Summer Attractions (12 page)

Who was there for Kimber?

“You’re so tense,” Gabe murmured, lips just brushing the skin of her shoulder. Jemma instantly knew what he was doing, and what he’d likely attempt to calm her down. But there wasn’t time this morning, and the thought of Kimber’s perplexing problem and the lack of solutions hadn’t exactly put Jemma in the mood. So she quietly pulled away and slid out of bed, wrapping the hotel robe around her naked body as she headed toward the shower.

The basketball game was fun, a rollicking affair as the US men’s team soundly thrashed the Brazilian team. Gabe was sporting a rather annoyed pout as they made their way out of the venue and toward the transportation that would take them to the archery final held at the Sambódromo, which normally hosted Rio’s famous Carnival parades. She’d been fascinated to learn that the annual event was so important that the Brazilian government had literally built an entire stadium for it. She had every intention of coming back someday to watch it; Gabe had told her it was a spectacle not to be missed. What she hadn’t told him was that she already intended to bring him back with her.

“Where to next?” Gabe asked as they slid into seats in the tram. Unsurprisingly, not many people were flocking to the archery events, and the tram was only half-full.

“Archery,” Jemma said and Gabriel let out a loud groan.

“Not that again,” he said. “Jemma, that was worse than watching paint dry, and I already know from today’s schedule that you won’t be able to give me the same kind of reward you did last time.”

“I think it could be interesting, a really fascinating event to write about,” Jemma insisted, ignoring the shot of heat up her spine as well as his reminder about what she’d whispered into his ear last time they’d gone to the archery event and had later fulfilled, enthusiastically, in her bed. He was right. There wasn’t time for that today. Maybe she should appeal to his better nature rather than his baser one.

“It wasn’t interesting the first time.”

Jemma pulled out her notes. “What about Michael Chandler? He’s one of the US’ greatest hopes for a medal in archery in the last twenty years. That’s something worth writing about.”

“Michael Chandler?” Gabe asked in disbelief. “The same Michael Chandler that is currently sitting ten spots down on the leaderboard?”

She really hated his ability to remember even the minutest detail about an event.

“He could still win!” she exclaimed.

“I guess if we manage to witness a miracle today, you’ll have a great story about how Michael Chandler overcame all odds—and I mean
all
odds, including everyone standing between 9
th
and 3
rd
—to secure a medal for the US.”

Jemma crossed her arms stubbornly across her chest. “It could happen,” she insisted again.

“What are you going to write if Michael Chandler doesn’t manage a miracle today?” he asked.

“I could write about how we need to put more resources into archery,” she challenged.

He rolled his eyes. “Be serious.”

“I am serious!” she said. “We aren’t practicing what we’re preaching! All the little boys love Hawkeye and the girls all want to be the Mockingjay but nobody actually wants to take archery lessons. That’s why we’re not winning medals!”

“Calm down, Katniss,” he quipped, “I get it. I do. But the reason why nobody wants to take up archery isn’t because they aren’t properly inspired, it’s because it’s
boring
.”

She sniffed, pointedly turning her attention to the sights of Rio flashing by her window.

“Why don’t you do a feature on swimming?” he asked. “You seem to really be stuck on the coverage. Always wanting to watch the medal ceremonies on the TV and all the interviews with the swimmers.”

Of course he’d noticed. Jemma didn’t know why she was even surprised. She thought she’d been so clever, deliberately trying to obscure her keen interest behind a clearly unconvincing casual attitude.

“Everyone wants to write about swimming,” Jemma said stiffly, still not wanting to tell him about her run-in with Kimber and her subsequent moral conundrum. At least not quite yet.

“For good reason,” he muttered.

Uneasy silence fell between them as the tram headed closer to the Sambódromo. They’d never argued like this before, not even their first day, and Jemma didn’t like it. Gabe, while a bit prickly, was actually quite easy to get along with. He had an easy, charming manner, peppered with just the right amount of laidback sarcastic humor, and she’d enjoyed his company—so much that she’d developed a strong crush on him in just a few days. Of course, the matter of them
very
satisfyingly sharing a bed at night probably didn’t help either.

Since they’d never had a fight before, Jemma didn’t know how he’d react. She spent the time as the tram pulled up at the Sambódromo to try to formulate an appropriate opening remark, but to her surprise as they walked toward the entrance, he spoke first.

“Listen,” he said, reaching out to catch her hand in his as she tried to walk faster, “I don’t mean to make you feel like you’re not doing a good job. You’re so dedicated and excited, about
everything
, and it’s fucking admirable.”

Jemma glanced up in surprise, but Gabe continued talking, as if he was very determined to get all of it out, like he’d been doing exactly the same as her in the tram, but instead of thinking something snarky to say, he’d been thinking of the best way to tell her she was doing a good job.

She’d have to be a lot tougher of a person for it not to melt her heart a little.

“I think you should write about whatever you want to write about, even archery, even if I think it’s boring, because what’s most important is how passionate you are about this. Anyone can write, but not everyone feels the way you do.”

She gripped his hand tighter. “Thank you.”

He gave a short bark of laughter. “You can thank me later. After the archery.”

Flushing, Jemma searched frantically for a way to casually and not at all awkwardly bring up the fact that she was going to be way too busy that night working on her article to possibly do that. Before she could vocalize anything, he leaned over and brushed a kiss to the side of her head and murmured, “I know, not tonight, but when you have a spare moment for a poor, lonely man.”

Jemma giggled and her heart melted just a little bit more. She could feel it, almost teetering on the brink of serious jeopardy, but there wasn’t much she could do or say to pull back. All that was left was to try to enjoy the dizzying fall.

Later that night, Jemma and Gabe watched as Kimber won a third gold medal. Her smile wobbled, clearly at the mercy of greater emotions than the moment called for, and yet Jemma felt undeniably certain that it wasn’t the overwhelming happiness that any other athlete might have at winning three gold medals.

She was going to have to do something. It just remained to be seen what that something was.

Gabe left Jemma with a spine-melting kiss that ended with her pressed right up against the door to her room, his mouth hot and insistent on hers. They broke apart, her breath coming in short pants.

“You going to write now?” he asked, as he gazed down at her, his arm braced above her head on the door.

Jemma’s knees wobbled like her grandmother’s jello salad. “Yes,” she said, her breathlessness betraying how much she’d rather go do something else.

“When’s your deadline?” he asked, like they weren’t just hanging out in the hallway of the hotel, making out in her doorway.

“Tomorrow at noon,” she said. Barely twelve hours away. She had notes, she had interview snippets, she had a lot of material, but most of all, she had a burning desire to prove Gabe wrong.

Kind of like when her school paper editor had said one day in a meeting that nobody would ever be able to do a good feature on Colin O’Connor.

“You’d better get working on it,” he said, reluctance dripping from his words. Jemma thrilled at it; thrilled at the idea that he didn’t want to let her go into her room alone.

“I’d . . . you know . . . let you in, and we could hang out, but . . .”

His eyes flashed a few degrees hotter. “We both know you wouldn’t get anything written at all.”

“Right,” Jemma said, punctuated by a long shaky exhale.

“We can meet for lunch tomorrow and you can read it to me,” Gabe said.

“Deal,” she said, and slid her key card into the door slot before she could change her mind. The door closed behind her, and she leaned back against it again, still not sure her legs would continue to hold her.

She took a second to gather herself, then pushed away from it, locking away all thoughts of Gabe until a more appropriate time tomorrow when jumping his bones couldn’t possibly interfere with her looming deadline.

First, she changed into old sweatpants and a tank, threw her hair up in a quick bun, and ordered a ton of strong coffee from room service. By the time it arrived, she was already a few paragraphs in, her foot tapping in time to the music playing through her headphones.

She could very well have found something else to write about, some other event connected to the Olympics, but in an effort to try to hit some of the less popular events, the archery competition was what she’d chosen. And partly because she was so stubborn and partly because Gabe had thrown down the gauntlet about how boring archery was, she was determined to stick to her original subject.

It helped a little that Michael Chandler had defied a
lot
of odds and had wound up in a very respectable fifth place, not quite the bronze medal he’d hoped for but still an excellent showing.

Jemma wrote about the history of archery, how it had been the sport of the wealthy and the privileged, for hunting and war, and how archery had come into the modern age with Hawkeye in the
Avengers
and Katniss Everdeen in
The Hunger Games
, and how the characters had made archery
cool
again.

Taking a break to stare out the window to the dark streets of Rio below and drink a cup of coffee, Jemma pondered the construction of the article again. Pulling so many different narratives together was a skill, a talent really, because not everyone had the instincts for timing and rhythm and balance in a piece. Jemma had always been good at it, and she’d gotten better with practice. She’d always felt like that particular skill had been part of what had drawn
Five Points
to her samples. That, of course, and her piece on Colin, which had been, as far as Jemma believed, her best representation to date.

Of course, that didn’t mean that she was constantly searching for a way to top it; she just hadn’t had much opportunity before.

Coffee cup empty, Jemma returned to her keyboard, and even though she was jittery with tiredness and caffeine and nerves skittering along her spine, she turned on her most upbeat techno, blasting the bass through her headphones.

With the rhythm pushing her forward, she wrote about Michael Chandler, about his history growing up in Tennessee, shooting arrows at makeshift targets in his backyard, about how his uncle entered him into an archery competition as a teenager on a whim. And he’d
won
, and continued on winning, until he was the best archer in the United States, and the best chance for them to win an Olympic medal in archery for the first time in twenty years.