The Greatest Risk

by Cara Colter

  Then she could tell he was having to dig in, to find a little more. His brow furrowed, a sheen of fine sweat appeared on that glorious skin. His muscles corded and contracted and bunched in an amazingly masculine ballet.

  At fifteen, pain entered the picture. She could see him turning inward, trying to find the place within him where a reserve of strength remained.

  His eyes were closed now. His limbs were trembling. His mouth was a formidable line of pain and determination. He was like an Olympic athlete training for his event.

  It was obvious to her he was way past the limits of his strength, that his injury caused him pain, and yet he was not giving up and not letting go.

  “That’s enough,” the therapist said, at eighteen. “We’ll try it again tomorrow.”

  Luke’s arms were trembling. He couldn’t have one more left in him. And yet she could see him gathering himself mentally.

  And then he gave a shout, pure and primal and strong. And lifted his chin up over that bar, not once more but seven more times in rapid succession.

  He let go of the bar and collapsed, arms braced on his knees, sweat pouring off him, his expression calm and determined and exhausted.

  “If I can impress you,” she heard him tell the therapist, “the doctor is letting me out of here.”

  “Don’t worry. You’ve impressed me. With your utter stupidity. You’re in here to repair those injuries, not to strain them.”

  Luke’s expression remained calm, the tirade washing over him, but not touching him. He turned his head to grab a towel and wipe his brow on it.

  Maggie leaped back into the shadows. Had he seen her?

  She suddenly felt embarrassed. She was like a high-school girl spying on the boys’ team. Of course, she’d never done that in high school, and she suddenly regretted it.

  It was a delicious guilty little pleasure. Worth the risk, she decided. Because Luke liked to play it as if he was light and lively and just a barrel of laughs. As if he was full of mischief and kisses, and nothing of substance was there.

  But this morning in Billy’s room she had caught a look at Luke’s substance. And now she had seen it again. At the core of the man were strength and depth and determination in breathtaking abundance.

  She hurried away before anyone else caught sight of her. It had been fun looking at him without it having to go anywhere. It had been like getting a fix.

  But what was she going to do once he left the hospital?

  She didn’t want to think about it. She hurried off to her seminar.

  It wasn’t like her to be late, and her friend Kristen gave her a quizzical look when she slipped in the back door and took the seat Kristen had saved for her.

  “What on earth have you been doing?” Kristen hissed.

  “What do you mean?” she whispered back.

  “You look like the cat who stole the cream.”

  “I do not.”

  “No, you’re right. You look more like a woman who has had a wild and very naughty adventure.”

  “I do?”

  “Give,” Kristen said, eyeing her.

  “I was just doing my homework from last time.”

  “We had homework?” Kristen whispered.

  “Be bold. Do something totally out of character this week.”

  “Really?”

  The lady in front of them turned and gave them a murderous look for chatting during Dr. Richie’s presentation.

  “Coffee break. I want the goods,” Kristen said out of the side of her mouth.

  Considering how much she had been looking forward to this seminar, Maggie found she was having difficulty concentrating. She looked around. Sure enough, there was the man she’d seen in Morgan’s last night, and there was the woman she’d seen on the front steps of the hospital.

  Both of them were beaming ridiculously.

  Maggie could only assume they were as satisfied with their homework as she was. She focused on Dr. Richie. He was such an appealing man. His speaking style was so warm and enthusiastic. He seemed wise and appealing and as if, for a relatively young man, he understood so much about life.

  Still, even feeling as she did about him, her attention wandered.

  “I want just to leave you with this preview of your homework before you go to coffee,” he said, and his words penetrated her daydream.

  “Go after what you want. Erase self-doubt.”

  It felt as though the words were spoken only to her. And Maggie knew exactly what she wanted, and exactly what was holding her back from it.

  Self-doubt. How could Dr. Richie have known that?

  She thought of that dress she had been eyeing up in Classy Lass. What had stopped her from buying it? Self-doubt.

  She doubted that she was the kind of woman who could pull off a sexy dress like that. She doubted that she would have a place to wear it, or a person to wear it for.

  But in the last twenty-four hours, all that had changed.

  “I have to go,” she told Kristen, getting up and sidling past the knees of all the people still seated.

  “Go where?” Kristen asked, flabbergasted.

  “I just remembered something I have to do.” She hurried out the doors of the Healthy Living Clinic. What if the dress wasn’t there anymore?

  “I’ll take it as a sign,” she told herself. And then she laughed out loud. “No, I won’t. I’ll find an even better one.”

  Carrie Martin sat at the back of the seminar when they came back in from coffee. She looked around the room, trying to mask her cynicism, trying to mask how appalled she was at the gullibility of these people. Couldn’t they see right through “Dr. Richie”?

  She was willing to bet he hated being called that. He probably tolerated it because that popular TV doctor, so successful, allowed people to call him by his first name.

  She did nothing to draw attention to herself, but she knew he would never recognize her. Everything about her had changed in twenty years.

  Her hair color, her eye color. She was fifty pounds lighter than the pudgy girl who had married Richard Strokudnowski right out of high school. They’d been small-town kids from Apopka, Florida. Only, Richard had harbored big-time dreams.

  She had wanted the things women of that age had wanted: a little bungalow with a white picket fence, babies, a swing set and a blow-up wading pool. Carrie had dreamed small, lovely dreams.

  Richard had dreamed of glory.

  Back then hadn’t she been just like these people? Richard had a certain charm, there was no denying it. And he’d had years to perfect it. Once, she had looked at him with the same starry-eyed gaze that he was now eliciting from the loyal following here.

  “I’d like to hear some NoWait success stories to kick off our second half,” her ex-husband said suavely.

  There were many NoWait success stories. Carrie would have loved to caution these folks to be careful. Richard was no chemist, not that that had ever stopped him.

  Oh, he had loved “inventing”—a love that had intensified after he’d gotten his degree, as if it gave him license to mix and match all kinds of herbs and chemicals.

  The sad truth was, even his attempts to make salad dressing—“Look at Paul Newman, Carrie”—had been an unmitigated disaster. He had blown up the toilet in their first humble apartment trying to make a better, not to mention cheaper, cleaning solution.

  At the time it had seemed funny and charming and rather exciting.

  At the time just about everything had seemed funny and charming and rather exciting. Until the exact point their dreams had ended up on a collision course.

  Already pregnant, Carrie had asked him one day when he would be ready to have children.

  “Never,” he’d said, and she had heard the truth in his voice, in the way he said that one word. He’d read the stunned expression on her face correctly, because he’d hastily added, “Well, maybe not never but certainly not now.”

  Sometimes, looking back, she wondered if she had pulled the plug too quickly
. Certainly Dr. Terry Browell, that TV doctor who gave out such confident advice, probably would have thought so. Over the years she had wondered so often. Had she done the right thing? Had it really been her decision alone to make?

  But in that moment, the word never shivering in the air between them, her husband had seemed like such a stranger to her, a man she had no hope of ever knowing, or ever holding.

  She had gone on to marry a lovely man, Ralph Martin, now dead, not the least exciting, but never, ever a stranger to her.

  And truth be told, Richard still seemed a stranger as she watched him today, performing, playing to his adoring public.

  He stopped speaking suddenly and grinned.

  Her heart stopped. Because suddenly he was not such a stranger. She had seen that very same grin for nearly twenty years.

  In their son, Jason. And whenever Jason had grinned that grin, she had remembered the man who had given it to him.

  Not the betrayals. Not the dreams on collision course.

  The laughter. The lovemaking. The sheer joy of being together.

  “Go after what you want,” he repeated emphatically at the end of the seminar. “Erase self-doubt.”

  Carrie did not join the many who wanted to talk to him after the class. She slipped out the door and contemplated his words.

  She smiled cynically. He would not have uttered them nearly so confidently if he knew that what one member of his class wanted to go after was him. Oh, how she would love to expose Dr. Richard Strong for what he really was: a superficial man who had left his pregnant young wife to fend for herself. Who had emptied half the bank account when he had left.

  Not, she thought reluctantly, that he had known she was pregnant.

  That was the self-doubt part.

  Erase it, she ordered herself. But she couldn’t.

  With Jason in college she had felt so confident that it was time to track down her old husband, to put away the ghosts of her old life for good.

  She stood in the late-afternoon sunshine outside the Healthy Living Clinic. The door swung open, and a wave of laughing people, filled with confidence and energy and excitement from what they had just learned from Dr. Richie, spilled out on the sidewalk.

  And her self-doubt intensified. She was no longer nearly as certain why she had come here or what she had hoped to accomplish. But a voice inside her, one of those ones that Dr. Richie spoke of but that she was pretty sure he was not on familiar terms with in his own life, told her to wait. When the time is right, you will know exactly what to do.

  She walked away, feeling lonely and tense, and very, very separate from all the hopeful, energetic people who had been inspired by a man who was not even close to being what he was saying he was.

  Five

  For all the times she had looked longingly in the window, Maggie had never shopped in Classy Lass before.

  The summer dress was still in the window, red and bold, and, taking a deep breath, Maggie went through the wide double oak and glass doors. It was quickly apparent that Classy Lass was not the kind of store she usually shopped in. It was more like walking into a very posh hotel lobby than a store. There were deep comfortable leather sofas, tasteful displays, wonderful little alcoves to explore.

  A freckled, friendly girl introduced herself as Tracey and made Maggie feel warmly welcome. Tracey acted as though she had no idea Maggie did not belong in a shop that was not advertising the underwear special in aisle 9 over the PA system.

  “Make yourself at home,” she said, “and just ask me if you need anything.”

  After looking at the price tag on a leather bag hooked carelessly over the arm of one of the sofas, Maggie wanted to say what she needed was a dose of oxygen. For a moment she considered leaving, but then she took a deep breath and approached Tracey.

  “I like the red dress in the window, but I don’t see it on display anywhere else. Have you got it?” Maggie gave the woman her size, and crossed her fingers that they’d have it.

  Tracey grinned without one little bit of condescension. “Only one perfect little red dress,” she said. “You don’t want to see everyone in Portland wearing a dress you paid eight hundred dollars for, do you?”

  Maggie felt her jaw dropping. Eight hundred dollars? For a dress that looked as if it barely contained a yard of material? She had known Classy Lass was going to be expensive, but she had not expected it to be quite so far out of her price range.

  The girl read her expression, and instead of looking haughty, she took on the look of a conspirator. “It doesn’t hurt to try it on,” she said, and before Maggie could protest, she was up in the window retrieving the dress. “It is your size.”

  A moment later, Maggie found herself in a huge fitting room with thick carpets and wall-to-wall mirrors. There was room for a leather armchair and a reading table heaped with fashion magazines. There was no sign on the door warning about the dangers of shoplifting, either.

  It was madness for Maggie to be here, and yet even so, she found herself skinning out of her clothes eagerly. She had hated the outfit she was wearing ever since she had seen Luke eye it—and dismiss it—this morning. Camel had always been one of her favorite colors. Now, lying in a crumpled heap on the thick burgundy rug, her suit looked like leftover porridge.

  She didn’t even want to know what he might think of her plain cotton briefs and bra. Maggie slid the red dress over her head, and stood there for a minute with her eyes shut, not even wanting to look. The dress felt exquisite where it touched her skin, as light and feathery as a cloud.

  Maggie opened her eyes and gasped.

  The dress had been designed to show a woman at her very best. It looked deceptively simple, with its narrow spaghetti straps, snug bodice and a short skirt that swirled and lifted around her legs at the slightest movement.

  She was not sure how but the dress managed to turn each of her faults into an asset. Her curviest areas, hips and chest, looked amazing, sensuous and full. When she twirled she saw how the flare of the skirt, the lightness of the fabric drew attention to the long, clean line of her leg.

  It was the perfect summer dress, light, carefree, perky, flirty. It was a dress that celebrated all the mysteries and marvels and delights of being a woman.

  But eight hundred dollars? She’d paid only slightly more than that for her wedding gown!

  “Come show me,” Tracey called.

  Feeling as shy and as gauche as a farm girl fresh out of her overalls, Maggie emerged from the fitting room.

  “Oh my God,” the girl said, and Maggie knew it was no sales pitch.

  “It’s nice, isn’t it?” she asked, twirling experimentally in front of another bank of floor-to-ceiling mirrors.

  “Nice? Oh, no. It’s not nice. It’s naughty as hell, and if you don’t buy it, you should have your head examined.”

  Maggie laughed. “I can’t pay eight hundred dollars for a dress.”

  The girl eyed her shrewdly. “Let me guess. Working. Professional something, like a teacher or a nurse. Single.”

  “That all shows?” Maggie was going home and dumping the porridge suit in the garbage. She was unexciting and broadcasting it to the whole world!

  “So, what do you spend your money on?” Tracey teased gently, “Your cat?”

  “I don’t have a cat,” Maggie admitted.

  “Well, then, you have absolutely no excuse not to treat yourself,” Tracey said. “He won’t be able to resist you.”

  “Who won’t be able to resist me? A homeless cat looking to change his circumstances?” Maggie asked innocently.

  “Nobody looks at a dress like that unless there’s a he involved: human, male, ten-out-of-ten. Believe me. I’ve been working here a whole four months, and I know.”

  Maggie laughed. “I do believe you.” She turned and looked in the mirror again. Well, why not buy the dress? Tracey was right. Maggie spent money on rent and had collected some lovely pieces of furniture. She treated herself to all her favorite romance authors’ books, bra
nd-new. She was saving for a down payment on a house. She had a car she adored.

  But when did she ever spend money on just making herself feel good, beautiful, one hundred percent a woman? The Bold and Beautiful seminars didn’t count!

  And neither did the wedding that had not happened, but still had had to be paid for. Maggie realized that her non-wedding was the last time she had splurged on deliciously decadent things just for her. She had bought underwear and lingerie and sexy sundresses for the honeymoon on the Mexican Riviera that Darnel had gone on by himself. And had never returned from.

  And when things had not worked out, she had packed up the items, unworn, most with the tags still on them, and sent them off to the Goodwill store.

  What she hadn’t realized until twenty-four hours ago, sprawled beneath a strange man’s chest, was that she had packed up all that was feminine about herself, too. Her hopes and dreams, her longings and desires had suddenly seemed too fraught with danger to investigate any further. She had locked herself away from a world that held pain, like a princess in a tower. Or a social worker in an office.

  “I’m going to take the dress,” Maggie decided firmly. And not for Luke, either. For herself. She could sit out on her balcony at night, look at the waters of the Columbia River, just visible through a maze of other buildings, sip iced coffee and feel splendidly and sexily like a woman.

  Okay, she planned to share that feeling of being womanly and sexy with Luke, but it was still for her.

  It was time to begin the healing that she had never done.

  “Want the bad news?” Tracey asked her.

  “Eight hundred dollars isn’t bad enough news?”

  “I have some Jimmy Choos that are going to look divine with that.”

  “I’m scared to ask, but what the heck are Jimmy Choos?” Maggie asked.

  A little while later she stood at the front desk with the Jimmy Choo shoes, a shawl, new underwear and the dress all being packaged up for her.

  “Now,” the girl said when she was done folding everything carefully into tissue paper and putting it in boxes and then bags, “have you got the place picked out? To wear it?”