“Hi,” Kerry replied, with a friendly smile.
“You new here?” the man asked. “Haven’t seen you around.”
Hmm.
Kerry eyed him.
He’s a cutie.
The man had curly reddish hair and a lithe, athletic build. “That’s because I don’t work here,” she informed him. “I’m just visiting.”
“Oh yeah?” He looked surprised. “I figured you were an intern or something, with that book bag. Sorry.” He flashed her a smile. “Well, that’s too bad. My name’s Curt.” He stuck out a hand.
Kerry took it as they kept walking. “Kerry.” She produced her name. “It’s a computer backpack, actually. I work with them.”
“Yeah?” Curt released her hand. “You don’t see many visitors taking the stairs either.” He looked down and laughed a bit. “Or staff either, to be honest. I think you’re the first person I’ve seen in here in weeks.”
“You take them, though.” Kerry turned the corner on the steps and started down the next set. “Good exercise, right?”
“You bet,” Curt agreed. “I have to get in all the leg work I can. I’m training for the Olympics.” He grinned at her surprised expression.
“I’m a gymnast.”
“Really?” Kerry turned her head to look at him. “That’s wild.”
The man nodded. “Yeah. It is. I’ve been into it since I was a kid, but my folks could never afford me just going to school for that, so I’ve kept at it on the side. I’m going to the trials next year.” He glanced over at Kerry. “You look like you’re into sports.”
It suddenly occurred to Kerry that she was being flirted with.
Hmm.
And by a really cute guy, too. It felt...kinda cool, actually. “Oh, nothing official,” she told Curt. “I just do some diving, swimming...climbing.”
She caught his very interested eye. “Martial arts, that sort of thing.”
“I thought so. You’ve got great muscle tone.” Curt grinned at her.
“Ever try gymnastics?”
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hours spent trying desperately to balance on a four-inch chunk of wood.
“When I was younger, yes,” she admitted. “My parents thought it would make me graceful.” She adroitly dodged a pipe sticking out of one of the stairs.
“They were right,” Curt laughed. “Hey, I just have to drop this bag off...you interested in sharing a pop?”
Fortunately, Kerry was from the Midwest and realized he was talking about a soda, not proposing something indecent. “Wish I could.” She softened the words with an honest smile. “Thanks for asking.”
They’d reached the bottom floor, and he shifted his bag to his other shoulder and held a hand out again. “Maybe next time, okay?”
Kerry took it and returned his firm handshake with one of her own.
“Sure.”
He turned, pulled the door open, then ducked through and let it close behind him. Kerry regarded the door for a moment, then turned and leaned against the wall, folding her arms over her chest as she rested a moment before starting her climb back up.
That was interesting,
she mused, examining the sensation. It was nice, once in a while, to have someone think you were attractive, wasn’t it?
Other than your partner, of course,
Kerry amended hastily. She’d never suspected Dar of thinking otherwise, had she? She thought about that, then blushed a vivid crimson, remembering a certain night not that long ago when she’d looked up from working on a report in her home office to find Dar watching her from the doorway, eyes half-closed, her thoughts very evident by her expression. No, she was pretty confident that they were both very much attracted to each other. But it was nice to have a stranger give your ego a pat on the head once in a while.
Kerry pushed off the wall and started up the steps.
Besides,
she grinned,
he sure was a cutie.
In fact, she thought, he reminded her of someone.
Now who...ah.
She nodded.
That’s right—Josh.
She’d gotten an e-mail from him that morning, saying he’d accepted her offer and was going to come to Miami.
Sorting through various other issues, Kerry kept jogging upward, catching her wind and falling into an easy rhythm as her body adjusted to the exertion.
THE MACHINE BUZZED softly. Dar kept her eyes firmly closed and spent the moments roundly cursing herself for being a stubborn jerk for not taking Kerry up on her offer of company. This was the third round of scans, and her nerves were beginning to twitch badly, wanting out of the machine and away from the cold, impersonal hands that invaded her personal space and moved her body.
Hands gripped her chin and she jerked, her eyes snapping open and pinning the doctor standing over her with an angry glare.
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“Okay, Ms. Rob—” The tall, willowy woman stopped speaking and removed her hands. “Sorry, did I startle you?”
Dar took a breath and forced her irritation down. “No. I thought this was about done.”
The doctor folded her arms. “Just about,” she agreed, wrinkling her well-shaped nose in thought. “You don’t much like being touched, do you?”
Dar scowled a little at being so easily read. “Not much, no,” she admitted. At least this doctor—Alison was her name?—wasn’t the usual condescending, iceberg type. “Sorry.”
“That’s all right, Ms. Roberts,” Dr. Alison reassured her. “Some people don’t. We’re so used to just grabbing what we want and pulling, we forget that sometimes. Could you tilt your head up and to the right?”
Dar complied, watching the woman make adjustments to the machine. The doctor was taller than Kerry but couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds, so thin that Dar was sure she’d blow away if the air conditioning cycled too strongly. Her white lab coat hung loosely on her, and the wrists that extended from it seemed barely wider than two of Dar’s fingers. The machine whirred again.
“Okay.” Dr. Alison looked down at Dar. “We’re done.” She pushed the machine arm back and leaned against the padded table on which Dar was lying. She had hazel eyes and a high forehead made all the more so by a hairstyle tightly pulled back into a knot. “Why don’t you sit up and let me take a look at your shoulder, okay?”
Dar obliged, tensing her abdominal muscles and pulling herself upright, then swinging her legs over the edge of the table. She hopped off and stood upright, startling the doctor, who took a step back.
“Oh.” Dr. Alison made a face, then smiled. “Somehow, patients always look shorter lying down. I didn’t expect you to be that tall.” She gestured toward a side room. “Why don’t we go in there so you can sit?”
Dar followed her in silence, taking a seat on a lower, but also padded bench in the examination room. She was still wearing her sling, but they’d allowed her Tylenol for the nagging headache, and she felt pretty good at the moment. “Well?”
Dr. Alison had been reviewing something on a computer terminal, and now she looked up over the screen at Dar. “Well, you want the bad news first or the good news?”
“Bad,” Dar replied instantly.
“You know, Ms. Roberts, I thought you were going to say that,” the doctor laughed. “Okay, well, the bad news is that you’ve got a lot of swelling in that shoulder. Aside from the bone bruise, you also strained some of the tendons and muscles around there, and everything’s pretty tense.”
Dar ran that over in her head and decided it didn’t sound life 280
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threatening. “Okay.”
“You’re going to need to do a lot of physical therapy to get the blood moving in there and get the damaged bits out,” Dr. Alison told her. “It’s going to hurt.”
Pain was something Dar could live with. She’d worked through enough injuries in her years of martial arts, after all, and while she never enjoyed the process, she knew ways of getting past it. “And?” She watched as the doctor left her console and came over, carefully unsnapping the sling to release Dar’s arm.
“I need to see what kind of range of motion you have, okay?” Dr.
Alison waited for Dar to nod, then she took hold of Dar’s wrist and slowly lifted her arm. “Let me know when it starts to hurt.” She first flexed the arm at the elbow, then gently pulled upward, getting no reaction from her wary patient. “Okay, that’s what I thought. Now I’m going to move it out to the side; I think that’s where the problem is going to be.”
Dar nodded and shifted a little, straightening up as the other woman carefully extended her injured arm out to the side, then started to lift it. About halfway, Dar let out a sound somewhere between a cough and a hiss, and the motion stopped.
“Okay.” The doctor examined the angle. “Well, that’s not too bad, actually.” She sounded surprised. “Given what I saw in the pictures, that’s pretty darn good.” She put Dar’s arm back down and started poking at her shoulder, touching and prodding the skin with absorbed interest. “You have a very well developed deltoid here.”
Dar’s brow lifted and she eyed the woman warily. “Thanks.”
“I don’t think I’ve seen a structure like this on a female in a while,”
Dr. Alison added. “You’re not doing steroids or other anabolics, are you?”
Dar glared at her. “Absolutely not.”
“Just asking,” the doctor replied mildly. “No offense intended, Ms.
Roberts. A lot of people do, you know. In my line of work, I deal with an enormous number of athletes. It’s a standard question.” She walked over and checked her screen. “You have an incredible bone density, did you know that?”
How was she supposed to know that? “No,” Dar replied.
“Well, you do.” The doctor typed something. “That’s a good thing.
It’s what kept you from getting hurt worse. You take calcium supplements?”
Dar’s brow creased.
Supplements?
“No, I just drink milk.”
“Can’t stand the stuff myself.” Dr. Alison shook her head. “Well, good for you, Ms. Roberts. You weight train, correct?”
“Yes.”
The doctor nodded. “Okay, I just need to get some stats on you so I can send them to the therapist. Could you take your shirt off, please?”
It suddenly occurred to Dar why she’d always been more
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comfortable with male doctors, an interesting moment of self-revelation that almost made her start laughing. “What stats does a therapist need?” she asked, standing up and pulling her T-shirt off over her head one-handedly. It left her in a pair of gym shorts and nothing else.
“Oh, height, weight, limb len—” Dr. Alison stopped speaking for a second as she looked up. “Wow.”
Dar’s eyebrow went right up.
“You have great body structure,” the doctor continued enthusiastically. “You have almost perfect symmetry, did you know that?” She picked up a tape measure and trotted over. “Outstanding.”
Dar didn’t know whether to feel like a show horse on parade or what. She held her arms out when told and felt the tickle of the tape measure as it was run across her back.
“I thought so. Seventy-four inches.” The doctor towed Dar over to a scale. “Let me get your height and weight.” She pushed the height bar up and stood on her tiptoes to let the top of it rest on Dar’s head.
“Seventy-two and three-quarters. Yep, I knew it.” Next, she ran the weights across and nudged the smaller one back and forth until the arm balanced in the center. “One fifty-six.” She nodded and scribbled. “That about normal for you?”
“Give or take a few, yes,” Dar replied. “Why?”
“Just curious.” After measuring Dar’s upper and lower arms, Dr.
Alison finished her writing. “Okay, we’re done.” She looked up, reviewing Dar with an air of scientific satisfaction. “Very nice bones, Ms. Roberts. Congratulations.”
Dar picked up her shirt and slipped it on. “Thanks,” she muttered.
“But I think it’s my father’s fault.”
“Really?” Dr. Alison smiled. “Are you a daddy’s girl? Everyone tells me I am.” She straightened her papers and slid them into an envelope. “I hate that. Don’t you?”
Dar picked up her sling and looked at it, then glanced up at the doctor. “No,” she said. “I’ve always considered it a compliment.”
“Well, you’re just a lucky woman, then.” The doctor held a hand out and gripped Dar’s. “Good luck, Ms. Roberts. Keep up what you’re doing, and I guarantee you’ll be rock climbing into your seventies.” She nodded briskly. “Any questions for me?”
Dar cocked her head. “Yeah, one,” she drawled. “If you think what I’m doing is so great, why don’t you do it?”
Dr. Alison blinked. She glanced at herself, then at Dar. Then she laughed, a touch sheepishly. “I’m a doctor.” She grinned and shrugged.
“We never listen to our own advice.” With a wave, she left the room.
Dar straightened up and looked around at the now empty room.
Okay. She’d gotten her head examined several times, and apparently her arm wasn’t going to require amputation. A smile appeared. That meant she could get her ass out of here and go home. She went to the door and peeked out, seeing no sign of her solicitous orderly with his 282
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ready wheelchair. “Heh.” Dar planned her route and slipped past the nurses’ station toward the doors.
“DAMN.” KERRY FELT the strain as she hit the seventh floor, her breath coming short and her legs starting to really burn. “That’s what you get for slacking off at the gym for the last month, Kerrison. You’re one lazy son of a biscuit when you want to be.” She sucked in a deep breath and pushed through the discomfort.
It annoyed her. She’d kept her running up, hadn’t she? Every morning, without fail, there she was at Dar’s side in the early-morning cool air. So, okay, she’d cut back on the climbing wall to let her shoulder heal, and they were between martial arts classes, but still. Kerry scowled. She’d even kept up with Dar lately...
Hey.
A thought occurred to her. Was Dar slowing down on purpose and letting her do that? Dar wouldn’t do that, would she?
Not to make Kerry feel better, right? White teeth chewed on a lower lip. Okay, but maybe she did it just to have company, how about that?
Dar would do that, right? Slow down so they could talk to each other, like they’d started to, using that time to go over problems at the office and plan their day.