Triple Score

She eased herself off the bike and made her way over to the free weights. He shrugged off her pissy attitude, knowing from personal experience she was covering for something. Like the fear of losing a lifetime of hard work.

Besides, it was just as well. If their conversation had gone on any longer, he might have let slip just how well acquainted he was with disappointment.

“What the hell?”

He stumbled as the treadmill came to a stop. Sara stood next to the machine, her finger still on the e-stop button. “I warned you.”

“I was barely moving.”

“You were practically running.” She handed him a towel. “It’s time for your session. Wipe off your machine and let’s get going. You’re in my army now, hotshot.”

Great. Not even noon and he’d already managed to piss off two women. With a groan, he balled up the towel, tossed it into a nearby hamper and followed Sara.

It was gonna be a fan-freaking-tabulous day.

* * *

WHAT WAS IT about Jace Monroe that brought out her inner diva?

Noelle flopped onto her bed, if you could call gingerly lowering herself so as to avoid jolting her bum-knee flopping. She really should take a shower, but she didn’t have the energy after her workout. Half an hour on a stupid stationary bike, and she felt as spent as if she’d danced Aurora in Sleeping Beauty. Plus, she was supposed to Skype with Holly in—she glanced at the digital clock on her nightstand—ten minutes.

Fuming, she ran a brush through her hair in a futile attempt to look presentable and pulled her laptop out from under the bed. Why did she let him get to her? She’d dealt with plenty of macho morons who saw ballet as some sort of sissy thing. One fairly innocuous comment from Jace, and she’d flown off the handle.

The guy must think she was a lunatic. Not that she cared what he thought. Not one bit.

Now she just had to convince her brain, which seemed to be fixated on him. And her heart, which beat a little faster every time he looked at her with that maddeningly sexy, Patrick-Swayze-in-Dirty-Dancing smile.

She shrugged it off and booted up the computer. Nothing like a little time with her sister and niece to get her mind off bedroom eyes, sun-kissed skin and sculpted muscles, three things she didn’t need occupying valuable brain space. No, what she needed now was to be totally focused on her rehabilitation. Without that, her chances of dancing professionally again were next to nil.

She’d just logged onto Skype when an alert flashed showing an incoming call. She clicked on “answer with video,” and a live feed of Holly popped up, a squirming, curly-haired toddler in her arms.

“Hey, Hols.” Noelle settled in on the bed, adjusting the laptop across her knees so her own face showed in a box on the corner of the screen. “How’s my baby girl?”

“Fast.” Holly untangled a chubby fist from her hair and handed her daughter a ring of plastic keys, which she immediately began chewing on. “And sneaky. I’m exhausted. It’s like she started walking and hasn’t stopped. Yesterday, I turned my back for a second and she figured out how to open the sliding glass door. She was halfway to the lake before I caught her.”

Noelle’s gaze drifted to her brace then back to the computer. “Maybe she can give me a few pointers.”

“Rehab not going well?” Holly asked, bouncing the toddler on her own perfectly healthy knee.

“Rehab’s rehab. Two hours a day of torture to move an inch forward.” Noelle ran a hand through her still sweat-dampened hair. “I just want to be back on stage, as soon as possible.”

“Have the doctors given you any idea when that might be?”

“No.” What she didn’t want to admit—to Holly or herself—was that the question wasn’t so much when as it was if. “They’re telling me to take it one day at a time. Easy for them to say. It’s not their life on hold.”

“You’re more than your career, Noe.”

“I know.” And she did. Really. For her, ballet wasn’t about the bright lights, the elaborate costumes or the thundering applause. It was about the dancing, pure and simple. Something she’d done each day, every day since she was just a few years older than her niece. And if she didn’t have that...

She pasted on a smile. Things were treading dangerously close to The Turning Point territory. Accentuate the positive, her mother always said. “I’m off the crutches.”

“That’s a good sign, right?”

“So they say. I’m putting weight on it. Even rode the stationary bike today.” She conveniently left out the fact that she’d practically passed out afterward.

“If anyone can come back from this, you can,” Holly insisted. “I’ve never known anyone as fearless as you, especially when it comes to your dancing. Remember how you convinced Mom and Dad to let you take the subway into New York for lessons? Alone? At thirteen?”

“It helped that I was the baby. By the time I was a teenager, you, Gabe and Ivy had already broken them down.”

“Down.” A tiny toddler voice echoed through the computer’s tinny speakers. “Down.”

“Nick,” Holly called, struggling to hold on to her fidgety daughter. “Can you come and take Joy?”

A second later the handsome face of Holly’s movie-star husband appeared over her shoulder. “Hey, Noelle. Fighting the good fight?”

Noelle nodded. “Always.”

“Here.” Holly placed Joy into Nick’s waiting arms, her nose wrinkling. “I think she needs a fresh diaper.”

“I got this.” He hoisted Joy into the crook of one arm and looked straight into the camera. “Hang tough, sis. We’re all rooting for you.”

“Thanks, bro. See you at Thanksgiving?”

“If not before. Enjoy your girl chat.”

He bent to place a quick, tender kiss on Holly’s forehead, and not for the first time Noelle felt a pang of longing for all she’d sacrificed at the altar of ballet. Home. Husband. Kids. She couldn’t even have a pet, for Christopher’s sake. She’d tried once—a Yorkie she named Sous-Sus—and it had been a total disaster. Traveling with a dog, even a small one, had turned out to be a logistical nightmare. How Kelly Clarkson and Taylor Swift managed it was beyond her. She’d wound up giving Sous-Sus to her hairstylist, who was lucky enough to have a rent-controlled apartment within spitting distance of Central Park.

“Come on, pumpkin.” Nick’s voice brought her back to the present and the computer screen. He had shifted his attention to his daughter, tweaking her button nose. “We’ve got a diaper to change.”

They disappeared from view, leaving Holly alone on the screen. “Now that it’s just us gals over legal age, how about we talk about something more fun. Like boys.”

“You’re trying to take my mind off the fact that I’m basically an unemployed invalid for the next who-knows-how-many months.”

“Is it working?”

“Not really.” Noelle flexed her feet and grimaced, even that tiny motion straining her overtired knee. “Besides, there’s not much in the way of prime man meat around this place.”

“Liar.”

“I am not lying.”

“Are, too.” Holly crossed her arms in front of her chest. “You’ve got a tell.”

“What do you mean?”

“Every time you lie, you tilt your head to one side. Usually the right. How do you think Mom knew you were the one who borrowed—” she put the word in air quotes “—her cashmere sweater and put it back with a huge stain on the sleeve?”

“I figured you told her.”