Taming Hollywood’s Ultimate Playboy (10 page)

He didn't want to feel that again. He just didn't know how to fix things with her. It could be that they could never be friends. That there was too much there for them to resist. Too much pull. Too much need—to laugh, to kiss, to talk.

They might never be able to be friends, and if he kept trying, the one friendship he could hold on to would sour.

Because Nick was right. Even if he didn't mean to, he would hurt Grace in the long run. She was innocent. She was good and loyal. She had a shining example of a long, happy marriage to aspire to.

And the look in her eyes when she'd talked about the bandage exchange with little Brody. Grace was mother material. Grace was built for marriage and the fairy tale. While he was doomed to be surrounded by addicts and to watch them fall off, one by one, she had white picket fences and playdates in her future. He was the product of something twisted and ugly. He knew enough about the way people passed their sickness on to their families, their children...and he couldn't risk it.

Nick was right. He needed to stay away. He just needed to keep things cool between them until then.

Professional. Being friends would never work. Not now.

Not after that kiss.

CHAPTER EIGHT

T
HREE
 
DAYS
 
SINCE
 
Liam had last seen Grace, he walked with the aid of his crutches into The Hollywood Hills Clinic. After signing in, he headed downstairs, praying for a good reception.

Their first day back she'd called to check on him, but he hadn't heard her voice since that call. Oh, she'd still checked in on him twice each day, which was probably more than any other physical therapist did with unruly patients, but it had been via text. Short texts. Terse texts. One-word texts:
Update?

And he'd taken the hint. Don't call her. Because what could he say?

I can't kiss you anymore because your brother will be mad at me
?

I can't kiss you anymore because all I want to do is rip your clothes off and find new, creative, and wildly satisfying ways to hurt my ankle
?

Without direction from her, he decided to go to the big room with the equipment rather than the pool this morning.

“Morning.” Her greeting came from the office area and he forced himself fully into the room.

Liam tilted an ear, rolling her words and tone around in his mind as he called back, “Morning. Am I the first patient?”

Come out of there, Gracie. I need to see you, to see how you are...

“You're my first patient,” she confirmed, stepping out of the office. “Everyone's got their first appointment of the day. You're not late, I just scheduled you about fifteen minutes after theirs.” Busily tapping on the tablet she carried to make notes, she didn't even look at him.

Which told him enough. She was still very unhappy with him.

“Where are the others?”

“I don't know. There are three of us here, and a few different therapy rooms that can be used. We're going to one of the private rooms since we're starting light this morning.” She gestured for him to follow her and stepped back out. A short distance away a bright corridor turned off and he followed her to the last room.

Inside there was a work table along with some chairs and counters. All very modern, clean, and comfortable looking as far as examination tables went.

What he should be aiming for was to handle this in a wholly professional capacity. It would be wonderful if they could be friends without all the rest of it, but it just didn't look likely. So feeling let down that she didn't want to look at him made him an idiot.

“Where do you want me?”

“Hop up on the table if you can,” she said, putting the tablet down and grabbing a rolling stool for herself.

“Of course I can. I've been navigating stairs with these suckers for days. I'm just about to go pro in the Stair Climbing with Crutches event.” He maneuvered himself up onto the table and scooted back, finally letting himself look at her more closely when he settled. All that professional nonsense aside, part of him still wanted her to smile at him. He had to do better than this.

Back in normal clothes, back in their own corners, she looked at him much like she had that first day: like she wanted nothing to do with him.

“I'm just going to unwrap and have a look at it. Have you been having any trouble wrapping it?”

“Yes. I am not nearly as good at it.” He leaned back and held his leg out for her to do whatever she was going to.

Still not looking at him, which was probably for the best. Eye contact led to words, and he had no words to offer her. Every time he tried to think about what to say, his mind invariably turned to replaying the limo ride, the way every time his tongue had slipped into her mouth she had rewarded him with moans and sighs, with pressing closer, with her hand tangling in his hair.

God. Stop it.

All he'd managed to riddle out was the fact that they'd have to go back to operating in strictly separate worlds after this ankle business was finished. If he were a stronger man—a better man—he could control himself. But apparently he couldn't do that.

His foot bare, she stashed the support implements to the side and gently turned his leg this way and that to examine it.

And there would be no wincing. He might not be strong in mind but he would be...strong in pain control.

“How does it look?”

“A little better. The bruising where the blood pooled isn't much different, but it's almost gone from the higher areas, away from where the actual damage occurred. But we really can't push it today. We're going to measure range of motion, what you can do on your own without my help, and what you can do with a little help from me. Did you take any pain medicine this morning?”

“I took the one you have to eat with. It helps more than the other.”

She nodded and got some kind of protractor and a chair and began walking him through basic movements.

Businesslike, but still gentle with touches.

His range of motion was really bad. She had him moving until it hurt, and she would gently press until he cried uncle.

The up-and-down motion, the usual walking foot motion, was better than he'd thought it would be but any rotation in the socket made him want to jerk his leg out of her hands.

She got him down from the table and into one of the recliners.

“Want my foot up?”

“Not yet. We're going to do a paraffin bath first.”

“Wax?”

“Yep, hot wax. It's not as hot as drippy candle wax because it melts at a lower temperature, but it is like no heat you can apply at home. It'll feel...” She stopped when her phone rang and she fished it from her thigh pocket. A quick scan and she gave the barest shake of her head and swiped it out. “What was I saying?”

“I think you were saying the hot wax was going to feel good.”

“Better than good, really. We'll dip, I'll wrap your leg in hot towels and let you sit in it for about twenty minutes, and then we'll measure again.”

The phone buzzed.

She grabbed it again and glanced at the screen. Then turned the thing off completely and dropped it on the counter. The expression on her face...well, it was exactly the expression he'd imagined on her face every time she'd sent her one-word texts the past couple of days.

“Something wrong?”

“My brother is hounding me.” She knelt and rolled up his pants leg. “We'll do this every day before we get going so you might want to wear shorts in here. Just an idea. No one to impress. No danger of it getting on your slacks.”

“Okay.” He looked at the phone and then at her stiff shoulders. He shouldn't ask, but it wasn't about kissing. Not exactly. Only kind of. And about the fact that his best friend thought he was a louse. Think about that. Focus on the consequences. “He's been upset with me.”

“Yeah, I worked that out our first day back.”

She didn't ask. Did that mean she didn't want to know how that had been going? With the way she was ignoring texts, he had to wonder what Nick had said to her.

“Both of those were him?”

“Yes. I'm not speaking to him right now.”

“Why not?”

She settled the cuff above his knee and wheeled the paraffin thing over to him, but stood and retrieved towels he could only guess were hot before she guided his foot up and into the bath.

“Is he telling you to stay away from me?”

“Is that what he's telling you?”

“Pretty much,” he muttered. “I told him you were helping me.”

“Yep. That's what the physical therapist is supposed to do.”

Zing.

She submerged his leg to mid-calf in the deep bath, and though it was plenty hot she didn't leave him soaking, just shook out one towel and as soon as his leg was out she wrapped the towel around it. And then another, and another.

Soon she had it completely encased, and nodded at the lever on the side of the chair. “Put the foot up now. I'm going to put you on a twenty-minute timer, and then we'll get you out of it.”

“Is it going to turn hard?”

“Somewhat.”

“So how do we...get out of it without causing pain after it gets hard?”

* * *

Grace stood up and went to wheel the bath away from him. Something she'd been asking herself for days.
How do we get out of this without causing pain?

He had been referring to the wax, presumably, but it didn't feel that way. They'd now resorted to talking in code, because no one could say what they really meant. Which was just...great.

“It'll feel good for a while.” The whole while, without a doubt. “You probably won't want to come out of it by the time it's done.” That she was less certain of, at least if they were talking in code. If he was just talking about the wax, her problems were actually far less significant than she figured them to be. He got much less sexy if she also made him an idiot in her mind.

“I don't doubt that at all,” he said, his words so quiet she might have missed them if she weren't so primed and tuned in to him.

Definitely talking in code.

She rolled her stool back, needing to make the room a little bigger...because all she really wanted to do was stand up and beg him to kiss her again. “I suppose it's about risks. What you're afraid of and what you're willing to risk.”

Risks. She shouldn't be the one who had to take all the risks. Was that what this would require? It hadn't seemed that way in the limo because that had been Liam's doing. For once. He'd been the one reaching for her. And then he'd laughed off the very idea of them being together. She couldn't even wish he wasn't so close to her family, because she knew now exactly how much his time with them had meant to him, and how it had probably saved his life.

“Well, you shaved my leg before, so that should help.”

Was he still talking in code?

“Right. Not going to rip hair out.” She twisted to snatch her phone off the counter and turned it on, checked texts and messages, then stashed it in her pocket. “I'll be careful, Liam. I have no desire to hurt you.”

“Me either,” he said, both hands lifting to rub over his face.

“You want me to leave you alone to soak in it?”

He dropped his hands heavily in his lap, finally looking her in the eye.

She saw regret there, matching what his voice told her. But Grace knew how terrible her instincts were with regard to this man. “All right.”

A quick detour and she retrieved a remote control to give to him, pointing out a sticker on the back with the Wi-Fi password on it. “For your amusement in the meanwhile. I'll be back in twenty, and we'll roll the wax off and check your range of motion, then go through the exercises you're to do today and tomorrow. I don't need to see you tomorrow, but I will check in. And you can call if you have trouble. It's only a few gentle exercises today and tomorrow, mostly just about keeping the joint working without interfering with the healing. I'll go over the instructions when I get back. And bring in a package prepared for you to take with you with a moist heat pack and sheet with exercises in little pictures.”

Liam took what she handed him and let it drop to his lap. “Thanks, Grace. I...I owe you.”

“No, you don't. You pay me to do this, just like all the double time you're being billed for travel and round-the-clock care.”

She wanted more, she knew that now, but she had absolutely no idea how to go about turning this mess into something more. Or even if she should try. The only thing she knew she had to do was try to keep things going, get through this, and see what happened.

That's what she always did.

Since her accident the only risks she'd taken had been with regard to Liam. All the rest of her life was Safety First. But in his presence? She kept throwing caution to the wind. Which should probably tell her something.

She stepped out of the room, set the timer on her phone, and headed back to the office. If he was going to be in therapy for the next two weeks, she should probably invest in some kind of wall padding or helmet for all the beating her head against the wall she'd no doubt be doing.

Once in the office, she closed the door and called her brother back.

She loved Nick. She really did. She knew he wanted the best for her, and he probably felt compelled to protect her.

But she was a big girl, and it was past time he figured that out.

* * *

Grace had RSVP'd Freya Rothsberg and Zack Carlton's wedding weeks ago. She even had a dress and new strappy sandals picked out. What she didn't have was a date.

Today she'd begun to feel the pressure of that. She'd blame Liam. How in the world was she supposed to find a date for a wedding when she had movie stars in her eyes?

The problem with having stupid squishy feelings for a celebrity patient was not just knowing that she shouldn't—ethics got involved because he was her patient. She could hold out and feign something professional for the few hours a week that they spent on his rehab, which should have made things easier, but it hadn't.

But the ethics mattered to the clinic, even in their case where their history was so deep and complicated that it made the ethics question reach new depths of murkiness.

This morning's early visit would involve time in the water to get him walking in a near-weightless environment.

Which meant it was time for her to change into her bathing suit.

Normally, she'd use the one-piece that came with shorts and really concealed her assets. But due to a series of phone meetings today Liam was coming in a good two hours before they usually started seeing patients.

And she was going to make the most out of that situation because, murky ethics or not, she did want more from him. She just had to start laying the groundwork now even if she couldn't act on it while he was her patient, and also because her grand gestures to seduce the man had never seemed to work out the way she'd envisioned.