The Unforgiving Minute (21 page)

Josh didn’t seem to notice what Ryan had said, stuck on his own track. “I hate that I thought you could be like him. I’m sorry, Ryan.”

Ryan didn’t know what to do with the emotions running through him, rage and disgust over Mitch, and his desire to comfort Josh, all mixed up with resentment at just how little trust Josh had had in Ryan, how he hadn’t even given him the benefit of the doubt or spoken to him before leaving the way he had.

“I know,” he said in the end, after Josh had bitten his lip and looked away again. “I know you’re sorry, and I guess I understand why you thought what you did. And that
bastard
knew just what he was doing,” Ryan suddenly realized, “hugging me like that and congratulating me on my ‘performance’
in front of you.”

“He’s good at what he does,” Josh said tonelessly.

“Yeah,” Ryan said. “He really,
really
is.” And as he realized that, realized the way they’d both been manipulated, the remnants of his anger at Josh’s behavior sputtered out. All he wanted was Josh, for things between them to go back to how they had been. And for Josh to stop looking like a puppy expecting a beating that he thought he somehow deserved.

Ryan slid his arm around Josh and, gently, giving Josh every chance to resist if he wanted, pulled him in close. “I’m sorry that happened to you,” he said, pressing a kiss on Josh’s hair.

Josh looked up at him, his startled eyes very wide and very blue, and Ryan leaned in to kiss him. After the first, careful seconds of his lips against Josh’s, it was only natural and all too easy for their kiss to deepen, still gentle, but so damn wonderful as they tasted one another again. Josh’s kisses were like nothing he’d ever known, and he couldn’t bear the thought that he’d nearly lost them—lost Josh—forever.

He finally, reluctantly, relinquished Josh’s mouth. He was still floating on the metaphorical cloud created by Josh’s kisses when he slowly realized that Josh was staring at him. Wherever his head was, it sure as hell wasn’t the same cloud as Ryan’s. There was painful question in his face, along with the first stirrings of hope. “I’m sorry,” Josh said, again, and it brought Ryan sharply back to earth.

“Now I understand
why
you did it, it’s okay. It’s done. Over. Present tense, remember?”

“Not sure that works so well for life as it does for tennis.”

“It’s going to work in this case,” Ryan said firmly, “because I don’t want to hear you keep apologizing when I’ve accepted your apology. Unless of course your idea of apologizing is to let me have my wicked way with you.”

Josh blinked at him and some sort of life seemed to be coming back into his eyes. “Seriously? What the hell kind of books do you read?”

“Blame it on Elena,” Ryan said, happily and mendaciously.

“Don’t think I dare,” Josh said before his gaze fell on Ryan’s cases, abandoned where he’d left them. “Shouldn’t you be in Rome?” he asked, as if it had only just occurred to him.

“Got knocked out, and there’s a few days before Paris. And then
somebody
called my cell. What was that about, by the way?”

Josh looked away, color creeping into his cheeks. “Guess maybe I drunk-dialed you.”

“I’m glad you did,” Ryan confessed.

“Me too. How did you know I was here?”

Ryan stared at him, nonplussed. It had never occurred to him that Josh wouldn’t be here, in California. As he realized his epic journey from Rome could all have been in vain, he felt the beginnings of hysterical laughter bubbling up. But the look on Josh’s face stopped him. He was biting his lip again. It was a habit that Ryan hadn’t seen from him before today and never wanted to see again.

“Are you staying?”

And it was all there, in those few words. Josh wasn’t asking about Ryan’s plans for the next few days, even if he thought he was.

“You better not even
think
about throwing me out on the street without feeding me and letting me sleep for about twelve hours. As for the rest, I have no idea what day it is right now. We’ll work everything else out tomorrow, okay? Together.”

Josh smiled then, a dim version of his usual one but no less real for all that. Then he looked at the closed door and sighed. “I guess I’d better tell my dad. He doesn’t know anything of what happened with Mitchell, only that my game went to shit when we were together,” he warned Ryan. As if Ryan would ever betray him to Roger. “He’s going to be pissed as hell that I’m sabotaging myself again.”

“By being with me?”

“By being in a relation—” Josh suddenly cut himself off midword.

“Maybe he should get into a relationship of his own and get his nose out of ours,” Ryan suggested.

Josh choked on a half-laugh. “Maybe,” he said, but he didn’t sound as if he believed it for an instant. Ryan couldn’t blame him. He didn’t see Roger Andrews backing off any time soon from his determination to make Josh the best tennis player that had ever lived, no matter the cost.

“Just don’t take it personally if he’s rude,” Josh entreated Ryan.

“I won’t. So long as he takes it
very
personally if I’m rude back to him.”

Josh’s mouth hung open as he stared in disbelief at Ryan. Elena had been right. It wasn’t the most flattering look, even on Josh Andrews.

“Come on then,” Ryan said, grinning slightly, suddenly relishing the confrontation to come.

The hallway was deserted. They found Roger sitting at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, a mug in front of him. From the way Josh’s nose twitched, Ryan guessed it probably contained coffee. Roger swiveled on his stool and looked at them, his face expressionless.

“Ryan’s staying for a while,” Josh said.

“Right. To give us all a break before you revert into a pathetic mess when he leaves again. Which he will.” His voice was striving for calm, but his eyes were furious. “You know what happens when you trust your own judgment, Josh. It happened with that talentless piece of crap before, and it just happened again with
him.
You don’t know what the hell you’re doing, and
I’m
the one who has to pick up the pieces and make your excuses. You are not doing this again.”

Josh’s mouth compressed into a tight line. Ryan didn’t have that problem.

“You know what, you have no right talking to your son that way in his own house. In fact, you have no right talking to him in that way
period
.”

Roger Andrews got up from his seat and stepped forward into Ryan’s space. “You have no business getting between me and my son, and you have no business here. I know what it is you’re doing, and I won’t have it, you hear me?”

“Dad.” Josh’s voice was quiet but certain. “I know I screwed up, okay, but I promise everything’s going to be back to normal now.”

Roger blinked as Josh’s words registered, and the weight of his gaze shifted from Ryan to Josh.

“I’ll be on court with Carlos and Xavier first thing tomorrow, working toward Wimbledon,” Josh said.

For the first time since he’d met him, Ryan saw something like uncertainty in Roger Andrews’s face. It was as if this was unexpected and he didn’t know how to deal with it. “Make sure you are,” he said at last and took a half step back, just enough to let them past without it seeming like he was retreating.

“He’s a real gem, isn’t he,” Ryan said as they crossed the garden toward the familiar line of the hedge, with the pool house beyond.

“He only sees things in relation to tennis and how they affect that.” Josh sounded apologetic.

“What a crappy way to live. Means he doesn’t get to enjoy stuff like this.”

“Like what?” Josh asked, puzzled and turning back to see why Ryan had suddenly stopped dead and let go of his cases.

“This,” Ryan said and, wrapping his arms around Josh, pulled him in for a long kiss. Josh’s mouth opened under his without hesitation, giving him everything, and Ryan’s heart clenched in the mixture of love and tenderness that he’d only ever felt for Josh. This, right here, was everything he’d ever wanted.

Chapter 21

J
OSH
prepared a quick meal in his small kitchen—apparently Danny had given him ready-made meals for his freezer—while Ryan had a shower. He was punch-drunk from being up for twenty-two hours straight, but so long as he was upright and his eyes were open, he’d take every minute with Josh he could get.

Keeping his eyes open became more difficult once they’d eaten. As another yawn split his face, Josh suggested they go to bed, even though it was only early evening.

They lay together in Josh’s bed, trading slow kisses. Ryan’s head might have wanted more when he had Josh’s naked body pressed against his, their legs tangled together, but the rest of him felt like it was still somewhere over the ocean on the way back from Rome. And maybe this was actually better, after all the emotion and the upsets, to ground themselves gently in one another. He snorted at the thought, causing Josh to pull back and glare at him. “That was gross.”

“Sorry,” Ryan said. “I was thinking about Elena.”

“While kissing me? Thanks for that.”

“I was thinking how hard she’d mock me right now for wanting to kiss you more than I want to have sex with you.”

“Sounds like we’re going to have to make a united stand against Ms. Sanchez,” Josh said, as Ryan yawned.

That was the last thing Ryan remembered, because somewhere between one yawn and the next, he fell asleep.

H
E
WOKE
up the next morning to find that his left arm appeared to have lost all feeling some time during the night. Opening his eyes, he found that was because Josh was lying on it as he burrowed into Ryan’s body. He tried to dislodge Josh subtly, so he could rub some feeling back into his arm, but Josh merely mumbled something and moved closer against him. Ryan resigned himself to lying there until Josh, not the world’s best when it came to mornings, finally woke up. Ryan wasn’t sure what time it was but knew it was early. His body clock was still on European time.

He must have drifted off again, because when he woke up, Josh was propped up on one arm, watching him sleep. “Morning,” he said, leaning in and kissing Ryan.

Ryan reached up and pulled Josh down on top of him, holding him there so he could kiss him properly. It ended up as the perfect wake-up call, Josh’s body moving against his as they kissed, and then a long, slow coming together with Ryan pushing into Josh until they both lost all control.

Having got up to deal with the condom afterward, Ryan decided he was too awake to want to return to bed. He prodded a dozing Josh. “You want to go for a run?”

Judging from the grumpy mumbling his question elicited, a run was not on Josh’s list of things he wanted to do. Taking advantage of knowing just how to handle him, Ryan managed to get Josh out of bed and into sweats before he really knew what was going on. He stood there blinking sleepily at Ryan while Ryan pulled his own clothes on.

Once out in the chill of early morning, the clear sky promising a fine day, Josh woke up and they ran comfortably side by side. The sound of feet hitting the ground in a familiar rhythm lulled Ryan into the peaceful headspace he always found when running. Once he got into that mindset, he could go for miles without noticing. Despite that, on reaching the clay tennis court, Ryan slowed. The early morning and the abandoned court brought back childhood memories. Except that Josh, unlike Paul, might actually be able to get a ball back across the net to him. “Want a game?”

Josh didn’t look enthused at the idea, but was obviously willing to indulge Ryan. He went off for racquets and balls while Ryan raised the net and then stood there, breathing in the cold, clear, early morning air and admiring the purity of the white lines against the deep red of the clay.

“Am I interrupting something?”

“Just enjoying the moment,” Ryan said, taking the racket Josh was holding out to him. “Let’s see your chops, old man.”

The resulting querulous squawk from Josh set Ryan to grinning, and his grin didn’t fade the whole time they were warming up. If anything, it grew even wider when he challenged Josh to a set.

After Josh won his opening service game with four blistering aces, Ryan stepped up to the net. “Is that all you’ve got?”

Just for that, Josh aimed his return of serve directly at Ryan. And that set the tone. Ryan lunged around the court, returning even the balls that would have gone out, exulting in the sheer joy of being alive and playing tennis on a morning like this and doing it all with Josh. And gradually Josh stopped his confused questions about what Ryan thought he was doing, throwing away points like that, to doing the same thing. A trick shot he made between his legs had Ryan flinging himself at full stretch and performing a forward roll on the clay to bring him back up onto his feet, ready for Josh’s return.

“You do know you don’t get marks for artistic interpretation in tennis?”

Ryan flipped Josh off. “Artistically interpret
that
.”

Eventually, they declared it a draw, having somehow lost track of the score, and Ryan stepped over the net just so he could kiss Josh. Josh’s hair was still spikily disordered from sleep, his stubble glinted gold in the early morning light, and Ryan didn’t think he’d ever seen him look so gorgeous.