Taking Beauty (Taking Beauty Trilogy Book 1)

by Wild, Nikki

  It wasn’t that I wasn’t interested in dating. I longed for adult conversation, adult outings…sex. But I felt like such a fish out of water in those situations, and nothing much ever came from the few dates I had gone on. To say I was discouraged with the whole thing would be an understatement. If there was a good man left in Denver, I hadn’t found him yet, and I damn sure wasn’t going to find him in this office.

  “How was your weekend?” Larry asked. “Do anything fun?”

  “No, not really. Took Maddy to the aquarium downtown, did a little shopping. Nothing too exciting.”

  “You know, Maisie, I’d love to take you and Maddy to the zoo or something sometime,” Larry said.

  He was persistent, I had to give him that. Lately he seemed to think the key to my heart was through my daughter.

  “Larry, I’ve already told you that I don’t mix business with pleasure,” I replied, forcing myself to smile through my irritation.

  “Yes, I know,” he said, a hint of disappointment in his voice. “I just keep hoping you’ll change your mind.”

  “I won’t,” I said. I hated saying no to people, but the last thing I needed was to create drama at work and lose my job. “You know how much I value this job, Larry.”

  “I know, I know,” he replied. “I won’t ask again.”

  He’d said that before and I knew he would break that promise again next week. It seemed like every Monday he was in my office trying to make small talk and wear me down. He’d been doing this for six months, but since he was co-owner of the clinic, there wasn’t really anyone I could complain to.

  Not that I would. I wasn’t one to rock the boat like that.

  “Thank you,” I said, smiling again, hoping that I’d found that balance between firmly turning him down and keeping my job.

  “So,” he said, with an exaggerated sigh. “It’s going to be a busy week. All the usual suspects will be back for their regular therapy but I hear we’ve got a special guest coming in today. Guess we’ll be seeing a lot of him. Somebody really did a number on his leg.”

  “A lot of who?”

  “Didn’t you hear? You know the Denver Mustang that got hit by a car? Blew his knee out, along with some other minor injuries?”

  “No, I didn’t hear about it,” I replied slowly, my heart slightly accelerating.

  “It was all over the news,” he said.

  “I try not to watch television,” I replied, the hair sticking up on the back of my neck. Something wasn’t right. My stomach flipped, just like it always did when I heard a football player was coming here for treatment.

  “Don’t you read the internet?” Larry asked.

  “Not if I can help it,” I replied. “Unless I’m doing research or something…”

  “What about the radio?” he asked “You trapped in some kind of time warp? This is the biggest news of the whole year.”

  “The radio in my car is broken,” I replied, my voice laced with annoyance. “Who’s coming? What happened?”

  “Oh, man, it was bad. He was running downtown, ran into an intersection, and BAM!” Larry slammed his palm on my desk loudly and I jumped. “Some kid was texting, didn’t see him, plowed right through the light and slammed into him. Busted up his knee, ACL’s torn, gonna be in rehab for a while. Hell, he’s lucky to be alive. Thank God it’s off-season so he has a few months to heal up, but we’re going to have to work fast if he’s going to make it back onto the field…”

  “That’s terrible,” I replied, starting to recite a little prayer in my head that my gut feeling was wrong this time.

  “Sure is. I’m going to assign you to his case. You’re my best PT, Maisey. But you gotta perform some serious magic if this guy’s going to be back at full force by September. I have faith in your skills. You’re really great,” he said, smiling that creepy smile at me again. It didn’t bother me this time, because I just wanted the answer to one question.

  “Who is it, Larry?”

  “Oh, I didn’t say?” he asked. I shook my head, resisting the urge to jump across the desk and strangle him.

  “No, you didn’t,” I replied, my voice sounding like someone else’s suddenly.

  “It’s Colorado, Maisey! Jesse Colorado!” Larry was as excited as if he’d won the lottery.

  My mouth dropped, my heart dropped, and my ass almost dropped right out of the chair, too. I gripped the arms of my chair and bit down on the inside of my cheek hard to keep from fainting.

  Here it was.

  My worse nightmare, my worst case scenario, my greatest fear was coming to life right before my eyes.

  I wanted to run. I was good at running. I’d run from him before…

  But this time, I was trapped. There was no where to run to, no where to hide. I’d built this life for myself and I couldn’t unwind the threads that bound me to it.

  I would have to face this demon head-on now, and all I could do was hope my world didn’t get turned upside down in the process.

  JESSE

  After surgery, my knee was the size of a fucking football and stained yellow from whatever weird stuff the surgeons used on it. I looked down at what I was now calling my ‘frankenstein leg’ and tried to move it.

  Nope. Nothing.

  No movement, but no pain either. The Vicodin were doing a good job of masking the pain, but I was ready to be done with them.

  I hated the way pain pills made me feel. Sleepy, groggy, my head all fogged up. That wasn’t my game. I preferred having laser-sharp focus. My life required clarity and for me to be as clear-headed as possible. Instead, I felt like a pile of fucking mashed potatoes or something. I could barely move the parts of me that still worked, let alone the pieces that were broken… I felt like my head weighed a ton and my limbs were limp and useless.

  I was laying here like a weak little kitten and I hated every fucking second of it.

  I wanted to smack that stupid texting kid upside his stupid fucking head for what he’d done to me. My left ACL was torn, my thigh was deeply bruised, and I had a groin sprain to go along with it. His car had hit me so hard I’d bounced a dozen feet away. The surgery had repaired my ACL by putting in pins and grafts but I still had a long road of physical therapy ahead of me if I was going to recover fully.

  And if I didn’t recover… I didn’t even want to think about that…

  I’d been in the hospital all weekend and today they were sending me home. Grady sat in the corner of my hospital room reading the newspaper and I was sitting up in bed scrolling through the dozens of well-wishing text messages I’d been sent from my friends and teammates over the weekend when my nurse walked in.

  Nurse Peggy was hot in that way that only nurses can be. They always look so healthy and clean, don’t they? I’d been flirting shamelessly with her all weekend - it was the only thing I could do to take my mind off my miserable situation. Luckily, she’d given as good as she’d received, and it felt like we were old friends by now. It was pretty clear on day one I wasn’t going to be fucking this one, but maybe that was for the best. I needed more friends and less ex lovers…

  “You ready to go home, Colorado?” she asked.

  “I thought you’d never ask, Peggy,” I replied, winking at her.

  “Your home, cowboy. Not mine,” she said, shaking her head and laughing. “Not that I wouldn’t mind having a piece of you… If you’re not careful I’ll ask the doctor if he’s got any bits of that shattered knee still laying around the office.”

  “Oh, Peggy, you’re a twisted woman, aren’t you?”

  “The best kind of twisted,” she said, as she pressed a cold stethoscope to my chest.

  “Maybe you need a good man to straighten you out,” I said.

  “Talk about unicorns,” she replied wearily.

  “Touche!” I said, laughing.

  “This guy harassing you again, Peggy?” my coach, Will Fox asked as he walked in the door. He’d been checking in on me everyday since the accident and I was glad to see him.
/>   “Does he ever stop flirting?” she asked.

  “Nope,” he replied. “I’ve even seen him sweet-talking the football before he throws it.”

  “I’m not surprised,” she quipped. “Does it work?” she asked, turning back to me.

  “Better than it does with you!” I replied.

  We all laughed as Will sat in the chair next to my bed.

  “You ready to get out of here, Champ?” he asked.

  “God yes, I can’t wait to get home to my own bed!”

  “Not so fast, Romeo,” Peggy said. “Doc said you have to go straight to rehab.”

  “Today?”

  “Yes, today,” Will replied. “There’s no time to waste. You’ll be spending most of your days at rehab, you can go home at night, but you gotta get right back there every morning. You have about six months of healing to do in three months time.”

  “I was hoping for at least a day to rest,” I replied.

  “You just spent three days in the hospital on your ass,” Peggy said. “You slept the whole time.”

  “You’re not helping, darlin’,” I replied, wearily.

  “I’m not here to help you slack off. I’m here to kick your ass into gear.”

  “Are you always such a hardass?” I asked.

  “Nope. Only to cocky sonsofbitches like you,” she winked, handing me a clip board with discharge papers attached. “Sign these and you’re out of here.”

  I shook my head, scribbled my name and handed the clipboard back to her.

  “Sure you don’t want to give me your number before I leave?” I asked.

  “I’m sure, Colorado,” she replied. “You take care of that cute tush, okay?”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah…” I replied, looking warily over at Will. “Alright, well I guess you’re the boss.”

  “I like it when you call me that,” he said, standing up and handing me my crutches.

  “Shouldn’t I be in a wheelchair?”

  “And let your other leg get weak, too? No way. You’re going to work your ass off until you’re back to a hundred percent. No short-cuts.”

  “Goddammit, I’m surrounded by a bunch of tyrants!” I exclaimed.

  “Yeah, well, you gotta earn those millions, buddy,” he said, helping me to my feet and helping me place the crutches under my arms. Grady stood at my side, ready to catch me if I fell. “Unless you want to hand over all this fame and glory to the next guy in line?”

  “Over my dead fucking body.”

  MAISEY

  In my quiet nights alone during the last ten years, I’d imagined this moment happening a million times. I’d wished for it to happen and prayed for it not to, all at the same time. I’d thought about what I might say. The things I wouldn’t say. Questions I would ask. Answers I might receive.

  And yet nothing had truly prepared me for the way I was feeling right now. I reminded myself that I was a professional. I reminded myself that I had no choice but to open the door in front of me, and that no amount of unexplained begging to Larry was going to get me out of it. I’d tried. Twice.

  I had no choice but to face the demons of my past. Today. Right now. In patient room number three, the most luxurious physical therapy suite of the Steadman Hawkins clinic, my worst nightmare was waiting for me like a monster in a closet.

  I’d taken this job a year ago, knowing in the back of my mind that if fate intervened, I might find myself in this predicament. And yet, I wanted the job so badly, that by the time of my second interview, I’d somehow disillusioned myself into thinking that the odds were in my favor.

  Denver’s a big city, I’d told myself. Hell, the United States is a big country.

  If Jesse Colorado needed sports rehabilitation, he would have his pick of the best facilities in the entire world, right? The chances of him walking into the Steadman Hawkins clinic were slim

  I’d been so wrong. So naive, so stupid, so disillusioned.

  And now I was stuck.

  Once again, I reminded myself I was a professional. I could do this. The past didn’t matter, that was all over. I wasn’t the timid little girl in a small town anymore.

  I was a grown-ass woman, with talent, skills and a rigid backbone that had never let me down.

  Jesse Colorado was just a dumb jock.

  That’s all. Nothing more. Nothing less.

  Nothing I couldn’t handle.

  That’s what I kept repeating to myself, over and over, as I finally turned that door knob.

  Dumb jock, dumb jock, dumb jock…

  JESSE

  I didn’t recognize her at first. She walked in full of confidence and throwing clipped clinical terms at me while refusing to look me in the eye. I knew right away something about her was familiar, though…

  The hair.

  Those unruly black curls that stuck out every which way from her head, despite her best efforts to pull it back into a tight bun.

  Maybe it was the stubborn set of her jaw.

  Or her profile - the same profile I’d sat staring at for months while she’d tutored me so many years ago.

  These things were all nagging at me far in the back of my mind as I tried to figure out where I knew her from. I tried to listen to whatever she was saying about my knee, something about a long treatment plan, but I was distracted right away.

  When she finally met my gaze, it all clicked.

  Those eyes! I’d never forget eyes like that, because nobody in the entire world had eyes like hers.

  Grass green with golden, sparkling flecks.

  “Dr. Green is the best in the city. He and I have created an extensive treatment plan for you, and if we follow it very strictly, you should be back on your feet in no time,” she nodded firmly as she finished her sentence, and that’s when she first looked at me.

  I turned away and turned to Grady, who’d accompanied me to the clinic. Coach Fox had left him with strict instructions not to leave my side.

  “Grady, can you excuse us, please?” He’d been standing stoically silent in the corner the entire time.

  “Sure, boss. I’ll be right outside the door.” He walked out, closing the door softly behind me.

  I turned back to the woman in front of me and smiled.

  “Damn, it is you,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Excuse me?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Maisey, don’t be coy. We went to Highland High together.”

  “Oh, we did, didn’t we? That was a long time ago,” she said curtly, tearing her eyes away and looking back at my chart. “I see here that you were hit on your left side —.”

  “Oh, come on!” I said, laughing.

  “What?” she asked, still refusing to look at me, her eyes glued to the clipboard in her hand.

  “Maisey,” I whispered. “Don’t act like you don’t know me.”

  Slowly, she raised her eyes and I was blessed with those golden flecks again.

  “Sorry,” she said, her voice even shorter than earlier. “Hello, Jesse. Yes, we went to school together. I just didn’t think you’d remember me,” she shrugged. “We hardly knew each other.”

  “What!” I scoffed. “That’s not true!”

  “Well, that’s how I remember it. Didn’t I do some tutoring for you or something briefly?” she dragged her eyes away again, turning her back to me completely this time as she sat my file on a cabinet in the corner and studied it.

  “Well, yes,” I replied, smiling at her back as I remembered those times so very long ago. “I think we did a little more than tutoring, though.”

  “Did we?” she murmured dismissively, her voice cool and calm. “I don’t recall.”

  Wow. Well, that hurts, I thought. How could she not remember? I remembered every last second… I took a second to look away from her, my mind drifting back.

  “Jesse, you really need to pull these grades up if you want that scholarship.”

  The recruiter from Colorado State had taken me and my parents out to dinner and while he was being
honest, I hated what he was saying. If I could spend the rest of my life playing on the field, then I’d be happy. Instead, I had to learn about shit that didn’t interest me to do what I loved.

  But then Maisey had shown up to my house, hand picked by my biology teacher to tutor me. She’d been so quiet, so studious, so shy - and for some reason that made me like her more. I wanted to draw her out, see what she was all about.

  Her hair stuck out from her head, forming a lush halo around her head. Her green eyes flashed with excitement when she spoke, even if her words were quiet and measured. I hated biology, and somehow she’d made it interesting. She’d use football analogies and funny little anecdotes to help me remember things. After a few sessions with her, I was excited to spend time with her.

  We spent more time laughing together than we did working, but with her help, I’d managed to bring my grades up and pass all my finals - which eventually meant I got that scholarship. I couldn't have done any of it without her.

  One day we were alone in my room, and one thing led to another. I kissed her like I’d been fantasizing doing for days, and then we’d melted into each other and made love. It was the first time I’d had sex where I hadn’t felt like I didn’t really know what I was doing. It was so natural, so easy, so right.