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

22. Confrontation

[RECAP: England cricket captain Matt Curran has realised that the dates don't match and he can't be the father of his celebrity girlfriend Miggy's unborn baby. Meanwhile Cara has also discovered she's pregnant, but won't tell Matt because she's worried it will ruin his life. Cara has told her family she's pregnant, and her brother has guessed who the father is.]

It was the hardest conversation Matt had ever had to have. It was going to be awful if he was right and awful if he was wrong. But something of this magnitude couldn't be buried. It would hang over him every day, taint his future happiness with his child - if it was his child - if he didn't know.

A lot of men in his situation might have felt angry. But Matt didn't, essentially because he knew he didn't love Miggy. If it was his baby he would stand by her and he would try to love her in time. If it wasn't his then being free again would outweigh any hurt pride. Sure - things would be excruciating for a while publicity-wise, you couldn't hush up something like this up - but he'd get through it.

At the end of the day he did care for Miggy. His lack of love for her made him care for her more, in a way. He didn't want her to be hurt. He had felt guilty because he loved someone else and couldn't stop thinking about her. But perhaps, if there was a chance it wasn't his, it meant that Miggy didn't care for him as much as he had thought either.

There was the issue of why she had lied to him, if she had lied. Or maybe she was genuinely mistaken. She could be surprisingly ditzy about certain things as much as she was astute about others.

The only thing that mattered was the truth, and getting it gently, and fixing things between them if he'd got it all wrong.

Matt just hoped that raising his doubts wouldn't fracture their relationship irrevocably. They had had some good times after all. Maybe they would again in future.

Miggy was at her place, curled up on the couch reading a pregnancy book. Ironically it was one of the same ones he'd bought in Manchester. They still more or less alternated between his place and hers, they'd had vague conversations about finding a new place with an extra bedroom but it hadn't gone anywhere.

He sat down on a chair opposite her. "I need to ask you something. If I've got it all wrong you can call me an idiot and put it down to male panic over fatherhood or whatever." She was looking directly at him now. Her face was unreadable.

"Is there a chance this baby isn't mine?"

It was out there. The words hung in the air and he couldn't take them back now.

She closed the book. She suddenly looked a lot more tired, as though the serenity and confidence she had been exuding these past weeks were a masque, now dissolved.

"I'm not sure. There's a chance, yes."

"It was the dates. There were nearly two months that we weren't together." He knew he didn't need to explain it.

Now she was explaining herself. "When I found out I honestly didn't know. I just assumed it was yours, I mean we've been together for ages. It was only after a while that I wondered."

"All the headlines, the interviews when I got back? Why the hell did you do that if you weren't sure?" Matt hadn't meant to raise his voice but remembering what he had gone through at the airport and afterwards, he felt frustrated.

Miggy looked contrite. "I suppose it was my way of telling myself that it had to be yours. That it was best if it was yours. It made it a done deal."

He still hadn't asked whose it was but that felt strangely unimportant.

"Did you want it to be mine?"