Head Over Wheels

Chapter 1

Lori

I could pinpoint the exact moment my luck turned.

It was a morning at the end of November, in the hills around Girona, the first day of pre-season training camp - my first day back in Europe after three long months of recovery. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, the crisp autumn air was the perfect temperature for cycling and I was back on the road, not the smallest suspicion of what was about to hit me.

Hurtling down my favourite set of wild hairpins in the high, scrubby hills, I hunched into position for the next sharp curve with a grin twisting my lips. I leaned in and took the corner at speed but, before I could straighten up, something flew in my face - something big and bulging and made of plastic. Panicking and flinging it away with both hands, I lost balance and skidded into the dirt.

I came down - hard - gravel gouging my hip and tearing up my shorts. With a crunch I came to a stop in the rocks by the side of the track.

'Fuck!' emerged from my mouth on my next heavy breath, as I blinked back shock. Pain burned up my back and flared out, followed by stinging at my hip and an ache in my knee. But, instead of swelling to a throb that suggested something was very wrong with my body - a feeling I knew well - the discomfort ebbed and I stared up at the wispy sky framed by dark evergreen oaks.

Lifting my head gingerly, I tugged off my protective sunglasses and peered to my left, glimpsing the prone form of another cyclist, tangled up in his bike. Yep, I hadn't imagined it. It appeared we'd been taken out by a blow-up doll.

It was all her fault, the empty-eyed, pouty-lipped caricature of a woman bobbing rather pitifully in the breeze.

If this had been the Giro d'Italia or the Tour de France, it might not have been surprising. I'd seen everything along the side of the course, from fans in gorilla suits to someone dressed as the Grim Reaper, complete with a rubber scythe he'd held out in front of the peloton.

But we weren't on the Alpe d'Huez and the only spectators were the birds of prey playing in the updraught - and the blow-up doll that some idiot had filled with helium and attached to the other guy's bike, along with a bunch of balloons.

Seeing the familiar blue and orange of the other guy's jersey, I suspected I knew the idiot in question.

My knee twinged when I hauled myself to my feet. I'd ripped a hole in my shorts and could look forward to picking some gravel out of my skin when we got back but I was still in one piece. I'd had injuries like this a hundred times in my career - along with knocked-out teeth and assorted broken bones. But the stab of fear was new, as was the urge to clutch my back even though the action didn't have the slightest effect on my lingering nerve pain - the pain that the physio assured me was only in my head, although it still fucking hurt.

Pain, fear. I couldn't afford either of them.

Propping my hands on my thighs and slowing my breathing, I imagined the headlines: Lori Gallagher's return to road racing after catastrophic injury scuppered during training by a rogue sex doll. But my body held and I stomped over to check on my fellow victim, giving the doll a punch in the face that relieved a good portion of my frustration.

'Are you alive?'

'That depends on whether you're the angel of death,' the other rider groaned in response.

A ripple of awareness tingled across my skin. That voice. A gamut of emotions clamoured for my attention and it took me a second to whack them all back in their holes. I couldn't afford guilt either - or that warm, fuzzy thing that felt like a pleasant version of indigestion, both of which I associated with my online friend - my former online friend.

I obviously didn't have my head in the game if a hint of a French accent - not exactly unusual for a World Team cyclist - took me right back to my parents' basement gym in Melbourne, where I'd tried to rebuild myself, forcing my body to heal before my career fell off a cliff the way my mum always warned me it would if I didn't focus.

I'd heard a similar accent over my headset nearly every day for weeks, making life bearable as I got back in shape on the home trainer, as a blessedly anonymous user of the Zpeed multiplayer simulation game. The voice had belonged to an equally anonymous training partner, who called himself LoonieDunes - presumably something to do with the 'Loonie', the Canadian dollar - and made poor-taste jokes remarkably like the one I'd just heard.

'I'm not any kind of angel,' I snapped. 'Are you hurt?'

He rubbed a gloved hand over his face and extricated his legs from his sleek carbon-fibre bike - the same model as mine, but with a larger frame. 'Just my pride,' he muttered, rising gingerly into a sitting position. His winter training jersey was covered in dust, but couldn't hide the breadth of a nice pair of shoulders, all muscle and sinew, and the lean, tight torso of a pro cyclist. Catching sight of the floating blow-up doll, his Adam's apple bobbed in a gulp as he tugged off his helmet. 'Yes, my pride is. in need of reanimation.'

Damn it, even his choice of words reminded me of LoonieDunes and his penchant for sci-fi films. I'd eventually decided he was either a gangly teenager or a 50-year-old man with six fingers and too many teeth. Either could well have been true as he was only ever an avatar to me.

An avatar I'd left behind, along with my own injury-plagued online persona, Folklore99. When I'd needed to be Lori 'Top Gun' Gallagher, Australian champion, again, I'd killed her off - and when Mum had started asking me too many questions about my recovery and why I was using Zpeed so much. She'd pressed me for answers one morning at breakfast and I'd panicked and shut it all down. She would have freaked if she'd seen my chat history with LoonieDunes - the doubts and the questioning.

This guy, evidently a new recruit in the men's team, was neither a teenager nor an old man. It was difficult to judge his age, with his pink cheeks and bright eyes, but he was cute. He had thick, brown hair that was a touch too long, with a sweaty tuft sweeping his high forehead. They were nice eyes, currently trying not to look at me for too long - the colour of meadow honey.

I was used to those furtive glances. A female athlete was some kind of holy grail for a lot of men and I even had slightly too much in the boob department to be aerodynamic - a fact that bothered me every time I tried to find a comfortable sports bra that didn't require double-jointed elbows to get into.

'Did my brother do this?' I flicked at the strings holding the blow-up doll and the balloons onto the seat tube of his bike. His wary look was all the answer I needed. 'Farking idiot,' I mumbled.

Colin Gallagher, lead rider with the men's team, joker, backslapper, all-round big guy - and my younger brother by 21 months and a shit-ton of maturity - pulled stunts like this every year and, for reasons that remained mysterious to me, no one ever stood up to him.

'Why did you ride off like this? Why didn't you just release her back into the wild? Is this the reason you're so far behind the men's bunch?'

He swallowed, now watching me with his mouth open. I nearly blushed, damn it. I was built to win races, not deprive men of speech, but that side-effect felt kind of good that day. His gaze darting to my mouth felt good.

Clearing his throat, he said, 'I took a shortcut. I thought it would be better to let Colin have his fun, but arrive back at the hotel at the same time.'

I was impressed by his attitude. Since I didn't recognise his face, I assumed he was a domestique, a support rider, and not a big name, but he had some spirit - and a really nice, strong jaw. And those eyes. Crap, I was not here for nice eyes.

'Besides,' he continued, 'I felt sorry for her.' He reached one lean arm up to give the doll a pat on the bum.

With a huff, I studied the vacant expression on the doll's face, the exaggerated lips that reminded me of a vacuum cleaner. Surprisingly, I felt sorry for her as well - not for her, exactly, but for the tangled mess of desire and ego and vulnerability that was sex. 'You bonded with her?'

He choked out an inarticulate response. With a beleaguered sigh, I held out my gloved hand to him and, after a moment's hesitation, he grasped it and allowed me to help him up.

'Do you think your bike's okay? Are the men coming down from la Mare de Déu?'

He nodded as he picked up his bike and inspected it carefully, hefting the frame with one arm and spinning the wheels. 'Looks okay.'

'Good, then let's go!' Grabbing my bike, I threw my leg over the seat and looked back just in time to catch him staring at my butt.

'What was that?' he asked, his eyes whipping back to mine and blinking rapidly.

'I said, let's go! Let's get down and I'll draft you back to the others.'

'You will?' His voice was high and breathy and...