Page 25 of Love In Translation

The Pink House’s basement contained snowshoes and skis, ropes and carabiners, canoes and paddles. The Whitlocks could open a store with all the equipment they’d purchased and collected over the years. Rheo made a point of avoiding the basement. Whenever she went down there, she remembered she was the gray dove in a flock of brightly colored flamingos.

“Why?”

Looking into his lovely eyes, Rheo wanted to tell him the truth. But how could she explain how out of sync she felt without sounding whiny? Would he understand that she preferred books to boulders, languages to ledges? She couldn’t bear a lecture on how much she was missing, what she could learn from expanding her horizons, or how she would come to love it if she just gave it a chance. She’d heard it all before—over and over and over.

“I have no natural stamina,” she informed him. It was the truth.

Fletch, as she expected him to, frowned. “What do you mean?”

“One of the reasons I’m not into trail running or hiking is because I tire easily,” Rheo explained. On the few occasions she’d tried to join in on a family hike, she’d struggled to keep up, and her family found her slow pace annoying. “I can move quickly when I have to, and I can do stop-and-start exercises, but I’ve never managed to run more than two miles without feeling like I am going to die. Honestly, during a zombie apocalypse, I’d rather let them eat me than run for my life. I’ll sacrifice myself so the rest of you can get away.”

His smile caused her breath to leave her body in a singlewhoosh. “Early in my career, I hired a cameraman who was the same. A fantastic guy, very creative, but despite training hard, he couldn’t build up enough stamina for long days and miles of slogging. Letting him go was hard, but necessary. I had to put his safety, and the safety of the team, first.”

Fletch nodded at her laptop. “You looked like you wanted to stab someone when I walked into the room. What’s the problem?”

She wrinkled her nose and wondered how much to tell him. “One of the reasons I’m in Gilmartin is because I’ve hit a snag at work...”

“Define a snag,” he demanded after her words trailed away.

She rubbed the back of her neck. “Currently, I’m not translating at a UN standard level,” she admitted.

His thick eyebrows rose. “I would say that’s less of a snag and more of a problem.”

Precisely. “Yeah. It’s one of the reasons I was forced to take a six-month sabbatical,” Rheo admitted. Would he ask what the other reasons were? She hoped not—she wasn’t ready to give him that much information yet. She lifted the lid of her laptop and gestured to the screen. “These are training videos. We use them to brush up on our skills when we’ve been away from the job for a while. Maternity leave or when we move from one language section to another.”

He sat on the edge of the desk, facing her. “Language section?”

“The UN Translation Service has language sections, like Spanish or Italian or Arabic. I worked in the Spanish section, but because I’m fluent in French, Italian, and German, I could work in those sections too. If I got transferred to another section, I’d use these programs to make sure my skills are up to standard.”

“And you don’t think they are?” Fletch softly asked, placing his big hand on her shoulder.

She shook her head and chewed the inside of her lip. “No,” she admitted. When she looked at him, she saw his curiosity and attempted to explain.

“I can still speak the languages—” they’d taken a little holiday, had some time out, but hadn’t deserted her forever “—but I’m second-guessing myself. I don’t know if I’m understanding the context correctly or choosing the right words to get the meaning across.”

Fletch’s shorts rode up his muscled thighs, and she wanted to brush her fingers through the soft hair on his legs, wanted the anchor of her hand on his skin.

She shook her head. She couldn’t expect anyone else to make her feel in control. She relied on herself, and it was dangerous to seek assurances from other people. Other people weren’t reliable.

Fletch looked from her to the screen and back again. “So, you have the words, but it’s the meaning you’re struggling with?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

He shrugged, lifting his hands. “Sometimes, when I can’t find a route through an obstacle, across a glacier, or through a section of jungle, I tend to get tunnel vision and I forget to look for other options. When I step back and take a few minutes to relax, my jumbled mind clears, and the way forward becomes easier.”

She considered his words. He’d nailed it. She was doing that. By trying so hard to get it right, she was second-guessing her word choices and making it ten times harder than it needed to be. When she was in the zone, time flew, and the words tripped effortlessly off her tongue.

But how could she relax when there was so much on the line? Her career—and the life she’d spent so much time constructing—all rested on her going back to work and doing what she did best.

Right now, she was far from her best.

Fletch touched her hand with the tip of his index finger. “One day I hope you’ll tell me why you’re on a sabbatical, Rheo, and why you’re hiding out at your grandmother’s house. I’d like to know why no one knows where you are or what you’re going through.”

She wanted to tell him, and that shocked her. Explanations danced through her mind, desperate to be verbalized. She ached to talk to him and explain the decisions she’d made.

Why? Why Fletch? She rarely spoke to anyone, even Paddy. She never described her inner landscape and seldom shared her thoughts. Words and languages were her thing, she earned her living from them, but she couldn’t verbalize what she felt inside.

Yet she could easily imagine telling Fletch more than she’d told anyone. Stupid, because they weren’t even friends! They shared a house, but they’d spent little time together over the past ten days. Carrie was arriving soon, and Rheo was leaving.

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