But the reporter barely seemed to listen as I walked her through Madison’s lavish house, talking lamely about my stepsister and Jason. Until she pressed on her earpiece with her hand and suddenly laughed aloud, turning to me with a malicious gleam in her eye. “Fascinating. But are you interested in seeing what the two of them have been up to today in Paris?” Then she’d cut to reveal live footage of the two of them naked and drunk beneath the Eiffel Tower.
The video became an international sensation, along with the clip of my stupid, shocked face as I watched it.
For the past three weeks, I’d been trapped behind the gates of my stepfather’s house, ducking paparazzi who wanted pictures of my miserable face, and gossip reporters who kept yelling questions like, “Was it a publicity stunt, Diana? How else could anyone be so stupid and blind?”
I’d fled to Cornwall to escape.
But Edward St. Cyr already knew about it. He’d even tried to warn me, but I hadn’t listened.
Looking at my new employer now, a shiver went through me, rumbling all the way to my heart, shaking me like the earthquakes I thought I’d left behind. “Is that why you hired me? To gloat?”
Edward looked at me coldly. “No.”
“Then you felt sorry for me.”
“This isn’t about you.” His dark blue eyes glittered in the firelight. “This is about me. I need a good physiotherapist. The best.”
Confused, I shook my head. “There must be hundreds, thousands, of good physical therapists in the U.K....”
“I gave up after four,” he said acidly. “The first was useless. I hardly know which was thicker, her skull or her graceless hands pushing at me. She quit when I attempted to give her a gentle bit of constructive criticism.”
“Gentle?”
“The second woman was giggly and useless. I sacked her the second day, when I caught her on the phone trying to sell my story to the press...”
“Why would the press want your story? Weren’t you in a car accident?”
His lips tightened almost imperceptibly at the corners. “The details have been kept out of the news and I intend to keep it that way.”
“Lucky,” I said, thinking of my own media onslaught.
His dark eyes gleamed. “I suppose you’re right.” He glanced down at his arm in the sling, at his leg propped up in front of him. “I can walk now, but only with a cane. That’s why I sent for you. Make me better.”
“What happened to the other two?”
“The other two what?”
“You said you hired four physical therapists.”
“Oh. The third was a hatchet-faced martinet.” He shrugged. “Just looking at her curdled my will to live.”
Surreptitiously, I glanced down at my damp cotton jacket, sensible nursing clogs and baggy khakis wrinkled from the overnight flight, wondering if at the moment, I too was curdling his will to live. But my looks weren’t supposed to matter. Not in physical therapy. Looking up, I set my jaw. “And the fourth?”
“Ah. Well.” His lips quirked at the edges. “One night, we shared a little too much wine, and found ourselves in bed in a totally different kind of therapy.”
My eyes went wide. “You fired her for sleeping with you? You should be ashamed.”
“I had no choice,” he said irritably. “She changed overnight from a decent physio to a marriage-crazed clinger. I caught her writing Mrs. St. Cyr over and over on my medical records, circling it with hearts and flowers.” He snorted. “Come on.”
“What bad luck you’ve had,” I said sardonically. Then I tilted my head, stroking my cheek. “Or wait. Maybe you’re the one who’s the problem.”
“There is no problem,” he said smoothly. “Not now that you’re here.”
I folded my arms. “I still don’t understand. Why me? We only met the once, and I’d already given up doing physical therapy then.”
“Yes. To be an assistant to the world-famous Madison Lowe. Strange career choice, if you don’t mind me saying so, from being a world-class physiotherapist to fetching lattes for your stepsister.”
“Who said I was world-class?”
“Ron Smart. Tyrese Carlsen. John Field.” He paused. “Great athletes, but notorious womanizers. I’m guessing one of them must have given you reason to quit. Something must have made the idea of being assistant to a spoiled star suddenly palatable.”
“My patients have all been completely professional,” I said sharply. “I chose to quit physical therapy for—another reason.” I looked away.