Sweet Talk Boxed Set (Ten NEW Contemporary Romances by Bestselling Authors to Benefit Diabetes Research plus BONUS Novel) (114 page)

It wasn’t as if he hadn’t warned her.

I don’t stick.
He’d said it the second day he’d known her, and he’d never said anything else. In fact, what had he said just now?
It’d give you a chance to see one more bit of En Zed while you’re here.
He hadn’t said
before you leave,
but he hadn’t had to, because they both knew it.

“Sure,” she managed to say. “If you think it’s better. Sure, I’ll stay here.”

“Good.” He sighed, turned his head, and gave her a soft kiss. “Night, baby. See you tomorrow.”

He was out within a couple minutes, the regular rise and fall of the chest under her hand told her that. But she wasn’t. She lay in the dark, eyes open, and faced facts.

See you tomorrow.
Sunday. Sunday was all they had, because he’d be leaving on Monday to join the All Blacks in Dunedin, and he wouldn’t be back in Auckland for nearly a week. Not until the following Sunday, and on Monday, she’d be gone, across the Pacific and back to work. And he’d be back to training again, back into the long season that ran all the way through to December, with only one short October break.

A long-distance relationship like that would be unlikely to work with anybody, and it would be even more unlikely for the two of them, because Will wasn’t anybody. He was a star, and he was a player. He’d told her that, too. He wasn’t going to make some kind of ridiculous commitment to her, not after knowing her for such a short time, after a few days of sex that had been spectacular to her, but probably no more than what he was used to.

This had been their deal all along, and there was no other way for it to play out. He was looking at it realistically, that was all, and she’d allowed herself to forget.

Two weeks had seemed perfect when he’d first proposed it. Two weeks had seemed amazing. The longest vacation she’d ever had, because she was somebody with three jobs and bills to pay. So long, and not nearly long enough. Two weeks had become two days. Two days, and goodbye.

She’d been wondering again this morning, for the hundredth time since she’d arrived in the country, if she should tell him about her story. Four episodes of it, the fifth and sixth coming soon, uploaded to all those electronic stores. So visible, too, because they were selling so well. Every one of those episodes with his picture on the cover, looking dark and dangerous. Looking like Will.

No, looking like Hemi. Hemi, who didn’t have anything to do with Will other than his body, the body of a man she had barely known at the time she’d started writing. But Will might not understand that, and if he didn’t, if he were upset, all she would do was spoil the little time they still had. If she didn’t tell him, he’d never know, and he’d never have to worry about it. That was what a pen name was for.

She shouldn’t have come here at all, she could see that now, and she definitely shouldn’t have slept with him, but she had. The only thing to do was to embrace it, to take the darkness as well as the light, the pain along with the pleasure. To enjoy being with him, even as she felt herself falling in love with him. Not just with his beautiful body, and not even because of the way he made love to her, the way he made her feel beautiful, and desired, and so very needed.

She would spend these final days with him, and she would love him. And then she would go home and remember him, and be glad, even in the midst of the pain, that she had had the chance to know the man he was. The friend who’d put her palm fronds into her truck for her, had cared during every single shoot that Gretchen had been comfortable, had played miniature golf with a four-year-old. The sweet, demanding, breathtakingly unselfish lover. The generous, protective brother. The son, and the grandson. The good man. The family man.

Tribunal

“Hang on a moment,” Hugh Latimer told Will as the private dining room in the Dunedin hotel started emptying after breakfast on Tuesday morning. “We need a chat.”

Will had stood up to leave as well, but he sat down again. It wasn’t like he hadn’t been expecting this. Just as it hadn’t been a complete surprise when he’d arrived the day before to find that he had been assigned to room with Hugh.

He would have expected to share a room with one of the younger boys and do the mentoring bit, the way he’d done with his Aussie squad and had continued with the Blues. Instead, he was in with the punishing flanker, his Blues skipper, a hard man amongst hard men. He was being sent a message and no mistake.

But that was the price you paid. The All Blacks’ bus was driven from the back, by the group of senior players who not only set the tone for a team that meant more to them than almost anything else in the world, but enforced its rigorous code of conduct as well. The worst thing, when you’d crossed the line, wasn’t facing the coaches. It was facing your teammates.

The most galling part was that Will was looking to be part of that senior leadership group himself. He wanted to be, he
needed
to be sitting on the other side of this tribunal. This was what happened when you took this kind of misstep, though, so he sat and waited while he and Hugh were joined by Koti James, his handsome face wearing an unusually serious expression. They weren’t going to be doing any lighthearted arm-wrestling today, it was clear. Nic Wilkinson, the fullback, was here now as well, along with Kevin McNicholl, the wing, and Liam Mahaka, the ferocious hooker. And, of course, Nate Torrance, the captain, from whom intensity was nothing but normal. 

The six of them didn’t range themselves on the opposite side of the table from him, or anything like that. They didn’t have to.

Nate spoke first, of course. “Can’t say we’re not disappointed,” the skipper told Will. “You wear this jersey, you’re expected to fill it up, on the field and off it. You don’t want to do that, you’re not fit to be in black. That’s how it is, and I’d have thought you knew it. It wasn’t like you didn’t have a choice. It’s just that you made the wrong one.”

His pale-blue gaze held Will’s, his face hard as stone, and Will remembered with a curling edge of shame that Toro and his partner Ally had faced something very much like this themselves. Photos online that she
hadn’t
modeled for, a massive invasion of her privacy that had created a national scandal and sent her fleeing the country. It had all been raked up again after Will’s own indiscretion, and that would have cut the skipper to the quick.

Not that Toro would have cared for his own sake, because there was nobody tougher-minded, nobody better able to disregard distractions and turn his focus to more important things. But he would have minded for Ally. Will knew, now, that seeing her hurt would have been worse than being hurt himself. And every man here would have minded for him, because that was how it worked.

“I let the team down.” Will looked his skipper in the eye and let him know he meant it. “I let you down, and I know it. I knew it was a risk, and I took it anyway. I didn’t think about the team, and I was wrong. Can’t say more than that.”

“Yeh. You can,” Liam Mahaka said from beside Toro. “You can tell us why.”

Mako’s face, with its broken nose and cauliflower ears, all the scars earned in a lifetime of battling in the dark places, had a kind of formidable gravity in repose, like the fearsome sculpture of an ancestor, carved from the hardest wood. Just that much strength, and just that much mana. The liquid brown eyes were stern today, the incongruously sweet smile conspicuously absent. This wasn’t the thoughtful, articulate ambassador for New Zealand rugby. This was the other Mako, the leader of the haka, calling Will to account exactly as if he’d been standing in front of the elders in the marae. Calling him to judgment, and to justice.

“No excuses,” Will said, meeting the other man’s gaze without flinching.

“No excuses, no,” Mako said. “But reasons. There are always reasons, and you owe us those.”

“Right.” Will swallowed. This was the gauntlet he had to run, so he braced himself, took a breath, and did it. “It wasn’t drink, or gambling, or Vegas. Wasn’t anything like that. It was my grandfather dying, I guess, that did it. Knocked me for a loop, and I didn’t even realize it until later.”

“So you went to Vegas,” Mako said. “For the tryout.”

“Felt like I had to do something, didn’t I,” Will tried to explain. “Decided to follow the money. Told myself I’d be seeing to my family that way, even though that wasn’t the way they needed me, in the end. I was thinking it might be easier in the States. Better money, easier on the body, and no pressure off the field either. Nothing expected but a good boot, and not being held to a standard I didn’t think I could meet. Sounds mad, I know. Sounds bad. But that was what it was.”

He said all that, breathed again, and waited.

“Nothing to live up to,” Mako said. “And this was part of that, somehow. Those photos, and that naff website. Putting yourself up there for all the girls to fantasize about, to write dirty stories about. Ego boost, maybe.”

Will did his best not to wince. “Hope that wasn’t it. Just…seemed like the sort of thing a footballer would do, I guess. Life on the edge. Taking a stupid chance because you could. Least that’s the best reason I’ve got, because when I look back on it now, it doesn’t make any sense at all.”

Mako nodded slowly, as if he knew. “And there was a girl.”

“Yeh. There was a girl. That one,” Will found himself saying, “I can’t be sorry about. If I hadn’t done it, I would never have met her. And if everybody hadn’t found out, I would never have brought her over here. And I can’t be sorry about that, either.”

Every gaze around the table had sharpened, and every eye was fixed on Will. “Think you’d better explain,” Nate said.

Will’s heart was thudding. He hadn’t meant to say this. Why had he? Because he didn’t want the responsibility falling on Faith anymore, that was why. He couldn’t bear to keep casting her as the reason he’d done this, the seductress who’d lured him into it. There was no amount of money he could pay her that would make up for his mum looking at her like that, or having his teammates think of her like that, and there was no way out of it but the truth.

He should have told his family before he’d left, should have trusted them to keep the secret. Leaving her had been bad enough as it was. When he’d been driving to Auckland the day before, he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her face when he’d kissed her goodbye. About the way she’d smiled, her mouth trembling a little at the corners until she’d bitten her lip to stop it. About his last sight of her in the rear-view mirror, standing in front of the house, her arms across her chest, hugging herself. When he remembered that, his own chest ached in a way it shouldn’t have, not after a week with a girl. It wasn’t the first time he had driven away, because leaving was what he did. But it had felt like it.

He should never have left her with his family with his mum still believing so badly of her. He couldn’t fix that, not now, because that wasn’t a conversation he could have over the phone. But he could tell Faith that he planned to tell them. He’d do it when they were together in Auckland again, before she left, when they talked about what they were going to do about this thing between them. If he could visit again, or she could. Or…what.

He didn’t have a clue how that was going to turn out, but at least he could do the right thing here.

“Because I lied about her,” he told his teammates. “It was all a lie.”

He saw the startled expression pass over Mako’s face, saw it change to something else as he went on. “She wasn’t my girlfriend. She was a friend, least I thought so. I mean, I thought that was all she was. Having her come over here…that was a stupid idea my agent thought up, to make there be a reason for what I’d done, a reason beyond my own bad judgment. And…” He swallowed, then put it out there. “I paid her to do it. And I’m sorry about all that, sorry I didn’t tell Ian where he could shove his idea. Sorry I didn’t face up to what I’d done and take all the consequences, except that I can’t be sorry. She wasn’t just a friend, and maybe there was a reason I said yes, besides that I was afraid for my career. But I’m tired of lying about it, and I’m not going to do it to all of you. Not anymore.”

Nate was exchanging a look with Liam, the seconds ticking by in silence. Five. Ten. And then Koti laughed.

“Bloody hell,” he said. “That is the stupidest plan I’ve ever heard. Stupidest way to get a girl I’ve ever,
ever
heard.”

There was some more laughter around the table. Disbelieving, maybe. Appalled, certainly. But laughter all the same.

“What?” Will asked. “Nobody here ever had to pay anyone to pretend to be his girlfriend?”

“Nah,” Hugh said, a smile splitting the dark stubble on his hard face. “Don’t ask us how many of us would’ve, though. Or how many of us have done some famously stupid things when it comes to women.”

Mako brought them back to reality. “We’ve all done stupid things for one reason or another,” he said. “And yours isn’t the worst we’ve done, either. I know, because I’m still carrying that title. But this goes nowhere,” he told Will. “It stays right here with us, because nobody else needs to hear it. Long as you’re not lying now. Long as that’s it.”

“That’s it,” Will promised. He hadn’t been planning to say it, not even close. But now that he had, he was so light with relief that he could have floated straight up to the ceiling. “That’s all for me,” he said again. “No more lying. No more pretending. No more secrets.”

“One more thing.” Koti was speaking up now. “Hope you’ve rung Hemi and talked to him about this, done some major apologizing. I don’t know whose idea that name was, but if it was yours…”

“It was mine,” Will said. Another secret revealed, that he’d been the one who’d named his dark, dangerous alter ego after his longtime predecessor in the All Blacks’ No. 10 jersey. Hemi Ranapia, family man, team man, and about the furthest thing from Hemi Te Mana it was possible to imagine. “I thought it was funny, and that it would be my own private joke, and no, it didn’t turn out that way, and that’s on me, too. I rang him about it straight away, yeh, soon as the whole thing came out. Right after I rang my mum. Nowhere to go but up after that, eh.”