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“What are you doing here?” Sara rushed over to him before he could even put down his water bottle. “Your appointment’s not until noon.”
“I wanted to get some time in on the treadmill.”
“No way.” Sara shook her head. “I don’t want you jarring that elbow until it’s more stable.”
“It’s in a brace, for Christ’s sake.” Jace looked at his arm, the joint in question almost immobile thanks to the range-of-motion splint, and scowled. “How much more stable can it get?”
“You just got here yesterday.” She pursed her lips. “I haven’t had a chance to fully assess it yet.”
He held up his arm. “Assess away.”
“I have other patients to deal with right now.” She waved a hand around the room. A handful of other residents were using the equipment. One in particular caught his attention—a very familiar one on a stationary bike in the far corner, her ponytail swinging as she pedaled.
He registered the empty treadmill beside her and grinned. Like Hannibal Smith, leader of the A-team, he loved it when a plan came together. “How come she gets to work out?”
“Because she’s been here for a few weeks already. Today’s her first day off crutches.” Sara looked from Jace to the blonde, then back again. “And she’s taking it easy. She follows instructions. Unlike some people.”
“Hey, I can follow instructions.” Never mind that he’d completely ignored them last night. “When I have to.”
She smirked. “You forget I have your records from the hospital in California.”
Yeah. He hadn’t exactly been a hit with the staff there. Noncompliant, they’d labeled him. Uncooperative. He preferred to think of himself as focused. Goal oriented. “What if I promise to go slow, like the Duchess?”
“The Duchess?” Sara’s brows knotted together.
Damn. He hadn’t meant to let that slip.
“Yeah. She seems kind of...prissy. What’s she in for? Fall off her high heels? Get trampled by crazed shoppers at the Macy’s one-day sale?”
“You don’t have any idea who she is, do you?” Sara jabbed a finger at his chest. “That’s Noelle Nelson.”
Finally. The Duchess had a name. “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”
“She’s only like the most famous ballerina in the country. Maybe even the world. Principal dancer with the New York City Ballet.”
Ballet? Jace knew as much about ballet as he did about nuclear physics. But he knew you needed two fully functioning knees. And from the look of the contraption on Noelle’s leg, she was in the same boat as him where her career was concerned. Without a paddle.
He watched her as she pedaled, her mouth set in a harsh line, a bead of sweat forming on her temple, her knuckles white on the handlebars. As slow as she was going, it still took an emotional toll. “Shit.”
“Yeah, shit.” Sara gave him a not-so-gentle shove toward the treadmill. “Go. Walk. But if I see you doing anything more than that, I’m hitting the emergency stop button.”
“Deal.” Jace started to offer his hand to her but pulled it back. “I’d shake on it, but I wouldn’t want to jar anything.”
“Ha-ha.” Sara picked up a physioball and headed across the room, where an older man with one ankle wrapped was sitting on a mat next to a set of low parallel bars. “I’ll come get you when it’s time for your session.”
Jace set off in the opposite direction.
“Morning, Duchess.” He plunked his water bottle into the holder on the treadmill console. “Fancy meeting you here.”
She stared out the window, not so much as glancing at him. “I thought we agreed to steer clear of each other.”
“You agreed. I just smiled.” He flashed her another of his never-fail-to-charm grins and hit the start button on the treadmill, setting the speed as high as he could without incurring the wrath of Sara.
“If you have to work out next to me, could you at least keep your mouth shut?”
“I thought we’d chit-chat. Get to know each other. Pass the time. Hell, at this speed, I could recite the Gettysburg Address.” He peeked over his shoulder for Sara. Her back to him, she was totally occupied with the guy in the ankle wrap. He edged the rate of the treadmill up a notch. “If I remembered it.”
Noelle swiveled her head to look at him. Finally. Too bad her baby blues flashed with annoyance and not a more...pleasurable emotion. Like desire. “What part of ‘I’m not here to make friends’ did you not get?”
“You can’t have too many friends. And you know what they say about all work and no play.”
“Well, I don’t want to play.” Her head snapped forward, her attention back on the window, or whatever lay outside it. “You’re not the only one with a job on the line and people counting on you.”
“Sara says you’re some big-time ballerina.”
“Sara’s new. She talks too much.”
“What’d you do?” He gestured toward her leg. “Torn ACL?”
“How did you guess?”
“I’ve seen a few in my time. Not on a dancer, though.”
“Dancers are just as much athletes as baseball players.” From the way the last two words dripped off her tongue, it was clear she considered his profession on par with used car salesmen and politicians. “More so, if you asked me. You don’t see us sitting on the bench, spitting tobacco. And the guys I work with throw around hundred-pound ballerinas, not a five ounce sphere.”
“Easy, Duchess.” He held up a palm. “I wasn’t trying to insult you.”
“You don’t have to try.” She tossed her ponytail. “You just do.”
“Like Yoda?”
“Minus the green skin and the pointy ears, obviously.”
“So you think dancers are better athletes than ballplayers?”
“Not better.” Wrinkles creased her forehead like she was deep in thought, searching for the right word to bridge the gap between her occupation and his. “Different. But we earn our living with our bodies, just like you do.”
“Finally.” He flashed another mega-watt smile, with as little effect as the last one. Damn. He hadn’t struck out this many times in a row since he’d faced Johan Santana at Shea his rookie season. “Something we have in common.”
“I seriously doubt there’s anything else.”
“Do you?” He raised an eyebrow.
“Let’s just say I’m not interested in finding out.” She slowed, then stopped pedaling.
“That’s disappointing.”
“I guess you’ll have to learn to live with disappointment.”
She eased herself off the bike and made her way over to the free weights. He shrugged off her pissy attitude, knowing from personal experience she was covering for something. Like the fear of losing a lifetime of hard work.
Besides, it was just as well. If their conversation had gone on any longer, he might have let slip just how well acquainted he was with disappointment.
“What the hell?”
He stumbled as the treadmill came to a stop. Sara stood next to the machine, her finger still on the e-stop button. “I warned you.”
“I was barely moving.”
“You were practically running.” She handed him a towel. “It’s time for your session. Wipe off your machine and let’s get going. You’re in my army now, hotshot.”
Great. Not even noon and he’d already managed to piss off two women. With a groan, he balled up the towel, tossed it into a nearby hamper and followed Sara.
It was gonna be a fan-freaking-tabulous day.
* * *
WHAT WAS IT about Jace Monroe that brought out her inner diva?
Noelle flopped onto her bed, if you could call gingerly lowering herself so as to avoid jolting her bum-knee flopping. She really should take a shower, but she didn’t have the energy after her workout. Half an hour on a stupid stationary bike, and she felt as spent as if she’d danced Aurora in Sleeping Beauty. Plus, she was supposed to Skype with Holly in—she glanced at the digital clock on her nightstand—ten minutes.
Fuming, she ran a brush through her hair in a futile attempt to look presentable and pulled her laptop out from under the bed. Why did she let him get to her? She’d dealt with plenty of macho morons who saw ballet as some sort of sissy thing. One fairly innocuous comment from Jace, and she’d flown off the handle.
The guy must think she was a lunatic. Not that she cared what he thought. Not one bit.
Now she just had to convince her brain, which seemed to be fixated on him. And her heart, which beat a little faster every time he looked at her with that maddeningly sexy, Patrick-Swayze-in-Dirty-Dancing smile.
She shrugged it off and booted up the computer. Nothing like a little time with her sister and niece to get her mind off bedroom eyes, sun-kissed skin and sculpted muscles, three things she didn’t need occupying valuable brain space. No, what she needed now was to be totally focused on her rehabilitation. Without that, her chances of dancing professionally again were next to nil.
She’d just logged onto Skype when an alert flashed showing an incoming call. She clicked on “answer with video,” and a live feed of Holly popped up, a squirming, curly-haired toddler in her arms.
“Hey, Hols.” Noelle settled in on the bed, adjusting the laptop across her knees so her own face showed in a box on the corner of the screen. “How’s my baby girl?”
“Fast.” Holly untangled a chubby fist from her hair and handed her daughter a ring of plastic keys, which she immediately began chewing on. “And sneaky. I’m exhausted. It’s like she started walking and hasn’t stopped. Yesterday, I turned my back for a second and she figured out how to open the sliding glass door. She was halfway to the lake before I caught her.”
Noelle’s gaze drifted to her brace then back to the computer. “Maybe she can give me a few pointers.”
“Rehab not going well?” Holly asked, bouncing the toddler on her own perfectly healthy knee.
“Rehab’s rehab. Two hours a day of torture to move an inch forward.” Noelle ran a hand through her still sweat-dampened hair. “I just want to be back on stage, as soon as possible.”
“Have the doctors given you any idea when that might be?”
“No.” What she didn’t want to admit—to Holly or herself—was that the question wasn’t so much when as it was if. “They’re telling me to take it one day at a time. Easy for them to say. It’s not their life on hold.”
“You’re more than your career, Noe.”
“I know.” And she did. Really. For her, ballet wasn’t about the bright lights, the elaborate costumes or the thundering applause. It was about the dancing, pure and simple. Something she’d done each day, every day since she was just a few years older than her niece. And if she didn’t have that...
She pasted on a smile. Things were treading dangerously close to The Turning Point territory. Accentuate the positive, her mother always said. “I’m off the crutches.”
“That’s a good sign, right?”
“So they say. I’m putting weight on it. Even rode the stationary bike today.” She conveniently left out the fact that she’d practically passed out afterward.
“If anyone can come back from this, you can,” Holly insisted. “I’ve never known anyone as fearless as you, especially when it comes to your dancing. Remember how you convinced Mom and Dad to let you take the subway into New York for lessons? Alone? At thirteen?”
“It helped that I was the baby. By the time I was a teenager, you, Gabe and Ivy had already broken them down.”
“Down.” A tiny toddler voice echoed through the computer’s tinny speakers. “Down.”
“Nick,” Holly called, struggling to hold on to her fidgety daughter. “Can you come and take Joy?”
A second later the handsome face of Holly’s movie-star husband appeared over her shoulder. “Hey, Noelle. Fighting the good fight?”
Noelle nodded. “Always.”
“Here.” Holly placed Joy into Nick’s waiting arms, her nose wrinkling. “I think she needs a fresh diaper.”
“I got this.” He hoisted Joy into the crook of one arm and looked straight into the camera. “Hang tough, sis. We’re all rooting for you.”
“Thanks, bro. See you at Thanksgiving?”
“If not before. Enjoy your girl chat.”
He bent to place a quick, tender kiss on Holly’s forehead, and not for the first time Noelle felt a pang of longing for all she’d sacrificed at the altar of ballet. Home. Husband. Kids. She couldn’t even have a pet, for Christopher’s sake. She’d tried once—a Yorkie she named Sous-Sus—and it had been a total disaster. Traveling with a dog, even a small one, had turned out to be a logistical nightmare. How Kelly Clarkson and Taylor Swift managed it was beyond her. She’d wound up giving Sous-Sus to her hairstylist, who was lucky enough to have a rent-controlled apartment within spitting distance of Central Park.
“Come on, pumpkin.” Nick’s voice brought her back to the present and the computer screen. He had shifted his attention to his daughter, tweaking her button nose. “We’ve got a diaper to change.”
They disappeared from view, leaving Holly alone on the screen. “Now that it’s just us gals over legal age, how about we talk about something more fun. Like boys.”
“You’re trying to take my mind off the fact that I’m basically an unemployed invalid for the next who-knows-how-many months.”
“Is it working?”
“Not really.” Noelle flexed her feet and grimaced, even that tiny motion straining her overtired knee. “Besides, there’s not much in the way of prime man meat around this place.”
“Liar.”
“I am not lying.”
“Are, too.” Holly crossed her arms in front of her chest. “You’ve got a tell.”
“What do you mean?”
“Every time you lie, you tilt your head to one side. Usually the right. How do you think Mom knew you were the one who borrowed—” she put the word in air quotes “—her cashmere sweater and put it back with a huge stain on the sleeve?”
“I figured you told her.”
