mocha skin of his bare, muscular shoulders, and one fist was raised in a triumphant gloat before he pointed to Mike. “You are buying the beers.”
“How do you figure that?” Mike Cutler caught the ball as it bounced past him, dribbled it once and shoved a chest pass at his smirking competitor. It was impossible not to grin as his best friend and business partner, Troy, schooled him in the twenty-minute pickup game. “I thought we were playing to cheer me up.”
Troy easily caught the basketball and shoved it right back. “I was playing to win, my friend. Your head’s not in the game.”
Mike’s hands stung, forgetting to catch the pass with his fingertips instead of his palms. He was distracted. “Fine. Tonight at the Shamrock. Beers are on me.”
He tucked the ball under his arm as he climbed out of the wheelchair he’d been using. Once his legs unkinked and the electric jolts of random nerves firing across his hips and lower back subsided, he pushed the chair across the polished wood floor to stow the basketball in the PT center’s equipment locker. At least he didn’t have to wear those joint pinching leg braces or a body cast anymore.
But he wasn’t about to complain. Twelve years ago, he hadn’t been able to walk at all, following a car accident that had shattered his legs from the pelvis on down, so he never griped about the damaged nerves or aches in his mended bones or stiff muscles that protested the changing weather and an early morning workout. As teenagers, Mike and Troy had bonded over wheelchair basketball and months of physical rehabilitation therapy with the woman who had eventually become Mike’s stepmother. Unlike Mike, because of a gunshot wound he’d sustained in a neighborhood shooting, Troy would never regain the use of his legs. But the friendship had stuck, and now, at age twenty-eight, they’d both earned college degrees and had opened their own physical therapy center near downtown Kansas City.
“C’mon, man. Don’t make me feel like I’m beatin’ up on ya. I said you didn’t have to go back to the chair to play me. I could beat you standing on your two feet. Today, at any rate.” Troy pushed his wheels once and coasted over to the edge of the court beside Mike. His omnipresent smile and smart-ass attitude had disappeared. “Losing that funding really got to you, huh? Or is this mood about a woman?”
He hadn’t put his heart on the line and gotten it stomped on by anyone of the female persuasion lately. Not since Caroline. “No. No woman.”
Troy picked up a towel off the supply cart and handed one to Mike, grinning as he wiped the perspiration from his chest. “No woman? That would sure put me in a mood.”
“You’re a funny guy, you know that,” Mike deadpanned, appreciating his friend’s efforts to improve his disposition. But he couldn’t quite shake the miasma of frustration that had plagued his thoughts since opening that rejection letter in the mail yesterday. “I had a brilliant idea, writing that grant proposal.” Mike toweled the dampness from his skin before tossing Troy his gray uniform polo shirt. “We had enough money from the bank loan and our own savings to get this place built. But it’s hardly going to sustain itself with the handful of patients we have coming in. If we were attached to a hospital—”
“We specifically decided against that.” Troy didn’t have to remind him of their determination to give back to the community. Mike opened the laundry compartment on the supply cart and Troy tossed both towels inside. “We wanted to be here in the city where the people who needed us most could have access to our services.”
“I still believe in that.” Mike stared at the CAPT logo for the Cutler-Anthony Physical Therapy Center embroidered on the chest of his own shirt before pulling it over his head and tugging the hem down to cover his long torso. “But those are the same people who don’t always have insurance and can’t always pay. I was certain that urban development grant for small businesses would help us.”
“There’ll be other grants.” Troy donned his shirt and peeled off the fingerless gloves he wore when he played anything competitive in his wheelchair. “Caroline said she’d fund a grant for us. To thank you for being there when she needed you.”
“And that would be right up until the night she turned down my proposal?” The fact that he could talk about it now told Mike that his ego had taken a bigger blow than his heart had. But that blow had been the third strike in the relationship game. He had no plans to step up to the plate and put his heart on the line anymore. If he couldn’t tell the difference between a friends-with-benefits package and a connection that was leading to forever, he’d do well to steer clear of anything serious. He’d been the shoulder to cry on, the protective big brother and the best friend too many times to risk it. He could rely on his principles, his family and friends like Troy. But he wasn’t about to rely on his heart again. “No. No asking Caroline. I didn’t propose because I wanted her money, and I’m not going to take it now as a consolation prize.”
Troy knew just how far he could push the relationship button before he made a joke. “Maybe you could hock the engagement ring. That’d keep us open another month.”
Mike glared down at his friend for a moment before laughter shook through his chest. “More like a day and a half.”
“Dude, no wonder she said no.”
The shared laughter carried them through the rest of putting away the equipment they’d used and prepping for their first—and, as far as Mike knew, their only—appointment of the morning. But even Troy’s mood had sobered by the time they headed toward the door leading into the entry area and hallway that led to a row of offices and locker rooms. “You’re a smart guy, Mikey. You’ll figure out a way to keep us solvent.”
“Without losing your apartment or my house?”
“I’d be happy to go out and recruit us more female clientele. It’s Ladies’ Night at the Shamrock tonight. I can pour on some of that legendary Anthony charm.”
“Creeper.”
“You got a better plan?”
“Not at the moment.”
“You’re thinkin’ too hard on this, Mike. We haven’t even been open a year. We’ll get more paying customers soon. I feel it in my bones.” He held up a fist and waited for Mike to absorb some of his positive thinking.
Trusting his friend’s outlook more than his own, Mike bumped his fist against Troy’s. “I just have to be patient, right?”
“Nobody waits out trouble better than you.”
Mike shook his head. “Is that supposed to be a compli—?” The door opened before they reached it, and the center’s office manager, Frannie Mesner, stepped into the gym. “Good morning.”
“Hey, Sun...shine.” Troy’s effusive greeting fell flat when they saw the puffy, red-rimmed eyes behind Frannie’s glasses. He rolled his chair over to get a box of tissues off the supply cart and take them to her. She sniffed back a sob as she took the box.
Was she hurt? Had she gotten some bad news? Mike moved in beside her and dropped a comforting arm around her trembling shoulders. “Frannie?”
The flush of distress on Frannie’s pale cheeks made her freckles disappear. She pulled out a handful of tissues and dabbed her eyes before blowing her nose. “Leo gets released on parole today.”
Her ex. She wasn’t hurt. But definitely bad news.
“Has he contacted you?” Mike asked.
“He’s not supposed to.”
“Has he contacted you?” he repeated, articulating the protective concern in his voice. Frannie shook her head, stirring short wisps of copper hair over her damp cheeks.
Troy set the tissue box in his lap. “Is the restraining order still in effect?”
Mike watched the confidence she’d built over the past few months disappear in the span of a few heartbeats.
When she didn’t answer, Mike pulled away to face her. “Take a few