by Amy Andrews
Ava stilled. This from a man who had rejected the term hero over and over? ‘What did you do?’ she asked, turning to Blake.
Blake shook his head. ‘It was nothing,’ he dismissed. ‘I was just in the right place at the right time.’
‘Pulled a wounded soldier and four kids from a house fire while some bastards shot at him,’ Jimbo supplied.
Ava stared at him as silence descended around the table. ‘You did?’
Blake sighed. She was looking at him differently. He hated that. ‘Anyone would have done it,’ he said.
Jimbo burped loudly. ‘Nah,’ he said belligerently. ‘I don’t think I would have.’
A murmur of me neither rattled around the table and Ava quirked an eyebrow at him. ‘They’re lying,’ Blake said. He knew these guys inside out and back to front. ‘Every one of them would have.’
‘Yeh, but it was you,’ Ava persisted. ‘You who ran into a burning building, under fire, and pulled a wounded man and a bunch of kids out.’
‘Because I was there,’ Blake said, exasperation straining his voice. ‘It’s not like you think about it—you just react. I went in to get Pete and there were a bunch of kids in there too. What was I going to do, leave them?’
Ava shook her head. ‘Of course not.’ Blake would no sooner turn his back on them than he had on her in her hour of need. ‘Sounds like hero material to me,’ she said.
‘Cheers to that,’ Jimbo said, raising his glass, oblivious to the undercurrent between Blake and Ava. ‘Captain Blake Walker, my hero.’
Blake opened his mouth to object. He wasn’t going to have a bunch of guys still serving their country while he sanded wood toasting him as a hero.
‘And Ava, his good looking bird. Never was there a man with such great taste in women.’
Blake didn’t have a comeback for that. Neither did his good-looking bird. So they laughed along with the rest of the table until someone changed the subject.
* * *
‘Stop looking at me like that.’
It was after five and they’d been driving for ten minutes. Blake could feel Ava’s sideways glances like prickles beneath his ribs. He didn’t want to have a conversation with her about the revelations of the day. It was bad enough she knew—he could do without the analysis.
Seeing the guys he’d served with again was always a bittersweet experience. But today had been a sombre day, a day where they’d laid a mate to rest. It wasn’t the time or place to be talking about an event that happened eight years ago during his first tour of duty. Some ancient history glory that the brass had deemed worthy of recognition.
‘So...you don’t think you deserve the medal, is that it?’
Blake sighed. ‘I don’t think they should give out bravery medals for an act of common human decency. Servicemen do stuff like that every day in war zones,’ he dismissed. ‘I was just doing my job.’
Ava couldn’t believe how blasé Blake was being. ‘You saved the life of four kids and a soldier.’
‘No, Ava, I didn’t,’ he said wearily. ‘Pete died.’
A cold hand squeezed Ava’s gut. ‘He didn’t make it?’
‘No. He did not. Between the bullet to his gut and his burns, he passed away en route to hospital.’
Some of his bleakness leached across the space between them and settled over her like a heavy skin. How had that made Blake feel?
‘I’m so sorry,’ she murmured. ‘That’s...awful.’
‘Yeh, well...that’s war for you.’
Ava didn’t know what to say to that. How could she even begin to imagine the things he must have seen? She looked out of the window at the grey day, misty rain forming streaky rivulets of water as it hit the glass. She’d been given a unique insight into him today, seeing him through the eyes of a group of men who clearly liked and respected him.
Ava wished she knew that man. Or had known him, anyway. She had a feeling he didn’t exist any more.
* * *
Blake brooded for the next hour as they drove in silence. He hadn’t meant to be so harsh with her, but he’d been to one too many funerals over the last decade and they had a tendency to mess with his head. Their closeness of the last few days seemed a distant memory now and he was sorry he’d been the one to destroy it, especially when all he really wanted was to get lost in her for a while and forget about the world and how insane it could be.
Her phone rang, the sound of rock music shattering the oppressive silence. She pulled it out of her pocket and looked down at the screen before looking at him.
‘It’s Ken,’ she said as she quickly answered it.
Blake assumed from the one-sided conversation and Ava’s palpable relief that the police had finally caught the culprit, a fact she confirmed when she hung up a few minutes later.
‘They made an arrest,’ Ava said, smiling at him.
A heaviness descended upon Blake’s chest. ‘Who?’
‘Grady Hamm.’
Blake frowned at the cartoonesque name. ‘There’s somebody in this world called Grady Hamm?’
Ava laughed. ‘Yes. There is. He’s an agent. Isobella Wentworth’s agent.’
‘Okay...and she is?’
Ava rolled her eyes at him. Hadn’t everybody in the world heard about the seventeen-year-old catwalk débutante? ‘An up-and-coming model. Britain’s next big thing? And up for the same advertising campaign I am.’
‘Ah.’ The penny dropped. ‘And he shot up your house to keep you out of the picture for a bit?’
She nodded. ‘Well, he didn’t shoot it up. He paid someone else to do it but, yes...it was just a scare tactic, apparently.’
A surge of anger jettisoned into Blake’s system and he gripped the steering wheel as he remembered how frightened Ava had been. There was nothing just about it. ‘A scare tactic that worked.’
‘Yes. Until Isobella found out and dobbed him in.’
Blake whistled. ‘That must have taken some balls for a teenage wannabe to turn in her agent.’
Ava nodded in agreement. It did. She knew the kind of fortitude that took intimately. ‘I owe her, definitely.’
Blake contemplated the road for a few seconds as the full implications of the arrest sank in. ‘So, you’re free to go back home,’ he said, injecting a cheeriness that felt one hundred per cent false after such a sombre day.
‘Yes.’ That should have been exciting but Ava felt as if they had unfinished business between them.
‘It’s time for your stitches to come out anyway,’ he said, trying to be practical.
Ava looked down at the sticking plaster on her palm. ‘Yes,’ she said again.
‘You should take the car as soon as we get back to the boat. You could be in London by nine.’
Ava knew that not only sounded feasible but sensible. But there was no way she was leaving Blake tonight.
Not after today.
‘I’ll go in the morning,’ she said.
Blake opened his mouth to protest. There was no reason for her to stick around—their arrangement had only ever been temporary. But her phone rang again. ‘Reggie.’ She grimaced as she answered.
‘Ava, darling, you have to get back here pronto!’
Reggie’s voice was shouting in her ear as he spoke over what could only be a huge gaggle of press all yelling at him in the background. She could picture him now standing on the top of his steps leading into his Notting Hill office.
‘Listen to them,’ he said over the din. ‘Come back, get a picture with Isobella. They’re going nutso down here.’
Ava shook her head as she pulled the phone slightly away from her ear. She couldn’t. And she couldn’t explain why either. She just couldn’t. ‘I’ll be back in the morning.’
‘Ava...’ Reggie spluttered. ‘Don’t be ridi
culous. This is the kind of publicity you just can’t buy.’
Ava was sure it was but that wasn’t the point as she glanced at Blake. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ she said and hung up on his continuing protests.
‘He’s right, Ava.’ Blake had heard every shouted word in the whisper-quiet confines of the hire car.
Ava shook her head. ‘I’m not leaving tonight.’
‘Ava.’
‘I’m. Not. Leaving.’
TWELVE
Ava wasn’t sure how long she’d been asleep when a loud cry woke her from her deep post-coital slumber. Her eyes flicked open and for a few seconds in the dark, her heartbeat thundering in her chest, she grappled to orientate herself. Then the cry came again—anguished, full of pain—and there was movement beside her and she realised Blake had vaulted upright in bed.
She groped through a groggy brain and leadened muscles to make sense of what was happening as he rocked back and forth.
‘Blake?’ She reached over and flicked on the lamp, her eyes shutting as the light hit them. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, her hand sliding up his bare back as her eyes slowly adjusted to the light.
Blake sucked in a breath, biting back the expletive and another bellow of pain. ‘It’s my leg,’ he seethed at the all too familiar sensation of hot jagged metal jabbing into his stump. Like the blast pain all over again. He raised his thigh and slammed it down against the mattress over and over trying to ease the crippling burn.
Ava shook her head as the mattress reverberated with the pounding. His leg? What did he mean? ‘What’s wrong with it?’ she asked over his guttural groaning, looking down at it for signs of redness or bleeding or anything that could be causing him so much pain.
But it looked exactly the same as it always had.
He didn’t answer her, just groaned louder as his movement grew more frantic and he became increasingly distressed. He kneaded his fisted hand so hard into his quad all the way down to his stump she winced and then he started pounding it, lifting his fist up then bringing it down hard.
‘Don’t, stop it,’ she said, tears threatening in the face of his inconsolable pain and the brutality of his actions. She felt utterly useless. ‘Please,’ she said, pulling at his arm. ‘Stop...you’ll hurt yourself.’
He ignored her, shaking her hand off, his seething breath sucking noisily through clenched teeth as he pounded at his leg.
Ava didn’t understand what was happening. Was he having a nightmare? Some kind of a flashback. Was he awake? ‘Why are you doing that?’ she asked, grabbing for his arm again.
‘Because it helps with the phantom pains,’ he yelled trying to shrug her restraining hands off.
Ava vaguely recalled having read an article on phantom limb pain a few years back. Something about residual nervous involvement in the amputated limb. Not that she remembered a single skerrick of anything that could be useful right now.
‘That helps?’ It was hard to believe anything so brutal could be used to treat pain—it seemed counter-intuitive.
‘Yes.’ Blake could already feel it starting to ease its grip. ‘Pressure on the stump helps.’
Ava blinked. There was pressure and there was pressure. Surely it was going to be bruised tomorrow? Before she could think about it, she was shifting, moving, kneeling on her haunches between his legs. The fact that they were both naked hadn’t even registered.
‘Let me try,’ she said, placing her hand over his fist, pushing it away, quickly replacing it with her hands, wrapping them around his stump and applying firm even pressure, squeezing rhythmically.
Blake felt himself slowly relax as Ava’s hands worked their magic. He doubted they would have had any effect had it not already started to ease up—but they felt cool and heavenly now as the pain proper started to fade.
Ava concentrated on the job at hand, determined to at least try and help him, satisfied as he seemed to be slowly relaxing, his breathing settling, his death grip on the sheet with his other hand easing. ‘Does this happen often?’ she asked.
Blake shut his eyes and tried to focus on his breath and not the pain as the shrink had counselled. ‘In the beginning quite a lot but I was one of the lucky ones able to get on top of it with medication...and time.’
Ava looked up at him. He had his eyes shut and despite his body slowly relaxing he looked haggard and tense in the lamplight. ‘But it’s obviously not cured.’ She couldn’t bear the thought of him, here alone, going through this with no one around to comfort him.
‘I usually wear a sock-thing to bed over the stump, which is a good maintenance strategy that seems to keep them at bay. But...’
Blake opened his eyes to find her looking at him.
Ava didn’t need him to finish. ‘I’ve been here and you haven’t been wearing anything to bed.’ Guilt washed over her and tears pricked her eyes again—had she been responsible for this relapse?
He shrugged. ‘It’s okay. I doubt the funeral helped, either. I’m sure my shrink would say there’s some psychological component as to why this is happening tonight.’
He sighed and rubbed a hand along the back of his neck, shutting his eyes again. ‘It’s been a hell of a day.’
Ava ducked her head as the tears threatened to become a reality. A hell of a day? It had been a hell of a life for him.
Serving his country. Earning a medal for bravery and just brushing it off as if it were nothing because he truly believed he’d only done what any decent human being would have done. Paying bodily for that belief. Still paying. Still going to funerals. Still waking in the night to excruciating pain from a leg that was no longer there.
The stump was smooth beneath her hand now but the pain... She couldn’t bear the thought of the pain he must have endured. If what she’d seen tonight was just a tiny indication of how it must have been in those moments straight after the explosion, she didn’t know how he’d got through it.
The haka chants drummed through her head with each knead of her hands—the anger and the anguish washing over her, swelling in her chest, building and building, pressure in her throat and her lungs and pricking at her eyes and nose.
Blake felt something warm and wet on his thigh and looked down to find a single drop of moisture. He glanced up at Ava’s downcast head. ‘Hey,’ he said, trying to look under her curtain of caramel hair.
He slid his hand to her jaw and gently lifted her chin to find tears dampening her cheeks. ‘Why are you crying?’
Ava shook her head. She couldn’t answer. She knew if she said one thing everything would come tumbling out and that would not be pretty because it churned in a big ugly mass inside her with no real cohesion.
‘Ava. It’s okay,’ he murmured, smearing a newly fallen tear across her cheek with a thumb. ‘I’m fine now. The pain’s gone. You helped,’ he assured her. ‘You helped a lot.’
He dragged her closer and she shifted until she was straddling him, her arms around his neck. He looked up at her, kissing her nose and eyelids and her cheeks. Kissing the tears away. ‘Shh,’ he said. ‘Shh.’
The lump in Ava’s throat became bigger. She’d never met a man so...good. He reminded her of her father and she clung even harder to his neck
‘Talk to me, Ava,’ he murmured quietly as he dropped butterfly kisses all over her face. ‘Talk to me.’
She shook her head. ‘I can’t...I can’t bear the thought of the...pain you must have been through,’ she said, trying to talk past the constriction in her throat. ‘You’ve been through so...much and here’s me with my own pathetic little troubles. For crying out loud, you have no leg, you have all this guilt about Colin and get...terrible pain and you have to keep going to funerals all the time and I...and I...’
‘Oh, Ava, no...shh,’ Blake said, pushing his hands into her hair, cupping her face so she was looking right at hi
m. ‘Someone shot at your house—’
Ava could feel more tears clogging in her throat and squeezing out of her eyes. ‘But it was just to scare me. It wasn’t for real...not like what you’ve faced.’
‘Hey,’ he said, pushing her hair back off her face. ‘I was there. It was pretty real if you asked me.’
Ava nodded even as her brain dismissed the sentiment. There was real and there was real. ‘Were you scared...over there?’ she asked.
Blake nodded. ‘Sometimes...yeh.’
A sob rose in Ava’s throat. Blake who was strong and brave had felt fear and pain and been exposed to so much loss because his country had asked it of him. ‘Why do we fight each other?’ she whispered.
Blake felt helpless in the face of a question he had no clue how to answer. Her yellow-green eyes were two huge pools of compassion and anguish. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.
And then he kissed her because that he did know. He did know how he could make it better. For tonight anyway.
* * *
The parting the next morning was a lot harder than Ava ever imagined it would be. They weren’t just two people who had shared a boat for a week. He’d been more than the safe haven she’d asked of him. They’d shared a bed. Intimacies. They’d opened up their bodies and shared themselves.
More than either of them had ever shared before with someone other than their nearest and dearest.
It was another rainy day and Ava snuggled into her coat as they stood by the hire car saying their goodbyes. ‘Maybe we could see each other...when you get back to London,’ Ava suggested.
She’d never been with anyone like Blake—for good reason. But maybe it was time to revisit that?
Blake shook his head, remembering the constant presence of media in her life, the way the paps had bayed for a comment at the roped-off area the night of the shooting. And that commercial they’d watched together with the guy ripping off her gown and ravaging her.
He really didn’t think he’d be very good with stuff like that.
‘I think you and I live in very different worlds,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I could live in yours and—’ he glanced over at the boat ‘—I’m pretty sure you don’t want to live in mine. Best to quit while we’re ahead.’