Love Notes Page 10

  She continued, “So don’t go overworking yourself thinking you can con me into it.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” was all he could muster. He was lying there, shirtless, wondering if she had laid him out for slaughter.

  Her hands found his arm, smearing warm oil down it, fingers working into muscles too sore to even react. Something half sigh/half moan escaped his mouth and she answered it with a smile and a bit of commiseration. “With me it’s usually my legs that give out. That warming oil is what I always use on them, and it does feel good.”

  She stopped, and he almost protested before he saw her pour another handful and walk around to reach his other arm. She didn’t speak while she found knots in his muscles, and softly worked each of them.

  He was grateful that she didn’t poke and knead the way the therapists often did, as though his muscles were to be attacked and punished. Her hands were soft and her touch soothing. She alternated between his arms, not leaving one too long, somehow knowing when it was starting to clench up on him again.

  Climbing on the bed, she parked herself on her heels, her knees and hips pressed along his torso. TJ could feel every movement of her legs in the soft, worn jeans. While he was grateful for the sensation, he also cursed it.

  She spoke just often enough to keep him grounded. “Your sheets are ruined. Well, it will wash out, but you won’t want to sleep here after you’ve showered.”

  “Oh.” He’d wanted to nod, but even those muscles weren’t obeying.

  After a while, she had him turn over. He just managed to find the strength so that she didn’t have to flip him herself. She put a pillow under his chest so he could keep his neck straight. Then, without warning, she threw one leg across him and straddled him like she did her horse.

  TJ thanked every god he could think of that he was face down. But she didn’t wiggle or do anything suggestive, other than straddle him, of course. Her hands, covered in warm oil, found his shoulders, his back, his neck. This time he moaned for real.

  Chapter 20

  Norah listened to TJ and laughed to herself. Everyone had a roommate who sang in the shower. Hers was singing a song his brother had written that was currently slaughtering records for country music and climbing the pop charts. From the sound of it, the studio hadn’t fiddled with the recording that much.

  She wasn’t one much to go see concerts or listen to live music. But TJ had a voice that made her think not all the sirens had been female. She understood now what he and JD had meant when they’d talked about keeping Wilder’s sound ‘organic’.

  This was new. He hadn’t sung while she’d been here—almost as though that part of him had been broken in the accident. As though his loss of control of his diaphragm had meant the loss of his vocal cords. Now the shower was prime territory, whether it was dawn or midnight. And the man had a set of lungs on him, a set he was rapidly reclaiming.

  The man wasn’t going easy on himself. If he wasn’t working his lungs, it was his legs. He needed strength and balance and all the fine motor control that no one thinks about just to stand upright. The few steps he had taken had seemed more like he was catching one fall after another, and had wound up with him landing, hands first, on the couch. At least he’d been laughing.

  True to her word, no matter how much he killed himself, she hadn’t offered another massage. Norah had found that quite easy to adhere to. She wasn’t sure what it was, but some element of that last one had turned sexual. It certainly wasn’t what she’d intended.

  She didn’t understand how it had gotten away from her. She couldn’t count the number of times she had done that for her fellow dancers. She’d straddled them when they were face up and worked chest muscles. No one had thought anything of having their hands in each others groins. Dancers were always touching each other, and yet none of those situations had reached inside her and turned her on the way handling TJ had.

  It was a good thing that school was only a few more weeks away. She’d re-open the studio doors, move back in with her Dad, and this gripping fear that was eating at the back corners of her would recede.

  She tried to read her magazine, but TJ’s voice kept getting through to her. So eventually she stopped trying and just listened to her own private concert.

  He stopped singing—usually a sign that the shower was about over—and she laughed. Her Dad’s house was going to sound remarkably dull after this summer.

  Sure enough, a few minutes later he emerged from the bathroom, seated in his chair, towel slung around his hips. His legs perched on the foot rests, but they didn’t succumb to gravity anymore. He looked like he’d just chosen to sit there, not like he couldn’t get up and saunter down the hallway.

  “Nice concert.” She called out to him. That hallway bathroom was designed for a wheelchair bound person who needed live-in help. Her room, the help’s room, had a small private bath that came off the back corner. His master bedroom didn’t. His bathroom was easily accessible to the help, in case anything should go wrong, and it left him wheeling out into the hallway after each shower.

  He grinned at her. “We’re meeting in the studio tomorrow for a starter practice. Want to come?”

  “That’s great, but I’ll be working out then.” She stood and started to tell him she was leaving now and would be back in a few hours.

  His frown stopped her. “Tell me you’re going dancing.”

  “Of course. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

  Jesus, he was going to start in with the indecency again. He did.

  “Put a sock in it, TJ!” She sailed out the door.

  Ten minutes later she was parked at the door to the studio. Once inside, she put on Wilder’s latest album. She hadn’t listened to it all summer, but now she wanted it. Maybe she’d been inspired by the music coming from the shower.

  The studio was cool, and she flipped on the lights in the largest room. She practically ripped her soft sneakers off her feet. Only the first song was allotted for warm-up. After that she felt the burn to push herself and stretch her limits, so she shoved her feet into her pointe shoes.

  She wasn’t where she wanted to be. She wanted her Houston Ballet body back. The body that could dance from dawn til dusk and not tire until she hit her pillow. The body that never missed a step, that only rarely couldn’t quite stretch or lift far enough.

  Dance turned her brain off from the demons that were chasing her. Her forgiveness of the man who killed Jeff and Jordan only opened the floodgates. She’d been so locked up being angry, that she hadn’t truly grieved for them.

  But she wasn’t in any place to truly grieve for them now either. They were so long gone. So she worked it out the way she always did—on a hard wood floor with her muscles burning.

  Norah stood up and snapped at the speaker system. It was voice activated, but she’d trained it to the sound of her fingers snapping instead. Most of the time it was silly to snap at the music and have it come on, now it was just an angry motion of her wrist.

  Track two opened on a hard chord, and Norah opened on her toes. It wasn’t ballet music by any measure. But she’d learned along the way that pointe shoes didn’t always mean ballet and ballet could be danced to anything.

  She threw herself into it. Every movement held just so, the tension in her both escalated and released. She knew these songs, she’d listened to them often before the summer began. When she finished the CD without stopping for a break, she snapped her fingers and it started over again.

  This time, having just heard it all the way through, she was aware of every nuance, every downbeat, every half-measure the guys made use of. She’d always been known for that—she could listen once, and hit every grace note or half-start perfectly. Now it meant that she could throw herself into the wild rhythm that much harder. She didn’t falter with mis-steps; she could leap and know she’d hit ground when the chord came down.

  An hour later she lay flat on the floor, panting.

  She’d wrung every last drop out of it that she coul
d.

  So she cried right there—soft, silent tears for Jeff and Jordan. Then she peeled herself up and went into the ladies room to wash her face.

  Her eyes were rimmed red, but it would fade before she got back to TJ’s. Her skin was a little blotchy. That, too, would disappear quickly. She told herself she was cleaning out her soul. Now her eyes were clearer and the smile she gave herself in the mirror was truer.

  Norah exited the bathroom, and looked around the lobby for just a moment, taking in the new portraits. Kelsey had delivered gold. Norah was considering inviting her to photograph the classes. There might be parents who would want that even before portrait time.

  Trying to see the studio through fresh eyes, she looked for the whole picture, and wondered if selling was really the right thing to do. But she had nearly six months to decide and pushed the thought away.

  Slipping back into her sneakers, she shut the place down, bolting the front door behind her. On the drive home, it hit. Her feet locked.

  They were cramped into position, and Norah wasn’t all that surprised.

  Flexing at every stoplight, she drove straight for TJ’s. She couldn’t work out her cramps while in the car. Her teeth ground together while she drove, the only concession she made to the pain.

  Parking as close to the house as she could, Norah gingerly stepped out. She was grateful that much of the front yard was level cement. It was intended to make things easy for a wheelchair, but what it meant right now was that the ground was flat and she wouldn’t have to add a twisted ankle to her wounds.

  TJ must have spotted her coming, because he held the door open. “What’s wrong?”

  “Foot cramps.” She just got the words out.

  “What do you need?”

  “Bananas.”

  He looked at her oddly, and she just was in too much pain to explain. “Potassium.”

  “I have that.” He wheeled off to the kitchen and quickly returned with two white pills and a cup of water. Norah stopped rotating her feet long enough to swallow them.

  A half-smile lingered on TJ’s lips. “You know I owe you. Where’s that massage oil?” He was already halfway down the hall.

  She barked at him, “No! It’ll burn.”

  He swiveled the chair. “It didn’t burn me.”

  “You didn’t have open skin.”

  “And you do?”

  She nodded, still rotating her feet with her hands.

  “Norah.”

  She looked up at him. He was now right in front of her, and demanding her feet.

  Without much input from her, he pulled her legs onto his lap, carefully untying the laces on her left shoe before pulling it off. “Jesus, Norah.”

  She just shook her head, trying to pull her foot, still in the sock, away and getting ready to explain that that’s what it was to be a dancer.

  But he beat her to it. “Does your other foot look like this?”

  “Probably.” She sighed.

  TJ left her for a moment and returned carrying a bin of gauze bandages and tape. The stash was for him; they expected him to sustain cuts, scrapes or burns just because he hadn’t been able to feel anything to protect himself. Luckily the kit had gone largely unused.

  Gingerly, he reclaimed her feet, which were still cramping enough to make her lock her jaw, and carefully peeled away one sock. She saw that it came away bloody. She was used to it, but realized from his face that he wasn’t.

  “Norah.” It came out sad and hurting.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “I hope so.” He sighed, then got to work. Gently he used the betadine swabs to clean each crack, each spot where she had simply rubbed the skin off. Then he cut and fit gauze, and taped each one into place. She practically had mummy feet when he finished. But she grabbed each one in turn—still working it, still trying to loosen clenched muscles.

  “Do you want them massaged?”

  “Yes.”

  That was all it took. Trying so hard to avoid the cuts, which were just about everywhere, he took one slim foot in his hands until it unlocked. Then he turned his attention to the other foot.

  “Your poor feet.” He breathed in a sigh of pity. “How do you do this? It looks like you didn’t even feel the pain that was telling you to stop. You just wore the skin off in some places.”

  “That’s about it. You just take off your shoes and go ‘oh, look, it’s bleeding.’” She shrugged. Now that her teeth weren’t locked, the massage felt good.

  He worked her toes, then her ankles, and for a moment she got embarrassed and tried to pull away.

  “Uh-uh.” He shook his head and recaptured her feet.

  “They aren’t pretty feet. They’re too abused.”

  “On the contrary, they’re very abused, beautiful feet. I think only dancers have this.” He traced the fluid curve of her ankle, then back up her arch. He massaged her calves, and she laid back, thinking it felt like heaven.

  He took up the conversation again. “I don’t know what you were dancing to, but you should destroy it.”

  She couldn’t help the laugh. “I was dancing to Wilder.”

  “In your pointe shoes?” The look on his face said it all. “Well, there’s your problem.”

  “I was just taking out my aggressions.”

  “On our CD?” He stroked her feet, and something knotted inside her.

  Quickly she reclaimed them. “No, on my feet.”

  “You got a lot of aggressions to get out?” He looked at her sideways, as though the different vantage point would yield answers.

  “No, that was the end of them.” She stood and winced as her feet made contact with the hard wood floor. “Ow.”

  “Duh.”

  “I’m getting old. This never used to hurt like this.”

  He laughed and the sound followed her all the way down the hall.

  Chapter 21

  TJ hauled himself into the chair Norah pulled out for him. Still standing on the sidewalk when he turned around, she refused to come in. He wasn’t sure if that bothered him or not. “Suit yourself.”

  Her grin at least let him know she wasn’t upset with him, maybe she just didn’t want to come see him. Giving a mock salute, he rolled himself through the front doors of the building that housed HeartBeats recording and practice studios. It was handicapped accessible and he didn’t think much of the impression he made wheeling down the hallway.

  Maybe he shouldn’t have invited her. It wasn’t like JD was bringing Kelsey or Alex would bring Bridget—who should have had that baby by now. Then again, the tour hadn’t been re-tooled around any of them either.

  Brenda spotted him. “Hey, how are you?” She didn’t sound quite pleased to see him.

  “Good, why?”

  She stopped walking. “I thought you said you were up and around. I may need to cancel more tour dates.”

  “Oh, no you don’t!”

  She grinned. “That’s the attitude I like to hear, but if you aren’t ready . . .”

  “I’m good.” He pushed with his arms, standing up out of the chair for just a moment. “But I can only go a few steps right now. I just lost all my strength. I’ll be back in time.”

  “All right.” She wished him luck and went off down the hall, stopping to talk to someone else not ten steps later.

  He pushed through the wide doorway into the studio. JD was already there, tuned up and singing something TJ hadn’t heard before. Listening for three bars was all that was necessary to determine that it was a love song—surprisingly not for Kelsey. This one pined for the girl next door, in one verse as a kid, in the next as an adolescent, and finally as an adult.

  When the last note ended TJ looked at his brother, knowing that even JD, as focused as he got when he played, couldn’t have missed the fat wheels of his chair sitting inches away. “You told Kelsey that one isn’t about Lilah, right?”

  “It kind of is.”

  “You had feelings for her after junior high?”

  JD sho
ok his head. “Nope, just made for a better song.”

  TJ started to open his mouth, then held back. For the first time he had something over JD and he didn’t need it. JD didn’t need to know that Lilah had run around on him. That would ruin his few good memories before their parents practically disowned him for throwing away his stock analyst job to come do something as low-class as be a musician.

  TJ had no pride or happiness at the knowledge either. With that thought came a flood of shame. He’d wronged the brother who’d done so much for him. He’d grown up simultaneously worshipping and hating JD. Jealousies had eaten at him: that he’d never be the golden child his big brother was, that he wasn’t a brilliant musician, he wasn’t a capable career man, he wasn’t a family man. JD did it all. Well.

  TJ never had. He simply wasn’t as good as JD, in so many ways.

  At that moment he looked at his brother and saw him as human, and TJ felt more comfortable in his own skin. He didn’t miss the irony that skin that wasn’t responding to his commands was the most comfortable he’d ever been in.

  Alex arrived, looking nervous. “I’m here, but I’m going to bolt the minute we finish, and if she calls then one of you has to drive me.”

  His eyes were wide with pre-panic as he glanced between the brothers. “I take that back. JD you’re going to drive me. No insult intended TJ.”

  He laughed. “Of course.”

  Craig arrived next, looking simply content. But then again Craig usually did. He’d been that way since he’d found Shay two years ago. Though their partying-together days were past, Craig still spoke to him straight. “You can get out of that thing, right?”

  TJ nodded and wheeled over to where they had a bar stool set up for him in front of the mic stand. Using his arms for leverage, he stood, balancing on unsteady legs. He managed to get onto the high seat with some level of grace, and tucked his feet up on the foot rail. “Let’s go.”

  The others tuned up. TJ didn’t, he saved his energy.

  They started with a slow one for him, and he sang it, giving it everything, wanting to impress them with what he could do. He ended up impressing himself. By the fifth song he had one foot against the ground for balance, and a quick glance down told him he looked like he belonged there perched atop the stool.