“I thought I was the most eligible bachelor for miles around,” Brody grumbled.
“Oh, please,” Heather said to Brody. “Your bachelorhood is so confirmed it might as well be carved in stone. What I want to know is why Krista gets Billy the Kid. She doesn’t even like men for heaven’s sake!”
“Now, now,” Mrs. A, the only person in the room with snow-white hair, said. “Krista likes men. Don’t you, Krista?”
“Yeah, right,” Heather and Brody said at the same time.
“I’ve never been able to get to first base with her,” Brody added indignantly.
“Well, that’s not so unbelievable,” Heather retorted, batting her eyelashes at Brody. “You’re not as young as you used to be.”
Krista laughed out loud at the look of horror that crossed Brody’s face. Her fellow physical therapist had recently celebrated his thirty-eighth birthday. He’d discovered a gray hair a few days later and hadn’t been the same since.
“What do you mean?” he insisted. “I can do anything I used to do.”
“Sure you can,” Heather countered.
“Maybe it’s only fitting that the person who’ll get to first base with Krista is a baseball player,” Mrs. A said, interrupting Brody and Heather’s bantering.
“Mrs. A!” Krista protested, trying to keep her coffee from sloshing over the side of her mug.
Heather and Brody both laughed, heading toward the door. Looking over her shoulder, Heather said, “I wish I had bought a lottery ticket, Krista. If I won, I’d trade it for spending two hours alone with Billy the Kid.”
“Two hours!” Brody called. “That’s a lot of batting practice, if you know what I mean.”
“We always know what you mean, Brody,” Mrs. A said, clucking her tongue. “But therapy is what we’re here for, and I think it’s time we all got to work.” Blue eyes twinkling, the older woman cast Krista an affectionate smile and left the room.
Alone with her coffee, Krista looked at the schedule board on the wall. Mrs. A had become the volunteer coordinator for the entire wing in July. Since then, Krista had become accustomed to the other woman’s rather strange speech patterns, but the way she’d implied that Will would get to first base with her had still taken her by surprise. Now that she thought about it, Mrs. A hadn’t even implied it. She’d said it as if she knew. It was downright disconcerting, almost as disconcerting as Krista’s erotic dreams had been all night long. In her dreams, Will had gotten a lot farther than first base, and the fans hadn’t been the ones cheering.
Taking another sip of her coffee, she decided then and there to make sure that particular dream never became reality. She reminded herself that Will had come to her because he wanted to walk again, not because he wanted her again. She didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed.
* * *
“Okay, Will,” Krista said after she’d explained the rehabilitation center’s policies and procedures. “Let’s see what you can do.”
“I want to try to walk without these damn leg braces, that’s what I want to do.”
She heard the vehemence in his voice. Underneath, she also heard the worry. She’d read his chart carefully. News of the car accident that had left Billy the Kid, the golden boy from Nebraska whose cockiness and down-home charm had melted the hearts of baseball fans everywhere, had made national headlines three months ago. Today, she’d read the doctor’s version of his spinal injury. Periodically interspersed with notes about his progress were inferences to his bullheadedness and determination.
Crouching down close to the floor in front of his chair, she said, “I know you do. I want you to walk without those braces, too. That’s why you’re here. And that’s why we’re going to do this my way.”
Will’s blue eyes were narrowed, his chin set stubbornly. After a long silence, he said, “Three months ago the doctors thought I’d never get out of a wheelchair. Two weeks ago the therapist in New York took the liberty to tell me that she doubted I’d ever walk without crutches.”
Stilling her hand on the strap of his leg brace, she said, “Then she was wrong. If you say you’re going to walk again, I believe you will.”
Will hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath until he noticed a burning sensation deep in his lungs. He let out that breath and took another, a sense of awe filling him. It was going to be all right. Krista wasn’t going to restrict his rehabilitation. He was going to be up and walking on his own in no time.
Her hand felt warm where it rested on his thigh as she loosened the straps of his leg braces. In his mind’s eye, he flexed the muscle beneath her palm.
In reality, nothing moved.
Until three months ago Will “Billy the Kid” Sutherland, had been considered the fastest base runner in pro baseball. Today he couldn’t even move one tiny muscle. Squaring his shoulders and straightening his spine, he decided he’d better take things one step at a time. He’d work on walking first. And then he’d work on running.
Half an hour later he was ready to scream in frustration. He was exhausted, and he’d barely done anything. His muscles refused to work no matter what he tried. He sat in a chair, gripping the armrest while Krista issued commands.
“Push against my hand. Push. Not from the hip. Use your leg muscles. Push.”
Nothing happened. He had some movement in his toes and all the feeling in his legs had come back, but without the braces his thigh and calf muscles were mush.
“Try it again. Push.”
Will tried it again, with no better results. He strained every muscle that moved, from his neck all the way down to his lower abdomen. He’d pulled his ham string sliding into third base during his first season with the Cougars. Today, no matter how hard he imagined it, no matter how hard he worked, he couldn’t make any of the muscles in his legs push against Krista’s hands. He wanted to learn to walk, dammit, but after forty-five minutes, all he felt was more frustrated than ever.
“Come on,” she said. “That’s it. Concentrate. Push. Again. Push.”
“I am pushing,” he ground out between clenched teeth.
Krista glanced up into Will’s face. His brow was glistening with sweat. Beads of perspiration dotted his upper lip. His teeth were clenched as if he wanted to bite somebody’s head off. She had a feeling that somebody was her. Good. She could deal with anger. In fact, it was a great motivator.
“If you want to get mad, go ahead,” she said. “This is going to take time, and your anger is going to help you get through it. You’ve made remarkable progress, and I’m sure you’ll continue to—”
“Don’t patronize me, all right? I got enough of that from Miss July!”
After a moment of silence, a sheepish expression stole across his face. She watched his shoulders move and his chest expand as he drew in a deep breath and said, “I guess I’m a little edgy.”
This was the Will she remembered. A little arrogant, a little cocky, and underneath it all, maddeningly sweet.
“Don’t worry about it,” she replied levelly. “One whole semester in college was dedicated to dealing with ornery, pigheaded patients.”
His blue eyes reflected the overhead lighting as he said, “Who are you calling ornery?”
Krista noticed he didn’t dispute the pigheaded portion of her statement and couldn’t help smiling. In that moment, the years seemed to fall away. She felt just as exasperated and infatuated with Will as she’d been when they were both young.
On impulse, she ran her finger along the bottom of his