Page 41 of Too Hot To Handle

„Oh,“ she said, swallowing. „Yes. My birthday.“

„Wear your best jeans,“ said Jed. „I’ll spring for lunch.“ He winked at the other men. „You see, I’ve got this thing for older women.“

Reever’s fork rang heavily against his dinner plate. Tory carefully did not look at him. She looked only at the steaming, fragrant, beautifully prepared and utterly unappealing dinner that she was systematically rearranging on her plate. Around her the hands argued about the best way to celebrate her birthday. She ignored them because it would have been too painful to speak, to tell them that their argument was academic. Whenever they celebrated her birthday, the guest of honor would be absent.

„But don’t worry, boys,“ Jed continued blithely, „I’ll get Tory back in time to cook dinner, birthday or no birthday. Otherwise, you’d all skin me alive.“

This time it was Tory’s fork that rang loudly against her plate. She wasn’t going to come back. She couldn’t bear being on the Sundance any longer, so close to the man she loved, yet so very far away from being loved in return. With a brilliant, false smile she stood up.

„There’s some pie in the oven,“ she announced, withdrawing quickly from the dining area.

„Tory?“ called Dutch.

She answered without looking back. „Just leave the dishes on the table. I’ll take care of them when I’ve finished my knee exercises.“

Reever’s chair scraped loudly against the unglazed tile floor as he pushed back with a force just short of violence.

„Boss?“ asked Jed, looking surprised.

„I’m going to check on Blackjack,“ snarled Reever.

Dutch, who knew that there wasn’t anything wrong with Reever’s favorite horse, wisely kept his mouth shut.

Tory went to her room and did her exercises, trying very hard not to think of Reever as she braced herself awkwardly on the wall, bumping her knee or her foot with every motion. The knee, at least, seemed better. It was neither tender nor swollen, and it had been a long time since she had limped at all. In that way, if in no other, the Sundance had been just what the doctor had ordered.

As soon as the exercises were finished, Tory pulled out her duffel bag and began cramming clothes into it, wondering why she felt so lost. For the first time in months she knew exactly where she was going – back to Southern California and the swim club, back to the diving that she loved and the competition that she had come to realize she didn’t like at all. But competition was part of the only world that remained to her. Diving.

Going back. Going home. Going away from the man she loved, the man who did not love her.

Halfway through the packing, Tory found herself standing motionless, staring out the window as the moon rose, full and round and silver, brilliant with promises that would never be kept.

Don’t be ridiculous,she told herself.It’s the same moon that you ‘11 see tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Same world. Same everything. Except Reever and the Sundance. They’ll be gone. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

Abruptly Tory turned away from the window. She realized that the lodge was utterly quiet. Making no noise, she walked out into the lodge’s main room, which gave her a view of the dining area. The men had long since finished dinner and gone to the half-finished cottages where they slept. Reever was nowhere in sight.

Quickly Tory cleaned up the kitchen and returned to her room. She knew that she didn’t need to hurry for fear of running into Reever. He would be with the men as he had been for the past five nights, playing poker and swapping lies until he thought she was asleep. Only then would he come quietly into the lodge, walking in his stockinged feet past her door, taking the bedroom at the end of the hall, as far away from her as he could get without causing a stir by sleeping out with the hands.

But Tory was never asleep when Reever came walking softly past her door. She was lying awake, afraid to breathe, praying with every bit of her strength that he would open the door and come to her, whispering words of love. It hadn’t happened. It wouldn’t happen tonight, either. He didn’t love her. He didn’t even want her anymore. Hanging around the ranch and hoping that he would change his mind was destroying her, and she knew it.

You’ve lost him,she told herself fiercely.Accept it like you ‘ve accepted other losses. Accept it and get on with your life.

It was late when Tory finished the last of her packing and crawled into bed. Suddenly, she knew that she couldn’t go through it again. She couldn’t lie awake until she heard Reever climb the lodge’s front steps. She couldn’t wait with her breath held and her body trembling while he ghosted toward her room. She couldn’t bear to know again the terrible emptiness that came when he passed by her door as though she had never been born.

Nor could Tory tolerate being inside her room a moment longer. She threw aside the sheet and walked barefoot through the lodge. The screen door squeaked loudly in the absolute silence of the night, startling her for a moment before she shut the door and left the lodge behind. The path to the lake was a pale ribbon unwinding beneath a moon whose brilliance pressed sharp shadows from the trees. The air was warm, silky, so clear that the night was like an immense, transparent black bell whose ringing was expressed in the shattered brilliance of stars.

The cliffs rose in tones of gleaming pewter at the margin of the lake. Tory climbed the familiar trail easily, quickly, for she had come there many times and sat on the lowest cliff, looking down into the lake’s thousand shades of blue. Tonight there was no breeze to disturb the pristine mystery of the lake’s surface. It was like the night itself, deep, motionless, unknowable. It lay at her feet in a black-and-silver stillness that was uncanny. The moon’s trail on the water was utterly sharp and so brilliant that it was painful to look upon for more than an instant.

Tory sat at the edge of the cliffs granite platform and looked down into the darkness and moonlight pooled beneath her feet. Shapes seemed to condense on the lake’s surface as though on a shimmering black screen, shadows thrown by her mind as she- thought about her life on the eve of her twenty-first birthday. Her years had been shaped by her yearnings to make a place for herself in the world, but to do that, it had been necessary to please men who couldn’t be pleased. First her father, then her stepfather, then a succession of coaches. And finally Ethan Reever.

Ultimately she had failed in all cases, especially and most painfully with Reever.

Now she was going to buy a ticket back to a world that she no longer wanted, a world that might ruin her knee beyond recovery. Although she had exercised faithfully, sometimes painfully, every night in her room, the feeling had slowly grown in her that her right knee would never again be as strong as her left. Under most circumstances the difference wouldn’t have been noticeable. Under the relentless stresses of world-class competition, it might be the margin between success and a crippling failure.

Narrow. Unnatural. Snort-lived. Olympics. Get out and look at the world.

Fragments of the doctor’s unwanted advice seemed to condense out of the night around Tory. She shivered and wrapped her arms around her knees, but it was her thoughts that chilled her, not the mild midnight air. The swim club had become home to her because she had no other and because she loved diving more than she had ever loved anything in her life.

Until Ethan Reever.