by Kara Isaac
Emelia took the advantage of surprise to study him a bit more. His hair was as flaming ginger as she remembered, his eyes as green, and his height still as imposing. So she cataloged the smattering of freckles across his face, his wide mouth, his athletic build, and his ugly sweater. Oh, his so-ugly sweater. Green with blue and red diamonds. It had better have some serious sentimental value, because there was no reason anyone should have been wearing it otherwise.
He had a nice face. Not one that would be called up for a GQ advertisement anytime soon, unlike Allie’s guy, whose name she’d forgotten, but it was nice.
He still hadn’t said anything. Instead, he’d kind of sagged onto the bed, still just staring.
Wow. Now this really was getting awkward. It looked as if the ball was in her court. “Hi. Um, sorry if I scared you.” She pushed herself up as she spoke. Tried to subtly stretch her legs out.
“You’re real.” There was a kind of childlike wonder in his voice that wrapped around her heart. “I mean, of course you’re real, I just . . .” He flapped one hand around. “Sorry. I’m just not used to finding cute girls in wardrobes.”
She laughed as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “If it helps, I’m not used to being found in wardrobes either.”
He seemed to regather himself at her words. Rising to his feet, he stood just under a head taller than her in her flat boots. Which would put him at about six foot three to her five foot nine. “I have a model of the Dawn Treader. I built it with my grandfather.”
What? “Um, that’s nice?”
He slid a smile at her that made her feel like she needed to sit back down for a few seconds. “It took us six months. It was like a gazillion pieces. You can’t tell a guy who spent six months of his childhood building the Dawn Treader that he’s not a Narnia fan.”
Oh, that. “So you’re practically Drinian.” She threw out the name of the captain of the ship to test him. If he was such a fan, what was with the Susan/Lucy question? Only those whose knowledge of Narnia began at The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and ended at Prince Caspian would ever want to be a Susan.
“I like to think I’m slightly less cynical than he was, but just as loyal.” Peter tilted his head. “So, do I at least get to know the name of the girl who’s almost given me two heart attacks?”
She wanted to offer her name, but something held her back. Once she gave him her name, it would be personal. She’d be more than the crazy wardrobe girl. She wasn’t here to do personal. Well, not this kind of personal. She was here for atonement. That couldn’t be derailed by some cute English guy, especially not one who had already been exposed to her particular brand of crazy twice and didn’t seem to think she belonged in the closest psych ward.
The moment stalled.
“Great, you’ve found Emelia.” Allie bustled into the room with another coat slung over her arm. She looked at Emelia. “Please don’t judge him by the sweater. I promise he’s cooler than he looks.”
Emelia couldn’t stop the grin that spread up her cheeks. “It would be hard not to be.”
Peter looked back and forth between her and Allie. “She was lost?” She spent every day surrounded by accents, but for some reason, his tugged at something in her every time.
Allie shook her head. “Not lost. Just new. Emelia’s recently moved to Oxford. I promised I’d introduce her to a few people.”
He gave her a wink and held out his hand. “Well, I guess we should meet officially then. Peter Carlisle.”
She held out her hand, aware of Allie watching their every move. “Emelia Mason.”
His hand enveloped hers, and his gaze captured hers. Warm, secure. “Nice to meet you, Emelia Mason.” Something about the way he smiled sent her heart beating in a way that a host of A-list celebrities with their million-watt grins hadn’t managed.
It was nice to meet him too. Which made it a very big problem.
“Did he really spend six months building a model of the Dawn Treader?” Emelia directed her question to Allie, giving Peter a second to try to get some air. He had a name. And for some reason, his heart pounded like he’d just sprinted a mile.
“Oh, is that how long that took?” Allie didn’t look in the slightest bit put out by the weird question as she grabbed a hanger out of the wardrobe and hooked the coat over it. “I don’t know if that’s true. But I can tell you he certainly has a model of the boat that he gets very anxious about if someone as much as breathes heavily near it.”
“Hey now.” That was an overexaggeration if there ever was one. Between the digs at his attire, the Sabine situation, and this, he was beginning to think Allie was more foe than friend.
“Who’s your favorite character in the book?” Emelia was still studying him as if she was setting a test and waiting for him to fail.
“There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.” Peter quoted the first line of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader without even thinking about it. Admittedly, the boy was a certified pain in the backside at the beginning, but he was also the character who underwent the biggest transformation over its pages.
“Huh. Interesting.” Emelia pulled some kind of upside-down fish-mouth thing as she turned his answer over in her mind. Peter waited for an indication as to whether he had passed or failed whatever the test was, but she gave away nothing. Instead, she plucked another hanger out of the wardrobe and picked another coat off the bed, mirroring Allie’s smooth movements.
“Who’s yours?”
Emelia thought for a second, her head tilted. “To defeat the darkness out there, you must defeat the darkness inside yourself.” She took a couple of steps and shoved the final coat into the already full wardrobe.
The words came from the magician Coriakin. Peter tucked away the knowledge that Emelia felt a kinship with the magician who had once been a star but had fallen from grace.
Allie turned from closing the wardrobe doors. “Okay, you two. Are we done trading lines or do we need a few more minutes to hide in here? Want me to bring up snacks and some drinks to tide you over a bit longer?”
Emelia looked startled. As he was sure he did too.
Allie looked at Emelia. “You’re hiding from having to try to infiltrate a room full of strangers. Which is fair enough because I hate those as much as the next person, but that’s going to change because I’m going to introduce you around now.” Allie pointed her finger at Peter. “And he’s hiding from his ex-girlfriend. Who I tried to set him up with. My bad. But I can’t help him with that short of tying my sheets together so he can shimmy out my window. Which could be quite fun.”
Peter blinked as Allie threw him under the bus. Hold on, she was the one who’d sent him up here with the coats . . .
“I’m quite good with tying knots,” Emelia offered.
The three of them all stilled for a second as they processed her words.
“I mean . . .” The girl blushed to the tips of her hair as her words trailed off.
Peter’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out and looked at the screen. Victor flashed up at him. Silencing the call, he slid the phone back in his pocket. He was done being his brother’s keeper for tonight. Victor would be turning twenty-nine this year. Time for him to get it together. He was the oldest in the rowing squad and still acted like some eighteen-year-old kid getting his first taste of freedom.
His phone started vibrating again.
“Looks like someone really wants to talk to you.” Emelia tilted her head at him.
His finger itched to just turn his phone off, but he couldn’t do it. He huffed out a breath. “I’m sorry. I should probably take it.” Swiping to answer, he walked out into the hallway as he put his phone to his ear. “This had better be good.”
“It’shh always good, little bro.” His brother’s slurred voice came over the line. Charming. Drunk before nine. “I just wanted to let you know, I took your carsh. But I’ll bring it back tonight.”
“You took my car?”
“Just for a c
ouple of hours. I’ll drive it back shoon. No problem.”
Uh, yes problem. Very big problem. “Victor, you can’t drive.”
“I’m fine. Right as rain.”
“Where are you?”
“Mazza’s place.”
Had they all lost their minds? They had training most of the day tomorrow. Starting at six. Not to mention a big five-kilometer erg test first thing on Monday.
Peter heard the sound of shuffling, then someone else on the line. “Coach?”
“Mitchell?” “Mazza” was what the rowing boys called him, but Peter stayed away from nicknames as much as he could. Tried to keep some sort of boundary between coach and team. Even if his brother made it his mission to make it almost impossible.
“Victor’s pretty hammered, Coach.” The seasoned international didn’t sound impressed. Not that Peter could blame him. The guys took their rowing seriously. It probably killed them as much as it killed him that Victor had the superhuman ability to drink until he was completely trollied and still somehow pull phenomenal times on the rowing machine the next morning.
“I’d let him stay here but honestly last time he did, he made a bit of a mess and my flatmates weren’t very happy.”
It was about a twenty-minute walk from Allie’s to Mitchell’s flat. As much as he’d have liked to tell the guy just to tip Victor out into the gutter and let him sleep it off, he couldn’t. Especially since the sod had nicked his car, and Peter needed it in the morning to get to Wallingford for training. No doubt with his brother half passed out in the passenger seat. “Okay, I’ll be there in about half an hour.”
Turning, he walked back into Allie’s room. “I’m sorry, I have to go.” He tried to keep his gaze from Emelia. If he even looked at her, it would probably be written all over his face how much he didn’t want to leave.
Allie gave him the stink eye but didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to. Her view that he should just leave Victor to fend for himself in situations like this was already well established.
“It was nice to meet you, Emelia.” In trying to not give himself away, he came off disinterested. It was probably better that way. Meeting a girl who intrigued him was not in the cards for this year. There was no time to be distracted. The only thing that mattered was getting back in the game. He could never make up for how he’d failed Anita, but he was going to do everything he could not to break the final promise he’d made to her.
Nine
WEEK TWO. AT THE JOB that, if Emelia got it right, would be her atonement. Or some of it at least.
She’d spent the previous week learning about the charity and her way around the system. Now she was on her own. Emelia straightened the pad of paper on her desktop and picked up a ballpoint pen. Across the top of the page she scrawled HOW TO SAVE SPRINGBOARD? in large block letters and stared at the four words.
In nine months she’d have either answered that question or not. If it was the former, she could return to LA with some sense of closure. If not, Anita’s legacy would be consigned to the same scrap heap as the many other charities that had tried and failed.
Peter did not feel very brave; indeed, he felt he was going to be sick. But that made no difference to what he had to do. The quote from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe flashed through her head. That was basically how she felt about the rest of the year.
“Emelia?” Elizabeth stuck her head in the door. “Great, you’re here. Can you drop by my office at nine thirty? I need to introduce you to the board member who’s been given oversight of fund-raising this year.”
Great. Just what she needed. Some pompous middle-aged man breathing down her neck. Emelia summoned up a smile about as fake as the color of Pink’s hair. “Sure. Who will I be meeting?”
“Of course, his—” The phone in Elizabeth’s hand buzzed and she looked down at the screen. “Sorry, I need to take this.” She put her phone to her ear and her gray head disappeared from view.
Oh, well, it couldn’t be that hard to figure out. Emelia had done her research on the board before she’d interviewed for the role. There were three men on it. Pulling up the homepage, she refreshed herself on their details. One was a retired lawyer, one a semiretired teacher, and the last a has-been children’s author from the nineties. Calling any of them middle-aged would have been generous. She sighed as she closed out of the page.
She doodled on her paper. No point trying to dream up any grand fund-raising plans until she had the measure of what she was going to have to work with. Or, more likely, work around.
Her phone buzzed in her purse. Picking the purse up off the floor, she placed it on the top of her desk and started rifling through it. Unable to locate her phone, she tipped the contents of her bag onto the surface, everything falling out into a messy pile. Her cousin’s name lit up the screen of her phone.
“Hey, Lace.” She wedged the phone between her ear and shoulder as she returned her wallet, change, and a handful of pens. A copy of The Silver Chair teetered on the edge of her desk. She reached for it but only succeeded in tipping it over the edge. It landed with a slap on the floor. She’d salvage it later.
“I still can’t believe you managed to talk them into it.” Though Lacey’s opening line didn’t show it, her cousin was a professional schmoozer who excelled at small talk. She just only used it when she had to.
“Clearly a case of desperate times, desperate measures.” Emelia didn’t mention that she’d gone out of her way to hide her connection to Mia Caldwell. She already knew what her cousin would think of that.
“So what’s it like?”
Emelia cast her gaze over the industrial metal filing cabinet in the corner of her office, the old desk in front of her, and the faded wallpaper. “Let’s just say no one is ever going to accuse them of wasting money on high-class office space.” In her mind’s eye she imagined Lacey’s LA office with its large windows and sprawling view of the city. Her cousin’s idea of slumming it would be Starbucks running out of hazelnut syrup for her latte.
“So what’s up on today’s agenda?”
Emelia let a groan rumble out of her throat. “Apparently I’ve got some board member who is going to be overseeing my work. I’m meeting him in”—she glanced at the clock—“seven minutes.”
“Oooooooh.” Her cousin was the type who saw romantic possibilities around every corner. Which was also part of the reason she went through men like water.
“You wouldn’t be saying that if you’d seen the three options. Go have a look at the website.” She waited a few seconds for her cousin to do just that. Lacey was perma-attached to multiple devices. For her, a high-speed Internet connection was a close second to oxygen.
She knew the instant her cousin had seen the page by the sound of the snort coming from the other end of the line, one Lacey tried to smother by clearing her throat. “Okay, maybe not. But you never know. New city, new possibilities.”
“I’m not here for new possibilities, I’m here to save Anita’s charity. That’s it. The last thing I need is some British guy complicating things.” She forced her mind away from a very specific British guy in particular. There was no way she could ever mention Peter to Lacey. What Emelia planned to write off as nothing more than a set of random and meaningless coincidences, Lacey would see as some kind of crazy cosmic intervention.
Whatever the phone call Saturday night was about, it had made him leave the party at full speed. She’d lasted another hour, the time simply a blur of names and faces as Allie had been on a mission to introduce her to people. Stupidly, she’d stayed that long hoping Peter would come back. Which was about as crazy as climbing into strangers’ wardrobes.
“Are you sure you want to be doing this?” Her cousin’s question jolted her back to the present.
“I have to do this.”
“I worry about you, Meels. I worry about what will happen if this doesn’t work out.”
“Don’t. It’s going to work.” It had to. She didn’t know how she’d live with he
rself if it didn’t. The clock on her screen changed to 9:27. Time to find out if she was being paired up with googly eyes, bad teeth, or rampant facial hair. “Gotta go, Lace. I’ll talk to you later.”
Closing out the call, she stood and smoothed down her navy knee-length wool skirt. You can do this, Emelia. She gave herself a pep talk as she exited her office and headed down the hall. You have charmed the world’s crankiest misogynistic men to get a story. And this is more important than any of those stories ever were.
She approached Elizabeth’s door, which stood ajar. From inside the office, a male voice came. Clipped, frustrated. Emelia’s hand froze just before it knocked, as she registered what he was saying.
“. . . an American? You know what they are like. Loud. In your face. Treading over everyone’s toes. They offend people even when they don’t mean to.”
Loud? Offensive? Emelia felt her face flush.
“Well, it wasn’t like I had much choice.” Elizabeth’s voice came back low and terse. “For what we were offering we’re lucky we got any applicants at all. I grant you, it’s not ideal, but at least she had some charity experience in LA. The one other applicant may have had the right accent but she was so witless she couldn’t have organized a drink in a brewery. Anyway, it’s done. She’s been hired and will be here any minute now.”
Googly eyes, or whichever he was, heaved a sigh. “I think we’re making a big mistake. Americans seem to think everything can be solved with a GoFundMe page. Putting someone in charge of saving SpringBoard who doesn’t even know how the English do things? I agreed to help out with supervising, not babysitting.”
Babysitting? At that Emelia lost all sense of self-preservation and pushed the door open. Her gaze first landed on Elizabeth’s startled face, before she pivoted to face her self-christened “babysitter.” “I can promise you, I don’t need any—”
Then she registered the agape mouth and green eyes staring at her. Oh. No. It couldn’t be. “Peter?”
There was no way. There was absolutely no way. Except there was. The American he’d just been so vehemently deriding, who’d overheard presumably every word he’d spoken, was the same one he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about since their first meeting.