Chapter 1

WARMUP: Getting one's body moving gently to circulate blood and warm muscles before strenuous exercise.

"There's Stell. She's so damn fast." Rick pointed toward the grassy area where several women, all clad in bright colored jerseys and black cycling shorts, were bending and twisting.

Adam would have thought their contortions impossible, if he hadn't once done the same stretches. "Which one is she?" He didn't really care, but Rick was so enthusiastic about this particular woman that he felt he ought to show some curiosity.

"Green jersey." Rick had his glasses to his eyes again. "Something's happening on the back stretch. I wish I could..." He stood up, but Adam paid little attention.

There were four women in green jerseys on the grass behind the grandstand. One wore dark green trimmed with pink, three lighter green highlighted with yellow. He supposed one of them was the famous Estelle McCray, cyclist extraordinaire.

Big deal. Adam said, "I can hardly wait." Fortunately Rick didn't hear the sarcasm in his voice.

He wouldn't even be here if he hadn't been outvoted. He still couldn't get over how Juliana and Mom had ganged up on him. KIWANDA OuterWear, the family firm, was doing just fine. There was still a vast, untapped market for outerwear just waiting for them. Why this sudden insistence on branching out, anyway?

He watched the women. One was tall, dark, handsome. He couldn't call her beautiful, not even pretty in the usual sense, but she was still one of the most attractive women he'd ever seen. Her movements were incredibly graceful, yet spoke of the controlled power inherent to most top athletes. Her dark hair was cut close to her head; her body was lean, with long muscles rippling under ivory skin; her smile was radiant.

In spite of his disagreement with the Marketing Department's idea of using amateur athletes in the introductory campaign, he had to admit she would look perfect in KIWANDA CycleWear.

Rick called his attention back to the race. "Only one more lap."

Adam supposed he might be more interested if he could see the cyclists all the way around the track, but for three minutes of each four-minute lap, they were out of sight. He turned again to watch the women at their stretching. At least they were doing something. But they were no longer on the grass.

He looked around. Fifteen or twenty women were standing at the gate to the track, just back of the grandstand. The tall brunette was among them, astride a bright, neon yellow bicycle. He decided to root for her in the next race. That bike would be hard to miss.

The first few laps of the women's race were equally unexciting. On the third lap the women were just coming into sight around the turn at the head of the straightaway when a bell rang three times.

Rick sat up, raised his binoculars again. "This is a Prime lap, so we'll see some action...ah, there they go."

Adam saw the mass of riders shift, change its configuration. "What's that?"

"First across the finish line will get a premium, usually something one of the sponsors has donated. Sometimes money. There! Stell's going for it!"

One of the women in a pink and green helmet accelerated. Adam couldn't see how she could find a path between the other riders, so closely were they packed together. Nor could he decide whether she was the one who'd caught his eye. "The one moving up?"

His breath caught in his chest as he saw a woman slip between two other riders, so close that he wondered why her handlebars hadn't caught theirs. He noticed that her bike was bright neon yellow, and suddenly the race became exciting. "Damn reckless," he said. "They can't be more than inches apart. She's going to break her fool neck."

The riders were almost in front of him now. The small crowd went silent. Tires hissed against wet asphalt. Only four riders were ahead of his favorite now, and they might as well have been standing still.

A woman on a red bicycle seemed to wobble as she looked back over her shoulder. Two wheels barely kissed and suddenly both bikes were a snarl of flashing spokes, a candy cane twist of yellow and red. Estelle McCray flew over the tangle, hit the ground, and slid, arms and legs flopping bonelessly as the track surface turned them from ivory to blood red.

The rest of the riders managed to avoid the disaster and continued their almost silent way past the finish line. Adam heard a bell sound as he leapt down the grandstand in Rick's wake.

He stood back, aware that more knowledgeable hands than his were efficiently pulling the bicycles apart, giving aid to the two women. He couldn't take his eyes off the still figure in green jersey and black shorts. Her face was relatively unmarked. Thank God! Not her arms and legs. He wondered if there was a square inch of skin left on her exposed calves and arms.

"Is she all right?"

No one heard his question, or if they did, they were too busy to answer. He stood, useless and helpless, as someone brought a shiny Mylar blanket to cover her. The woman whose inattention had caused the collision was led away, limping. Two men remained kneeling beside the unmoving figure, checking her pulse, her breathing, but not moving her.

A young man whose jersey matched Estelle McCray's trotted up. "Ambulance coming."

Adam marveled at the lack of emotion in his voice. Apparently he was a member of the same team, yet he didn't seem to care that she was unconscious and bleeding.

"Will she be all right?" This time Adam's question was more insistent. Again no one answered.

The pack of women riders whispered past, only feet away. Absently he listened to an announcement that only one lap remained in the race.

Adam raged inside. These people were acting as if nothing had happened. He grabbed Rick's arm. "What the hell's the deal here? Don't they care? She could be severely injured, could be dy--"

"Shut up." Rick pulled him several feet away from the circle around the fallen cyclist. "Cool it, Adam. There's nothing more we can do until the ambulance gets here." He raised one eyebrow at his boss. "You know that."

Sheepishly, Adam nodded. With all his Red Cross training, he did know that everything was being done correctly. He couldn't explain the anxiety that was threatening to overwhelm him, didn't understand his need to do something--anything--to help the woman sprawled limp upon the track.

An ambulance wheeled onto the track. The EMTs went about their work with an efficiency and dispatch that always impressed him. Soon they were carefully moving Estelle McCray onto a stretcher, loading her into the ambulance.

"Will she be all right?" Adam demanded.

"Too early to tell," the EMT replied as she walked around to the driver's door. "Are you a relative?"

"No. No, I..."

"I'll follow you to the hospital." It was the young man who'd called the ambulance. "I'm her cousin."

"Right." Within seconds the ambulance was slowly moving away. Adam watched it, unaccountably concerned for her.

For brief seconds while the EMTs were checking her for broken bones, her eyes had opened, wandered sightlessly, and focused on Adam's face. A fleeting smile had touched her mouth before her lids drifted closed.

He knew he was overreacting. Estelle McCray meant nothing to him, except as one of several candidates for a job he didn't even believe was necessary. There was no reason for him to feel this unaccountable responsibility for her well-being. As a serious amateur athlete, she knew the risks she took for nothing more lasting than a fancy trophy and a week's notoriety.

She had to be all right.

* * * *

Stell woke, pulled out of grotesque dreams by the pain. It was unfocused, filling her, containing her, melding with her until it became her. It rose and receded like ocean waves, drowning out sight and sound, confusing perception. She knew she should fight it, but she couldn't. She had to stay quiet, still, so it would forget about her and go away.

Even when they spoke to her, she didn't move, except to smile. That was safe, for a smile would show the pain she was still detached from it. So she listened and murmured sounds of understanding in response to meaningless syllables. And she smiled, to fool the pain. Pretty soon the people in white went away, and the pain followed them.

When she woke again, she waited for the pain to rediscover her. It did, but it had shrunk curiously and lacked the power to dominate her. Its waves were mere ripples, gentle reminders that it was only waiting, not tamed.

She opened her eyes, no longer afraid to move. Her arms were covered with bandages and she could feel the tightness of tape across her forehead, see scabs on her hands.

An accident of some sort. Almost certainly on her bike. But where? When? She wasn't even sure what day it was, let alone how she'd gotten here.

If someone would just tell her where here was, she'd be a lot happier.

Disjointed memories drifted in and out of her mind through the next hour. Yesterday--yesterday?--had been the season's first race at PIR. She could remember checking her bike, mending the popped seam in her shorts. The team jerseys had arrived last week, but there had been a problem with the logo on the shorts and they'd been delayed, so she'd worn a plain black pair, old ones that she usually kept for training.

She tried to relax, but her mind wouldn't quit. It kept trying to fit all the fragments of memory back together. Together, and into wild visions, bizarre juxtapositions of memory and fantasy...bright colors blurring into people all around her...sparkling, spinning wires, circling before her. A warm, voice, full of worry...white clad figures trying to tell her something she didn't want to hear...the pain, holding her captive so nothing else mattered.

When Warren stuck his head through the curtain around her bed, she felt she'd never been more happy to see anyone in her life.

"You gonna live?" Her cousin's homely face was split in a wide grin. He shouldered through the curtain and set a Mason jar filled with forsythia on the bedside table. "God, you look awful!"

She found it hurt when she laughed, too. "I feel like a refugee from a sanding machine," she admitted. For a second, there were two Warrens beside her bed. Her eyes were playing the same strange tricks as her mind.

"What happened?" she asked Warren, when he finally coalesced into a single person. "Is my bike badly damaged?"

"Totaled. What do you remember?"

"Nothing. I keep getting flashes, but they don't seem to fit anywhere...like pieces of dreams." There was one in which a tall stranger stared at her until her toes wanted to curl.

"It was a Prime lap. You'd been drafting Janet, and she moved aside so you could sprint. You were doin' fine, moving up through the pack, when Leslie Franck cut in front of you." He paused, frowning.

Stell knew what he thought of Leslie.

"It was the damnedest thing I've ever seen. Just like she wanted you to hit her." Shaking his head, he reached out and took Stell's hand. "I'm really sorry about your leg."

"What are you talking about? What about my leg?" Stell tried to sit up, to grab his arm, but a wave of dizziness overwhelmed her. "Darn it, Warren, tell me!" she cried, knowing she didn't want to hear.

"Hey, calm down." He stood, well back from the bed so her reaching hand couldn't touch him. "They said they told you--"

"Nobody's told me a darned thing. I just woke up." As she spoke, she remembered the pain, remembered the sober young doctor asking her if she knew what day it was.

Of course she'd known. It was Tuesday, and the mayor's name was Elinor Greene, and she'd piled up during a Prime lap at PIR. After that, the world had grown fuzzy, fuzzier, fuzziest, until the doctor's voice had become an irritating racket, full of words she hadn't wanted to hear. She had deliberately tuned him out, concentrating instead on keeping unconsciousness at bay.

Warren watched her cautiously, as if she were Mount St. Helens about to blow. "The effects of the concussion shouldn't last more than a week or two. They don't know about your leg, Stell. It's pretty badly torn up and they have to wait until the swelling's gone down to tell for sure."

"How long?" She tried again to move her legs, but they were both splinted. Concentrating on the pain, she isolated the biggest ache in her left leg. "Warren?" Even she heard the rising hysteria in her voice as her cousin blurred and became twins before her. "How long before I can get back in training?"

"Look, I gotta go. I'll be back to take you home tomorrow, okay?"

Before she could protest, he'd disappeared.

Stell grabbed the call bell. She wanted answers and she wanted them now.

The nurses wouldn't tell her anything. The doctor was not in the hospital. By the time he made his rounds that night, she was beyond anger, beyond tears.

Almost beyond hope.

"It's really too early to determine what the long term implications of your injuries are, We'll have to wait until the swelling goes down to get a complete picture, but I can tell you it doesn't look good. You did a real number on that leg. Why you didn't break every bone in it, I can't even guess. But you've got massive soft tissue injuries."

He went on and on, describing torn and stretched muscles and tendons, but she tuned him out.

"How soon can I be riding?" she demanded.

"It's too soon--"

"Tell me!"

He shrugged. "I don't know. Stell, you may never ride at the level you have been."

She closed her eyes, ignored his reassuring words. They were probably lies, spoken to cheer her up.

What she heard, over and over in her mind, was may never ride again...may never ride...never ride....

* * * *

The doorbell rang again. Stell bit her lip, wondering if she'd made a mistake, refusing Warren's offer to stay with her for a couple of days. "I'm coming," she called. In a lower voice, she said, "Don't get yourself in a snit. I might just decide not to answer the door at all." Twenty-four hours after her release from the hospital, she was still awkward on her crutches.

A dark shape was visible through the long, sheer-curtained window beside the front door. A large, dark shape. For a moment she seriously considered ignoring whoever was leaning on her doorbell. She'd already learned how exhausting visitors could be, especially those who oozed sympathy. No. It might be Rick's boss. She couldn't imagine what the president of KIWANDA OuterWear would want with her, but this morning she had promised Rick she'd talk to him. She pulled the door open.

"Ms. McCray?"

His voice! It reminded her of the warm, caring voice she'd heard in the eerie, pain-filled world where she'd floated for so long. "All right....be all right...will she be..." Over and over. Keeping her from drifting, pulling her back from the never-never land where pain was the only thing she knew.

Forcing her thoughts back into focus, she looked into blue eyes as familiar as the voice. "I'm Estelle McCray," she agreed, waiting for him to identify himself.

"Adam Vanderhook."

His smile was about five hundred watts. She stared dumbly at the hand he held out. This was not what she'd expected Rick's boss to look like.

"Ms. McCray?"

"Oh. Yeah. Sure. Come on inside." She motioned. "Sorry. I'm kinda spacey sometimes. The concussion..."

"Of course. How's the leg."

She didn't want to talk about it. "Okay. Clumsy." She turned and led him, slowly, at the best pace her crutches allowed, into her living room.

He watched her, adding to her clumsiness. The crutches were proving to be a lot more difficult than she'd imagined. Sitting down was almost impossible, if grace was the object. She let the crutches drop beside the sofa and tried to let herself down gently, using the arm for support. Her leg, in its absurd fiberglass brace, needed to be elevated as often as possible, so she sat sideways and stretched it out along the cushions.

Rick's boss sat in one of the wing chairs, looking completely at home in her antique-filled living room. His smile was sympathetic. "Broken?"

"No, but they don't want me to use the knee." She shifted uncomfortably. "Rick said you wanted to talk to me?"

"I do. KIWANDA still wants you to be one of the models, even though it may be a while before you can."

"Only a week or two. None of the abrasions are deep, so they shouldn't leave scars. Nothing that a little makeup wouldn't cover, anyway." She really wasn't looking forward to modeling fancy, upscale cycling clothes, but it was for the good of her team, after all. They'd been supportive enough of her ever since she decided to go big time. It was the least she could do for them.

"I wasn't worrying about that," he said.

She wasn't sure just what his expression meant. Compassion? Or pity? Stell wasn't about to be an object of anybody's pity! "So what's your concern?"

"I just wanted to make sure you were going to be able to ride soon enough to work for us. We're scheduled to begin shooting in a couple of weeks. Will you be back on your bike so soon?"

"Of course." She'd be back on her bike as soon as this stupid brace was removed, if she had her way.

He smiled, and she felt her temperature go up a couple of degrees. Ye gods! Was this what concussions did to you?

"That's great. After the other night, I'm really looking forward to seeing our CycleWear in use. I think you'll find it's far more comfortable than anything you've worn before."

She doubted it, but who was she to discourage him? What she knew about KIWANDA OuterWear could be written on the head of a pin. They just weren't her kind of clothes. Too spendy. "What made you decide to start making cycling gear?"

"We see a tremendous market in weekend recreation, especially adults who are in it for exercise and pleasure. Our marketing studies show that a vast number of people are participating in amateur athletics, both organized and casually. With our reputation for quality, we feel that we can carve out a significant portion of the market for ourselves. Our CycleWear is just one of the lines we plan to introduce. Until recently, only serious cyclists wore jerseys and shorts. Now we see a market segment in weekend athletes who are interested in looking good while they get their cardiac conditioning."

She couldn't help but smile. He sounded like he'd memorized his little spiel, a false note in an otherwise sincere impression. He was right, though. The new breed of cyclist, riding mountain bikes fitted with shock absorbers, were a far cry from the people she'd been riding with for years. "And you expect them to buy your gear?" They probably would. Anyone who could afford a thousand dollar bike as a toy could afford the two hundred dollar jacket to go with it.

"The firm that designed our advertising campaign is one of the best."

"Which means they create a market if one doesn't exist." She remembered some of the courses she'd taken as part of her MBA program. While she didn't entirely approve of modern advertising techniques, she had to admire their effectiveness.

His chuckle told her that his streak of skepticism was wide as hers. "Exactly."

He had the nicest smile, one that warmed her heart and more.

"And what besides cycling gear are you planning to convince the unsuspecting public it can't live without?"

"You name it, we're going to make clothing for you to wear while doing it."

"Dogsled racing?"

"We already do that. Part of our regular OuterWear line."

"Windsurfing?"

"Naturally."

"Tiddly Winks?"

"I'm sure we'll have something suitable for the World Class Tiddler."

He had an answer for everything, although she couldn't have been more pleased at this one. How many people knew the correct term for a Tiddly Wink competitor? "Give me time. I'll think of something you haven't considered."

"All the time in the world. In the meantime, keep in touch. I'll want to know as soon as you're available."

"I can do that." She reached for her crutches, but before her fingers touched them, he was on one knee beside her. His face was only inches from hers and his smile begged, no, demanded, a response. She licked her lips, feeling trapped. He was much too close and much too...too devastatingly male. Stop it, she told herself again. You're imagining things. All he wants is your body in his clothes, not in his bed.

Where had that thought come from? Of course he only wanted her as a model.

She stood, quickly, grateful for his help. Otherwise she would have put pressure on her leg, and that was what the doctor had warned her not to do. "You know, there are three other women on our team. You don't have to wait until my road rash heals." She almost hoped he would take the hint. The more she thought about it, the less she liked the idea of spending time anywhere near Adam Vanderhook.

"No! I want..." His grip on her elbows was almost rough. "We want you!"

A thrill shot through her, warm and exciting.

Stell McCray swayed as he released her, and Adam had to clench his fists to keep from taking her into his arms. He had never felt the slightest attraction to a woman like her, and he wasn't going to start now. Never mind that she moved, lean and lithe, through his dreams. Forget that he'd been turning to look at every close-clipped dark head, hoping to catch a sight of a woman he knew couldn't be anywhere nearby. Anything between him and an amateur athlete was going to be strictly business. He knew only too well that there was room in a person's life for only one obsession. When he was with a woman, he wanted to be the focus of her passion, not share it with dreams of a trophy.

"Okay now?" he asked, knowing that his abrupt reaction had caught her off balance. Again his eyes swept over her, seeing the long, red-black scabs on her forearms. He knew her legs were similarly scabbed and he wondered if they itched. He still remembered how his floor burns had itched, enough to make him crazy.

"Fine." She pulled her arm free. "If you don't mind, I won't see you out. Just make sure the door latches behind you."

She sounded tired. Didn't she have anyone who could stay with her? She'd said she was still feeling the aftereffects of the concussion. "Spacey" she'd said. What if she fell? Or became unconscious?

He knew, only too well, how dangerous a concussion could be. That time Steve had gotten tangled in the wires....

Damn! He hadn't thought about Steve in years. Not since his once-best friend had taken the Olympic gold.

"I'll expect to hear from you, then," he told Stell. "I hope you'll decide to do it."

Now why, he wondered as he let himself out, did his mind refuse to picture her wearing KIWANDA CycleWear?

He kept imagining her clad in nothing at all.

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