two weeks.”
    “Only ten more days to go,” I swiftly pointed out.
    “Yeah,” he said, nodding absentmindedly as his brows knit together in a frown. “You’ll be rid of me before you know it.”
    There was an awkward tension lingering in the air, so I stood up and started easing my way toward the open door.
    “Well with our new-and-improved truce, the next ten days should be a lot better than the first few. Right?” I asked, laughing nervously as he watched me with narrowed eyes.
    “That depends. You going to keep up your end of the deal and drop the professional shit?”
    “I said I would.”
    Jared swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up, shooting a charming smile at me as he walked over to stand beside me.
    “Then the rest of our time together should be wonderful.”
    Having a wonderful time with him was exactly what I was afraid of.

14

Jared
    “ A pril .”
    “It’s fine. I’m just going to—”
    “ April ,” I drawled, dragging out her name while I suppressed an eye roll.
    “Jared—”
    “Let me do it.”
    “I don’t need—”
    I growled in irritation and gripped her hips firmly, lifting her into the air and smirking at her squeal of surprise. I twisted around and placed her on her feet behind me, then reached out to take the wrench from her hands while she just started up at me with wide eyes.
    I crouched down and crawled under the sink to undo the pipe she was struggling to get loose. I lined up the wrench and used my all my strength to turn it, grunting from the strain. The damn thing was pretty well stuck—if it wouldn’t have pissed her off, I might have pointed out that there was no way she could’ve gotten it off by herself.
    Instead, I stuck my hand out and said, “Give me the new one.”
    A moment later, the replacement was placed in my hand. I made quick work of putting the new piece on and making sure it was tight enough to not leak, but hopefully loose enough for her to get off next time. When I was done, I eased myself out of the small