Man of the Match: hot celebrity romance (FULL NOVEL)

15. Struggling

[RECAP: Cara is devastated to read in the newspapers that Matt's girlfriend Miggy is pregnant. Meanwhile Cara's ex-fiancé Declan is single again.]

It was an effort. A huge effort. Matt felt like he was going through the motions and his frustration grew along with his sense of guilt.

He longed to get away but England weren't touring again until the end of the year. By then he'd be a father, caught up in wedding plans, he felt like his life was spiralling out of his control.

This should be the happiest time possible for him. Career success, money, a beautiful girlfriend, a baby on the way.

Instead he felt trapped. He couldn't get Cara out of his mind as much as he tried to suppress thoughts of her.

Miggy was glowing with her pregnancy but had totally gone off sex which had been a relief to Matt rather than a frustration. Things were complicated enough as it was.

He did all the right things, or at least he tried to. He got Miggy what she wanted. He accompanied her to appointments when cricketing and captaincy duties permitted. He went window shopping for baby stuff with her.

She was planning on getting most of it for free, either through sponsorship deals or from friends and family. Miggy was never as loaded as she needed to be, but she was smart at getting things as favours. Everyone did it in her world, where you needed a new designer outfit for every event.

Matt had always admired this about Miggy: how she could charm anything out of anyone. Now he felt he would rather just pay for the damn designer pram out of pocket so they could get out of the shop and not have to endlessly look at different colours and styles.

And now he had a kid on the way, and felt a sense of duty to provide for it, it felt a bit grasping to be angling for freebies. He wasn't sure it if undermined him, somehow. If it was demeaning.

He tried talking about this with Miggy but she laughed him down. "Don't be absurd! What's the point of spending thousands of pounds on nursery furniture if someone is happy to give it to us?"

Matt attempted to explain that he wanted things to be simple. That they - and the baby - didn't need all this stuff. But Miggy mocked him for being "noble" and he ended up dropping the subject.

He should have been grateful, he supposed. He knew of enough relationships that failed under financial pressures.

Miggy also had completely different ideas about names than he had. Every day she seemed to come up with something new that he inwardly cringed at. Anoushka. Portia. Pandora. Tristram. Rollo. Cosmo. He could just imagine the reaction in the dressing room at "Cosmo Archibald Chatham-Curran", her current preferred combination.

Matt imagined something simpler. A sweet little girl called Poppy. A little boy wearing mini cricket whites called Finn. He mentioned these names to Miggy but she dismissed them as too commonplace.

If it wasn't for Chris he might have gone mad. He was a constant source of support. Although Chris hadn't had kids with his ex, he had a slew of nephews and nieces.

"It's always like this, for a first. Just ride it out."

Other team mates got on his nerves. "About time you two got hitched isn't it, before the happy arrival? When's that happening then?"

"The more people who ask the less inclined I am," Matt said. Then he felt bad for snapping, and disloyal to Miggy at the same time.

Chris could see that Matt was deeply unhappy.