by Devney Perry
“On my back?” he rephrases his question before I can recover from my thoughts, and takes a step closer. “On my stomach?” He stops and scrubs a towel over his face so that his dark brown hair sticks up every which way, yet somehow it only adds to his appeal.
Give him a chance, Scout. He’s baseball royalty. Besides, he might not be that bad. Does it really matter if he’s a conceited jerk? There’s still a contract, a set timeframe, and he’s still your client. So, chop-chop. Get to it and do your job.
“Uh,” I say as I glance down again, trying not to let that body—the hard, damaged, perfection of it—scatter my thoughts and undermine my professionalism.
“Uh?” he repeats, as those multicolored eyes of his laugh at a joke only he seems to understand.
“Sorry, you distracted me.” Once the words are out I realize how they sound, giving the implication that his body is the culprit.
“Distracted?” A lift of his brows. A ghost of a smile.
I start over. “I’m the new PT the club contracted to help get you back on the field.”
“The club hired you? I thought they were hiring Doc…and you’re definitely not Doc.”
“Doc’s the one who assigned me to your case.” My tone is defensive, my soul sagging under the weight of why I’m here and he’s not.
“Doc Dalton, Doc?” Disbelief tinges his tone.
“Yeah, Doc Dalton, Doc. I’m his partner.”
“Partner? Doc’s notorious for working solo.” He narrows his eyes and studies me unabashedly for a moment. The silent scrutiny has me shifting on my feet, and just as I’m about to speak, he chuckles under his breath at something I’m obviously not privy to. “Which one of the guys hired you?”
“Your general manager. Cory Tillman.”
“Cory?”
“Yes. Cory.” Why is this so hard for him to understand?
“And she even has the name right,” he mutters, more to himself than to me, only furthering my confusion. “Nice try, though. My bet’s on Drew or Tino. They covered all of their bases with you, didn’t they?”
What in the hell is he talking about?
“Not that you care, but I don’t need my bases covered. I’d really like to get started.”
“No.”
“No?” Is he being serious?
“You think I’d let just anybody touch my arm?”
“Excuse me?” The insult hits me harder than it should. It’s one I’ve learned to expect—the assumption that I can’t be as good as Doc—and yet my temper still lights. “I assure you my touch is every bit as magical as Doc’s is.” Asshole.
“I’m sure it is,” he murmurs, drawing the words out, while his eyes roam down the length of my body. The look in them—one of pure male appreciation—sets my nerves, already tinged with temper, abuzz. And I don’t want them to be abuzz. I don’t want them to feel anything when it comes to him and how much of a prick he is proving himself to be right now.
“Try it on someone else, Hot Shot. Your charm isn’t going to work on me.”
“My charm?” I love the little startle to his head. The one that says he’s not used to being called on the carpet.
“Yeah. The ‘I’m a cocky bastard’ charm. Do you really get women when you act like that?”
“I wasn’t aware I was trying to get a woman.” His eyes lock onto mine. There’s humor in their hazel depths, but all I feel is stupidly hurt as if he’d just rejected me, when I didn’t want to be wanted by him in the first place. “And for the record, it works all the time.”
What I’d give to knock that smug smirk off his face right now.
“So, what? You just walk up and throw some stats at her? ‘Hey, baby, I’m having a killer season, batting three seventy-five with a twenty-game hitting streak. Wanna go out?’”
“Nah.” He fights back a laugh, and I hate that even though I know I’m being mocked, that sheepish smile of his draws me in to take a step closer. “I just tell her I have a big stick and I know just how to use it.”
“Seriously?”
He shrugs. “No, but you’re going to think what you want to anyway, right?”
“Sure am.”
“And you have a thing against big sticks, I take it?”
He’s taunting me. Seeing how far he can push me. Little does he know, I push right back.
“Nothing against big sticks, but they’re worthless unless you know how to use them. And guys who drop cheesy lines like the one you just did definitely don’t take the time to learn how to use them properly.”
“Are you speaking from experience? Do a lot of men try lines like that on you?” Our eyes war across the small space.
“Not men I’d give the time of day.”
“That’s a pity. Maybe you haven’t met the right one, then.” He just stares at me with an unrelenting gaze that asks questions and makes assumptions I’d rather he not make. This conversation has veered way off course from where it needs to be.
Back to him.
Focused on him.
And the irony isn’t lost on me that this is the exact opposite of what I wanted moments ago.
“Look, I’m here to do a job. It’s probably best if we stick to that,” I say in an attempt to reset this conversation for the second time.
“You sure you want to? Your hostility screams how much you’re enjoying my company.”
“Liking you is not a necessity. I’m good at ignoring people who rub me the wrong way.” I follow the dig with a sickeningly sweet smile. “Let’s get to it.” I motion to the padded table behind him.
He looks at the table and then back to me. “What if I tell you thanks, but no thanks.”
“And what if I tell you, you don’t get a say? I’m getting paid to do a job, and I intend to get that job done.” I take a few steps closer to him and make sure my voice is as authoritative as possible. “On your back.”
“Gotta love a woman who knows what she wants.” There’s no mistaking the suggestion in his words, and it’s only reinforced by the intensity of the way he stares at me, as if with each passing second, another layer of my clothing is falling off. “But you’ll learn soon enough, I rarely do what I’m told.”
“Pretty please.” Sarcasm rings through my voice as we wage a visual war of wills, but I’m unsure over what. I’m here to give him exactly what he wants—to be back on the field—and so his defiance is both frustrating and confusing.
Because while I may have been questioned by players in the past—underestimated because I’m a woman, tested because I’m not as experienced as Doc—it’s so very different this time around.
This time I have Doc Dalton’s benchmark career riding on rehabbing Easton Wylder. I have my father’s last wishes to fulfill. I have my reputation to solidify.
“Feisty, gorgeous, intelligent, and polite,” he muses, crossing his arms over his chest so his biceps flex with the movement. Eyebrows lifted, he gives me a full-blown smile to boot. “Because of that, I’ll obey…but just this once.”
Quit staring at me. “Let’s get to it.” Quit smiling at me like that. “On the table.” Quit flexing your biceps. “Shirt off.” Quit unnerving me.
“My shirt’s already off.”
“Oh. Yes. Sorry.” Crap. Nothing like showing you’re capable and in control by completely missing the obvious. “Do you want to tell me where it hurts the most, so I can start there?”
“I’ve got a lot of hurts.” He laughs, and it irritates me that I find the sound of it sexy. “But I’m curious, how do you plan on fixing me if touching the clientele is off-limits?”
“I touch, Wylder. There are no limitations. I throw my hands and my body into it until I’ve made the pain go away. Then we move on to your next ache and start the process all over again.” Ignoring the disbelief on his face, I point to the table behind him. “I thought you were going to obey this once?”
“On one condition.”
Condition? Is he serious? I have no choice but to play along. “What’s
that?”
“Stop pretending like you know what you’re doing when it comes to my arm.” He arches an eyebrow in challenge.
The surest way to piss a woman off is to question her abilities and yet he just did again. “Don’t be an ass. You’re irritating me. And wasting my time.” I raise my eyebrows. “I don’t like my time wasted.”
“Isn’t the customer always supposed to be right?”
“Sit. Down.”
“What the lady wants, the lady gets.” Resigned, but with a lopsided smirk that says somehow he’s getting what he wants anyway, he scoots his ass onto the padded table behind him, eyes still locked on mine. “One more condition?”
“No more conditions.” The man is positively frustrating.
“What’s your name?”
“Scout,” I answer, already exhausted from this game I’m a player in but don’t quite understand.
“Scout?”
“Yes. Scout.” I opt to leave out my last name. There’s no need for him to question my abilities any further.
“That’s not exactly the type of originality I was expecting. What happened to Star or Trixie or Kitty? Were those all taken?”
What in the hell is he talking about?
“Sorry to disappoint you, but it’s just Scout.”
“Damn. My bet was on Kitty.”
“Nope.”
“Scout. Hmm.” He nods his head, eyes narrowing as if he’s trying to figure something out. “I was wrong. It wasn’t Tino. It was Drew. He’s the one who hired you, coached you on what to say, and told you what to do, right?” He swings his legs up onto the table, and I swear he says something about there being no Velcro but when he props himself up on his elbow and meets my puzzled gaze, all he does is give me a perfectly innocent, choir-boy smile.
“I’m sorry, am I missing something?” I’m so confused.
“Don’t you worry that pretty little head of yours,” he says with a smirk. “You’re not missing a thing.”
I hear him—the mockery in his tone, the alarm bells telling me something’s going on that I don’t quite understand—but I’m momentarily distracted by our proximity. By the scent of the shampoo in his hair. By the sight of faded scars on his body, more visible now that I’m closer to him. By the unique color of his eyes, which are a mixture of brown and gray with a ring of blue around the iris.
But it’s his wince that pulls me from la-la land. It’s a simple motion, the lift of his arm behind his head, but I catch the grimace on his face. My eyes home in on his shoulder. On the vibration of his muscles as he shifts and adjusts to get comfortable and the mask now in place trying to pretend it didn’t hurt.
My training kicks in. Takes over. Throws that unwelcome pang of insta-lust I was momentarily mesmerized by out the window. I itch to put my hands on him so I can knead and stretch and try to give him relief from his nagging pain.
But right as I’m about to touch his shoulder, he shifts to look at me and asks, “Don’t you need music or something?”
My hands freeze as his words break through my concentration. They hit my ears, and my synapses fire for what feels like the first time since he stepped in here. Everything clicks into place. The hints that have been niggling in the back of my mind suddenly link together and make sense.
The throwback baller.
The All-American do-gooder.
And the notorious prankster.
How could I not have connected the dots earlier? That the man who is known in locker rooms around the country for pranking his teammates—like the ones he named moments ago, Tino and Drew—thinks they are pranking him. Getting him back for the legendary stunts he’s done to them.
And he thinks I’m in on it.
Velcro. Music. The ridiculous stage names.
Yep. He thinks I’m a stripper.
Or a hooker.
Lovely.
And while I should be insulted that he thinks I’m here because his buddies hired me to dance for him, at least our conversation makes some sense now.
Why does the thought relieve me? Because it redeems him? Not in the least. But maybe he’s not the asshole I pegged him to be. Maybe, just maybe, he was reacting to the situation he assumed and not to me.
But then again, he’s still lying down, still letting this play out, still letting me—the woman he thinks is here to strip for him—touch him.
And while I may have worked in enough clubhouses to know this prank is tame in the scheme of things, I also know there is no better way to get a prankster to take you seriously than to prank him right back. So, I make the split-second decision to ride this ruse out. I’ll play the part, and then when the time is right, I’ll tell him the truth. Perhaps his disappointment that I’m not a stripper will knock some of the cockiness from his smile.
When I meet his eyes again, I hold them just a touch too long, smile a little more seductively. “Do I want music? It’s your preference. Do you prefer that I…do it to music? Or would you rather we do a dry run first—see what feels good to you, what doesn’t, and then we can take it from there?” I don’t believe my voice has ever purred before, but right now I feel like I deserve the stage name Kitty.
Those thick lashes of his shock open at my sudden change in demeanor. He glances at me and then out of the training room’s windows to the empty locker room beyond. He must be wondering where Drew and Tino are, because no doubt they’d be standing by to watch their prank play out.
No dice, Hot Shot. The joke’s on you.
“There’s no one else here, Easton. Just you. And me.” I put my finger on his forehead and push so his head rests back. “And the little workout I’m about to give you.”
“A workout? Is that what you call it these days?” His chuckle says it all. So does the quick inhale of breath and the tensing of his muscles beneath my fingertips as I press on the skin atop his rotator cuff to feel for the presence of scar tissue. The first step to try and assess why it’s taking his arm so long to heal when it should be far past the wincing stage.
His skin is smooth. Hot. And there’s a zap of electricity—a hum of something—when our bodies connect in this most innocent of ways. It’s so unexpected and unlike anything I’ve ever felt before that I have to stop myself from pulling my hand away in reaction.
“I appreciate you pretending to know what you’re doing and all, but—”
“Oh, I know what I’m doing, no worries there,” I croon to stop his protest. “Let’s try this now. Does that hurt?” He resists when I try to lift his arm over his head. At least he has enough sense to question letting a stripper work on his million-dollar arm.
“No. It’s just…I don’t think you should—”
“I assure you I’m more than qualified.” There’s panic in his eyes, fear over how far this stripper is going to carry on the I’m-a-physical-therapist-routine. So I carry on. “A torn labrum isn’t anything to mess around with. Only a professional will know how to make it feel better. And rest assured, I’m a professional.”
“Handling me is one thing, Scout,” he says with a bit of bewilderment, “but my arm is a whole other matter.”
“You don’t trust me to fix it?” I walk my fingers up his biceps, and his Adam’s apple bobs in reaction as he debates what to do next.
“I highly doubt that’s what you’re here for.”
“No?” I feign innocence. “Then why don’t we get down to exactly what I’m here for?”
In a move I use daily to stretch my players, and before I lose the element of surprise, I hop onto the table so that my knees cage the sides of his hips.
“Wait. Whoa.” Easton’s face is the picture of surprise—eyes wide, mouth opening and closing, eyebrows arching.
“I’m ready if you are.” The purr is back as I lean forward so I’m on all fours with our torsos parallel and my eyes locked with his.
“Yes. No.” He blinks rapidly as if it will help him grasp the fact that what was all fun and games a minute ago is now very real. A part of me li
kes that he’s hesitant and not all grabby-hands and raring to go with some random woman. The other part of me wonders if I really were a stripper here on a prank, just how far would he let this ride out. “My rehabber—Doc. He’ll be here any minute.” He stutters out the protest.
“No, he won’t.”
“He won’t?” His voice rises in pitch.
“Nope.” I shake my head and lift my eyebrows.
“I knew it. I knew Drew and Tino were behind this.” He breathes out a laugh that’s part disbelief, part relief, but when he starts to sit up, I remain right where I am.
“Nope. Not a prank.” That stops him cold.
“What do you mean? You’re a…”
“A physical therapist,” I finish for him.
“That’s a good one. Cute. But I call bullshit.”
“Actually, it’s not.” I reach out with one hand, and just as I’m about to touch his shoulder, he yanks it out of my grasp. His hiss from the pain, the kneejerk reaction, is audible. “And you need me.”
His eyes bore into mine—gauging, judging, questioning—before that cocksure grin of his returns. “I’m sure a lot of other guys need you…Scout, is it? But I’m not one of them. I don’t need to pay to see some skin.”
“First, you’re not paying me, the club is. And second, I’m fully clothed.”
“Drop the act, sweetheart. The club’s not paying you shit. They’re paying Doc, and right now, he’s somewhere waiting for me, and I need to find him. So, time’s up. It was cute, you had me going for a bit, but it’s time for you to head out.”
I nod in mock resignation as I slowly climb off the table, but my eyes never leave his as I lean down close to his ear. “You get a pass today, just so you can wrap that pretty little head of yours around the fact that I’m your new physical therapist. Be here tomorrow. Same time. Same place. Don’t let my appearance fool you, because I’ll work you out all right, but only so I can get you back on the field.” I step back, take in his wide-eyed expression as it morphs slowly from arrogance to the realization that I just might be telling the truth. I smile. “Oh, and leave your assumptions at home. I may not be Doc, but I sure as hell am a Dalton. It’s been a pleasure.”