Page 12 of Last Line of Defense

Dani lets out a brief, warm, mischievous laugh that echoes throughout the living room.

“You can’t pull the wool over my eyes, Clara. What frustrates you and drives you up the wall isn’t that the girl is unbearable. What’s eating you up inside is that you’re obligated to maintain that blessed medical professionalism instead of ridding her of her unbearable nature with some good, hard kisses and wild bites.”

I’m so shocked that I come within a millimeter of choking on my sip of wine. I cough immediately.

“Please, tell me you didn’t just blurt out something that outrageous in my own home!”

“I just said it out loud, and besides, I know perfectly well that I’m absolutely right. I can see it in the look on your face, Clara. There’s definitely some intense chemistry between the two of you, a sexual tension you could cut with a knife… and it terrifies you like nothing else in this world.”

I jump up from my chair, more out of a physical need to move and escape his truths than anything else. I can feel my heart pounding against my ribs a thousand miles an hour.

“You’re not even remotely right,” I mutter, turning my back on him and heading for the kitchen.

“Oh, I certainly am,” he says, rising from the table as well to follow me closely to the counter. “That response of yours would be much more convincing if you weren’t clutching that knife and slicing the bread as if the baker had personally offended you.”

I stare at the knife I’m clutching in my right hand, realize how tightly I’m gripping it, and set it aside on the cutting board with the utmost care, as if it were burning.

“Absolutely nothing is going to happen between that player and me—I assure you,” I declare in a firm voice.

“But I never said anything had to happen. It’s just a simple observation from an outside observer.”

“You’re implying it with that little smirk of yours.”

“No, I’m not implying anything. What I’m clearly telling you is that you’ve spent a lot of years hiding behind your work schedule as if the mere act of having feelings for a woman were an unforgivable professional lapse. And that forward seems to have found the first major crack in your icy armor.”

The kitchen is plunged into a thick silence for a few moments. All you can hear is the constant patter of rain lashing against the windows outside and the rhythmic sound of our breathing.

“I don’t need this kind of express psychological therapy on a Tuesday night, Dani.”

He softens his mocking expression, takes a step toward me, and places an affectionate hand on my shoulder.

“I know, Clara. But I also know full well that ever since what happened with Charlotte, you haven’t let anyone—absolutely no one—get close to you. Not even a little bit. And I understand why; I really do, because I was there to pick up the pieces. That relationship left a very ugly scar. But what you can’t do is turn a bad story from the past into a life sentence for your heart. It’s not fair to you.”

I look away toward the large window in the living room, where raindrops are tracing irregular, whimsical paths across the glass.

“It’s not about being afraid of getting hurt again,” I admit in a whisper of honest truth.

“Then what the hell is it about?”

It takes me a few long seconds to answer him. Because in my head there are easy, politically correct answers, and then there are the raw, painful ones—and those rarely coincide.

“It’s about control, Dani,” I finally confess, turning to lock eyes with him. “It’s about knowing exactly where my safe zone ends—down to the millimeter—and where absolute disaster begins.”

Dani nods slowly, showing a complete understanding that comforts me.

“And from what you’re telling me, that girl is a real magnitude-eight earthquake.”

I let out a dry laugh, devoid of humor but full of irony.

“Not at all… Alicia Puertas isn’t an earthquake; she’s a wildfire with a dangerously charming smile. Every time she walks through the door of the rehab room, the temperature in the air changes. She looks at me with such audacity… as if she knew exactly what I’m thinking about her at that very moment, and I… I have to play the role of my life and pretend I’m just a cold-hearted physical therapist doing her job.”

“And may I ask what exactly you’re thinking when you stare straight into her eyes?” he teases me with a knowing smile.

At that moment, I inevitably think of Alicia—the tempting curve of her neck when she tilts her head cockily, how her firm muscles tense deliciously beneath my hands when I have her do resistance exercises on the treatment table, and that faint, sexy gasp that escapes her lips when the pain is far more intense than her pride will allow her to admit out loud.

“I think she’s a very dangerous woman,” I reply with complete honesty. “Because she constantly forces me to step outside my professional comfort zone—the one where I always have absolute control over the situation. With her, I find myself painfully aware of things that have nothing to do with medicine, and that… that’s extremely dangerous for my sanity.”

“But you’re not going to do anything stupid that you’ll regret, are you?”