Under His Spell

“Oh, that’s the one talent he’s got.”

“Judging by the hand-kiss thing, I’d say he’s got a few more.”

Lainie sucked in a breath of annoyance. “Yeah, well, he’s not going to use them on me.”

“You so sure of that?”

“Positive.”

Caro stirred her cappuccino. “What’s the problem, is he a jerk?”

Both less and more. “J. J. Cooper cares about three things—skiing, parties and women, and not necessarily in that order. He has the biggest ego on three continents and the attention span of a gnat.”

“Big breeders, those gnats.”

Lainie finished her coffee and thumped down the cup a little too loudly. “He’s just yanking my chain. He’s stuck here for a while instead of being Mr. Continental and he’s bored. Showing up here gives him something to do.”

“So are you going out?”

“Not in this or any other universe.” Lainie finished the last bite of scone with a decisive munch and screwed up the napkin.

Caro took a meditative sip of her coffee. “Why not?”

“The same reason I don’t hit myself on the head with a hammer. It’s dumb, it’s unhealthy and I know for a fact it’s going to be painful before I ever start.”

“So you’ve got a thing for him.” Caro nodded wisely.

“I do not have a thing for him,” Lainie retorted, stung. “And Speed Racer is dreaming if he thinks for one minute that I’m going to be the one to take him off the hook while he’s stuck here.”

Caro nodded. “Understandable.”

“Because I am so not.”

“You’ve got me convinced,” she said mildly.

“He’s not my type. He never has been.”

“Don’t forget to invite me to the wedding.”

Lainie gave her a narrow-eyed stare. “Does the phrase ‘when hell freezes over’ mean anything to you?”

“Winter’s coming,” Caro said genially.

It looked, J.J. thought, like a medieval torture rack, an open-sided, metal-framed cube built of steel bars as tall as a man. Levers and steel weight plates and leather belts dangled on the inside. “You’re weren’t part of the Spanish Inquisition in a previous life, were you?” He turned to the short, muscle-bound man in sweats who stood outside the cage.

Manny Turturro grinned at J.J. from a face misshapen from a decade in the boxing ring. “Me? I’m the milk of human kindness.”

“The milk of human kindness,” J.J. repeated. Actually, to his eye, Manny looked more like a human fireplug with a smile. “So how does this work?”

“I use the lever to raise the weights, then lower them so that all the pressure is on you. Your job is to use your legs and abs to stay in place for a count of ten, then I pull the weights off. The idea is not motion but maintaining peak muscle contraction.”

“And it’s not going to be a problem with my shoulder?”

Turturro shook his head. “The weight’s going onto your trapezius. I checked it all out with your sports med doc and he was fine with it. How’s the shoulder feel, anyway?”

J.J. moved his arm around a bit. “Good. A little twinge if I try to move too fast, but otherwise it’s fine.” Not fine enough to let him get on the slopes, though, which was why he was at Turturro’s. Manny Turturro’s methods may have been unorthodox, at best, but the iconoclastic trainer had brought countless elite athletes to the peaks of their professions with a few months of work at his training compound north of Boston.

“I can pretty much guarantee it won’t be pleasant, but you want to be ready for the slopes, we’ll get you ready for the slopes.”

J.J. grinned and stepped into the metal cage. “Okay, let’s do it.”

Unpleasant, he quickly discovered, was a mild word for it. Agonizing, maybe, or excruciating. And Manny just kept grinning at him like a demented gnome and calling for another set.

“Come on, Cooper, show me what you got.” He levered up the weights without breaking a sweat.

“Anybody ever tell you you’re a sadist, Manny?” J.J. said through gritted teeth as his quads trembled with effort.

“Hey, all you have to do is convince yourself you’re having fun. Just ignore all this. Think about something pleasant. Take your mind off it.”

Something pleasant? And that quickly, Lainie popped to mind. Stop it. He’d been tempted, oh, so tempted, to stop in Salem again the previous day, and even that morning. Unfortunately he’d been running late—figuring out he hadn’t needed to leave at the crack of dawn to make his appointment had made sleeping in far too tempting. As it was, he’d still gotten up earlier than he’d have liked, and if he had to spend more days in the car than he was out of it anymore, he was going to start clawing his face off.

Time to think about Plan B.

“Come on, Cooper, another set.”

He glowered at Manny. “I’ll give you another set.”

“If distracting yourself doesn’t work, then visualize. Isn’t that what you fancy athletes do? Close your eyes, feel the weight and imagine it’s the g-forces from going around a gate.”

Fine idea in the abstract, except that when he closed his eyes, the image in his head was Lainie, staring at him, stunned, as he kissed her hand. J.J. sank down into another rep, pushing aside the pain of fatigue. He liked seeing Lainie stunned, her control and assurance gone. He liked knowing that for a moment all she thought of was him.

So maybe he should get in her way a little more, see where it all went. He had the time; she wasn’t attached the last time he’d heard. Maybe they ought to run it around the block, see how it did. Of course, she might take some convincing.

He smiled broadly. Then again, the convincing might be the fun part. After all, he’d never set out to charm a woman yet without succeeding.

“There you go, imagine yourself winning,” Manny said.

“It works—you know as well as I do. You get a goal, then concentrate on it and make it happen. It’s as simple as that. Give me one more.”

J.J. swiped away the sweat that was starting to drip into his eyes and tried to ignore the trembling of his legs. Thinkabout something pleasant. Like the feel of Lainie folded against his chest at the Jack and Jill party. Like the way she’d feel, warm and naked against him in bed.

“There we go, that’s what I’m talking about,” Manny said.

“Focus, concentrate on what you want.”

And J.J., in the midst of another rep, concentrated.

The mountains were where he felt best, he thought as he stood on the terminal slope of the Mount Jefferson ski run with Gabe. Something about being there always felt right. Not that he didn’t love the beach and the city, or that he couldn’t find a sort of quiet beauty in the desert. They weren’t the same, though.