Just My Luck by Rosalind James Page B

Mac brushed the question aside. “What matters is, they’ll be here. And we need to have the place looking sharp. Plan to spend some extra time tidying up this week.”
    “What kind of thing do you have planned for them?” she asked.
    Mac waved a hand. “Usual stuff. The easy routes. I don’t think any of them have climbed before.”
    “If it’s going to be filmed, though,” she suggested, “how about setting some new, easier routes on the high wall for it? That’s an opportunity we didn’t take, last time around. It only occurred to me later. But those guys are fit. If we make the climbs easy enough, they’d be able to get up high, even the first time. Well, unless they were scared of heights,” she amended, thinking of Nate. “And that’d look much more impressive on TV, for the team and for us.”
    Mac didn’t say anything, just grunted, and Ally heaved an inward sigh.
    “Still beating your head against that brick wall, I see,” her coworker Robbo said after the meeting broke up and they were doing their safety checks of ropes and carabiners in preparation for the lunch crowd. A climber snatching a few months of casual employment during the busy season, Robbo had started at the gym a couple weeks earlier. He was a cheeky young Australian with more attitude than height who’d asked Ally out his first day, shrugged good-naturedly at her refusal, and moved smack into the Friend Zone.
    “It was a good idea,” she protested.
    “It was bloody brilliant,” Robbo corrected her. “And that’s why Mac’ll be doing it next week. Or I should say, having you come in early or stay late to do it. And pretending he thought of it.”
    Which, of course, turned out to be the case. Ally did work late Thursday night to help set the new routes, and was back again Friday morning at seven. Saw the sign outside the gym: “Closed till noon today for private event: Hurricanes Training.” And tried not to think about Nate.
    She’d bet the whole thing had been Liam’s idea anyway. She saw him at the gym once or twice a week, sometimes with Kristen and sometimes on his own, and he always had a smile and a word for her. But he was a forward, she knew, so that didn’t make sense, because Mac had said it was the backs who were coming.
    Nate was a back, she thought for the hundredth time. And, for the hundredth time, shoved the thought aside. He wouldn’t even be there. Drew had said the All Blacks didn’t have to report to their teams until the first of February, and that was still a week away. And she’d be in the background anyway. Mac would want the limelight today, she knew. He might even let her leave once she’d finished with the routes, she thought hopefully.
    But he didn’t. Of course he didn’t. Which meant she was right there when the fifteen or twenty fit young men in bright yellow warmup suits sauntered into the gym, preceded by a camera crew who filmed their entrance, and followed by several handlers. Ally wasn’t entirely surprised, after all, to see Nate in the group. Somehow, she’d known he would be here.
    She got busy distributing shoes and harnesses, trying not to stare as the guys stripped down to short shorts and shirts that stretched tight over muscular torsos. No hulking behemoths here. Backs, she’d read during a bout of Internet research she wasn’t especially proud of, were primarily kickers and ball runners, lean and fast. And they looked it.
    “Ally,” Mac called from where he was standing with a young man who’d been introduced to the group as Simon, a member of the Hurricanes’ PR team. And with Nate. Of course. With Nate.
    She squared her shoulders, took a deep breath, and walked over to the little group. Acknowledged Nate with a nod, then tried not to look at him.
    “Simon thinks you should do the demo of how to put on the harness,” Mac told her. “For the cameras, eh.”
    “You put yours on first,” Simon suggested, “do a bit of adjusting, much as you can manage. The