The Risk

by Skye Jordan

  “Thank God, only two left,” he said, turning the napkin. “What’s next? Claiming my right hand? My heart? The family jewels?”

  He read it silently. I, Noah Hunt, am committed to abstaining from dating for the duration of therapy. A deep frown pulled at his brow, and he held it up to her. “What’s this about?”

  “Focus. You can’t focus when your mind is distracted by women.”

  Noah slid the napkin slowly to the side like it might strike out and bite him at any moment. “Let’s let this one sit a minute.” Then he picked up the last one and read, “I, Noah Hunt, am committed to abstaining from—” He read the rest in his head: sex for the duration of therapy. “Oh, hell no.” He crumpled it into a ball and tossed it over his shoulder. “That ain’t happening, chica. Let’s go back to this one…”

  He reached for the dating napkin, but Julia was off her stool, retrieving the no-sex napkin.

  “Throw that in the trash, beautiful. It hurts my eyes to look at it. Hurts my dick to think about it. Now, what’s this about no dating? Are you, perhaps, jealous?”

  She set the offensive no-sex napkin back on the bar in front of him and met his eyes. “As I said, you need focus to achieve what you’re shooting for. Dating and sex will not get you back on that mountain. Commit to this for six weeks, and you can go back to your womanizing ways as soon as you own Snowmass.”

  “Oh Christ.” He sat back, stunned. “You’re serious.”

  “As a limb amputation.”

  His mood soured. “Not funny.”

  “Not trying to be.” She patted the napkin. “Sign them, Noah. Commit to your future for a change.”

  “My future?” he said, growing serious and frustrated. “That’s all I’ve ever been committed to. A change would be committing to enjoying the moment.” He reached out and closed his hand over hers. “Enjoying you. The way we enjoyed last night. You can’t tell me you can just write that off as nothing.”

  “Last night is the past. I told you, I don’t—”

  “Sleep with your clients. I heard you.”

  “Then we’re clear.” She straightened and met his look with a flaming beam of challenge.

  She didn’t want him. And this was an easy way of getting around shrugging him off while still getting her cash. He should have known. It always came down to the almighty buck.

  Great.

  Fucking perfect.

  “Fine.” He picked up the pen and signed both napkins, shoving them back at her.

  He felt like a stupid two-year-old when he crossed his arms and proceeded to pout, but he couldn’t seem to control it.

  She picked up the napkins, pulled them into one neat pile, and met his gaze. “Go change for your assessment and first workout. Then we’ll hit the grocery store for a crash course in nutrition and shopping, then end the day with a cooking lesson.”

  “Scintillating.” He pushed back from the bar, looking forward to getting away from her for the first time since he’d set eyes on her thirty hours ago. “Can’t wait.”

  Julia had forgotten how draining it could be to work with a difficult athlete. They required intense mental and emotional manipulation to get them to give their all to every workout. Other trainers might call it providing motivation. Julia had never been one to sugarcoat.

  She stepped out of the shower in her suite and pulled a towel from the heated rack. Oh, the little luxuries wealth brought. She’d grown up with them all—the designer clothes, jewelry, nannies, tutors, trainers, chauffeurs. But as she dried with a towel heated to her body temperature, she was reminded that nothing money could buy replaced what a soul truly needed.

  For her, it had been the unconditional love of her parents. She wondered what loss lurked in Noah’s psyche. She’d worked with too many professional athletes to believe he’d escaped the development of some black hole in his past. She’d gone through the harrowing training herself and knew exactly what a person had to give up to reach Noah’s level of expertise.

  “Doesn’t matter,” she reminded herself. She was in a professional relationship with Noah, not a personal one. Professional therapists didn’t worry about damaged psyches unless it hindered performance, and that didn’t seem to be the case for Noah. “Just drop it.”

  She wrapped the towel around her back, and her shoulders and biceps ached with the movement. Today, Julia had leveraged Noah’s obvious male vanity to light a fire under his ass during the workout by joining in. As she’d expected, he’d added weight, corrected lazy form, and pushed himself to beat her in some way—more reps, more weight, quicker finish. She sure as hell hoped she didn’t have to do that with every workout. Yes, she was committed to health, but she was no longer training for a two-hundred-meter butterfly against China’s gold medalist and would rather not feel like she was.

  Julia fastened the towel between her breasts and reached for her moisturizer sitting on the vanity. She pumped the lotion over her fingers and spread it over her face, then her neck. A tingle of pain brought her gaze to the skin beneath her fingers as she touched her collarbone.

  The small, red, diamond-shaped welt there shot her mind back twelve hours. To her cheek crushed against the mattress. To Noah’s weight forcing the front of her body into the softness on every long, deep stroke of his cock from behind. To her hands trapped against the bed at eye level, their fingers threaded, his flexing and clenching with each thrust. To his teeth sinking into the skin above her collarbone as she’d climaxed and bowed with pleasure so intense, she felt absolutely no pain.

  Lust spiraled through her body, pooling between her legs. Her sex clenched against a surge of need, wet for him at the mere split-second memory.

  Damn, last night had been good. Awesome. Spectacular. Noah had been a perfect balance of demanding dominant, and sensual explorer.

  No, no, no. She forced her brain into the here and now. Last night was last night. Not tonight. Not tomorrow night. Their fleeting time together was in the past. And yes, that gave her a little ache at the center of her chest. But life wasn’t about sex. And they both had futures riding on their professional relationship.

  Three sharp knocks sounded somewhere in the other room, making Julia jump. Then Noah’s muffled voice called, “Quinn, are we doing this sometime today? Looks like more snow is coming in.”

  The quivers in her belly died down. She stepped out of the bathroom and yelled at the bedroom door, “Didn’t your mother teach you never to rush a girl?”

  “You’re not a girl. You’re a sadist. I’m warming up the car.”

  Julia pulled on the same jeans and sweater she’d been wearing earlier, brushed out her hair, and met Noah at the car. He didn’t look at her as she slid into the passenger’s seat. Didn’t wait for her to get her seat belt snapped before he backed out of the garage. And didn’t talk to her on the drive.

  “Where do you usually shop?” Julia finally asked, both annoyed at his mood and anxious over her own sense of unease with her decision to stay.

  “I don’t. Teresa does it for me.”

  “Who’s Teresa?”

  “My housekeeper.”

  “Oh.” Julia made a mental note to have a sit-down with Teresa. “When does she come?”

  “Tuesday and Friday. Eight a.m.”

  “What are our choices in town?”

  “Safeway and Pac-n-Save are the only two I know about.”

  She’d need to search out alternative grocery stores, preferably those focused on organics. And she’d need a heavy-duty health store to get ahold of all the supplements he needed.

  Noah pulled the SUV into a spot near the entrance, and Julia slipped out. When he met her at the front of his car, he was pulling his phone from his pocket to answer its ring. His ring tone: “Hall of Fame” from The Script, singing, “You could be the greatest, you could be the best, you could be the King Kong bangin’ on his chest…”

  Julia smiled as she headed into the store, pausing at the shopping carts. He caught up to her while she struggled to separ
ate one cart from another.

  “No, baby, I’m sorry, I can’t right now,” he said into the phone as he closed in behind Julia.

  He reached over her shoulder, his front brushing her back where tingles broke out beneath her sweater, then curled his hand around the cart’s red handle and gave it one solid yank. Metal untangled from metal, and the cart rolled easily backward.

  He gave her a superior smirk, then continued his conversation over the phone. “I’m at the grocery store. No, Teresa didn’t quit. All right, that’s enough. Do you want me to call you back later or don’t you? Then, be nice. Yeah. Okay. Couple of hours. Bye.”

  Julia walked into the store, wondering who in his life warranted that sweet tone. When he came up beside her, she saw he wasn’t exactly limping, but he was definitely favoring his injured leg. “I hope you don’t think I’m not going to notice you sneaking out to meet a chick.”

  “How are you going to do that from the guesthouse?” He stuffed his hands into the front pockets of his jeans and strolled beside her, glancing at the signs above the aisles.

  “Lesson one about grocery stores—shop around the borders. The main aisles hold mostly processed foods. You should be getting ninety percent of your food fresh—meat, produce, dairy—from the edges of the store.”

  “But pain relief is smack-dab in the center.” He picked up his pace, heading that direction. “And after your Attila the Hun workout today, I’m starting there.”

  “It only seemed hard because you haven’t been doing it right until today.” But her thighs were sore too, and she exerted deliberate effort to keep up with him.

  “That’s because I haven’t had my homies to keep me in line.”

  “Who are your homies?”

  “A bunch of other snowboarders, animals who keep my form in check and challenge me.”

  Noah turned down an aisle and paused in front of the ibuprofen, pulling a random bottle of Advil off the shelf.

  Julia covered his hand before he pulled the box open. “Not that.”

  The feel of his warm, masculine hand beneath hers made her stomach tighten. She released him quickly and pulled the box from his grip.

  “Hey—”

  “Take this instead.” She reached for extra strength Tylenol. “It’s better for your inflammation.”

  “No, Miss Masters-in-physical-therapy, ibuprofen is the one that reduces inflammation—”

  “It’s best for reducing acute inflammation for the purpose of pain relief.”

  “Hello…” He held his hands wide.

  “Okay, enough.” She wrapped her hands tight around the cart handle. “I’m getting tired of the attitude. You’re not the only one who’s tired or sore or not getting one hundred percent of what they want. If you need an explanation for every damn decision I make, I’ll give you one, but just remember—you asked for it. Try to follow along here.

  “When a bone breaks, it creates an influx of free radicals, because antioxidants repair oxidative damage. This happens to an even greater degree when bones are broken forcefully, as in your case, because it ruptures the collagen strands running through the mineral phase of bone.”

  His brow furrowed, his gaze sharpened.

  “Free radicals,” she went on, “are associated with inflammation, and inflammation is an essential part of bone healing and rebuilding. The process involves two critical enzymes, but these enzymes also create pain. Anti-inflammatories like ibuprofen cut the pain, but they also inhibit those enzymes, which ultimately delays healing.”

  His eyes had glazed over somewhere around “enzymes,” and now he dropped his gaze to the ibuprofen. “Well, shit.” He replaced the box on the shelf. “So you’re basically telling me to suck it up?”

  “Not exactly.” She held up the Tylenol. “I’m telling you to take this and add a bunch of other inflammation-reducing foods and supplements into your diet.”

  He rubbed a hand down his face, tore open the Tylenol box, then struggled with the small bottle. “If you think I’m an asshole now, wait till you see me in real pain. You probably shouldn’t have worked me that hard today.”

  Before his obviously strained patience could snap, Julia took it from his hand, opened it, and poured two capsules into his palm. “It may seem counterintuitive, but exercise speeds healing.”

  “My whole life seems counterintuitive.” He tossed the pills back, swallowing them dry.

  “Give it fifteen minutes,” she said, dropping the Tylenol box into the cart and moving down the aisle. “If it’s not any better, you can take one more.”

  “What if it’s still not better?”

  They turned into the main row near the checkout counters, and Julia started toward the produce. “Therapy will help.”

  His brows lifted. “Therapy, huh? Are you gonna do that massage thing you did last night?” His voice rose with hope, and more visions of their lust-filled night together filled her brain—and her body—with flash fire. “Because that was a-freaking-mazing. Can’t say I’ve ever had my—”

  “Noah.”

  “Just sayin’.”

  They passed by the entrance and into the produce section. Julia stopped at a display of cherries. “Grab a handful and start eating. They’re high in anthocyanin, which reduces inflammation and curbs pain.” She tugged a plastic bag from the dispenser and fluffed it open. “I’m going to be giving you a lot of information over the next hour. Are you listening?”

  He tossed a cherry into his mouth, then hit her with a flirty look. “I can tie the stem of this thing into a knot with my tongue. Wanna watch?”

  “No. I just want to know you’re paying attention.”

  He chuckled, the sound hot and full of himself. But, she had to let him have that—he was particularly talented with that tongue. And those lips. And hands. And fingers. And…

  “I’m listening,” he said. “Go for it.”

  Oh, she’d like to go for it. Instead, she said, “These cherries are going to help you stay off ibuprofen.”

  “Ibuprofen is a hell of a lot cheaper. Judging by the price, these were flown in—first class—from Tibet.”

  “It’s January. You live in the snow. Produce is going to be expensive. And why would that concern you anyway?”

  “The key to having money is not wasting it.”

  “And making good decisions.” Which was where she’d screwed up. “Investing in your health is never a bad decision.”

  She spun the bag and tied off the top, dropped it into the cart, and moved on to the kiwis. Pulling another bag from a nearby roll, she tested the firmness of the little fuzzy fruits, dropping the ripe ones in the plastic.

  “Kiwis have healing effects that range from fighting cancer to reducing cholesterol. Multiple studies have shown they reduce oxidative stress, that thing I just explained happened with bone fractures, and encourage damaged cells to repair themselves.”

  “Your medical talk is starting to hurt my brain. Maybe you could—”

  “Hey, Noah.” The call drew their gazes toward the entrance, where a man strode toward them. He was a few years younger and a couple of inches shorter but just as attractive in that rugged, outdoorsy way. His hair and eyes were pure milk chocolate, his face scruffy with a little more beard than Noah currently sported. The new guy wore clunky snow boots and black ski pants, their suspenders hanging loose along his thighs, all topped off by a long-sleeved gray Henley.

  The man’s gaze drifted to Julia. His eyes held, his grin widened, and his trajectory altered from Noah to her.

  Noah stepped into his path. “What’s up, dude?” He put a hand to the guy’s shoulder, stopping him, then walking him backward. “Taking a break from your ride?”But the guy was leaning sideways to look at her. “Who’s that?”

  “No one,” Noah said.

  “Dude.” He laughed the word. “No one? You’re not just out of practice, you’re fuckin’ damaged. Maybe you bored Samantha to death the other night. She told us she passed out on you, thinks you’re mad a
t her because you didn’t get any, which is even funnier considering how long—”

  Noah gave his buddy a shove. “Dude,” he said in a hush Julia barely heard, “lower your damn voice.”

  Julia grinned and moved around the fruit stand to the mangos on the opposite side.

  “Who’s this chick?” His friend’s sharp gaze darted to Julia again, and a slow grin crossed his bearded face. “Hardly your type, but definitely mine.”

  He gave Noah a shove and stepped past, his gaze steady on Julia, smile sparkling.

  But he didn’t get far before Noah gripped his friend’s bicep and swung the guy around. “Just mind your own business.”

  Instead of stopping to face Noah, the guy turned a full circle, easily pulling his arm from Noah’s grasp and catapulting himself out of Noah’s reach on his way toward Julia. A very smooth, practiced move that made her lift her brows.

  “Hi there, beautiful,” he said, still sixty feet away. “I’m Finn. Why is Noah trying to keep me away from you?”

  Julia tied off her bag of mangos and pushed the cart toward the next stand for apples. “Probably because he doesn’t want to be seen with someone so ‘not his type.’”

  Noah followed, expression tense, eyes dark—the complete opposite of Finn, who was quite handsome when he flashed that grin on a girl.

  “He’s an idiot.” Finn said, laughing as he sidestepped to escape another one of Noah’s grabs. “And slow with that lousy leg.”

  “But I’ll be quick to kill you once I get ahold of you,” Noah said.

  “Eventually. Until then…” Finn returned his attention to Julia. “So what’s up with you and this scamp?” He leaned a hip against the refrigerated produce stand. “You two have a thing going?”

  “She’s my physical therapist,” Noah said, coming up behind his friend. “Back off.”

  “Ah,” Finn said, his gaze sliding slowly over Julia until he reached her feet. “That explains the body.” When his gaze returned to hers, there was also one hell of a lot of heat making gold flecks in his irises stand out. “Maybe you and I can compare abs sometime.”

  That made Julia laugh. “There’s one I haven’t heard.”