Can't Help Falling (17 page)

She finally relaxed her death grip on the steering wheel when she knew they had to be getting close.

She chanced a glance over at him. Even when he was in excruciating pain, there was something about his presence that made her feel safe. The way she'd always imagined Peter Pevensie would. “You okay?”

“I'll be fine.” His pinched voice said the opposite.

Emelia knew the voice. Knew the words. They were the same ones she'd used the day she'd lost out on her dream job as reporter for the
Boston Globe
to a congressman's daughter who couldn't have told an adverb from an adjective if her vapid existence depended on it. Apparently none of that mattered when you had a daddy with a Rolodex full of prestigious contacts you could go simpering to when you needed a story.

She knew what broken dreams looked like, so she wasn't about to offer perky motivational lines that weren't worth the air they traveled on.

She turned the wipers on instead of the blinker, and then
made a left into a small, narrow street. Then realized Peter had said to take the next right.

“Um, Peter? I just turned left instead of right.”

Peter opened his eyes and peered out the windshield. “So you did. Know what else?”

“What?”

A smile flickered on his lips. “This is a one-way street and it's not this way.”

Emelia stomped on the brakes, leaving Peter sucking in a sharp breath as his shoulder tilted forward.

“Sorry. Sorry!” She managed to reverse the car into a tiny driveway and turn it around.

“
Girls aren't very good at keeping maps in their brains.
” Peter uttered Edmund's well-known line with a twisted smile.

“That's because we've got something in them.”
Emelia threw Lucy's responding line back as she turned onto the original road. Driving a little farther down, she took the next right. “Did you say you're number thirty-six?”

She looked sideways when Peter didn't answer to find him staring at her. “What? Did I get that wrong too?”

“You quoted right back. The line. You didn't even have to think about it. Who can do that?”

She came to a stop at the curb. “Someone who's read Narnia more than a few times.” Avoiding the intent look in his gaze that made her feel like he was peering into her soul, she reached over, released Peter's seat belt, and watched as it traveled over his torso. His sweat-soaked T-shirt stuck to his chest, leaving little to the imagination.

Reaching across to open his door, Peter got out of the car, slamming it shut behind him. Scrambling after him, Emelia grabbed his backpack from the backseat and followed him up
the path. What had just happened? One second it felt like they were having some kind of moment, the next he was stomping away like an adolescent boy losing Xbox privileges.

He turned around at the front door. His face was still contorted, but every step didn't make him look like he might be about to keel over. At least that was something. “Thanks for bringing me home. I've got it.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “You've got what, exactly?”

“I'm good.”

Emelia suddenly realized she hadn't thought past this point. How was she going to get home from here? It wasn't like she could drive his car. It was a miracle someone hadn't reported her to the cops on the way here.

She returned her attention to the stubborn guy in front of her. “Tell you what. I'll make you a deal. If you can open your front door, then I'll leave you alone.” There must be a bus route or something nearby. She dropped his backpack near his feet.

Leaning over, he picked it up, wedged it between his knees, and used the hand on his uninjured arm to lever the zipper open enough for him to get his hand through. It reappeared with a bunch of keys dangling off his fingers.

Giving her a smug look, Peter inserted a gold key into the lock and twisted it. A small click rewarded him. He turned the knob and went to open the door, but it didn't move. Still held fast by the dead bolt located just above.

Muttering something under his breath, he pulled the key out, flipped the ring around, and picked out a silver one. He shoved it into the dead bolt, twisted that one, and then looked at the lower doorknob as if willing it to move with the power of his mind.

He moved closer to the door and reached for the lower handle
with his injured arm. But even that small movement made him wince and clench his jaw.

Short of being strung out on enough opiates to take down a horse, there was no way it was going to happen. Emelia wasn't going to stand here all day watching him try.

Without warning, he pulled the key from the dead bolt and threw the set to the ground with such force they bounced.

Emelia stepped forward and swiped the keys off the ground. “Easy. I know it hasn't been a good day but—”

“A good day?” Peter turned toward her, pain etched across his face. “I probably just tore my rotator cuff again. It was meant to be better. After eleven months—
eleven
. ‘Not a good day' doesn't even come close to it.”

“I'm sorry. I'm sure it's just a minor setback.” And there she went, offering up a pointless platitude when she knew nothing of the sort. Exactly the kind of words that she'd hated. The ones she'd wanted to throw back in people's faces when she lost out on serious journalism jobs to people who had better connections, or had rich daddies to pave their career path, or were better looking. Never mind that the only way they could have found a story was if it was handed to them on a diamond-encrusted spoon. An apology formed on her lips but didn't make it out before Peter rounded on her, clutching his shoulder, green eyes flashing.

“You have no idea what you're talking about. You know where I'm meant to be right now? Training. With my team. I trained for ten years to get there. Ten years. Of early mornings. Hundreds of thousands of kilometers of rowing. Half the year in sleet, until my hands bled and I could taste the blood in my mouth. What would you know about that? What would you know about having a crazy, audacious dream and then getting
it ripped away from you when it was finally within reach? You're just a glorified admin assistant.”

Emelia stepped back as if she'd been slapped. “Excuse me?” He had not just gone there. Peter's mouth opened but she didn't even give him a chance to get out a syllable. “You have
no
idea what you're talking about. You don't know anything about me. Not really. Oh, you probably think you do. Maybe you think it's funny that I hide in wardrobes. Whatever. You probably think it's cute that I can quote Narnia off the top of my head. None of that means you know anything that matters about me.” She shoved the key in the dead bolt, twisted it, turned the door handle below, and threw the door open with such force it slammed against the wall.

“Sabine is welcome to you.”

T
HE FOLLOWING
T
HURSDAY
, P
ETER APPROACHED
Emelia's office doorway like it framed gallows. In his hand he held a box of Cadbury chocolates. After his appalling behavior, he was hoping they'd buy him enough time to explain himself before she threw him out.

The last time he'd put his foot in his mouth so badly he'd ended up doing a similar walk to penance. Thankfully, this time Elizabeth wasn't around to give him the third degree. Her eagle eyes missed nothing.

He paused, peering around the side of the door. Emelia sat at her decrepit desk, intent on some documents. Her wavy hair was in a ponytail, a few loose strands spilling over her bare shoulders, the dark purple sleeveless, filmy top she was wearing skimming her curves in all the right ways.

As she jotted something down on the paper in front of her, a small smile lifted at one end of her lips. She turned to her keyboard and typed out a few words, then tugged a piece of hair behind her ear.

Peter could have watched her all day, except any second now she would look up and find him peering at her like some kind of Peeping Tom. And that would go down so well after everything else.

He tapped on the doorframe, holding the box of chocolates up to his chest like a shield. Maybe she'd take pity on a guy with a sling.

Her gaze landed on him. “Hi.” Her face was a study in neutrality.

“Hi.” He walked in. “Chocolates?”

Emelia tilted her head. “As in, do I like them? Would I like one? Or you've come armed with a large box as an attempt at a truce?”

“All of the above?” He still lurked awkwardly in her doorway, not sure whether he should enter.

“Yes, but only because I'm a sucker for Cadbury.” She stood up, walked around the desk, and plucked the box from his hand. “Come in. We need to talk.”

Peter braced himself for her to tell him that she'd talked to Elizabeth and told her that they couldn't work together anymore.

He had to see this through. For Anita. “All the other board members would be pants at this!” The words fell out of his mouth as Emelia was using her scissors to slice open the cellophane wrapping.

She stopped and looked at him like he was talking gibberish. “I'm sorry. Did you just say something about the board members' pants?”

He'd forgotten Americans didn't use the saying. “Pants. Rubbish. No good. I know that I've been a total jerk but replacing me with one of the other board members . . . none of them would be any good.” The truth was that, from what he'd seen, Emelia didn't need a board member at all. She could get all the guidance that she needed off Elizabeth. But he was hardly going to point that out. Since the Boat Race was over
and his stupid rush of blood to the head after the row-off had put his shoulder back months in rehabilitation—this, helping save Anita's charity, was the only thing that gave his life meaning.

He tried to ignore the fact that working with Emelia was also a distinct bonus.

“Chocolate?” Emelia offered him the box and he grabbed a caramel one. Dropping the box on the desk, she walked back around it and sat down. She offered him that same half smile as he stood there awkwardly. He wasn't sure if her offering of chocolate was Emelia's version of an olive branch. “You can sit.” Reaching over, she picked out a circular one and popped it into her mouth.

Peter chomped his chocolate as he lowered himself into the same chair he'd groveled from last time, careful not to jar his shoulder. “I'm sorry I was such a plonker to you.”

“What happened to your shoulder?” It didn't pass his notice that, once again, she didn't explicitly accept his apology. “The first time.” Emelia leaned forward in her chair, grabbed another chocolate. It made a nice change from Sabine, who had pedantically tracked every calorie that passed her lips, determined to hover just on the minimum weight allowed for coxes.

Peter's body stiffened. He hated talking about that night. But she was right, he owed her an explanation. “Bar brawl.”

“Wow. I wouldn't have guessed that.”

He blew out a breath. Him neither. “We were at the world champs in Verona. We'd won a big race that day. So the team decided to go out for drinks to celebrate.” As usual, he'd only had one beer, left the real celebratory drinking up to a few of the other guys. “We decided to go to a club. Not my thing but we
had some younger guys on the squad who could get a bit cocky once they had a few drinks in them and I wanted to make sure they kept their noses clean.

“Anyway, one of them ended up hitting on some guy's girlfriend. He took exception to it and the next thing I knew fists were swinging. I waded in to try and break it up. One of the guy's friends cracked me with a bottle across the back of my head and the next thing I really remember is waking up in hospital. Tore my rotator cuff up pretty bad.” That was an understatement. “The worst I've ever operated on” were the words the surgeon had used.

According to his teammates who'd seen it, he'd gone down like a tree, arm outstretched like a branch. To this day he couldn't work out how he'd fallen like that.

“I'm sorry.” Emelia leaned over and picked another chocolate. “I know I'm only a glorified admin assistant now, but I know what it's like to have big dreams that don't come true.”

He flinched at the words he'd used to describe her. “Emelia, I was mad at myself for being so stupid. You're far more than that.” He stopped himself before he could say anything else. Things that he didn't even really understand himself and would just make things awkward for both of them. “What was your crazy dream?”

She studied him for a moment, as if deciding whether he was worthy of being trusted with it. More than anything else he wanted to be, even though he knew he had a track record with her of the absolute opposite.

“I wanted to be a journalist. A real one. Like Christiane Amanpour. Reporting from war zones, natural disasters, the world's hot spots.”

“What happened?”

She shrugged. “Didn't have the right connections, I guess.” From the look in her eyes, he could see there was far more to it than that. For a second it looked like she might say more, but then a guard sprang up and she turned her attention to the papers on her desk. “Anyway, we should talk about the row-off. It did better than we expected. I'm just finalizing the report to the board for you to review. And we also need to talk about this cricket match and the mystery ball venue you have up your sleeve.”

He didn't care about the board, or some report to review, or even, in that second, about saving Anita's legacy. All he cared about was knowing the story of the girl sitting in front of him.

“H
OW CAN YOU EVEN BE
asking that of me?” The words hit Emelia as she closed the front door. Jackson sounded frustrated and hurt. The golden couple having a disagreement. That was a first. When Emelia had left to run a few errands they'd been snuggled up on the couch, so cozy you would've struggled to fit a paper clip between them.