Yet he hadn't been smug about it. It wasn't as though he had used her and disposed of her like a plastic razor. If anything, he had appeared more shattered than she. But why when she had given him what he wanted and needed, when he had proved himself capable of —
The thought crystallized and gave her pause.
Slowly she rolled to her back again. Her lips parted in surprise. Why hadn't she thought of it sooner? Clearly now, she recalled Adam's face as it had looked when she left him. Not triumphant. Quite the contrary. Failure had been stamped on his features. It wasn't that he hadn't wanted to look at her. He hadn't wanted her to look at him.
Absently she rubbed all traces of tears off her cheeks and whispered something unladylike into the darkness. "No wonder he was upset."
She knew Adam's body intimately. He had a small birthmark in the shape of Utah on the underside of his upper arm. He had stepped on a tin can at the beach when he was a kid, and the cut had left a scar on his heel. There was a dusting of soft, fuzzy body hair in the small of his back.
But just as intimately as she knew his physiology, she knew his psyche. She knew what made him tick. She knew how he thought. Given any set of circumstances, she would be able to make an educated guess what Adam's reaction would be to those circumstances.
And because she knew him so well, she now understood what had upset him.
She also realized what she would have to do about it. It would cost her some pride, but that hardly seemed of consequence when the quality of a man's life was at stake. The method she had in mind was highly unethical, surely grounds to have her license as a physical therapist revoked. Nonetheless she would do what she must. Her motivation was the strongest known to man short of survivaclass="underline" Love.
Lilah breezed into Adam's room the following morning, looking as chipper as Flamingo Wing lipstick and half a tube of dark-eye-circle concealer could make her look.
"Morning, Ace. How goes it?" Adam was sitting in his wheelchair, staring out the window. His mood was morose, just as she had predicted.
"Fine."
"Sleep well?"
"I slept okay."
"Pete said you didn't eat much breakfast."
"What are you, my mother?"
She laughed gustily. "Well, if I am," she said, dropping an eyelid, "we're guilty of a grievous sin." He didn't even crack a smile. "Not funny?"
"Not funny."
"What's with you, sad sack? Need some stewed prunes?"
"You come near me with stewed prunes and I'll — "
"What? Beat me with a stick?"
"Will you just be quiet and do your job?"
"What a crosspatch," she muttered. Standing directly in front of him, she raised her arms above her head and stretched, knowing that as she did her T-shirt crept up to give Adam a view of her bare belly above her bikini swim trunks. "I slept marvelously well. Breakfast was yummy. Now I'm ready for a swim. Want to come out with me?"
"No, I'll stay here."
"And let that gorgeous tan of yours fade?" she asked in mock dismay. "I'll set up the mat table on the deck and we'll do your therapy session outside today. How 'bout it?"
"I want to work at the bars again."
"Later today."
"Why not now?"
"Because I said no."
"Because you want to slough off around my swimming pool and work on your own tan."
She thrust out one shapely hip and glared down at him. "I'm going to ignore that, Cavanaugh, even though comments like that make me madder than hell. When are you going to get it through your thick skull that I'm the therapist and you're the patient and until you can fight me down, what I say goes?"
He banged his fists on the armrests of the wheelchair and shouted, "I want out of this damn thing."
"Right," she drawled. "So we're wasting time up here arguing when we could be downstairs working on getting you out of it," she said sweetly. Stepping around him, she disengaged the brake and pushed the chair across the room and through the bedroom door.
When they reached the terrace, she poured him a glass of pineapple juice from an iced pitcher that she had prearranged with Pete to have waiting for them on the table. She kissed Adam fondly on the cheek as she handed it to him. "Maybe this will improve your mood by the time I get back."
Apparently he was too stunned by her seemingly spontaneous kiss to speak. She peeled the T-shirt over her head and dropping it negligently on the deck, strutted to the end of the diving board and executed a perfect dive that barely created a splash. After swimming several vigorous laps, she took the steps out of the shallow end and shook the water from her hair.
"That feels great. I Want to sit in the shallow end?"
"I'll pass."
She shrugged indifferently. "Another time."
Adam's eyes were on her, though she pretended not to notice as she walked toward the bin where a supply of beach towels was always folded and neatly stacked. Water was beading on her skin, just as she had planned for it to. Baby oil worked miracles.
She blotted the shimmery droplets dry with the fluffy towel, then rubbed her hair with it. Keeping her back to him, she reached around and unsnapped her bra. She replaced it with the T-shirt she'd taken off only minutes earlier. The soft cotton molded to her damp skin.
When she faced Adam again, she saw that her ruse had worked. He was gripping the arms of the wheelchair so hard that his knuckles had turned white. He seemed about to come out of the wheelchair, either by a spring action device beneath the seat or by his own propulsion. His eyes were dark, smoldering with internal combustion. And he was hard. His nylon gym shorts couldn't conceal his arousal.
"I see Pete has set up your mat table." She gestured toward it. "Can you get on it by yourself?"
He wheeled his chair up to the table. Supporting himself by placing one hand on the edge of the table and the other on the arm of his wheelchair, he was able to transfer himself. Then he lifted his own legs into position.
"Soon you won't even need me." Leaning closer, Lilah added in a sultry voice, "Not for this anyway."
"I'm ready to do it."
Her eyes dropped significantly to his lap. "So I see."
"Lilah," he warned.
"Okay, okay. You're anxious to get on those bars again. But you can't blame a girl for being impressed with your other … accomplishments."
They went through a routine of stretching and strengthening exercises. She resisted each of his movements, and though he cursed her for her diligence, he was smiling proudly when they finished.
"Better today, right?"
"You'll be able to kick me into the pool tomorrow." She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. "Bet you'd enjoy that, wouldn't you?"
He laughed with chagrin. "More than that, I'd like to hold you under."
"Under what?"
Secretly pleased, she watched a muscle in his cheek twitch with desire and annoyance. "Under the water."
"Oh." She looked away, as though his answer had disappointed her. "Are you in a hurry to get back to your room?"
"Not especially. Why?"
"It might be nice to lie out here and sunbathe."
"Go ahead. You're off duty now."
"I meant together. Why don't you stay out here with me?"
"What for?"
"For the sun, goose. Some cultures believe that it has healing powers."
"That's superstitious bull."
"Well it certainly can't hurt," she said tartly. "But suit yourself." She spread out one of the beach towels on the deck and lay down on her stomach, but not before whipping off her T-shirt.
"What the hell!" Adam exclaimed. "Don't you have a grain of decency?"