Page 25 of Too Hot To Handle

Jed came in afterward, along with three other hands. The rest were on his heels. Jed, too, saw the grass stains.

„Don’t tell me that old Twinkletoes threw you,“ he said, astonished.

„What?“ asked Tory, turning quickly, incautiously, toward Jed. She braced herself on the counter before her right knee could give way beneath the twisting stress.

„The grass stains on your back,“ Jed explained, picking up the coffeepot and pouring coffee for everyone. „Did you get thrown?“

Tory flushed and nearly dropped the spatula she was using to turn the potatoes. She hadn’t even thought that she might have stained her T-shirt rolling around on the grass with Reever. „Yes, I guess you could say I got thrown,“ she said, her voice raw.

„Hell, Tory,“ said Jed, setting down the coffeepot and going quickly to the stove. He put his hand on her shoulder. „Don’t feel bad. Everyone that rides gets thrown. Even Reever.“

„I’d like to congratulate the horse,“ Tory said, emotion crackling in every word.

The rest of the hands laughed and chimed in, offering comfort and recounting their own experiences „riding air.“ With her back turned to the table, Tory blindly stirred the potatoes while Dutch finished recounting an unlikely story about Reever riding a mare that was blind, crippled in one leg and the meanest bucker any cowhand had ever straddled. When Dutch told about Reever being unloaded into the manure pile, Tory started smiling, then laughed, shaking her head, not believing a word of it but enjoying the story just the same.

She was still smiling when she turned around with a big dish of steaming fried potatoes and onions in her hand. She hadn’t heard Reever come in, but there he was, sitting in his place at the head of the table, watching her with a dark, unreadable expression. Instinctively she flinched from him, only to have her knee protest sharply at the sudden movement. For one awful instant she knew that she was going to fall full-length across the table, scattering potatoes to every corner of the kitchen.

Dutch made a lightning grab and saved the potatoes just as Jed dropped his coffee cup and caught Tory.

„You okay?“ asked Jed, ignoring the coffee dripping down his shirt as he set her back on her feet. „You looked like your right leg gave way. Did you hurt it when Twinkletoes dumped you?“

Tory saw only the sudden, harsh look on Reever’s face as he loomed over Jed’s shoulder. Instantly she remembered Reever’s warning about leaving Jed alone.

„I’m fine,“ she said, pushing away from Jed almost frantically. „Just – “ Her voice broke. „Clumsy. Ask Reever. He’ll tell you how awfully clumsy I am.“

Tory’s smile was a travesty of reassurance or humor, but it was the best she could do. She turned away too quickly to see the lines of pain that suddenly bracketed Reever’s mouth. In silence she served up the rest of the dinner, not meeting anyone’s eyes.

Normally she would have sat down to eat as soon as the food was on the table, but she knew that she couldn’t do it that night. She couldn’t sit with Reever’s long legs not two inches away from hers and his icy gray eyes looking at her and remembering how she had offered herself to him so clumsily that he had been repelled. She couldn’t even pretend to push food around on her plate. She knew that she would drop her fork or her coffee cup and further disgrace herself in front of the man she loved.

„I made some cake for dessert. It’s in the pie cupboard,“ Tory said quietly, walking out of the kitchen. „Just leave the dishes on the table when you’re finished.“

„Aren’t you going to eat?“ asked Reever. His voice was like his face, aching with the savagery of the restraint that he had imposed on himself.

„I – I ate while I cooked.“

„Like hell. You didn’t have time. Come back here and eat, Tory,“ he added almost gently. „You’re too thin as it is.“

„No, thank you,“ she said politely, balancing her voice as carefully as she was balancing her body. She hurried around the corner, saying, „I’m really not hungry. Maybe later, after I pack.“

Reever ignored the sudden stir as heads turned toward him when the cowhands realized that Tory intended to leave the ranch. One look at Reever’s savage expression warned the men that anyone asking a question would probably be invited to drive Tory into Massacre Creek – and stay there.

Tory wasn’t sure that she had escaped until she shut her bedroom door behind her. With a shaky sigh she leaned against the heavy wood and bowed her head. To her horror tears began to well silently from her eyes. She wiped impatiently, afraid of being caught crying. After a moment she realized that it didn’t matter. There was no father or stepfather or coach to call her a crybaby and no roommate to give her half-sympathetic, half-curious glances. In that, at least, Tory’s stay at Sundance had been a success – it had given her a privacy she had never before known.

Ignoring the tears that fell very slowly, Tory peeled off her clothes and pulled on a knee-length green nightshirt. She wouldn’t think about Reever and the Sundance and the love that turned in her like a razor with each breath. She couldn’t do anything about those things except endure the pain.

Her knee was a different matter. It was within her power to hurt or help her knee. So she ignored her tears, adjusted the elastic support around the knee, sat on the edge of the bed, strapped weights onto her right ankle and began the hour of tedious, repetitious exercises.

She tried not to think as she worked, but it was impossible, just as it was impossible to stop the tears from running down her face in two slow, thin streams.

After so many weeks of exercises, Tory had expected her knee to be much stronger than it was. Even as the doctor had been cautioning her that the healing and rebuilding process would be slow, she had believed that he was wrong. She had believed that if she just worked harder and then harder still, she would be able to achieve her goal of finding a place for herself in the world as an Olympic athlete.

She had believed that it would be the same now as it had always been in the past when she had counted on no one but herself to get what she wanted from life. With her knee as with her diving career, she would ultimately win because of her own discipline and drive, her own ability to work harder than anyone else, to give up more than others would give up, because to her the goal was worth any sacrifice. Anything.

At least, that was how it had worked before. It had to work that way now, too. It simply had to. Nothing had changed. The only person she could lean on was herself.

Counting softly, ticking off exercises and the timed pauses between, Tory worked her knee, ignoring the pain. Eventually the knee would loosen, strengthen, and the pain would stop. Until then she would simply have to work harder.

Tory was softly counting aloud, timing the pause before the final exercise, when the bedroom door opened behind her. She didn’t hear it. Nor did she see Reever shut the door behind him and lean against it even as she had. His icy gray eyes saw first her tears, then the white elastic support around her right knee.