Page 64 of Blindsided By You

As I’m lining the bottles up in neat rows, a flash of movement catches my eye. The bright red painted door of the once tumble-down manse, now restored into a bed-and-breakfast, swings open. A disgruntled-looking Jimmy Calder stumbles down the steps, clutching a large duffle in one hand and a laptop bag over his shoulder.

“Morning Jimmy,” I call, waving with exaggerated cheerfulness. My hastily-assembled party of lads from the rugby team, doing volunteer work for the church on a Sunday morning, is part of the reason for his grumpy face. The other is the response to his questions, emailed to him just before I left the house. My carefully crafted PR reply had been polite but crystal clear: Nothing to see here, Jimmy. Get your sorry arse back to London.With satisfaction, I watch him climb into a grey Ford Fiesta.

A few onlookers have gathered, surveying the team with curiosity. The Sunday morning spectacle draws them as if the travelling fair has come to town. Some of the women use it as an unexpected chance to admire the eye candy on display, as the thirteen players I was able to muster at short notice, flex muscle. They’re an attractive bunch in t-shirts and a mixture of work jeans and shorts, beads of sweat jewelling their faces, hair with a tousled ‘just got out of bed’ look, and easy smiles as they banter back and forth over the task.

One woman gives Geordie a blatant appraisal from head to toe. It’s Kelly Latham who works on the checkout at the Co-op—Cluanie’s command centre for gossip. She had the cheek to ask me about Geordie outright the other day. Said she’d heard he’d been working at my house. It was old news, and I brushed her off, but I suspectedshe knew more. Today I’m sure. She watches him with a sultry smile on her face, and I feel a surge of possessiveness. Heat rises in my face, my fingers itching to reach for him. I want to march over there, wrap myself around him and claim him as mine, but I dare not.

She locks eyes with me for a moment and heads Geordie’s way. He straightens from where he’s been bent over, tugging at a reluctant piece of stone, his gorgeous arse on full display. I strain my ears but don’t catch her words. He replies, but there’s not even a polite smile, as he turns away from her, abandoning the wheelbarrow and heads straight for the drink station—and me.

“Good turn out.” Geordie takes a deep draft from the bottle of water I hand him, then wipes one hand across his mouth. A droplet clings to his lower lip, and I force myself to look away. “Thirteen of the lads on a Sunday morning.”

It’s more than I expected when I put out an SOS call for volunteers at seven-thirty a.m. Not only is there significant manpower, they all turned up with barrows and tools, including Angus with a concrete mixer. He’s determined to make a good start on the restoration today.

“Yeah, I’m really grateful. You’re all helping a lot of people out of a tight spot.”

“What about you? Feeling OK about the tight spot my sister put us in last night?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Rachel was surprisingly calm about it all. She just wants us to be happy,” I say, leaving out how she’s put me on notice. For us to be happy, I need to step up. “Guess I was overthinking it.”

“As you do,” he chuckles. The familiar crinkles bracket his eyes. “At least that’s got one problem off our backs. The other one behindyou might be a little trickier.” His mouth tightens. He casts a wary eye across my shoulder before taking another swig from the bottle.

“There she is,” Dad says, loping towards me with Grant Darby in tow. “My little lass to the rescue again.”

“Lads are doing well, Jenna.” Grant runs an approving eye over the orderly workers. “Bloody good bit of team-building that. And gets young Smith off the hook. Some coaches would have benched the lad for bringing heat down on the club.”

“Not this one,” Dad rasps. “I can count on one hand the number of times I sat a player out for something that happened off-field.”

“Well, there was Webster,” Grant points out with a knowing smirk. “That made quite the stir at the time. Star player.”

Dad’s expression hardens slightly. His jaw tightens, the muscles working beneath his stubbled cheek.“That was different.”

I feel Geordie tense beside me, his water bottle pausing halfway to his lips. It mirrors the tightening of my own body as I brace myself for what’s coming.

“Different how?” Grant presses, seemingly unaware of the sudden shift in atmosphere.

Dad’s eyes flick briefly toward me before returning to Grant. “Webster thought his talent gave him special privileges. Made a move on Jenna at a team dinner. Wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

My cheeks burn at the memory. It was my third week with the Highlanders. At the time, I didn’t even know Dad had seen David Webster come up to me at the bar and slip his arm around my waist. Although young, he already wore the cockiness of his newfound fame, and it had taken me several attempts to brush him off. I only joined the dots the next day after the club CEO requested an urgent press release. My job was to manufacture a reason for Webster’sone-game stand down. When I confronted my father, he admitted it without an ounce of remorse. From then on, I was always extra careful around the players, never putting myself in a position for it to happen again. There was only one other slip up. That time, Dad tried to throttle the guy, and it was his arse I had to protect.

The silence stretches between us, loaded with implication.

Seeing Grant’s interest, Dad continues, his voice taking on that steel edge I know so well.

“I don’t care if you’re David Webster, headed for international glory or some bench-warmer who barely makes the practice squad. Nobody messes with my daughter. That’s a line I won’t let anyone cross.”

I dare not look at Geordie. But I can feel him—the heat of his body suddenly distant, though he hasn’t moved an inch. He tosses the empty plastic bottle into the bin and heads back to work without a single backwards glance.

My chest tightens as I watch him go. There’s more than my heart on the line here. Geordie’s rugby, the most important thing in his life right now, could disappear in an instant if my father catches wind of our relationship. I can’t bear the thought I might be the reason he loses the thing that makes him happiest.

Chapter 34

GEORDIE

Thefirstquiznightcomes around way too quickly. I park the van in the scruffy open area behind the pub which passes for a parking lot. I really should do something about buying a car. At the moment I’m conspicuous wherever I go, the vehicle splattered with signwriting on all sides, although Sparky’s happy enough with the free advertising.

I’ve held off getting something of my own, not because money is a problem, but with a major purchase like a car, there’s this sense of permanence. These last two months I’ve flip-flopped between fearing and wanting to put down roots. Now the wanting seems to be winning, and it’s only because of Jenna. Yeah, I think it’s time to get a car.

She’s here, her BMW already parked. Now that’s conspicuous. A bright scarlet—San Francisco red, she says—it stands out amongst the rows of drab blues and greys. There’s no way you could mistake the sound of it either, the growl that becomes a roar as she screams up the road to my house and the explosive pops and crackles when she lifts off on the final bend before my driveway. Kyle says one oldlady called the cops the first week Jenna arrived in town with that car, swearing she’d heard gunshots.

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