Second Chances Boxed Set: 7 Sweet & Sexy Romances in 1 Book

by Tracey Alvarez

  She nodded. She couldn’t trust herself to speak. It was humiliating to put him through this just to entertain the readers of a woman’s magazine. She wasn’t going to ask for more. For a minute they sat in silence. Everything that was said and unsaid became a wall between them.

  “I didn’t know about the nightmares.”

  She wanted to say she was sorry, but it didn’t feel enough somehow.

  “Don’t sweat it. You scared them away for me.” He gave her the lopsided grin that made her want to taste him. Instead she was left with an empty echoing pain. “You sure make life interesting.”

  That was one way to put it.

  “I need to file my story.”

  She felt foolish telling him.

  “Deadline looming. Rent due.”

  “Yeah.” She stood, pulling her oversized bag over her head so it sat diagonally on her body. “I think it’s best if I catch a train to Amsterdam and fly home.”

  “Probably right.”

  Words ran through her mind. Would he be okay? Would he sleep without her?

  “It’s been a blast,” was what she settled for.

  Charlie grinned.

  “Literally.”

  Laura flushed red.

  “So, uh, I guess I’ll be seeing you.”

  “Sure.” He stood in front of her. “We both know Maddie.”

  The message was clear. The only way they would meet would be accidentally through his sister. If it was what she wanted then why did it hurt so much?

  “Good. Okay. Well thanks again for the interview and the trip. Hope you figure it out. Life I mean, and what to do with it.”

  “Enjoy the new job.”

  They stared at each other awkwardly. Laura turned away first. She pulled open the door, smiled goodbye and stepped out into the hallway. And then she was gone. Tears stung her eyes as she plodded down the steps. Had she hoped he would stop her? Did she want him to change completely and offer to compromise his life to be with her? Did she mean anything at all to him?

  Tiny little sobs squeezed themselves out of her mouth as she marched to the train station. Even though she kept checking over her shoulder, Charlie was nowhere in sight.

  Charlie looked around the hotel room, which suddenly felt shabby and cold. He slumped down onto the edge of the bed. It was time to put Laura out of his mind and get on with things. It was time to make some decisions about his life. He could float around London for the foreseeable future or he could choose a direction. Maybe it was time to become a little more responsible. He rubbed a hand down his face and let out a frustrated breath. As usual Laura had been right about him too. He had found himself. He knew what he was. Now he had to decide what to do about it. That was what adults did right, took stock, did what was right, not just what they felt?

  He looked at the doorway which had swallowed Laura. That’s what she’d done. She’d been mature, responsible. Right? He squared his shoulders. It was time to grow up.

  He picked up his phone, scrolled through his contact numbers and dialled one in the UK. As it rang he wandered to the window. Laura was nowhere to be seen. His chest felt tighter. He felt cheated. His holiday still had two more days on the clock and yet she was gone. How was he going to sleep now?

  “Mark Chambers,” the voice in his ear said.

  “Mark, it’s Charlie. Are you still looking for an on-call doctor?”

  “Are you kidding me?” He could imagine the guy, huge as he was, bouncing in his seat. It made him smile. “You’d be helping us out of a bind. Are we talking permanent or short term?”

  Charlie watched people wander down the brick inlaid street in front of him. Folk cycled past, bikes laden with shopping. Over the road, the café overflowed out onto the broad pavement. The tables were full of people, even though it wasn’t even lunch time yet.

  “Charlie, you there?”

  “Yeah.” He took a deep breath. “I’m thinking permanent. Well, as permanent as anything is these days.”

  There was a whoop. He held the phone away from his ear.

  “That’s the best news I’ve had all day.”

  “Yeah, that would mean more if I didn’t know it was mid-morning in England.”

  Mark ignored him.

  “I’ll draw up a contract. It will be good to have you on long term. You know how much we need you. And don’t worry, if you freak out at the permanence, you can always quit.”

  He could hear the grin in Mark’s voice and it made him smile wryly. It appeared even folk he didn’t know that well had him summed up.

  “I’m in Holland right now. I’ll be home tomorrow and I’ll pop into the office then. But I want to start straight away, what have you got for me?”

  He heard paper rustling.

  “We have a desperate situation in Bolivia; the doctor we hired broke his leg and won’t get there for another six weeks, at least.”

  “Bolivia it is.”

  “This is fantastic man.” Mark’s enthusiasm was contagious, Charlie felt his mood lighten. “You’ll be making a huge difference. These people really need a doctor. You won’t regret this.”

  They said their goodbyes and hung up. Charlie hoped Mark was right, he hoped he wouldn’t regret working with Medicine International. They were a great charity, did a lot of good work around the globe, but it was a huge commitment and it worried him. After all his regrets were beginning to stack up and there were only so many a man could take. He counted them off in his head, first there was Jones and the fact he couldn’t save him. He looked down the street. Second there was Laura and the fact he hadn’t stopped her.

  He let the curtain drop. Yeah, he regretted that. Even though he still had no idea what he would have done with her. He looked around the empty room. It wasn’t the same without her. After he threw his meagre belongings into a bag he headed for the tandem. Once he’d traded it in for a better bike he planned to cycle as fast as he could back to his car. Maybe then he wouldn’t have a head full of regret.

  The door slammed hard behind him.

  Chapter Ten

  Laura hesitated outside Claire’s office. She held the flash drive so tightly that it bit into her still raw skin, but she couldn’t seem to loosen her grip on it. Maggie, Claire’s assistant, smiled at her sympathetically. It didn’t help; it only made the butterflies in her stomach turn into full-fledged bird. She swallowed hard.

  “Do you want to sit down and have a glass of water first?” Maggie whispered.

  Laura shook her head and tried to smile. No. She needed to get this over with. It was just that her feet weren’t working properly. She seemed to be stuck to the spot.

  “I need a minute,” she whispered back.

  Maggie nodded. The sympathy on her face almost made Laura start to cry again and she couldn’t do that anymore. The bags under her eyes were so big that even make-up couldn’t camouflage them and she was back to wearing her huge black rimmed glasses because she couldn’t keep her contacts in for very long.

  Deep breath. She stared at the door as the flash drive containing Charlie’s story felt heavy in her hand. She had no idea why she didn’t just email it in, but she couldn’t. Even the thought of it had made her ill. So here she was, staring down the witch’s door and wondering what to do next.

  “You’ll get used to her,” Maggie whispered. “We all do eventually. You learn pretty fast around here that life is a lot more pleasant if you give in to her demands early on. Less stress.”

  Yeah, and Maggie looked less stressed. With her wide eyes and grey skin she looked every bit a terrified mouse.

  “It’s a good place to work. People are queuing up to work here. We should be grateful.”

  The woman sounded as though she was trying to convince herself.

  “I’m okay,” Laura said, although no one had asked her.

  She took a deep, shaky breath and stepped towards the door. She knocked boldly.

  “Come in,” the ice queen called.

  Maggie gave her a thumbs up gest
ure and then Laura was inside the room.

  “Why on earth didn’t you send the thing to me?” Claire scolded. Her lips pursed making the tiny lines around her mouth, that screamed she used to be a smoker, all the more pronounced. “This story was supposed to be here last night. Are you trying to make us miss a deadline? I had to get Patty to write a backup story in case you screwed up. At least we can use it next month. Come on then.” She held out her hand. “Hand it over. Let’s see what masterpiece has turned you into a snivelling wreck?”

  Laura hesitated.

  “Charlie was wondering what else would be in the issue along with this, he asked me to tell him how we were playing the story?”

  She held her breath waiting for the answer.

  “What and you can’t hand it over until I tell you?”

  Claire’s blood red fingernails tapped the desktop.

  “Fine,” she sighed at last. “We’ve got some great photos of the event, a couple of your boy looking like an underwear model and we’re running it in our hot to trot hero issue. Jane came up with a fireman who strips in his spare time, but was awarded community hero of the month last June and there is a vet who rescued a koala during an Australian fire, while he was on holiday there. He came in for a photo shoot. Happy now?”

  Hot to trot? No, she wasn’t happy.

  “This,” Laura motioned to the flash drive she seemed to have a death grip on, “is quite a serious piece. I’m not sure it fits.”

  Claire’s eyes narrowed as the temperature in the room fell.

  “I’ll be the judge of that.”

  “Men died, a friend of Charlie’s amongst them. I don’t think he would be too pleased with us taking the hunky hero angle. Don’t you think it trivialises the story?”

  Claire stood on her twenty inch heels. She managed to glide around the desk to face Laura.

  “I think it will sell magazines.” Her tone was as icy as the atmosphere. “That is what I do. So hand over the story Laura. That is, after all, why you went to Holland in the first place. To get the story.” She paused in front of Laura. “And to save your job.”

  Laura licked her dry lips. Charlie would be devastated. A story like this trivialised him and turned him into a pin-up boy. She remembered his reaction to the website teaser. This would cause way more damage. She suspected that under other circumstances he would have welcomed a spread on his looks, but not in this one. This meant too much to him. This had changed him. A stark realisation hit her. If she published this story, in this magazine, he would be disappointed in her. The world shifted on its axis. She’d spent most of her life disappointed in him, she wasn’t sure if she could cope with a reversal.

  “Laura, this is no time for second guessing. You said yourself; you are like a dysfunctional family. Does it really matter what the slant is? The story will get out. Your friend will be centre stage and the army will get some good publicity.”

  And Jones would get lost in the side bars on which hero had the best bachelor appeal. Her grip on the flash drive tightened. She took a deep breath.

  “I can’t do it.”

  The words surprised her more than Claire.

  “I’m sorry; I don’t think I heard you properly. Are you refusing to give me my story? The one I commissioned. The one I paid for?”

  Laura stuffed her sore hand, and the drive, into her jeans pocket and held it tight.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t do that to Charlie and to the men who died. This story deserves respect. They deserve respect.”

  For a second she thought Claire might actually slap her and she took a step backwards. Instead the witch folded her arms across her designer grey suit and gave Laura a withering look.

  “Think about this carefully, Laura. This isn’t only a decision about a story. It’s a decision about your life. You must ask yourself, are you being sensible? After all, it’s only a story. Next week we will all be interested in something else. Do you really want to throw away your career over something like this?”

  Laura felt a rush of adrenalin flow through her; it brought a wave of courage, of certainty. She began to smile. For the first time in her life she wasn’t being sensible. She had no idea what she would do next or how she could survive this decision. Her life would be in tatters. It was terrifying. She pulled herself up to her full five foot two and looked Claire in the eye.

  “This is the right thing to do,” she told her and was proud that her voice didn’t waver.

  “Oh my hairy aunt.” Claire looked towards the ceiling, because it couldn’t have been anywhere else. Laura had no doubt that Claire had absolutely no awareness of heaven. “You stupid child. You’re in love with the man. You’re making serious decisions with your heart. Don’t be a fool. Men come and go, careers last a lifetime. You only have yourself to depend on. Don’t throw that away over a man.”

  Laura smiled as her words came back at her through Claire’s mouth.

  “This isn’t over a man. It’s the right thing to do. And if that means I don’t have a job…” She shrugged like it didn’t matter, a gesture Charlie had perfected. She grinned wider. He was such a bad influence on her. “Then I guess I don’t have a job,” she said.

  The witch pointed a long manicured talon at her.

  “No, sweetie, you don’t have a career. By this time tomorrow there won’t be a women’s magazine in Europe that will employ you. You can kiss goodbye to teen mags too, I plan to spread the word there as well.”

  Laura felt nauseous.

  “You have to do what you feel is right,” she told her now ex-boss. “That’s all each of us can do.”

  With that she turned and let herself out of the room, leaving the rest of the staff to deal with a furious Claire.

  Maggie was whiter than chalk.

  “What are you going to do now?” she said with a trembling voice.

  Laura gave her an equally unsteady smile.

  “I have no idea.”

  She waved goodbye to Maggie, and to her life, before heading to her desk to clean it out. As she held her head high she wondered how long she could live on principles alone, because that was all she had left.

  “Break time?”

  Charlie looked up from his cup of weak coffee to see the clinic manager enter the room. He was exhausted. He’d seen more patients in one shift in a jungle clinic in Bolivia than he’d seen in a week in a busy emergency department in Central London. Word had gotten out that there was a doctor in town and the people flooded in.

  “Ten minutes. What I really need is a decent night’s sleep.”

  “Yeah, me too.” He gave Charlie a meaningful look before he dumped his sandwiches on the table beside him.

  “Yeah, sorry about that.” Charlie eyed the food and his stomach rumbled. “I’ll find somewhere else to sleep as soon as I get a minute to do it.”

  “Who is Laura anyway?” his roommate asked, as he slid half his sandwich in Charlie’s direction. “You were screaming her name most of last night. And not in a good way.”

  Charlie scoffed the food in a couple of bites. He knew about the screaming. The dreams were getting worse. Now Laura was in Afghanistan too and every night he had to save her. He always woke before he could manage it.

  “I’ll find another bunk as soon as the clinic closes,” Charlie said wearily. He’d sleep in the supply cupboard if he had to.

  “Whatever.” Jacques waved the offer away.

  An African born Parisian, he was currently managing the clinic for Medicine International. The guy was a veteran, ten years with the organisation and this was his third posting. He was a wanderer, a lot like Charlie, his job was to start projects, get them up and running and move to the next. Charlie’s job was to go where they needed a doctor short term and fill in until the permanent person turned up.

  “So what is the problem?” the Frenchman said. “Did this Laura break your heart?”

  Charlie grinned in spite of the effort it took to stay upright. Even though he was desperate for sleep, he was t
oo wound up to actually fall asleep – and wasn’t that a kicker?

  “I know all about heartbreak. I have caused many,” Jacques said. “Ask me anything. French men are experts with women.”

  He looked so smug that it made Charlie laugh.

  “If you are such an expert why are you single?”

  “That is why I’m an expert my friend. I have experienced many women and I can share that experience with you.” He tapped his temple. “Extensive knowledge.”

  Charlie rolled his eyes. Yeah, right.

  “Well?” Jacques prompted.

  “It’s complicated,” Charlie said. “Anyway, she’s half way round the world doing her thing. So it doesn’t matter. We’re not going to see each other again.”

  No, because she might lose control, he scoffed to himself. Like that made any sense.

  “Ah, you are in love with her?”

  “No,” Charlie held up his hands. “No, no, no. I’m just worried about her and we have some unfinished business.”

  Like the fact he could never quite find the thing about her that drove him nuts.

  Jacques raised an eloquent eyebrow.

  “Seriously.” Charlie felt he had to explain. “I’m not a relationship type guy. I’m like you - too many women, not enough time. I mean what am I supposed to do, change my life, give up on who I am to work in the suburbs for her? Because she’s never going to do anything spontaneous or anything that involves risk. You don’t know her, she’s stubborn, she’ll carry on making stupid choices and living half a life all because it’s the sensible thing to do. She should have sensible tattooed on her backside, it’s her life motto.”

  He glared at Jacques.

  “I’m not going to spend my days in some repetitive job so that she’ll have someone to make sure she doesn’t die of boredom, or make one sensible decision too many so that her head explodes.”

  Jacques smiled smugly. Charlie didn’t like it one bit.

  “Yes, that is a problem,” the Frenchman said. “I can see why it is keeping us up at night.”

  Charlie was pretty sure that he was missing something. He just wasn’t sure what.