Chapter 3
PENNY HARRISON GRIPPED THE SIDE OF THE MATTRESS, TENTATIVELY pressing her foot down on the soft area rug beneath the bed. A sharp pain immediately flew up her leg and made her entire body tense.
“Damn it,” she muttered to herself, but felt the bed shift behind her. A warm hand slid up her bare back, tangling into the bottom of her hair.
“All right, love?” Alex asked, voice still rough with sleep.
The morning light was just barely creeping through the shades over the windows of his London townhouse, and the sounds of people leaving their homes, car doors slamming, engines rumbling down the street signaled the start of the day as well.
The taupe walls made his room warm and cozy, despite the floor-to-ceiling windows and high ceilings, with glossy white crown molding.
The dark, nearly black, wood of his bed frame and furniture gave the room a distinctly masculine air.
This was unmistakably his space, her luggage and some of her clothes strewn on the floor the only feminine touches in sight.
She looked over her shoulder, blowing a lock of dark brown hair out of her eyes. He was leaning up on one elbow, dirty-blond hair sticking up in all directions, the navy-blue sheets pooling around his waist.
“Still hurts when I put pressure on it,” she mumbled, leaning back into the bed and pulling the sheet around her as well.
“Doc said it would,” Alex reminded her, his arm snaking around her waist, drawing her closer. “A couple more weeks at least, until you’re at full strength.”
“I know, I was just hoping…” She trailed off, then sighed. “I wanted to play in Birmingham and that’s not going to happen.”
The scruff lining his jaw rubbed against her shoulder, soothing in its roughness, before he kissed the skin gently. “Doc said that, too. Grade-two ankle sprain, four to six weeks, minimum.”
“You never know, I could wake up one of these mornings and all the pain could be gone. Besides, he said it was between a grade one and grade two, the teeniest, tiniest tear.”
“Very tiny,” Alex agreed, sliding his fingers underneath the chain around her neck, pulling the old British penny from its usual home against her skin. He rubbed his thumb over the metal, his eyes suddenly far away.
“It’s not really Birmingham I’m worried about,” she whispered, her hand resting over his, stopping the motion and drawing his eyes to hers.
“I know, love, I know.”
Wimbledon.
Her ankle might be just fine by then, but there was a good chance it wouldn’t be, and even if she healed in that time, she’d have to miss weeks of training leading up to the tournament, the most important of her life.
After beating Zina Lutrova in the third round at Roland-Garros, even with her ankle barely holding her weight by the end, the entire tennis world expected her to pick up right where she left off.
She went into the French Open expected to do well, but she would be going into Wimbledon expected to win.
The injury couldn’t possibly have come at a worse time, right before the shortest break between Grand Slams. She’d been at the top of her game at Roland-Garros, was on track to win the whole thing, but instead, she’d had to watch from the stands with an air cast on her foot as someone else hoisted the trophy.
For Penny, there was nothing closer to hell on earth than watching someone else play while being told she couldn’t.
Even Alex’s trophy, downstairs in his ridiculously gorgeous home, mocked her every time she walked past it, though it would be worse back at home.
Jack and Dom would be fussing over her and she’d have to watch everyone else train day in and day out.
She was better off here, where she at least had London to explore and Alex to show her everything he loved about his hometown, even if they hadn’t actually explored much more than his bedroom…
and most of the other rooms of his house.
“All right, no time for a lie-in this morning. Time to get up,” he said, pulling away and grabbing his watch from the bedside table. “Paolo will be here soon, and while I’m sure he’d appreciate how you look right now, he definitely doesn’t want to see my naked ass.”
The bed shifted behind her again and Alex groaned, his reflection in the window stretching his arms over his head. “You take the shower here, love. Easier on that ankle,” he said, gathering some clothes from his dresser and heading down the hall to another bathroom.
She hobbled over to where her suitcase was resting atop his dresser, dug through it, and found one of her dresses, only slightly wrinkled from the trip across the channel.
They’d stayed a night in Paris, celebrating his victory at a nightclub with a name she couldn’t pronounce, and from there it had been a short trip to London.
She’d planned on staying at The Dorchester, but Alex had actually laughed at the idea and brought her straight home.
It was a lovely house in a gorgeous neighborhood made up of white townhouses facing a small park, each house with an actual garden in the back, a rarity in a city like London. She knew it must have run him millions.
The shower in the en suite was walk-in with a long bench that she could sit down on and keep the weight off her ankle.
As the hot water sluiced over her body, she half wanted to call out for Alex to come join her but knew that was probably a bad idea.
They’d get distracted, much the same way they had over and over again the night of their arrival from Paris, when he’d promised his mother they’d go to her house for dinner and he’d forgotten about it completely.
They had to start being able to rein in that desperate need for each other soon.
It wasn’t normal to want someone that much, was it?
Penny bit her lip and laughed as she shampooed her hair. She decided that she didn’t care.
Normal or not, it was amazing.
She made her way slowly down the stairs toward the smell of coffee brewing and the sounds of a conversation, half in English, half in Italian, the words meshing together so seamlessly, like a completely new language.
Paolo Macchia, one of Alex’s best friends and his training partner while they were in London, must have arrived while she was in the shower.
Her cheeks warmed, glad she hadn’t given in to the urge to call out and invite Alex to join her.
Paolo had been in Paris, too, but she and Alex hadn’t exactly been on speaking terms for most of their time there, so she hadn’t actually met the man yet.
He wasn’t playing at Queen’s, the London tournament that served as the men’s warm-up for Wimbledon.
Alex probably shouldn’t either, but he felt a deep loyalty to the tournament hosted by the courts he’d grown up playing on as a junior.
So, despite being more than a little drained by the quick turnaround, he kept his commitment to the place that had given him so many opportunities over the years.
At least it gave her the chance to get to know Paolo. So much of their relationship had been centered in her world. She was looking forward to knowing more about his.
Smoothing down the skirt of her floral-print sundress, she braced her weight on the end of the banister and leapt lightly off the last two stairs, landing on her good foot with ease.
As she leaned over just a bit onto her bad foot, the pain wasn’t quite as intense as when she’d awoken, the hot water having done it some good.
Limping just a bit to keep her weight off it, she stepped into the kitchen and let out a little shriek as she was immediately swept up into a hug, but not into the strong arms she was accustomed to.
The man she assumed was Paolo spun her around and then put her down gently before kissing each of her cheeks.
“Come here.” He held her back by her shoulders, looked her up and down, but there was nothing creepy or predatory in it. It was sweet, actually. “Perfetto.”
Alex stood just a few feet away, leaning against the island at the center of his massive kitchen, a smirk playing across his face as Paolo finally released her. “I told you so,” he said, standing up straight.
“Sei felice.”
And suddenly it felt like this meeting was a lot more important than she’d initially thought.
Penny twisted her mouth into a pout and raised her eyebrows, knowing they were talking about her but not having any idea what they were saying.
“If you’re going to stick around, you need to teach me some Italian,” she said, moving toward the coffee machine to pour herself a cup.
Paolo nodded. “It is easy. I’ll teach you.”
“Where’s your boot?” Alex cut in, frowning down at her bare feet.
Penny wrinkled her nose. She hated that damn boot. “In the library. I took it off last night when I was reading, then someone stole my book and decided to…” Alex’s hand slid over her mouth and muffled the rest of her words, his other arm sliding around her waist, pulling her back against his chest.
Paolo’s face warmed in a huge smile, olive skin crinkling at the corners of his hazel eyes as they twinkled in amusement, a lock of nearly black hair falling across his forehead, making him look even younger than his twenty-four years.
“I do not want to know, but Alex, if we don’t leave soon, they will give our practice court away. ”
It wasn’t true, of course; they’d hold the training court for hours if Alex asked them to. Right on time, the doorbell rang, signaling that the car scheduled to take the guys to the Queen’s Club had arrived.
“I’ll see you later, right?” Alex asked as he and Paolo grabbed their bags. His quarterfinal match was scheduled for later that night.
She pushed up on her toes and he gripped her elbow to help her balance as she pressed a soft kiss to his lips. “I’ll be there with bells on,” she said, rolling her eyes. As if she hadn’t been at his matches all week.
“Bells on?” Paolo asked as they both shuffled out the door.
“She’s American,” Alex said with a laugh, and Penny huffed in mostly mock annoyance, but they were already out the door and beyond her reach.
She limped into the library, a large room with bookshelves stuffed to the gills.
Alex always had a couple of novels on his nightstand in his house near OBX, but she still hadn’t expected this room to be quite so packed or the books so well loved.
No one would believe her if she told them, but Alex Russell, Britain’s bad boy, was a closet book nerd.
She found her boot right where she’d left it next to a brown leather sofa in the center of the room and slid the horrible thing on, tightening the Velcro straps across the front. Now there was nothing but time to kill.
Her phone was on the table where she’d left it beside the book Alex had ripped from her hands the night before, and checking the time, she calculated the difference, knowing it was still the wee hours of the morning in North Carolina.
That didn’t stop her, though, as she ignored the night’s worth of notifications and messaged Indy.
It’s 3am. Go to bed! You have training in four hours!
She waited and then grinned when the reply came back.
Fuck you. Night! :-)
She tossed her phone down beside her. She hadn’t even needed confirmation to know Indy was certainly up way too late analyzing training footage.
She picked up the book Alex had suggested, something about elves by the same guy who wrote The Lord of the Rings, but it just wasn’t going to hold her attention.
Tossing it aside, she grabbed the remote and switched on the TV, a flat-screen monstrosity surrounded by shelves with even more books.
She flicked through the channels and found Sky Sports, then settled in to watch a soccer match, a replay from the night before, but she thought it might actually keep her attention on something other than the boot.
“And Penny Harrison, basically on one foot, is going to try and serve out this match against the number one player in the world.” The broadcaster’s voice, filled with awe, echoed through the speakers.
“We all knew how talented she was, heard everyone comparing her to Steffi and Serena, but ladies and gentlemen, she isn’t just great, she has heart. ”
“Oh, no way. You’ve got to be kidding me,” she muttered as she watched a black-and-white version of herself limp across the beat-up clay on Chatrier, the crowd noise fading quickly, replaced by the imported sound of a racing heartbeat, steadily slowing down as the camera zoomed in on her face, her pupils almost fully dilated, making her eyes look black.
Her jaw clenched against the agony in her ankle.
The sweat trickled down her forehead in tiny rivers as she tossed the ball up for the serve.
Then the screen went black with the sound of her serve, her scream, the crowd exploding, followed by silence as the Nike logo flashed broad and bold across the TV.
She grabbed her phone and flicked through her messages before finding one from Jack, who, when he wasn’t being her agent, moonlighted as her older brother.
Nike is trying to capitalize on the injury. Commercial to air up to and during Wimbledon. Call you tomorrow with the details.
After texting him not to bother, that she’d already seen it, she sighed, letting her head fall back onto the arm of the couch.
Famous for winning, but not exactly the way she’d imagined.
Gotta be more careful what she wished for because she just might get it.
The only thing to do now was to replace that moment with a different one.
Screw it.
She was going to win Wimbledon, even if her fucking foot fell off in the process.