Don’t know where that came from. I was a translator, not a medic.
I didn’t give them a chance to argue, just guided him towards one of the other small rooms where there was a fridge and some chairs.
We’d been there for a few hours, and he hadn’t sipped any water. And the Portuguese heat and those leathers…
I opened the fridge and shoved a bottle at him. “Drink.”
He frowned at me before snatching it. “I’m not a child.”
“Then don’t act like one.”
He scowled, then cracked the lid and guzzled half—unzipping his leathers to his navel.The 91 on his chest was pulled apart by the zip.
I looked at the door because I was not about to oggle this man’s shimmering, sweaty abs and the way his chest heaved as he recovered from drinking so fast.
“Have you eaten anything?”
“No.”
Rolling my eyes, I opened the door, ready to grab him one of my snack bars from my locker.
“Where?” he called out in English.
“To get you something to eat. I have a…” Oh shit, what was the word for granola?“…Snack in my locker.”
“Can you go to mine? I need my bag.”
I nodded, he gave me his code, and I fled, hoping he’d have the decency to zip himself back up in my absence.
His gym bag was so heavy that I might need to reconsider going back to the gym. I grabbed some pastries from one of the tables and then returned to our little kitchenette.
Instead of going for the croissant I’d wrapped in a serviette for him, he pulled out a white, thin tube from his bag, reached over from his seat to open the fridge, threw some tablets in his mouth, and nearly downed a new bottle of water before wolfing down the pastry too. “Paracetamol.”
“Keep drinking like that, and you’re going to need to pee,”I told him.
“With how sweaty I am, I might need you to peel the leathers off me.”
I scoffed, nearly choking on a flake from my pain au chocolat. “Absolutely not.”
He sat back in his chair, eyes narrowing on me, a soft smile on his lips. “Livie said you could ask me to take my shirt off. If you wanted. Did you want to wait until we were in private?”
Now I was choking on my laughter. “She didn’t say that!” Isnatched the water from him to clear my throat.
“That’s what I heard.”
“Thank god you have a translator,” I sighed, passing back his drink.
He took a swig, looking me over. His voice was low and casual as he said, “You don’t look like a translator.”
I didn’t know what that meant.
My heritage spans Europe. My biological father was Hungarian, my mum was Portuguese, and the man I called‘Dad’was French. I was brought up in England, but of course, I had multiple languages up my sleeve.
But my pale skin, dark hair, and British accent didn’t exactly hint at any of that.
My sister, Everly, looked far more exotic than I did. She had the same dark olive skin tone as our dad, as she shared half of his DNA.
So defence blurted, “And you don’t look medically cleared to ride, yet here we are.”
