The Unforgiving Minute (4 page)

Chapter 4

“O
NE
name that will be new to many of our viewers is that of Ryan Betancourt. While we wait for play to resume in Rod Laver Arena, we’re going to have a quick look in on Court 7, where he’s just taken the first set against Michael Kreissig. Betancourt caused a bit of a stir at last year’s US Open and has been landing some noticeable blows on some of the bigger players ever since.”

“I think you’re getting your sports confused there, Alex. But yes, Betancourt’s always shown flashes of real talent, though until recently he didn’t seem able to play at that level consistently.”

“He’s getting to be a great favorite with the crowds, isn’t he, Bill?”

“You can see why, Alex. He obviously loves the game, and he’s a very entertaining player. There’s no such thing as an un-returnable ball so far as he’s concerned.”

“And he seems to have the control now that sometimes eluded him before, wouldn’t you say?”

“Oh, the commentators’ curse strikes again, Alex. He seems to be all right, though I think the net might need some attention after that collision. Yes, he’s getting to his feet and bowing to the crowd. They just love this young man.”

A
FTER
beating Michael Kreissig, Ryan was on a high. He was through to the fourth round of the Australian freaking Open. He was grinning as he sat down with a bit of a thump on one of the couches in the treatment room.

Tim, the in-house sports masseur, strolled over, flexing his hands. His wonderful, miracle-working hands. The first time Tim had treated Ryan, Ryan had proposed marriage. It had only been when the words were already out of his mouth that he’d realized he should be more careful; what he thought of as harmless banter might not be taken too well, even though everyone except Elena and Tommy probably assumed he was straight. Thankfully, Tim had been unfazed. He was apparently used to proposals from the players, whether of marriage or full-time employment. He’d also turned Ryan down with unflattering swiftness.

“What can I do for you today, Mr. Betancourt?”

Ryan laid himself down on the couch on his front, resting his head on his folded arms. “You can make it all go away, Tim, then run off to Bali with me.”

“You only want me for my hands.” Ryan couldn’t see Tim’s face from where he was lying, but he sounded suitably lugubrious at the thought.

“Well, yeah. And your knowledge of physiology.”

“Irresistible as you make it sound, I don’t think my wife would agree.”

“She could come too. Hey, does she give massages?”

And for that, he was subjected to a very firm deep tissue massage. He wasn’t entirely sure if it was reward or punishment, but he couldn’t stop the groans that it drew from him as Tim worked his magic.

He did, however, manage to control them when he saw the next player requiring attention walk into the treatment room. Wet with sweat from his match, Josh Andrews was a sight to behold. The hair at the nape of his neck was clinging to his skin in a way that made Ryan wish he could do the same, while his strong arms glistened and the V at the neck of his T-shirt showed just enough smooth, wet torso to tease cruelly.

Mesmerized by the sight in front of him, Ryan watched as Josh spoke to one of the physios. The physio ushered him across the room, bringing him just yards away from Ryan to where the instruments of torture that haunted Ryan’s nightmares lurked in silent menace. Of all the training he did, of all the many exhausting and varied ways that Stefan came up with to torment him, the one thing that Ryan had never gotten used to, and couldn’t conceive he ever would, was the ice bath. Whenever he had to have one, he tended to let the entire world know just how wretched an invention it was for the full first minute of his immersion, and quite possibly for every minute thereafter, until the blessed point at which numbness took over. Josh Andrews, of course, climbed into one without so much as a murmur. It figured he would be as good at that as he was at everything else.

“How do you
do
that?” Ryan demanded of him before his brain caught up with his mouth.

Josh’s eyes jumped to him. He looked surprised, as if he hadn’t noticed anyone else was in the room.

“I mean, seriously, how are you not screaming like a girl right now? Or not so much a girl as a very male, manly tennis player,” he rushed on, realizing how mad Elena would be if she heard him and also that he might have just insulted Josh Andrews. “That stuff is
cold.
I always think they’re going to pull me out and find I’ve turned into a giant ice pop.”

Josh’s eyebrows gradually climbed up his forehead until the point where Ryan finally, blessedly, managed to stop talking and Josh’s lips twitched. “I can’t say that’s ever worried me before now. Hey, Mikey?” He directed this at the physio who was timing him. “Am I in danger of turning into frozen goods in here?”

“I’ve never lost a client to Popsicle yet, Mr. Andrews.”

“Well, I feel so much better for knowing that,” Josh said, before the laughter in his blue eyes disappeared so fast Ryan thought he might have imagined it. One of Josh’s ever-present army had walked in the door. The man was in his midfifties, with his dark hair graying at the temples, and Ryan recognized him as Roger Andrews, Josh’s father, who accompanied Josh to every single tournament. He’d been a player on the Tour himself, winning a few titles but never any of the big ones. Josh’s career had completely eclipsed his.

“No problems with the ligament out there, I take it?” Roger Andrews’s deep voice was positive, as though he was making a statement rather than asking a question.

Josh nodded slightly in Ryan’s direction and his reply was quiet, as if not wanting to be overheard. Roger Andrews too dropped his voice as they spoke, which made sense; they wouldn’t want any other players to know if Josh was having problems again with the knee that had put him out of commission all of last year.

“There you go, Mr. Betancourt.” Tim straightened, flexing his hands. His magical, wonderful, totally marriable hands.

“You sure you won’t rethink Bali?”

“No chance.”

Ryan pouted. “Can I at least stay here a while and bask in the blissful results of your work?”

“You’ve got the couch till I need it next,” Tim said, and Ryan relaxed back with a sigh. He
so
did not want to get up right now. Partly because it felt as if everything was loose and perfect and he imagined this would be how it felt to be on really good drugs, but it had also occurred to him that if Josh had got
in
to the ice bath, he would also need to get
out
of it again. And the thought of Josh Andrews in clinging and hopefully transparent wet clothes was…. Well, Ryan was only human.

Thankfully the treatment room remained quiet, so Ryan continued lying there and was able in due course to witness the full glory that was Josh Andrews rising like Venus from the waves in translucent tennis whites. The dark points of his nipples were pressed hard against his T-shirt, intriguing and so very, very tempting, but when he turned round, the way his shorts clung to the curve of his ass had Ryan wanting to fall to his knees. The swell of that ass was simple perfection. The line of his white underwear was visible through the shorts, and Ryan desperately wanted to follow that curve with his mouth.

As Josh was ushered from the room by his father, Ryan closed his eyes for a minute and willed himself to think of other things. He couldn’t risk being found with the beginnings of a hard-on here, without a female player in sight, even if it wasn’t his fault that Josh Andrews was so perfect he would give a tennis net a hard-on. Probably did, every time he brushed against it to shake the other player’s hand.

Damn it, thinking about touching Josh wasn’t helping Ryan’s problem at all. He closed his eyes and called to mind that cheap motel he’d stayed in for one of the ITF tournaments where accommodation wasn’t provided. He’d pulled back the shower curtain, about to step in, only to see the shower tray was crawling with cockroaches. He had
not
run screaming and buck-naked out of his room and into the parking lot, no matter what Elena said. He’d had a towel round his waist and it had been no more than the sort of efficient jog he favored to keep himself fit.

Okay, yeah, that was getting easier. Cockroaches definitely trumped Josh Andrews. Ryan got to his feet just as a new influx of players arrived into the treatment room. Greeting them in passing, he headed back to get changed, with the intention of going to the players’ lounge for a cold drink. Perhaps Josh would turn up there once he was finished with his post-match physio. Perhaps Mitch would already be there.

On his way to the bar, he greeted and was greeted by a few people. He recognized more faces now. He’d just snagged a juice when he saw Elena’s partner, Lily, across the crowded room, beckoning him over.

“Hey,” he said, bending to give her a kiss on the cheek.

“Damn it, Ryan, did you get taller?”

“Nope, which means you must be getting shorter.” He shook his head sorrowfully. “I heard it happens with age.”

That earned him an elbow in the ribs—she was just as bad as Elena—before he was introduced to the group she was standing with. It was a bit of a whirl of faces and names, but everyone was friendly and it didn’t take Ryan long to feel right at home. He’d just gotten to the climax of his drunken moose story when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Turning, he found Mitch standing there.

“Howdy, y’all,” he said. “Mind if I borrow Ryan here for a few?”

“God, take him away!” Lily said. “If I never have to think again about Ryan braying seductively at a drunken moose, I can die happy.”

“I— Yeah, I’m just going to pretend I understood that,” Mitch said, and steered Ryan away and out of the lounge.

Outside, with the door closed behind them, it was relatively quiet, though bursts of applause from various courts drifted occasionally through the warm summer air.

“Did you really just say howdy?” Ryan demanded.

“Did you really just poke fun at my cultural heritage?”

“Cultural heritage? Really? Next thing I know you’ll be telling me everything’s bigger down there.”

“Oh, believe me, Ry, it is.”

For an instant Ryan stared at him, mouth dry and heart thumping fast because it sounded as if Mitch had meant it as the come-on it sounded like. But then he came back to his senses. “Yeah, yeah. Do you know who you’re playing next?”

“Jurgen,” Mitch said before changing the subject. “Look, I wanted to see you. I shouldn’t have said so much about injuries the other day. I didn’t mean to worry you.”

Which, until this moment, he hadn’t. Ryan had actually forgotten that side of their conversation. “You didn’t, not really,” he said, “but I appreciate you bringing it up. It’s something I should plan for.”

“Happens to all of us at some time or another, and I just thought, with the less than graceful way you throw yourself round the court….”

“Hey!”

Ryan’s indignation rolled off Mitch like warm barbeque sauce. Which wasn’t at all a weird thought and had nothing to do with Ryan wondering just how Mitch’s sun-warmed arms, shown off to perfection in the faded muscle shirt he was wearing, would taste.

“I said I’d drop by the studio,” Mitch was saying. “The commentators want me to do one of those drop-in interviews. I’ll catch you later, Ry.”

“Later,” Ryan said. He watched Mitch walking away with a loose, easy stride that was made all the more watchable by those damn jeans that looked as if they were made for him. Given the money he’d made over the years, they might well have been, Ryan thought, but if so, it was money very well spent.

Chapter 5

R
YAN
lay on his bed, curtains closed and lights off, and cursed the insistent knocking on his door. As it got louder and faster, he pushed himself off the bed, stalked over to the door, and yanked it open. “
What?
”

Elena pushed past him, a bag in her arms that seemed to clink as she moved. “Nice to see you too, Ryan. I brought the fixings for mojitos. Where’s the damn light switch?”