Necessary Roughness

by Julie Brannagh

  “No.”

  “I’ll get your walker.”

  What a blast.

  He wanted his former life back. The one in which he was able-bodied and could bench press almost four hundred pounds. The one in which he ran a 4.5-second forty-yard dash. The one in which he made $14 million a year before endorsements. He stifled a sigh as he turned in the car seat to heave himself out.

  The sooner he accepted the fact that his life wasn’t coming back, the better off he would be. Plus, he had to steel himself for another encounter with the princess of physical therapy. He could only imagine what she was up to today. Maybe she had three little girls braiding her hair before they danced around a starburst painted in the center of the main square in her parents’ kingdom.

  Harrison held open the door to the building. “I’ll get you checked in, and then I’m going to do some work while we’re here. Try not to make anyone cry today.”

  Tanner stared at him and then clomped up to the front desk. The receptionist looked like she was about to cry, wet her pants, or both. He wasn’t that scary.

  “Hello, Mr. Cole. How are you this morning?”

  He wasn’t that old, either. He thumped his chest with one hand. “I’m Tanner,” he insisted.

  She nodded frantically. “Yes. Tanner. Jordan is ready for you if you’ll follow me.”

  “Sorry,” he blurted out. “I didn’t mean to be an ass.”

  She came around the desk and patted him on the back as she indicated that he should follow her.

  He rounded the corner of the lobby to see Jordan. She flashed another angelic smile in his direction. Maybe she needed some medication or something. It wasn’t normal to be that happy. He was fairly happy before his knee exploded, but he wasn’t the kind who would smile for the hell of it, all the time. What was it with her? Something about her made his eyeballs itch with annoyance, and he was pretty sure she returned the favor.

  “Shall we get started?” she said.

  “I still want to work with Marco.” He really didn’t, but he got perverse enjoyment out of being a bit annoying.

  “My grandma used to say ‘If wishes were horses, we’d all ride.’ ”

  He bit back a comment about her grandmother that was truly objectionable and parked his walker in a corner. “Do your worst,” he said.

  “We’ll take it easy today. You’re still sore from yesterday, aren’t you?” She gave him an innocent smile. “It might be a good idea to get a massage in the next day or so. Be sure to drink a lot of water to release the lactic-acid buildup.”

  If he kept biting his tongue, it was going to bleed. “Thanks for the advice,” he said.

  “You’re welcome.” She gave him another perky smile. He almost laughed out loud when he saw the corner of her mouth twitch in the effort to keep back what he was sure was an equally sarcastic response. Maybe he should find out if the kitten had claws.

  She put him through multiple exercises focusing on strengthening his surgically repaired knee, which all hurt like a mofo. The patient, sweet facial expressions he’d seen when she interacted with anyone else were gone. He wondered if she was part drill sergeant.

  “Are you always like this, or just with me?” he grunted out after a set of particularly grueling reps.

  “You won’t get better if I’m not tough on you,” she chirped. She gave him another innocent smile and a head tilt, which made him want to kill something. “You’re not giving up, are you?”

  “The hell?” he said.

  “More reps, please. Less talking and more doing,” she said. All she needed was a riding crop to slap against her other palm while she watched him. Maybe she moonlighted as a dominatrix. “Also, you need to do a better job with your form.”

  “Form, my ass,” he said through gritted teeth.

  “Do it right, or you’ll be doing twice as many,” she said as she checked her watch.

  By the time she was done, he felt like he’d been in a bar fight. He knew from experience he was going to feel worse in a few hours. She’d worked him over but good. He was going to have to come up with another objection to her besides the fact she bugged him for some weird reason. He realized it was probably a mystery (or hilarious) to everyone but him: if he knew what was making him so nuts where she was concerned (besides being annoyingly happy), he’d get over it.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said as she handed him another towel to mop himself up with. “I know it hurts, but you need to walk every day. You have a walker, so this should be on your to-do list. You want to keep as much mobility as possible.” She nodded at Harrison. “Your roommate might be willing to spot you.”

  “We don’t live together.”

  “Do you have someone living with you while you’re recovering? A girlfriend or a family member? You may need some assistance—”

  “Fuck no,” Tanner said.

  He wasn’t an invalid. He could deal with his own life, thank you. He’d hired a housekeeper and a chef instead. Things were fine except when he had to take a shower or something. He’d managed to make things work so far by wrapping his injured leg in a big plastic garbage bag and sealing it up with duct tape.

  Her sweet pink mouth pursed a bit. “We can talk about this later,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow at ten.”

  He longed to snap out that there would be no discussion of his private life at all, but he managed to stifle it with a reproving look from Harrison. “Of course,” he said. “Thank you.” It popped out before he bit it back.

  “Oh, no. Thank you, Tanner.”

  She was being a real smart-ass, but when he looked into her eyes, all he saw was gentle amusement. Harrison reached out to give her a side hug.

  “Nice to see you, girl. Did he give you trouble?”

  “Not at all,” she said. “It’s great to see you too.”

  His best friend was going to ask her out any minute now. They’d get married and have angelic-looking children, and she’d be bugging the shit out of him for the rest of his life. He gave the walker a savage shove as he moved away from them.

  Chapter Four

  LATE THAT AFTERNOON, Jordan pulled on an old T-shirt and a pair of leggings before jamming her feet into running shoes. She needed a good run. The day hadn’t been so bad after Tanner left, but spending an hour stifling the impulse to say something objectionable to him (or push him over onto the padded mats) shredded her typically steady nerves. She pocketed her house key, stuck her earbuds into her ears, and stretched a bit before turning onto the quiet street she lived on in Redmond.

  He was really under her skin too. She couldn’t imagine how the people in his life dealt with him. Harrison seemed like such a nice guy. Why was he friends with someone so difficult? She was always the first one to stick up for the clients with Marco. This one, however—she needed something worse to call him.

  Even more awful for her, Tanner was handsome. If any of her girlfriends (or her sisters, even if they were married) got a look at him, they’d ask her if she needed help. He could be a real jerk when he wanted to be, but she’d have to be blind to not admit he was handsome too. She let out a loud “Ooh!” of frustration and was rewarded with a stare by some woman trimming the rosebush in her front yard.

  She’d spent both PT appointments doing everything in her power not to stare at him. He was tall and muscular. He had that dark, tangled, wavy, curly guy hair she could never resist, coupled with stubble that probably grew in five minutes after he’d shaved. His eyes were a silvery gray and framed by thick dark brows and long lashes. He riveted her. Plus, he smelled good. She could never resist that fresh-out-of-the-shower smell, paired with some guy thing she’d never be able to describe. Did testosterone have a smell?

  She’d never been able to stay away from men like him, despite his awful personality. She was attracted, repulsed, and disgusted with herself. Why wasn’t she drawn to the handsome, charming, and funny Harrison instead? He was a much better choice of how to spend her time than the compelling ar
gument for male PMS that was Tanner Cole.

  It was the bad-boy thing all over again. Something was obviously wrong with her. Her mom would tell her to “make good choices.” She knew there was someone nice in there somewhere. She wasn’t sure how long it was going to take her to find him.

  “He’s a client,” she said aloud. “I can’t date him.” Another of the neighbors was pulling weeds in her front yard. Whenever the sun came out in Seattle, the entire population rushed outside before it rained again. She glanced up and gave Jordan an odd look. Jordan waved a little as she ran by. Maybe the neighbor would think she was on her phone or something.

  She’d run another mile or two, get herself cleaned up, and find out if anybody she knew wanted to go see a movie or get some dinner later. She needed an evening out before she had to face the ogre again.

  ***

  UNFORTUNATELY, THE EVENING out Jordan dreamed of wasn’t happening tonight. She would have settled for Netflix, her couch, and a glass of wine—anything but what greeted her when she arrived back home. Her three roommates were arrayed on her living room couch waiting for her. She’d talked with them before about asking before they invaded her basement apartment; they must have forgotten that convo.

  She’d taken the place she was currently living in when she had to move out of her former roommate’s condo on less than a month’s notice. Rentals were expensive and scarce in the Seattle area. Most people had roommates unless they lived in one of the teeny “pod” apartments in Ballard or something. She made a pretty good living, but she wasn’t close to the amount she’d need to buy a five-hundred-square-foot condo anywhere near her office. She’d needed to find a place to live fast, she didn’t have time for a long search, and it hadn’t taken her long after moving in to figure out why the three upstairs roommates had a somewhat-affordable vacancy.

  Becky, Madison, and Blair treated her like she was Cinderella and they were the three ugly stepsisters. She’d rented the basement, but they insisted on barging in uninvited whenever they wanted to. They used her things. Whoever they got to mow the lawn dumped the clippings on the doorstep in front of her separate entrance. They also tried assigning her some of their housework upstairs, which she refused to do. When she installed a lock on the door leading to the basement, one of the roommates crawled through her bedroom window late one night because she’d “lost her keys.” A guy she’d never seen before crawled through the window minutes afterward.

  “This is my man,” Madison told her. “You’ll need to leave your window unlocked so he can get in.”

  “No.”

  “If he breaks it, you’ll be responsible for paying for the glass.”

  “Get out of my room! Go use the front door. I need to work tomorrow.”

  “At least someone is sleeping tonight,” Madison said with a smirk. “We won’t be.”

  “Want to join us?” the guy said.

  Jordan jumped out of bed and grabbed the baseball bat that sat in the corner of her bedroom.

  “No harm in asking,” the guy said. She could hear their laughter all the way up the stairs.

  Mostly, she needed to find a new place. She couldn’t live like this anymore. She regarded the three women on the couch and said, “Did you let yourselves in?”

  “The landlord says you can’t install any locks without his permission,” Becky said. She looked down her surgically corrected nose at Jordan. “You’ll need to take the lock off of your bedroom window too.”

  “That’s not going to happen—”

  “We’ll do it for you.” Blair gave Jordan a glare. Jordan could never understand why they treated her the way they did from the minute she moved in. She was quiet, paid her rent on time, and met up with her friends elsewhere. They hated her anyway. It was like junior high all over again, except for the fact she had a hard-earned doctorate and a job that paid significantly more than theirs did. She made more money, but she had the same problems as any other Seattle-area renter in their twenties and thirties.

  Madison crossed her legs, folded her arms across her chest, and tried to prevent the grin breaking over her face. She was unsuccessful. “Actually, Jordan, you won’t be living here long enough to remove anything but your stuff. You need to be out of here by the end of the month.”

  “You can’t evict me without thirty days’ written notice,” Jordan said. She tried to control her facial expression. She didn’t have time to look for a new place so soon. She hated where she lived, but at least it was a roof over her head. She was not going to let them see she was upset by this news, either.

  Becky brandished a piece of paper with some type of letterhead. Jordan wasn’t getting close enough to grab it out of her hand. “Oh, that’s not true. The landlord said you are altering his property, so you’re out.” She tried to look concerned. “Hope you can find a mover on such short notice.”

  “We’ll just leave her shit on the front lawn,” Blair said.

  “I’d love to say I’ll miss you, but I won’t,” Madison said.

  The three of them cackled like Jordan’s possessions on the front lawn was the funniest thing they’d ever heard.

  “Why the end of the month?”

  “We have another roommate moving in,” Becky sang out. “She’s doing all the housework and paying twice as much for the space.”

  All three stood up from her couch in unison. She watched them straighten their clothes, fluffing hair that was fried from too much time with the flatiron. Jordan almost laughed when she saw Madison teetering on her five-inch stiletto-heeled boots. It wasn’t kind, but perhaps Madison should stick with shoes she could actually walk in.

  “It was nice to meet you ladies. I wish you luck in the future,” Jordan said. They were bitches who deserved every bit of misery that came their way, but taking the high road never hurt.

  Madison whipped around while climbing the stairs. “What the fuck does that mean?”

  Jordan watched with fascination as Madison teetered, teetered, and finally lost her balance. It looked like dominos falling. She, Blair, and Becky slid down the basement stairs and ended up in a heap. The resulting shrieking and shoving wouldn’t have been out of place in a roller-derby match. It didn’t seem like anyone was hurt. Well, maybe their pride.

  The three women managed to untangle themselves and flounced up the stairs. Madison flipped off Jordan as she went. Jordan sank down on her couch and put her face in her hands. She did not want to go through this again, but it looked like she had no choice. It was time to boot up her laptop and start looking for somewhere else to live.

  ***

  THE NEXT MORNING, Jordan checked her smartwatch three times in five minutes. Tanner was late. She’d tossed and turned last night thinking about finding another place to live. When she wasn’t worrying about that, she wished she could come up with one snarky thing to say to him. Just one. It was like a three-day-old kitten attempting to start something with a Saint Bernard. The Saint Bernard would regard her pityingly, pivot on his good leg, and clomp out of the office. He’d pee on something on his way out too.

  He could really get under her skin for some unknown reason, but then he’d do or say something sweet and she was totally confused. She kept thinking about the day she gave him the recommendation to Dr. Emma’s practice. She expected him to snap at her, but he was kind. Who knew? Some days, though, he brought the sarcasm, and she couldn’t resist letting him have it too. He brought out a side of her she didn’t think existed before the first day he’d walked into Eastside PT.

  She glanced at her smartwatch again. Seconds afterward, her cell phone vibrated in her pocket. Marco didn’t want his employees on their phones during work hours, but Marco wasn’t in today. The number was unfamiliar to her. She hit Answer. She could hang up if it was a telemarketer.

  “This is Jordan.”

  “Good morning, Jordan. It’s Harrison Lane. Tanner’s had a bit of an accident. He won’t be in today.”

  “What?”

  “He’s on his way t
o the hospital. He wiped out in the shower this morning. He’ll probably need more surgery to repair what happened.” Harrison let out a sigh. “I told him. Everyone told him. He wouldn’t listen and now—oh, forget it.”

  “Where is he going?” came out of Jordan’s mouth before she could stop it.

  “He’s being taken to Virginia Mason in Seattle. They’re on Broadway. This probably means he won’t be at physical therapy for a while.”

  “I see,” she said. She clicked over to her schedule on her phone. “Thanks for letting me know.”

  Harrison had left his business card in her work space when he had dropped off Tanner yesterday. She’d e-mailed him this morning. He was a real estate agent, and she needed somewhere to live. Yesterday. If worse came to worst, she could move in with her parents for a couple of weeks, but she’d rather find another place instead. She loved her mom and dad. They’d welcome her with open arms. The problem: she’d like to meet someone special, and “Hey, want to spend the night at my mom and dad’s?” was a pretty big cock block.

  “Anytime,” Harrison said. “Obviously, I got your e-mail. I’ll look at what’s on the market today and let you know if there’s a place that would work for you. We can talk later about pre-qualifying and what you’re interested in.”

  She probably pre-qualified for a tent in the park in Sea-Tac, but she wasn’t telling him that yet. “I’d love that.”

  “Great,” he said. “Talk with you later.”

  His phone disconnected.

  She sat on the weight bench in her area for a couple of minutes, staring into space. What the hell had Tanner done to himself? Even weirder, why did she care? She tried to remind herself that she didn’t want to spend any time with him at all outside of PT time, but she was already moving to the front desk. Maybe she should drive to the hospital and see if she could be of help. It wasn’t like she was doing PT with someone who’d just reinjured himself, but she might be able to find out if this was a huge setback or a couple-of-weeks’ annoyance. She could puzzle over later why she felt such a need to go find out how badly a man who allegedly bugged the crap out of her had injured himself.