Chapter 4

From the moment she met him in the lobby, Cara knew she had made the right decision.

It wasn’t just that he was wearing a shirt the exact same colour of her dress, a coincidence that made them both laugh and broke the tension.

It was that when she saw him he was Matt, someone who should really be a total stranger but felt like the exact right person to be with. Her co-conspirator. Her partner-in-crime.

Someone whose smile made her weak at the knees and whose touch, as he lightly held her arm as they went to a taxi, made her skin tingle.

"I was worried you’d stand me up," he told her later. She was surprised to see there was genuine uncertainty in his eyes. He couldn’t be used to girls standing him up, surely?

"It was a hard choice between you and the hotel seafood buffet," Cara said.

"The seafood buffet is every night," Matt said and she laughed again.

The taxi driver took them some miles out of the city, away from the coast and into the hills, until they came to a tiny restaurant in such a secluded spot that Cara wondered how it managed to get any clientele.

Her stomach was turning over with nerves and she wasn’t sure why. Was it the fear of being seen with him? Was it being with him? Was it a sense of the forbidden?

Cara let Matt order the food as he seemed to be more acquainted with the local cuisine than she was. As a cricketer he had travelled the world and was doubtless used to exotic places, she supposed. Her travels didn’t extend much beyond summer holidays to France and Spain. This was the furthest she had ever been from home.

In more ways than one. She was out of her element here, voyaging into the unknown.

Matt started asking Cara about her life. His head told him that this was a mistake, it would be better to keep things superficial and remain strangers as far as possible. But he wanted to know more about her. She intrigued him - his reaction to her intrigued him - and he was trying to figure out why.

There wasn’t much to tell, Cara felt. School, then university. It wasn’t as though she had even started a proper career yet.

She didn’t want to tell him about Declan, but he managed to coax it out of her. She gave him the very bare basics: that there had been someone, but she had recently broken it off.

"Was it serious?" he asked.

"I thought it was at one time, but not now."

"How serious? Living together?"

"No, but we were engaged," Cara told him.

"Surely you’re a bit young for that?"

That was what her friends had said. "Maybe. Not that it matters now."

Matt saw a shadow pass over her face and felt bad for asking her. The thought of Cara being engaged made him uneasy, partly because he was still trying to keep Miggy at arm’s length and delay what everyone assumed was inevitable.

Added to that, Cara was also considerably younger than Miggy from what he could work out. He hadn’t asked her what her age was, but from what she had said about her life so far she couldn’t be much past her early twenties.

There was something else that made him uneasy about the topic of her being engaged, but he didn’t want to think about that. So he changed the subject to ask her about more neutral things. What she thought of Sri Lanka, where she had travelled.

Because there wasn’t much to say, Cara eventually turned the questioning onto him. "So how did you get into playing cricket?" It was probably something any cricket fan would know, but he already knew she wasn’t a cricket fan due to her failure to recognise him or any of the team on their first encounters.

He gave her a potted history, the same he gave in any interview. Schoolboy cricket, university cricket, county selection.

"What’s it like, playing cricket?" Cara asked him. "I mean internationally, as a career?"

No one had ever asked Matt this. For a moment he was lost in thought just at this fact. He’d been asked any amount of times about how he was feeling ahead of a match or after a match, what he thought about an umpiring decision or his own performance, for his thoughts on other teams and players, endless thorny questions about cricket politics and the future of the game. He’d been asked personal questions: about his relationships, his family, his plans for the future. But never this.

Had he even thought about it himself? What was it like, playing cricket, being an international sportsman? An easy answer was to say it was a dream come true but that didn’t really explain what it was like.

"It’s strange, I guess. You’re always on the road, travelling, spending all your time with the team. But everyone else has their own family lives as well. It’s a very short career of course. You spend your first years worrying about selection and your later years worrying about injury and retirement."

"But you love it?"

He did. More than anything. More than being with Miggy, if truth be told. There never seemed to be time to step back and reflect, but doing so now Matt realised how grateful he was. He found himself thinking about a boyhood friend who had played alongside him in the under-19 team and for a couple of seasons of county cricket. He hadn’t made it to the big time and had ended up selling real estate. "Yes. I feel very lucky."

"And actually playing matches, what’s that like?" Cara asked. She was genuinely interested.

Once again Matt had to think about it. It was just something he did, not something he considered. "You’re very focused, it’s tactical. We spend so much time training and preparing. Probably just like anything except there’s more at stake with a test match."

"It must be hard when it’s going badly."

It was. Having to go out on a pitch day after day, half way through a series you were already losing, knowing the odds were against you. Knowing the savaging the press back home would deliver. No wonder he was so wary of journalists.

"It’s not the greatest. I think this tour will go alright though."

Then he was silent for a moment, looking into her eyes. This tour already felt different than others had, though he didn’t want to admit why.

Cara looked back at him. They held the gaze longer than they should have. The air felt charged with electricity. Deeper than that, she felt a connection with him.

Matt also felt as though for the first time in a long time, someone was actually looking at him. Matt Curran the person. Not the sports star, the captain, the famous international player. Just a man. He felt oddly exposed and wasn’t sure if he was comfortable with it.

She was so pretty though. He liked the way she seemed both shy and spirited.

The waiter appeared to top up their drinks, breaking the tension. Cara hadn’t planned to drink much at all, intending to have her wits fully about her. But she could already feel a warm glow and an increased sense of recklessness. The little stern voice inside her head, telling her to be sensible, to not get in over her head, was being drowned out.

It wasn’t just the alcohol making her giddy though. It was the proximity to this man, with his masculine good looks, his tall, athletic body, and the strangely haunted look that she sometimes saw in his eyes. A look of doubt. But she wasn’t sure what he doubted. Did he still not trust that she really was who she said she was?

Matt was wrestling with himself. He knew what he wanted to do that night. He also knew what he should do. It was funny, thinking back how just a few years ago he would have had no qualms. Everything would have been so easy. Was this exciting because it was illicit? Complicated? Did he want to pursue this girl because it was forbidden?

All he could be certain of was that for the first time in ages, he was seriously tempted. More that tempted in fact because he was going to pursue this. He was already doing so, he had already taken a huge risk just coming here with her.

The vision of a boy, over a decade ago, sprang into his mind. Arriving home and embracing his mother. "I met a girl!" His mother laughing, pleased. Her face lighting up with gladness for him.

He could hardly remember that girl’s name now. They had barely been out of their teens, it hadn’t lasted.

It hadn’t started that way with Miggy. Their relationship had burst into the tabloids almost from the outset, before he’d even had time to think. He remembered feeling almost furtive when he told his parents he was "seeing someone" and they told him that they already knew. Everyone knew.

He didn’t remember his mother’s face lighting up. Maybe her expression was neutral. Maybe she had been worried, even. For a wild moment he wanted his time back. To be free. To be able to tell them he’d met someone, with all the joy and hope of that first time.

"Are you alright?" Cara was looking at him, concerned.

"Just lost in the past for a moment."

"You look tired. Did you want to get back? I know you must have an early start tomorrow."

He wanted to get back but not for the early start. He wanted to get back to the hotel and lose himself in this girl. He wanted to drown out his problems and his memories and right now he felt that she was the perfect drug to do that.

Whether she was up for it was another matter. But he was going to try his chances.

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