The Secrets of Bell River

Interestingly, Bree’s placid face didn’t register the same delight Tess felt, but she didn’t comment further. Was there a problem? Perhaps proximity to water presented a dampness concern? Had there been a debate about where to build the spa?

Tess was surprised to realize how curious she was to know everything about the Wrights and Bell River. Should a secret blood connection she’d discovered only three months ago, and which had been no part of her life for twenty-seven years, affect her so profoundly?

In the end, these people were strangers, and probably would never be more to Tess than amiable employers. And not even that, if she didn’t nail this massage.

“Sorry you can’t work in one of the cozier single rooms,” Bree said as she led Tess into a large space that obviously was set aside for couples massage. Two tables, a hot tub, its own nail station. “But we have just the two singles. Chelsea is using the Taupe Room, and Ashley’s got Mrs. Fillmore in the Blue Room.”

Mrs. Fillmore. Another nuance Tess would have loved to explore. Another detail that was none of her business.

“I don’t mind at all,” she said honestly. The frills—the decor, the candles, the music, the lighting—were mostly for the clients’ benefit. When Tess worked, she went into a zone and didn’t register anything except the body under her hands.

Bree seemed ready to leave Tess, but she paused about halfway to the door. She glanced down the hall, toward the faint, distant hiss of water where Jude had disappeared to “wash the work off.”

“You know, there’s nothing to be nervous about,” Bree said, turning to Tess with a disconcertingly sharp gaze. “He’s a nice man, very down-to-earth. Not an ounce of arrogance in him, amazingly.”

“It hadn’t occurred—”

“No?” Bree smiled. “Come on. We grew up with him. He’s always been around—he and Mitch, Rowena’s brother-in-law, are best friends, so he’s practically like a brother to us all. And yet sometimes even we can’t believe how good-looking he is.”

Tess shrugged. “I’ve lived in L.A. all my life. Even before I went to work for Pink Roses, I’d seen some amazing things.”

“Oh? I didn’t know that. That’ll give you something in common, then. Jude spent a little more than six years in Hollywood.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” Bree’s elegant brow pinched a fraction. “Not that I’d mention it. It wasn’t an entirely happy experience for him.”

Tess tried not to bristle. Massage therapists weren’t priests, but discretion was definitely desirable. “I don’t tend to chitchat while I’m working. I need to concentrate, and the clients usually prefer to relax. Even if they talk, I mostly listen.”

“Good. Well, I guess that’s everything.” Bree fidgeted with her earring, clearly a bit uncertain about leaving Tess without supervision. “Except...I probably should mention that—”

“I’m fine.” Tess hoped her voice didn’t sound too tight. The hovering was a little annoying. Five years, remember? She’d worked her way up to some of the most demanding spas in the country, spas that catered to people who expected perfection, even in their massage therapists.

Yet Bree acted as if she were leaving a kid at kindergarten on the first day.

Tess forced a smile. “Really. I’ll be fine.”

Nodding, Bree turned, practically running into Jude, who stood in the doorway, wearing a white terry robe monogrammed with the initials BRR across the breast.

“There you are!” She patted his chest casually. “Okay, then, if you guys are both set, I’d better run. Remember, if you need anything, both Chelsea and Ashley are a shout away.”

“Thanks,” Tess said.

And then she and Jude were alone. For an awkward minute, she was ridiculously tongue-tied, forgetting her protocols as if she really were the newbie that Mrs. Fillmore and Bree took her for.

His coloring and perfect features had been striking enough, even in his work clothes, but like this, half-dressed, tousled and damp from the shower...

It was impossible not to have a purely female reaction. The robe hugged the lean contour of his hips, ending just above the knees. Long, trimly muscled legs extended bare beneath the hem. The casually knotted belt nipped the robe in at his narrow waist, but above that his chest and shoulders tugged the cloth apart, exposing golden skin and a light dusting of dark hair.

Pull yourself together, girl! She never did this. Never.

Once clients lay on the table, they ceased to be “people” in that way—they weren’t male or female, young or old, beautiful or homely. They certainly weren’t sexual.

They were simply exquisitely complex interlacings of muscle, tendon, nerves and needs. They were...well, it sounded silly but she sometimes thought of their bodies as works of art entrusted to her care. Art that had been damaged somehow. Misaligned. Knotted. Twisted, overtightened or blocked. Her job was to find the parts that had been disturbed and restore them to harmony.

Perhaps Jude was the most artful of all the works she’d ever been asked to restore. But so what? In her experience, athletes and body-builders and actors—all the physical perfectionists who populated Los Angeles—needed her help more than most.

They punished their bodies to take them to those heights of performance, and, once they relaxed, they proved to be masses of knotty pain and foreshortened tendons.

“Are there any injuries I should know about? Anything you’d particularly like addressed today?” She was glad to hear that her voice was normal.

He shook his head. “Nothing serious. I’ve got an ankle sprain that bugs me now and then, but massage helps, as a rule.”

Internally, she noted that.

“Okay, then. Good. There’s a sheet on the first table, and a light blanket, in case it feels a little cold to you. Make yourself comfortable, and I’ll be right back.”

Her crisp, competent tone made her feel less nervous, and Jude’s easy smile helped, too. “Sure thing,” he said.

She stayed away longer than was strictly necessary, giving him plenty of time to get covered, and giving herself plenty of time to get calm. Finally, she gathered the supplies she had chosen earlier, took a deep breath and moved down the hall, too.

He’d left the door open, so she walked in—slowly enough to alert him, and speaking as she entered. “Sorry. I don’t know where everything is, so it took me a minute to find it all.”

No response.

She moved to the counter nearest the massage table, where he lay on his stomach, his head not in the padded opening, but turned to one side, so that he presented his elegant profile. He was completely still.

“Mr. Calhoun?”

Tilting her head, she looked closer. He was so completely motionless he might have been dead...except that as she drew near he shifted once, sighed deeply and let out a low rumble that was...

Instinctively, she smiled. Yes, it was a snore. In the dim lighting, made more soothing with the addition of a few candles, with a Chopin Prelude playing on the sound system and the perfume of clean sheets and lavender oils floating in the air, he had fallen asleep.

She fiddled with her supplies, not banging things around, but not attempting to be particularly quiet. If he woke on his own, it would be much less awkward.

He didn’t. He wasn’t snoring anymore, but he remained utterly still, his eyes shut and his beautifully bowed lips slightly apart, glistening in the candlelight.

She allowed herself the indulgence of studying him. It wasn’t voyeurism. As a therapist, she could learn a lot by how he held himself, whether his shoulders relaxed into symmetry when he slept, whether his body twitched in those little ways that spoke of tension that dissipated only when the conscious mind shut down.

A couple of seconds passed before she could stop staring at his face, but when she finally transferred her gaze to his shoulders and back, she inhaled sharply.

The perfection stopped there. On either side of his spine, starting just below the neck and running down between the shoulder blades for at least five inches, were the unmistakable thin, thready scars left by a set of human fingernails.

She’d seen similar scars before, once or twice. But Jude’s were deeper than the average remnant of exuberant passion. These were more like...an attack.

“I suppose this is what Bree meant,” he said, “when she said she should probably warn you.”

Tess’s gaze flew to Jude’s face. His eyes were open, and he was smiling. She tamped down her momentary embarrassment and reached for her lotion.