Love In Translation

Six

C húpamela!

Rheo jabbed her finger on the pause button on her video and cursed again. She flung a ballpoint pen against the wall, wincing when it left a black streak on the cream paint.

Over the past ten days, since Fletch’s arrival, she’d spent a lot of time planning her return to New York City. First on her list of priorities was to find out how rusty her translation skills were. Like most things, simultaneous translation required practice, and she hadn’t spoken Spanish, or any other language aside from English, for many months.

Biting the bullet, she’d downloaded training manuals for translators and spent a few hours every day moving up through the various levels. Once she got into the swing of it, the first two levels were easy, but today’s sessions—each two hours long—were much harder. She’d fallen way behind, and her Spanish word choices were consistently inaccurate. Thinking she might have a block with Spanish—the language of her biggest failure—she’d switched to French, and the results had been equally disastrous. There had been nothing simultaneous about her efforts.

Alone in Paddy’s office, with only a machine judging her, she fumbled her words. If she couldn’t get it right here, with no one applying pressure, how could she return to her job? Nicole expected her to come back with the same or better skills, and Rheo was way off. Way, way off.

Dear God, this was an ongoing nightmare.

Rheo heard a knock and hastily minimized the program before telling Fletch to come in. He strolled through the door, a little sweaty, a lot sexy, carrying two water bottles. Rheo swallowed, trying to keep her thoughts out of her eyes and off her face. Her nipples were out of control. It wasn’t fair he was so damn sexy, that every atom in her body reacted to him on a cellular level.

Whenever he entered a room, fireworks exploded under her skin, the moisture in her mouth disappeared and the ache between her legs intensified. She wasn’t particularly sexual, but Fletcher Wright, adventurer and the last man in the world she should be attracted to, just did it for her.

Rheo took the bottle of water he offered and leaned back in her chair, watching as he walked over to the window and pressed his shoulder into the wall. Fletch never stood when he could lean...

His pale gray sleeveless vest dipped low enough to show most of his chest. Unsurprisingly, he wore running shorts and a pair of well-used sneakers. On the days he wasn’t leaving early for a hike, a kayaking session, or rock climbing, he always went for a run. Watching Fletcher jog down the street, heading for one of the many trails in the hills surrounding Gilmartin, had quickly become the best way to start her day.

“How far do you run?” she asked him, happy to be distracted from her interpreting shortcomings.

“Normally fifteen, but my doctor won’t let me run more than six miles at the moment.”

Fifteen miles? Why would anyone want to run for so long unless end-of-world zombies were chasing you, threatening to suck out your brains?

“Why only six?” she asked.

He swallowed half his water before answering. “He says my body has taken a pounding and he wants me to rest,” Fletch replied, sounding grumpy.

“And has it?”

He lifted one bare shoulder in a dismissive shrug. “It’s his opinion.”

“An opinion built on experience and many years of study,” Rheo said, her tone dry. Fletch hated being told what to do, that was obvious. “Did you get hurt on one of your expeditions?”

“I put myself in hard-to-survive situations. There’s always a chance of getting hurt,” he replied. He didn’t answer her question, which was an answer in itself.

“You only ever walk to your friend’s house or the deli,” Fletch said, turning his sharp eyes on her. “Why don’t you go for longer walks? Why don’t you run?”

Oh God, he wasn’t going to lecture her, was he? There was nothing worse than an evangelical fitness fanatic. “I hide from exercise. I’m in the fitness protection program.”

Fletch didn’t smile, and Rheo threw up her hands. “C’mon, that was funny!”

“You’d enjoy hiking if you did it a bit more, got a bit fitter.”

Rheo leaned back in her chair and rested her hands on her not-so-flat stomach. “You’re confusing me with my cousin,” she told him. “She’s the adventurer in the family... Actually, that’s not true. Everyone in my family is obsessed with the great outdoors except me.”

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 single whoosh . “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.

Though only God knew where she was going. Her apartment was currently occupied and Rheo, the queen of planning, didn’t have a plan B. Plan A was also proving hard to nail down.

Rheo sent Fletch a tight smile and pushed her chair back. They had two days left together, so what was the point of sharing anything when she was halfway out the door? “It’ll all work out. I’m not worried.”

Biggest.

Lie.

Ever.

She was terrified to the soles of her feet and was rapidly running out of options. Carrie’s arrival meant Rheo had one of two choices: coming clean or moving out. She wasn’t ready to explain, to eat humble pie—admitting to her family how she failed was worse than the failure itself—but she didn’t have anywhere else to go.

She could stay on Abi’s sofa for a few nights, but that wasn’t a long-term solution. Returning to Brooklyn wasn’t an option either—she’d have to rent another place for a month and her expenses would eat into her savings. Wherever she went, she’d have to pay to rent a place. And get a temporary job to cover her accommodation costs.

But where? How?

That was her problem, not Fletch’s. Rheo tossed her water bottle in the trash basket. She was on her own and running out of options. And Fletch was a complication, a distraction.

She gestured to her screen. “I’ve got to get back to work.”

Rheo waited for Fletch to close the door behind him before resting her forearms and head on the desk. Yes, she was frustrated and overwhelmed, but she wasn’t finished. That would only happen if she gave up and quit. She’d checked out for four months, but she was back in the game. Sort of.

But, crap, it was harder than she remembered.

Two days later, Fletch stood in the kitchen, idly making scrambled eggs and splitting his attention between his food and the view. After almost two weeks in the Pink House, he expected to feel scratchy and antsy, ready to move on, but he’d yet to feel restless or hemmed in. Yesterday, he’d spent the day hiking, and today he planned on hanging out in the hammock strung between the two huge western hemlock trees at the bottom of the garden. He’d found a book on David Livingstone’s exploration of the Zambezi in the library, and he was eager to dive into the world of the nineteenth-century explorer.

He’d been for a run and Fletch was, strangely, happy to do nothing. The only irritation was his low-hum attraction to Rheo, an itch that wouldn’t go away. He’d expected the attraction to have faded by now but, nope, it was still there, bigger and brighter than before. And he spent far too much time imagining them naked, together, in bed.

His phone pinged and he glanced down at the message on his screen.

Shit, Fletch, I’m sorry. Am still in Hanoi, I’ve picked up food poisoning. Obvs, I’m not going to make my flight and I need to get better quick because I have a meeting with a producer who wants to talk to me about a travel program for Netflix. I will probably not get there for another few weeks. Sorry to break your heart, but stay in the Pink House for as long as you want! You understand, right?

Fletch pushed his annoyance away. The stomach bug couldn’t be helped, and he wouldn’t pass up an excellent business opportunity to fly home for a holiday either. He’d delayed some of his Gilmartin adventures to share them with Carrie, and she wouldn’t be here for ages. But he wasn’t going to wait around for her. He would schedule the Little White Salmon run for just before he left, one day of hard exercise couldn’t hurt him, surely? He’d also find a climbing party keen for him to join them, and sign up for some hikes. Compared to his normal exercise regime, running, light climbing, and hiking were well within Seb’s orders. The residents of Gilmartin knew he was in town, and having some clout, adventure guides would fall over him to make his adventuring wishes come true. There were upsides to being semi-famous.

He liked this town, enjoyed the vibe, and felt at home in Paddy’s house in a way he’d never experienced before. Houses, hotel rooms, even his tiny house in Portland, reminded him of being confined as a teenager, and any room he spent too much time in soon started feeling like a prison.

Having spent a year confined to a bed, Fletch valued his freedom above all else and reveled in his pick-up-and-go lifestyle. His quest for freedom went deeper than physical movement. It was, in a weird way, symbolic of his recovery and triumph over CFS. And, yes, ridiculous or not, he was scared that staying in one place for too long might somehow push him back into confinement and illness. Being fit and constantly on the move was his way of reassuring himself he was healthy and free. He wasn’t wasting his second chance to live life fully.

He shook off his thoughts and pulled in a deep breath. The walls of this house had yet to start closing in on him, so he was good for another week or two, maybe even three.

He didn’t need Carrie to enjoy the area, but how would Carrie’s news impact Rheo? She was leaving in a day or two, and he’d found himself dreading her departure. He had no idea why, especially since they hadn’t spent much time together.

He’d avoided her because of their hair-trigger attraction. He always scanned the horizon for trouble, and after that kiss they’d shared on his first day, he knew that if he and Rheo ended up in bed, and Carrie came back to Gilmartin, he’d have to juggle his time between the woman he was sleeping with and his adventure-loving friend.

Spending his nights with Rheo and his days with her cousin seemed sketchy, so he’d kept his distance. It hadn’t been easy.

And Rheo avoided him because... Who the hell knew?

But if Carrie wasn’t due back to Gilmartin for a few weeks, then there was no reason for Rheo to leave right away. Would she leave anyway? He had no idea. His stomach knotted.

Rheo affected his inner compass, made him feel like he was a few degrees off, less confident in his direction, and unsettled. He was a man who rarely second-guessed himself, but Rheo made him feel off-balance and curious. Normally, he’d be running for the hills, so he wasn’t sure why he was eager to keep that feeling that way, but he was.

Fletch tipped his eggs onto his toast. The kitchen door banged open. Rheo stood in the doorway and stepped out of her dirty flip-flops. Over the past week, he’d heard lots of cursing coming from her study—he presumed she still wasn’t as fluent as she needed to be. Some words he recognized, some he didn’t, since she flipped between languages.

When she had enough of whatever she was doing in there, she worked off her frustration by weeding her grandmother’s garden. He wasn’t much of a gardener, but he could tell a plant from a weed. Rheo, unfortunately, could not. And he wasn’t brave enough to tell her.

Rheo lifted her hair and twisted it into a messy bun on top of her head, securing it with a band she kept around her wrist.

She had a streak of dirt on her nose and grubby hands. She declined his offer to share his eggs.

Fletch sat at the kitchen table as Rheo washed her hands. Her tight vest showed the straps of her hot pink bra, and her ragged denim shorts traced the gentle curve of her spectacular ass. The table hid how much he appreciated the view.

His phone rang, flashing an unfamiliar number, but he recognized the Gilmartin area code. Only the adventure supplying brothers had his cell number.

“Mick? Or Sam?” he asked, mouthing sorry to Rheo.

“Mick. Sam’s run out for coffee,” the older of the two brothers replied.

“What’s up?” Fletch asked, placing his ankle on his opposite knee.

“We have two hardcore trail runners coming in at the end of the week, and they’ve booked a run with us. We wondered if you wanted to join.”

“Hardcore” meant distance and difficult terrain and long hours. The type of exercise Seb had forbidden him to do. Fletch should say no right now and not waste Mick’s time.

The devil on his shoulder danced. “How long?”

Mick replied quickly. “Forty miles.”

“Elevation?”

“ thousand feet.”

Hard but usually very doable. “And what time do your clients want to clock?”

“Between six and six and a half hours. Sam regularly runs those sorts of times.”

That was fast, and it would be a challenge for him to keep up. Fletch liked challenges. Then he remembered Seb’s directive to take it easy and silently cursed. He could ignore what Seb said and do the run. He felt fine, and Seb would never know.

Except that one of Louie’s nephews would tell Louie and Louie might mention it to Seb and his friend would wipe the floor with him.

Besides, if he couldn’t do something openly and honestly, then it wasn’t worth doing. Dammit.

“Next time,” he reluctantly told Mick and quickly ended the conversation before he changed his mind and disobeyed his doctor’s orders.

“What’s up with you?” Rheo asked. “You look like a bear with a sore paw.”

“Have you ever seen a bear with a sore paw?” Fletch demanded. God, he sounded like a cranky toddler.

“What’s put you in a foul mood?” Rheo asked, drying her hands.

Being unable to do what I want... His health was an off-limits subject and so was the urge to kiss her again, so he told her Carrie’d had a change of plans.

“She won’t be here for nearly a month,” Fletch told her, then forked eggs into his mouth.

There was no hiding the relief in her eyes, the way her body sagged as tension seeped out of her. Carrie’s change of plans suited her.

“What’s her excuse this time?” Rheo asked, keeping her tone light. “Is there a mountain she needs to climb, a dive she has to take? Is there a man she has to see, a temple she has to explore?”

He heard a hint of resigned irritation in her words. What had caused the issues between the cousins? Carrie was fun and outgoing, and she didn’t owe him her time. If she wanted to change her plans, she could. Like him, she didn’t bind herself to anyone. She could move at a moment’s notice, and they both liked it that way. Yeah, he was disappointed not to have her company in Gilmartin, but he couldn’t be pissed off about it. There wasn’t one set of rules for Carrie and another for him.

“Actually, she’s got a stomach bug and won’t make her flight,” Fletch told Rheo, his voice cool.

Rheo’s smile seemed a little sarcastic. “I’m sorry to hear that. But I bet you a hundred dollars something else cropped up. There’s a fish she’s trying to hook, a catch she’s trying to land.”

He couldn’t deny it. “She’s got a meeting with a TV network producer,” he admitted.

Rheo snapped her fingers and pointed at him. “And there it is,” she said. “I can’t tell you how many times Carrie has changed her plans at the last minute.”

Rheo dropped into a chair opposite him and leaned back on its two legs. She bit the inside of her lip, her expression a little anxious. He knew she wanted to ask whether she could stay, whether he’d give her another few weeks at the house.

She wasn’t ready to leave, and for some reason, he couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t ready to let her go. But he couldn’t help wondering how she’d ask him... Would she dance around the subject? Would she ask without frills and fuss? Or would she chicken out and leave?

Rheo put her chair down, her elbow on the table, resting her chin on her clenched fist. This woman had so many layers, and he wanted to peel them off one by one.

A ripple of terror chased up his spine. He enjoyed peeling off clothes, but going skin-deep was as far as he ventured. Relationships required sacrifices he wasn’t ready to make, and he had no interest in working out what made a woman tick. Rheo, damn her, tugged uncomfortable feelings to the surface.

A part of him hoped she left the Pink House and Gilmartin, and took her big eyes, her tempting body, and her vulnerability somewhere else. The rest of him wanted to take her right here on her grandmother’s kitchen table.

She lifted her head and her eyes slammed into his. “Carrie’s delay doesn’t change anything, Fletcher,” she told him. “I said I would go, and that is what I should do.”

Should . She said “should,” and that one word was a cracked door, a sliver of light.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” he said, his voice deeper than normal. He pushed an agitated hand through his hair. If she wouldn’t ask, he’d tell her. “If you want to stay, that’s fine.”

Then he added, “And I won’t tell Carrie you’re here.”

“Thank you, I appreciate that. I’d like to stay.”

She reached for his phone and spun it around. She liked to fiddle with things when agitated. He wasn’t a master of zen either. He was on a mental surfboard, feeling a mammoth wave rising underneath him. It would either be a great ride, or he’d wipe out spectacularly.

He frowned at the flash of frustration skipping across her face. “Am I missing something here?” he demanded.

Rheo sent him a smile as old as time and full of promise. A smile that made him lose his words. His shorts tightened across his lap. Rheo crossed one tanned thigh over the other and he nearly swallowed his tongue.

“Look, I know that I’m not wildly good at flirting,” she said, “but I’ve noticed you looking at me. I’ve certainly done my fair share of looking at you, and you’ve caught me once or twice. I think you’re attracted to me—”

Think? His eyes followed her every movement, and it took all his willpower not to make a move every hour of every day. He leaned forward and waited until she met his eyes. When she did, he kept his tone low, but definite. “I’m very attracted to you, Rheo.”

She nodded, closed her eyes, and scrunched up her nose. “I’m tired of pretending I don’t want you, Fletch. I’m tired of lying in bed, wishing you were with me, wishing your hands were streaking over my skin.”

Holy crap. Okay, then. He was about to make a move—hadn’t she given him a green light?—but Rheo motioned him to sit.

“Hold your horses, cowboy,” she murmured.

His horses were way out of control, and judging by the glint of amusement in her eyes, she liked his eagerness.

“Spit it out, Rheo,” he muttered. He looked at his hand, shocked to find his fingers trembling. This woman wanted him and it made him tremble .

Pull yourself together, Wright! Who are you?

“I’d like to stay in Gilmartin for a little while longer, Fletcher,” Rheo said in her precise way. “But I also want to sleep with you on a let’s-have-fun-while-we-can basis.”

He was on board. So, so on board.

“As long as you know there’s nothing more to my offer than some fun between the sheets. I’m not looking for anything more.”

Fletch frowned. That was his line, and she’d delivered it with aplomb. Unfortunately, her words didn’t ring true. Not because Rheo didn’t believe what she was saying—he could tell she meant every word—but because she deserved more. She should be in a relationship. Rheo should have someone to love and support her. Not him but someone...

You’re overthinking this, Wright. She’d offered and was waiting for his answer.

He wanted Rheo, Rheo wanted him...

Rheo looked anxious, like he was about to reject her... Jesus, how wrong could she be?

He stood and held out his hand. She slid her smaller hand into his. “Are you sure?” he asked.

“Very.”

Fletch nodded, dropped her hand, bent his knees, and in one smooth movement, lifted her and tossed her over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift.

He heard the whoomph of her surprise and her small fist smacking his back. He walked out of the kitchen and jogged up the stairs.

“Fletcher! What the hell are you doing?”

He kicked open the door to his bedroom, pulled her down his body, and dumped her onto his bed. She pushed her hair out of her face, and he was relieved to see laughter in her eyes.

He shrugged and grinned. “I’m taking you to bed, and I intend to keep you here for the next few hours. Is that okay with you?”

Her smile smacked him in the solar plexus. “Yes, very okay. But your delivery needs work.”

His delivery, now and later, would be just fine.