Meeting her eyes again, he assured Winn, "Yes, I think so. There's got to be a reason for all of this, and if it's not love, what else could there possibly be? You love her, too, and because you do, you needed to cry and so you came to me. And I think I could very easily fall in love with you. Maybe that's the reason… to bring us together."
"Joseph, you mustn't say that." Her voice was quiet, unchiding, as she probed his dark brown eyes with her troubled blue ones.
"But it's true."
"But there's still Paul."
"Yes… Paul." The pressure on her jaws increased as Joseph held her prisoner with his hands and eyes. "And why aren't you with him right now, crying on his shoulder? He's the one who should be comforting you at a time like this."
She pulled away and drew her knees up, looping them with both arms. "Paul has a hard time dealing with the fact of death or even disease. He sees perfection as the ultimate, I guess. The imperfect bodies I work with put him off, and he's uncomfortable talking about them."
"Did he try… this time?"
"He… I… no. I told you, he wasn't home when I tried to reach him. But when I first got Merry as a patient, I was upset one night and called him then."
"And what did he do?"
"We talked a little bit about it."
"Did he come over?"
She flashed him a warning glance. "Don't judge him, Joseph. He has his own qualities. They may be different from yours or mine, but he has them just the same."
"Such as?"
"Such as his supreme intelligence, his analytical mind, his… his tenacity. I mean, when Paul makes up his mind to do something, he does it, if it takes him a month or a year, he does it."
"Such as providing you with a house and furniture?"
"Exactly. I'm the one at fault for wishing he'd-"
"Cut it out, Winn!" he snapped.
"Cut what out?" she snapped back.
"Rationalizing about your relationship with him. It stinks and you know it."
"It does not stink! We get along wonderfully!"
"Oh, sure. That's why you came running to me instead of to him today. From what you tell me about him, he must have silicon chips for emotions!"
Her face colored deeply. "You're overstepping, Joseph."
"I'm pointing out what you already know but refuse to admit. The two of you have nothing in common except some goddarn house he's living in without you! If you were engaged to me, I wouldn't be letting you flirt around with other men at wedding dances."
"I didn't-" But Joseph forged ahead.
"And your birth-control pills would be sitting in my bedroom. And your panty hose would be lying on my bedroom floor beside my jockstrap after we ended up every day with a rousing game of racket ball like the one we just played."
She tried jumping to her feet, but he grabbed her wrist and held her where she was.
"Winn, sit still!" he ordered, refusing to release her. "How in blazes did you ever end up with somebody like him in the first place?"
She simmered for a long time while their eyes locked angrily. Her wrist strained against his grip, and at the precise moment she wrenched it free, she spit, "My mother!"
His eyes widened in surprise. "Your what?"
"My mother introduced me to him." Winn dropped her eyes, uncomfortable with the admission.
"Go on."
"He was teaching a class on computers that she took, and the two of them discovered this great common interest in COBOL and FORTRAN."
He screwed up his face. "What?"
She waved an impatient hand. "Oh, those are some high-level computer languages. Anyway, she told me she'd met this wonderful man." Winn stopped and shrugged.
"Then why didn't she marry him instead of you?"
Winn stiffened. The corners of her mouth pulled down, and she glared at Joseph. How unflinchingly he hit upon her most vulnerable spot. How many times had she submerged the very thought, believing it too touchy to allow herself to think, much less voice!
"I don't think that's funny, Joseph."
"Why? Did I hit a nerve?"
"The nerve here is yours, and you're displaying plenty of it."
"It's nothing to be ashamed of. You wouldn't be the first woman who agreed to marry somebody because he was her parents' choice."
"That's not why I'm marrying him," she claimed, perhaps a little too emphatically.
"Then why are you? Did he sweep you off your feet-sexually?" Her mouth puckered tighter. He drove on, "Well, it's sure obvious you didn't fall for him because he shared your interests. Or your goals or your tastes! You've already told me enough about him to know you're like steam and he's like ice. They may both be made of the same element, but that doesn't mean they're anything alike, Win, and you know it."
She crossed her forearms on her knees and dropped her forehead onto them. "I didn't come here so you could make me feel worse than I already did, but somehow you're managing it."
"I'm sorry, Winn." He rested a hand on her slumped shoulder, but she shrugged it away. "I didn't mean to make you upset, but so far the only thing I can name that the two of you do well together is dance, and he leaves you behind to do that with me? I should think you'd be the one picking out these gaping holes in your relationship, not me."
She raised her head wearily. "Don't you understand? Our wedding is only six weeks away."
His eyes pierced through her. "Yeah. Scary, isn't it?"
Winn did leap to her feet then and leaned over angrily to scoop the blue ball off the floor. She began bouncing it vehemently with the racket while presenting her rigid back. "Do you want to play another game or not?"
He glared at her shapely back, her erect shoulders and the irritation she displayed as she whapped the ball. He grew more than irritated. He was frustrated and angry that she refused to explore the mistake she was making in her choice of men just because of a few social commitments.
"You bet I do. And we'll see who whips who." She was standing in the serving lane when his answer bit the air just behind her shoulder. Then he went on, "I won the first match, Gardner. The serve is mine."
She felt properly chastised and not a little embarrassed. There were men who extended the courtesy of always letting ladies serve first. It had always peeved Winn. She'd win on her own merits or not at all. How dare Joseph Duggan imply that she was trying to grab an unearned advantage! Wordlessly she retreated to the backcourt, leaving the serving lane to him. When the first ball came, it whistled off three surfaces before she reached it just in the nick of time. The volley was long and exhausting, and he took the point. Her ego was definitely stung, for she'd tried her hardest to take the initial point after their argument. As he bounced the ball preparatory to serving, she held her racket in a position that definitely stated, "Attack," leaning forward from the waist, rocking her hips from side to side, intensity written on every muscle of her face and stance.
The longer the game went, the better they both played.
They were neck and neck at fifteen, and her lungs felt ready to explode. She felt a slight cramp in her right foot but shook it off, promising herself Joseph Duggan would lose this game, come hell or high water.
He slammed a power shot off the back wall, and she missed it.
She executed a beautiful pass shot and left him standing on the opposite side of the court from where the ball rebounded.
At nineteen all, the sweat was running down their legs, backs and bellies. Her bra was soaked, and the band of her shorts stuck to her skin. His shirt-what there was of it-was so dark with sweat she wondered why he bothered to pull at its shoulder to swab his forehead.
She served a deadly one that struck with the speed of a copperhead and took point twenty to tie him.
On his next attack he reached and leaped at a scorcher skimming no farther than a quarter inch away from the wall. But in his intensity he grew careless, leaped too hard and hit the concrete, then bounced off and landed with a thick thud, flat on his back.
He wi
nced, bared his teeth, grabbed his right knee and rolled back and forth, sucking air.
She dropped her racket and ran, falling to her knees beside him. "Joseph, I'm sorry. Oh, Judas, what is it? Is it your knee? Here, let me see."
He rolled and winced all the more.
"Joseph, let go. See if you can straighten it."
He felt her fingers on his arm and forced himself to lie back, releasing the knee and leaving it flexed while his foot rested on the floor. Her hands grasped the backside of his calf, then one of them eased over his shinbone, forcing him to straighten his leg. He gasped and arched his chest higher. She laid the leg on the cool floor, touched it exploringly here, there, there, there. She made him work it back and forth, gently probing the muscles, the kneecap.
His initial shot of pain eased slightly. "Well, what do you think, doc?" he asked.
"I think we'd better get some ice on it right away and, depending on how it feels within the next hour, have it X-rayed."
She stood up, reached a hand down to help him. "Can you use it?" He could, but he limped. She wrapped his arm around her shoulder and together they hobbled back to the dressing rooms.
"If you shower, use cool water, not hot, and I'll meet you back here as quick as you can make it." He'd already pushed open the locker-room door. "And Joseph?" He stepped and looked back over his shoulder. "I really am sorry."
"It's not your fault, Winn. I was playing stupidly, with all body and no brains. I deserved it."
She thought it best if he didn't drive the truck because it had a floor shift, and until they found out how serious his injury was, the leg definitely shouldn't be strained. She stalled the old rattletrap three times before she'd even managed to back it out of its parking space. It chortled and chugged and nearly snapped their necks when she shifted from first to second.
But it made Joseph laugh. And when she heard him laugh, she was so relieved, she laughed, too. She talked him into letting her take him to North Memorial Medical Center, even though he said he didn't want to check into any emergency ward.
"All right, then I have another plan. But we'll have to sneak to do it."
"Sneak?"
"Into P.T.-it should be deserted at this time of night-and we'll put an ice pack on your knee and wait to see if you think you need the X-ray."
"Why should you have to sneak when you work there?"
"Because I could get fired if we get caught. The hospital is liable if you're using their facilities, and unless you're officially admitted, they have no legal recourse if something happens to you on our equipment. But it won't. I'll see to it."
"But what if you get caught?"
She angled him a devilish corner-of-the-lip grin. "You'll be indebted to me for life."
* * *
A short time later they pulled up before the Abbott Street entrance, a back door used for patient pickup, which was deserted now at 7:00 P.M. and also was the closest route to Physical Medicine.
Just before Winn got out of the truck, Joseph reached out to lay his palm on the seat beside her. "Winn?"
She stopped and turned to him.
"I'm sorry. You were right. I overstepped."
Judas, but the man had eyes she couldn't get enough of. "We'll see," she answered cryptically, then the truck door slammed behind her.
It was quiet and dark in the rehabilitation room, and he stood in the doorway, interested in its every fixture simply because it belonged to her world, and he wanted to know as much about it and her as possible.
The room was like a narrow gymnasium with ceiling-to-floor windows at one end. Along the walls were various pieces of exercise equipment lined up: two sets of portable wooden stairs with handrails, two stationary bicycles, a refrigerator-freezer, low tables topped with blue mats, more mats on the floor and various ordinary wooden chairs.
She led the way to the far left end of the room. "Sit here," she ordered, "on the table." It was scarcely knee height and easy to fall back upon. She stood beside him and ordered him to stretch out on his back. He clasped his head as if about to do sit-ups and looked along his trunk to watch her untie and remove his tennis shoe, then the clean sock he'd put on only a half hour ago. He wore the red jogging suit again. He had six-inch zippers up each ankle. She slid the right one up, then pushed the pant leg past his knee until it drew tight around his thick thigh and stayed there.
Whatever he'd done, he'd done to the muscles just below his knee, and as she surrounded them with competent hands, she gently probed and tested.
"Relax," she ordered. "You're all tensed up with your head raised like that. I'm not going to hurt you."
He fell back flat and answered all her questions, telling her what each touch felt like. Her fingers were gentle and her palms soft as she explored the muscles below the knee, then the knee itself, and finally worked her way up his thigh, probing. He tried to concentrate on the discomfort, because her hand felt so good, and because he was having difficulty disassociating the therapist from the woman. Her hands skimmed over the hair-roughened surface of his leg all the way to the top of his thigh.
At last, when he thought he was in mortal danger from the wonderful feeling of her hands upon him, she dropped them. "It's not a hamstring, and it's not a knee. I think it's your triceps surae."
"My what?"
"Triceps surae, the muscles found in the lower leg. You may have pulled one or more when you fell after hitting the wall."
"How can you tell?"
"Three things. Pain, heat-it's hot right here…" She touched a sensitive spot lightly. "And swelling. You've got all three." She crossed to the refrigerator while he lay thinking about another swelling that she'd come awfully close to promoting. She returned with a flat pack that looked like a miniature inflated mattress and carefully wrapped it around his leg just below the knee and secured the Velcro patches.
"For the first forty-eight to seventy-two hours ice is best, then if it's still bothering you, we'll switch to heat."
"We? Does that mean I'll see you again in the next couple days?"
She withdrew her hands from his leg immediately, then realized what she'd done and let her hands drop to her sides while sitting down on the edge of the table beside him, crossing her knees.
"If your leg is giving you pain, of course I'd be happy to help you work with it and save you the cost of outpatient care. But if it's not…"
He reached to take one of her hands and twisted their fingers together.
"And if it's not?"
She studied him silently, and from nowhere came the appealing one-eyed blink that he could read so well by now.
"Joseph, you're an extremely attractive man." She rubbed the back of his hand with her thumb. "But how many times in a woman's life does she meet an attractive man whom she must resist? Once I'm married, I'm not expecting never again to be face to face with men who raise my temperature a notch or two. It's bound to happen, but it's how I react to it that's important. I'm not denying I've… reacted to you. You're a very persuasive man, Joseph, and sexy to boot. But I'm involved in wedding plans that are so mind boggling I wouldn't even care to list all the people and dollars involved. My mother-" again her thumb brushed his hand softly "-well, my mother is a very frugal woman and always concerned about security-investing, saving, planning for the future. But this time she's throwing caution aside and going whole hog. Nothing's too good or too expensive for Pau -" She caught herself in time and finished, "For us."
But Joseph heard her slip. "Just make sure you aren't making a mistake, Winn."
She dropped his hand, placed hers on her thighs and pushed herself up to her feet. "There's no such thing as a sure bet, but I know mother will be ecstatic when I marry Paul, and he'll be terribly good to me, and I'll have all the security she always wanted for me."
"All the security she never had?" Joseph questioned.
Winn pondered silently, then answered, "Yes. It's not hard to see through her. Security is her biggest hang-up."
"Because of
your father?" She had never mentioned her father.
"Yes."
"Did he leave her?"
"It wasn't a question of his leaving. He never stayed long enough to leave. He got her pregnant while they were dating, then disappeared, and she never heard from him or saw him again. She's had a rough time making something of herself with me to raise and nobody else to rely upon. But she's a scrapper. She made it through business school and became a superb private secretary, and she didn't stop there. When things changed, when computers came along, she didn't rest on her laurels or make up her mind she wasn't going to go along with such upstart ideas. Instead she went to learn how to use them. And of course, that's when Paul became her teacher."
They fell silent again. But it was not a comfortable silence this time. Joseph wanted to tell her she was being a fool. She wanted to tell him to mind his own business.
At length, she picked a neutral subject. "How does your leg feel?"
"Numb."
"Good. Let's see it now."
She removed the ice pack and examined the leg again, had him flex it, stand on it, and judged it to have pulled muscles, not broken bones.
"I don't think you'll need an X-ray. How does it feel when you walk?"
"Better since the ice."
"Good. Would you like to see the tank room where I work with Merry?"
"I'd love to."
She showed him around the rest of the Physical Medicine Department, but much of the time Joseph was thinking of other things than the Hubbard tank, traction units and treadmills. He wondered how she could be so sensitive to the needs of others, yet so ignorant of her own.
When they got back to his house, he tried to kiss her, but she pressed a hand to his chest and turned away.
"No, Joseph. My mind is made up."
"Can I call you?"
"No."
"I think you're making a mistake. I think you and I would be-"
"Don't say it."
"You think it's just spring fancy, but I don't."
"Goodbye, Joseph, I hope your leg gets better." She turned to her own car and practically ran the few steps to it before slamming herself inside its sanctuary, as if a mere enclosure of metal and glass could insulate her from the powerful force that compelled the two of them together.
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