The Unforgiving Minute (15 page)

It turned out that Ryan’s prescribed diet wasn’t a hundred miles removed from Josh’s and didn’t present much extra work for Danny. Ryan had the distinct impression that, even if it had, Danny would have welcomed it. He wasn’t just a cook; he was an
artiste
in the kitchen. Just as he was in the bedroom, if even half of his tales were to be believed. After hearing Josh’s fervent testimony about his magical hands, Ryan had no reason to disbelieve them.

Ryan spent the next few days doing nothing unless he felt like it. It turned out that what he felt like doing was accompanying Josh to his gym—and how wild was it that he had his very own gym?—every morning. While Josh was being carefully supervised by Rob and Danny, who ensured his knee was never put under strain, Ryan enjoyed sessions on whatever equipment called to him, then lazed next to the secluded pool, which the hedge sheltered from view, until it was time to go and get lunch for him and Josh. In the afternoons, he often took himself off into the hills, hiking or running for a couple of hours while Josh worked on tactics with Carlos, and came back in time for a late afternoon swim with Josh. They followed that with supper at the pool house and then an evening spent watching TV or DVDs, ending the day curled up in bed together. Yep, this was one hell of a vacation.

As the days passed, Josh’s knee improved until it got to the point where he was allowed back out on the court wearing a knee brace. Ryan finally found a use for himself. He volunteered the first day to be Josh’s hitting partner because he was here to be with Josh, after all. After seeing the way Ryan managed to keep placing the ball in exactly the same spot, time after time, a placement that meant Josh wasn’t risking his knee, Carlos had looked at him with a little more approval, and Xavier was given a few days off. Maybe Ryan should have felt a bit guilty over that, but he didn’t want to give up a single minute that he got to spend with Josh. And he didn’t think Xavier minded in the least, if his “Later, dudes” as he blew out of the door was anything to judge by. Josh had been right; Ryan
did
like Xavier. He reminded him of Tommy with his easygoing attitude toward life.

R
YAN
was enjoying the late afternoon sunshine, sprawled on one of the sinfully comfortable Adirondack lounge chairs by the side of the pool. They were huge, big enough even for him to spread out on and still have room to spare. Money might not buy happiness, but it sure as hell seemed able to purchase a lot of comfort.

Josh was closeted away with Danny, so Ryan was soaking up the sun while reading one of Josh’s books. Josh’s selection wasn’t that different from his own bookshelf at home, apart from Josh’s books about sailing ships and nautical history. There was the expected John Grisham and Tom Clancy, and then there was a whole shelf full of books on sport psychology, some of which looked rather well-thumbed. Ryan had picked out a textbook on cognitive behavior therapy on his first day, but had swiftly put it back again because, on flicking to the section on cognitive restructuring, he found that Josh had underlined parts of it, as well as written notes in the margins. Reading it would have invaded Josh’s privacy. So John Grisham it was, and Ryan had to admit that was more like vacation reading than sport psychology would have been.

He glanced up from his book as Josh came through the gate in the hedge. Josh looked stressed, so Ryan’s solution was to leap up and tackle him into the pool, clothes and all. As Josh came up spluttering and swearing, he figured he’d succeeded in jerking him out of the headspace he’d been in. Which was fine until the sneaky little bastard decided to duck underwater and pull Ryan under. Ryan of course had to get revenge for that, and escalation was inevitable.

Finally, deeming their watery wrestling match to be a draw, mainly because they’d both swallowed about as much water as was possible without drowning, they clambered out.

“What the hell, Ryan?” Josh asked stripping off his soaking wet T-shirt.

“I got bored.”

Josh looked down at his saturated sweats, which were creating pools of water round his feet. “You’re like a big puppy. A big
untrained
puppy.”

“I knew you’d see my charms sooner or later,” Ryan said, as with great satisfaction he laid himself back down on the chair to dry in the sun and watched Josh squelch into the pool house.

Josh emerged a few minutes later in swim trunks and carrying a bottle of sunscreen. “Make yourself useful.” He tossed the bottle to Ryan and settled down on his front on the lounge chair next to Ryan’s, head pillowed on his arms.

“Yes, sir.” Ryan took great, petty pleasure in squeezing out a huge dollop of cream onto the middle of Josh’s back, making him yelp and squirm with how cold it was. He then took even more pleasure in working it into Josh’s smooth skin, his hands sweeping slowly over every inch he could reach. And although he was taking his time because he loved the feel of Josh’s body under his hands, he was also being careful to make sure he got every bit of Josh covered. Josh burned if he got too much sun and always had to put on sunscreen before an outdoors match. Ryan had found that vaguely hilarious at first; he turned as brown as a nut at the first hint of sun, so sunburn had never been anything he’d had to think about, except in Australia where it was practically health and safety regs not to go out on court without some sort of sun protection. At Josh’s urging he’d started to take it more seriously. Even getting tanned the way he did wasn’t a guarantee against skin cancer.

He smoothed more lotion over Josh’s shoulders. “This stinks of coconut,” he said, his fingers working into Josh’s shoulder muscles, eliciting a happy little wriggle from Josh.

“Don’t care,” Josh said petulantly, adult to the last.

As Ryan looked at Josh, laid out on the chair like that, dark blue swim trunks stretched tantalizingly across what was probably the most perfect ass in existence, he didn’t feel the urgent need to jump him that tended to be his usual response to Josh in a state of undress. Instead, he found an entirely unexpected tenderness welling up inside him as he noticed the shell of Josh’s right ear was sunburned. He dropped a kiss on it, startling Josh, and then rubbed sunscreen over it, and over his left ear, before making sure the nape of his neck, with its soft, fine hairs, was fully covered.

“Now for the fun side,” Ryan said. “Turn over.”

He was right—this
was
the fun side. Josh’s cock was getting hard, jutting against his trunks and distorting them in the most obscene, tempting way. But Ryan wasn’t one to start a job and not finish it, so he ignored the temptation laid out before him and instead squirted more cream on his hands, which he then started to work over Josh’s chest.

“Fuck,” Josh got out, his voice ragged as Ryan made perfectly sure with the tips of his fingers that Josh’s nipples were suitably protected from the sun. “Ryan,
please.”

Even while Ryan was smirking at how easy Josh was, when he looked at Josh, his eyelashes still clumped together from the water, his hair wet and spiky, he just had to kiss him. And then that wasn’t enough and he was climbing onto the chair on top of Josh, so their bodies were pressed together as they kissed, hungry and needing. Lost in the feel of Josh’s mouth, of lips and tongue and his hard body under Ryan’s, Ryan scarcely even noticed that he was getting smeared with coconut-scented sunscreen as Josh squirmed against him.

“Oh, for God’s
sake
.” Disgust and contempt practically dripped from the words.

Ryan jerked away from Josh. Roger Andrews was standing on the patio only yards away from them, his arms folded and his eyes furious.

“Josh, you were due with Carlos twenty minutes ago,” he snapped out.

“Shit,” Josh said. And then, as he watched Roger walk away, he let his head fall back against the chair.
“Shit.”

Ryan knew just what he meant as he scrambled off Josh.

“Shit, I can’t believe I forgot,” Josh muttered as he disappeared into the pool house, re-emerging in record time in T-shirt, sweats, and gym shoes. Ryan was still standing around helplessly, Roger Andrews’s reaction making him wonder if he was about to be kicked out for besmirching Josh’s virtue. Josh must have noticed something, even in his hurry, because he reached up and pressed a quick kiss to Ryan’s lips. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Dad doesn’t care about us making out. He’s just mad I missed a session.”

With Josh gone, Ryan slunk into the pool house, desperate for privacy. Two seconds more and he’d have had his hand down the front of Josh’s trunks. The thought of Roger Andrews walking in on that…. Hell, no.

He took a shower, mainly to distract himself from those thoughts but also to get rid of the coconut smell that was clinging to him. Then, he sat down on one of the couches and pretended to read while he waited for Josh.

As his embarrassment slowly faded, anger began to grow. They were adults, for God’s sake, in Josh’s own home. Would it really have been too much for Roger Andrews to back off quietly and never let them know he’d seen? It also bothered him that Roger Andrews so obviously didn’t like him. Ryan liked everyone, and everyone usually liked him right back. Being dismissed without even being given a chance was a new experience for him. It smarted.

T
WO
hours later, the day had cooled to the point where Ryan pulled on a shirt. Josh still hadn’t come back. In the end, bored and also twitchy in case Roger Andrews decided to drop in on him again in his friendly way, Ryan decided to go over to the house to see if he could help Danny with supper.

As he crossed the lawn that ran up to the house, he heard raised voices, and an instant later, realized one of them was Josh’s. He hesitated, thinking he probably shouldn’t be an audience to this, but then he heard his name. A quick glance round showed him a table and chairs set out on the terrace outside the house, so he made his way over there as quietly as he could. He wouldn’t be doing anything wrong sitting there. It wouldn’t be his fault if it just happened to take him closer to where the angry voices were coming from the open windows of one of the many downstairs rooms.

“It wasn’t Ryan’s fault! I’m the one who forgot, okay?” Josh was all but shouting.

“And that’s the problem, right there. Even if he isn’t trying to derail you, you’re doing a bang-up job of that all by yourself. Grow up, Josh.” Roger Andrews’s voice was slightly lower in volume, but just as furious. “You really want to throw away everything we’ve worked for just for a quick screw?”

Ryan’s breath came out of him like he’d been punched in the gut. To his relief, Josh’s voice sounded almost equally breathless and upset in his response to Roger. “It’s not just a quick screw,” he said. “It’s
Ryan.”

“A journeyman player who’s never going to amount to much.” Roger was scathing. “Why the hell do you think he’s bothering with you, Josh? You really can’t see the obvious here? If he distracts you, he’s got a chance at beating you. Meanwhile, he’s watching you train, learning your weaknesses, and all the time he’s living in your house, using your gym, and eating your food. You really don’t see the damn problem?”

Ryan was shaking with rage and reaction, but he had to sit there, silent, while Josh said nothing.

“It’s not like that,” Josh said in the end, sounding mulish. “
Ryan’s
not like that.”

Roger laughed, a harsh, ugly sound. “Yeah, because you’ve got such a good track record in making those judgments. I want him gone.”

“Screw you.”

Ryan wasn’t sure who was more shocked at that, Josh or his father, because dead silence followed.

“This is my house, and I say who’s welcome,” Josh said after a minute. “I screwed up earlier. I apologized to Carlos, I’ve apologized to you, and that’s all there is to it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go see to it that my guest feels welcome here.”

Ryan shrunk down in his seat as much as he could. He didn’t want to look as if he’d just been listening to a private conversation, even if it was true. The back door by the kitchen banged shut and he saw Josh making his way toward the pool house, his stride uncharacteristically choppy and short. Ryan gave him a minute before following.

Josh was standing in the empty living room, looking rather helplessly around as Ryan walked in.

“Oh, hey,” Josh said, when he saw Ryan. “You want to go out for a drink?”

He was making a valiant attempt at sounding normal, but when Ryan opened his mouth to answer in a way that sounded equally unruffled, he found he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t pretend that he hadn’t heard those awful, venomous words about him coming out of Roger Andrews’s mouth.

“I heard you and your dad,” he said.

Josh sank down on the nearest couch. “I’m sorry,” he said, looking up at Ryan. “I am so sorry.”

“God, it’s not
your
fault,” Ryan said. “I didn’t mean to hear, but I did and I can’t pretend I didn’t. Your dad really, really sucks as a human being, you know?”

Josh didn’t say anything, but a muscle clenched in his jaw as he stared at the floor.

As the shock of what he’d heard wore off, the rage Ryan had felt earlier came flooding back. “For God’s sake, he’s spoken to me once—
once—
and he thinks he knows me.”

“I know.” Josh was standing up again, his eyes following Ryan’s furious pacing round the living room.

“What the hell? He thinks people actually
think
that way? He thinks
I’m
like that?”

“Tennis is the only thing that matters to him, and he thinks everyone else is the same. Believe it or not, it’s not personal.” Josh’s tone was careful and neutral.

Ryan barked what might have been a laugh. “Believe me, it feels pretty fucking personal. I mean, what the hell, Josh? What did I ever do to him?”

Josh stood there, looking helpless as he watched Ryan’s erratic progress round the room.

“What a fucking awful way to go through life, always thinking the worst of other people,” Ryan said, picking up a book simply to do something with his hands before slamming it back down on the bookcase and swinging round on Josh. “What the fuck is
wrong
with him?” he demanded.