Just Physical (11 page)

Jill started the car and followed Crash's directions to her spot in the underground garage of her apartment building. “Lots of milk, no sugar,” she said when she shut off the engine.

“Um, excuse me?”

“That's the way I like my coffee.” With an impish grin, Jill released her seat belt and got out of the car.

Chuckling, Crash climbed out too. She already felt much better than she had half an hour before. Amazing what the right kind of company could do.

While Jill followed Crash up to the second floor of the apartment building, she debated the wisdom of that decision.
Oh, come on.
Staying away from relationships was one thing, but she didn't want to become a hermit in the process. Since the diagnosis, she'd been so busy rearranging her life that she hadn't made new friends other than Lauren. She liked Crash's kind, easygoing nature and her sense of humor. Why wouldn't she want to have her in her life, at least as a friend?

It's not like I'll throw her down on the nearest horizontal surface and have my way with her as soon as the door closes behind us.

Promptly, images of just that scenario flashed through her mind. Growling under her breath, she shoved them away. She could do this—just be Crash's friend. So what if she found her attractive? When she had first met Grace, she'd been attracted to her too, but over time, that had faded. While she wasn't blind to Grace's beauty, she no longer felt anything but friendship for her. All she had to do was wait until the same happened with Crash.

And ignore the way her ass looked in that pair of jeans.

She directed her gaze elsewhere as Crash unlocked the door to the third apartment on the right.

“Come on in,” Crash said and led her into a studio apartment.

To the right was a tiny kitchen with dirty dishes piled up in the sink, and to the left, a couple of weights, a skipping rope, and a towel lay on a yoga mat.

With a hint of a blush on her cheeks, Crash picked up the towel. “Sorry. I wasn't expecting visitors.”

“You should have seen my house before I hired a housekeeper.”

Crash let out a low whistle. “You've got a housekeeper? Wow. Acting must pay better than I thought.”

“I wish. Susana, my housekeeper, only comes in for an hour or two every day, and she's very affordable. She'd work for free if I let her. She kind of adopted me.”

“That's good.” Crash walked into the kitchenette and asked over her shoulder, “So, lots of milk, no sugar, right?”

“Right.”

While Crash made coffee, Jill stepped farther into the studio apartment to look at the framed photos on the bookshelf. They showed Crash with an older couple that was probably her parents and five men that had to be her brothers. Leaned against another frame was a strip of photos taken in a booth at an arcade or an amusement park. Crash, one of her brothers, and two kids that were probably her nieces and nephews had all squeezed into the booth and were making silly faces at each other. In each picture, everyone was smiling broadly, their arms around each other. What a difference to the stiff, staged Christmas photos on her own bookshelf. Jill sighed and turned away from the photos.

This is nice,
Crash thought as she popped another cookie into her mouth and chewed contentedly. She hadn't had a close female friend since Sabrina, her mentor, had betrayed her by sleeping with Kyleigh.

Granted, thinking of Jill as just a friend wasn't easy, especially not with the way Jill kept licking cookie crumbs and chocolate off her hands.

The chirping of her cell phone announced a new text message, finally making Crash look away from Jill. She put down her coffee mug and reached for her phone on the coffee table. When she pulled her hand back, her arm brushed Jill's side.

Warmth flowed through the rest of her body. She settled back on her part of the couch and glanced at her phone.

It was a message from TJ.
Want to come over and watch the game with me and the boys?

What game? God, she was really out of the loop. She hadn't spent much time with her best friend since shooting had started.
Sorry,
she typed back.
I've got company.

Oooh. I knew it! That's why I haven't seen you in ages!
TJ's reply was followed by a string of smiley faces, hearts, and virtual kisses.

She rolled her eyes. TJ could be such a girl sometimes.

“If something has come up, I can go,” Jill said next to her.

“Not necessary,” Crash said quickly. She wasn't ready to give up Jill's company yet. “Just a message from a friend who invited me to watch the game.” She dashed off a reply to TJ—
Not that kind of company. Talk to you later
—and then put the phone away.

“Are you sure you don't want to go?”

“Very sure.” Crash gave a rueful smile. “To tell you the truth, I'm not even sure what game he's talking about.”

“Baseball. The Dodgers. Hello?” Jill waved her hand up and down in front of Crash's face. “What kind of lesbian are you?”

“One who's busy having coffee with you.” She took the cookie bowl from Jill, trying to ignore the tingling that went through her at the brush of their hands.

Jill peeked into the depths of her coffee mug, then over at Crash. “Can I ask you about the stunt you did today?”

Instantly, her stomachache was back. While she had talked with TJ about the mechanics of the failed fire stunt many times, she had never spoken about the emotions involved. But after Jill had driven her home and been there for her, she couldn't just shut her out, so she nodded reluctantly.

“You didn't hurt yourself when you were thrown through that wall, did you?” Jill asked.

Crash shook her head. “The wall wasn't the problem. It's the fire I didn't like.” That, of course, was the understatement of the century.

“Yeah. I heard some of the other stunt performers say that fire stunts are some of the most dangerous gags around.”

“That's true. If you work with fire, there's no trick involved, no illusion of danger. The fire and the danger are real.”

Jill swirled the coffee in her mug as if it were wine and studied it, deep in thought.

Did she sense that there was more to Crash's dislike of fire stunts?

“Have you ever gotten hurt doing a stunt?” Jill finally asked.

Crash rubbed her neck, only realizing what she was doing when she touched the burn scar. Quickly, she snatched her hand away. “I don't like talking about stunts that went wrong. If I allow my thoughts to linger on the dangers of my job for too long, I won't be able to do what I do for a living anymore. Once I've analyzed the situation and found out what the problem was, I need to move on.”

“So you did get hurt,” Jill said.

Boy, she was like a terrier with a bone, not letting it go. “Nothing major. I've been lucky so far.”

“Why do I get the feeling that your definition of ‘nothing major' differs from mine?”

“I mostly just got bruises and cuts, really. Some were deep enough to require stitches, but I haven't had any broken bones or injuries that put me in the hospital for long.”

Jill turned on the couch so she was facing Crash more fully. “
Mostly
just cuts and bruises? You did get hurt in a stunt involving fire, didn't you?”

Crash hugged her knees to her chest and put her chin on top. “Yes,” she whispered.

Jill slid closer and touched Crash's leg.

It was just a fleeting touch, which didn't last for more than a moment, but it warmed Crash's entire body.

“You don't need to talk about it if you don't want to. I shouldn't have asked.”

“It's okay,” Crash said. She clutched her shins more tightly. One of her hands crept up and touched the scar on her neck.

Instead of pressuring her into telling her more, Jill just watched her.

“The year before last, I had a string of bad luck. First, I hurt my leg during a motorcycle stunt and was out of work for months. When my leg finally healed, I took the first job that was offered to me, even though it was a low-budget action movie with a stunt coordinator that didn't have the best reputation.” She lifted her head and rubbed her knees with both hands. “I should have known better, but I was eager to work again, so I said yes. They didn't have the budget to do more than a take or two for most stunt scenes, and practice was kept to a minimum too. Everything went okay the first few days, but then…”

Jill slid onto the edge of the couch, her eyes wide. “What happened?”

“I was scheduled to do a full-body burn. The director had very specific ideas how he wanted the scene to look. He wanted the shot done during sunset. The crew setting up for the stunt ran a little behind, and we were quickly losing the light. We were in a hurry, and that's never good when you're doing a stunt.”

Jill nodded. “Yeah. I realized you and Ben and the rest of the stunt crew always put a lot of time into preparing each stunt.”

“I wish they'd done that on the set of
Point of Impact
too.” Crash sighed. “They lathered the fire gel onto my skin and clothing, but the problem is that it only protects you while it's wet, and it dries within five minutes, so that upped the time pressure. The wind picked up just as they were about to set me on fire.” Her jaw muscles were hard as stone as she ground her teeth. “We should have put it off, but we didn't.”

Jill hardly seemed to breathe as Crash continued.

“The fire was supposed to be mainly on my front, where most of the fire gel went, but with the wind it crept upward immediately and snaked around to the back of my neck.” She pulled down the neck of her T-shirt in the back, giving Jill a glimpse of the raised, uneven scar, which had started to itch as soon as she'd started talking about the damn fire stunt. “By the time they put me out, I had this little souvenir.” She tried to sound casual, but the expression on Jill's face revealed that she saw through her quite easily.

“God, Crash.” She slid over on the couch. For a moment, she looked as if she was about to touch the scar on Crash's neck, but then she put her hand on Crash's shoulder instead and rubbed gently. “No wonder having to do a fire stunt made you throw up.”

Crash groaned. “Don't remind me. That wasn't one of my finest moments. If Ben had seen that…”

“What if he had?” Jill asked, sounding a bit angry. “I bet they all had moments like that. It doesn't make you a bad stunt performer. It just makes you human.”

A smile crept onto Crash's face. Jill Corrigan, the woman who went out of her way to never let anyone see her vulnerable, was passionately defending her moment of weakness. It warmed Crash's heart, chasing away the memories that made her blood run cold.

“What?” Jill asked.

“Nothing,” Crash said, but her smile broadened.

Jill stopped stroking Crash's arm.

Crash instantly missed the touch, comforting and exciting all at the same time.

“Nothing?” Jill playfully narrowed her eyes at her. “You're grinning like a fool over nothing?”

“Yep. That's my answer, and I'm sticking to it.”

Raising up on one knee, Jill grabbed a pillow from the couch. “Oh yeah?”

“I wouldn't do that if I were you. I've got a fourth-dan black belt in Taekwondo, which means I know a lot of moves and techniques to disarm you.”

A challenging glint entered Jill's eyes. “Such as?”

“Such as…this.” Ducking the pillow aimed at her head, Crash started tickling her.

Laughing and shrieking, Jill tried to escape the tickling hands.

Crash stalked after her like a lioness and quickly disarmed her.

Jill squirmed and tickled back. Her palm brushed Crash's breast, nearly turning the tickling match into something else.

Breathing hard, hands on each other's bodies and faces just inches apart, they both stopped and pulled apart.