by Tami Hoag
She turned back to the administrator just as he launched into a lecture.
“As Mr. Cooper has specifically sought our help in this matter, I feel it our duty to give him the very best we have to offer—”
“Yes, I agree.”
Three pairs of eyes stared at her in surprise.
Jace was the first to speak. “You’ve changed your mind? You’ll work with me?”
Rebecca smiled broadly then. She would work with him. She would be his unrelenting taskmaster. She would show Jace Cooper she was a woman of steely resolve, that she could face him on a daily basis and not be the least affected by his famous charm. And if he did pursue the idea of renewing his old relationship with her, she would be able to shake her head and tell him she didn’t date patients—ever.
“Yes,” she said, glancing back out the window as Susie Chin rolled into the exercise room in her wheelchair. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, I see my next patient has arrived. This is to be her first day at the parallel bars, and I’m sure she’s nervous. I don’t want to keep her waiting.”
When she started for the door, Jace blocked her path. His expression was wary. He was obviously trying to puzzle out her sudden change of heart.
“Thank you, Becca,” he said softly.
“That’ll be the last time you thank me. I expect you to be here at eight o’clock sharp tomorrow morning, ready and willing to work your butt off.”
The corners of his clear-cut lips tipped up as he gave her a brief salute and hopped out of her way. “Aye, aye, ma’am.”
Rebecca slumped onto her chair, feeling as worn out as an old rag doll. She propped her elbows on the desk and rubbed the last of her makeup off her face with her hands. What a day.
Physical therapy was a demanding profession. Helping to lift and move patients was hard physical work. Taking a patient from evaluation through the final stages of rehabilitation was mentally and emotionally demanding as well. Yet this was what she had wanted to do since she’d been a little girl. Watching her mother struggle with the debilitating effects of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis—Lou Gehrig’s disease—had inspired her to her career, and she loved it. Most of the time.
“Here,” Dominique said, as she walked into the office and set a bottle of lemon-flavored mineral water in front of Rebecca. She lowered herself into a chair on the other side of the desk, stretched out her mile-long legs, and propped her feet up on the wastebasket. “It’s not exactly a piña colada, but we can always pretend, can’t we?”
“Yes,” Rebecca said with a sigh.
“I feel as if I’ve been put through one of those old wringer washing machines.”
“Must have been all that time you spent in here with Jace Cooper.” Dominique’s dark eyes sparkled. “I admit to feeling a little weak in the knees myself. What was that big powwow all about?”
Rebecca grimaced. “The Great Railroad Conspiracy. I have been duly chosen by the powers that be to oversee Mr. Cooper’s therapy since he’s going to be such a valuable member of the community now.”
“Was it his good looks that turned you off or the fact that he’s got more charisma than Tom Cruise and Dennis Quaid put together?”
“I used to know Jace Cooper.”
“Are we talking ‘know’ as in the biblical sense?” Dominique asked.
Rebecca nodded.
“I’ll work with him,” Dominique said resolutely. “To hell with Griffith Saunders.”
“Thanks, pal,” Rebecca said with a warm smile. The offer was a tempting one, but she had made her mind up. “But no thanks. I gave it some thought, and I believe the best thing I can do is work with Jace. What better way to show him I’m immune to him than to face him head-on without flinching?”
“Oh…” Mischief lit Dominique’s dark face. “You could line his athletic cup with an itch weed potion. I’ll call my mother and get her recipe. Her grandfather was a medicine man, you know.”
Rebecca laughed, feeling the day’s problems lift a bit off her shoulders. She pushed herself to her feet and said, “Let’s call it a day. I just want to go home, eat a pizza, and crash.”
She would have added “forget Jace Cooper” to that list, but Rebecca Bradshaw was nothing if not practical. With their next confrontation looming on the horizon, there was little chance she would be able to forget about him overnight.
Rebecca went to the parking lot with her spring coat slung over her arm. As she unlocked the door of her blue Honda Accord, Rebecca took a deep, cleansing breath. Maybe the day had been awful, but the grass was still growing and the sun would come up tomorrow. One thing she had learned—life could be hard, but the world went on turning and people made it from day to day.
All things considered, she didn’t have such a tough row to hoe. It was just that at the moment, her row had a big rock in it—Jace Cooper. Rocks could be moved. In Jace’s case they rolled away and gathered no moss.
Rebecca didn’t let herself wonder why it stung a little to think he would only be there to pester her until greener pastures lured him away again.
As she pulled her car out of the hospital parking lot and headed for home, she stuck a tape in the tape deck and settled back with a sigh and a smile. The strains of Pachelbel’s Canon in D floated from the speakers. The full round tones of peace and serenity filled the car. Violins sang a serenade to the end of a beautiful spring day. Rebecca felt her tension drift away on the soothing tide of sound.
A lone figure moving down the tree-lined sidewalk caught her eye. A lone figure swinging slowly along on crutches. Before her mind could register who it was, her heart was already picking up a new rhythm. She drew even with Jace, who was trudging along with a huge duffel bag strapped across his back. Rebecca sighed and pulled her car over to the curb. Jace glanced at her and then had the audacity to appear surprised.
“Just what do you think you’re doing?” Rebecca yelled as she slid across to the passenger seat and stuck her head out the window.
“Heading home.” He put on his little-lost-boy look. “Providing I can find it.”
If he thought he was going to play on her sympathy, he was sadly mistaken. Rebecca wasn’t about to fall for that routine. “We have taxicabs, you know. They’re not exclusive to Chicago.”
“Mmm,” he said noncommittally as he glanced around. “It’s a nice day for a walk.”
“You’re not walking, you’re hobbling,” she pointed out, all her mother hen instincts rushing to the fore in spite of her resolve to take no pity on him. He should have been sitting somewhere with that knee elevated and packed with a warm compress. Knowing him, he’d probably been on it all day. “How far are you going?”
Jace shrugged with a comically innocent expression on his handsome face. “I’m not sure I remember my way around that well.”
“What’s the address?” she asked impatiently.
He dug a hand into the front pocket of his jeans, stressing fabric that was already under considerable strain. Rebecca swallowed hard as unwanted memories washed over her in a hot flash. He was a beautifully built man in every respect, and his athleticism had never been confined to the baseball diamond. It made her furious to admit to herself that no man had ever measured up to Jace Cooper in bed, but that was the plain truth.
She couldn’t help breathing a sigh of relief when his hand emerged with a crumpled scrap of paper, but all the blood drained out of her face as he read the address he had scribbled down.
“That’s Muriel Marquardt’s house,” she said weakly. “That’s right across the alley from my house.”
Jace’s dark eyes rounded. “Is it?”
Rebecca scowled at him, her elegant hand curling into a fist on the open window of the car. “You know darn well it is!”
He didn’t deny it. She wouldn’t have believed him if he had. This was vintage Jace Cooper—an all-out assault. She shouldn’t have been the least surprised. After all, he had very clearly stated his intentions. Well, if he thought living in close proximity was
somehow going to weaken her resolve and make her susceptible to his charm, he was deluding himself. She was going to ignore him on every plane but the professional…just as soon as she took him home…to the house that stood directly behind her own.
“Get in the car. Get in the car!” she said in a tight voice.
Propping his crutches against the side of Rebecca’s Honda, Jace shrugged off his duffel bag and tossed it into the backseat. Gingerly, he eased himself into the car, bad leg first, so he wouldn’t have to bend the knee that had begun to swell and ache. He buckled his seat belt as soon as he closed the door, and he glanced across to make certain Rebecca had hers in place as well.
Rebecca didn’t say a word until she signaled and pulled away from the curb. “You’re some kind of crazy person. You always were a little off the mark, but you’re in the deep end of the pool now. Don’t try to tell me you didn’t plan this well in advance, Jace Cooper. Don’t try to tell me you didn’t.”
“Gee, Becca,” he said mildly, rubbing at the ache in the muscle above his sore knee, “are you upset? You’re repeating yourself. I remember you used to do that when you were upset.”
She halted the car at a red light and took advantage of the opportunity to glare at him, her eyes narrowed to mere slits. She didn’t speak again until the light changed. “How did you get Mrs. Marquardt’s name? She hasn’t been advertising for a boarder.”
“Ummm…a friend gave her name to me,” he said evasively, fixing his gaze on the bus they were passing.
Rebecca was too steamed to notice his strange tone of voice. So he had friends in Mishawaka, did he? He hadn’t bothered to do so much as send her a Christmas card in seven years, but he had friends here who could line up accommodations for him at a moment’s notice. Wasn’t that just peachy?
Well, she thought, half chuckling to herself, maybe they weren’t such good friends after all. A room at Muriel Marquardt’s house wasn’t going to be quite what Jace was used to.
“Renting a room from an elderly lady is hardly your style,” she commented as she negotiated a right turn that took them into an older residential area where the houses were big and sturdy and full-grown maple and oak trees lined the boulevard. “I would ask why you didn’t have this famous friend of yours find you a posh condo overlooking the river, but I’ve realized this is part of your demented scheme.”
She was right. It was part of his master plan, but that wasn’t the only reason he’d taken a room in a less-than-fashionable part of town. Jace wondered what Rebecca would have to say if he told her he couldn’t afford much better at the moment. He could well imagine the tongue-lashing he’d get if he told her he’d gambled away a good deal of his money.
He glanced at her. She was muttering to herself under her breath as she hit the turn signal with a ruthless motion that threatened to break the slender wand. Obviously she was in no mood to hear the story of the last seven years of his life. She looked more ready to put an end to his life.
That fact would have discouraged him if not for her reaction to him that afternoon. No woman got that skittish around a man she cared nothing about. If he meant nothing to her, she would long since have let go of the hurt and anger his leaving had caused.
“I’ll admit it,” he said. “You have an IQ of two hundred plus. It’s not likely that I could come up with a plan so subtle you couldn’t figure it out, so why not be obvious about it? I mean to set the past to rights with you, Becca. It’ll just save me a lot of time and trouble if we’re in the same neighborhood.”
“Oh, yes, by all means!” she said. “Why go to a lot of extra trouble? I might as well be handy!”
“Becca, that’s not how I meant it.” His thinning patience was evident in his tone of voice. Just enough steel came through the flannel softness to warn her she wasn’t the only one who’d had a long day. She’d pushed him about as far as he was going to allow. Yes, he deserved her sarcasm. Yes, he’d expected a show of temper. But he wasn’t going to be a martyr about it.
Rebecca took her gaze off the road just long enough to glimpse the stern look on his face—a look that quickly turned to a grimace of pain as one of her front tires dropped into a pothole. With a cry of pain, he squeezed his eyes shut and grabbed his injured knee.
“Oh, Jace! I’m sorry!” She swerved the car to the curb and slammed it into park. Leaning across his crutches, she reached for his leg, gently pushing his hand away and replacing it with her own. “Lean back and try to relax. Tensing up the muscles will only prolong the pain.”
Jace gasped for air as he forced himself to sit back. The pain that had driven into his knee like red-hot pokers gradually receded as Rebecca gently massaged his thigh. It felt like heaven, even through the heavy elasticized brace he wore. A feeling of weakness shivered through him as he relaxed.
“Better?” she questioned softly, her hand steadily kneading the cramped muscle.
He nodded, his head falling back against the plush gray seat.
“You’ve been on it too much today, haven’t you?”
“I guess.” The bus ride from Chicago hadn’t done it any good either, but he didn’t feel much like talking about that at the moment.
“Does it feel as if it’s swelling?”
“Like a balloon.”
Rebecca clucked her disapproval. “You always were a horrible patient. As soon as we get you to Muriel’s, I want you to elevate this knee and get some ice on it to take the swelling down, then go to a warm compress to stimulate blood flow. Did Dr. Cornish give you a prescription for pain pills?”
“I don’t want any drugs.”
“Jace, you’re in pain—”
The look he gave her ended the argument as surely as his words did. “No drugs.”
Rebecca raised her free hand in surrender. “Fine. No prescription drugs. But please, take some aspirin. That will help take the inflammation down as well as making you more comfortable. I doubt you’ll be able to sleep tonight without it.”
He nodded again as his body relaxed another degree. Pain in his knee wasn’t the only thing that was going to keep him awake, he thought, biting back a moan. Rebecca continued to rub his thigh absently as she quizzed him about his injury. As if they had minds of their own, her fingers crept up under the frayed edge of the cutoff leg of his jeans. Flesh massaged flesh with no barrier to dull the pleasure. Jace let his imagination draw her hand upward an inch at a time.
He wanted her. He hadn’t wanted a woman since the accident, nearly two months before, but he wanted Rebecca Bradshaw. Memories rushed back of the way she’d felt beneath him, around him. All the tastes and sounds and scents of her filled his mind until he had to fight them off as a matter of self-preservation. He had to remind himself that Rebecca was a long way from welcoming his advances, even if her fingers were doing a little reminiscing of their own.
Jace knew the instant she realized what she was doing. Her brilliant green eyes seemed to double in size. She jerked her hand from his leg and stared at it in a most accusatory way, as if it had betrayed her.
“Don’t stop on my account,” he said in a warm lazy voice.
His head lolled to one side as he watched her skitter across the seat until she was practically jammed up against the door on the driver’s side. A blush rouged her cheeks. Jace chuckled. “Do you think aspirin will take care of the swelling in other parts of my anatomy?”
Conceited man! He undoubtedly thought she had been touching him on purpose. “I doubt it will do anything for a swelled head,” Rebecca said primly.
“It’s not my head that’s swelling at the moment.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that maybe he shouldn’t wear such tight pants, but she bit back the words. Remembrance shuddered through her and settled in a warm pool in the pit of her belly. She fixed her gaze on the odometer as she leaned forward to start the car. The Honda buzzed a noisy protest.
“You never turned it off,” Jace pointed out unnecessarily.
Rebecca blushed a
deep apple red. “Must you make everything into a sexual innuendo?”
“What did I say?” he asked with a shrug, amusement sparkling in his dark blue eyes. “Oh, you mean, turned off as opposed to turned on—the way I am right now?”
The Honda lurched backward. Rebecca muttered steadily under her breath as she rammed the gearshift and pressed down on the accelerator. The motor raced.
“That’s neutral.”
She shot him a withering glare. “Would you like to drive?”
Jace sobered and glanced away. “No.”
Rebecca shifted on the seat uneasily as she managed to get the car into drive and eased it away from the curb. She felt as if she’d slapped a puppy. Jace’s teasing was abruptly finished, and it was somehow her fault. Not that she had wanted him to tease her. It was just that this brooding silence wasn’t like him.
“Was it a bad accident?” she asked cautiously, stealing a glance at him. He was staring out the side window, his shoulders tensed as if ready for a blow.
“Yes.”
“Were you with—”
“I don’t want to talk about it right now, Becca.”
There was a certain urgency in his voice that caught her interest and, at the same time, kept her from probing deeper. She focused on the quiet, tree-lined street and piloted the car toward home. That was where she wanted to be—home, in the house she’d grown up in. Home, away from Jace Cooper. She was glad he had ended the subject because she didn’t want to know anything about his life since she had ceased to be part of it. It was none of her business.
She glanced at the digital clock nestled in among the dashboard instruments and bit her lip. “I have to make a quick stop at home before I take you to Muriel’s.”
“I can walk from your place. You said yourself it’s just across the alley.”
She shot him her sternest health-care-professional look. “No. You’ve walked enough for one day.”