by Melissa Good
Kerry pushed off the wall and started up the steps. Besides, she grinned, he sure was a cutie. In fact, she thought, he reminded her of someone. Now who...ah. She nodded. That’s right—Josh. She’d gotten an e-mail from him that morning, saying he’d accepted her offer and was going to come to Miami.
Sorting through various other issues, Kerry kept jogging upward, catching her wind and falling into an easy rhythm as her body adjusted to the exertion.
THE MACHINE BUZZED softly. Dar kept her eyes firmly closed and spent the moments roundly cursing herself for being a stubborn jerk for not taking Kerry up on her offer of company. This was the third round of scans, and her nerves were beginning to twitch badly, wanting out of the machine and away from the cold, impersonal hands that invaded her personal space and moved her body.
Hands gripped her chin and she jerked, her eyes snapping open and pinning the doctor standing over her with an angry glare.
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“Okay, Ms. Rob—” The tall, willowy woman stopped speaking and removed her hands. “Sorry, did I startle you?”
Dar took a breath and forced her irritation down. “No. I thought this was about done.”
The doctor folded her arms. “Just about,” she agreed, wrinkling her well-shaped nose in thought. “You don’t much like being touched, do you?”
Dar scowled a little at being so easily read. “Not much, no,” she admitted. At least this doctor—Alison was her name?—wasn’t the usual condescending, iceberg type. “Sorry.”
“That’s all right, Ms. Roberts,” Dr. Alison reassured her. “Some people don’t. We’re so used to just grabbing what we want and pulling, we forget that sometimes. Could you tilt your head up and to the right?”
Dar complied, watching the woman make adjustments to the machine. The doctor was taller than Kerry but couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds, so thin that Dar was sure she’d blow away if the air conditioning cycled too strongly. Her white lab coat hung loosely on her, and the wrists that extended from it seemed barely wider than two of Dar’s fingers. The machine whirred again.
“Okay.” Dr. Alison looked down at Dar. “We’re done.” She pushed the machine arm back and leaned against the padded table on which Dar was lying. She had hazel eyes and a high forehead made all the more so by a hairstyle tightly pulled back into a knot. “Why don’t you sit up and let me take a look at your shoulder, okay?”
Dar obliged, tensing her abdominal muscles and pulling herself upright, then swinging her legs over the edge of the table. She hopped off and stood upright, startling the doctor, who took a step back.
“Oh.” Dr. Alison made a face, then smiled. “Somehow, patients always look shorter lying down. I didn’t expect you to be that tall.” She gestured toward a side room. “Why don’t we go in there so you can sit?”
Dar followed her in silence, taking a seat on a lower, but also padded bench in the examination room. She was still wearing her sling, but they’d allowed her Tylenol for the nagging headache, and she felt pretty good at the moment. “Well?”
Dr. Alison had been reviewing something on a computer terminal, and now she looked up over the screen at Dar. “Well, you want the bad news first or the good news?”
“Bad,” Dar replied instantly.
“You know, Ms. Roberts, I thought you were going to say that,” the doctor laughed. “Okay, well, the bad news is that you’ve got a lot of swelling in that shoulder. Aside from the bone bruise, you also strained some of the tendons and muscles around there, and everything’s pretty tense.”
Dar ran that over in her head and decided it didn’t sound life 280 Melissa Good threatening. “Okay.”
“You’re going to need to do a lot of physical therapy to get the blood moving in there and get the damaged bits out,” Dr. Alison told her. “It’s going to hurt.”
Pain was something Dar could live with. She’d worked through enough injuries in her years of martial arts, after all, and while she never enjoyed the process, she knew ways of getting past it. “And?” She watched as the doctor left her console and came over, carefully unsnapping the sling to release Dar’s arm.
“I need to see what kind of range of motion you have, okay?” Dr.
Alison waited for Dar to nod, then she took hold of Dar’s wrist and slowly lifted her arm. “Let me know when it starts to hurt.” She first flexed the arm at the elbow, then gently pulled upward, getting no reaction from her wary patient. “Okay, that’s what I thought. Now I’m going to move it out to the side; I think that’s where the problem is going to be.”
Dar nodded and shifted a little, straightening up as the other woman carefully extended her injured arm out to the side, then started to lift it. About halfway, Dar let out a sound somewhere between a cough and a hiss, and the motion stopped.
“Okay.” The doctor examined the angle. “Well, that’s not too bad, actually.” She sounded surprised. “Given what I saw in the pictures, that’s pretty darn good.” She put Dar’s arm back down and started poking at her shoulder, touching and prodding the skin with absorbed interest. “You have a very well developed deltoid here.”
Dar’s brow lifted and she eyed the woman warily. “Thanks.”
“I don’t think I’ve seen a structure like this on a female in a while,”
Dr. Alison added. “You’re not doing steroids or other anabolics, are you?”
Dar glared at her. “Absolutely not.”
“Just asking,” the doctor replied mildly. “No offense intended, Ms.
Roberts. A lot of people do, you know. In my line of work, I deal with an enormous number of athletes. It’s a standard question.” She walked over and checked her screen. “You have an incredible bone density, did you know that?”
How was she supposed to know that? “No,” Dar replied.
“Well, you do.” The doctor typed something. “That’s a good thing.
It’s what kept you from getting hurt worse. You take calcium supplements?”
Dar’s brow creased. Supplements? “No, I just drink milk.”
“Can’t stand the stuff myself.” Dr. Alison shook her head. “Well, good for you, Ms. Roberts. You weight train, correct?”
“Yes.”
The doctor nodded. “Okay, I just need to get some stats on you so I can send them to the therapist. Could you take your shirt off, please?”
It suddenly occurred to Dar why she’d always been more Red Sky At Morning 281
comfortable with male doctors, an interesting moment of self-revelation that almost made her start laughing. “What stats does a therapist need?” she asked, standing up and pulling her T-shirt off over her head one-handedly. It left her in a pair of gym shorts and nothing else.
“Oh, height, weight, limb len—” Dr. Alison stopped speaking for a second as she looked up. “Wow.”
Dar’s eyebrow went right up.
“You have great body structure,” the doctor continued enthusiastically. “You have almost perfect symmetry, did you know that?” She picked up a tape measure and trotted over. “Outstanding.”
Dar didn’t know whether to feel like a show horse on parade or what. She held her arms out when told and felt the tickle of the tape measure as it was run across her back.
“I thought so. Seventy-four inches.” The doctor towed Dar over to a scale. “Let me get your height and weight.” She pushed the height bar up and stood on her tiptoes to let the top of it rest on Dar’s head.
“Seventy-two and three-quarters. Yep, I knew it.” Next, she ran the weights across and nudged the smaller one back and forth until the arm balanced in the center. “One fifty-six.” She nodded and scribbled. “That about normal for you?”
“Give or take a few, yes,” Dar replied. “Why?”
“Just curious.” After measuring Dar’s upper and lower arms, Dr.
Alison finished her writing. “Okay, we’re done.” She looked up, reviewing Dar with an air of scientific satisfaction. “Very nice bones, Ms. Roberts. Co
ngratulations.”
Dar picked up her shirt and slipped it on. “Thanks,” she muttered.
“But I think it’s my father’s fault.”
“Really?” Dr. Alison smiled. “Are you a daddy’s girl? Everyone tells me I am.” She straightened her papers and slid them into an envelope. “I hate that. Don’t you?”
Dar picked up her sling and looked at it, then glanced up at the doctor. “No,” she said. “I’ve always considered it a compliment.”
“Well, you’re just a lucky woman, then.” The doctor held a hand out and gripped Dar’s. “Good luck, Ms. Roberts. Keep up what you’re doing, and I guarantee you’ll be rock climbing into your seventies.” She nodded briskly. “Any questions for me?”
Dar cocked her head. “Yeah, one,” she drawled. “If you think what I’m doing is so great, why don’t you do it?”
Dr. Alison blinked. She glanced at herself, then at Dar. Then she laughed, a touch sheepishly. “I’m a doctor.” She grinned and shrugged.
“We never listen to our own advice.” With a wave, she left the room.
Dar straightened up and looked around at the now empty room.
Okay. She’d gotten her head examined several times, and apparently her arm wasn’t going to require amputation. A smile appeared. That meant she could get her ass out of here and go home. She went to the door and peeked out, seeing no sign of her solicitous orderly with his 282 Melissa Good ready wheelchair. “Heh.” Dar planned her route and slipped past the nurses’ station toward the doors.
“DAMN.” KERRY FELT the strain as she hit the seventh floor, her breath coming short and her legs starting to really burn. “That’s what you get for slacking off at the gym for the last month, Kerrison. You’re one lazy son of a biscuit when you want to be.” She sucked in a deep breath and pushed through the discomfort.
It annoyed her. She’d kept her running up, hadn’t she? Every morning, without fail, there she was at Dar’s side in the early-morning cool air. So, okay, she’d cut back on the climbing wall to let her shoulder heal, and they were between martial arts classes, but still. Kerry scowled. She’d even kept up with Dar lately... Hey. A thought occurred to her. Was Dar slowing down on purpose and letting her do that? Dar wouldn’t do that, would she?
Not to make Kerry feel better, right? White teeth chewed on a lower lip. Okay, but maybe she did it just to have company, how about that?
Dar would do that, right? Slow down so they could talk to each other, like they’d started to, using that time to go over problems at the office and plan their day.
Hmm. Kerry reached the eighth floor and turned the corner, feeling her heart rate starting to climb. So here she thought she was cruising along, doing so well. “Looks like I’m going to just have to try harder, that’s all,” she panted, forcing herself to leap up the next set of stairs two at a time. She rounded the corner and swung a little wide, a little out of control toward the door that led to the ninth-floor entrance. She put out a hand to steady herself, then suddenly blinked as the solid surface started to move toward her.
Kerry tried to stop, but her momentum was too great and she ended up crashing into the opening door, knocking herself senseless as she reeled backward dangerously close to the steps behind her. “Oh!”
She fought for balance, reaching out for the handrail, but the sweat on her hands betrayed her and she started to fall.
And then, just as suddenly, she wasn’t falling. She was caught and held in a powerful grip, and her senses scrambled to reconcile the abrupt presence of Dar’s distinctive aura surrounding her. “Ow.”
“Hey.” Dar’s voice confirmed her dizzy revelation. “Kerry?
Kerrison!”
Oh boy. Did I do something wrong? Kerry felt her knees buckle, and the next thing she knew, she was on the ground, its cold hardness pressing against her legs, with her upper body cradled in a nice, warm, very Dar-smelling nest. She blinked a few times. “Didn’t know seeing stars wasn’t just an old saying.” She stuttered the words out. “Ow.”
“Easy.” Dar’s voice sounded worried. “Take it easy. Why are you breathing so hard? Honey? Look at me, okay?”
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Kerry obeyed, tipping her head back and opening both eyes, very glad she did so when she was rewarded with Dar’s concerned face inches from her. “Wow.” She finally felt her heart rate start to calm.
“Are you ever a sight for sore eyes.” She lifted a hand and gingerly felt her forehead. “Or a sore head.”
Dar stroked her face gently. “What in the hell were you doing?” she asked. “You’re all wet.”
“You have that effect on me,” Kerry joked faintly, getting a halfhearted smile from her lover. “I’m all right. It’s just sweat. I was running the stairs.”
Dar tugged her shirtsleeve over and wiped the droplets of sweat out of Kerry’s eyes. It was warm in the stairwell, and the smaller woman was still breathing hard. “Can I ask why?”
Kerry took a long, shaky breath, then released it. “Seemed like a good idea at the time?” She gave Dar a wan smile. “I was just working the kinks out—getting a little exercise.” She settled her back against the wall and untangled her feet from Dar’s.
“And?” Dar shifted to a more comfortable position. “You decided to make it a decathlon event instead?”
“No.” Kerry dredged her self-disgust back up. “I was getting tired after seven measly flights, and it pissed me off,” she admitted. “I’ve been telling myself what good shape I’m in. Hah.” She forced a laugh and rolled her head to one side, gazing at Dar. “I’m a wuss.”
“Sweetheart,” Dar laid her good arm over Kerry’s shoulders, “our floors at work are eight feet high,” she said. “The ones here are twelve.
You just ran up the equivalent of about fourteen flights of steps at full speed.”
Kerry gazed at the steps, then tipped her head back and looked up.
“Oh.” She felt like an idiot. “Really?”
“Mm-hmm.” Dar gazed fondly at her. “So you’re entitled to be out of breath. I would have been.” She leaned forward and stuck two fingers into the collar of Kerry’s shirt, pulling it outward and peeking inside. “Besides, I really like the shape you’re in.”
Kerry looked down, then up at her. “Really?”
“Really.” Dar released the fabric, transferring her touch to Kerry’s face. She traced the rounded cheekbones and snub nose delicately, examining the crystal clear green depths of her lover’s eyes. “You are the most beautiful person I’ve ever known.”
It was amazing. Kerry felt a little fuzzy happy ball settle inside her stomach, its tickling presence causing a smile to spread across her face, achieving an immediate echo on Dar’s. How could a sterile-scented stairwell be this romantic? “Thank you for telling me that.” Kerry leaned forward slightly and brushed Dar’s lips with her own, then made a more solid contact. “Especially since I feel like a slimy, skanky old pair of gym socks right now, so I know you’re just saying that to make me feel good.” She gave Dar a wry smile.
284 Melissa Good Dar studied her in silence, a tiny furrow appearing in her brow. “I most certainly wasn’t.”
“Dar, c’mon.” Kerry nudged her. “Don’t sit there and pretend I’m attractive sitting here all sweaty and covered in hallway dirt.” She held up a hand, which was almost black, then blew her disheveled hair out of her eyes. “I’m a mess.”
“I think you missed my point,” Dar replied. “Ker, you’ll always be beautiful to me, no matter what you look like.”
Kerry gazed back at her seriously. “Do you really mean that?” she asked. “No matter what? Even if I shaved my head, put on fifty pounds, and got a tattoo across my neck that said ‘Budweiser’?” She kept her tone light, but she felt the anxiety as she watched Dar’s face, twenty-five years of her mother’s voice hammering into her conscience.
“Hmm.” Dar cocked her head, giving the vision its due and sober consideration. “Nope. I think I’d have to draw t
he line at the Bud tattoo,” she said gravely. “Maybe ‘Corona’ I could live with.”
Kerry smiled and dropped her gaze, more relieved than she was willing to admit.
“But as for the rest, yes, I do mean that.” Dar tipped Kerry’s chin up and forced eye contact. “We’re not going to look like this forever, Ker. I don’t know how you feel about it, but I want you to know I don’t give a damn.”
It was ridiculous, Kerry decided, that they were having this absurdly critical discussion sitting in a hospital stairwell. But Dar’s speech deserved an answer. “All my life I’ve had it hammered into me that appearance is what matters,” she said. “And I’d always hoped that...” a slight shrug, “...being in love would mean more than just being physically attracted to someone.” She met Dar’s eyes. “For me it is.
There’s something about you that has captured me completely, and I hope it never lets go.”
Dar nodded slightly.
“So, I don’t give a damn, either,” Kerry went on. “I know I joke about it a lot. Maybe it was just that I bumped into a cute little gymnastic boy, and he stroked my ego for me.”
Dar eyed her. “When was this?”
“On the way down the stairs,” Kerry admitted. “He admired my muscle tone.”
“Ah.” Dar settled back against the wall. “Well, I just had a good-looking young woman tell me to take all my clothes off.” She eyed Kerry’s profile, which went suspiciously, suddenly still, save for the flaring of her nostrils.
“And?” Kerry asked.
“And I spent the next ten minutes being told what a lovely specimen I was.”
Kerry’s eyebrow lifted.
“Did you know I have dense bones and perfect symmetry?” Dar Red Sky At Morning 285
asked, arching a brow of her own.
Kerry half turned. “Who is this person?”
