Page 86 of Love In The Spotlight

Saturday, three weeks later, Jamie opened his front door to Laken and Aileen Carlisle.

“It’s so nice to meet you in person,” Aileen said. “I hate when West sends his jet for me, but Abby asked me to come up and talk wedding plans with her so we’ve been walking around West’s house in the Hamptons and figuring things out. It was perfect timing.”

“I’m glad you could come. All of you when they get here. Penelope is excited.”

His daughter’s second birthday was four days ago and he’d had a little cake and her favorite dinner with him, Janelle, and Laken. Just the four of them.

But he wanted Penelope to have a party and Laken had mentioned her family. This was a way for him to meet some of the significant others.

He’d be meeting Abby for the first time and Lily. Braylon had gotten engaged on Valentine’s Day. Laken also told him that Lily was going to be working with her soon. As the assistant that Laken needed desperately in her life so that she could have time outside of work to spend with him and Penelope. When she’d told him that, he realized that if you work hard enough and wait long enough, dreams can come true.

With the football season over, he was looking forward to seeing what the future held.

Scared too, knowing that people would find out about Penelope soon, but he was as prepared as could be.

“I can’t wait,” Aileen said. “Two weddings coming up and hopefully some grandbabies to follow.”

“It’s not like you live close enough to babysit, Mom,” Laken said.

“I can come here to watch them when needed. Maybe Talia won’t be around as much by then and I’ll be lonely.”

He’d heard about Laken’s youngest sister who still lived at home and was trying to figure her life out and what she wanted.

Must be nice to be twenty-two and not have a lot of worries.

At twenty-two he was sweating to see how early he’d be drafted and for how much.

His parents weren’t even with him when he walked on stage to get his jersey. His father said there was too much going on, and his mother would never leave his father.

Deanna was there because it would have looked horrible to not have one family member.

You’d think his parents would have done that for the image alone.

At some point he was going to have to let this all go.

“One can hope she has it figured out,” Laken said.

He heard little feet come running. “Laken,” Penelope said. “You came.”

“I did,” Laken said, lifting his daughter. His daughter had a red T-shirt on with a pink heart in the center that said Birthday Girl in white. Penelope’s pink tutu skirt got bunched up in his girlfriend’s arms, but she had white leggings on under it and red socks with hearts on them. Penelope’s glasses were red today. Not her normal flexible ones but a thicker plastic pair that didn’t always stay on her face and were sliding down now, but Laken pushed them up.

“I’ve got hearts,” Penelope said.

“I see that,” she said. “I like hearts. Penelope, this is my mother, Aileen.”

“Hi,” Penelope said, putting her head on Laken’s shoulder.

It wasn’t like his daughter to be shy and he wondered if this was a mistake to have so many people here for a party that his daughter was meeting for the first time.

“Laken used to wear skirts just like that when she was a kid.”

“She did?” Penelope asked.

“Yes,” Aileen said. “She’d end up taking them off because it got in the way when she wanted to play with her brothers.”

Jamie laughed. “Sounds like she always wanted to keep up,” he said.

“Always,” Laken said. “Did you get a heart cake for your birthday too?”

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