by Kara Isaac
“About eleven. I’ll pick you up at twelve.” He lifted his tea up again, gave it another try. Still horrid.
“Why doesn’t Jackson stay over?” Emelia took a tentative sip of her drink.
Tea sloshed over the rim of his cup, searing the top side of his finger. He’d expected the question about as much as he’d anticipated her sweeping kick. “Um, I think they’re waiting until they’re married.”
“To . . . ?”
Was she really going to make him say it?
Then it connected. “Oh. Wow. Really? That’s, um, different.” Her mouth said “different.” Her face said “weird.” “Crazy.” “Unbelievable.” “But they’re so . . . so . . .”
“All over each other.”
She grinned. “Understatement of the year.” He watched thoughts shift her expression as she pondered it. “But they’re so . . . he’s so . . . okay, sorry, this is a weird conversation. I just didn’t realize people like them existed. Especially . . .”
He could practically see what she was thinking. People who were smart. Normal. Ridiculously good-looking. In her world, the only people who saved themselves for marriage were probably losers who didn’t have any other choice.
“Are you like them too?” Her hand flew to her mouth. “Sorry. Don’t answer that. Right. I’m going to stop talking now.” She leaned over and took a huge gulp of her drink.
Peter started laughing. He couldn’t help it. The girl looked like a paleontologist who’d just stumbled over a living dinosaur. Then the scent of singed air made him pause. Something was burning. He put his drink down and stood up. “What’s that smell?”
“Smell?” Emelia looked around, then wrinkled her nose as well. Her hand flew to her mouth. “The popcorn!”
Slamming her cup onto the coffee table, she jumped off the couch and sprinted toward the kitchen. Peter strode after her, almost colliding into her when she stopped in front of the microwave. “Fire!”
Sure enough, inside the microwave a fireball rotated, the flames devouring what had once been a popcorn bag. Wow. The little boy inside who had once aspired to work in pyrotechnics was momentarily entranced.
The black smoke coming out the side was a bit concerning though.
The next thing he knew, Emelia had thrown the back door open, ripped the microwave’s cord out of the socket, and picked it up off the counter.
“Wait . . . no—” But he was too late, she was already running with it out the back door. He ran after her, just in time to see her somehow launch the white box so it flew through the air before landing with a loud crack on the cobblestones outside, flipping over once and coming to rest on its back.
They both just stood there, watching the remaining flames flicker behind the now-cracked door.
Emelia peeked up at him from under long lashes, a nearby streetlight casting a dim halo over her. “So, um, maybe a little overdramatic?”
Peter couldn’t help but grin back. “Well, I was just going to turn it off so the fan stopped feeding the fire, but that worked too. How long did you put it on for, Smoky?”
Emelia wrinkled her nose. “I meant to set it for three minutes but I must’ve set it for thirty by mistake. Guess I’m going to have to go buy Allie a new microwave.”
In the sad, rectangular box, the last of the flames had dimmed to embers. Even outside in the almost dark, it was clear there was no resuscitating it. The smell of smoke still lingered in the air. “At least it went out in style. Not many microwaves can claim an ending like that.” He walked toward it and started to pick it up, but the moment he attempted to lift it off the ground, his shoulder told him to think again.
“What’s the prognosis?”
Emelia spoke from behind him as he let it go and stood back up.
“Unclear. No more rowing for a while, that’s for sure.” When he’d been forced to confess to Kevin what he’d done he’d thought his physio was going to clock him. And he didn’t blame him. Months of rehab work out the window. He wanted to clock himself.
“Well, for what it’s worth, the few seconds I did see of you on that erg were pretty impressive.” Emelia stepped around him and scooped the appliance off the ground. Turning around, she carried it a few feet and set it against the side of the house next to the rubbish bin. He felt so useless not being able to even perform a simple task like that.
He blew out a breath. Not wanting to remember how, for a few minutes, it had felt like somehow the miraculous had happened. Maybe his shoulder had completely healed. A blissful few hundred seconds of feeling the burn again in his legs, lungs, and arms.
“Sabine mentioned you want to make a comeback.” It wasn’t a question.
Peter started at the unexpected mention of his ex. “Yes.”
“Is it possible? With your shoulder?” The question was tentative, as if she knew how much just hearing the words hurt.
“It has to be.” He rubbed his hand along the bristles that covered his jawline. His shoulder couldn’t even manage a decent shave at the moment. “I need to do it for my cousin. She was my biggest cheerleader. Even on the worst day, she never stopped believing that I would be able to row again at an elite level.”
“What happened to her?” Emelia dusted her hands off as she approached him. Somehow she’d gotten a smudge of dirt across her cheekbone.
“What do you mean?” Peter shuffled on his feet.
“You said ‘never stopped.’ Past tense.”
Nothing got past this girl. “She died. Last year.”
“I’m sorry.”
Peter tried to shove the guilt down. He hadn’t been there for Anita, but maybe he could be there for this feisty, independent girl with professional deflection skills. Something in his gut told him she’d spent a lot of her life having to fend for herself. “What about you? What brought you to Oxford?”
Emelia shrugged and wrapped her arms around herself. “I’m not nearly as interesting as you. No Olympic aspirations for me.” She gestured to the door. “It’s cold out here. We should go back inside.”
Peter reached out, catching her elbow as she started to move past him. “Any girl who can put me on my backside when I don’t even see it coming is pretty much the most interesting one I’ve ever met. Besides, you were right. I don’t know much about you that matters. And I would really like to.” Even in the darkness, he could see the wariness in her eyes. “Please.”
She studied him for a second, as if weighing something. “Starting over.”
What? “Sorry?”
“That’s what brought me to Oxford. I made a huge mistake. I came here to try to start over. But then that’s never really possible, is it? Because wherever you go, you’re still there. You can never escape yourself.”
Her voice was tinged with resignation and hurt. She looked at him as if hoping he would be able to tell her she was wrong, but knowing he couldn’t. Especially not when that pretty much captured how he’d felt ever since Anita died.
Some days it took everything he had not to just knock back another Oxy to try to escape the condemnation ringing in his own head. And that was while clinging to the knowledge that God still had a plan. Even if he couldn’t see any of it. Emelia didn’t even have that to hang on to.
He didn’t know what to say, but he had to say something. He could already see her expression starting to close, as if she’d realized she’d said too much. “Em—”
“What’s the worst-case scenario?” She cut him off. Changed the subject.
“For what?”
“So best-case scenario is you make a blazing comeback and win gold in Tokyo. What’s the worst case? If you put yourself back into training and it happens all over again?”
“That I do permanent irreversible damage.”
“Which means?”
“Lifelong weakness. Pain.” Or as his consultant so bluntly put it, not being able to ever lift his arm again. The next fifty years on hard-core opiates.
“And which is more likely? The best or the worst?”
“
The worst.” By a long mile.
“And it’s still worth it to you? The minute chance of winning an Olympic medal versus the very real chance that you could become permanently disabled?”
He’d never really had to have this conversation before. Sabine got it. His teammates got it. His parents didn’t but trusted him to make his own decision. How did you explain the drive to beat all the odds? No matter what the risk? To be the best? To stand on a podium and hear your country’s national anthem playing? “Yes.”
She shook her head. “That’s crazy.”
He bristled. “Aren’t you the girl who once wanted to be the next Christiane Amanpour? To be a war correspondent? Do you have any idea how many journalists and photographers come back in body bags? Or without limbs? Or, at the least, with post-traumatic stress disorder? My dream doesn’t involve the real risk of me dying.”
“Seventy-one.” She said the words as she walked past him toward the door.
“Sorry?”
Emelia looked right at him. “Seventy-one journalists were killed last year.”
“Want to know how many Olympic rowers were shot? Or executed? Or thrown in prison? None.” He wasn’t even sure what the point was that he was trying to make.
“But at least they were doing something worth—” She cut her own words off but not before he knew exactly what she was about to say.
“Worthwhile? Worthy? Whereas my dream is just, what? Selfish? All about my ego? Pride? Ambition?”
Emelia didn’t say anything.
He blew out a breath. Well, that was a great kick of reality. Nothing quite like finding out the girl you have a crush on thinks your biggest dream is self-absorbed stupidity.
“What are you guys doing out here?” Allie saved Emelia from being forced to confirm that was exactly what she thought. She stood in the doorway, a brown paper bag in her hand, the local burger place’s branding on the side. Allie didn’t even wait for an answer before she launched into her next thing. “Guess what? Jackson and I have talked and we’re going to have an engagement party.” She looked at them with expectation. What did she want? A medal? They’d been engaged for like eight months already.
“Great. Took you long enough.”
“Congratulations.”
Peter and Emelia spoke over each other.
Allie scrunched her nose. “Why does it smell like smoke?”
Twenty-Three
EMELIA WATCHED THE ENGLISH COUNTRYSIDE pass by the car window. All lush and green with flowers poking up their bright heads. There were cobbled stone fences and pastures filled with cattle. Quaint villages with looming church spires reaching toward the heavens. The scenery was outstanding, but everything else about the drive to visit Peter’s potential venue had been very mysterious so far. When she’d tried to dig, all she’d managed to get out of him was that there was a “family connection.” Words that made her realize she knew pretty much nothing about his family.
She still had no idea how that had morphed into her coming with him to his parents’ house for lunch, except that it seemed to make sense at the time. Something about its being near the potential location. And she needed to apologize for basically saying his dream was stupid.
“You okay?” Peter flicked on the blinker and turned a corner.
“Fine.” Emelia returned her gaze to the road. Her pulse increased for a second as she instinctively reacted to being on the wrong side. “Just a bit nervous, I guess.”
The silence from his side wasn’t exactly comforting.
Suck it up, Emelia. Just say sorry. “I’m sorry about last weekend. About your shoulder. My opinion doesn’t matter. But permanent damage to a rotator is bad. You want a medal so much you’d be willing to live a life of excruciating pain? Risk never being able to throw a ball with your kids?” She stopped herself from saying any more. She’d already said more than enough.
“You’re wrong.”
Maybe she was. She was dredging her memory of what she knew about sports players who had suffered a similar injury.
“Your opinion does matter.” He looked over at her and captured her with his gaze.
Oh. She forced herself to break the connection. “Can you tell me about your family?” She didn’t care that she’d changed the subject with all the subtlety of a Miley Cyrus music video. Staring into eyes like that as he told her that she mattered was just asking for trouble.
“What would you like to know?”
She turned her face toward him. “Um, their names?”
He looked directly across at her. “I haven’t even told you their names?”
“No.”
“Sorry.” His fingers tightened around the steering wheel. He cast a half smile her way. “I guess I’m a bit nervous too. It’s been a long time since I brought a girl home.”
Brought a girl home. The words twisted inside her. Both terrifying and exciting, the emotions fighting for dominance. She’d never been the girl anyone brought home. Not ever.
“My father is William. Bill. My mother is Margaret; everyone calls her Maggie. My brother is Victor.”
She winced at his brother’s name. Even though she was sure Peter’s brother was nothing like her nemesis.
“What are they like?”
His fingers relaxed slightly. “My dad is tall, big. Played rugby. Almost made the English team when he was young. Apparently was pretty much a steamroller on the field. He has the kind of booming laugh that you can hear for miles. He works hard. He doesn’t really care about what we do, all that matters to him is who we are. My mum is the sweetest woman you’ll ever meet. The glue that holds our family together. She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis a couple of years ago but you’d never know it. Never complains, always looking for opportunities to help everyone else. You’ll love her . . . she’ll love you.” He added the last sentence almost as an afterthought. She didn’t know if it was to make her feel better or if his mom was just the type to love everyone.
“What about your brother?”
Something twinged in his jaw as he stared at the road, face set, seeming to ponder her question. Finally, he lifted one hand and pushed it through his hair. “Look, I wish that I could say that we’re best mates but the truth is we have a . . .” He paused, searching for the right word. “Challenging relationship. He’s older by three years but we’ve never been close. He wasn’t too crazy about me from the day I arrived.”
“I’m sorry.”
“How about your family?”
“My dad remarried a few years ago, someone closer to my age than his. I’ve got two half brothers and a half sister. He’s pretty busy with them. Though my stepmother was excited about me coming here. She has high hopes of me snagging Harry. Or at least a member of the aristocracy with a large estate so she can come and play Downton.” Maybe if she distracted him with tales of her social climbing stepmother he wouldn’t ask about her mother.
Peter suddenly started coughing. “Excuse me. How old are your siblings? Half siblings? Sorry. I’m not sure of the terminology.”
“It’s okay.” She wasn’t sure how to refer to them most of the time herself. They were young enough to be her nieces and nephews. “Um . . .” She had to pause for a second to calculate. “Charles is six, George is three, and Katherine-Elizabeth is almost two.”
He couldn’t hold back his grin. “Wow. You weren’t kidding about your stepmother being a royal fan.”
“Unfortunately not.”
He glanced across at her. Opened his mouth as if to ask another question, but then closed it without saying anything.
Time to steer things onto a more neutral topic. “So who will be at lunch?”
“Probably just be the four of us. Victor doesn’t often show up for family lunches.” He turned off the main road onto a smaller side road with tall hedges lining both sides. “So there’s something I need to tell you.” Peter stared straight ahead as he said it.
Emelia’s stomach clenched at something foreboding in his tone. “What?”
“So, um, our house isn’t so much a house. And when I said my parents lived near the potential location, it would have been more accurate to say they are the location.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, it’s more of an estate.”
She still wasn’t getting what he was saying. “Are you trying to tell me your parents are rich?”
He laughed. “Definitely not with money, but there is quite a bit of land.”
“How much land?”
They’d turned onto a smaller road again, one lined with picturesque stone walls and lush fields on either side. He gestured around them. “We’re almost there. This is some of it.”
Shadows covered the car as it passed through a stand of trees and across a small bridge. They came around a bend, and in front of them, in the distance, loomed a huge house. A mansion. And not just any mansion. One that twisted knots of dread in her stomach until she thought she might choke.
She stared at it, trying to process what her eyes were telling her. Finally words started forming in her head. “Highbridge Manor is your house?” Too late she realized her slip. Why would an average American know the name of this estate?
He grimaced. “It is.”
“Stop!” She hadn’t meant to shout, the outburst filling the small space.
Peter hit the brakes. Hard. The car slammed to a stop in the middle of the road. Her seat belt cut across her as it held her in her seat. Her head bounced back against the headrest. She was going to be feeling the effects of that at some point but the realization flooding her mind had nothing on the impact her body had just taken.
She turned her entire body sideways as much as she could and asked the question she already knew the horrible answer to. “Who exactly are you?”
Peter had no idea what to make of the expression on her face. It could have been anything from horror to excitement. Oh, he hoped she wasn’t one of those liberal anti-aristocracy types. Probably should’ve thought to subtly check for that before he brought her home.
“I’m Peter Carlisle.” He refused to be defined by his father’s title. Especially when they’d only come into it by a combination of tragedy and rotten luck.