Page 1 of Blindsided By You

Chapter 1

GEORDIE

“Rightlads,looklively.Five laps should do it.”

Coach’s gnarly face stretches into what passes for a smile as the team sets off. I hear muttering from some of them. Five bloody laps. He’s already trying to kill us at the first practice.

Jogging at the back of the bunch of rainbow-clad men circling the rugby field, a shiver ripples through me. We should thank the old bugger for the extra-long warm-up run. Our colourful practice jerseys aren’t standing up too well against the unexpected chill on this August evening.

The country is in daylight time, so five-thirty sunshine jabs at our eyes. It should be balmy, but welcome to summer in bloody Scotland. Today the wind off the nearby mountains cuts through me, reminding me I’m back in Cluanie, on the edge of the Highlands.

My homeland is welcoming me back with a sharp slap of the changeable weather—the main topic on the minds of everyone in this part of the world. Walk into any shop in this wee town and you’ll hear all the old biddies, and even more frightening, the young people too, harping on about the latest forecast.

Down in the Timor Sea, where I spent the past two years, the brutal heat of the tropics never lets up. Every frigging day is the same as the last. The only time anyone on a rig gives a toss about the weather forecast is when a tropical cyclone blasts through.

I’m not afraid to admit to being shit scared during those storms. There’s nothing like being trapped on an offshore oil rig in the middle of nowhere at the mercy of an angry sea to remind you just how insignificant you are. Lying in my bunk with the wind screaming, all I could do was hope the anchors held and we wouldn’t be tossed like driftwood on the crests of towering waves, and wish myself elsewhere.

Be careful what you wish for they say. While I’m glad to be back on dry land, and in a climate more to my taste, landing back in my hometown, living with my parents isn’t exactly what I imagined. But here I am and it’s not all bad. I get to do the thing I love most again—play rugby.

“Shit, MacDonald, is this what you guys call summer? It’s cold enough to freeze the tits off a bull.”

I grin at Nathan Wilder, the guy at my elbow giving me shit. I met him three weeks ago on my first day on the new job, and his Kiwi accent alone would make him stand out. But it’s the stream of outlandish sayings and creative curse words that pour from his mouth that make him so damn likeable. He certainly displayed his full repertoire in our first conversation on that call-out to MacFarlane’s distillery.

While Nathan paced and muttered, I wrestled with a malfunctioning temperature control system, attempting to chase down an elusive electrical fault. Determined to not face defeat on the firstday back on my home turf, I persevered and won. Nathan’s relief matched my satisfied grin at coaxing the system back to life.

With the control unit fixed, he quickly offered to shout me a beer at The Railway after work. An instant bond sprung up between us, and, nudged along by our shared love of rugby, has grown into friendship. He’s a newcomer to the town, and after so long away, I might as well be.

Now we’ve both made the cut for the Cluanie Rugby Football club’s 1st XV team, we naturally drift together at the back of the pack on this first practice night.

Our footsteps pound in time on the firm ground. The locals comment daily on the drier than usual summer, disbelieving smiles as they wake up to yet another day without rain. It might make them happy, but the dryness has left the field like concrete. Can’t say I’m looking forward to the first few tackles. It’s been a while since I put my body through this sort of punishment, but I’m prepared to lay it on the line for the game. Although this is amateur rugby, my own determination and our new coach’s expectations demand it.

Though my returning fitness means I could easily put on a burst of speed and catch up with the guys at the front—the ones I know from my rugby playing days as a kid—I stick with Nathan. I’m keen to help him find his place in the group.

As we round the dead-ball line, past the goal posts, all heads turn towards the edge of the field. Our coach, Robbie ‘Razor’ Sharpe, stands on the twenty-two mark, sizing up his new team with a critical eye, but it’s the movement behind him that catches our attention.

A woman appears from the carpark, and Robbie’s eagle eyes follow our gaze. The terse line of his mouth softens into a rare smile. It’s his daughter, Jenna.

She’s wrapped in a long padded jacket with a fur-lined hood. A good choice of clothing for tonight, even if it is summer. One hand clutches the collar tight around her neck and mouth, while she hands her father an envelope with the other. Sensing twenty pairs of male eyes on her, Robbie turns to us with a withering glare. We get the message. It’s ‘Eyes front, boys’. Coach Robbie’s daughter is not for us lower lifeforms to gawp at. Or ogle.

Though how we’re supposed to avoid it at Saturday night’s team-building exercise—otherwise known as a party—at their house is beyond me.

It must look hilarious to anyone watching. Like soldiers on parade, no one dares to look anywhere but straight ahead when we’re all dying to check out Jenna Sharpe.

I know what she looks like. Well, what she looked like as a teenager. I saw her often when she hung out with my older sister Rachel, and I dragged my feet into her mother’s piano studio for my weekly lessons.

Although it’s risky, my curiosity about this grown-up Jenna gets the better of me, chancing a sneaky glance as I come level with her. Fortunately, Robbie, distracted by their conversation, has his back to us. Her eyes, the only part of her face visible above the collar, dart my way for a moment. They’re still the same chocolate brown I remember, with the kind of warm depths you could lose yourself in.

Even as teenagers, Jenna and my sister Rachel wore their confidence like armour. Everyone in Cluanie knew they were destined for more than our dead-end town. Although they gossiped about boys like the other girls, they also plotted their escape to universityand careers in London, while perfecting their accents to hide their small-town Scottish roots.

Sure, they roamed the streets at a loose end like all teenagers trapped here; hanging out at the skatepark watching the boys ride the makeshift ramps someone had banged together, feeding coins into arcade games at the chippy, sprawled on the grass down by the loch, working on their tans. But there was always something different in how they carried themselves, as if they were just passing through a place that couldn’t contain them.

I must have been damned annoying, like a stray dog that keeps following you around and you hope it finds its way home before it ends up at your house. Rachel wasted no time telling me to piss off when I’d turn up on my bike, just ‘happening’ to find myself in the same place as them. Equal parts embarrassed by her kid brother’s presence and worried I’d dob her in to Dad for smoking round the back of the rugby club rooms or drinking beer with Kyle Stewart and his mates in the carpark at the top of Bourke’s Hill. I’d never have done that. Even as a little kid, I knew Rachel and I needed to stick together for any chance of peace in our household.

Jenna, always at her shoulder, had an undercurrent of softness my sister lacked. To Rachel I was her irritating little brother, whereas, maybe as an only child, Jenna cut me some slack. Whatever the reason, she smiled more, laughed easier and didn’t seem bothered by me hanging around.

The years in the cut and thrust world of sports PR have apparently toughened her. She’s got quite the reputation if the gossip at the pub is anything to go by. Yet watching her now, across the field, I wonder if that gentleness still exists under the professional veneershe’s cultivated, waiting for someone patient enough to uncover it again.

When our eyes meet, something flickers across her face—recognition, perhaps curiosity. That same smile seems to hover beneath the hood. I’m drawn to this adult version of Jenna; intrigued by the woman she’s become beneath the enormous jacket she’s wrapped in against the Cluanie chill. Maybe I could grab a few minutes with her, a chance to catch up on old times.

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