Chapter 4
I didn’t have racing along the Thames with a violent hockey player on my wish list, but that’s what Father Christmas gifts me.
Santa also stuffs my stocking with Calum Trelawney giving me directions before laughing again, which is unexpected.
It rings out as I weave us between party boats holding Christmas revellers.
Calum doesn’t overbalance. He’s rock steady as I open the throttle to slice through the beating heart of London.
He leans into each sharp curve nice and easy, no sign of the injury issues I read about online. We pass HMS Belfast and then shoot under London Bridge, and he’s still grinning when we leave Southwark, Waterloo, and Westminster Bridges behind. My shout is almost drowned out by Big Ben chiming.
“You should strap in.”
“Why? I’m not scared.”
“I am,” I yell. “You’re worth a fucking fortune. You fall overboard and I’ll be in trouble. For all you know, I could have a track record for crashing.”
“You don’t. I’ve watched you in action enough to know it. You’re a pro helmsman.”
I’m surprised into unprofessionally swerving. “You think so?” Hearing that from him is almost as unexpected as discovering Lito subscribes to my channel. I can’t see Calum being as desperate for nighttime company on his laptop, so I snort. “You haven’t watched me in action.”
He snorts right back. “Believe me, I didn’t want to. But thanks to Jack, the whole last week has been a crash course in Valentin Juno.” He leans down, mouth to my ear as if to make sure I hear this. “So I know you can go even faster.”
Of course, he’s a danger merchant. But so am I, and I can’t lie, it’s good to go flat out to test the limits of a vessel Dad once lent out, and to do that high-speed testing with someone who whoops each time she leaves the water.
Something inside me takes flight too, then lands with a bump at how fast we reach his destination.
Both Lambeth and Vauxhall Bridges rush up before Chelsea, where I finally reduce power and let us drift a little.
He asks, “Why have you stopped out here?”
“Because I need to know what this is really about.”
“This?” He takes the seat beside me. “That’s easy.” He points a finger at himself. “I need to look like a loser.” He jabs that finger at me. “You’re the dick who does that to other people. End of story.”
End? I don’t think it’s even the beginning, and it isn’t what he promised.
Worry that he’s changed his mind about placing the speedboat order tightens my chest all over again.
Or perhaps this breathlessness is down to wanting to know so much more about him.
Like why the fuck he tracked me down for what sounds like the opposite of a rescue mission.
And why he watched enough of my footage to know I’m decent at the wheel when the rest of the world only remembers the one time I almost sank my true love in the English Channel.
Most of all, I want to know if he pressed Pause like Lito whenever seawater left my shirt transparent.
Of course he didn’t.
His silence means I keep talking, piecing together potential reasons. “I don’t know much about hockey, but it seems like you’ve got it all. Luck has always been on your side, like getting headhunted—”
“Scouted.”
“Whatever. You got noticed despite having virtually no track record. And every contract you sign blows the last one out of the water. You break records.”
His head dips.
I keep going. “And you have a ton of contracts for brand deals. Then there’s that luxury apartment you share with your girlfriend.”
His head rises.
“That isn’t true.”
“Yes, it is. I saw the pictures. Your place is swanky.”
“No. I didn’t mean about my apartment. I meant that I don’t live with anybody.”
That isn’t what the article suggested under a photo of a woman with hair as black as mine partying while swamped by his hockey jersey. “Whatever you say.” I set my GoPro running, red light blinking. “Just hurry up and tell me the truth before my nuts really do freeze off.”
He reaches over, and for a split second I assume he’ll grab my camera and toss it in the water. He doesn’t. Warm fingers find the gap where my borrowed shirt gapes at the collar. “You are freezing. What happened to your jumpsuit and jacket?”
“Don’t change the subject.”
He huffs. “Listen, I . . . I can’t tell you everything. Not without an NDA.” He huffs again for long enough that the air clouds between us, a fog bank that clears to show him focussed on my camera. “Turn that off, and I’ll tell you what I can.”
Of course, I don’t press Pause on my camera. I don’t even pretend to by only stopping its red light from blinking. “This is what I do. Take me or leave me.”
Once I do steer us to shore and moor us, he chooses the leave option.
At least, that’s what I assume when he slings his suit carrier over his shoulder and strides off.
Calum turns just as abruptly. “You coming?”
I hurry then to keep up with his long-legged pace. One brisk walk later, I’m out of breath, and about out of patience, when he stops dead.
We’ve reached South Kensington, near the end of a row of the tall townhouses this borough is known for.
Ahead, a restaurant is visible. Light spills out in a golden reminder of an incubator that I hope to fuck isn’t baking my egg solid.
That’s where Calum suddenly decides to take his sweet time by walking slowly until we’re almost opposite plate glass windows beneath sparkling signage.
Penny’s.
He doesn’t cross the street to enter that restaurant. Instead, he backs into an alley. “Come with me.”
I do, which proves that my danger radar isn’t working.
It can’t be if I think following someone with brutal as part of his nickname spells safety for me.
And if I needed any more proof that I’m still wired to act first and think second, like my grand-mère always suggested was a family trait I inherited, it’s right here in me hurrying after him so fast that I almost trip over my own feet.
Calum demonstrates the lightning-fast reactions that scored a kid from Cornwall a fortune across the Atlantic.
He catches me and he doesn’t let go. We’re as close now as when I almost crushed an egg between us, then he gets even closer.
He leans in as if worried a passing late-night Christmas shopper might overhear this secret.
“I want out of my contract.”
I guessed that much already. “Why?”
“Because I’ve got a chance at a better deal for me long term.”
“Better for you?” He already has a contract worth millions. “Better in what way?”
He looks over my shoulder, and the light spilling through those restaurant windows finds glints of gold in his beard.
It’s another reminder of the glow cast by that incubator that fades as soon he backs deeper into the alley.
“The detail doesn’t matter. Not if I can’t get released from my contract.
” He backs even further into shadow, and I hope my camera’s night-vision catches what I glimpse right before his head dips again like it has once already.
He really is desperate.
“I need to get released. And I need it to happen ASAP. That means actioning a solid plan before I leave London.”
“Which will be when?”
“The week before Christmas when I’ll head home to Cornwall.
” I stave off a prickle of worry that my contest entry won’t be ready before my own mid-December deadline, and then tune into him adding, “Then I’ll probably head stateside before the New Year.
Maybe a little bit after.” He rubs the back of his neck. “It depends.”
I don’t need to ask on what. He rushes to tell me.
“This recovery time is my one real chance, Valentin. Wheels will start turning in the new year, and I’ll be handcuffed to a commitment.
One I would never have agreed to if I’d .
. .” Calum rubs at the back of his neck again.
“I need to deke it.” He translates what I guess is hockey-specific lingo.
“I have to find a way around it so I can take that better-for-me option.” I guess that option must involve money—it’s the next thing he mentions.
“That’s why I’ll throw cash at getting released.
What I don’t have is any more time after this December.
It’s all I’ve got. The rest of this month. ” He straightens. “And you.”
I search the shadowed face of someone big enough not to be scared lightly.
He is. I don’t need more light to see it.
I feel it the same way I did around Reece whenever lifeboat sirens sounded.
The difference is that Reece’s fears were for other people.
I’m not so sure that’s the same for Calum.
Besides, fear shouldn’t be a factor for someone who straps blades to his feet and hurls himself into the path of other giants.
To win.
“I can’t lose this chance.” He’s as gritty as I’ve felt each day closer to my contest cutoff. “It’s the last one I’ll get.”
To score an even more lucrative contract somewhere else?
I’m not convinced. Not after videoing parents handing over their life savings to bloodsuckers, desperate for a spot on a boat that could easily sink with their entire families.
Calum Trelawney has enough cash to buy a whole flotilla if he wanted.
Wanting even more cash shouldn’t make him as frantic as those families, should it?
I can’t see his real motivator. “What have you tried already?”
“To get released?” He scrubs a hand through his hair.
“Tried negotiating through my agent, but she got nowhere, apart from getting management to agree to this recovery time here. That was a big deal. A massive concession. A one-off. They wouldn’t budge on anything else.
” He chuffs, his breath clouding. “I thought that was it until I remembered what a player on another team did to get released.” Just as quickly, he says, “Forget about him. My club insisted on us signing extra NDAs since then.”
“Why?”