Joss Wood - Maverick Millionaires

“Thanks.”

Mac pushed her hair behind her ear and his fingers brushed her skin, and Rory couldn’t help but shiver. This wasn’t good, she thought, taking a huge step backward. He was dangerous, working with him was dangerous...she shouldn’t do this. It was a train wreck waiting to happen.

Clinic, house, practice, dream, her brain reminded her.

Shay, Mac cheating, men are inherently faithless, her soul argued. Attraction leads to love and love leads to betrayal. Not happening.

Rory jammed her hands into the back pockets of her jeans and nodded at Mac’s bare feet. “Shoes?”

“Flip-flops,” Mac replied, walking over to the bed and picking up a royal blue, V-necked T-shirt. He pulled the opening over his head and managed to slide his uninjured arm through the corresponding opening. Then he looked at his injured, immobile arm and cursed again.

“There’s an art to dressing yourself when you’re injured,” she told him. Idiot that she was, she got up close and personal with him again, but this time she tried to avoid touching him as she pulled the shirt up and over his head. Shaking it out, she found the sleeve to his injured arm and gently slid the shirt up and over so that it bunched around his shoulder. He ducked his head through the opening, shoved his other arm through and the fabric fell down his chest.

It was wrong to hide such a work of art, Rory thought.

“Thanks.”

Rory looked up at him, her head barely scraping his shoulder. God, he was big, six foot three of solid, sexy man. “Anything else?”

Mac shook his head. “No. I’m okay.” He sat down on the edge of the bed and gestured to the chair she’d been sitting on earlier. “Take a seat, we need to talk.”

Rory wasn’t under any illusion that his quietly stated words were anything other than an order. Her spine straightened and her mouth tightened. Since there were, actually, a few things she had to say to him, she sat down and crossed her legs.

“You’ve had a little time to read over my chart, to assess the damage.” Mac stretched out his long legs and sent her a hard look. “Thoughts?”

Rory pulled in a breath. “I presume you don’t want me to sugarcoat it for you?”

“Hell, no.”

Okay, then. “You ripped the lateral ulnar collateral ligament, luckily not completely from the bone, and it was surgically repaired. You also sprained the radial collateral ligament and the annular ligament.”

“Which means?” Mac demanded, impatient.

“You’re in a lot of pain and the injuries won’t be easy to fix.”

Mac’s expression hardened. “Oh, they will be fixed. How much time does it normally take?”

She hated these types of questions; there were too many variables. Like bruised, broken and battered hearts, there was no time frame for recovery. “C’mon, Mac, you know better than to ask me that! Some people heal quicker, some never do. I can’t answer that!”

“Can it be done in two months?” Mac pushed for an answer.

Rory tipped her head back to look at the ceiling. “I think you are asking for a miracle.”

“Miracles happen,” Mac calmly stated. “What can I do to jump-start the healing process?”

Rory thought for a minute. “My electromagnetic mat, for a start. We’ll do treatments three or four times a day. It’s noninvasive and will get the blood moving through the damaged capillaries. Anti-inflammatory drugs to take the swelling down.

“When I think it’s time, we will start doing exercises,” Rory added, and as she expected Mac’s scowl deepened.

“I’m a professional player, I can take the pain,” Mac said through gritted teeth. He wasn’t listening to her, Rory realized. Did men like him ever listen to what they didn’t want to hear?

“It’s not about what you can endure, McCaskill!” Rory snapped. “It’s about not making a very bad injury ten times worse! You will start exercising that arm when I say you can, with the exercises I approve, and not a minute before.”

Mac glared at her and she kept her face impassive. “I’m not joking, Mac, this point is not up for negotiation.”

Mac rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand. “Look, Rory, I’m not trying to be a jerk but a lot is riding on me being able to play in nine or so weeks.”

“I understand that, but what you don’t understand is that if you push, you might never play ever again! Is that a risk you are prepared to take?”

For a moment, Mac looked desolate, then his inscrutable expression fell back into place. He didn’t respond to her question but she knew she’d made her point. “I don’t want you to pussyfoot around me. You push me and you push me hard. As soon as you can.”

He didn’t allow for weakness, Rory thought, his body had to function how he wanted it to. She suspected he carried that trait into his relationships. His way or the highway...

Reason number fifty-four why they would never have managed to make a relationship work.

Going back to their actual conversation and pushing aside the craziness in her head, Rory realized that was the only concession he was prepared to make and she mentally declared their argument a draw. Good enough for her. She stood up to leave and gestured to the folder on the table. “I’ve signed your contract and I’ve been released from my job for ten weeks. We need to set up a schedule for when it’s convenient for me to see you. To check on your mobility, to wrap your arm in the mat.”

Mac shifted on the bed. “Where do you live?”

“I have an apartment in Eastside.”

“I live in Kitsilano, not far from here actually. Commuting to my place three or four times a day is unnecessary. I have a spare room. You should move in.”

Yeah, no way. Ever. That was far more temptation than she could handle. She needed to keep as much distance between them as she possibly could and if that meant trekking across town daily, or three or four times a day, then that was what she would do. She and Mac together in a house, alone, was asking for trouble. Trouble she needed like a hole in her heart.

Rory slowly shook her head.

“C’mon, Rory, it’s not a big deal.” Mac was obviously used to women moving in to his house on a regular basis but she wasn’t going to follow those lemmings off a cliff. Nope, she’d deal with the devil if it meant the chance to run her own clinic, to treat her patients the way she wanted to, but she’d keep this particular devil at a safe distance.

“I’ll live with the driving.” She pulled her cell from her back pocket. “What’s your address?”

Mac told her and also gave her his cell number, handing his phone to her so she could input hers into his state-of-the-art phone. When they were done, Rory looked at the door. She should leave. She picked up her bag and pulled it over her shoulder. “I’ll see you later this evening. Around five?”

Mac nodded. She was almost at the door when Mac spoke again. “Are we not going to discuss it? At all? Pretend it didn’t exist?”

Rory turned around slowly and lifted her hands. “What’s the point? You insulted her on national television, we almost kissed, my sister heard us talking. She had to deal with a broken heart while she was stalked and hassled by the press. And she didn’t talk to me for months.”

Mac’s jaw tightened and his lips thinned. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think of that.”

“You weren’t thinking at all that day,” Rory told him, her voice tart. “Admittedly, I wasn’t either.” Rory exhaled. “Look, it happened a long time ago and there’s nothing to talk about.”

Mac released a laugh that was heavy with derision and light on joy. “You’re right. Nothing...except that the chemistry hasn’t gone away. We’re still attracted to each other.”