Undefeated

by Reardon, Stuart

  “Used them to go fishing.”

  “Really?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, funny guy! I see how it is! Now I’m in eager suspense to know what talent number three could possibly be.”

  He chewed his lip for a minute then finally answered.

  “I’m a good friend.”

  Anna sat quietly in her chair, then smiled as warmth spread through her chest.

  “Oh, Nick, that should go at number one.”

  October 2014

  FOR THREE WEEKS, Anna saw Nick every Tuesday for an hour. She kept her thoughts to herself and her conduct professional at all times. God, it was hard. But the more she learned about the quiet man of rugby, the more she liked him.

  He’d turned 27 the week before, but if he’d been out partying, it hadn’t had any effect on his training. Alfie, the assistant coach said that he’d never been late or turned up with a hangover, never been mouthy and always had a good attitude. He also suspected that Nick was training on his days off, too.

  There was no doubt, the man was determined to win his place on the team.

  His passion on the field was evident in the old tapes that she watched avidly, learning everything she could about her client. His match focus was intense, nothing was half-hearted. She watched a few blurry hand-held videos of his final game when he was still with the lower league team, and despite the blood and mud and mayhem, he’d been the steel spine, the one who kept going and kept forcing the team to play, winning a sensational try and Man of the Match at the same time. That was the game where he’d torn his Achilles tendon.

  In person, the man sitting in front of her was quiet and contained, keeping his emotions tightly controlled. She couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to have all of that passion unleashed. Dammit! She was not supposed to think about a client like that.

  She shook her head, giving herself a pass. He was hot and she was only human.

  Today’s meeting with Nick started like all the others. Then took a left turn and never really got back on track.

  “Hi, Nick! How are you? Have a seat. How’s training going?”

  “Hello, Dr. Scott,” he said with a huge smile.

  “You’re formal today, Nick. It makes me think you haven’t done your homework,” she teased.

  He raised an eyebrow, and she suspected that behind his glossy beard, he was suppressing a smile.

  “Are you going to give me detention?” he asked in a low, gravelly voice. “Are you going to punish me, doctor?”

  Anna blinked.

  What the hell? Was he flirting with her?

  “Depends. Do you have a guilty conscience?”

  “Not yet,” he mumbled.

  Anna decided not to hear that. A flirty Nick was something new. He didn’t say anything else even slightly off-centre, but for the rest of the hour, there was a crack and sizzle in the air, quick looks and unnerving eye contact. Anna started to sweat, feeling her armpits and the small of her back grow damp as she tried to ignore the way her body responded to his dark glances.

  She was distracted when she saw a message flash up on her phone.

  I’m in the UK this week.

  Let’s hang out.

  She wished she hadn’t left it in plain view on her desk, and she definitely wished she hadn’t looked at it, because now she felt like throwing her phone at the wall, and she hated how seeing Jonathan’s name pushed her buttons. As if she’d ever want to hang out with him, and anyway, she also suspected that was a euphemism for ‘have sex’.

  Anna grimaced when she realised that Nick had seen the message as well as the name she’d assigned to Jonathan on her phone.

  “Douchenozzle?” he raised an eyebrow.

  Anna laughed uneasily.

  “My ex. And yes, he definitely was . . . is a giant douchenozzle.”

  “Is he bothering you?”

  Nick’s eyes flashed with sudden anger making Anna sit back. In the weeks that she’d known him, he’d never been anything but sweet, a little flirty today, but overall a nice guy. She’d never seen this Nick off the field, the aggressive alpha male.

  “Uh, not really. This is the first time he’s contacted me in months.”

  “Why haven’t you blocked his number?” Nick asked roughly.

  Anna was flustered.

  “I . . . well, I didn’t think I’d need to. I didn’t think he’d get in touch after . . .”

  She flushed, remembering the hideous scene.

  “It’s nothing.”

  “It’s not nothing if it upsets you.”

  She licked her lips and Nick’s gaze darted to her tongue stud.

  “What were we talking about before?”

  “Visualisation,” he said after a lengthy pause as he dragged his eyes from her mouth.

  “Oh, yes, right. So, what I think we should . . .”

  “I’ve got a visualisation I want to run by you,” Nick said.

  “Great! Shoot!” Her voice was too bright.

  “Well, Anna, what I want you to do is to visualise putting on a pair of leather work boots with steel toecaps. With me so far?”

  “Um . . . I thought you were the client?”

  “I am, and you’re a great teacher. So just go with it for a moment. Close your eyes and visualise it, Anna.”

  His voice was low and authoritative. Anna found herself doing exactly as he instructed.

  “Now imagine the douchenozzle standing in front of you. Okay?”

  “Okaaay.”

  “Now visualise dropkicking his arse.”

  He said it so seriously that Anna’s eyes flew open before she burst out laughing and Nick’s quiet chuckle met her ears.

  “Oh em gee! You really had me going there!”

  “Did it work? Visualisation is a powerful tool,” he grinned.

  “So you have been listening!”

  Nick’s smile fell away.

  “Yeah, I’ve been listening, and if the douchenozzle couldn’t appreciate a beautiful, compassionate, sexy woman like you, then he didn’t deserve you and you’re better off without him.”

  His unexpected assertion brought tears to Anna’s eyes and she looked down at her desk, rapidly trying to blink them away. She felt the heavy weight of Nick’s hand on top of hers. He squeezed her fingers gently, and then the weight was gone.

  Anna took a sip of lemon water, swallowing past the lump in her throat.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “You’re welcome.”

  His words replayed on a loop in Anna’s mind: He called me sexy?!

  4th November 2014

  Anna had given Nick more ‘homework’. This time, she’d made an appointment for him to visit the local high school’s rugby team.

  Her idea was to help him remember the excitement he’d had at that age.

  When you did something for a living, some of the passion could be lost. And since his surgery, he’d been so focussed on recovery, that it stopped being fun—which she totally understood. But she needed Nick to re-engage with the kid he’d been. For a twenty-seven year-old guy, he could be very serious. She’d seen glimpses of a silly, joking side—that’s what he needed to find again: heart.

  On the day before the visit, Nick had texted her asking if she’d like to come with him. There was nothing else on her schedule, and the chance to see Nick enjoying himself was too much to turn down. A tiny, whispering voice reminded her that this wasn’t in her job description when she’d agreed to take him on as a client, but she decided it was entirely appropriate—and it would be fun.

  The high school had put out the bunting for Nick. Triangles of coloured paper fluttered in the breeze, adding a jaunty air to the dull, grey building, like rouge on a great grandmother.

  Nick was sitting in his black Beamer in the visitors’ parking lot when Anna drove up.

  He grinned through the windscreen and climbed out of his car to open her door.

  When his larger hand wrapped around hers, helping her
out, she smiled up at him. His old fashioned manners were sweet, and Anna was charmed.

  “Ready to go back to school, Nick?”

  “Yes, teacher.”

  She laughed, happy to see him so relaxed.

  Today, he was dressed in sweats and a Minotaurs t-shirt, and carried his rugby boots in a kitbag. Anna was dressed less formally, too, opting for comfortable boots rather than her usual heels.

  They made their way to reception and an excited woman phoned the headteacher who came out to greet them personally.

  She had the harried, slightly distracted air of someone with too many fires to put out and not enough buckets of water.

  “We’re so grateful you could make the time,” she said. “Our first fifteen are so excited to meet you.”

  “And the second team?” Nick asked, making Anna smile.

  He never forgot that not everyone could be in the top grade. Not ever.

  The headteacher laughed lightly.

  “We only have one team, but the footballers and hockey players didn’t want to miss out on meeting you, so they’ll be along later.”

  At that moment, they were interrupted by what looked suspiciously like a picket line of teenage girls, waving banners and chanting:

  “One, two, three, four

  Men-only rugby, we deplore.

  Five, six, seven, eight,

  Rugby players are rubbish dates.”

  “Eloise! Will you stop that!” snapped the headmistress.

  The girl leading the chanting stuck her lip out belligerently.

  “It’s not fair, Miss! Why is it only the boys get to play rugby? It’s sexist, that’s what it is! It’s illegal!”

  The headmistress sighed, as if this was a familiar opening bombardment in a long-running war.

  “Because, as I’ve explained to you before, there aren’t enough of your classmates who share your desire to play rugby. There simply aren’t enough of you to make a team.”

  “You should let us play with the boys!” the girl whined.

  Nick stepped forward, shaking his head.

  “Eloise, is it?”

  “What?” she said rudely, but not before Anna spotted her eyeing Nick closely, her gaze skating over his broad shoulders and narrow waist.

  “How much do you weigh?” he asked, his voice low and steady.

  “What?” she shrieked. “You’re a pervert! Did you hear him, Miss?”

  “I weigh 92 kilos,” he said. “Two hundred and three pounds. You weigh about half that, right?”

  Anna suspected that the chunky girl was considerably heavier than that, but said nothing, watching with admiration as Nick’s masterplan unfolded.

  The girl was flattered, fluttering her eyelashes at Nick and coyly flashing the braces on her teeth.

  “About that, yeah.”

  “If someone my size tackled someone yours, you could get badly hurt. That’s why your teacher can’t have boys and girls playing a contact sport like rugby together.”

  “But it’s not fair, Sir! Me ‘ole fam’ly is rugby mad. I want to play, too!”

  “That’s more than enough, thank you, Miss Higginbotham. Back to class, please, Eloise. And take your . . . banners with you.”

  Grumbling and swearing almost loudly enough to be heard, Eloise and her followers sloped off, trailing their placards in the dust.

  “I’m so sorry . . .” the headteacher began.

  “No, it’s fine,” said Nick. “Women’s rugby is on the up—the England team is doing better than the men’s team right now. It’s a pity the girls can’t play. Isn’t there another school nearby that they could make up a team with?”

  The headteacher raised her eyebrows.

  “That might be possible.”

  Nick grinned at her.

  “And the girls could do the fitness training with the boys . . .”

  She smiled at him, and Anna could see that Nick had gained another fan.

  “They could train with us today,” he offered. “Just fitness stuff, no tackling. We could play touch and pass, so two hands touching your body means you’ve been tackled.”

  The headteacher snorted.

  “Not an opportunity I’d like to give to Miss Higginbotham,” she said tartly.

  Nick tried not to smile.

  “There’s also a version for kids called tag rugby.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You can Velcro tags to your shorts—again, if someone manages to pull the patch off, you’ve been tackled. Girls can definitely play that. It’s rugby, but it’s not contact.”

  “Thank you for the suggestion, Mr. Renshaw. I’ll see if I can arrange it.”

  He shrugged a massive shoulder.

  “Just Nick.”

  Anna wanted to hug him. He’d easily defused a difficult situation and spread a little rugby love. But she wasn’t allowed to hug him. The club’s strict rules of no fraternization made that impossible. And the small fact that she was his psychologist and could be reported to the Health and Care Professions Council. She would lose her licence.

  She set her face in the imitation of a smile, and he glanced at her curiously.

  Did he know? Could he tell?

  Anna had been aware for some weeks now that she was sexually attracted to her client. Worse still, she was emotionally attracted to him. She knew that during the therapeutic process it was inevitable that you got to know a client so deeply that many connections could arise. She cared about him more than she should.

  To use a well-known sports metaphor: she was screwed.

  She followed him around the school like the book nerd after the star quarterback, which was a closer analogy than she liked to consider. But she also knew that her plan for Nick was working. The visit had put the sparkle back in his eyes. He was excited, enthused, and this motley assortment of schoolkids had done that.

  He ran up and down the school field with them, threw easy passes, let them tackle him even though it was obvious he could have outrun every single one of them. The boys grumbled a bit when the girls came out to join in the fitness section, but Nick happily reminded them that women’s rugby England team had won the World Cup the previous summer. That shut the boys up, and he got them all running drills together.

  Then they had a game of tag rugby, and by the end of the morning, Nick was hot and sweaty and happy.

  Anna itched to touch him, to bask in his happiness for just a second. Instead, she gave him another tight smile and turned to talk to the headteacher who was discussing the possibility of setting up a combined-schools girls’ rugby team with the PE staff.

  When Nick was finally able to peel himself away from his new fans, he walked back to the parking lot with Anna.

  “You looked like you were having fun today,” she said, smiling at him.

  “I was. It was a great idea of yours. Nice bit of reverse psychology,” he teased.

  “Oh, there was nothing reverse about it—seeing kids enjoying themselves can rejuvenate the most jaded athlete.”

  He frowned slightly.

  “You think I’m jaded?”

  “A little, yes. But that’s inevitable when you’ve had a run of bad luck or when you’re injured.”

  He thought about this, shoving his hands in his pockets and frowning.

  “And,” she said gently, “kids do it for the love of it. In the hothouse atmosphere of a club, salary negotiations, sponsorship and contracts, it’s easy to lose sight of that.” She paused. “Maybe even more so now you’re in a top-tier club.”

  “Yeah, I suppose so. I had a sponsorship contract once.”

  “Really? I didn’t know that. What for?”

  “Shaving products.”

  Anna goggled, staring at his thick black beard.

  “Seriously?”

  He laughed happily, his eyes crinkling at the corners.

  “They might want their money back,” Anna muttered, raising her eyebrows.

  “Nah, I don’t have that contract anymore. And anyway,
I’ll have to shave before my first game or some git will try to see if it’s detachable.”

  Anna smiled but didn’t comment.

  He turned his intense hazel-green eyes on hers.

  “Are you okay? You seemed a bit . . . off, today. Has the douchenozzle been in touch again?”

  She blinked, remembering their previous conversation. She hadn’t thought about Jonathan all morning, although she’d had a few sleepless nights wondering whether to ignore him or to reply to his text. What she really wanted to say was that it would be a cold day in hell before she willingly set eyes on him again, but she didn’t want to get into anything resembling a conversation. In the end she’d simply texted back that she was busy. He hadn’t replied.

  “No, I haven’t heard anything. I’m fine.”

  “Okay,” he said, still looking worried. “Er, can I buy you lunch today? To say thank you for setting this up?”

  He looked so hopeful, Anna was dying to say yes. For a second she hesitated, her heart ruling her head. Which was the exact reason she had to say no.

  “Thanks for the offer,” she smiled politely, regretting her decision already. “But I have to get back to the office. Other clients, you know?”

  He took a step back, rocking on his heels.

  “Sure, no problem. See you next week, Anna.”

  Nick watched Anna drive away. He could tell that something was bothering her. All those sessions in her office hadn’t been one way; he’d started to get to know her, too. All her mannerisms, how she spoke; the way her lips twitched when she was amused but trying to hide it; the way she settled her hands on the desk before she hit with a one-two punch of steely insight; the way she met his initial scepticism with tolerance and persistence.

  And today had been fantastic. It would never have occurred to him that going back to his roots could fire him up like this. The way the kids had responded to him and his suggestions. Yeah, definitely good for his soul; definitely good for his ego. He smiled at the memory of brazen Eloise—a little tank of a girl who might even have a future in women’s rugby. If she did, he’d like to think he had played a small part in that.

  He climbed in his car and drove to the training ground, wishing Anna had taken him up on his offer of lunch, but at the same time knowing Molly would have hated that he was spending time with another woman, no matter how platonic.