Page 106 of Best Man
“Ha! How about that. Big Rig and me … hockey dads!”
“I know! The timing is kind of amazing, isn’t it?” she said, beaming. “Our babies are going to grow up at the same time and experience everything together. They’ll probably be best friends for life.”
“Who knows? If we have boys, maybe they will even play in the NHL together.”
“Yeah …” she trailed off. “But what if we have a daughter, Sasha? You won’t be disappointed, will you? You’ll still love her, right?”
“Of course I would like a son, so I can teach him how to play hockey. It’s all I know how to do, after all,” he said with a wink. “But if we have a daughter? Well, I don’t know how much I can teach her about life … but she’s still my child, Paulina. I will love her with all my heart.”
Touched, Paulina smiled. “Thank you. That’s all I needed to hear. You’re going to be an amazing dad.”
He chuckled. “Really? You think so?”
“I do,” she said with a bob of her head. “Anyway, sorry for interrupting. You were telling me that your teammates are all baby crazy right now.”
“Yes. And I’ll be honest, Paulina, I didn’t understand it. I thought they were all crazy! Because sleep is so important for us athletes—why would weeverwant a little screaming monster waking us up every night?”
Paulina’s brow furrowed and she slowly shrank away from him. Obviously, those weren’t the words she wanted to hear from the father of her baby …
“But that was the way I thought before I met you,” he clarified.
“And now you’re suddenly ready to have a baby, huh?” she asked skeptically, and Niko realized it was her turn to have doubts abouthim.
“Is anybody ever ready for a baby?” he asked.
“Your teammates sound pretty ready,” she pointed out.
“Fine. That’s true. All I’m saying is, as soon as I met you, I started to see things differently.”
“You did? Seems like a pretty quick change of heart, if you ask me.”
He sighed. “Yes. It was. I don’t blame you for not believing me,” he said. “Maybe it would help if I tell you something. When I first saw you, I had this crazy thought enter my mind.”
“What was it?”
“Something like:‘Man. She is so sexy. I want to put my baby inside her.’”
“SASHA!!” She let out a shocked burst of laughter and attacked his shoulder with a flurry of rabbit punches. “Youwantedto get me pregnant?!”
He laughed, too, and shirked off her playful punches. “I would not say Iwantedto get you pregnant. But then again—” He paused to run his greedy eyes up and down her bare body. “—wow, how could Inot?You’re incredible.”
She slapped her forehead. “Oh my God. If I’d known you were thinking about me like that, I definitely would’ve been a little more careful with you.”
“But isn’t it beautiful?” he asked.
She groaned. “Beautiful? I dunno, man. You’re going to have explain yourself a little more.”
“Okay. Let me try again. I was teasing my teammates about how they wanted to have babies. And as soon as I saw you, I started having my own crazy thoughts and ideas about babies—”
“Wait. You’re saying you hadmorethan one thought about knocking me up? It wasn’t just a onetime thing?”
“Da,” he admitted shamefully. “More than one.”
“I want to hear ’em all, Sasha. Every last detail.”
“Okay …”
He rattled off the list: the first time, the one he’d already told her about, was the time he very first saw her. The second time was when he was pretending that he was going to push her out into the rain, and she fought back against him.
