Penny & Leonard
July
CHAPTER1
Ryan
“Due to the current weather,all flights are suspended.”
I stared up at the boards, the same word repeated next to each flight out of Houston.
Cancelled.
I leaned back in the uncomfortable airport seat and looked at the weather app on my phone, taking nice, deep, cleansing breaths. It didn’t matter if I wasn’t in Manchester in the next forty-eight hours; it wasn’t like I had a multi-million-pound contract to sign or anything that the media had gotten wind of.
This was out of my control. According to the weather app, it was going to be out of my control for the next two days, maybe more. Flights were suspended across the Gulf States, including Texas where I was currently situated, due to Georgette – as in Tropical Storm Georgette and not some errant celebrity having a meltdown – who was currently ravishing the area with high winds and deluges of driving rain.
I sent a text to my agent, who would more than likely tell me to get a double whisky and a decent hotel room, then watch some porn. The last one of those wasn’t going to happen; porn wasn’t my jam. A decent hotel room was going to be hard to come by, given the number of people stranded in transit. Going into Houston for a hotel room probably wasn’t the best idea, not since an unidentifiable object had just careened past a window like a football from an overshot free kick, so the whisky seemed like the best piece of advice to take.
There was already a line to reclaim luggage, another sign that I was going to be stuck in Houston for the next couple of days. I was a realist, and when I’d alighted the last plane, one from some bumfuck in the middle of nowhere and the place where my best friend had decided to set up her new offices for our latest venture, I’d known this was likely to happen. I could’ve stayed, postponed my journey back, but for some of those at my about-to-be new club in Manchester, who didn’t understand the impact of storms like this because they didn’t exist in England, they could’ve taken my postponement as a sign of indifference to joining them.
So I was here. Stuck in Houston. I needed to book a hotel, find somewhere to sleep. Do some work. Preferably somewhere with a gym so I could at least get some strength training in, because pre-season started in a week or so.
Baggage claim wasn’t worth bothering with right now. If someone collected my luggage by mistake, they could have the pleasure of a lot of dirty laundry. My trip out here had been for work, not to raise my profile – although why I’d do that in the States was a good question – so there wasn’t anything other than my geek uniform of cheap ripped jeans and hoodies, plus some training gear. Nothing irreplaceable.
There was one hotel at the airport that had rooms available still, the others nearby were already full due to a convention or something like that. My grandmother, the gods supply her soul with whisky, used to say I’d been born under a lucky star. She could’ve been right. I wouldn’t mind her being right today, because I knew that the hotel was already going to be rammed with people whose connecting flights had been cancelled, along with all the flight staff who were stranded too.
I found my way there, only my laptop and hand luggage with me, and aware I looked like the world’s biggest computer nerd. Air travel and airports with contact lenses was something I despised, hence I was wearing my black rimmed glasses, which just happened to have been slightly damaged, and therefore had a bit of tape to help keep an arm on. I didn’t look like a footballer who was just about to sign for a fee that could probably keep a small country afloat for half a decade. I also didn’t look like the kid who’d been half of the developing team of a platform that was now used as the basis for most training apps, the ones that people subscribed to in the hope that just by doing so they’d lose half a stone.
It didn’t work like that. I only wish it did.
The hotel reception was clear; a worrying sign. What was more worrying was the notice that was standing on the reception, the one announcing that there were no vacancies.
Fuck.
That meant trying my luck at a hotel in town in weather that I doubted any cab driver would want to be out in, or finding somewhere to crash in the airport, which was going to be uncomfortable. I couldn’t imagine many of my teammates – from the team I was about to leave – in this situation. They’d be on the phone to their agents, demanding that they wave a magic wand and have a hotel appear just for them to stay in.
I grinned, thinking about the reactions of one or two of them if they were here now.
I’d enjoyed my time at Arsenal. It’d been good fun, even though it was football, but the move made financial sense and I wanted out of London, had done for a while, so transferring to Manchester Athletic was the right decision.
If I ever got there.
I headed to the hotel bar. A couple of drinks, beers rather than anything stronger, and something to eat was about all I could look forward to for the next few hours. Hopefully no one would mind if I fell asleep on one of the sofas in the bar, which would be comfier than the benches in the airport.
“I’ll have a negroni, please.”
The English accent surprised me. I’d been at the airport for six hours already and had only met one other person with an English accent. This speaker was a gorgeous blonde wearing tight ripped jeans and a fitted zip-up top. Her hair was piled on her head in a messy knot, and if she was wearing make-up it was minimal.
“A negroni. And can I get you anything else with that?” The bartender briefly looked at me.
So did the blonde. “Whatever he’s having.”
I raised my brows at her. She hadn’t heard me speak, so she’d have no idea I was from the same country as her.
“A negroni, too.” I nodded at the bartender who kept the same professional expression he’d had all along and started to make the cocktails. “Thank you. I’ll get these.”
She laughed, a sound that was a force of nature. “No. I offered. My treat.” She got onto one of the barstools, a movement that showed off her curves.
