rang out like a shot and echoed through the empty gym, taunting him with his failure.
“Damn!” Nathan wiped a towel across his face before resting his elbows on his knees. Just that little bit of pressure caused more pain and he winced before shifting positions.
“Damn!” The curse echoed around him. This was definitely not going the way he had planned. He was into his fourth week of physical therapy. He should be able to lift more weight by now. They had told him not to push it, but what did they know? If he waited as long as they suggested, he’d be old and gray before he went back to playing. That was a chance he couldn’t take.
Nathan ran his hands through his damp hair then stood, ignoring the throbbing in his leg that threatened to topple him to the floor before he got his balance. He limped halfway to the locker room, thinking of nothing but a long, hot shower followed by several ice packs when the gym door opened behind him.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” The voice was unnaturally loud, the anger and accusation bouncing off the walls. Nathan stopped with a sigh and slowly turned.
Sonny LeBlanc stormed across the floor, his meaty fists clenched by his sides when he stopped a foot away. Nathan fought the urge to flinch and make up excuses like a child. Sonny had that effect on everyone. At a stocky six feet tall, Sonny looked more like a former drill sergeant than a hockey coach. His dark eyes were harsh slits and the squareness of his face was made more austere by the buzz cut of his salt-and-pepper hair. The straight-edged scar that ran down the left side of his cheek glowed red under the bright overhead lights, an incongruous slash in an otherwise smooth face.
Sonny had the misfortune of running into a skate blade during one of his final games years earlier. Now one of the best coaches in the league, he had the reputation of remaining outwardly impassive—except for the scar. No matter how poker-faced the man stayed, the scar always betrayed him, glowing like a brand during times of anger and duress.
Right now, the brightness of the scar would light the gym if the power failed. Not a good sign for Nathan. He took a deep breath and let it out, waiting for the inevitable explosion.
“How stupid are you, Conners? How stupid do you think I am? What are you trying to do, blow every chance you have of coming back? I oughtta suspend you just for being dumb! I’d’ve thought you knew better! Well? What the hell are you doing?”
“Therapy.” Nathan’s tight voice seemed liked a whisper after Sonny’s outburst.
“Bull! I just got off the phone with that doctor of yours and he said you ain’t supposed to be doing any of this crap until you’re cleared.” Sonny’s finger came up and jabbed Nathan in the chest for emphasis. “And you’re not cleared! Now get in there and wash up and don’t let me catch you back here! I’m not going to have you blow your chance because of some bullheaded notion swimming around that thick skull of yours!”
Nathan clenched his jaw and stared at Sonny’s broad back as he left, feeling like an ultimatum had been laid at his feet. So now they were trying to keep him from working on his own, were they? Well, he’d just go see about that. He had too much at stake to let it rest in someone else’s lap.
“I need to see Dr. Porter,” Nathan repeated for the third time, leaning closer to the desk so he hovered over the receptionist. He felt a second of gratitude when she flinched.
“Mr. Conners, I’m sorry, but I already explained he left for the day. I can make an appoint—”
“No! I want to see him. Now.”
“There is nothing I can do. I’m sorry.”
Nathan glared at the small woman staring back at him and called himself every kind of fool. He would get nowhere by browbeating the poor lady, but he couldn’t just turn around and walk away. He had come here full of steam, eager for a face-off. He couldn’t give up so easily, not when there was so much at stake. “What about Dr. Wilson? Is she in?”
The receptionist eyed him warily then flipped through one of the many appointment books in front of her. He was grabbing at straws, he knew, but he was desperate.
“Yes, she’s still here.”
“Fine, then I’ll see her.”
“Mr. Conners, you can’t just walk in…she has patients.”
Nathan shot a quick look around the empty waiting room then turned back to the receptionist. “I need to see her!”
“Mr. Conners, I said—”
“What is going on out here?” Nathan turned at the sound of the cool voice, swallowed hard at the look of steel in the dark eyes that impaled him.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Wilson, but Mr. Conners insists on seeing someone….”
“In my office!” She turned smartly on her heels and walked down the short hallway, stopping at the open door of her office and shooting him a look of impatient anger. Nathan clenched his jaw and followed, preparing for the battle he had initiated. He flinched when she slammed the door behind them. The apology that hovered on the edge of his lips died before he could utter it.
“Who do you think you are, storming in here and shouting like that?” Clenched fists rested on her slim hips as she stared at him, the fury evident in her flushed face and heavy breathing. Nathan fought back his own anger, knowing he had instigated her temper with his loud demands. It would be easier to ignore her if his gaze would stop traveling the length of her body, noticing how different she looked from the other night. She was dressed more conservatively in dark trousers and an oversize lab coat that hid the blouse she was wearing.
“Well?”
Nathan pulled his gaze back to her face, noticed the flush that had spread across her cheeks and realized he had missed the last part of her angry tirade. He shifted from one foot to the other and tried not to wince at the sudden flare in his knee. “What?”
“I wanted to know who you thought…never mind.” She pushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear and walked back to her desk, passing close enough to Nathan that he could smell the faint hint of her perfume. Something flowery, he thought. “I assume you have some reason for barging in here like Attila the Hun on steroids?”
“Uh, yeah.” Nathan straightened, determined to think of the woman in front of him as a doctor only. The sudden thought that she could possibly be his chance to go back to the ice sobered him. “I want you to look at my knee. I’ve been in therapy for four weeks, and I want to be cleared to go back. At least to practice.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Excuse me?”
“I said no.” She lowered herself to her chair and bent over some paperwork, the tip of her pen making scratching noises in the silence. Nathan stared at her in bewilderment before realizing she had, once again, dismissed him.
“Why not?” They were the first words that tumbled from his mouth, far from the angry demand he wanted to make.
Catherine’s impatient sigh brought him up short. She leaned across her desk and pointed at him with a stern finger. “Number one, you are not my patient. If Bri—Dr. Porter wants you released, that’s up to him, though he’d be a fool if he did. And number two, you’re not ready. Period.”
“How
