twitched as if he was trying for a smile but couldn’t force his lips to form one. She smiled for him instead. She’d seen tough men before and understood their difficulty in accepting help, as well as their own imperfections.
Especially when they had to depend on a woman.
Male pride and all that. This guy possessed it in spades.
“We’ll start over here, Mr. Collier.” She directed him to a desk in the corner for their first consultation. As soon as she sat, he relaxed slightly, although for a fleeting second his gaze skittered over her in an almost appreciative way, as if he’d noticed her as a man notices a woman. Good, some part of him wasn’t dead.
She’d wondered at first.
As a therapist, in the past, a few patients had been attracted to her. At first. But once they started the sessions, they usually wound up hating her. Hating her for pushing them. For punishing their bodies. For reminding them she could walk without help and they couldn’t.
She didn’t let their attitudes affect her, either. In the end, when they stood and walked out on their own two feet, free of their crutches, tolerating their temper outbursts was worth it.
Thankfully, putting herself more on his level helped dissipate some of his tension. She’d seen that reaction before, too. Men despised women towering over them. Control issues.
“Well,” she said, inflecting a cheerfulness in her voice she used with her patients. “It looks like we have our work cut out for us, Mr. Collier.” She reviewed his injuries and described the strategy for getting him back in shape, outlining basic exercise routines to be performed at the center and at home. “Remember, it takes time to regain your strength. You have to be patient.”
His curt nod warned her not to count on it.
She gestured toward the workout area. “Are you ready to get out of that chair, Eric?”
He seemed momentarily startled she’d used his first name, but he dismissed it quickly, then nodded, somber but determined.
“Good, but remember, you’ll have to take it one step at a time, one day at a time.” She smiled, hoping to temper her comment. “If you overdo, you can damage yourself further and cause a setback, so remember when I tell you to stop, it’s for a reason.”
“Right.” His sarcastic reply wasn’t lost on her. She’d have to stay on top of him or he’d ignore caution.
She pointed to the locker room and watched him wheel toward it, his broad shoulders stiff, his head held high. She hoped he would maintain the attitude.
He would need it to survive the long grueling sessions ahead of him.
ERIC STEELED HIMSELF against the instant attraction he felt for Melissa Fagan while he changed into workout shorts and a T-shirt. He should have worn them to the session, but pride had made him stall in revealing his scars. Especially when he’d heard his therapist was going to be female.
Disgust filled him for even momentarily noticing her beauty. This woman had read his chart. She knew the extent of his injuries. She would have to help him stand, help him learn to walk again.
She would have to touch his ugly marred flesh.
He could not think of her as a woman.
Still, he sucked in a sharp breath at the thought of exposing himself to her, though after all he’d endured in the hospital the last three months, he should be accustomed to it. The baths, the skin grafts, the constant poking and prodding. But somehow revealing his wounds to Melissa made him feel even more naked and raw.
Focus on the job. On catching Hughes.
His resolve set, he wheeled through the doors to the locker room, but the young blond candy striper winced as her gaze landed on his scarred thigh. He gritted his teeth and rolled past her, stopping directly in front of Melissa Fagan, daring her to do the same. She didn’t. She simply offered him a smile and gestured for him to follow as if his injuries didn’t faze her.
He gave her credit for not flinching, when he had almost gagged the first time the doctor had removed the bandages and he’d seen the mounds of discolored, purplish-red mangled flesh that had once been his solid, slick muscular thighs and arms and chest.
Of course, she was simply doing a job. Maybe she’d become immune to reacting to patients the way he’d forced himself to be impersonal when he dealt with victims. God knows, he’d seen some horrors in the past few years.
He remembered the courage the brutalized women he’d helped had shown as he gritted his teeth and endured the painful stretching and warm-up exercises she instructed him to do. He wouldn’t complain. Wouldn’t growl at her or curse even though he desperately needed to vent.
He would suffer through torture if it would make him whole again.
Damn it, his thigh completely cramped. The shooting pain radiated all the way from his upper leg down through his calf. Nausea gripped his stomach from the impact of the muscle spasm, but he sucked in air to control it.
“That’s right, breathe in, out.” Melissa gently kneaded the muscle, slowly stretching his leg and fitting his foot against her thigh. He focused on the deep-breathing exercises to stifle the rage of temper that attacked him at his helplessness.
Her silky hair swayed around her shoulders as she leaned forward to press her fingers into his leg, rubbing and massaging with long nimble strokes that felt like heaven.
He stared at her hands. He’d never quite appreciated the power of the pleasure they could offer a man. At least, not when the act wasn’t sexual. Her fingers pressed harder as she leaned forward to continue her ministrations, and he glimpsed the perfect pale skin of her neck. But he didn’t dwell on it or allow himself to enjoy the sweet fragrance of her soap and shampoo or the way her lips were the color of sun-ripened raspberries. And when images of her long dark hair cascading across his stomach intervened, he banished them, as well.
“That’s the reason we start with those basic warm-up and stretching exercises,” she said softly. “Although cramps are inevitable, especially in the early stages of therapy.” She angled her face toward him and smiled. The light softened her already pale green eyes. “Feeling better?”
He nodded, reminding himself that her smile and the soft words she murmured in that thick, sultry voice were intended to encourage him to work harder. They were also filled with compassion that he didn’t want to need or feel.
Because feeling only meant more pain. And he had reached his limit.
THE SIGHT OF ERIC’S proud stubborn chin thrust high as he wheeled toward the locker room stirred Melissa’s admiration even more, but the sensations she’d felt when she’d massaged the cramps in his legs had her heart pounding. When she’d helped him into the whirlpool, she had watched the bubbling water ooze over his flesh and had ached to soothe the tension from his strained face, the strain caused by working so hard to camouflage his agony.
She had never reacted this way to a patient before.
Touching and massaging body parts had become rote, impersonal. Yet, her stomach had fluttered when she’d placed Eric’s foot against her leg and touched his thigh. He had struggled to contain his reaction, although she’d glimpsed the fine sheen of perspiration that had
