TWICE VICTORIOUS (4 page)

"While I watch whatever's on," she admitted. "I do it more for company than
anything. And I usually eat pretty late. After I train."

He frowned and was silent for a long time. Stell shifted, trying to get comfortable.
Not only did he disconcert her, but her leg felt tired from always being stretched out.

"Rick said you were training for some international race?"

"The Sawtooth Classic," she said. "It's just about the biggest women's amateur
race in the world."

"Something like the Tour de France?" There was still the hint of a scowl on his
face, but his voice was mild enough.

"Something like that. Thirteen stages, with road races, time trials, a circuit race
and a criterium." She shifted again, still trying to find a comfortable position for her leg.
"It's the biggest and best women's race in the world. I was one of the standbys last year,
because I missed an important qualifying race. It was held the first week in April, and I
was hip deep in tax returns."
Yes, and was miserable the whole time, wanting to be in
the race so bad I could taste it.
"The competition for team positions is pretty
stiff."

"Like the Olympics," he said, not asking. The flat, hard tone of his voice chilled
her, as if she were sharing the room with an iceberg.

"Yes, but even tougher to qualify for. The Classic is just as demanding."

"It's rough," he said, his voice gentle and full of understanding, "to have to give up
something you've worked so hard for."

Stell stared, unable to speak, for long seconds. "Give up? What do you mean? I
haven't given up anything?"

"But you won't be able to race now. Not with your leg." His gesture showed his
doubt.

"The devil I won't!" She scrabbled for her crutches, forced herself to her feet. "I
may have ruined my chances this year, but I'll be on the team next year, and I'll race.
Nothing's going to stop me! Do you hear? Nothing!" She didn't need this. Not someone
who didn't believe in her, who offered pity instead of encouragement.

Adam stood and raised his hands before him. "Hey, I didn't mean anything. I just
thought, well, you're in pretty bad shape. Rick said it could be months before you were
back on your bike."

"Rick's a pessimist. My leg's going to be fine. Frank Pauvel is one of the best
sports medicine specialists around, and he's a cyclist, too. He understands how important it
is for me to keep training."

"Stell, you can't push something like this," Adam told her, his voice again full of
that gentle pity. "If the tendons are damaged, it could take months, even years, before you
can ride again. I know. I've had..."

"Don't!" She didn't want to hear what he'd had. Shin splints, probably, so he
couldn't take his morning run along with all the other sleek young executives who crowded
Portland's early morning streets in their expensive, colorful running clothes. "I think you'd
better leave now, Mr. Vanderhook. I've got to be at my doctor's at two, and I still have to
shower and eat lunch. If you'll excuse me?"

She had to give him credit. He left without any further urging, and even bade her a
friendly goodbye. But he had the last word, too. "Keep me posted on your recovery. I'd still
like to see you model our CycleWear." His fingers lightly stroked her cheek, sending tiny
thrills through her.

She stared at him blankly as he touched his brow before he pulled the front door
closed behind himself. Hadn't he heard anything she'd said?.

She'd like to tell him where he could put his modeling job, but her mother had
raised her to be a lady.

* * * *

"You've got a lot of soft tissue damage," Frank Pauvel told her, once he had her in
tears. For a painful eternity he'd been twisting and bending her injured leg, poking at it, and
frequently referring to the x-ray and the MRI images in the lighted holder on his wall.
"Nothing we can fix with surgery, either."

"Great," she said, relieved. "How soon can I start training again?" Her heart
almost stopped when he looked up, shaking his head.

"Stell, you don't understand. If we could fix it with surgery, you might be back on
your bike in a few months. As it is..." He shrugged, not meeting her eyes.

"But if it's only soft tissue damage...I mean, it's not as if anything's broken."
Surely he was being unduly pessimistic. "Frank, I know about strains and sprains. I-E-R.
Ice, elevation, and rest. I've been wracked up before. I've always been back in training in a
week or two."

"Not this time." He ran his fingertips gently down her thigh and across her knee,
the knee that hadn't stopped hurting since her accident. "You won't be doing any
competition riding this summer, Stell."

She looked into his eyes. They were sympathetic. Pitying.

"Maybe never."

Stell saw individual hairs in his dark handlebar moustache, a blackhead on his
nose, the white line of an old scar along his left eyebrow. Her heart thundered in her ears,
and her stomach tried to climb out her mouth. She was distantly aware of his hand on her
nape, forcing her head between her knees.
Never...never...maybe never.
His words
sounded in her mind, until she jerked herself upright and thrust them out.

"You're kidding, right?" That couldn't be her voice. Not that thin, tremulous
soprano. She gulped, clenched her fingers against the sides of the examining table. "If I
take it easy all summer, by fall I should be..."

"Stell, I can't promise you'll be back on your bike in a year, let alone by fall.
Haven't you heard anything I've said?"

"I heard everything, but it didn't make a lot of sense. Iliotibial bands, static
tendons. What are those?"

He shook his head, sighing, "How can you spend so many years on a bicycle and
not have any notion of how your legs work?"

She shook her head. "Does it matter? As long as they do?" She'd learned about
nutrition because she wanted peak efficiency. She hadn't thought it necessary to learn the
long, jaw-breaking names of all the bones and muscles and tendons that propelled her
bicycle. In fact, she'd often thought Warren somewhat of a hypochondriac, because of his
fascination with human anatomy.

"Look, I know this has been a shock," Frank said, his voice so full of pity she
wanted to scream. "You need time to think about it, time to adjust."

She'd never adjust. She was going to ride the Sawtooth Classic in fourteen months.
She would go to the physical therapist he recommended, but she wouldn't be patient.
Medical people were always conservative. They just didn't understand that you couldn't
take a year or two off to recover from a minor accident.

"Take it easy, Stell," Frank told her as he ushered her out of the examining room.
"One day at a time."

"Sure, Frank. Thanks."

During the taxi ride home, her anger cooled and her determination faltered. What
if Frank were right? What if her leg wouldn't heal? What if she never rode again?

No. That was an intolerable thought. She'd just have to be positive.

But she was so tired. And she hurt.

The phone was ringing when she limped inside her back door, but Stell didn't
answer it. She just didn't feel up to talking to anyone right now. Tossing her purse on the
kitchen table, she pulled the refrigerator door open. That mousse Carmen Kroll had
brought by--the one she had expected to throw away uneaten--should still be edible. She
moved covered dishes and casseroles around, thinking that she should clean out all the
leftover dabs of this and that so she would have room for the veggies she needed to pick
up, now that she was free of the crutches.

There it was! She pulled the soufflé dish out and peeled back its plastic
wrap. The rich, seductive scent of chocolate filled the kitchen. Chocolate, with brandy
overtones. Dark, sinful, delicious, sugar-sweet. She reached for a spoon.

For almost five years she had been avoiding dishes like this, knowing that even
though cycling burned fuel almost as fast as she could take it in, sugar wouldn't stay with
her as well as complex carbohydrates. The kind of cycling she did placed enormous
demands on her body and made good nutrition absolutely imperative.

None of that mattered now....

Now she wished she'd listened more carefully, so that she could have followed
Frank's patient explanation of her injuries and the implications thereof.

Stell dipped the spoon into the decadent mixture of chocolate and eggs, hardly
noticing the rich taste on her tongue. Darn Frank Pauvel, anyway. Why hadn't he made
sure she understood, while she was still in the hospital? She remembered refusing to listen
to something he was trying to tell her, something she hadn't wanted to hear. But he was the
doctor. He should have made sure she did listen.

And what kind of sports medicine specialist was he anyhow, telling her to learn to
live with her injuries? His job was to fix her up, so she could race. Not to discourage her,
to undermine her confidence.

The jarring screech of steel against porcelain sent shivers up her spine and brought
her back to the present. She looked down and was amazed to discover the soufflé
dish empty.

While she had been wallowing in self pity, she'd eaten the whole mousse.

Shoving the dish aside, Stell stared out across her back yard. The camellia bushes
that framed her breakfast nook windows were in full bloom, and daffodils swayed along
the edges of the steps into the lower level of the yard. So did dandelions.

Now that the stiff brace was off, maybe she could sit on the ground comfortably.
She'd pull a few weeds and not think about Frank's verdict.

She didn't know what she would do if he was right.

HILL CLIMB: a timed race on an uphill
course

"The timing of that storm was perfect. All the trails looked fresh and new. It
almost made me want to take up cross-country skiing."

Adam looked at his sister with amazement. "That'll be the day." She was a
dedicated, self-professed sloth, avoiding any aerobic activity like the plague. She kept her
figure and agility with Yoga, much to his envy. He had to work out regularly to keep his
muscles from turning into flab.

Juliana grinned. "Well, yes, but I did say 'almost.'" She tossed a folder on the table
in front of him. "Here's the first batch of photos. They look great. I can't believe we're
having such good luck."

"Not like the early days, when we did our own promotion photos. Roger must
have shot twenty or thirty rolls of film."

"And that fool bird dog of Al's. He minded perfectly until Roger aimed the camera
at him, then he went crazy. Do you remember who that other fellow was, the one who wore
the rainsuit?"

Adam shook his head, thinking back to when he and Juliana were trying to get
KIWANDA off the ground. Every penny they could save by doing things themselves
meant that much longer they could keep striving for success.

"We sure were naive," he said, leaning back and lifting one leg to rest on the
conference table. "If we'd known then what we know now...."

"We'd never have tried starting an outerwear business." Juliana smiled as she
repeated words they both had spoken many times before. Her eyes seemed to look back
into the past, and Adam knew she remembered as well as he did the long evenings at
Mom's dining room table, cutting and sewing heavy fabric, arguing over the choice of
colors for each garment, working out design details, until it would both protect the wearer
and last for years. And look good all the while.

Those had been the days, all right. If Adam hadn't given up his youthful dream, if
he hadn't put duty before passion, they never would have founded KIWANDA OuterWear.
It was hard to believe, now, that it had all been a whim, at first. Juliana had been newly
graduated from college and not sure of what she wanted to do with her life. The traditional
uses for a degree in Home Economics were not nearly glamorous enough for his big sister.
Nor remunerative enough, he suspected.

And he had been desperate. For the first time in his life, he was learning what it
was like to be ordinary, and he'd hated it. Without work experience, the only job he'd been
able to get was as a snack food delivery man. After six months, his employers had been
impressed with his performance, but he'd never been so bored in his life.

He and Juliana made the first rainsuit when Roger, her fiancé then,
complained that he couldn't find anything that was light and waterproof and bright enough
to protect him from other hunters while he was pursuing deer and elk. Juliana offered to
make him one. Adam couldn't avoid adding his two cents worth, until his sister, in
exasperation, told him if he had so many good ideas, he should prove them.

He did, and Roger preferred his unconventional design to Juliana's more
traditional one, even with the crooked seams and amateur workmanship.

It had taken Juliana weeks to forgive him. By then they were deep in planning
KIWANDA OuterWear, with Roger's help.

He became aware that Juliana was looking at him expectantly. She'd said
something, but his mind had been years away. "Sorry. What did you say?"

"Wake up, baby brother. I said that they want to start the CycleWear shoot
Monday. The sooner we can get done, the sooner we'll be ready to send everything to the
printers."

"But they can't...." He dropped his leg from the table and stood up. Stell's scabs
were probably almost gone by now. It had been three weeks since her accident. But she
wouldn't be in any shape to be photographed. He still believed he could convince her to
model, but he might not be able to do it in a day.

"Why can't they?"

Why indeed? Stell wasn't the only attractive, photogenic woman cyclist in
Portland, or even on her team. That little redhead was cute as a button.

And what difference did it make who they used, anyway? He still didn't believe
the company should be expanding in the direction of active sportswear right now. The only
reason he'd stopped opposing the expansion was because he owed his sister. She'd been
supportive enough of his ideas once or twice when she hadn't approved of his reasons.