AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Okay.’ Rhona leaned back in her chair. ‘Natural blond, very handsome, complicated. Tidy flat...although I don’t necessarily hold that against him. Anything else?’
‘Very good at what he does.’
‘Aha! So you like him, then.’
‘He’s...got a lot of charm. And he’s tall.’ Alex decided to leave the bit about the great body out. Rhona was going to want a full description, and she’d been trying to forget all about what Leo might, or might not, have been doing with his great body last night. This morning’s papers had pictures of a very famous, very beautiful woman walking down the steps of a smart-looking building. Holding ti
ght to the arm that Leo had offered Alex last night.
‘And... Come on, Alex, you always go for the serious guys. Ever thought of a quick dalliance with someone who’ll leave you with a smile on your face?’
‘Leave me? You’re seriously suggesting I go out with someone who I know is going to leave me?’
‘Yeah. Don’t knock it. He crashes in, rocks everyone’s world and then leaves again. Five minutes of feeling good and then he doesn’t look back. You need to waste your time with a few like him, before you can work out who the right guy is.’ Rhona’s thumb gravitated to the band of her engagement ring in the way it always did when she talked about the ‘right guy’.
Alex sighed. Leo was already rocking her world, and the experience wasn’t altogether positive. He was charming, unpredictable, those flashes of commitment and compassion just enough to keep her wondering. Just enough to make her believe that there was more to him than met the eye, and that maybe he just needed someone to bring that out in him.
‘I don’t want someone who’ll leave me. And I can’t just tap him on the nose with my magic wand and get him to change. What’s the first rule in the book? You think you can change them, but you can’t.’
‘True enough. So ten minutes of magic is out, then. I bet he’d make it interesting...’
Alex knew he’d make it interesting. And she’d thought about it—who wouldn’t? But if the last ten years had taught her anything, it was to focus on the goals that were possible, not the ones which weren’t.
‘There’s no point in wasting your energy going after things you can’t have.’
‘Your famous single-mindedness?’ Rhona grinned. ‘You can take some time out from that, you know.’
‘What for? Life’s beautiful. Why fill it with the things you know aren’t going to work out?’
Rhona thought for a minute. ‘Dunno. You’ve got me there. Want some coffee?’
‘Yes, thanks. And thanks for the chat, Rhona...’
Rhona rolled her eyes but said nothing. There was nothing to say. It was all very clear in Alex’s mind. Leo was handsome, complicated and wouldn’t know what to do with a relationship if it smacked him in the face. And he wasn’t the one she wanted.
CHAPTER SIX
BY THAT AFTERNOON the picture in the paper—the one Alex was ignoring because it was none of her business—had done its work. Nudging at the jealousy centres in her brain. Telling her that all the good she thought she saw in him was just her imagination, and stamping on any notion she had of trusting Leo any further than she could throw him.
It had taken her three months to get a permit for the teachers’ car park, but when she arrived Leo’s car was parked in one of the spaces reserved for the Year Heads. When she inspected the windscreen, there was a note on the school’s headed notepaper giving him temporary permission to park there and when she shouldered her bag and walked towards the gym she saw Leo, wearing a fur-hooded parka, standing on the frozen ground by the entrance, talking to the headmistress.
Typical. Was there no one on the planet who was immune to Leo’s charm?
‘And Together Our Way provided training for your staff...?’
‘Yes, we have a two-day workshop every summer, in the holidays. The first one was just for our staff, but last year we invited PE staff from schools all over the borough.’ Belinda Chalmers was justifiably proud of the initiative her school had taken.
‘And has this impacted the culture of sport in the school? As a whole?’ Leo was absorbed in the conversation and hadn’t noticed Alex standing behind him.
‘Have you ever seen the winners of a race turn round to cheer the losers on to the finish line? I hadn’t, before I went to one of Alex’s race meetings, but now the idea’s caught on and it’s something a lot of our children do.’
‘Impressive. So the kids with disabilities aren’t just struggling to keep up. They’ve been leading the way.’ As usual, Leo’s questions had led him to the very heart of the matter.
‘Exactly.’
‘And you take children from all over the borough? Not just this school?’
‘Yes. But we don’t have enough places for all of the children who want to come. Even though we have a new gym building, we only have so much space and equipment. And there’s a very high ratio of trainers to children during the sessions, so we’re limited by that as well.’
