He took the card and stared at it.
“If you’re ever worried or you need an update about anything, call her. I’ll be keeping in close contact with her.”
His Adam’s apple sank with a deep swallow, and he nodded before gazing at her with red-rimmed eyes. “Take care, Caitlyn. Please. And...” He glanced away for a second. “And bring yourself home safely. Promise.”
“I promise.”
He swept her into his arms for a last knee-shaking kiss, leaving her feeling dumb, as though he’d kissed the brain cells right out of her head. She patted his arm and walked to the office, leaving him standing there.
Chapter Fourteen
How to turn chaos into organized chaos? Caitlyn and her colleagues struggled with that question as they met with professionals, local volunteers and the UN in a canvas tent so different from the one she’d shared with Spencer two nights earlier. Nothing cozy or sensual about this place. It contained a fully operational office run by generators and satellites. The UN had set it up in an open space that people from the surrounding mountains had flocked toward in search of safety.
The UN was still passing out tarpaulins to provide families with at least an element of shelter for the next few months until sturdier shelters could be constructed. But for now, this base camp for the workers—with its large sleeping block, tented office and a nearby mobile hospital—was the only area that resembled a secure environment.
Secure—
ha.
As soon as she stepped outside the tent’s flap into the blinding Afghan sun, the complete insecurity of her situation smacked her upside the head. She tugged her black headscarf farther down her forehead and strode quickly across base camp with her team and sanitation specialists from the other agencies. For Spencer’s sake, she’d been full of fake bravado when she’d promised she’d be fine. Going on a mission—
any
mission—carried risks, but being on edge had saved her ass more than once. She would know it was time to go home as soon as she felt comfortable here.
“Yesterday we surveyed the land that the UN’s steering people toward,” explained Hamasa, an Afghan water engineer from a local charity that had been digging boreholes and wells in the area before the quake. “We’ll maybe have a thousand families living here by the end of the week. Space will be a big problem.”
“So will preserving women’s modesty,” Caitlyn said. “What do you think—if we put the women’s blocks at the edges of the camp, will that risk their safety in other ways?”
Even as she and the team spoke about the land and how best to use it, Caitlyn kept her eyes focused on the ground. Local men had lined up to receive their shelter packets and rations, and she felt their stares as her group cut through them to survey the growing camp. Most of her postings in the past had been physically demanding. Because of cultural sensitivities, on this one she would work in the background, visiting women in their homes to explain how to deal with their special hygiene needs.
Never had a mission contrasted so starkly with her home life. After eight months, London felt as much like home as anywhere. But leaving the comfort of Spencer’s arms to travel across the world and work in chaos? That was hardest of all. Only two days apart and her longing for him had grown instead of diminished. He occupied her thoughts far more than he should, especially since the people she served here deserved everything she could give them.
Worse, she feared he occupied her heart. This had to be what he’d meant when he’d admitted he feared she would get too attached to him. Not love, but a severe affection that replaced his presence with sadness. Loneliness. She’d never left anyone behind before, and it sucked hard.
Unconsciously tugging her headscarf again, she forced herself to smother all thoughts of Spencer. She had a job to do, and her life wasn’t the only one that depended on her full concentration.
* * *
“Stretch those hammies, lads!” The conditioning coach slapped Spencer on the flank as Spencer leaned deeper into the stretch. One foot flat on the ground, the other flexed with his toes pointing skyward, his hamstrings tugged till he felt like he had to piss.
The coach liked them to hold their stretches for ages, and the last thing Spencer needed was more thinking time.
He wanted to kick himself so hard up the arse he’d have toes for teeth. Unfortunately he wasn’t that nimble. He’d practically begged Caitlyn not to go—asked her to give up her professionalism and one of the most worthy careers he’d heard of—so she could what? Spend a week getting off with him?
The only other time in his life he remembered feeling this kind of sickening regret was in the Sydney jail.
“All right, boys, line up on the tape for thirty-meter sprints. The first series, you sprint to the tape on the grass down there and touch it with your foot and your hand before sprinting back. The next series, you drop to the ground on the tape and scramble up before sprinting back here. You go until I say stop. Ready?”
Not really. He’d spent his last week of summer freedom surrounded by twenty-four-hour news channels, switching between them like an anxious old woman if there was no coverage of the earthquake. Then his preseason training had started, interrupting his telly-watching time and completely fucking with his concentration for the past six weeks.
Now he was two days away from his first match of the season. He needed every ounce of focus to prove himself on the pitch. The autumn internationals started in a month, and he had to be selected to represent England so he could show himself worthy of a spot on the squad for next year’s Rugby World Cup. Yet all he could think about was the fact that Caitlyn would fly home soon.
He lined up next to his London Legends teammates, his toe on the line. Just like his career.
“Go!”
He hauled arse down the pitch, bending down so he could tap the tape with his toe and fingertips at the same time before sprinting back. Breath ripped from his lungs.
“Again!”
He tapped the tape and spun to start all over again, this time sliding the last meter on his belly before scrambling to his feet and heading back. Chest straining, quads on fire, he drew on all his endurance to make it to the starting line, ready to collapse...
“Again!”
Fuck’s sake.
He did it. Barely. When he reached the end, he crumpled into a messy heap next to Liam. Retching sounds to his left told him he wasn’t in the worst shape, but several of his teammates had finished split seconds before him.
“Mate, a piece of friendly advice?” Liam panted beside him.
Spencer sucked in a breath. “Mmm?”
“Get your head out of your arse.”
Spencer crawled to his hands and knees but couldn’t muster the strength to lift his head. “What—”
pant
,
pant
, “—you mean?”
Liam slapped his shoulder and groaned as he stood. “We need you. You’re half here and half in Afghanistan, where you can’t do anything. Be useful in one place, not useless in two.”
Spencer shook his head, too shattered to respond.
Two hours later he stepped out of the shower, dried off and slung a towel around his waist. Liam had parked himself on the bench in front of Spencer’s locker.
“You waiting for me, handsome?”
“You wish,” Liam shot back. “Sit down.”
Spencer bit back a retort and did as his captain demanded.
“You want to mope like a girl? Then be a girl and tell me what’s wrong.”
“We didn’t part on the best of terms.” Spencer rolled his eyes to stare at the ceiling. “I made myself look like a self-righteous prick, and it gets on my tits that that’s her last memory of me.”
Liam wiped the sweat off his face with his T-shirt. “Mate, just send her an email to apologize. Tell her the truth—that you’re occasionally a pathetic, moody git, and you’re sorry.”
“I can’t. She’s sharing an email address with her colleagues. I don’t even know if they have internet access there.” He heard his mobile beep with a text and he leaped off the bench. “Move.”
Liam slid to the side so Spencer could open his locker.
“It’s from her flatmate, Emma. She’s on the news now.”
Spencer ran across the gym to the meeting room, where they usually gathered to watch game tapes. He switched the TV to the news just in time to see a newsreader with an orange fake tan introducing a clip. “...
with this special report shot by aid workers on the ground.
”
He knew what would follow. For weeks Caitlyn and her colleagues had been using the video recorders on their mobile phones to send messages to news channels. The picture was surprisingly good but unsteady, and Spencer always wished whoever held the phone would keep it still so he could get a better look at Caitlyn, even though the shots of her were fleeting.
A British journalist gave a voice-over. “
The death toll stands at over ten thousand
,
and many thousands of people are still unaccounted for.
”
Shots of crumbled buildings, men weeping and women in burkas grasping their chests as they cried out. “
But the earthquake that wrought so much destruction in the hills bordering Afghanistan and Tajikistan also left nearly fifty thousand people homeless.
”
Thousands of tents set up along the mountainside. “
Aid workers still face several enormous challenges.
” A Western man and several Afghani men digging in the dirt and pouring something into the hole. “
Sanitation systems
,
water
,
shelter
,
properly disposing of the bodies.
These are the challenges facing local volunteers and staff from just a handful of foreign organizations.
”
There was Caitlyn. If he’d blinked he would have missed her. She was on his screen for a second or two, standing in a room full of women talking. She wore a headscarf, as she always did in these videos. She was always shown inside a tent. Did she have to cover herself completely when she left the tent or would she be fine in her headscarf? Did she have a choice?
The report ended and he switched off the TV.
He liked it better when she was on the radio, as she had been several times in the weeks following the disaster. Then he could hear her voice and pretend she wasn’t in Afghanistan but in Cambridgeshire or Surrey. She sounded so capable and calm on the radio that he had no trouble imagining she was sipping a cup of tea somewhere in the Home Counties.
He sent Emma a text simply saying thank you. She’d started texting him the morning after Caitlyn left with brief messages.
She landed safely
and
Interview tonite
@
7
.
Caitlyn must’ve given her his number and asked her to keep him informed. The first week after the earthquake, the texts had come several times a day. It was a wonder Caitlyn got any work done, the number of times she’d been interviewed via her satellite phone. In the past couple of weeks, though, the texts became much less frequent as the media gave in to its attention deficit disorder and switched its focus to the appalling state of the domestic economy. Now, for the most part, Emma’s texts let him know that she’d talked to Caitlyn or her team and all was well. He tended to receive those texts early in the morning and knew that Emma was burning the candle at both ends trying to keep the story in the news. He wanted to do something nice for her but wasn’t quite sure what.
“Mate, are you going to be able to concentrate Saturday?”
Liam leaned against the doorjamb, brows drawn in concern. “Seriously, Bailey, you know what’s at stake here. You’ve only just got back into the England team. Don’t lose your momentum now. Don’t give
anyone
a reason to call you that word again. You know which one I mean.”
Spencer nodded. Liam wasn’t referring to the granddaddy of insults, the
R
word that the tabloids had labeled him with. He meant the other one:
unreliable
.
“Good. I know you’ll show up and give the team two hundred percent this weekend. Otherwise you’re fucked.” Liam threw him a crooked smile to take some of the bite out of his words, but Spencer knew better than that. Liam had difficult decisions to make as the team captain, and being best mates placed him in an uncomfortable position. Spencer wanted to be honest with his friend but couldn’t be completely honest with his captain.
“I know she’s going to be okay, and she’s coming back soon anyway. I’ll be fine.”
Liar.
He was a mess and he lived for the beep of his phone receiving a message. Worse, Liam had known him too long to believe a word he’d just said. He needed to change the subject.
“What would you do to thank a female friend for being really thoughtful?”
Liam frowned and closed his eyes like he was thinking real hard. “A female friend?”
“Yeah. Someone you have no interest in shagging and don’t want to give the wrong idea to. But she’s been...I don’t know...really helpful, and I want to thank her for it.”
“A bottle of wine?”
“I could. But she probably buys wine herself, so I wanted to do something more. A real treat, you know?”
“Megan used to treat herself to a day at a spa in Mayfair every time I got paid. The day before she kicked me into touch she went there to get the works—massage, facial, manicure, pedicure, a full-body wax, and something involving mud and rocks that I didn’t quite understand. Set me back five hundred quid.”
Spencer laughed. “She must’ve been celebrating.”
“I think she was already hunting for her next prey.”
“Maybe I’ll set that up for Emma. Not the wax, though. Don’t want to insult her.”
When Emma texted him that night to say that all was well, he called her. “How are you holding up?” he asked.
“Oh, I’m great. Who wouldn’t be after two straight weeks of working eighteen hours a day? Fortunately, I’ve got next Friday off. Unfortunately, I’ve got it off because it’s my sister’s hen weekend in York, and I’m supposed to be organizing the thing. I get to spend three days with bridezilla and five of her friends, who range in personality from comatose to downright evil, so there’s a plus.”
Before he could figure out how to respond, she paused and took a deep breath. “Sorry, Spencer. Without Caitlyn around, I’ve got weeks’ worth of sarcasm boiling inside me. I’m thinking about taking next Thursday off so I can sleep. I figure that’ll lessen the chances of me ritually slaughtering anyone.”
Spencer smiled into the phone. “How does a mud bath sound?”
Dead silence. Then: “A mud bath?”
“I’ve read they’re rejuvenating and good for the soul. At least, that’s what the website of this spa in Mayfair says.”
“I don’t have a soul, and if I did it wouldn’t want to be covered in mud. What are you talking about?”