Man of the Match: hot celebrity romance (FULL NOVEL)

26. Rescue

[RECAP: Cara's friends are desperately worried about where she is. Cara's brother Will tells Matt that she's missing, and he's the actual father of her baby.]

Will rang before leaving Surrey to update them.

"It's looking like it must be Declan. Apparently he was over at your place yesterday and to cut a long story short, he wouldn't let Matt in the door."

"You've seen Matt Curran?" Fiona was on the other end of the line.

"He's here with me now. We're driving back as fast as we can."

"I've got one lead," Fiona told him. "Apparently Declan has access to some cottage in the countryside. Lucinda told me about it but she had no idea where it is. It's within an hour or so drive from town, but she didn't even know the direction. We've told the police but they don't seem to be on high alert because there's no sign of a struggle. As far as they're concerned she probably left of her own free will or whatever."

"Hopefully they can at least find the cottage. Just hang in there, we'll be with you soon."

Will and Matt started the drive in silence but the tension became unbearable. Matt kept remembering how weird Declan had been and it chilled him. He didn't know the guy but he could still tell something really untoward was going on. What if the reason he wouldn't let Matt in the door to see Cara was because...? No, he couldn't even start thinking along those lines. But if he had tried to coerce Cara into something and there had been a struggle...

He kicked himself for not just pushing past him and seeing Cara for himself. He replayed it again and again in his mind. He had to distract himself. "Do you live nearby?" he asked Will.

"No, I work up North," Will told him.

It was hard to hold a conversation given how anxious they both were, except for a few remarks. Matt asked Will what he knew of Declan and if he had been unstable in the past. They both avoided explicitly discussing Cara or Matt's personal life but their mutual fears were obvious.

Will wanted to hate Matt for the injustice he felt that the England cricket captain had done to his sister but he couldn't help liking him. It was clear the other man was incredibly worried about Cara. He obviously had strong feelings for her but he wasn't a man who wore his heart on his sleeve.

Will could admire that. He could see how it would be a necessary skill for sport as well, not showing emotion to your opponents.

They finally got back at the end of the day, there were still a couple of hours left before it got dark. Fiona and Ann had maps spread out over the coffee table. "Lucinda rang back and remembered a few more details about the cottage. Apparently they stopped at a service station just before taking an exit off the motorway. She thinks it was about twenty minutes to half an hour after that. She also remembered going through a ford, not long before they arrived," Fiona told them.

"A ford?"

"She said the stream ran over the road, and she thought it was flooded but Declan said it was always like that. So she must have meant a ford. It's hard to figure out exactly where as you'd need a detailed Ordnance Survey map to get the symbols, but there are a few places where streams look like they cross roads."

"Shouldn't we just give all this to the police?" Will said.

"We have. But we're not convinced they're serious about putting out a proper search yet, so we thought we'd give it a go ourselves. It must be the Weston Bridges service station as that's the only one out of town to the north, towards the countryside. Then I figured we could find a nearby pub and ask someone about fords in the area. They're pretty rare after all."