TWICE VICTORIOUS Read Free Page A

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.

Chapter Two
    TIME TRIAL: a race against
time
    "Honestly, Cindy, I'm getting along just fine." Stell twisted the telephone cord
around one finger and grimaced. In the two weeks since she got out of the hospital, her
best friend had called her at least three times a day.
    "But are you sure you've got plenty of food in the house? I could stop by the store
on my way home and pick up whatever you need."
    "I don't need..." She sighed, telling herself to hold on to her temper. It wasn't
Cindy's fault that Stell was ready to bite heads off with the slightest provocation. "Cindy, I
really, truly don't need a thing. I've still got most of the gallon of milk you brought by night
before last, and I've only used four slices of bread. There's enough food in the 'fridge to
feed an army, and I couldn't get another thing into the freezer."
    "Well, if you're absolutely certain...."
    "I am. Now don't worry about me. I've got my leg in a brace, not my whole
body."
    "But what if you fall?"
    "Then I'll drag myself to the phone and call you." She grimaced, not wanting to
admit how much trouble she would have getting to her feet again. This morning she'd been
on the floor for about a half hour, doing her stretching, or as much of her routine as she
could with the brace and the assortment of aches and pains