Straight from the Heart (3 page)

Rebecca pushed her chair back from her desk and rose to her full height, which nearly equaled Jace’s. “Yes, I do get my share of jerks here, and I have no intention of adding your name to the head of that list. If you want to take your therapy in this hospital, you’ll take it with whomever I say.”

“If you don’t feel anything for me, why can’t it be you?”

He was pressing his luck, pushing her this way. Lord knew he’d made enough mistakes with Becca. But it was plain she was going to retreat, that she would simply avoid him rather than be confronted with a painful reminder of the past.

He couldn’t let that happen. Somehow he felt that his whole future hinged on making a fresh start with Rebecca Bradshaw. He couldn’t accomplish that if she was never around, so he threw out a challenge. “I think you’re afraid, Becca. I think the thought of working closely with me scares you, because you’ve realized you do feel something for me, even after all these years.”

She pulled her reading glasses off and threw them onto her desk. “Yes, you’re right, I do feel something. Loathing, contempt, anger. I would have denied it yesterday, but seeing you has brought it all back to me. I thought I had put those feelings aside years ago, because, frankly, you aren’t worth the wasted effort. But I guess they’ve lain dormant since I never had the chance to vent them on you. A person doesn’t get a lot of satisfaction out of railing at someone who’s vanished into thin air.”

Well, you asked for that, Jace, old boy, he thought, straightening from the desk. As he propped one hand on his hip, he ran the other through his hair. He sighed and glanced out the window to the exercise room, where he could see a striking, statuesque therapist showing an elderly woman how to use a walker.

He’d hurt Rebecca when he’d left Mishawaka for Chicago, but he hadn’t realized just how deeply he’d hurt her. To think that she could still hate him for it after all this time cut him to the quick.

Lord, what a bastard he’d been. Rebecca had been so sweet, so giving. She had trusted him with secret fears and hopes she had never shared with anyone else. But when his shot at the big leagues had come, he’d walked away without a backward glance. He’d been so caught up in his own success, he’d packed up and gone without giving her anything more than a quick phone call to say good-bye.

When he turned back to her, there was pain in his eyes that had nothing to do with his injured knee. “I’m sorry I hurt you, Becca.”

“Thank you,” she said, combing her raven hair back behind one ear. She was angry with herself for confessing her feelings to Jace. Still, she couldn’t help adding, “Seven years after the fact.”

His dark brows bobbed above his eyes as he mustered a sad smile. What excuse could he offer? There was none. “Better late than never.”

“Better not at all.” Rebecca shook her head, which had begun to pound from tension and from having knocked it into the parallel bar and her desk. She stared down at her shoes and resigned herself to making another admission. “I wish you hadn’t come back here, Jace.”

“That’s honest.” It hurt, but it was honest. “I’ll be honest too. Life has come full circle for me, Becca. I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of. I’ve wasted a lot of opportunities. I haven’t been the kind of person I should have been. I could have been killed in that accident, but I wasn’t. For whatever reason, God saw fit to save my miserable hide. I’ve been given another chance, and I’m going to make the most of it.”

He looked at her with the kind of hawkish determination she remembered seeing on his face when he was on the baseball diamond.

“I’m going to fight my way back from this knee injury—with or without your help,” he said. “I’m going to make it back to the majors—with or without the support of the Kings’ management. And I’m going to win you back, Rebecca Bradshaw—whether you like it or not.”

                  2                  

A chill went through her. Whether it was fear or anticipation, Rebecca couldn’t have said. She stared at Jace Cooper as if she was certain he had taken complete leave of the little sense she credited him with. “That’s absurd! You can’t have a relationship with someone who isn’t interested in you.”

“You were interested once,” he pointed out. He was a little shocked himself by the claim he’d made. He hadn’t planned on blurting it out that way, but he wasn’t going to back down. The idea of not only clearing the slate with Becca but also renewing the relationship they’d shared felt right, dead-solid perfect—like a hit that sailed over the left field fence before he could even let go of the bat.

“That was a long time ago,” Rebecca said, not liking the gleam in his eyes.

“It wasn’t so long ago that we’ve forgotten how good it was between us.”

Jace cursed his bum knee. If he had been more mobile, Rebecca wouldn’t have been able to hide from him behind her desk. He would have joined her back there, and he might have made good on the promise he was sure was in his eyes, the promise to refresh her memory. Damn, but he was aching to kiss her!

As if she sensed that, Rebecca backed away warily. She shook her head at the memories and at Jace’s idea. “I don’t want you, Jace. I don’t like you, and I don’t trust you.”

“I don’t blame you, honey,” he said truthfully, “but I’m not the same man who hurt you, Becca. I’ve changed, and I intend to prove it to you.”

“You’ll be wasting your time.”

He smiled as he perched a hip on one corner of her desk and picked up her round glass paperweight. He tested the feel of it in his hand and fleetingly wished it were a baseball. “I don’t think so.”

Rebecca rarely lost her temper, but now she was fuming. She literally saw red as she stared at Jace. “You arrogant jackass! If you think for one minute that you can just waltz back into my life after seven years and pick up where you left off, you’re out of your mind! I won’t be your little plaything while you bide your time waiting to get called back to the big leagues! I can’t believe even you would have the flaming arrogance to make that kind of assumption.”

She stormed past him but paused with her hand on the doorknob to deliver a parting shot. “Maybe women back in Chicago line up, eager to fall at your feet—and no doubt that will happen here as well—but I won’t be among them!”

Rebecca swung her office door open and ran head-on into Dr. Cornish.

She backed away from the door as the head administrator followed Dr. Cornish in.

“Rebecca,” Dr. Cornish said with an unrepentant grin. “I ran into Mr. Saunders downstairs. He was eager to meet Jace.”

“Yes, I was,” Saunders said, his pleasant smile revealing neatly capped teeth. He was a distinguished-looking older man whose passion for athletics showed in his youthful looking physique. “I have to tell you, Mr. Cooper, our little hospital may not have the prestige you’re used to, but you couldn’t put your knee in better hands than Rebecca’s. She’s a topflight physical therapist. I’m proud to say the Mayo Clinic tried to lure her away from us. We’re damn lucky to have her.” He shot a sweetly apologetic look at Rebecca. “Pardon my French, Rebecca.”

She couldn’t help but smile at him, even if he was infatuated with Jace. He was practically a second father to her.

Saunders’ sudden frown was very much that of a disapproving parent. “Donald tells me there’s some question as to whether or not you’ll work with Mr. Cooper.”

“You know I try to limit my caseload to severe problems, Mr. Saunders. Mr. Cooper’s injury really isn’t so serious.”

“It’s serious enough to threaten his career.”

It was the same tone of voice her father had always used when he was about to ground her sister, Ellen. Mr. Saunders could just as well have tagged “young lady” onto the end of his sentence.

Rebecca drew in a deep breath and glanced out the window. Bob Wilkes was making the rounds in his wheelchair, giving words of encouragement to other patients. As an idea took shape, a smile began to tug at the corners of her mouth.

She turned back to the administrator just as he launched into a lecture.

“As Mr. Cooper has specifically sought our help in this matter, I feel it our duty to give him the very best we have to offer—”

“Yes, I agree.”

Three pairs of eyes stared at her in surprise.

Jace was the first to speak. “You’ve changed your mind? You’ll work with me?”

Rebecca smiled broadly then. She would work with him. She would be his unrelenting taskmaster. She would show Jace Cooper she was a woman of steely resolve, that she could face him on a daily basis and not be the least affected by his famous charm. And if he did pursue the idea of renewing his old relationship with her, she would be able to shake her head and tell him she didn’t date patients—
ever
.

“Yes,” she said, glancing back out the window as Susie Chin rolled into the exercise room in her wheelchair. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, I see my next patient has arrived. This is to be her first day at the parallel bars, and I’m sure she’s nervous. I don’t want to keep her waiting.”

When she started for the door, Jace blocked her path. His expression was wary. He was obviously trying to puzzle out her sudden change of heart.

“Thank you, Becca,” he said softly.

“That’ll be the last time you thank me. I expect you to be here at eight o’clock sharp tomorrow morning, ready and willing to work your butt off.”

The corners of his clear-cut lips tipped up as he gave her a brief salute and hopped out of her way. “Aye, aye, ma’am.”

Rebecca slumped onto her chair, feeling as worn out as an old rag doll. She propped her elbows on the desk and rubbed the last of her makeup off her face with her hands. What a day.

Physical therapy was a demanding profession. Helping to lift and move patients was hard physical work. Taking a patient from evaluation through the final stages of rehabilitation was mentally and emotionally demanding as well. Yet this was what she had wanted to do since she’d been a little girl. Watching her mother struggle with the debilitating effects of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis—Lou Gehrig’s disease—had inspired her to her career, and she loved it. Most of the time.

“Here,” Dominique said, as she walked into the office and set a bottle of lemon-flavored mineral water in front of Rebecca. She lowered herself into a chair on the other side of the desk, stretched out her mile-long legs, and propped her feet up on the wastebasket. “It’s not exactly a piña colada, but we can always pretend, can’t we?”

“Yes,” Rebecca said with a sigh.

“I feel as if I’ve been put through one of those old wringer washing machines.”

“Must have been all that time you spent in here with Jace Cooper.” Dominique’s dark eyes sparkled. “I admit to feeling a little weak in the knees myself. What was that big powwow all about?”

Rebecca grimaced. “The Great Railroad Conspiracy. I have been duly chosen by the powers that be to oversee Mr. Cooper’s therapy since he’s going to be such a valuable member of the community now.”

“Was it his good looks that turned you off or the fact that he’s got more charisma than Tom Cruise and Dennis Quaid put together?”

“I used to know Jace Cooper.”

“Are we talking ‘know’ as in the biblical sense?” Dominique asked.

Rebecca nodded.

“I’ll work with him,” Dominique said resolutely. “To hell with Griffith Saunders.”

“Thanks, pal,” Rebecca said with a warm smile. The offer was a tempting one, but she had made her mind up. “But no thanks. I gave it some thought, and I believe the best thing I can do is work with Jace. What better way to show him I’m immune to him than to face him head-on without flinching?”

“Oh…” Mischief lit Dominique’s dark face. “You could line his athletic cup with an itch weed potion. I’ll call my mother and get her recipe. Her grandfather was a medicine man, you know.”

Rebecca laughed, feeling the day’s problems lift a bit off her shoulders. She pushed herself to her feet and said, “Let’s call it a day. I just want to go home, eat a pizza, and crash.”

She would have added “forget Jace Cooper” to that list, but Rebecca Bradshaw was nothing if not practical. With their next confrontation looming on the horizon, there was little chance she would be able to forget about him overnight.

Rebecca went to the parking lot with her spring coat slung over her arm. As she unlocked the door of her blue Honda Accord, Rebecca took a deep, cleansing breath. Maybe the day had been awful, but the grass was still growing and the sun would come up tomorrow. One thing she had learned—life could be hard, but the world went on turning and people made it from day to day.

All things considered, she didn’t have such a tough row to hoe. It was just that at the moment, her row had a big rock in it—Jace Cooper. Rocks could be moved. In Jace’s case they rolled away and gathered no moss.

Rebecca didn’t let herself wonder why it stung a little to think he would only be there to pester her until greener pastures lured him away again.

As she pulled her car out of the hospital parking lot and headed for home, she stuck a tape in the tape deck and settled back with a sigh and a smile. The strains of Pachelbel’s Canon in D floated from the speakers. The full round tones of peace and serenity filled the car. Violins sang a serenade to the end of a beautiful spring day. Rebecca felt her tension drift away on the soothing tide of sound.

A lone figure moving down the tree-lined sidewalk caught her eye. A lone figure swinging slowly along on crutches. Before her mind could register who it was, her heart was already picking up a new rhythm. She drew even with Jace, who was trudging along with a huge duffel bag strapped across his back. Rebecca sighed and pulled her car over to the curb. Jace glanced at her and then had the audacity to appear surprised.

“Just what do you think you’re doing?” Rebecca yelled as she slid across to the passenger seat and stuck her head out the window.

“Heading home.” He put on his little-lost-boy look. “Providing I can find it.”

If he thought he was going to play on her sympathy, he was sadly mistaken. Rebecca wasn’t about to fall for that routine. “We have taxicabs, you know. They’re not exclusive to Chicago.”

“Mmm,” he said noncommittally as he glanced around. “It’s a nice day for a walk.”

“You’re not walking, you’re hobbling,” she pointed out, all her mother hen instincts rushing to the fore in spite of her resolve to take no pity on him. He should have been sitting somewhere with that knee elevated and packed with a warm compress. Knowing him, he’d probably been on it all day. “How far are you going?”

Jace shrugged with a comically innocent expression on his handsome face. “I’m not sure I remember my way around that well.”

“What’s the address?” she asked impatiently.

He dug a hand into the front pocket of his jeans, stressing fabric that was already under considerable strain. Rebecca swallowed hard as unwanted memories washed over her in a hot flash. He was a beautifully built man in every respect, and his athleticism had never been confined to the baseball diamond. It made her furious to admit to herself that no man had ever measured up to Jace Cooper in bed, but that was the plain truth.

She couldn’t help breathing a sigh of relief when his hand emerged with a crumpled scrap of paper, but all the blood drained out of her face as he read the address he had scribbled down.

“That’s Muriel Marquardt’s house,” she said weakly. “That’s right across the alley from my house.”

Jace’s dark eyes rounded. “Is it?”

Rebecca scowled at him, her elegant hand curling into a fist on the open window of the car. “You know darn well it is!”

He didn’t deny it. She wouldn’t have believed him if he had. This was vintage Jace Cooper—an all-out assault. She shouldn’t have been the least surprised. After all, he had very clearly stated his intentions. Well, if he thought living in close proximity was somehow going to weaken her resolve and make her susceptible to his charm, he was deluding himself. She was going to ignore him on every plane but the professional…just as soon as she took him home…to the house that stood directly behind her own.