Winner Takes All (16 page)

He didn't like it. No one had ever done that before and he didn't know the first thing to do about it.

“I told you before, I don't have a problem,” he growled at her. He got in the truck and Annabelle stepped back as he reached for the door. “If you're looking for a quick roll in the sack, you know where to find me. Otherwise, keep your nose out of my business.”

Then he slammed the door and started the truck, tearing out of the parking lot and leaving her standing there alone. He should have felt vindicated for putting her in her place.

Yeah, he should have felt good, especially after that world-shattering kiss. Instead, all he could think about was the hurt darkening those beautiful eyes of hers. As he drove home, he cursed himself for the asshole he was, thinking she'd only been trying to help. Because that's what Annabelle did. She helped people whether they wanted to admit they needed the help.

Maybe it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world to pay her studio a visit. After all, it would give him an opportunity to feel her hands on him.

Normally Annabelle could function on about five hours of sleep. Any less than that, and she went about her day growling like a zombie.

From the moment she rolled out of bed, she knew today would be one of those days. Even though she'd had a full night's sleep, it had been rough and interrupted. Tossing and turning, alternating between erotic dreams about Blake and replaying his accusatory words in her head.

Her mother had always told her she'd been too outspoken for her own good. Always thinking she knew what was best for others. Case in point, her mother's care.

Last night, standing next to Blake's truck and turning a perfectly lovely moment into a nightmare had been a perfect example of that. She'd seen the man struggling to keep his cool and she'd taken it upon herself to butt in. As usual.

How had she expected him to react? Confess his addiction with eager acceptance? Most addicts reacted to that sort of confrontation with anger, and Blake was no different. No matter how much she wanted him to be.

Why she always thought she could save people from themselves was beyond her. All those years she'd tried talking sense into her sister for living like a nomad should have been enough. But she kept on doing it. Because she never learned her lesson.

Now the only man she had growing feelings for, since her husband, probably hated her.

She opened up her studio an hour before her first appointment. The coffee cup she clutched in one hand trembled as she pushed through the glass doors. Today was definitely a two or three cup kind of day.

The place was cold, so she turned up the heater and flipped on all the lights. Annabelle left her sunglasses on, mostly because she wasn't in the mood to deal with bright light or her own reflection in the wall of mirrors. Because then she'd see what an idiot she really was.

Whatever Blake was going through shouldn't matter to her. Obviously he was a wounded soul and she identified with that. Maybe that was why he called to her so much. She saw someone trying to overcome a struggle, on his own, and she'd been in that situation before. She'd picked up the pieces of her heart, without burdening anyone else, and moved on.

The bell above the door dinged and Annabelle turned. She froze in the act of sliding her bag down her shoulders.

There, big and tall and so wounded her heart broke for him, was Blake.

He, too, had sunglasses on, and his mouth, surrounded by dark stubble, as though he hadn't bothered to shave that morning, was set in a hard line. His hands were casually resting in his pants pockets, but the rest of his body language was anything but casual. Normally his unruly blond hair was covered in a baseball cap. In fact, Annabelle couldn't remember ever seeing him without something covering that thick hair of his. Today, he'd left it off. But his hair was still unruly, still a bit too long and pushed back from his forehead from too much finger combing.

In a word, the man was devastating.

Devastatingly handsome and devastating on her heart. Because she longed for him, longed to feel his arms around her and longed to chase away his pain and regrets.

“I'm not open yet,” she said by way of greeting.

He didn't move a muscle. “I heard you work with people recovering from an injury.” His voice was deep and gravelly, as though he'd rolled out of bed a few minutes ago. Given the state of his hair, he probably had

“I only help people who are nice to me.”

His mouth twitched, which could have been mistaken for an almost smile. Annabelle knew better than to expect spontaneous smiles from Blake Carpenter. He slowly removed his sunglasses and hooked them in the front pocket of his black athletic pants. By now she ought to have been prepared for the impact of those crystalline blue eyes, one of his best assets, in her opinion, but she couldn't quite steel herself for them. Flanked by dark lashes and hooded by thick brows, they were a force to be reckoned with, and they knocked the breath out of her every time.

“Yeah, about that,” he started, taking a few steps toward her. “I shouldn't have spoken to you that way last night. I'm sorry.”

Annabelle nodded and caught a whiff of his shampoo, something musky and spicy and so very male she wanted to weep. “It's all right. We're all susceptible to douchebag moments.”

“Are you calling me a douche, Annabelle?” His eyes narrowed, but his lips quirked up.

Oh man, the way he said her name. “I said you had a douchebag moment.”

He nodded. “Fair enough.” He looked around, taking in the studio. “So, this is a nice place.”

“Thanks,” she replied. “It just so happens my first appointment canceled, so I have some time for you.”

This time he did smile, and the butterflies in her stomach kicked into high gear. “Lucky me. I guess I should have called first.”

“No, that's all right.” She led him to the weight machine that she usually used with Stella. “I guess I can make an exception for you.”

“You shouldn't after the way I talked to you last night,” he told her.

His Green Bay Packers T-shirt stretched over his wide shoulders and gave definition to his chest. Over his narrow waist, the shirt was loose, but when he moved to take a seat at the machine, she got the occasional impression of corrugated abs.

“I told you, it's all right. We all act like douches sometimes. Even me.”

Blake leaned back against the padded bench and folded his arms over his stomach. “You were just doing what you thought was right. Nothing douchey about that.”

“I should have minded my own business,” she told him.

“That's not who you are,” he reassured her. “And you're right. I do have a problem.”

She studied him, noticing the hard set of his jaw and lines of stress and pain bracketing his mouth. Had she been so enamored by his good looks that she'd never noticed the battle lurking behind his gorgeous eyes? How long had he been going through this? Had he been dealing with it alone?

“How often do you take them?” she asked.

He hesitated before answering, then said, “Every day.”

“How are you even getting them so long after your surgery?”

“I have a doctor who doesn't ask a lot of questions. I tell him I'm in pain, and he writes the prescription.”

“That's not very responsible of him,” she countered. “All he's doing is enabling you.”

“I'm aware of that.”

“Have you thought about talking to someone about it?” she asked, again without thinking. She'd crossed a line with him last night and didn't want to do so again. “I mean like counseling or something.”

A humorless laugh popped out of him. “Wouldn't that make a great headline: ‘Disgraced football player seeks therapy for pain pill addiction.'”

“Is that how you see yourself?” she asked. “As disgraced?”

“That's how everyone else sees me.”

Her brows lowered. “How do you know that?”

“How else would they see me?”

The defeat in his voice tugged at her heart. All his cocky attitude was a façade to conceal the turmoil inside. How many other people had misjudged him the way she had?

“You don't strike me as the type of man who cares what other people think,” she told him.

“Not usually,” he replied. “But there are some people worth impressing.”

Something about the way he said the words made her squirm. As though her skin had grown too tight for her body, stretching thin and wanting to snap. Even her ex-husband, who could have charmed the panty hose off a librarian, hadn't made her feel so…aware of herself. Aware of her heart beating erratically in her chest and the fine layer of sweat gathering in between her breasts.

Lord, but the man was potent.

His attention dropped down to her hand, still resting on his injured knee, reminding her she'd left it there, as though she had every right in the world to touch him.

“You know, you can talk to me about it,” she said out of the blue. “Your retirement,” she clarified when he didn't respond.

But he still didn't respond, unless one would call a ticking jaw a response. She supposed, knowing Blake, that was a response. Considering he was a man of few words, he wouldn't exactly come out and say, “I don't want to talk about it.”

“If you…you know…” She shrugged, suddenly not knowing what to say. Because, why would he want to share something so dark with her? It's not like they had that kind of relationship. “Wanted to get it off your chest or anything.”

His chest puffed out when he inhaled a deep breath. “Not right now,” was all he said.

She got it. It's not as though talking about her divorce was an easy thing for her. So what had she been thinking asking him?

That she wanted to know him better. What made him tick. What had shaped him into the man that he was now.

“Can I see it?” she blurted out.

One of his dark brows lifted, giving her a sardonic look.

Her eyes dropped closed. “I meant your knee.”

And then the half-smile playing around his mouth turned into a full-force grin. “Are you sure?”

Actually, she wasn't. At least until he called her out on it. The man had a bad habit of doing that.

“Go for it,” he told her. He lifted his leg, giving her room to pull his pant leg up, past a defined calf sprinkled with dark hair and over his knee.

The joint was riddled with scars. A single incision line cut down the center of his knee, along with another, longer one down the side. On the top of his knee were three dots, formed into a triangle.

Annabelle touched the tip of her index finger to them. “What're these from?”

“Laser scars,” he answered in a low voice. “And this,” he went on, running his thumb down the frontal scar, “is where they had to rebuild my ACL using my patella tendon.”

Annabelle looked up at him, realizing how close their hands were to touching, which shouldn't have sent her heart all aflutter. Especially after kissing, twice. But it did. With both their hands resting on his knee, his thumb just centimeters away from her palm, all she had to do was shift her fingers. Just a little and she could place her hand on his.

Instead, she focused on the other scar. The thing was long and gnarly, going from the top of his thigh and wrapping around to the bottom of his knee. “What about this one?”

“That's from both the ACL and MCL.”

“You tore both of them?” She hadn't remembered hearing that bit. “Sounds pretty painful.”

He shook his head, as though he couldn't believe it himself. “You can say that again.”

“What kind of therapy did you do after your surgery?”

Blake leaned his head back on the bench, looking exhausted and tired of his own life. “After the first one, I had access to the best trainers in the NFL, so my therapy was pretty extensive.”

“You had more than one surgery?”

“About a year after the first one, I had to have another to clean the joint up and drain fluid. But that was after I retired and my recovery was in my own hands, so I never really did anything about it.”

Because he hadn't cared. The words didn't need to be said for Annabelle to understand them. Most people saw a man surrounded by scandal. Performance-enhancing drugs. Career-ending injury. Rumors of an affair with the team owner's wife. Annabelle dismissed that last one, already knowing Blake well enough to realize he had more integrity than to mess around with a married woman.

But the rest would have been enough to send anyone spiraling into depression and whatever other hell he'd been through. Beyond that, Blake was a broken man who'd been forced to give up a game he'd no doubt lived and breathed for. Not only that, but he was also in Blanco Valley coaching high school football, probably because he hadn't had any other career options.

Once again, she saw past the brash exterior, past the melt-you-into-a-puddle eyes to the human man underneath.

“So you never went to physical therapy after your second surgery?”

He gazed back at her beneath lowered lids. “The second surgery wasn't as invasive, so I didn't feel the need to,” he told her. “And before you launch into a lecture, I realize now I should have.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “You think I lecture people?”

“I think you thrive on it,” he answered with a smirk. “You should have been a teacher. Or a lawyer.”

Annabelle answered his smile with one of her own. “That's what my mother used to tell me.”

“So how'd you end up doing this?”

She removed her hand from his knee and rubbed her damp palm down her pants. “I like to help people.”

“That's obvious,” he agreed. “But there are a hundred different careers for that. Why physical therapy?”

Annabelle shook her head, not sure how to answer because no one had ever asked her that before. “I'm not sure. I guess because I don't like to see people in pain. I like to think I'm doing my part in helping them put themselves back together.”