Defending Hearts

by Rebecca Crowley

  She winced. “That’s horrible. I’m sorry.”

  He lifted a shoulder. “It was a long time ago. Anyway, when I signed my first contract, I decided I would never be like my uncle. He had no plan, no contingency. He thought soccer would last forever and when it didn’t, he didn’t know who he was or what to do. That’s not me, though. I have The Plan.”

  “The Plan?” she echoed.

  “Very few footballers play past their early thirties, if they don’t have a career-ending injury before then. I have another two, maybe three years to play at Skyline, then I’ll take a twilight transfer to a club in Europe. By thirty-five I’ll be back in Sweden, doing something else entirely.”

  “That’s a hell of a plan,” she murmured, her own post-military strategy seeming vaguer by the second. “I struggle to commit to a twelve-month phone contract.”

  He smiled. “The Plan also involves finding a woman who’s nothing like my uncle’s wife. Someone who’s with me for the long haul, not the short-term glamour. I haven’t found her yet, but I will. And when I do, I’ll know.”

  She nodded faintly. His revelation should’ve made this whole situation easier—she shouldn’t have sex with him, he wouldn’t have sex with her—but she found herself swallowing a thick lump of disappointment. A thin, watery beam of hope that they’d find an uncomplicated, uncompromising way to be together had lit the last few days, but now the shadows of certainty snuffed it out.

  Then she noticed Oz focusing on her. His gaze was heavy with intention, its heat resonating in a slow, methodical throb between her legs. He glanced at the base of her throat, down to the level of her nipples, then back up to meet her eyes. Her throat tightened.

  A shrill, tinny ring cut through the moment. Oz jerked, tugging his phone from his pocket, the stiffness of his movements betraying that he felt the same unfulfilled sizzle arcing across every inch of her skin.

  He glanced at the display. “It’s Roland.”

  “Take it. I need to pack up my room and check out. I’ll meet you in the lobby at five-thirty.”

  She heard Oz answer the phone as she left the room, shutting the door behind her. Briefly she pressed her back against it, fighting to slow her breathing and calm her pounding heart. Then she jogged down the hall, wondering how she was going to survive the four-hour drive if ten minutes alone together made her wish she’d packed her vibrator.

  It turned out to be harder than she’d imagined. Oz sat in the front of the rented SUV and she sat behind the driver, giving her an uninterrupted view of every move he made.

  She struggled not to look at him, stubbornly turning her face toward the window. The first half-hour of the drive passed in awkward silence. Eventually the contracted security guard, Zach, seemingly couldn’t take it anymore and launched into conversation.

  “Soccer,” he stated, glancing in Oz’s direction. “I’ve got to be honest. I don’t know anything about it. We only got a team in Charlotte a couple years ago. You like any American sports?”

  “No,” Oz replied flatly. Kate winced. Please don’t be a dick to the guy behind the wheel, not with three and a half hours left.

  “I watch baseball sometimes,” Oz relented, his tone suggesting he had the exact same thought. She sent up a silent prayer of thanks.

  “Okay, cool.” Zach paused, thoughtful, before admitting, “I’m not really into baseball.”

  “Are you into video games?” she piped up. “Oz is some kind of master player at Outlaw Brigade.”

  “Seriously?”

  Oz nodded. “I’m a beta tester.”

  “No shit,” Zach replied, and they launched into a discussion on the best of the game’s many versions, the pitfalls of multiplayer, and the sneak preview Oz had gotten of the newest release.

  She leaned back in her seat, eventually tuning out the specifics of their K/D ratios to focus on Oz’s voice, his accent, the gravelly rumble of his laugh.

  Oz was a complicated man, more so than she’d imagined when they met, and there was no way in hell she was the right woman to untangle him. She barely had herself figured out from one day to the next, and as much as she hated to admit it to herself, she was still getting to know this Kate, who had a job and her own apartment and wouldn’t have to move again unless she chose to.

  Mostly she was happy with her new life, her new self. Mostly. But she had bad days, and sad moments, and entire weekends when she was so listless she struggled to do more than order pizza delivery.

  She’d always gone for men with big personalities, whom she could quietly prop up without expecting much attention—and as such not being disappointed when she didn’t get it. But things were different now. She was different now. If she got into a relationship—and that was still the biggest if going—it would have to be with a man ready and willing to listen, support her, and push her back onto her feet. Oz seemed to be such a big star in his own life, she doubted there was room for anyone else.

  But maybe she was selling him short, she considered, watching him draw a diagram in the air to explain some element of the game to Zach. It was usually a safe bet to judge a guy by his friends, and Oz’s were so nice. He’d also bounced back from not one but two of her rejections with signals that he was still interested. That meant either he had the biggest ego going, or he really wasn’t ready to give up.

  After two hours they stopped for gas. Kate watched Oz move around the small convenience store, restlessly examining the shelves, finally picking up a bottle of water and a packet of unsalted cashews.

  He rounded the aisle and glanced at the beef jerky and bottle of Coke in her hands.

  “For Zach,” she explained.

  “You don’t want anything?”

  “I’ll get a coffee after I pay for these.”

  Wordlessly he took the items from her hands and nodded toward the self-serve coffee machine at the back of the shop. “Go. I’ll get this.”

  She arched a brow but didn’t object, and in a minute she joined him at the counter where he was passing over his credit card.

  He looked over at her small coffee. “Sure you don’t want anything else? Won’t you be hungry?”

  She shook her head. “I snuck some bananas from the continental breakfast this morning.”

  He signed the receipt and lifted the plastic bag from the counter. “Maybe you’ll let me buy you a nicer cup of coffee when we’re back in Atlanta.”

  “Maybe,” she tossed back lightly, stifling a smile as they walked back to the car.

  It was well after dark as they set off on the second half of their journey, and after an hour all three of them lapsed into comfortable silence.

  She phoned Rich as they neared the city limits. When she hung up Oz twisted to look at her, his eyes wide with a question he didn’t need to voice.

  “They’re still outside your house, but fewer than were there an hour ago,” she confirmed. “We’ll go to the training ground and wait. Hopefully they’ll give up.”

  The headlights of another car briefly illuminated his tight jaw, but he turned around without speaking.

  She watched the vehicles around them as they approached the deserted training complex, while loosely memorizing makes and colors so she could hopefully recognize any that reappeared on their way out. The security guard waved them in and Zach parked next to a car she recognized as Roland’s.

  As if on cue, the manager appeared at the door of the building.

  “What are you doing here?” Oz called, tugging his bag out of the back of the SUV. “Go home to your wife.”

  “I couldn’t stop thinking about those racist assholes outside your house. It was either drive over there and put the hose on them or come here and wait with you.”

  Oz smiled, patting his manager on the back. “I’m not sure you made the right choice, but I appreciate the company.”

  The two men fell into conver
sation in Swedish as the four of them proceeded into the complex. Rich was also waiting for them, and Kate seethed inwardly as she imagined her boss sweet-talking Roland. She didn’t even want to think about how he planned to calculate his percentage now that he was elbowing into her account.

  He didn’t have good news, either. “The group is down to fifteen people, but that’s still too many for us to risk bringing you in, not to mention leaving you there. We can wait, or we can find you a hotel for the night.”

  Oz shook his head decisively. “I spent all day in a hotel. I’ll wait.”

  And so they did, with the exception of Zach, who was released to a motel for a night’s sleep before driving the SUV back to Charlotte. For the next several hours the four of them drifted around the enormous building. Roland worked on his tablet in the lobby. Rich checked out the gym. Kate wandered outside to chat to the security guard, and when she came back Oz was asleep on the floor behind the reception desk.

  “I told him to at least use one of the physiotherapy tables, but he ignored me as usual,” Roland remarked without looking up from his screen.

  She crossed her arms and tilted her head, surveying Oz’s prone form. Stretched out on his stomach, his shoes arranged neatly beneath the receptionist’s chair, with what looked like a lumbar-support cushion under his head.

  “I thought being in the Army taught me to sleep anywhere, but that is impressive.” She returned to sit on a hard-backed chair opposite Roland’s.

  “What’s that expression about sleep being easy when you have a clear conscience? It’s obviously not true.” He shot her a joking grin, and she smiled back. She liked Roland. She hoped she could hang onto him as a client.

  Rich exchanged half-hourly calls with the Peak Tactical patrol car making rounds in Oz’s neighborhood. Shortly before one o’clock in the morning he strode into the lobby with his thumbs in the air.

  “They’re gone. Piled into their vehicles and left.”

  Roland shot to his feet. “Brilliant. Let’s go.”

  Kate held up a hand. “Are we sure this isn’t a shift change. Citizens First is organized, they’ll rotate protesters in and out.”

  Rich shook his head. “I don’t think so. Oz can go home, but not in his own car, in case they have people watching the street.”

  “I’ll take him,” Roland volunteered instantly.

  “I’ll take him,” Kate insisted. “Your car is as conspicuous as his.”

  Roland looked like he was about to argue, then changed his mind. He inclined his head, which Kate took as his signal to wake up his defender.

  She walked around the desk and paused, watching the rise and fall of Oz’s back. His arms were tucked under his head, his lips parted slightly.

  In a flash of vivid fantasy she saw him in the crisp sheets in his bedroom, black hair stark against all that immaculate white linen. She wanted to wake up beside him, trail her toes up his calf, run her finger along his cheek until those big eyes opened with a smile. She wanted it so much it hurt.

  She crouched beside him and touched his shoulder. He opened his eyes with a sharp intake of breath. Focused on her. Smiled. Then winced.

  He massaged his neck as he propped up on one arm. “What time is it?”

  “Almost one. The protesters left. We have to hurry and get you home, in case they come back.”

  He got to his feet stiffly and followed her into the front of the lobby. Roland had put on his blazer, signaling his readiness to leave.

  “Kate will drive you in her car, since they might be watching for yours,” the manager explained.

  Oz shouldered his duffle bag. “Let’s go.”

  “Call me when you get home. And call me in the morning.” Roland had his keys in his hand but he trailed them to Kate’s car, his expression reluctant.

  “I’m in good hands,” Oz assured his boss, then slid into the passenger seat.

  “Roland seems like a good guy,” she remarked with a wave to the security guard as they pulled out of the parking lot.

  “I owe him my whole career. He came back to Sweden after a few years in Spain and scouted me when I was fifteen, playing in the youth system for a small club. I loved soccer but I didn’t take it seriously. My brother played for the same team, then went to university and moved on. Roland convinced me I could do both.”

  “I didn’t know you had a brother.” She guided the car onto the empty highway.

  “Yusuf, three years older. He’s a corporate banker in London. Married a devout Muslim, British-Pakistani, which my parents are still coming to terms with.”

  “They don’t like her?”

  “They do now. My parents are both professors, progressive academics, super liberals. When my mother saw her future daughter-in-law in a hijab she nearly had a heart attack. She’s coming around to understand women can be observant and empowered, but it took her awhile.”

  The CB radio mounted on her dashboard crackled, and the passenger in the Peak Tactical patrol car announced himself.

  She grabbed the microphone out of its bracket. “This is Kate, what’s up?”

  “Bad news. Couple of SUVs just pulled up and dropped off ten new protesters, people we saw yesterday. Shift change, not cessation.”

  She swore under her breath, stopping the car on the side of the road. They were only a couple of blocks from Oz’s house. The timing couldn’t be worse.

  “I can handle ten people,” Oz insisted beside her. “I handle eleven every time I play.”

  “It’s not the ten, it’s the additional forty they’ll call when they realize you’re back. I’m sorry, I know you want to get home but I wouldn’t be doing my job if I let you.” She braced herself for an argument, but instead she got resignation.

  “Fine,” he acceded wearily. “Where to?”

  “Your decision. We can find you a hotel. Or do you want to call someone? Roland? Glynn?”

  He gazed out the window, his shoulders slumped. She fiddled with the cord on the microphone, wondering why she felt guilty. She didn’t organize the protesters. She hadn’t asked them to stake out his house for two days and blame him for a random act of violence committed by someone claiming to be of the same faith. If it was up to her, he’d be in his own bed, in his own house—and in an ideal world she’d be beside him.

  He turned clear eyes on her. “I’d like to spend the night with you.”

  She blinked. She must’ve misheard. “What?”

  “I’ll stay at your place tonight. Unless you have a compelling reason why I shouldn’t.”

  She should have several reasons. Strong reasons. Well thought-through, ironclad reasons he couldn’t argue with. But in that moment she couldn’t think of a single one.

  “Okay.”

  A flash of surprise suggested he hadn’t been as sure of himself as he’d sounded, but it quickly gave way to a smile. “Good.”

  “We’ll have to give Rich and Roland your location,” she realized belatedly, remembering the minor hurdle of potentially losing her job over inappropriate conduct with a client. “We can’t tell them you’re at my apartment.”

  “Give them Glynn’s address. I’ll text him so he knows the situation.”

  It was too easy. They spent the next several minutes on their phones, tacitly proliferating the fiction that Oz would spend the night with his friend. Then they looked at each other expectantly.

  With an unsteady hand, Kate turned the key in the ignition.

  “Can we go past the protesters?” he asked as she pulled away from the curb.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “They won’t recognize your car, and it’s too dark for them to spot me inside anyway. I just want to see them.”

  She sighed, turning onto the road that would take them past his house. “I’m not stopping or slowing down, and if you try to get out of this car
I swear to God I’ll use my Taser.”

  He held up his palms. “I believe you. Two-second drive-by, that’s all.”

  The protesters stood out ominously in the quiet road, bathed in the high-wattage motion-activated lights affixed to the outside of Oz’s house. They were in a loose line, an even number of men and women in sneakers and summer-weight jackets. All white, all over thirty-five. All gripping homemade posters with phrases like Go Home, No Sharia Law and, in the hands of a small, middle-aged woman, Thanks for 9/11.

  Kate gritted her teeth, praying her passenger didn’t do anything stupid.

  He didn’t. In fact he didn’t do anything except stare out the window until they were well clear of his neighborhood. They proceeded in silence to the equally quiet but much less affluent part of town where she lived, in an apartment above a bridal shop. She circled around to her parking spot at the back and cut the headlights.

  He eyed the sign over the deliveries entrance, which reiterated the store’s name, Wedding Belles, in faded pink letters. “This may be a level of commitment I’m not ready for.”

  “Don’t worry, I couldn’t afford any of their dresses even if I wanted one. Luckily the high price tags downstairs mean the rent is cheap upstairs.”

  They got out of the car and crossed the lot, with Oz pausing briefly to take in his surroundings. “I don’t think I’ve ever been to this part of Atlanta.”

  “It’s mostly residential. No reason to visit unless you live here.”

  “Or I want a wedding dress.”

  “Or a cotillion gown.” She led him up the stairs to her second-story apartment.

  She paused as she slid her key into the lock, trying to remember whether she’d left any incriminating personal items lying around. Then she decided she didn’t care. There was no way in hell her shabby one-bedroom would ever live up to the standards of Oz’s showroom house. She opened the door.