Scoring the Billionaire (Bad Boy Billionaires Book 3) Read online

  “Sounds perfect. Mind if I join you?”

  Before I could even respond to his question, I noticed something in her hair.

  Something moving in her hair.

  What in the ever-loving hell is that?

  The tail end of Wes’s question almost registered. “—you still there?”

  “Uh-huh…” I replied, but everything in me was focused on Lexi’s scalp.

  And that’s when I figured it out. Three tiny little bugs scattering across her scalp every time I ran my fingers through her hair.

  Oh. My. God.

  Lice.

  My daughter had lice.

  The fight-or-flight instinct was strong, and an honest to God twitch took up residence in my upper thigh as I struggled to decide. Physician or not, the flight side wanted to hop off the couch and run the fuck out of my house. And the fighter…well, she wanted to burn my entire motherfucking house down.

  Holy. Fucking. Shit.

  “Oh, no,” I muttered and scooted almost violently away from my own daughter.

  I was really trying to pull myself together and be a good mom who didn’t have the urge to shave her daughter’s head and then set fire to all bedding, linens, pillows, and clothing, in the front yard, but the human survival instinct was tugging pretty fiercely on the other end of my rope.

  Lexi’s eyes moved off her iPad and met mine, and I tried to turn my oh-holy-shit face into a smile. “Mommy?”

  “Fred?” Wes demanded into my ear. “Are you okay?”

  I shut my eyes and tried to take deep breaths. I was Dr. Winslow. I had handled some of the worst trauma injuries ever to walk through St. Luke’s ED doors. I could do this. I could handle these little lice fuckers without losing my cool.

  I could.

  I could do it.

  Before I tell you the next events, just remember, lice.

  LICE. In my daughter’s hair.

  If you’ve never had to experience lice in your lifetime,

  get on your hands and knees now and tell God you love him.

  When I opened my eyes, I glanced down at my shirt and that was when everything took a turn from internally freaking out to externally losing my ever-loving shit—a little bug crawling around the sleeve of my T-shirt, mere millimeters from my skin.

  “Holy fucking shit!” I shouted, too freaked out to think about the age-inappropriate words coming out of my mouth and my daughter’s propensity for repeating things, and jumped off the couch so high, if my living room had been a sanctioned venue, I could have qualified for the Olympics. Catapulting myself over the coffee table, I hopped around maniacally from foot to foot and smacked my hand against my shirt to rid myself of the demonic, disgusting parasite.

  I honestly had no idea where the phone went at that point, and I didn’t fucking care. All I wanted was the ability to set myself on fire without suffering life-threatening burns.

  “Mommy?” Lexi repeated with her little head tilted to the side. “Mommy, what’s wrong?”

  The worry in her voice was the only thing powerful enough to pull me out of my plans for self-detonation. When I looked down at her, her bottom lip was pushed out and slightly quivering.

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  If that wasn’t a mom fail, I didn’t know what was.

  I scurried back over toward her and kneeled at her feet, both hands gently gripping her cheeks. “It’s okay, baby. Everything is okay. I promise.”

  “But why was Mommy shouting?” she asked as her little hand reached up to scratch at her scalp.

  Because you have an infestation of lice on your head and now I probably have lice and we’re going to have to shave both of our heads and I haven’t studied up on how to get away with arson…

  I fought the urge to grimace and tried to ignore how incessantly my scalp—my whole body—was now starting to itch. I felt like I had bugs crawling all over me.

  “Mommy was just playing around a little. Just dancing,” I bullshitted, hoping she’d buy it.

  Her nose scrunched up, and she squinted one eye. “Scared dancing?”

  God, I felt like the worst mom ever. I would’ve thought my years in the medical industry would have prepared me for handling a mild case of lice, but obviously, they didn’t.

  But the time to freak out was over. Now I had to deal with it.

  “Hey, I need to run to the store real quick. If you promise to be a good girl, I’ll let you pick out a toy. Sound good?”

  “A calculator?”

  “You want another calculator?”

  She grinned and nodded her head.

  I shrugged. At this point, I didn’t care if we were a forty-calculator household if it kept her happy and agreeable. “If you’re good, sweetie, you can pick out anything you want.”

  Lexi’s grin turned wide and excited as she jumped into my arms and buried her face between my neck and shoulder.

  I wish I could say I wasn’t internally cringing, but when I felt her hair brush across my arm, I very nearly lost my shit all over again.

  Somehow, the mom inside me won out over the lunatic this time around, though. I stood up and set her on her feet. “I’ve got an idea. Let’s see who can get their shoes on and be at the front door the fastest. Sound good?”

  She nodded again. “Twelve…nine…six…three…zero… Go! Go! Go!” And then she sprinted toward her room as fast as her little feet could take her.

  Only my daughter would count down in multiples of three.

  Twenty minutes later, we were walking—more like speed walking—back to our home, lice talk with Lexi officially complete, my wallet one hundred dollars lighter, and a bag full of every lice treatment known to man. Apparently, facing my one true weakness, I still wasn’t over the lice. Constantly glancing down at my shirt or Lexi’s hair and mentally freaking the fuck out, this was, quite literally, hell.

  Again, I considered the consequences of setting my home on fire with all of the things we loved inside it, or you know, moving out until the infestation died, but that still left me fucked. The lice were on Lexi, and she was the one thing I couldn’t stomach burning to the ground.

  As we rounded the last corner and solidly set foot on our block, Wes appeared, pacing in front of my front door, phone pressed to his ear and face set with worry and concern. He glanced up from watching his angry feet grind each step into the sidewalk and, when his eyes met mine, relief consumed his face.

  “She’s here. I found her…and they’re both okay. Yeah.” He smiled sardonically and ran his tongue along the front of his bottom teeth inside his lip. “I love you, too.”

  I love you too? Who the fuck is he talking to?

  He quickly hung up the call and shoved the phone into his back pocket.

  “Wes!” Lexi shouted and sprinted toward him before I could stop her.

  “Wait—” I started to say, but it was too late. He picked her up and held her close to his chest. The last of his lingering worry receded.

  His hazel eyes met mine. “What the hel—heck happened? You screamed, and then you were just gone.” At the memory, his face went straight to ravaged again.

  Jesus. I obviously wasn’t handling this well at all.

  I should apologize.

  “Who was on the phone?”

  Whoops.

  He shook his head and looked to the sky before looking back at me. “Your brother.”

  “Remy?”

  He nodded. “I haven’t met the rest of them, have I?”

  It still didn’t make any sense. “You love him?”

  Understanding lifted the corners of his mouth as he rolled his eyes. “His sentiment was a far sight less flowery.”

  Shit. “Sorry.”

  He shrugged. “I was worried about you two.”

  Lexi leaned back and looked him in the eyes. “Head lice are scientifically known as Pediculus humanus capitis, and an infestation with head lice is medically known as pediculosis capitis. They are obligate parasites. They cannot survive without a human host.”<
br />
  He studied her closely before moving on to the clear, plastic shopping bag in my hand.

  “She has lice?” he asked, having Sherlock Holmes-ed the situation quite skillfully.

  “So…about the whole lice thing…” I jerked my chin toward Lex’s head where it rested on his shoulder. “You probably have it now too.”

  He remained completely neutral for a second before he burst into laughter.

  His mouth turned into a knowing smirk. “The screams? They were because of lice?”

  I nodded, a little bit ashamed.

  But, in my defense, we are talking about lice here.

  LICE.

  They are up there with bed bugs.

  “I can’t believe Dr. Winslow can’t handle lice.”

  “They creep me out, okay?” I protested.

  He held me captive in his stare, everything in his eyes screaming the most flattering things I’d ever been told. He didn’t mind that the lice were on him, and more than that, he didn’t mind that I did. I wasn’t going to have to handle everything alone—not this time. He winked and then looked back at Lexi. “What do you say we get you inside and take care of the pediculosis capitis?”

  She grinned and nodded.

  Fifteen minutes later, Wes, Lexi and I crammed into the tiny space of my bathroom, Wes was in full kill-the-lice-fuckers mode. He had read all of the instructions on the treatment and was busy applying it to my daughter’s head.

  “You’re next,” he told me, and I melted even deeper into the wall.

  Lexi sat comfortably on the closed toilet seat, her little legs swinging back and forth as she stared down at Wes’s phone and tapped random math problems into the calculator app, and all I had to do was stand back and watch.

  I was in complete awe of him.

  His tall, muscular frame standing in my small, en suite bathroom looked equal parts right and wrong, and he made my little girl look so tiny. But God, the look in his eyes melted my heart, the hazel irises soft and warm and filled with nothing but care and tenderness. It was truly apparent he cared about Lexi just as he cared about me.

  It was awesome, but holy God, did it scare me.

  Lexi adored Wes. Looked at him like he could do nearly anything. And I didn’t want her to have another father figure in her life, only for him to leave her behind.

  The mere idea of that broke my heart. She had already been through so much with her own father. Nick rarely made a point to keep contact, let alone make her feel special. Sure, he lived in a completely different city, but he could at least pick up the phone. My daughter didn’t say all that much, but she had everything to say. Nick never listened.

  Lexi did not deserve to go through something like that again.

  “Almost done, sweetie,” Wes said as he squirted a little more of the treatment into his hand and kneaded it into her hair and scalp.

  “How many minutes?” she questioned predictably. Those little pieces of her—the quirks I could always count on—felt like home.

  “Three more minutes until I’m done,” he answered patiently, eyes focused on the task at hand. “And then we wait for twenty minutes until we can wash it out.”

  She looked at the time on his phone. “3:04pm and 3:24pm.”

  “That’s right, Lexi girl. And then, you’ll be all done,” he said with a proud smile on his face.

  But God, the way he was with her, so intuitive to her little, unique mind. It made it really hard for me to know what was right for her, for me, for both of us.

  “And then, it’s mommy’s turn to get treated.”

  My nose scrunched up in annoyance. “But I don’t want to have lice,” I whined.

  Wes’s smile was both condescending and comforting. “But you do. And the last thing I need is for you to give lice to an entire professional football team.”

  I groaned, and he just laughed, visibly amused by my discomfort.

  “Plus, we can’t,” he added, and then his lips made a little high-pitched, sexy whistle, “if you don’t let me get the disgusting parasites out of your hair.” He winked at me. “Which, I gotta say, is an even higher priority than the team.”

  I rolled my eyes but still couldn’t stop myself from laughing.

  “I can’t whistle until the lice is out of my hair?” Lexi asked.

  “Yep,” he answered with a giant, roguish grin. “We can’t whistle until the lice is gone.”

  I pointed at Wes, still giggling quietly. “There is something seriously wrong with you, you know that?”

  His smile never faltered. Sweet, sexy bastard.

  What was he trying to do to me?

  The only thing worse than winter in New York is really fucking winter in Wisconsin.

  It’s the kind of cold that gels your insides and eats away at the will you have to do basically anything—other than drink.

  Which is essentially what people do in Wisconsin. I’m pretty sure that’s why my dad moved there, relocating from the Pacific Northwest after I flew the nest. That and his love for summers on Lake Michigan. And even I had to admit I understood that one.

  There was something about it that felt like magic.

  But it wasn’t summer, and I wasn’t here to visit with my dad—though he always made the effort to see me when the team was here. The Mavericks and I were here to secure our spot in the play-offs and maintain our undefeated streak. We hadn’t had a season this good since I’d taken ownership—actually, well before then—and I knew it had a lot to do with the recruiting we’d done. Sean Phillips was a maniac, a complete dual threat, and Quinn Bailey had the kind of poise you rarely saw in anyone. And now that Mitchell was back on the field after a long but necessary recuperation, we were starting to feel unstoppable.

  Meanwhile, things with Winnie felt stuck in cement no matter how hard I tried to go. What we now referred to as the Thanksgiving Lice had come and gone, along with a couple of weeks, and Christmas would be here in almost the same time. I felt good for a few days after the lice thing, having stepped in and handled the situation so that Winnie could have the freedom to freak out for once. I still fucking itched from time to time, but after years and years of practice, my ability to fake calm while a storm raged inside had actually come in handy. But what I hadn’t noted in that moment was that Winnie didn’t come to me for help, wouldn’t have had I not intervened, and if I hadn’t been on the phone with her the moment it happened, I might not ever have known.

  Because I was just there; I wasn’t the guy she called in a pinch. I tried not to take it too personally, seeing as Winnie Winslow didn’t turn to anyone in a pinch, but I was genuinely trying to build something with her at this point. I pushed and she pulled, and the more time that passed, the more I started to wonder if she’d ever take anything about me seriously, other than my cock.

  But here she came now, strutting down the hall with her irresistible confidence and a down comforter for a coat as I pulled away from a back-pounding hello hug with my father. I smiled at her getup, a defense from the cruel wind on the field, and her face softened at the unexpected affection from me. Though, at this point, I wasn’t sure there was ever a time I greeted her with anything less than the full strength of my most genuine smile.

  She gave me a wink, finger flutter, and a circling finger—our symbol for “Later, I’ll be around”—intent on moving right past us, when I reached out and grabbed her elbow to pull her to a stop.

  She stuttered in surprise as I pulled her to my side. Granted, she didn’t have any clue who the man standing with me was and might have been expecting me to keep my normal game-day distance, but I was tired of it. I wanted to be able to pull her into my arms no matter where we were.

  My dad looked on with the knowing smile of a man who loved women and interacted with them on the regular—big and bright and a little inappropriate. He hadn’t been with anyone seriously since my mother passed, but he’d been with many someones, and at my age now, he no longer tried to shelter it.

  Kyle Lancaster h
ad always been an attractive man—and still was—with the world at his feet. What people never recognized, thanks to the never-graying hair, hard jaw, and well-muscled physique, was that when I said he had the world at his feet, I meant literally. Buried six feet down, in the casket he picked out with a newborn in his arms.

  His example had always made sense to me—never settling down again after my mother passed. In the early years, he had me to worry about, a crying, puking, screaming baby with all the stubbornness I had now and then some. But his routine in loneliness never waned, and I figured it was a move of a man who knew he’d had the right fit from the puzzle of life, and the rest of the pile was just pieces. Maybe, if you pushed really hard, they’d bend into place, but as far as being made for that spot, cut specifically by their maker to fit with him, he’d never find a duplicate. It was ironic, but lately, it felt remarkably like I was living his life in reverse. My mother had died during my birth. Up until then, my dad had had it all, and after, for the entirety of my life, he’d been living with just a mound of pieces—and so had I. But I was snapping in with my one fitting piece now. At least, I was trying my goddamn hardest to.

  “Dad, this is—” I started to introduce then. Winnie’s eyes flared noticeably on the word “Dad.”

  “Dr. Winslow,” she interrupted. “Winnie to you,” she added with a wink.

  I smiled at the melodic confidence in her voice. “She’s—”

  “The team physician,” she broke in again. “New to the team, but I really love it.”

  “I like her,” my dad remarked with a batty old smile—the only part of him that hinted at his age. “Knows enough not to wait around for you. Gets right to the point herself.”

  I wasn’t thinking that myself, though.

  It felt to me like she was beating me to the punch to prove a point—to draw a line between us. A line that defined personal and business and meant a very specific thing about a meeting with my father. A goddamn line I didn’t want drawn because it was ugly and dark and reeked of permanent marker, the words “fuck buddy” illustrated perfectly in shaded bubble letters.