Just My Luck (Escape to New Zealand #5)

by Rosalind James

  “If it’s going to be filmed, though,” she suggested, “how about setting some new, easier routes on the high wall for it? That’s an opportunity we didn’t take, last time around. It only occurred to me later. But those guys are fit. If we make the climbs easy enough, they’d be able to get up high, even the first time. Well, unless they were scared of heights,” she amended, thinking of Nate. “And that’d look much more impressive on TV, for the team and for us.”

  Mac didn’t say anything, just grunted, and Ally heaved an inward sigh.

  “Still beating your head against that brick wall, I see,” her coworker Robbo said after the meeting broke up and they were doing their safety checks of ropes and carabiners in preparation for the lunch crowd. A climber snatching a few months of casual employment during the busy season, Robbo had started at the gym a couple weeks earlier. He was a cheeky young Australian with more attitude than height who’d asked Ally out his first day, shrugged good-naturedly at her refusal, and moved smack into the Friend Zone.

  “It was a good idea,” she protested.

  “It was bloody brilliant,” Robbo corrected her. “And that’s why Mac’ll be doing it next week. Or I should say, having you come in early or stay late to do it. And pretending he thought of it.”

  Which, of course, turned out to be the case. Ally did work late Thursday night to help set the new routes, and was back again Friday morning at seven. Saw the sign outside the gym: “Closed till noon today for private event: Hurricanes Training.” And tried not to think about Nate.

  She’d bet the whole thing had been Liam’s idea anyway. She saw him at the gym once or twice a week, sometimes with Kristen and sometimes on his own, and he always had a smile and a word for her. But he was a forward, she knew, so that didn’t make sense, because Mac had said it was the backs who were coming.

  Nate was a back, she thought for the hundredth time. And, for the hundredth time, shoved the thought aside. He wouldn’t even be there. Drew had said the All Blacks didn’t have to report to their teams until the first of February, and that was still a week away. And she’d be in the background anyway. Mac would want the limelight today, she knew. He might even let her leave once she’d finished with the routes, she thought hopefully.

  But he didn’t. Of course he didn’t. Which meant she was right there when the fifteen or twenty fit young men in bright yellow warmup suits sauntered into the gym, preceded by a camera crew who filmed their entrance, and followed by several handlers. Ally wasn’t entirely surprised, after all, to see Nate in the group. Somehow, she’d known he would be here.

  She got busy distributing shoes and harnesses, trying not to stare as the guys stripped down to short shorts and shirts that stretched tight over muscular torsos. No hulking behemoths here. Backs, she’d read during a bout of Internet research she wasn’t especially proud of, were primarily kickers and ball runners, lean and fast. And they looked it.

  “Ally,” Mac called from where he was standing with a young man who’d been introduced to the group as Simon, a member of the Hurricanes’ PR team. And with Nate. Of course. With Nate.

  She squared her shoulders, took a deep breath, and walked over to the little group. Acknowledged Nate with a nod, then tried not to look at him.

  “Simon thinks you should do the demo of how to put on the harness,” Mac told her. “For the cameras, eh.”

  “You put yours on first,” Simon suggested, “do a bit of adjusting, much as you can manage. The more the better. Then have Nate put his on, and adjust it for him. A bit of sex appeal never hurt anything.”

  Ally’s eyes flew to Nate’s. He was looking a little uncomfortable too, which definitely made her feel better.

  “I am so not adjusting your harness for you,” she muttered to him when the two of them were standing in front of the group, each man holding his own contraption of black webbing, buckles, and carabiners

  “No worries,” he said, his voice equally low. “Not asking you to.”

  She demonstrated stepping into the harness, pulling it into place as the group, and Nate, followed along.

  “You’ll want to tighten it around your waist and thighs,” she instructed, demonstrating as she’d been told to, turning around, running her fingers under the leg loops to show them how snugly the thing should fit, and trying to forget that she was being filmed. Wishing that she’d worn something less form-fitting than her usual tank top and capri-length tights.

  “Or for some of you,” she added, looking around with a smile, “you’ll actually need to loosen those buckles on the leg openings in order to get them on.” Because, wow, there were some seriously muscular thighs out there.

  “Check Nate’s, Ally,” Simon called from his spot next to the cameraman.

  You can do this, Ally told herself. She turned to Nate, put her fingers gingerly underneath his waist strap at the side, and tugged.

  “That’s good,” she told him. “Nice and tight, just like that.” She didn’t care what Simon said, she wasn’t touching his thighs.

  “Now, you may want a chalk bag,” she decided to add. “In case your hands start sweating.” Ha. That should even things out a little.

  His eyes flew to hers, then a slow smile appeared. “Good idea,” he said. “I may get nervous up there. May even need rescuing, you never know.” The others laughed, and Ally had to smile in spite of herself. He got a point for that one.

  “We’ll clip it on back here.” She turned him with a touch on his shoulder, then fastened the tubular bag to the back of his harness. Tried not to notice what a truly great butt he had, muscular and tight. Well, of course he did. He was an athlete. She’d already spent way too much time watching it, she reminded herself, hiking behind him. And look how well that had turned out.

  “Reach in there,” she told him, doing her best to maintain, “rub around a little, then pull your hand out and rub it together with the other one. Get good and chalked up before you even start. And when you’re on the climb, if your hands do start to sweat, you just lean back in your harness, let it support you, and do it again. That’ll give you a moment to catch your breath, too.”

  “Cheers,” he said with another smile. “I’ll do that.”

  He was the first to start up the wall. Naturally. And she had to admit, his second attempt at climbing was more impressive than his first. Of course, thanks to her resetting of the routes so they only looked difficult, he wasn’t having to work as hard. But she could see that he was more comfortable now that he knew what to expect, and managed a more credible performance that she somehow ended up watching. It wasn’t easy to make yourself try something that had scared you the first time, she knew. It was probably willpower that was forcing him up that high wall, but willpower, she suspected, was something he had plenty of.

  “Good to go,” she told another pair a few minutes later. Stood back and watched another fit young male body make its way up the wall.

  “Keep that rope a bit tighter,” she told the man belaying. “You want it pretty taut.”

  “Sorry about that earlier.” She heard the voice behind her shoulder, didn’t turn from her supervisory post. “I know you’d rather not have done that.”

  She stepped a pace away from the belayer and spoke quietly, still without looking at him. “You can’t always get what you want, I guess.”

  She could hear his sigh. “I said I was sorry. Not sure what else to say.”

  “Nothing else to say,” she told him. “It’s done. No big deal.”

  “It is, though,” he objected. “I wanted to say, today . . . I wanted to . . .”

  “What?” she asked in exasperation. Shot a quick glance at him. Why did his hair have to be so messy? Why did he have to have stubble again, and look like he’d just got out of bed? It was so totally unfair.

  She turned hastily back to her climber again. “Good job,” she called up. “Move your left leg up a little, to the left.”

  “Why are you here, anyway?” she couldn’t resist asking Nate. “I
didn’t think you were training yet.”

  “Ready to get back into it, that’s all,” he said. “And I wanted to come today.”

  “Nate,” came the welcome interruption from behind them, just when Ally was softening. The PR, Simon, again. “Could we get you holding the rope for somebody?”

  “Belaying,” Nate said. “Yeh. Half a mo.”

  Ally glanced at him again, could see him hesitating. Then he shrugged, went to where his teammate stood waiting, and clipped in. And that was the last time she spoke to him.

  A Lesson for Nate

  “Oh, no,” Ally exclaimed involuntarily a week after the Hurricanes event, looking over the day’s schedule when she got into work. Right there in the last block under her name. “Lesson: N. Torrance.” At five o’clock, the last hour of her shift.

  Robbo was there, looking over her shoulder. “You may not like Captain Fantastic,” he said with a grin, “but I think he likes you. Dunno why, you’re so bloody standoffish. Must be a case of treat him mean, keep him keen.”

  “I do not treat him mean,” she muttered. “No meaner than he deserves. He’s a jerk.”

  “Didn’t seem like one to me,” Robbo said. “Typical Kiwi, I thought. Polite, humble, modest, all those boring Kiwi things.”

  “Trust me,” she said. “I know him a lot better than you do. And he’s a jerk.”

  “Why?” she was asking Nate the moment he got close enough. She was standing near the front desk, body language spelling “tension” at the sight of him.

  He sighed inwardly. He hadn’t made any progress the other day after all. And he’d have his work cut out for him today.

  “Because I want to learn to climb,” he said. “And you’re a good teacher.”

  “All right,” he admitted as she continued to stare at him, a hint of temper in the dark eyes. “Because I wanted to see you again, and this was the only way I could think of to do it.”

  “But you’re in the middle of training,” she pointed out. “You’re getting plenty of workouts. It isn’t good for you.” Then snapped her mouth shut as if she didn’t want to be caught being concerned about him.

  He shrugged. “This is stretching, and something different for my body. I’ve had a long break, and I’m fit. And,” he added, glancing pointedly at the clock on the wall, “I’ve paid for my hour. So come on. Teach me.”

  “And that isn’t going to bother you,” she challenged. “My telling you what to do.”

  “Did I seem bothered last week?”

  “I don’t know. I was trying not to look at you,” she admitted, and he was startled into a laugh.

  “All right, then,” she finally said. “Let’s get you a harness and shoes.”

  He lifted the black Adidas bag he was carrying. “Bought them already. And a chalk bag, and chalk. Got it all right here.”

  “You’re really serious about this, then,” she said in surprise.

  He was serious about something, all right. Even if it wasn’t climbing. But he wasn’t sharing that, not while she was this wary.

  He did his best during the lesson that followed to listen to her, to do exactly what she said.

  “Use your legs more,” she instructed from beneath him. Where she was belaying him, he reminded his monkey mind, which insisted on telling him that he was in danger. “Right arm, left leg. Left arm, right leg. Don’t let your arms get way up above you, so you wear yourself out pulling yourself up.” And even though he didn’t like this much more than he had the first time, he held on grimly and obeyed.

  “Crikey,” he said after half an hour, on the ground again to his everlasting relief and flexing his fingers. “My hands are cramping up.”

  “That can be one of the tougher things,” she agreed. “Especially for someone as strong as you. It won’t be your arms and legs, or even your core, in your case, that limit you. It’ll be the tendons and the small muscles in your hands, the things you probably don’t use as much in rugby. You may not want to overdo it today. You don’t want to strain something in there.”

  “You’re right,” he decided. “My hands are pretty important to me. But d’you have some exercises I could do, maybe? A way to get my fingers stronger? Wouldn’t be a bad thing in any case.”

  She looked at him in surprise. “Well, climbing’s probably the best thing. If you’re serious about this. But I could loan you a little contraption I have, where you squeeze with one finger at a time. If you really want to. If you’re coming back again.”

  “I’m coming back again. If you have a look, you’ll see that I bought six lessons from you. But maybe we could use our extra . . .” He looked at the clock again. “Twenty-five minutes, and have a coffee, or even a beer. As you’re done for the day.”

  “Which you knew,” she said slowly.

  “Well, yeh,” he admitted. “I checked. So, a coffee?”

  She seemed to be searching for an excuse, finally shrugged. “We’re on your time, you’re right. Let me grab my stuff, change my shoes, and we’ll go.”

  “So,” she said when their coffees had been delivered to the table at the little café ten minutes later. She’d vetoed a beer, no surprise. “This would be when you tell me why you’re doing this.”

  “Because I wanted to see you, like I said,” he protested. Then sighed as she said nothing, just kept her gaze steady on his face. “Look. I know I did everything wrong. That I got offside with you in the worst possible way. But ever since then, I’ve been regretting it. I’ve been thinking about you. I thought we could start again, that you might give me another chance to get it right.”

  She looked at him warily, still not speaking. But she wasn’t actually telling him to shove off, so he decided to have a go.

  “My name’s Nate Torrance. I’m a rugby player, and I’m a clumsy boofhead who spills things on girls, and hits them in the face—accidentally,” he hurried to add. “And says all the wrong things. But I like you, and I want to get to know you better. And I’m prepared to take as many climbing lessons and buy as many coffees as it takes to do that.”

  “And that’s it?” she asked, looking at him with a searching intensity that had him squirming a bit.

  “Well, no,” he said reluctantly. “But if I were forced to be dead honest, I’d have to admit that I’m desperately attracted to you. That I’ve been imagining you naked since the first time I saw you, and that I want to get you alone, take off all your clothes, and make love to you for hours, every way there is, until neither of us is able to move. And I reckon that would just about spoil my chances for good.”

  “Maybe not, though,” she said after a long pause. He’d seen the flush moving up her cheeks, the look of shock dawning on her face. Had heard himself saying those things, half of him wanting to slap a hand over his mouth to stop himself, and the other half wanting to go on. To tell her more, everything he’d imagined doing to her. To reach across the table, take her head in his hands and kiss her until her mouth was swollen with it, until she felt the way he did. And then to take her home, put her on his bed, and do it all.

  “You think?” was all he said. All he could manage to say.

  “Well, not about the . . . hours deal,” she said, that flush rising a bit higher. “I’m not interested in being another . . . bump in your road. An obstacle that defeated you temporarily, until you won again. I’d have to be sure that isn’t all that’s driving you. And I’m not sure you can even tell the difference yourself. I don’t trust my own judgment that much these days either, to tell you the truth. So you’re going to have to convince me that it’s more than that. More than some conquest.”

  “Whatever it takes,” he promised.

  “All right, then,” she decided, and he felt a surge of relief. Who knew that honesty could actually work?

  “Climbing lessons,” she said, “and coffee. And for the rest of it—we’ll just have to take it slow. And . . . see.”

  “You’re from Canada, eh,” he said over their next coffee together. Another late Frid
ay afternoon, the little café crowded with tourists and locals enjoying the summer weather. Nate in T-shirt and shorts once again, bare arms and legs showing way too much tanned skin and lean, defined muscle for Ally’s peace of mind. He’d offered a beer, but she’d decided they were safer sticking to coffee.

  “Another conversational topic?” she asked with her best sassy tone.

  He laughed. “Too right. I’m trying to stay on safe ground here. And at least ‘where are you from?’ is a bit more personal than the weather.”

  She had to smile at that. “Much better than talking about taking off my clothes, too.” Which had given her some sleepless minutes over the nights since he’d said it. And made for some very naughty thoughts.

  He cleared his throat. “So. Canada.”

  “Yep. Calgary. Cowboy country.”

  “How d’you know Kristen, then? Because she and Hannah are from the States, I know that.”

  “I was born in the U.S. My dad’s American, my mom’s Canadian.” All right, getting-to-know-you stuff. That was good, right? Starting over, like they’d said. “We moved to Canada when I was little, and I think of myself as Canadian. But I actually have dual citizenship. I went to college in California and stayed on in the San Francisco Bay Area afterwards, working. I met Kristen when she came in to take climbing lessons last year, and we got to be friends.”

  “Never known anyone from Canada,” he said. “Well, apart from the rugby teams they’ve fielded for the World Cup. Pretty good blokes.”

  “I never even knew we went to the World Cup,” she admitted. “How did we do?”

  “Had a good whack at it.”

  “Uh-huh. In other words, we stunk.”

  “Well . . .” He grinned back at her. “Reckon we wouldn’t do too well at hockey either. Couple of those boys had the biggest beards I’ve ever seen, though. If it’d been the World Cup of Beards, now, you’d have taken it.”

  “Sounds like Canada,” she said. “A little of that frontier mentality.”

  “Not so different from En Zed, then,” he offered.