‘Everything all right with Ryan?’ Debbie asked, fixing Amber with a look that told her she knew she was hiding something. And she’d get it out of her one day – soon.
‘Ryan’s fine, as I’m sure you’re well aware, him being Gary’s best friend. In fact, you probably know how he’s getting on better than I do. I only know the stuff that’s being reported from Tenerife.’
‘Ellen’s flown over to see him, did you know that?’
Amber felt her heart almost stop dead. For another reason she couldn’t quite understand. ‘Ellen? But I… I thought it was all over between those two?’
‘So did Ryan,’ Debbie sighed, running a hand along the small of her back. ‘Jesus, this baby can kick!’
‘So why is she out there with him?’ Amber was confused now. Ryan had all but told her that he didn’t love Ellen – that he never had done. So why would he encourage her to go and see him?
‘It wasn’t his idea,’ Debbie said, pulling her phone out of her bag. ‘She just turned up, out of the blue, apparently. Told Ryan she wanted him back, that she could be good for him, all that kind of crap.’
‘And… I mean… are they back together?’
Debbie fixed Amber with another one of her looks. ‘Do you care?’
Amber rummaged round in her bag for nothing in particular just so she could avoid Debbie’s eyes. ‘Just curious, that’s all. I had a run-in with her – with Ellen – after the derby game, and…’
‘A run-in? Really? You never told me. Did she have a go at you?’
Amber nodded. ‘You could say that. Blamed me for the fact Ryan’s out on loan…’
‘Well, she’s right, really, isn’t she?’
‘Jesus… thanks for that, Debs.’
‘I’m sorry, chick. I didn’t mean it like that, but… Look, from what I can gather from Gary – and you know how crap he is at conveying any kind of gossip – Ryan is trying to let her down gently. Again.’ She rolled her eyes, and Amber smiled. She loved Debbie, she really did. ‘Hey, you know he’s become all pally with Callum Henderson, don’t you?’ Debbie went on. ‘And, although he isn’t saying anything, I think Gary’s just a tiny bit jealous.’
Amber couldn’t help laughing. ‘Does it feel like his best friend’s cheating on him?’
‘Something like that, yeah.’ Debbie smiled, briefly, before another baby-kick made her wince slightly. ‘I swear this baby’s a boy. He’s already kicking like a frigging footballer.’
‘They’re quite similar, really, I suppose,’ Amber went on, quickly banging out a text to Max before throwing her phone back into her bag. ‘Ryan and Callum, I mean… Look, I’ve really got to go.’ She leaned over and kissed Debbie on the cheek. ‘You take care of yourself, and baby. And I’ll see you soon, okay?’
‘Do you want me to pass a message on to Jim for you?’
‘Stop it, Debbie.’ Amber half-smiled at her, throwing her a look over her shoulder before she ran out of the café, quickly hailing a cab to take her to Max’s offices in Covent Garden.
It took a while to get there, thanks to the Friday afternoon London traffic, but it was a meeting she needed to have. To help her decide just what it was she was supposed to do next. Max needed to know what was going on – Max needed to help her.
‘You look a bit flustered,’ Max said, kissing her lightly on the cheek as he closed his office door behind her.
‘Well, you can thank London on a Friday afternoon for that,’ Amber sighed, taking a look around a room that couldn’t really be described as an office – it was more like a suite, it was so big. Painted almost entirely in white, bar one wall that was a deep, dark red, floor-to-ceiling plate-glass windows lined one entire wall, making the room feel incredibly bright and airy. A TV the size of a small cinema screen took over another wall directly opposite Max’s ridiculously over-sized desk, and two huge black leather sofas were placed at opposite ends of the room, amidst an array of furniture that seemed to be a mixture of classic retro and Ikea’s finest. Pictures of a multitude of famous footballers, past and present, took pride of place on the dark red wall behind one of the sofas, all of which had been, or still were, clients of Max’s, and Amber couldn’t help but notice the picture of Ryan, her eyes going straight to it. He was in his Newcastle Red Star kit, all handsome and hot with his tattoos and his stubble, down on his haunches in front of a football bearing the name of one of his biggest sponsors, those dark blue eyes of his staring right back at her. She felt her stomach take another dive into nowhere, making her swallow hard before she took a deep breath and turned away, walking over to the chair in front of Max’s desk.
‘Everything all right?’ Max asked, frowning slightly as he leaned back against the front of his desk, folding his arms as he looked at Amber.
‘I’m pregnant.’ There was no point in beating about the bush. Max didn’t have long, and she couldn’t be bothered to skirt around the issue. It had to be dealt with.
‘I’m… I’m sorry. You’re what?’
She’d never seen Max lost for words before, and it was actually quite amusing, for a few seconds.
‘Now who’s flustered?’ she smirked, crossing her legs and clasping her hands together, her eyes never leaving Max’s.
‘But, I thought…? I thought you couldn’t…?’
‘Well, I’m not going to go over my entire appointment with Dr. Lowry, suffice to say, I’m what you might call extremely lucky. I beat the odds.’ She shrugged. ‘I beat them.’
Max frowned again. ‘You don’t sound too happy about it, if you don’t mind me saying.’
‘It isn’t Jim’s.’ Her voice had wavered way more than she’d wanted it to when she’d said those words. But Max needed to know the truth.
‘Jesus, Amber…’ Max pushed a hand through his hair, letting out a deep breath. Before realisation took over. ‘It’s Ryan’s. Am I right?’
She looked down at her clasped hands, a strange kind of relief washing over her – relief that she’d taken that first step towards sorting this whole mess out. Although they were a long way off making any kind of sense out of it. ‘You’re right.’ She looked back up at Max. ‘There’s no doubt, Max. This baby was conceived at a time when Jim and I hadn’t slept together for weeks, so there’s absolutely no chance it could be his.’ She closed her eyes for a second, silently willing the tears to stay away. She should be experiencing the happiest time of her life, yet all she felt was overwhelming confusion and a pain so deep it hurt in a way she couldn’t explain. ‘The dates, they…’ She swallowed hard before exhaling deep, desperately trying to keep her composure. ‘It’s Ryan’s.’
Max stayed silent for a few more seconds, taking in a bombshell he just hadn’t been prepared for. How could he ever have seen this one coming?
‘I knew something had gone on between you and Ryan, but…’
‘It was sex, that’s all.’
‘It’s never as simple as that with you two,’ Max sighed.
‘Well, it certainly isn’t now.’
Max looked at her again, all hard-edged ice queen with a determination not to let her true feelings show. But he didn’t think even she’d be able to keep that up for much longer, given everything she’d been through, and everything she was about to go through now.
‘Does anybody else know?’
‘Just Ronnie.’
‘You haven’t told anyone at work?’
‘There’s no need for anyone else to know anything. I’m not showing yet, I can pass off morning sickness as something stress-related, and… Oh, I don’t know, Max. I really don’t know what I’m supposed to do next.’
‘I take it you haven’t told Ryan?’
She looked back down at her hands, shaking her head. ‘But I think I need to do that.’ She looked up at him, her eyes meeting his. ‘Don’t I?’
Max sighed again, walking over to the window. ‘I have no idea how he’s going to take this news.’
Amber continued to stare at her hands, the confusion she was already feeling doublin
g in intensity. ‘I’ve really messed up, haven’t I?’
Max turned around to face her, shoving his hands in his pockets. ‘It takes two, kiddo.’
‘He’s over there in Tenerife for no reason other than to try and get his head straight, and I’m about to drop this on him? So what was the point, huh? What was the point of him going over there if all this shit is about to kick off? How is any of this going to help him sort himself out?’
‘Okay, okay. Don’t get hysterical. Look, in a way, it’s probably best he is over there. It’ll give him some space to get his head around everything. If he was back here, I think there’d be a far greater chance of him going off the rails.’
‘You reckon?’
‘I know him.’
‘Yeah. So do I, remember?’ Amber threw her head back, running her hands through her hair. ‘That’s it. Decision made. I’m going to see him. ’She sat up, looking straight at her agent. ‘This afternoon. I’m coming with you. To Tenerife.’
‘Are you out of your fucking mind, Amber? You can’t just up and leave on the spur of the moment. What about work?’
‘I’ll tell them I need some time off. Surely you can sort something out for me, it’s what you’re good at, isn’t it? Come on, Max. Please. I don’t think I can go through the entire weekend with this hanging over me, avoiding conversations with people because I know they can tell something’s wrong, but I can’t say what. Not yet. Because I need to see Ryan first.’
‘Jesus, you kill me. You and Ryan, the pair of you – you fucking kill me.’
Amber stood up, walking over to Max, her hands in the pockets of her black trouser suit. ‘You know I need to do this, Max. I need to speak to him first. Before it all goes public. He deserves that at least.’
He looked at her. ‘You’re avoiding Jim, that’s what you’re doing. Come on, Amber. I know he’s down here this weekend…’
‘You have no idea what’s going on in my head right now, Max. The man I love with every inch of my heart doesn’t want me anymore, and I’m pregnant by a man I slept with purely to forget that fact. It’s so fucked up it’s unbelievable! So, yes. Yes. Maybe I am avoiding Jim – for now. Because, until I’ve spoken to Ryan, I really have no idea what to say to him. I don’t know how to handle this, Max. And I’m scared. I’m really, really scared. So, please, just get me on that flight with you to Tenerife, and let’s try and begin to sort this mess out.’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
‘Thanks for doing this.’ Amber smiled at Max as she joined him outside in the hotel’s terrace restaurant for breakfast. Although she wasn’t in the mood to eat. Food was the last thing she felt like. ‘It means a lot.’
‘Well, you’re right, kiddo. This is a mess, but at least you came to me first, which means we can at least try and keep a lid on things until we work out exactly what’s happening. I take it you are keeping the baby?’
Amber just looked at him as she poured herself a cup of tea. She thought she might just be able to keep that down.
‘Okay. Point taken. Sorry.’
She sat back in the comfortable padded chair and pushed her dark glasses down over her eyes, staring out at the view of the Atlantic, the sound of jet skis already piercing the morning’s peace. It was the middle of February, the sky was the most incredible blue, and the sun was beating down on her bare shoulders, yet all Amber felt was a cold, fierce pain in the pit of her stomach.
‘Maybe coming here wasn’t such a good idea,’ she said quietly as a million memories of her visit to this beautiful island with Jim and the Red Star squad just a few months ago invaded her brain. She’d been happy then. They’d been happy then. It had felt as though nothing could have pulled them apart after all those years of wanting nothing but each other. Yet now look at them. Torn apart by – by what? By anything? Or by so many things it was impossible to separate them out?
Max turned to look at her. ‘Things happen for a reason, Amber. I’m a real believer in that.’
She said nothing. She’d long given up believing in fate.
‘Do you want me to come with you? When you tell him?’ Max asked, trying to direct the subject away from whatever she was thinking about, because, whatever it was, it wasn’t making her happy.
‘No. No, I think I’d rather tell him on my own, if that’s all right?’
‘That’s fine with me,’ Max sighed, placing his hands behind his head and stretching his legs out in front of him. ‘You know where I am when the pieces need picking up.’
She looked at him, not really knowing what he meant by that. Not that it mattered. Nothing mattered anymore except trying to get a situation she couldn’t quite believe she was in under some sort of control, to a point where they could at least begin to start making some sense out of it, anyway.
‘Do you… do you think it’s best if I just go round to his villa or… or should I ring him first? Shit! This is ridiculous, Max. I’m thirty-eight years old yet I’m acting like some teenager who’s got herself into trouble with the school’s most popular boy.’
Max looked at her out the corner of his eye, unable to stop a slight smirk from twitching at the corner of his mouth. ‘Just go and see him, Amber. Sitting here talking about it is only delaying the inevitable.’
She let out a quiet, frustrated cry, throwing her head back. ‘I want to run away. I really just want to run away, curl up into a ball and hide from all of this.’
‘No you don’t.’ Max sat up, leaning forward slightly. ‘Look, kiddo. You can tackle most shit, because I’ve seen you do it. You’ve got a reputation as this beautiful, smart, intelligent woman…’
Amber raised an eyebrow at the word ‘intelligent’. She wasn’t so intelligent now, was she?
‘You’re a smart, intelligent woman,’ Max went on, ignoring her expression. ‘Successful, talented, stunning to look at…’
‘All right, Max, you can stop laying it on quite so thick. What’s your point?’
‘You can handle this, too. You just need to make a start, because it won’t go away. And the longer you leave it, the worse it’s going to be. Do you want the press to get hold of the news first? Is that how you want people to find out about it? You can’t hide a pregnancy forever you know.’
‘Jesus, don’t even talk about the press.’ Amber shuddered at the thought of what was going to happen the day the media got wind of this little gem of a story and, given her line of work, surrounded by media constantly, she knew that day wouldn’t be too far away. And that’s why, all of a sudden, she knew she’d give up every single second of her success if she could just go back to being Amber Sullivan, local North East Sports Editor and a woman nobody cared all that much about. ‘My dad is gonna flip, big time… I sound about fourteen again, don’t I?’
Max smiled, reaching out to take her hand, squeezing it gently. ‘You can handle this. Okay? Now go, go on. Go see him. He’s not training till this evening and he doesn’t have a match until Monday night, so at least your timing is pretty good. Sort of.’
Amber couldn’t help but smile back, leaning over to kiss her agent. Her lifeline. How she’d ever survived without him before, she had no idea. ‘Thanks, Max. I really love you for this.’
‘Yeah, well, don’t tell everyone I’m such a soft touch. I’ve got a reputation to keep up you know… Shit! Is that my phone?’
She left him to his calls and made her way back up to her room, her head still spinning with everything that had happened. Maybe if she closed her eyes and pinched herself she’d wake up and realise she was still on that blissful pre-season tour, she was still with Jim, and everything was the way she wanted it to be. Because she didn’t want it to be like this.
The cool of the air conditioning hit her head-on as soon as she walked into the room and she leaned back against the door for a few seconds, letting it wash over her.
‘I can do this,’ she whispered to herself, trying to push to the back of her mind her dad’s reaction to this news, Debbie’s reaction to this news – bu
t thinking about Jim’s reaction was what hurt the most, what caused a wave of pain so raw to rush through her at such speed it knocked the breath right out of her.
Her phone ringing stopped her from sinking into another unnecessary pit of self-pity and she grabbed it from the bed, answering it immediately. Because she knew exactly who it’d be.
‘Where the fuck are you?’
‘Hey, Ronnie.’
‘Hey, Ronnie? Is that all you’ve got to say? Where are you, Amber, because if you’re where I think you are…’
‘He needs to know, Ronnie. Before any of this comes out, he needs to know.’
‘Jesus fucking Christ… Why didn’t you talk to me first?’
‘Because you’d have stopped me from coming here. You’d have tried to talk me out of it, tried to make me do…’
‘Amber, sweetheart, you’ve got me all wrong. I’m not stupid. I know you’ve got to talk to Ryan, I know that. I just… did you have to do it right now?’
‘Yes, Ronnie. Because I can’t even begin to work this whole mess out until he knows what’s going on.’
There was a brief silence from Ronnie, and even Amber couldn’t think of anything to say to break it as she walked over to the full-length mirror by the window, lifting her top up to reveal her still-flat stomach. Funny. She didn’t think she’d actually believe she was pregnant until that bump started to show. But right now there wasn’t even a hint.
‘We should have talked about this some more, Amber,’ Ronnie said quietly.
She closed her eyes, resting her hand on her non-existent baby bump. ‘Me telling Ryan I’m having his baby doesn’t mean me and him are suddenly going to live happily ever after. I just need him to know, that’s all. What happens after that is so up in the frigging air it’s lost gravity. So don’t go on about it, okay? We’ll talk about everything when I get home.’
‘And when are you coming home? Only, everyone here at Cloud Sports seems to think you’re on holiday for a week to deal with some urgent family problems.’
‘Well, that’s kind of true, isn’t it?’
Ronnie didn’t reply.
Extra Time Page 45
