"Quintin, Jardine - Fallen Gods" - читать интересную книгу автора (Quintin Jardine)

cleared away the mud from the last inundation.

But all too often, the attention span of politicians lasts no longer
than the next election, and so, inevitably, it had.

Meanwhile, three thousand miles to the west... Two.

"It must have been a hell of a shock for you, with your husband just
dropping in his tracks like that."

"Have you been playing football for long without your helmet?" Sarah
Grace Skinner asked, wryly, her voice suddenly brittle. "Of course it
was a hell of a shock. All I could do was scream." Her mouth set
tight for a few seconds. "Bob collapsing at my feet, I'm a damn
doctor, and all I could do was stand there and scream."

Ron Neidholm's massive quarterback's hand enclosed hers. "Hey there,"
he murmured. His voice had always struck her as surprisingly gentle in
such a big man; its contrast with the rest of his physical makeup had
always amused her. Indeed it was that, rather than his rugged good
looks, or the blueness of his eyes, which had caused the fluttering in
her chest at their first meeting, thirteen years earlier. "Don't go
taking the guilt on yourself," he told her, earnestly. "This is your
husband we're talking about, and at your parents' burial into the
bargain. Goddamn right you screamed. In your shoes I'd have done the
same thing."

She glared at him across the small table, and then the moment passed,
and her face creased into a smile. "Oh no you wouldn't," she retorted.
"You're a lawyer. First you'd have checked whether the ground was
slippery, in case you could sue the funeral company, then you'd have
gone straight home to look out the will."

He laughed out loud. "That's what you think of me, is it? I may have
a law degree, but I've never practised, remember."

She took her hand from beneath his and reached out to touch his face,
her fingers tracing its scars, gently, on his nose and above his left
eye; then she slipped it inside his open-necked shirt, feeling the lump
on his collarbone, the relic of an old fracture. "Maybe it's time you
did," she whispered.

"Maybe it is," he admitted, with the awkward grin she remembered so
well, 'but it's just I love football, Sarah. Even when I was at
college, it was my whole life. Apart from you, that is," he added,
quickly.

It was her turn to laugh. "I don't think so. That damn ball was
always more important than me, when it came to the crunch. Pity help
the woman who forced you to a choice."