Life Shocks Romances Collection 3: Inflamed, Jilted, Kindled, Lured

by Jade Kerrion

  “You’re stretching at home, aren’t you?”

  Guilt flickered over his face.

  She sighed. “You’re not supposed to. Not yet. Your physical therapist—”

  “Isn’t moving fast enough.”

  “Your injury is scarcely a week old. Most people would still be in a wheelchair instead of hobbling around on crutches.”

  “I’m not ‘most’ people.”

  Was that arrogance she heard in his tone? Well, no surprises there either, although Nicky was right. As a principal dancer, his athleticism was at least on par with, or exceeded, most Olympic athletes. No wonder he was impatient to recover. Every day lost to his injury had immediate and long-lasting professional impact. Well, it was time to help him along that path to recovery. “Where are your centers of pain?” she asked.

  His mouth twisted into a wry grin. “Everywhere.”

  “Specifics would help.”

  His brow furrowed as he frowned, as if trying to isolate the pain.

  Marisa waited through his silence. “It really is everywhere, huh?”

  He nodded.

  “All right. Go ahead and undressed and get under the sheets.” She hesitated. “Do you need help?”

  “No.” His response was immediate.

  Marisa left the room, closing the door behind her. She slumped against the wall and drew a deep breath. The air seemed suddenly clearer and cleaner; her lungs less clogged by…

  Him.

  Nicky had always that had effect on her, even after she started dating Michael. He had never given her any reason to think that he was interested in her beyond dance. To expect anything more was absurd; if they had dated and broken up, it would have damaged, or even ended, their dance partnership. It was all very logical, but her heart had apparently been slow on the uptake.

  She had hoped that her inconvenient teenaged attraction to Nicky would fade once she had a steady boyfriend; in the end, it had been wishful thinking. Some part of her continued to long for Nicky even while the rest of her was happy with Michael. Nicky was magnetic. It made him mesmerizing on stage—that, and his gravity-defying grand jetés.

  But magnetism did not equal love.

  In fact, as far as Nicky was concerned, it did not even equal friendship, or he would not have so completely abandoned her, walking away from their dance partnership and their friendship as if she were nothing at all to him.

  Marisa sucked in another deep breath. She would have to keep those facts firmly in mind. Nicky was a client. Nothing more.

  She tapped on the door.

  “Ready.” Nicky’s grunt was muted.

  She let herself into the massage therapy room. Nicky had managed to undress, but like the other day, contorting his body to pull the sheets over himself while lying on his chest, was beyond his capabilities. Without comment, she tugged the sheets up, draping them over his legs and buttocks, before stepping over to her iPod on the side table. “Any particular music you prefer, Nicky?”

  “Nicholas.”

  “What?”

  “I go by Nicholas now.”

  She swallowed through the unexpected pang. If she didn’t know it before, she did now. The boy she knew, the boy she thought she had loved, was gone. “All right, Nicholas. Any music preferences?”

  “What you had that day was fine.”

  She selected the nature sounds and reached for the scented oil as the room filled with the sound of running water and softly warbling birds. “Let me know if you want me to adjust the pressure.”

  He grunted, but said nothing.

  The remaining hour passed in silence. His eyes stayed closed, but the unevenness of his breath told her he was not sleeping. Too often, his breath caught when she smoothed out a clenched muscle, but he did not tell her to ease up.

  He wouldn’t have, of course. Stubborn fool.

  Instead, she adjusted the pressure based on his physical response, stopping entirely on several occasions when he held his breath. She did not continue until his breathing resumed.

  Stubborn, stubborn fool.

  He had been like that once too. At sixteen, he had taken part in a dance competition despite a twisted ankle. He had compensated by substituting difficult leaps that ended on two feet with even more difficult leaps that landed on his uninjured leg.

  She stood in the audience, pale and almost trembling with terror, while the other women around her shrieked with delight.

  He had won that competition.

  That time, sheer determination and dazzling skill had taken him all the way. Unfortunately, with a back injury, he would need to add patience to the list of traits needed to see him over the finish line.

  Patience had never been Nicky’s—Nicholas’s—strong suit.

  Marisa finally set the oil away before touching him lightly on his feet. “We’re done. Take as long as you need to rest here before you get up. And do it slowly. No one’s rushing you out of here.” Except yourself.

  She left the room and walked to the reception area to wait for her next client. Jon was also there behind the desk, peering over Karen’s shoulder at the appointment log for the day.

  “How was it?” he asked.

  “He apologized and was perfectly well behaved thereafter, just like I told you he would.”

  “Any progress?”

  “Not necessarily in the right direction. His back muscles are still weak, but there’s increasing tightness and tension in his neck, shoulder, and buttocks.”

  “Because his body is compensating for the effort of moving himself by pulling on different muscles,” Jon finished.

  Marisa nodded. “He’s stretching at home.”

  “What?”

  “He’s a professional dancer. They do stupid things to stay on top of their game.”

  “Even when injured?”

  “Especially when injured.”

  “Did you tell him to stop?”

  Marisa shrugged. “I tried. I doubt he’ll listen. You should tell him, too, and we’ll tell his physical therapists and doctors to yell at him, for whatever good it does. I doubt that anyone short of the artistic director of the ABT will be able to get him to stop, and probably not even him.”

  Jon sighed and shook his head. His gaze flicked toward the corridor as feet shuffled toward them. Nicky appeared a moment later, his dark hair tousled and his green eyes glazed equally from pain and exhaustion. A day’s growth darkened his jaw; it accentuated the dangerous look of a predator in spite of his crutches.

  Marisa’s mind, ever cautious, stepped back as it had done once before even though her heart—heck, her entire body—reeled before Nicky’s raw sensuality. Nicky had never been the “safe” choice. Even she had known it as a teenager. Michael—steady, kind Michael—was the man who made for an amazing husband. He would have been an amazing father, too.

  Not Nicky, who could not think beyond his life on stage and in the spotlight.

  Their eyes met, and for a sizzling instant, something clicked between them—a connection of old, an understanding beyond dance partnership and even friendship. It stole her breath and yanked thoughts out of her head.

  Jon stepped out from behind the reception area. “Are you ready for your chiropractic session?” he asked Nicky.

  Nicky nodded without taking his eyes off Marisa. The spell he had cast over her did not break until he looked away and followed Jon to the treatment room.

  Marisa drew a shuddering breath. The power Nicky had over her had not waned.

  The only difference was she now knew him for the soulless, friendless cad he was.

  Later that evening, after Eva was tucked in bed, Marisa curled on the couch with her computer notebook, and Daisy beside her. Her idle perusal of social media sites led her to news reports of Nicky’s motorcycle accident and speculation over the cause of his injury. What was he doing so far from New York City? Had he been visiting a girlfriend in Westchester?

  Not very likely. Marisa snorted although her heart clenched. She would kno
w, wouldn’t she, if Nicky were dating someone in town? People would talk about it; there was no way Nicky would be able to keep something like that quiet. Her thoughts whirled and she frowned. Could it be Ellen? Her former classmate had made no secret of her crush on Nicky, and she had a made a big show of attending all the opening nights of Nicky’s performances.

  Nicky wouldn’t go for a clingy, voluptuous type of person like Ellen, would he?

  Marisa sighed; she was being unfair. Ellen was a nice enough woman, and she was also really pretty. Marisa was certain Nicky would have no trouble dating someone like Ellen, who wasn’t burdened by a tumultuous past with Nicky.

  Following social media links brought her to YouTube videos of Nicky’s performances, as Romeo in Romeo and Juliet, Albrecht in Giselle, and Siegfried in Swan Lake. Marisa held her breath at each soaring leap, each flawless pirouette, the perfect placement of his body, and the tenderness, the love, the passion on his face as he stared into the eyes of the prima ballerina.

  Ballet is as much dancing as it is acting. Once he looked at me in the same way.

  Her fingers moving as if on their own accord, she accessed old folders on her computer and found videos and photographs of Nicky dating back eight years, when they had been dance partners and best friends.

  They had been so much younger then—Nicky, tall and lean, without the muscular filling out of his early twenties, but already possessed of the arrogant arch of his eyebrow and lift of his chin. Marisa—short and skinny, her blond hair knotted into a ballet bun, leaving stray strands to frame her face. She was fair-skinned and pale next to his dark hair and tanned complexion, but the stark contrast was beautiful on stage, or so others had said.

  It wasn’t beautiful enough to Nicky, or he wouldn’t have broken their partnership as abruptly as he had.

  Marisa traced his face with a slender finger. That look in his eyes—the tenderness—had fooled her too. She had taken it for more than it was. How young I was then. How foolish.

  I shouldn’t let it keep eating me up. He didn’t make me any promises.

  The knot of anger lodged in her chest, however, was as hard and hot as it was old. Resentment both armored and anchored it. No, he didn’t make promises, but we were friends, not just dance partners. We were best friends. Nicky threw it all away. He threw me away, and he never told me why.

  In the dim light of his old bedroom in his parents’ home, Nicholas reclined against the spread of pillows on his bed. They were too soft to be supportive and too hard to be comfortable.

  And I’m turning into a grumpy bastard.

  He checked the mental complaint and tried not to scowl, but shifting his thoughts away from the doom and gloom of his predicament was impossible, not trapped in his little room and hurting from every muscle, every joint, and from places he hadn’t even known had nerve endings.

  That day’s massage session had been hell, made endurable only by the knowledge that Marisa was his therapist. She had broken his heart but she would not hurt him, not physically, not deliberately. It wasn’t her.

  How do you know? You didn’t think she’d break your heart either, did you?

  Nicholas’s hands curled into fists, a motion that stretched pain across his shoulder blades. It’s been eight years. Get over it. Get over yourself. She moved on.

  He reached for the electronic tablet on the bedside table, moving faster than he knew his body could handle. He wanted to silence that voice in his head before it uttered those damning words.

  But I didn’t.

  I couldn’t.

  He snarled. His lower back muscles tensed, punishing him for pushing harder than he should have. Pain radiated through his rib cage. For several moments, he sat still and breathed, and even that took absurd amounts of effort. When was he going to get better?

  He just needed to stretch.

  The ballet dancer’s answer to everything was “stretch.” When you’re feeling tight, stretch. When you’re feeling loose, stretch. When you’re tense, stretch.

  The easy elongation of limber muscles provided a subtle kick of endorphins through the body—the dancer’s high—but at that moment, the thought of stretching made him cringe. Bone-weary, all he wanted was sleep, but the pain—always present yet unpredictable—made it hard to settle down. His gaze fell on the bottle of prescription painkillers.

  Maybe in an hour.

  He had been telling himself “maybe in an hour” for the past thirty-two hours.

  To distract himself, he opened his electronic tablet. Habit brought him to a folder of old photographs. He pulled up the first—a candid photograph of seventeen-year-old him and Marisa in a field of wildflowers. They sprawled in the grass, laughing over who knew what. Her smile was dazzling; her eyes—a brilliant sapphire blue—shone with love.

  He knew only that they had been happy.

  His finger brushed gently over the face of seventeen-year-old Marisa. If he tried, he could remember the softness of her skin. Her scent—he did not even need to extend himself to recall her fragrance. It had driven him wild earlier that day as she massaged him—the intoxicating smell of sweet vanilla and spicy oranges; spring and summer swirled into a tantalizing blend of innocent sensuality.

  Nicholas ground his teeth. There was a reason he hadn’t come back home after Marisa and Michael had betrayed him.

  Being around Marisa without being allowed to touch her, to love her, was hell.

  Chapter 5

  “Are you sure you’ll be okay at home?” Nicholas’s mother asked him for the fifth time in half an hour. “I’ve packed individual portions of food in the microwave, but if you run out, you can call the café and they’ll deliver within the hour.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Nicholas said.

  “Are you sure?” Her anxious eyes searched his face. “Your dad and I don’t have go on this cruise.”

  “You’ve been planning it for years. I won’t die of starvation, and everything’s just a phone call away. And I’m feeling better.” The latter wasn’t precisely a lie. Two weeks had passed since his accident, and the pain had eased a little, but his back had not regained any of its former flexibility or strength.

  His doctor, physical therapist, and chiropractor were pleased with his progress and told him to be patient.

  Marisa said nothing to him; probably because she knew him well enough to save her breath.

  His lack of visible improvement rankled him. The splinter of doubt lodged deeper the more he tried to yank it out. Hell, he didn’t even know how much to eat or if he was eating enough to repair his damaged muscles but not so much that he went to fat. He sure as heck wasn’t getting any exercise; the hours of stretching and endless pacing of the narrow corridors didn’t count.

  He glanced out the window as a cab pulled up in front of the house. “The car’s here. You’ll miss your flight if you don’t get out of here.”

  “All right, come along now, Marie.” Alex Dragov placed his hand in the small of his wife’s back and ushered her out the door. “Nicky’s probably glad to have some alone time. We’ve been in his face for two weeks.”

  Yes, Nicholas thought. But it hadn’t been all bad.

  Over the past eight years, the interactions between him and his parents had whittled down to bank transfers on birthdays and at Christmas. He had forgotten how much his parents cared. And then on the one day I decide to come back to visit them for Thanksgiving—and to visit Michael’s grave—shit happens.

  Perhaps it was the universe’s way of telling him to stay the hell away from Westchester and from Marisa.

  Well, message received loud and clear.

  As soon as I get out of here, I’m never coming back.

  He waited until the taxi departed with his parents and their luggage before closing the door. The emptiness of the house rushed out at him, vast and cold. He shuddered—his back pulled at that slight motion—and shrugged it off. It was just his imagination—his loneliness getting the better of him.

  He had never i
magined what it would be like to be so physically close to Marisa and yet not be allowed to touch her.

  Out of bounds. She had been out of bounds ever since she chose Michael over him. Even with Michael dead—

  Hatred, remorse, resentment, and anger collided, smashing together like a crater, leaving a hole in his heart. I should have just kicked your ass that day. I would have felt a whole lot better, and who knows, I might even have won Marisa back.

  But devastated by the double betrayal, he had reeled emotionally and retreated physically. Like a coward. His lip curled into a self-mocking sneer. Perhaps I should have actually told Marisa I loved her. Perhaps I have no one to blame but myself.

  He made his way to the den to lose himself in a movie, but the television suddenly flickered out ten minutes into the show. Nicholas sighed. It was probably a blown fuse, and the fuse box was in the basement. How desperately did he want to watch the show?

  Well, it beat doing nothing and thinking about Marisa.

  Gritting his teeth, he tightened his grip on his crutches and hobbled down the narrow basement stairs. The naked bulb over the staircase swung slowly, making shadows dance over the wooden steps. He had second thoughts about the wisdom of what he was doing, but by then, he was more than halfway down. He made it to the bottom without incident—other than sending his back muscles into a screaming fit—and checked the fuse box, swapping out the blown fuse for a fresh one.

  He hobbled to the staircase and made his way up the stairs. He was almost at the top when his grip on his crutch slipped. He tumbled sideways and grabbed the wooden rail to break his fall.

  It cracked sharply.

  Flailing, Nicholas plunged eight feet to the cement floor.

  Marisa parked her car outside of Nicky’s house and stared at the closed door. She huffed her breath out. What was she doing here? Nicky had missed his appointment at the clinic; so what? He had endured a brutal week of therapy; taking a day off would help, not hurt.

  Still, he hadn’t called to cancel the appointment.

  And he wasn’t answering the phone.

  She chewed on her lower lip. Checking on him would only take five minutes, and she could make it home before Eva’s babysitter, Patty, had to leave.