Taming Hollywood’s Ultimate Playboy (9 page)

* * *

Two days later, decked out in her classy, cotton, roomy, embroidered polo and slacks, Grace walked beside her morning patient at the clinic, holding on to the small woman's support belt as she used the double bars to take shaky but supported steps toward the end.

Finally, a patient who didn't confuse her.

A patient who liked her and listened to her advice.

“You're doing great. Don't rush.”

“I want to sit down and the sooner I get to the end, the sooner I get to sit down,” Mrs. Peters said.

“And every step gets you closer to needing to sit less. You're doing so well. I can honestly say you're the best patient I have had in days.”

The woman stopped midway and Grace kept holding on to the support belt, as she always did.

“I need just a little breather.”

“Take your time. You standing here without walking is still making you do work.”

“Yes, it is. I don't know how I got so weak.”

Grace knew. Stroke. It had been caught fairly quickly, but it had still had time to do some damage.

“Muscle weakens really fast. Many of the people who come visit me here don't actually even have direct accidents or illnesses to blame for the atrophy. It happens if you just spend too much time sitting. My gran needed a bit of rehab after she had particularly nasty flu, just because she wasn't active in that time. It sneaks up on you.”

Mrs. Peters nodded and inched her hands along the bars, supporting herself that way before they took another step. “A good reason to keep going.”

“You can wait a bit more if you want to. It's probably only...six more steps to the end. That was one. Five more.”

Other physical therapists on staff came and went with their patients during the day, but the facilities came with the kinds of equipment that made it possible to do this kind of work with only one therapist. She had safety harnesses and leads that hooked to the ceiling if the client was too heavy for the belt, but Grace preferred the belt. She'd liked it best when she'd been rebuilding her own muscle after her accident. It was smoother than the cables. Felt more secure, even if that was the opposite of true. Being connected to a person rather than some apparatus brought trust into the equation, and she'd swear that patients who could use the belt with her help got better faster.

Together they counted the steps, and once Mrs. Peters got to the end, Grace helped her turn and sit in the chair that she'd already placed there. “Let me get you some water. Don't go walking around while I'm gone, now.”

She stepped into the storage room and snagged a cold bottle of water from the cooler. Her phone rang when she was in there. She glanced at the screen and rolled it to voice mail.

She didn't want to talk to Nick. She was having a hard enough time finding ways to not think about Liam, without Nick talking about anything. He invariably talked about his best friend.

And she was a terrible liar, and what was she supposed to say if he asked about her weekend?
Great. I went to New York and made out with your best friend who I'd currently like to strangle because he's being a big taciturn jerk?

After the steamy kiss in the back of the limo he'd gone to his room and she to hers, and she hadn't seen him again until the morning when Miles came to knock and give her the ten-minute warning before they went to the airport and she'd gone to Liam's suite to wrap his ankle.

Yes, he'd accepted the ice.

He'd been polite but had slept most of the flight.

He'd taken the anti-inflammatories when she'd foisted them on him.

But what he'd refused to do was talk. He didn't actually say,
I don't want to talk to you.
There had been no yelling. He'd just failed to engage about anything.

“I'd like to watch television for a bit, Grace,” Mrs. Peters said. “I didn't sleep well last night and feel tired today, but my son isn't coming to pick me up for another half an hour.”

Grace flipped the brakes off on the chair and wheeled the small, frail woman around to a wall-mounted television above where the treadmills faced. She confirmed that Mrs. Peters wanted her to phone her son to come and pick her up.

She didn't have any other clients this afternoon as her clients had been shifted to other therapists—she'd only had Mrs. Peters because of a scheduling misunderstanding.

What she should do was call Liam and check on him. Even if he didn't want to talk to her about anything else, he was the one who had dragged her into this patient-therapist relationship, so she'd do the job she was supposed to do.

She dialed.

Liam answered on the second ring. “Afternoon, Grace.”

“Hi. Just checking on the ankle. Doing all right? Keeping it elevated? Heat instead of ice?”

“Doing all prescribed actions.”

She opened her mouth but heard Liam's name on the television and turned to look at it.

“You're on TV. Mrs. Peters is watching something. Interview.”

“I had a couple of interviews this morning.”

“Did you use your cane?”

“I did. And they came to the house so I didn't have to go to them. Foot elevated and all that. I told you I'd do what you told me as soon as I was able to.”

A picture of Grace flashed up on the television, all decked out in her beautiful deep taupe, sparkly halter gown. “They asked about me?”

Watching the interview and talking to Liam at the same time was...weird.

“Is that you, Grace?” Mrs. Peters asked. “You know that Liam Carter?”

“Yes. And it's... Yes.” She answered Mrs. Peters first and then added into the phone, “Why were they asking?”

She stopped when Liam's eighteen-inch head began laughing off the idea of dating her. Just his physical therapist. Just a friend from childhood. Just there to make sure he didn't do anything silly with his ankle in wraps.

“Wow,” she said into the phone, not even sure what she felt about the denial. The way bighead TV Liam phrased it, the notion was laughable. Like there had been no kissing. No history worth mentioning aside from having been childhood friends. Nothing romantic at all.

“It's just the way you handle the press, right?” he said, trying to lead her to the same conclusion.

But all she could say was, “Wow.”

Mrs. Peters's son arrived, having just wandered back inside from the grounds. She needed to go.

“I'll call you tomorrow to set up your first appointment in two days.” Before he could say anything, she hung up and stashed her phone.

The chair her patient was currently using belonged to the facility, so she needed to transfer her back to her own chair and remove the belt once she was securely seated. She could think about Big Laughing Head Liam later.

Right now she didn't have room inside her own small head for all...that.

* * *

“What the hairy hell, Liam?”

Liam winced into his phone at his best friend's voice crackling down the line, loud and sharp enough to peel the eardrum from his ear. He'd been expecting Nick to call all afternoon, but he'd expected to get a greeting out before the expletives came into play.

It took a little effort, but he kept his voice steady and calm. He deserved his friend's wrath, but knowing that still didn't make it easier. “Hi, Nick. I guess you've been watching the gossip blogs.”

“No, television, actually. And there you were with my sister in New York. Together. Holding hands, and then more... So let me ask again, what the hairy hell, Liam?”

“I sprained my ankle.” Liam had expected a call, but for some reason he hadn't expected anger. Even in the rare instances that he and Nick had disagreed, it had only ever gotten physical once. And that time? His temper had started it, over nothing of consequence, and it had ended after they'd exchanged punches.

He'd always skipped this part during his Interlude with Grace fantasies. Consequences were rarely fantasy material, so he'd cut off anytime his imaginings had strayed in that direction.

“And?” Nick said.

“And I went to Grace to get help to finish my press tour and go to the premieres, she went with me to the East Coast premieres because having a date helps keep me from doing as much walking as I do when I'm alone. Right now, I'm sitting with my foot elevated and a heating thing on it. I have physical therapy at the clinic starting in a couple days. After I've had a mandatory rest on it.”

“That doesn't explain the shots of her on your lap in the back of a limo, man.”

No, it didn't.

That he couldn't explain. He'd done precisely what he'd sworn he'd never do—he'd crossed lines with Grace. “That was bad judgment. A mistake.”

“You could have found another date. You could have found twenty dates to take with you and keep you from walking around too much.”

He gripped the phone and switched to the other ear, this one starting to hurt from how hard he'd been smashing it with the earpiece.

One mistake in fifteen years wasn't so much.

Especially considering that he had turned her down in that trench coat, not that he had ever told Nick that. And he wouldn't tell him now. Nick didn't know about it and Grace deserved more. “It's complicated, but it's fine. Everything's fine now. It was a kiss, we didn't do anything else.”

“Then why isn't she responding to my texts or answering my calls?”

“I don't know. Because you're acting like a possessive older brother?” The words came out before he could stop them and Liam suppressed a sigh, trying again. “She's seen the interviews I did this morning, so she's probably not answering because she didn't want to talk about it.”

“Why not? What else did you do?”

“Dude! Do you really think I'd ever set out to hurt her?”

He heard Nick sigh and after a moment he said in a quieter tone, “You're my best friend so don't take this the wrong way, but Grace is not a player. She's a good girl. She went through a bad-boy phase and she couldn't handle it. I'm not sure how she grew up around us and remained an innocent little angel, but she did. She can't handle you.”

Nick saw what he wanted to see, but there was a naughty side to Grace that Liam would never expose. A side that family should never see. But other than that, she pretty much fit the word Nick had selected. “I didn't molest her.”

“You don't have to. All you have to do is be yourself. She's been more than half in love with you since she was twelve years old.”

“She had a crush.”

“No. She had...she had feelings for you. That's why when she stopped talking about you I stopped inviting her out with us. You still come up in conversations, but she shut down after you left. For a long time. I don't know what she feels now, I just know that you're a weak spot for her. You might not mean to make women fall at your feet, but it could be messy with Grace. Even if you don't mean to hurt her...”

This understanding and caring older brother thing chafed his already raw conscience, and he couldn't keep the irritation out of his voice. “Are you telling me to stay away from her?”

“Do I have to?”

“No. I'm seeing her for my physical therapy, but we're not traveling together anymore. They've got me scheduled for, like...ten visits. Five days a week for two weeks, weekends off. And it will be in a clinical setting. She's good at what she does, and she understands what's going on. She's the one who was taping my ankle and keeping me upright this weekend.” He could probably find all that with a different physical therapist, and that's where his conscience was catching. The secret was out, so any decent physical therapist could see him in the clinic for the next two weeks. There were probably even other PTs at the clinic he could see instead.

But he didn't want to go to them. And that he couldn't defend, so when Nick started cautioning him again, Liam cut in. “I know you're protective, but you don't have to protect her from me. I love your family, Nick. I've got to go, but give her some space. She'll call you back when she wants to talk.”

He hung up before he started shouting.

Because, yes, he'd screwed up, and he kept screwing up when it came to Grace.

When she'd called earlier with that interview playing in the background, he'd been hoping she'd walk out of the room, or that someone would change the channel. It had been an example of what not to do: go to an interview without knowing what you were going to say about everything. He hadn't known what to say about Grace, so he'd stuck with the physical therapist story they'd sold to his producers. It was easy. It flowed off the tongue. He'd had to force the levity there at the end, and the laugh had rung false to his ears. But, then, he knew his fake laughs from his real ones. He'd gotten good enough at faking them that most other people didn't. Grace hadn't spent enough time with him in the past few years to even have a chance of recognizing them.

To her ears, that all probably sounded legit.

Everything with her had somehow spiraled out of control. That dress had made him stupid. Dinner. The conversation he should have never started. A smarter man would have just left that subject alone rather than pick at it, thinking he could fix it.

He dropped the phone onto the table beside him before he gave in to the urge to throw it.

He was supposed to sit still for three whole days. All he wanted to do was run. Run from all this, find a peaceful beach and let his feet pound wet sand.

And it was the first time he'd ever wanted to run from any of the Watsons.

When he'd first known them and he'd run, it had been toward their house. The safe place. The place with parents who'd made sure he'd done his homework, given him a standing invite to dinner, and had always picked up a third one of anything they'd bought for their own two kids.

Even when she'd shown up at his door in her black underwear, he hadn't wanted to run from her. Every step away had been sluggish and hard.