by Amy Andrews
Blake shook his head. It was a complicated situation but he didn’t have to think about it to know the answer to that one. ‘No.’
‘Well, isn’t that your answer?’ she asked.
Blake shook his head. If only it were that simple. ‘I was supposed to look out for him,’ he said.
‘Because he was one of your men?’
Blake shook his head. ‘No. Well...yes, but...’ Blake paused, the desire for her to understand pushing hard at his chest. ‘Because he was one of my closest friends and...my brother-in-law.’ He placed his forehead against her collarbone, his lips brushing her chest. ‘Colin was Joanna’s husband.’
Ava shut her eyes as his heavy words felt oppressive against her chest. The guilt in his voice was undeniable. Oh, dear God—how had Blake survived that? She tightened her arms around him.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said.
Having to face his amputated leg every day must be a constant physical reminder of what he’d lost. Having to face Joanna, his sister, must be a constant emotional reminder. She was surprised he’d ever got his life together again.
That must have taken real strength.
Her breath stirred the hair at his temple and Blake held her tighter too. He was used to superficial sympathy from people but with Ava wrapped around him like this it felt real.
‘Have you talked to anybody about any of this?’ she asked after a few moments.
Blake gave a soft snort, pulling back from her neck. ‘Ad nauseam,’ he said. ‘The army supplies a shrink.’
‘So they should,’ she muttered. ‘Has he helped?’
‘She,’ Blake supplied and smiled to try and soften the topic and erase the anguish from her gaze. ‘And yes, actually. I was kind of resistant but, yeh...I’m in a much better place after talking to her than I had been.’
‘Well, that’s...good,’ Ava said, feeling slightly mollified.
Blake smiled and made a concerted effort to drag himself out of the funk they’d descended into. Even he knew this was a far cry from the fun she’d prescribed earlier.
‘It is,’ he murmured, dropping a kiss on the fluttering pulse at the base of her throat. ‘Although I prefer other forms of therapy.’
Ava shut her eyes as his tongue traced wet circles up the hard ridge of her throat, sinking into the heat and the thrill of it. ‘Like what?’
Blake smiled as her reply buzzed against his lips and she dropped her head back to give him better access.
She might not be able to do anything about the demons in his head or erase all the bad stuff that had happened to him, but she could definitely give him her body. Maybe that was wrong, maybe she should be trying to get him to talk and open up, but she couldn’t help but think that a man who’d been through what Blake had been through deserved to choose his own path to wellness.
And right now, in this moment, there was something she could do to help him forget for a little while.
She was definitely up for a little sexual healing.
ELEVEN
The next three days drifted by in a perfect little bubble. A bubble where she wasn’t a supermodel and he wasn’t a one-legged pleb totally out of her league. No lady and the carpenter thing. Just good company and great food and amazing weather.
Laughter and sunshine.
Long days of lazily navigating the waterways of southern England. Waving to fellow boaters. Operating locks. Eating at pubs.
And the nights? Long, hot, sweaty nights of a more frantic persuasion. Eager to be naked and explore. Being bold and forthright. Pushing each other to the limits of their sexuality.
Never quite getting enough.
It was as if they both knew deep down it could never last and therefore the everyday masks they wore to face the world were stripped away. Pretence was shed and there was only room for the real and the raw.
The investigation was progressing according to Ken. They were tracking down leads, leaving no stone unturned. But no arrests had been made and his advice to keep lying low remained the same.
Ava should have been getting antsy. Ordinarily she would have been going out of her mind, not doing anything, worrying about her time out of the limelight and how that might impact her career. Reggie certainly was. Fretting about it day and night with his increasingly desperate calls and texts. Pleading with her to allow him to feed the press something...anything...any morsel to keep them fed and watered and interested.
But after a decade of unfettered availability, anonymity was seductive. A simple life on the water with a simple man was even more seductive.
And while the British press and the paparazzi were in a feeding frenzy over Ava Watch, obsessing over her whereabouts, reporting any faux sighting as if she were Elvis, Ava was revelling in her new-found freedom to just...be.
To not put on make-up.
To not go to the gym every day.
To stuff her face with banoffee pie at a pub and not have to watch for a telephoto lens.
To kiss Blake publicly and not worry that she was going to read about her engagement or possible pregnancy in some tabloid the next day.
But the bubble burst late on day six with a very sombre intrusion. And it was the beginning of the end.
Blake’s phone rang while they were having dinner at a pub in Devizes. They were talking about the Caen Hill staircase lock they were going to tackle the next day. A good six hours of lock after lock, twenty-nine in total.
Ava watched him frown at his screen and push the answer button. He didn’t say much, just, ‘Right...right,’ and ‘When?’ and ‘Where?’ but his face got grimmer and grimmer and she could feel a cold hand slowly closing around her heart.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked as he pushed the end button.
‘Change of plans. I have to go to a funeral tomorrow.’
Ava blinked. No more information appeared to be forthcoming. ‘Oh. Okay...who?’
‘A guy I served with.’
His reply was clipped and his face, which had been animated about the adventure ahead just a few minutes ago, was suddenly as bleak and forbidding as a thunderclap. ‘Where?’
‘A little village outside Salisbury. I’ll hire a car in the morning. I can be back by nightfall.’
Ava nodded. She wasn’t sure what she should do, or say. Should she push him for more—did he want that? Or should she take him back to the boat and distract him? She looked down at their half-eaten meal, suddenly not remotely hungry. She looked around at the cheery pub crowd enjoying the late evening warmth in the beer garden.
‘You want to go back to the boat?’
Blake nodded. ‘Yup.’
They walked along the towpath in silence. Blake was tight-lipped and she didn’t even attempt to hold his hand as she had on their way to the pub. Once they were inside the boat and Blake had locked the door behind them she turned to him and said, ‘Do you want to talk about it?’
Blake shook his head, grabbing her arm and yanking her flush with his body. ‘No,’ he said and slammed his mouth down onto hers as he swept her off her feet and carried her into the bedroom.
Distraction it was.
* * *
The next morning dawned cool and miserable. They woke to rain patting lightly on the roof and a grey light barely making it through the curtains.
The symbolism was not lost on Ava.
‘I can come with you,’ she said, snuggling her back into his front, her bottom into his groin, reaching for the bone-deep warmth that seemed to have evaporated in the cold grey light.
She felt him tense and hastened to assure him. ‘Not to the funeral,’ she clarified. ‘But for the trip. For...company.’
She expected him to say no. And for a long time he didn’t say anything at all, his warm hand firm and unmoving on her belly. ‘Sure,�
� he said. ‘Company would be...good.’
And then he was kissing her neck and his hand was sliding between her legs and Ava opened to him, welcoming another session of feverish sex, knowing instinctively that Blake needed a physical outlet for the grief he couldn’t express any other way.
* * *
A few hours later they’d been driving for an hour in virtual silence when Ava couldn’t bear it any more. The landscape was as bleak as the mood in the car and her indecision was driving her nuts.
Say something, don’t say something.
But in the end, she couldn’t pretend they were just going for a Sunday drive in the countryside.
‘What’s his name?’ she asked.
Blake’s knuckles tightened on the steering wheel. ‘Isaac Wipani.’
Ava frowned. ‘That’s an unusual surname.’
‘He’s a Kiwi. His father was a Maori. Died when he was a boy.’
‘Didn’t you say you served with him?’
Blake nodded. ‘He joined us from the New Zealand Defence Force after he met and married an English girl.’
‘How old was he?’
‘Twenty-nine.’
Ava almost asked him how it happened. But really, did it matter? A man was dead. A young man. A soldier. ‘Did they have children?’
‘Two.’
If anything, Blake’s face got grimmer and any other questions died on her lips. She wished they had the kind of relationship where she could slip her hand onto his thigh, to loan him some comfort. She knew they’d shared something special the last few days but what were four days and nights of sex compared to a lost comrade?
And he looked so incredibly unreachable in his dark suit and even darker mood she was too paralysed to try.
* * *
They made it just in time for the funeral. Blake deposited her in a pub opposite the churchyard where the service was taking place and she sat at a cosy booth cradling a coffee, looking out of the rain-spattered window at the bleak day.
Lucky for her, Joanna had thought to include clothes for when the Indian summer came to an abrupt end, which it was always bound to. The black jeans and duffel coat were baggy but the tie at the waist helped and a slouchy knitted beanie even looked quite funky and fashionable when she tucked her hair up inside it and let it pouch to one side like a beret.
It was too dark inside to wear her sunglasses but Ava still felt utterly incognito.
Half an hour later and on to her second coffee, Ava noticed movement across the road and watched as six uniformed soldiers hefted a coffin draped with the Union Jack high on their shoulders through the churchyard towards the headstones. A woman in black and two little children holding her hand came next. Then other people, silent mourners, followed at a respectable distance. A lot in uniform. A lot of civilians too.
Ava could see what was happening very clearly from her seat as the procession stopped at a clearing on the outer edge of the headstones, fresh earth piled nearby. She knew she shouldn’t watch. That it was a private affair, not some spectacle to gawk at. But the sight of those two little kids broke her heart. Her breath was heavy in her lungs and she couldn’t seem to look away.
Her eyes sought Blake through the crowd. Needing to find him, to see him, to know he was okay. She started to panic when she couldn’t locate him, her eyes darting around more desperately. And suddenly he was there—one grim-faced man amongst a group of grim-faced men, mainly uniformed standing to one side—and she breathed again.
A loud cry cracked the laden air like a whip and Ava startled at the unexpectedness. It had come from the direction of the gravesite and her eyes scanned for the source.
It was a man’s cry. A warrior’s cry. A call to arms. It had easily penetrated the four-hundred-year-old stone walls of the pub and no doubt was even now echoing right down the high street if the heads poking out of windows were any indication.
She looked back towards the church in time to see movement down the far end of the gathering, about a dozen khaki-uniformed men, in two lines, one behind the other.
The men were bouncing on the balls of their feet, their knees slightly bent, their arms folded out in front of them. They advanced towards the coffin sitting at the end of the waiting hole in the ground, calling out and grunting, their faces fierce. Then it became more organised, with the men all chanting in unison, stamping their feet in time as they slowly closed in on the coffin, slapping their hands against their chests.
Ava recognised it as the special dance she’d seen the New Zealand rugby team do at the World Cup a few years back. As the men surrounded the coffin, their forceful rhythmic chants echoing through the entire village, she felt tears well in her eyes and goose bumps prick at her skin.
It was raw and primitive and so achingly mournful she couldn’t remember ever seeing anything so...savage be so utterly beautiful.
As suddenly as it started, it stopped, the angry chants falling silent, and there were long moments where nothing but the light patter of rain could be heard. Then, one by one the group of soldiers straightened, tall and strong, and slowly walked backwards from where they’d come, their solemn gazes locked on the coffin, their moving tribute to a brother-in-arms complete.
‘Such a shame, isn’t it?’
Ava dragged her gaze away from the window at the sudden intrusion. She looked up to find the woman from behind the bar, who collected her empty coffee mug. She held out a box of tissues and Ava realised her face was wet.
‘Thanks,’ she said, taking a couple and dabbing at the tears.
‘Such a lovely family. Jenny, the widow, she grew up just outside here, went to school just down the road,’ the older woman continued as she wiped Ava’s table down. ‘They got married in that church.’ She shook her head, tucking her dishcloth in her front apron pocket. ‘Offered him a full military funeral, you know, but he never wanted that. He was coming home in three weeks...’
Ava nodded even though she didn’t know. Didn’t understand. Probably never would. All she could think about was Blake and what had happened to him. What if he’d died? What if she’d never known him?
The thought was so awful she could barely breathe.
‘Another coffee, luv?’
She nodded. ‘Yes, please.’
Ava had almost finished the third cup when the pub door opened, letting in a blast of cold, miserable air and a rowdy bunch of uniformed men and a smiling Blake. She waved at him as he looked around for her and he headed towards her.
‘Hi,’ Blake said as he reached the booth. He smiled at her and then frowned as she barely managed one in return. She looked as if she’d been crying. ‘Are you okay?’
Ava shrugged. ‘I saw that...dance.’
‘Ah.’ He nodded. ‘The haka.’
‘Yes, that’s it.’
‘It was a funeral haka,’ he said. ‘Some of the guys Isaac served with in New Zealand were over here.’
‘It was...’ Ava rubbed her hands up and down her arms. Even though the duffel coat was thick she still felt chilled.
‘Blake, you dirty dog!’
Ava was kind of pleased for the booming interruption. She wasn’t ready to articulate how deeply the funeral haka had affected her.
‘You never told us you had a bird waiting for you,’ a strapping great blond guy said, slapping Blake on the back. ‘And a very nice-looking one at that. How are you, darlin’?’ he said, holding out his hand, which Ava duly shook. ‘I’m James but they just call me Jimbo.’
‘Ava,’ she said after a slight hesitation and a quick glance at Blake. It might not have been a common name but it was hardly unusual.
Jimbo certainly didn’t bat an eyelid over it. ‘Hey, guys,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Come check out Blake’s bird. Bring those beers over here and a champagne for the lady.’
&nb
sp; ‘Sorry.’ Blake grimaced. ‘I hope you don’t mind?’
Mind? Blake was actually smiling, which, considering his recent grimness, was a miracle. It was the most comfortable she’d seen him apart from when he was sanding wood or steering the boat.
Ava quirked an eyebrow at the man who had interrupted them. ‘Make it a beer, Jimbo.’
‘Oh, mate.’ Jimbo laughed. ‘You’re on a winner there.’
Blake smiled down at her and said, ‘Yeh. I think you’re right,’ and Ava smiled back, suddenly warm all over.
* * *
The next several hours, squashed into a booth with five strapping men, were the most educational of Ava’s life. She’d have thought the mood would be sombre, and certainly there was talk about Isaac and toasts drunk to him, but mainly they just talked guy stuff and joked around with each other.
Ava was good at talking to men and fitted into the easy banter as if she’d been born to it. Jimbo, who was drinking steadily, would look at her every now and then with narrowed eyes then look at Blake and say, ‘She looks really familiar.’
But she’d just shrug and tell him she had one of those faces and change the subject, getting him to tell her another story about what Blake was like during basic training, which Blake weathered like a trouper.
In fact all four of the guys who’d joined them seemed to have great stories about Blake and she encouraged them outrageously. Clearly he was well liked and respected and she was enjoying hearing about that part of his life—before he’d become so serious.
She also listened to Jimbo’s female woes. The only single man at the table besides Blake, clearly he found women puzzling. She dished out some sensible advice about what women wanted and explained why infidelity was generally a deal breaker for women.
‘You’re lucky to have her.’ Blake rolled his eyes as Jimbo repeated the decree for the tenth time.
‘I don’t know,’ Ava said. ‘Maybe I’m lucky to have him.’
‘Oh, you are, you are,’ Jimbo agreed. ‘Good. Honourable. And brave. The man was awarded the second highest decoration for bravery you can get for what he did.’