“I wanted to thank you for keeping me up to date about Caitlyn. I thought a day at a spa might be good. Is that too weird?”
Emma laughed. “Are you kidding? That’s the best thing I’ve ever heard! Set it up. No mud, though. I can only imagine how many toes and other gross bits have squished through it. Do they wax? I’m starting to resemble a Highland cow.”
He made a noise somewhere between a cough and a gag. “Why don’t I just give them my credit card number and you can book whatever you want? I don’t need to know the details. Anyway, how did she sound when you talked to her tonight?”
“It was a really quick conversation. The SAT phone’s expensive so we try to limit how much we use it. But she was just going to bed and said she’s finally getting used to being there, now that she’s about to come home. She got about five good hours of sleep last night, she said. I know that doesn’t sound like a lot, but when you first go on a mission, you’re so pumped up on adrenaline and the conditions are so uncomfortable that it’s hard to sleep more than a few minutes at a time, no matter how exhausted you are. At least, that’s how it was for me and her when we were in Zimbabwe. Some of our colleagues could conk out standing up.”
He desperately wanted to know more, to find out every detail of Caitlyn’s life there. Among his many regrets was the fact he hadn’t shown more of an interest in her career in the long hours they’d spent together. He’d been too busy lusting after her to realize how incredible she was. But he couldn’t keep Emma chatting long. She needed rest nearly as badly as Caitlyn, so he gave her the contact number for the day spa and hung up.
Emma didn’t get the chance to take up his gift, though, because the morning of his first match, the proverbial feces hit the fan.
Chapter Fifteen
Beep beep bzzz thunk.
Spencer groaned, opening his eyes just enough to watch his mobile vibrate itself off the edge of the hotel nightstand. Red digital numbers glared at him from the clock radio, and he squinted, sure he couldn’t be reading them right. 6:42. Who the fuck would text him at 6:42 the morning of his first match?
Emma.
He scrambled to retrieve his phone from the floor and checked the text.
Wake Up
,
Britain
,
live interview at 6.45.
Throwing off the thin sheets, he searched for the remote as quietly as he could so he wouldn’t disturb Shaggy, the Samoan tighthead prop snoring in the bed next to his. Shaggy might be a foot shorter than Spencer, but he was just as wide and, frankly, Spencer had learned long ago not to needlessly provoke men who didn’t have necks. Shaggy was not a morning person, and he could be a vicious bastard before breakfast. After it, too.
By the time Spencer got the TV on and lowered the volume to a whisper, a presenter was already introducing Caitlyn.
And then there she was. She’d covered all the glorious red curls he’d spent a month dreaming about tugging and tangling his fingers in as he pressed against her in a full-body kiss. Her face looked drawn and tired, but her eyes were alight as she told the presenter her team had built hundreds of toilets in the weeks they’d been at the camp. Her words passed through him as he watched, still asleep enough that he couldn’t be sure whether she was real or one of his more vivid dreams.
Suddenly, the screen flashed white, and a blast of thunder shook the image.
Spencer’s breath caught in his gut. Not thunder. An explosion. The camera tumbled to the ground, showing nothing but billows of smoke. Muted screams screeched through the speakers. Spencer leaped off the bed, kneeled and grabbed the sides of the TV, as if he could twist it to the side like a periscope, forcing the camera to search out Caitlyn.
The presenters, normally so cheerful on their plush sofa, called out Caitlyn’s name. “
Caitlyn?
What’s going on?
Is everything okay?
”
Everything clearly was
not
okay. The camera cut back to a stunned-looking man and woman in a London studio, but not before the smoke in Afghanistan cleared enough to show riotous red curls of hair lying on the ground at the edge of the camera’s lens.
Completely, utterly still curls.
“Mate, what the fuck’s wrong?”
Panicky breath shuddered in Spencer’s throat. Shaggy’s words barely broke through the haze of disbelief, but his meaty hands prying Spencer’s from the TV did.
“No!”
Spencer gripped harder, staring dumbly at the screen in case the show returned to Afghanistan instead of the presenters’ inane patter as they tried to figure out what had happened. “
Was that a bomb?
It sounded like it could’ve been a bomb.
Oh
,
God
,
I
hope it wasn’t a suicide bomber.
Everyone
,
our producers are getting in contact with IDEA
,
and we’ll have more information for you as soon as we can.
It really did sound like a bomb
,
though
,
Rupert
,
didn’t it?
”
“Mate, calm down. What happened?” Shaggy was on his knees next to Spencer, trying to force his head around. Spencer let go of the TV long enough to punch him in the face.
“Fugg!” Shaggy clutched his nose and glared at Spencer with watery eyes. “Whathe fugg—”
Overflowing with fury, Spencer launched himself at his teammate at the same second Shaggy growled and went for Spencer. They bashed together like a couple of bison. Tears sprang to Spencer’s eyes—not from emotion, no, of course not—from the collision with a man whose career had been built around knocking heads with feral opponents.
Spencer was a foot taller, and actually had a neck, neither of which qualities did him any favors in the brief tussle. Shaggy’s lower center of gravity helped him wrestle Spencer to the ground and pin him down. Adrenaline seeped from Spencer’s body and he lay on his back, huffing and puffing as the last few minutes of hell became reality.
Shaggy snarled down at Spencer, his whole body tense and waiting for the next blow. His nose dripped blood onto Spencer’s chest.
Shit.
Ah
,
shit
,
Caitlyn.
Spencer squeezed his eyes closed and pressed his hand over his mouth, clamping his jaw closed to keep it from trembling like a little girl’s. The pressure eased from his chest as Shaggy got off him, but all Spencer’s concentration focused on keeping his shit together.
At some point a door opened and closed, and he felt someone next to him on the floor. He pulled in deep breaths, desperate to overcome the sick working its way up his gullet before letting himself look.
Liam crouched next to him, brow furrowed in concern as he watched the TV. Spencer’s throat made a strangled noise as the program showed the explosion all over again. Liam glanced down at him and clasped his shoulder. “Jesus, Bailey. I’m sorry.”
“No.” His voice cracked, leaving the rest unsaid.
Don’t be sorry.
Sorry means she’s gone.
Sorry means it’s hopeless.
He had one hope left. He crawled across the hotel’s scratchy carpet to his nightstand and grabbed his mobile. No messages from Emma. He dialed her number.
No answer.
Liam spoke softly. “Mate, I’ll talk to Coach and let you rest today. You do what you gotta do.”
Spencer stared at the empty screen of his phone, feeling his whole life unraveling. He shook his head, fighting to regain control. “No. Don’t do that to me. I need to play.”
* * *
The two worst days of Spencer’s life followed. He heard nothing from Emma for hours, and when he finally made it back to the changing room after a punch-up with a complete bastard, he had a voice mail from her that shriveled his stomach. IDEA hadn’t heard anything from their team on the ground. They were trying to contact the UN, but so far had no luck.
He should’ve worried that he’d started the season proving himself unreliable to his own team, much less the England team selectors, but that fear was nothing compared to his bone-deep terror for Caitlyn.
When Emma finally called him days later, he was breaking the team’s rules by working out at home, doing one-handed press-ups to exorcise the terror eating away at him. He stumbled and nearly broke his face in his eagerness to get to the phone. Emma’s name flashing on the screen triggered his gag reflex, and he braced himself for the anguish.
“Spencer, she’s okay. We just heard from her. She’s okay.”
He collapsed onto his couch and pressed his palm hard against his eyes.
Emma panted in his ear, as if she’d just run a marathon. “I have to go. But I wanted to let you know. It was some sort of land mine. One of the trucks set it off. The driver was killed. Caitlyn was knocked out and she’s concussed, but she’s okay and we’re flying her home as soon as we can.”
“Thank you.” Who he whispered his gratitude to, Spencer had no idea. His chest bloomed with it. “Thank you, Emma.”
She rang off, leaving Spencer to wipe some sort of wetness—sweat, probably—from his cheeks as he shuddered in relief.
* * *
Caitlyn gripped the armrests on either side of her and tried to pretend she was on Disneyland’s Space Mountain instead of crossing the Channel during a raging thunderstorm.
Her head ached and her whole body was weary after twenty-four hours of travel from the mountains of northern Afghanistan to the airspace just outside London. How appropriate would it be if she’d survived the blast but crashed as they came in to land at City Airport?
She banished the morbid thought and turned to face Jack, a logistician from another charity who’d traveled with her from the camp to Kabul, then Dubai, then Geneva and now here. Not bad looking, and pretty funny, too. He’d kept her mind off the journey’s perils. But he didn’t make her heart race or her tummy flutter. Not like a certain rugby player.
Romance post-Spencer sucked.
“Do you have enough cash for a taxi?” Jack’s voice brought Caitlyn back to the practical world. Thanks to an electrical fault on their first plane and the thunderstorm, their flight from Geneva had been delayed for several hours. It was past three in the morning; the trains wouldn’t be running and she had no idea if night buses served London City Airport.
“No, only about five pounds, but we could ask a driver to stop by an ATM, or see if there’s one at the airport. Do you think there’ll be any taxis waiting around? I can’t imagine there are any flights scheduled to arrive at this hour.”
Jack shrugged. “Know anyone with a car, then, who wouldn’t mind being woken up?”
Yes, Caitlyn knew someone with a car. And yes, she figured he’d mind hearing from her since it was the middle of the night and he’d need sleep so he could kick ass on the rugby field. Besides, calling him now would be overstepping one of the boundaries he’d put in place to protect himself, and Caitlyn completely understood the importance of respecting boundaries.
“Caitlyn, it wasn’t a rhetorical question.”
“What? Oh, no, I don’t know anyone with a car.”
She jumped as the wheels hit the tarmac and bounced before the plane was brought to a bone-jarring halt. Within a few minutes, they collected their bags, breezed through immigration and walked into the concourse, where Caitlyn came to a halt. Jack bumped into her from behind, reaching out to steady her, but all she saw was a haggard Spencer waiting for her, holding an even more haggard bouquet of flowers at his side.
Caitlyn let out a happy sigh and smiled for the first time in days.
Spencer glanced warily between her and Jack. “Emma said you were flying standby and trying to get on the earlier plane.”
“We did try. Apparently planes can’t fly without radar, though. Hello, Spencer.”
“Hello, Yankee.”
He made no move to embrace her, his eyes shifting toward Jack until Caitlyn realized the other man’s hand still rested on her shoulder. She took a step so his hand fell away, and gestured between them. “Spencer, this is Jack, a Red Cross loggie. Jack, my friend Spencer.”
The two men greeted each other with an “All right?” and a firm handshake. Then Jack said, “I don’t suppose you drove here?”
“I did.”
“You passing Bethnal Green, by any chance?”
“Could do.” Spencer glanced at Caitlyn but all she could do was grin like an idiot.
“Brilliant. If you give me the ticket for the car park, I’ll go pay, let you two catch up.”
Spencer dug in his pocket and produced a crinkled parking permit, which Jack disappeared with. As soon as his back was turned, Caitlyn closed the distance between her and Spencer, resting her aching forehead against his broad chest. He clasped the back of her neck as she battled tears. “It’s so good to see you,” she whispered.
He kissed her hair, pulling her tighter against his body until she pressed against him from instep to crown. “You too, love.”
He squeezed tight for a second before letting her go. She pointed at the bouquet, whose petals now littered the ground around them. “Those for me?”
“No, I knew Jack would be traveling with you. He seems like a daisy man.”
She laughed and grabbed the flowers from him, raising them to her nose. They didn’t have a smell. “Thanks, they’re...”
Really, what could you say about a wilted bunch of gas station flowers that still had the price sticker on? “They’re the first flowers anyone’s ever given me.”
“Oh.” Spencer stared down at the droopy blooms, his cheeks flushing. “In that case, I’m sorry they’re so shit. They were an impulse buy.”
He looked so chagrined, she was filled with contrition for not gushing about the gift. She pressed up onto her toes to kiss him. Unfortunately, he chose that moment to bend to pick up her bag. The contact between their faces wasn’t exactly how she’d hoped it would be. Their noses smashed together and Caitlyn’s teeth bit into the soft membrane behind her lips.
With a cry of pain, she jerked back and pressed her hand over her nose and mouth.
“Oh my God, are you all right?” Spencer gently tugged at her hands. “I’m so sorry. Are you bleeding?”
Caitlyn let him pry her hands away and tilt her face toward him. “I don’t think so. Did I hurt you?”
The question seemed to shock him, and he chuckled. “No, not even a little.”
Warmth washed over her as they slipped back into their easy friendship. She gripped the front of his shirt and whispered, “I missed you,” before pressing her lips to his throat.
He was still for the barest fraction of a second and then nearly crushed her to his chest, nuzzling her neck. “I’ve missed you, too.”
“How quickly do you think we can get rid of Jack?”
“
Very
quickly now I know you want to.”
“Spence, it wouldn’t be right to leave him here.”
He pulled back enough to free the smashed flowers. “It never crossed my mind. And if it had, I would’ve quickly remembered he has the parking ticket and we can’t leave without it.”
Spencer drove like a bat released from hell with a hot poker up its rear, tearing through the empty streets of East London to drop Jack off in Bethnal Green. Caitlyn wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d wedged his shoe against Jack’s butt and given him a strong push out the door. She exchanged business cards with Jack and promised they’d get together for lunch soon, all while biting back a smile as she felt Spencer’s triumph buzz through the car.
After seeming to test out his chances of a future Formula 1 career, Spencer surprised Caitlyn by slowing to a crawl for the short drive to Wapping. It was a journey that would have taken ten minutes in normal traffic. At the rate Spencer was driving, they’d arrive in three days.
“Are we conserving gas?”
Spencer downshifted, something Caitlyn hadn’t thought was possible without stalling. “I’m just enjoying having you near me before I drop you off.”