Knock Me for a Loop (7 page)

That taken care of, she headed back to the bedroom. No tiptoeing this time. This time, she wanted him to hear her.

But apparently it was going to take more than her heavy footsteps to wake him from whatever drug- and booze-induced stupor he was in. A marching band and foghorn blast, maybe.

“Hey,” she said, leaning over and poking him in the bare shoulder.

God, he had a nice back. All smooth and broad, with skin just begging to be stroked and occasionally scratched.

Her brows knit and her mouth turned down in a frown. Down, girl! she chastised herself. No thinking sexy thoughts about the bad man. She was here to whip him into shape, not whip herself into a frenzy of unrequited lust.

“Hey! Sleeping Beauty!” she called, more loudly this time.

Good Lord, was he even alive? she wondered crossly. He was clearly breathing, even letting out a snuffled snore from time to time.

Hmm. All right, time for the Nurse Betty routine.

Canting herself sideways over the bed again, she lifted one of his eyelids to study his pupil.

“Hey, Zack!” she tried in a near-shout.

Seriously, how he couldn’t be plugging his ears or pulling a pillow over his head by now, she’d never know.

He gave a sudden short snort, startling her into dropping his eyelid and jumping back.

“Whata hellif gona?”

Which she took to mean,
What the hell is going on?

“Don’t wake up on my account,” she told him blithely. “This is the first time you’ve ever brought me true pleasure in the bedroom.”

He quirked a light blond brow—or tried to, at least.

“Grace?”

It sounded like he had a mouthful of sawdust, but she understood him well enough to make out her own name.

“The one and only,” she replied brightly.

“Grace,” he breathed on a sigh. “You came back.”

Row 6

Whoa. Note to self
, Zack thought, while his brain pounded out a reggae beat inside his skull,
no more mixing pain pills with alcohol.

It was the first time he’d ever done that, and only after spending the better part of the night praying for sleep to come.

His knee had hurt like a bitch all day, the Vicodin the doctor had prescribed not making a dent in the steady ache and sharp stabs of pain. He’d taken twice the recommended dose in half the recommended time period, but even that hadn’t helped. So he’d resorted to a couple swallows from an old bottle of Jack he had left over from a long-ago bachelor party.

It had apparently done the trick, but now he was thinking it had done it a little too well. His knee still hurt—but then, didn’t it always?—and he was suffering the mother of all hangovers for his trouble.

Oh, but that wasn’t the best part.

No-ho, of course not. Because fate or karma or Jesus Christ Superstar—whatever the hell was out there fucking with his life like a Tinkertoy—couldn’t be happy with making him feel like just ordinary crap. He had to pass through the Seven Levels of Crap-related Crap first. So far, he felt as though he’d waded through about twenty feet of sewer water, a football field of knee-high cow patties, and a landfill full of dirty baby diapers.

But that still left four more delightful levels of abject misery, one of which apparently included saying something truly humiliating in front of the woman who’d kicked him into the shit pool to begin with.

God in heaven, he hoped he hadn’t said it aloud. Please, God, Jesus, Buddha, Allah, and Bob’s Big Boy, let that sad, pathetic, embarrassing
You came back
have been only in his head. A bad dream wrapping up what had started as a half-decent fantasy, and
not
something that had actually passed his lips to be heard by the one person who would take great joy in holding it over his head and rubbing his nose in it for the rest of his natural life.

There was a chance—prosciutto thin though it might be—that the unintentional utterance
had
only been in his head.

You came back.
What the fuck could he have been thinking?

Dropping his head until his chin touched his chest, he let the pulsing heat of the shower drum the nape of his neck and slide down his back.

A noise from the other side of the closed bathroom door jarred him from his lingering lethargy, and he sat up straighter, reaching for the soap. He hadn’t bathed in a while, and was sure he smelled none too fresh, so he spent a little extra time sudsing up.

Truth was, his knee was thoroughly fucked up, which made getting in and out of the tub nearly impossible. On top of that, when he did make it inside to shower, he had to sit on a plastic stool like some ninety-year-old invalid. He’d rather stand out on the balcony buck naked during a thunderstorm than use the freaking thing, but the current temperatures didn’t exactly make that an appealing prospect, and no rain was expected for at least another month or two.

If Grace hadn’t prodded him with her damn bony fingertips and elbow, he wouldn’t have bothered getting out of bed, let alone climbing into the shower. But she’d insisted, promising him a cup of hot coffee as soon as he was finished, and using her body as a crutch to help him hobble to the bathroom.

A body that was wrapped almost head to toe in some soft, pink velourish stuff. No one could pull off pink quite the way she did, even if it was of the track-suit variety.

The fact that she had JUICY stamped across her ass didn’t help matters, either.

Having her see him like this …not just injured and more under the influence of booze and meds than he’d have liked, but
helpless
and
needy
and
pitiable …
made him feel even worse than the throbbing in his head and queasiness in his stomach. It made him feel like less of a man.

And given how much less of a man he’d felt the past several weeks, that was really saying something. He was surprised someone from the Man Club hadn’t come by to revoke his dick and balls.

A tap on the door made him jerk in surprise, and he dug in even harder with the bar of soap.

“You okay in there?” Grace called through the closed wooden panel.

Yeah, hunky-freakin’-dory. Just a grown man, in the prime of life, sitting on an invalid stool to wash his ass crack.

In answer to her question, he couldn’t work up much more than an annoyed grunt, but he knew she heard him because she responded brightly, “All right, let me know if you need anything. Your coffee is ready when you are.”

The promise of caffeine—and possibly a bottle or two of aspirin—spurred him to speed up his motions. He finished lathering up, then pushed himself none too easily to his feet to grab the handheld shower head. He had to sit back down to rinse, but got the job done in record time before he leaned forward to shut off the water.

Grabbing the fluffy white towel from the toilet lid where Grace had set it for easy access, he rubbed it over his hair, then started to dry the rest of his body. Before he got past his chest, another knock sounded, and the bathroom door swung open.

“I heard the water stop, and figured you could use a hand,” Grace informed him, moving closer.

To her credit, she kept her attention locked on his face. If their positions had been reversed, he didn’t think he’d have the same self-control. If she’d been sitting in the tub, naked but for a bunched towel covering her sweet spot, he’d have been looking everywhere
but
at her face—and imagining what was under the towel, to boot.

Of course, he knew what was under that hypothetical towel, the same as she knew what was under the one he was currently holding over his crotch.

Not a good direction for his thoughts to be traveling right now. Imagining her naked, remembering the things they used to do together both with and without clothes on, was a one-way ticket to a woody he definitely didn’t need at the moment.

Bad enough that getting turned on when he had nothing more than a bath towel to hide it would make the condition kind of hard to miss, but getting turned on in front of his ex-fiancée was akin to smearing honey on his junk and walking into grizzly territory.

No, thank you. That kind of ridicule and degradation he could do without.

“Swing around, and I’ll help you out,” she said, stepping forward.

And speaking of humiliating experiences
, his inner Bob Barker announced in the same booming voice he might use to invite someone to “Come on down!”

All the same, Zack swiveled around on the stool, carefully lifting his injured leg up and over the edge of the tub, putting weight only on his good leg as Grace gripped his elbows and helped hoist him upright.

The towel fell to the floor, and she bent to retrieve it, wrapping it around his waist herself, then tucking in the ends while he kept his hands firmly on her shoulders. She didn’t seem the least uncomfortable with his brief nudity or the need to assist him with basic activities he should have been able to manage on his own.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t say the same. This whole bloody mess made him uncomfortable. From needing help to get around his own apartment, to having his name and photo splashed across the front pages of newspapers and magazines, along with headlines speculating on whether he’d be back in his position as goalie for the Rockets by next season or was becoming Cleveland’s version of Howard Hughes.

The Howard Hughes thing hadn’t actually sounded like such a bad deal until about…oh, eight thirty-five this morning. Something about having his ex carry him to the bathroom and help him wash his balls just took all the fun out of becoming an eccentric recluse.

“You could use a shave, too,” Grace decided suddenly. She pointed to the closed toilet lid and gestured for him to have a seat.

He followed the direction of her finger, but stayed where he was, balanced none too steadily on his right leg.

When he didn’t move, she cocked her head, a question clear in her eyes. “What?”

“I don’t think so,” he replied tightly. “It’s winter. A beard will keep me warm.”

Her lips pursed a moment before one corner turned up in a grin. “What’s the matter—don’t you trust me so close to your throat with a razor blade?”

His own mouth twisted. “I don’t trust you anywhere near me with anything sharper than a ball of yarn.”

As soon as the words were out, he muttered a silent curse. Knitting references probably weren’t the smartest for him to be making. Not if he wanted to keep his little hobby a secret. And he
especially
wanted to keep it a secret from
her.

One blond brow quirked up over her robin’s-egg-blue eyes. “You’d be surprised how much damage I can do with an innocent ball of yarn.”

Of that, he had no doubt. He was also intimately familiar with her talents with a Louisville Slugger, a pair of scissors, a lit match, and the most dangerous weapon of all—her dagger-sharp tongue.

“But I promise not to use your razor for evil, only for good. After all, if I’d come over here to hurt you, do you really think I’d have helped you get cleaned up first?” Her right brow lowered only to have the left rise in equal mockery. “If that had been my intention, I’d have done it while you were still unconscious.”

Pressing against his arm and chest, she maneuvered him exactly where she wanted him to go and got him lowered onto the commode.

“You were completely conked out when I got here,” she said, moving around the bathroom to collect what she needed. And she knew where everything was because she used to live here, too—at least part of the time.

“It took
a lot
to wake you,” she continued, shaking the can of shaving cream and squeezing the trigger to fill her palm with a heavy dollop of the thick white foam.

Then she began to spread it over his face. Cheeks, chin, above his lip. He let his head fall back and closed his eyes, pretending he didn’t want to see the razor in her hand, didn’t want to see her using such a sharp implement so close to his jugular.

The truth, though, was that it felt too damn good. It had been months—hell, going on close to a year—since she or any other woman had touched him. The most human contact he’d had since Grace walked out on him was the occasional slap on the back from his friends or a very manly group hug from his teammates when they won a game, complete with uniforms, helmets, sticks, and about ten inches of padding between each man.

Oh, and of course the wonderful poking and prodding from the doctors and surgeons after his injury.

But when it came to gentle caresses or sensual strokes of his skin …he’d pretty much been flying solo lately.

He wondered how Grace would react if she knew he hadn’t been with another woman since she walked out on him. She would probably roll her eyes and give an unladylike snort. She didn’t believe he hadn’t been with another woman
while
they were engaged, why should she believe he hadn’t been with one since their breakup?

It was true, though, on both counts. Which probably explained why even the sensation of metal blades scraping along his jawline—combined with the soft press of her fingers on the other side of his face—turned his blood warm and sent it flowing in a decidedly southbound direction.

“So if you didn’t come over to smother me in my sleep or give me a Colombian necktie, why are you here?”

She hesitated ever so slightly in a downward stroke across his cheek. “Your friends were worried about you,” she offered softly.

He arched a brow. “And they sent
you
?” His voice went up at the end in surprise, even though he had to mumble the question because she’d moved to his upper lip.

Wasn’t that a bit like sending the fox into the henhouse to check on the chickens? The snake into the sparrow’s nest to check on the eggs? Jason Voorhees into the cabin to check on the campers?

“Only as a last resort. They all did what they could to pry your ass out of this apartment, but that same thick skull that kept you from getting brain damage when your head hit the ice is apparently making it hard for any sense to get through.” She waited a beat, tapping the razor on the edge of the sink to dislodge a buildup of shaving cream before adding, “They thought I might have more success getting through to you…maybe because I’m less inclined to let you get away with feeling sorry for yourself, and more inclined to inflict physical damage, if necessary.”

Of that, he had no doubt. Despite the damage she’d caused to his belongings when she’d gone off the deep end, he actually counted himself lucky to have been in another city at the time.

When he remembered that tumultuous week, he rolled his eyes at the notion that his friends had sent her over to motivate him out of his slump. Luckily, his lids were once again closed, so she couldn’t see the gesture. No sense pushing her buttons while he was at her mercy and she was still holding a sharp object uncomfortably close to his throat.

“And you think a shower and shave are going to do the trick?” he asked.

He heard the click of the razor against the sink again, followed by running water. A second later, something hot and wet hit his face.

He opened his eyes to meet her gaze while she stroked his newly shaven cheeks and wiped away stray remnants of shaving cream.

“Getting cleaned up is just the beginning,” she told him, tossing the washcloth into the sink basin when she was finished and opening the medicine cabinet to remove a dark brown bottle of Sexy Men aftershave.

His muscles tensed at the sight of it. When they’d first met, he’d been using some cheap, ordinary brand of aftershave and cologne. The stuff you can pick up at Wal-Mart or Rite Aid. He didn’t even have a favorite, just used whatever was on sale or grabbed his attention when the old stuff ran out. Brut, Aspen, Old Spice…and yes, even Aqua Velva. They all smelled pretty much the same to him.

Then he’d met Grace. No, not just met her, fallen balls over brains in love with her. So when she’d declared that his current brand didn’t suit him—he thought he might have been using a mix of Stetson and Old English at the time—he’d been more than happy to let her pick something new. Hell, he’d been as flexible as a Gumby doll, letting her choose his clothes, his shoes, his cologne, his hairstyle.