Free Blitzed by the Brit: A Secret Baby Sports Romance by Jessica Ashe

staring at me for five minutes, he reads the text quickly and devours the meaning with little effort. Getting him to concentrate is the tricky bit.
    “Stop looking up at me,” I scold, as I catch his eyes darting up from the book. “You can’t look to me during the exam.”
    “You motivate me to keep reading. If you weren’t here, I’d have given up a long time ago. Sorry, but if you want me to keep studying you’re going to have to let me check you out once in a while.”
    “Were you always like this in school?”
    “No, but I never wanted to fuck any of my teachers. Well, actually, there was that one—”
    “I don’t want to know,” I interrupted. “Anyway, you don’t want to fuck me, you just want to get a rise out of me.”
    “For someone so clever, you do say a lot of stupid things. I definitely do want to fuck you. And I’m going to.”
    “Are you now?” I say, trying to sound casual and disinterested. This seems surreal. Men like Charles are the stuff of fantasies, but he’s saying that if I click my fingers I can have him right here, right now. Or maybe upstairs—I’m not sure I want to do anything like that with Gemma watching on eagerly.
    “How much longer are you going to make me wait?” Charles asks. “We’re both suffering here.”
    “I’m only suffering because you won’t focus on the text. Where are your highlighters? You’ll be able to concentrate easier if you highlight the text as you go.”
    “I don’t have any.”
    “You don’t have any highlighters?” What kind of student doesn’t have highlighters? I can’t live without my collection of six different colored highlighters. “Please tell me you at least have sticky labels to tab pages.”
    Charles looks back at me with a bemused expression on his face. “Do I really need all that crap?”
    “Yes,” I reply. “But we can cope without them for now. Back to reading, buster.”
    Charles smiles at me again, but he does go back to reading his book. I’m just relieved to have changed the subject. He probably doesn’t believe me when I say I don’t want him, but I need to keep denying it for my sake as much as his. The second I admit to having any feelings for him, this entire relationship goes to shit.
    I do have feelings for him. I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to admit that to myself, but it’s obvious now. I have feelings for the cocky, arrogant, stunningly good-looking footballer who has a young child.
    I’m in deep shit.

Chapter 6
Charles
    I feel like shit .
    I know it’s not a hangover. When I have a hangover, my head pounds and I feel queasy. I don’t have a headache and I don’t feel sick, but my throat hurts like hell and I feel like I’m coming down from a huge sugar high.
    I didn’t even drink that much last night. I can handle my beer, but whatever crap they served at the party last night wasn’t beer. I’d stuck to beer thinking it would be the sensible choice, but all they had was that fizzy piss that tastes more like a soft drink. Now I feel like I’ve drunk four liters of cola.
    Predictably, the party had been absolute shit. I swear, regardless of what it says on our driving licenses, I must be at least five years older than the rest of these people. The party was all drinking games and desperate attempts to get women to flash their tits. Maybe I’m just old before my time.
    I only went to the party to keep the team happy. Morale is always important in team sports, and I’ve not exactly endeared myself to everyone in the squad. The way I see it, I can earn points by attending shitty parties, and I can then cash in those points when I need to bollock my teammates for acting like idiots. Last night should have earned me a lot of points for all this shit I put myself through.
    I drag myself out of bed and head straight over to the library. Becky has set up another study session, and this time she refuses to do it at my house. In order to escape all my crazy fans, we are meeting at