Extra Time (50 page)

‘You lost something?’

She quickly turned back to Ronnie. ‘No. No, I’m just… I’m busy.’

He raised a questioning eyebrow, giving her that look again. ‘You’re busy. Doing what, exactly?’

‘Nothing, it’s…’

Ronnie sighed, walking into the hall before Amber could stop him, just as Ryan came jogging down the stairs. And even in the midst of this rather awkward situation Amber couldn’t help but notice how hot and handsome he looked in jeans, army boots, and a t-shirt that showed off those toned and tattooed arms, his dark hair falling over his eyes, that familiar stubble still making him look all the more sexy. No wonder her stomach couldn’t stop flipping over.

Ronnie stopped dead in his tracks and stared at Ryan, before turning to Amber, shaking his head. ‘No. Don’t tell me… not again, Amber. Please tell me you didn’t…’

Ryan stood at the bottom of the stairs, looking at Amber, who once again had decided to focus on the tea towel that was wound tightly between her fingers.

‘What do you
think
happened, Ronnie?’ She pushed past both of them, going back into the kitchen.

‘For fuck’s sake… What the hell are the pair of you playing at? Huh? I mean, if this was a mess before, then you’ve both just upgraded it to fucking chaos!’

‘You don’t know anything, Ronnie,’ Amber said quietly, watching as Ryan followed them into the kitchen, leaning back against the wall and folding his arms.

‘I know that you and him shouldn’t be doing
this
.
He’s
supposed to be on a plane to frigging Tenerife and
you’re
supposed to be sorting your marriage out…’

‘My marriage is finished, Ronnie, and you know that,’ Amber hissed, finally ridding herself of the tea towel. ‘It’s over, and if I wanted – if I
needed
– just a few hours to forget that fact, a few hours where my fucking heart isn’t breaking because the man I love with every inch of my being doesn’t want to be with me, then I’ll take those few hours. I’ll take them, and what’s more, I enjoyed them.’

‘You should have called
me
,’ Ronnie said, his voice quieter but still with an edge that displayed more than a hint of anger and frustration. ‘I’m your friend. That’s what I do, I help you, Amber.
I’m
supposed to be the one you turn to;
I’m
the one who’s supposed to be there for you.’

‘I needed more than just a chat, Ronnie.’

‘And I could have given you that, too. Don’t you see? Have you fucking forgotten what happened just a few months ago?’

‘I needed him.’ Amber’s voice was raised now, tired of trying to explain something she couldn’t really explain herself. And then the anger suddenly faded, leaving her words quiet and only just audible. ‘I needed
him
.’

Ronnie leaned back against the counter, pushing a hand through his hair. ‘You didn’t need him, Amber. You just needed someone.’

Amber turned away, her eyes meeting Ryan’s, and whilst last night she may have agreed with what Ronnie had just said, now she wasn’t quite so sure.

‘You really need to make sure you lock your front door, Amber. Anyone could walk in.’

She broke away from Ryan’s stare to see Max standing in the kitchen doorway, hands in pockets, dark glasses pushed up into his salt-and-pepper hair.

‘Something either of you two want to tell me?’ he asked, indicating first her then Ryan.

‘Shit! Sorry, Max,’ Ryan sighed, throwing his head back. ‘I should have called you.’

‘Yeah. You should have.’

Ronnie looked at Amber, raising that cynical eyebrow again. She ignored him.

‘Doing a disappearing act the night before you’re due to begin a pretty high-profile, not to mention controversial, loan period abroad wasn’t the smartest of moves, Ryan,’ Max said, helping himself to coffee. ‘So I can only hope that you were careful enough not to have allowed any unnecessary publicity to rear its head.’ He looked straight at Ryan, fixing him with a look that said the answer he was expecting was yes.

Ryan’s eyes met Amber’s again, and neither Max nor Ronnie missed the look that passed between them.

‘So,’ Max went on, taking a sip of coffee in his usual calm and controlled manner. There was no situation that could faze Max Mandell. He’d seen it all, and more, in his years as a top football agent. There was nothing he couldn’t handle. ‘You two got anything you want to share with the rest of us? Or can we just assume that this was your way of saying goodbye?’

Amber looked down at her hands, unsure of what to do with them now that she’d discarded the tea towel. ‘It was just a night out,’ she said, wishing her stomach would unravel itself from the mass of knots it was tied up in. It was making her feel sick again.

‘Ryan?’ Max turned his attention to his unpredictable client.

Ryan said nothing for a second, pushing a hand through his hair as he turned his head to look out of the window. ‘Like Amber said, it was just a night out.’

Amber didn’t miss the slightly sarcastic laugh that came from Ronnie, but again she ignored him.

‘Right. Well, in that case, you’d better finish saying your goodbyes, Ryan, because we have a plane to catch. Five minutes, then I want you outside and in that car, you listening to me?’

Ryan nodded, once more looking over at Amber, who seemed more interested in what was happening out in the garden.

‘Everything all right, princess?’

She turned to see Max standing right beside her, his voice a little softer than it had been before. She smiled, folding her arms against her chest. ‘Everything’s fine.’

‘You sure?’

‘It’s a crazy time, Max. That’s all.’

He reached out to gently squeeze her shoulder. ‘Yeah. I know it is, kiddo. So you call me if you need me, okay?’

She smiled again, not sure if it had reached her eyes, but she didn’t really care. Suddenly she was too exhausted to worry about things like that.

‘Do you want to say goodbye to Romeo over there on your own?’

She looked up, surprised that he’d asked that. But glad. Because she didn’t want Ryan to walk out like this, not like this. It would leave things way too open-ended and she needed some kind of closure if she was ever going to deal with moving forward.

‘Yeah.’ Her voice was quiet again, almost a whisper. ‘Thanks.’

‘Max…’ Ronnie objected, looking at him with an expression of disbelief.

‘Come on, Ronnie. Let them say goodbye. A couple of minutes, that’s all.’ Max looked at Amber again, and she nodded, all of a sudden loving this man in front of her for giving her this chance she hadn’t even realised she’d needed. She’d thought she’d said every goodbye there could be to Ryan Fisher a long time ago, but it seemed she’d been wrong. It seemed that she’d never really said goodbye at all.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Ronnie sighed, walking out of the kitchen, closely followed by Max.

Amber waited until the door closed behind them before she looked up, watching as Ryan walked over to her.

‘Thank you,’ he said, his hands still stuck in his pockets as he stood in front of her. ‘For last night.’

‘You make it sound so impersonal when you put it like that.’ Amber was finding it hard to even look at him as every confusing feeling she’d been experiencing for hours now seemed to whirl round faster and faster inside her head.

He looked down at his boots for a second before raising his head to finally meet her gaze, their eyes locking together in a stare so intense she felt a bolt of something sharp and shocking shoot right through her.

‘You take care of yourself,’ he whispered, stepping forward, reaching out to gently touch her face, cradling her cheek in the palm of his hand. ‘You hear me?’

She closed her eyes as his mouth met hers, her body pressing against his, and it was an automatic reaction to slide her arms around his neck, to hold him tight and lose herself in that kiss.

His hands slid up under her shirt, the touch of his fingers on her skin making her gasp out loud before the kiss deepened even more, their tongues entwining, dancing round each other. He tasted so good, and he’d been there for her at a time – and this was where Ronnie had been right – when she’d needed somebody. But not just anybody, because, deep down inside, Amber knew she’d needed
him
. For those few hours she’d needed
him
. But now it really was time to say goodbye, to move on and let him start that new life he was moving abroad to begin.

He pulled away slightly, looking at her, playing with the open collar of her shirt, letting his hand slide down slightly, skimming the curve of her breasts with his fingertips.

‘Go on, get out of here,’ she said, trying to force a smile as a hundred and one memories of her time with this man – good and bad – flooded her already crowded brain. She really had loved him. Once.

‘You trying to get rid of me?’ He smiled, too, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear as he leaned forward to kiss her again. ‘Because I’m sure Max said I had five minutes, and I may not be the best mathematician there ever was, but I’m positive I’ve still got a couple of those left.’

This time the smile came naturally. He was making her feel like a teenager saying goodbye to the boyfriend she’d been forbidden to see, rather than a thirty-eight-year-old woman who should know better than to let this get to her.

‘Then shut up and kiss me some more, before you waste what little time you have left.’

She closed her eyes again as his mouth rested on hers, moving slowly against it until they had that perfect rhythm going, and for a final few seconds she lost herself in him, in this crazy, complicated man who’d stolen a piece of her heart she would never get back, she knew that now. She knew that. And that was all she was sure of right now.

‘You could still come with me,’ Ryan whispered, his hand holding tightly onto hers, clinging onto her as though he was scared to let go.

‘No, Ryan, come on, baby. We’ve been through this. You know where my head is at the minute – it’s all over the place. And I think yours is, too, which is why you’re going away in the first place, you need to remember that.’

He rested his forehead against hers, kissing her quickly, still reluctant to let go of her hand. ‘It’s all so fucked up, Amber. All of it. I don’t even know what I’m doing anymore.’

‘Hey, come on.’ She placed a hand on his face, stroking his cheek with her thumb. ‘Listen to me, okay? You’re gonna be fine. You’re gonna get out there and show the Spanish how it’s done, do you hear me? Yes, things are confusing and fucked up and what we’ve done here hasn’t exactly helped matters, but once you get out there, Ryan, you’ll see that this really is the best decision. For all of us.’

He squeezed her hand, suddenly aware that he had tears in his eyes, but he didn’t care. He didn’t. Right now he felt like someone had just kicked him hard in the solar plexus, knocking every breath he had clean out of him. And he was scared. Yeah, he was scared. Scared of what he was doing, and sad for the things he hadn’t done.

‘And the next time I see you I expect you to at least be able to say a few words of Spanish. Okay?’

‘Amber…’

‘You’d better go.’ She smiled, letting go of him and turning away, focusing on the garden outside and not him, because to focus on him would be dangerous. She’d said her goodbyes, and now he needed to leave.

‘I love you, Amber. I want you to know that. I love you. And I don’t think I ever stopped.’

She closed her eyes as she heard him walk away, heard the sound of muffled voices out in the hall before the sound of the front door banging shut heralded in a fresh bout of tears that she quickly blinked away. She was determined that today was the day she became stronger and stopped letting weakness take hold at a time when showing weakness just wasn’t going to work. It wasn’t going to get her anywhere. It wasn’t going to help.

‘You okay?’

She swung round to see Ronnie standing there, his expression softer now, his voice more understanding. ‘Not really.’

‘It’s for the best, Amber. You know that.’

‘Yeah.’ She sniffed, turning away from him for the briefest of seconds to wipe away a stray tear that had escaped. ‘Yeah, I know.’

He walked over to her, reaching out to take her hand, but she pulled it away, folding her arms against her. Right now, she didn’t want his sympathy. She didn’t want to be comforted by him or sit down and have one of those ‘chats’ that were supposed to make her feel better. She wasn’t even sure she
wanted
to feel better. Maybe she deserved to feel this miserable and confused. Maybe it was some kind of payback for displaying so much weakness. She was a different woman to the one she’d been a year ago, and she wasn’t altogether sure she liked this version of her.

‘Amber, sweetheart…’

‘No, Ronnie. I don’t want to talk, okay? I just want to be on my own.’

‘Don’t be stupid, kiddo. I can’t leave you on your own when you’re like this.’

‘Like what? I’m fine, okay? I’m just tired of always having people around, confusing me…’

‘How the hell am
I
confusing you? Come on, Amber. I just want to be there for you, I want to help you…’

‘Then leave me alone.’ She looked at him, right into eyes that had never hurt her, never lied to her, and she knew they never would. But she didn’t need him right now. She didn’t need anyone. ‘If you really want to help me, just leave me alone. Please.’

‘I don’t want to do that,’ Ronnie whispered.

‘Please, Ronnie.’

He stared back at her, knowing exactly what was going on inside her head. And knowing he shouldn’t be going anywhere. ‘You don’t have to pretend to be strong with me, Amber.’

‘I’m not pretending to be anything. I just want to be alone.’

He shook his head, taking a couple more steps forward, his eyes still on hers. ‘No, you don’t. Not really.’

‘Please don’t tell me what you think I’m feeling, because you have no idea.’

‘Why are you pushing me away, Amber?’

‘I’m not pushing you away.’

‘Yes, you are. I’m trying to be there for you and you’re just…’

‘I don’t want you to be there for me, Ronnie. I don’t need that from you, okay? I don’t need that anymore. I’m a big girl now. I can handle all this crap on my own. So just go. Please.’