Valentine's Day. Nicola Marsh

nice to think someone would.’

      She lifted her eyes to his.

      ‘Isn’t that what anyone wants?’ he said. ‘Someone to sacrifice all for them.’

      ‘You don’t seem the type,’ she murmured, sliding into the passenger seat next to him.

      ‘I’m as susceptible as anyone to grand gestures.’

      She laughed as they pulled away from the kerb. ‘And you wonder why your staff are frightened of you.’ And then, at his frown, ‘If death is the only way they can get in your good books. Even metaphorically.’

      He stared ahead at the road, letting that sink in.

      ‘You value loyalty that highly?’ she risked.

      He took a moment answering, but when he did it wasn’t with the same light tone that they’d been firing back and forth since the war-games ended. ‘I’ve not had a lot of it in my life.’

      ‘Who from?’

      But of course he wasn’t going to answer that. And no matter how many hours of fun they’d just had, it didn’t give her much of a right to ask.

      Instead he turned to her, brightly, and said, ‘Want to grab something to eat on the way?’

      No. But she wasn’t ready to go home alone, either. Maybe she could wheedle some clues out of his assistant, Casey. Now that she was a super spy and all. Then again, Casey probably hadn’t stayed as an assistant to a man as exacting as Zander Rush for as long as she had by chatting casually about his private business.

      She’d have to be smarter than that.

      She matched the brightness of his smile. And the fakeness.

      ‘Sure.’

       SIX

      June

      ‘It’s a good ten kilometres longer than a regular marathon,’ the spectator perched next to Georgia on a fold-out chair said, his eyes firmly on the bend in the road they were sitting by. ‘But it’s only a club-training day so it doesn’t count as an ultra-marathon. It’s just a good run.’

      Georgia chuckled. Calling a fifty-three-kilometre run ‘good’ was like calling her drive up from London in her gran’s borrowed car ‘brief’. Though getting herself to the starting point up towards the Scottish border reminded her just how long it had been since she’d taken herself right out of London.

      Too long.

      So even if this was the craziest and most spontaneous of bad ideas, it at least had the rather pleasant silver lining of getting her out into fresh, brisk, northern air.

      The event didn’t run adjacent or even near to the actual Hadrian’s Wall remains; disappointing but understandable. The past two thousand years hadn’t been kind to them already, the last thing they needed was forty sweaty runners and their support crews plodding along their length. But the route trundled along paved roads and tracks and along a river in one place, and so Georgia was able to drive ahead, park, and set herself up at strategic locations with the other spectators to watch them go by.

      She quickly realised that Zander would be in the front half of the pack, though not right at the front. Those spaces were occupied by the elite professional runners and their support crews. But he wasn’t too far behind, sans support crew. Last stop she’d practically hidden in the shrubbery as the pack ran by, keen for Zander not to spot her on the side of the road. But as she’d watched him steadily plod past she realised he wasn’t paying the slightest bit of attention to the spectators. He was just lost in a zone of his own. The zone that got this tough job done.

      She’d had a good poke around a Roman ruin and Hadrian’s Wall itself and still been ready at this next vantage point twelve kilometres along for the moment he came jogging along the track.

      ‘Here they come,’ the man said in his thick accent, standing. He readied himself with squeeze-bottles of energy drink and a pair of bananas and stepped up to the road edge in case his runner needed supplies. Georgia stepped back into his considerable shadow so that she was partially screened from the runners.

      Just in case.

      Zander stood out in the field, both for his height and also his electric-green vest top. So she watched for that. Only about a dozen runners passed her before she saw the flash of lime and she tucked back even further into her companion’s wake. As before, Zander was totally focused on the path ahead and, not expecting anyone to be out here for him, he wasn’t looking for anyone. That meant his eyes were locked forward, determination all over his face, and he sucked air in and blew it out steadily between the thud of his sturdy runners on the track.

      A slick gloss of sweat covered most of the exposed areas of his body but instead of making him look hot and miserable, it just made him look...hot. Some men really did sweaty well and apparently buttoned-up Zander was one of them. The all-over sheen defined the contours of muscles that flexed taut with effort and made her imagine other ways he might get that sweaty. And that taut.

      She shut down that thought hard as he ran past.

      ‘Is that your guy?’ the man next to her asked, his eyes still on the bend in the road up ahead, his bananas and energy drink still outstretched.

      ‘No, he’s just a friend,’ she laughed. Way too brightly.

      The man glanced at her quizzically, as if she’d answered a totally different question from the one he asked. ‘I meant is he the one you’re here cheering on?’

      Heat surged into her face. ‘Oh, yes.’

      He turned his eyes back to the bend and waited for sight of his guy. Or girl. That was how little attention she’d paid to anyone but Zander. ‘Next stop you’re welcome to one of my squeeze-bottles if you want.’

      ‘Thank you, no,’ she said, dragging her eyes back off Zander’s disappearing form. ‘I’m just watching.’

      She picked up her fold-a-chair.

      ‘Well, I’ll see you at the King’s Arms,’ the affable fellow said. ‘We’ll all have earned a brew by then.’

      She hadn’t planned on waiting at the end, she’d only thought to watch him for a bit, get a feel for this sport that he loved, and then drive the many hours back to London. But while the idea of sitting waiting to surprise him in a pub didn’t appeal, the thought that what she was actually doing was tantamount to stalking appealed even less.

      ‘Yes,’ she suddenly decided. ‘I’ll see you there.’

      Late night be damned.

      She clambered her way back across the farmer’s field to where her car was pulled off the road heading west—the same direction as the pack of runners.

      As the afternoon wore on, Zander’s form remained steady but the exertion showed in the lines around his mouth and the cords that became more pronounced in his neck and calves. So even with all his heavy training this wasn’t an easy run. The front of the pack certainly made it seem so and she was always gone by the time the rest of the pack went through. But Zander went from the front-runner in the second cluster of runners to the rear-runner in the front group with a brief, lonely stint by himself as he transitioned the ever-stretching gap between them.

      Most of the other spectators went to the final checkpoint to cheer their runners across the line but Georgia headed straight for the small pub on the main street. There was no guarantee that Zander would even go there; if he valued his solitude enough he might just clamber back into his Jag and head straight back to London all puffing and sweaty.

      And she’d be sitting here for nothing.

      But she stayed. She wanted him to know she’d come—even if he might not be all that happy about it. She wanted him to