EXCERPT
PROLOGUE
The wrestling crowd exploded in a deafening, reverberating chant, ‘Wild Man Harris’, shouted by the men and screamed by the ladies as Raymond Lee Harris sauntered toward the ring.
His red, white and blue cape swung backwards and flared up, caught in the draft of wind generated by two huge rafter-mounted fans, turned on per his instruction. It was all part of his show, purposefully hyping his motto of ‘Wild Man Harris, always ready to fly into action’.
His skin-tight purple trunks hugged his six foot four frame, leaving little to the imagination, emphasized the obvious—Lee ‘Wild Man’ Harris was definitely well endowed. And as his muscled upper torso, his broad chest, ripped abs and perfectly tapered body were exposed, Lee lifted his hand in a wave.
Flashing his famous, white-toothed smile to the ladies in the front row, he paused briefly to tease them by flexing his pectorals. Then, following his trademark gesture, he blew them a kiss and one—a pretty, blonde-headed girl he guessed to be in her late teens—struggled to unhook and wiggle out of her bra, which she tossed to him as he drew near her. Lee chuckled as he caught it mid-air, kissed it and tossed it back to her.
This kind of over-the-top accolade still astonished Lee. Ever since he’d won the championship title the year prior it had been this way. Drinking it in, glancing around, Lee wondered what those rabid fans would say if they knew this on-stage persona, which he’d worked hard to perpetuate over the years, was absolutely contrary to his true personality.
Lee was actually shy in his everyday world encounters. He preferred reading a good book and cooking a gourmet meal to enjoy at home with his family; his family being his three best friends and the one lady they all loved, Kayla.
Yet here, in the midst of this adoring crowd of strangers, Lee preened as was expected of him, donning that one-eighty degree different personality as easily as he had the cape, to give his fans the show they anticipated. The show he knew they had paid to see.
With those conflicting thoughts running through his mind, Lee executed his usual agile and flamboyant flip over the ropes to enter the ring, unhooked his cape and tossed it to his manager before bowing to the audience.
With his second glance at the upturned faces, Lee frowned in confusion as he spotted Kayla and her other “husbands”, Harm, Luke and J.J. He wasn’t surprised to see Luke and Harm because he knew they enjoyed wrestling, but Kayla and J.J.? This didn’t make sense. Neither of them liked wresting, especially Kayla who had said more than once she considered the sport barbaric.
Something was wrong—very wrong! Lee suddenly knew it as the bell rang, followed by a jarring rendition that pounded through his head of his adopted theme song, Hail to the Chief. Everything began to waver as that sound became a sharp pain.
Frowning, Lee glanced down at them again, but they had all vanished. Even the crowd was gone. Nothing was left but that insistent ringing and the pain that throbbed behind his eyes.
Lee awoke from the dream with a start, confused, his heart rate accelerated with anxiety as he struggled back to the present. Then the truth hit him with brutal force and he lay wishing he could go back to sleep and pick up the threads of that dream.
Unable to shake off a lethargic sense of depression, Lee glanced at his watch. It was 7:30 p.m. He’d silently vowed to stop taking these late afternoon naps which he’d fallen into the habit of doing, not only because his energy seemed to be sapped by around three every day, but also to kill time in unconscious mode.
Disgusted with himself, Lee exhaled a long breath as he stared dully up at the intricate, ceiling-mounted lift that allowed him to lift and lower himself from the bed to his wheelchair without assistance. A familiar rage swept over him. He hated that device! He hated his useless legs! He hated waking up at all.
The ringing persisted. It drew his attention to his cell phone, which he’d forgotten to put on vibrate. Cursing, he snatched it up from the bedside table, glaring at the caller ID.
It was Harm Pranston again, his once best friend and former co-husband. Harm had called periodically since Lee had been released from the hospital, but Lee had never answered. He didn’t want to talk, especially to someone who’d known him in his prime, when he was a complete man. The last thing he needed was to be pitied for being half a man. That was how Lee saw himself now—incomplete–the best part of him gone forever.
With an exasperated sigh, knowing he couldn’t dodge talking to Harm forever and believing if he did, Harm would just show up on the doorstep, Lee answered the call. He choked back tears as he heard the relief in his best friend’s voice.
“Lee? This is Harm. How are you, buddy? I’ve called several times, even left a couple of messages. Glad you picked up this time.”
CHAPTER 1
The Gods of Destiny
Thirty-one-year-old Cassandra Sheppard stood nervously outside Lee Harris’ door, building up her courage to ring the bell. She had lobbied for this therapist job, ever since she’d heard about it from Martin Long, the manager of the outpatient rehab center, out of which she worked on a temporary basis when not employed by some individual client.
It had been like a dream come true, hearing that Lee Harris was the one who was seeking a live-in therapist. Cassandra had shrugged off Martin’s warnings that Lee was an extremely difficult patient; that he threw temper tantrums, not to mention the fact that his language left much to be desired.
She had assured Martin that not only was she the one who could manage Lee, but she was the only one he should recommend. Then she reminded him of her motto, which she religiously followed and instilled in all her patients, and which had garnered amazing results with which Martin couldn’t argue.
“I won’t give up on Mr. Harris, Martin. You know my motto—‘you can give out but you never give up and in the end, you win’. I will make Mr. Harris a winner. Will you recommend me?”
Martin had relented against his better judgment, saying as a parting gesture, that if she found herself in deeper than she wanted to be, give him a call and he’d come to the rescue.
Recalling that, Cassandra thought, deeper than I want to be? Impossible. I want to go as deep into Lee Harris’ life, and hopefully his heart, as I can.
It seemed that fate, or the Gods of Destiny, were on her side because here she was, at the door of the one man she had obsessed over for years!
Cassandra had followed Lee Harris’ wrestling career from his first match, which she’d gone to with a boyfriend she quickly forgot about as she laid eyes on the man of her dreams, to the last. It was that last farewell match that she recalled now—Lee stopping to wink at her—catching the bra she tossed at him, kissing it and tossing it back.
Her then boyfriend, whose name she had long forgotten, had gotten up and left in a huff when she did that, but she hadn’t cared. She had gotten noticed by Lee and that was all that mattered. She still had that bra.
Smiling with that memory, Cassandra remembered how her friends had kidded her about her obsession with the wrestling mania. She’d never confided to anyone that it wasn’t the wrestling she loved—it was Lee Harris.
Biting her lip, Cassandra took in a deep breath to steady her nerves, than rang the doorbell. While she waited for Lee to answer the door, she wondered what he would think of her; wondered if maybe he might even remember that wide-eyed, star-struck bleached-blonde girl who had tossed him her bra.
Of course, she realized she looked very different now. She had long since allowed her hair to return to its natural shade and she wore less make-up. In her twenties, she’d piled it on in order to at least look her age because when she was actually in her twenties, she looked like a teenager.
Good genes, she always said, when someone commented on the fact that she never seemed to age. Her raven-colored hair had miraculously survived the bleaching process and now fell softly around her shoulders, full and lustrously shiny.
Fighting back a flash of impatience, Cassandra rang the doorbell again. She strained to hear a noise from inside to indicate that he was approaching the door, while she mentally calmed herself.
* * *
Lee wheeled down the wide hallway and entered the special elevator he’d had installed in the two-story home his manager, at his request, had purchased and had had the specific renovations done that would ensure Lee could be independent after being discharged from the hospital.
Once down on the first floor, Lee easily maneuvered the living/dining room, sparse in its decor for easy wheelchair access, and rolled into the spacious kitchen. For a minute, he just sat looking at the specially designed cooking area, everything lowered to accommodate a wheelchair-bound individual choosing to prepare his own meals.
Cooking had always been Lee’s great love, just a notch below his love for what had once been his perfect polyandry life with Kayla and the guys. But both those loves were in the past.
Lee ground his teeth in frustration as those memories floated through his mind—laughing at one of Harm’s jokes while they all sat around the kitchen island in Kayla’s house, which they preferred over the formal dining room–Kayla and the guys bragging about his cooking—later picking up Kayla, cradling her in his arms as he effortlessly carried her upstairs and into the bedroom.
That last image caused him to wince. The thought of never being able to pick any woman up and carry her again, never to walk again, made him almost physically sick to his stomach. Swallowing hard, Lee studied his perfect kitchen, shaking his head, feeling mutated and useless.
Before the plane crash that had left him paralyzed, food, and the preparing of it, had been one of the ultimate pleasures in Lee’s life. It had led to his opening a chain of gourmet restaurants, a chain he still owned but never visited anymore to try his hand at some new recipe to delight his patrons. He recalled his co-husbands teasing him about it, and pointing out his expanding waistline, saying it was like he lived to eat.
Now a pale version of his former self, Lee just ate to live and sometimes wondered why he even bothered. The tan he’d acquired before the crash had long since dissipated and even though his tremendous upper body muscle mass was still visible, what Lee saw when he looked in a mirror now was a dwindling shadow of the vibrant man he had once been.
Muttering obscenities, Lee heard the doorbell chime again. He glanced at the black-rimmed kitchen clock. It was 8:00 p.m., so he assumed it was his new therapist who he’d been told would be arriving around this time.
Though he’d vehemently vetoed the idea of a live-in ‘nursemaid’, as he considered someone who would be hovering about trying to help him do everyday things he was determined to do for himself, he had finally agreed to a live-in therapist for a trial period. But only after his former agent/manager and now his only remaining friend, had worn him down with unrelenting persistence, soliciting his vow to at least give it six months.
Lee had gone through four therapists at the outpatient therapy clinic before being released from the hospital’s rehab center. He didn’t blame them for giving up on him; for not putting up with his short-temper. He realized he was far from being an easy patient–patient being the operative word that, when the therapists used it, immediately sent Lee into rage mode.
The mild-mannered, easy-going days of the old ‘complete man’ Lee were over. Now, inner rage drove the crippled shell of him through each day, and each day his fuse got shorter. It didn’t take much for him to explode and tell the therapists how stupid he thought what they were telling him to try and do was; that it all was a senseless waste of time; that he was a damned cripple and would always be a cripple. So why bother?
Lee dreaded meeting this new therapist. He already regretted having given his word to give it a six-month trial. He envisioned another muscle-bound guy who would strut in, confident and manly, making him feel even more diminished than he was.
The chiming doorbell jarred Lee out of his morose reverie. With a resigned, inhaled breath, he rolled out of the kitchen, down the hall to the front door and opened it. He stared at the woman who stood, clutching the handle of a roll-away bag.
“Hello, Mr. Harris,” she said. “I’m Cassandra Sheppard, your new therapist.”
A woman? Not muscle-bound by any means. In fact, the exact opposite. She was perhaps five foot five at the most, curvy, tanned, with wavy, shoulder-length dark hair, a dazzling white smile that she flashed at him, dimples at full mast. Not at all what Lee was expecting. He sat staring at her, incredulous, his disapproval and disbelief clearly outlined in his scowl. His long dormant cock twitched despite his determination to feel nothing but antipathy.
Cassie did see his disapproval and imagined what he was thinking as he just continued to stare. She waited for him to speak, but he didn’t. She managed to conceal the fact that this awkward silence was making her nervous.
Something about Cassandra struck a chord in Lee. His frown deepened as he tried to grasp what it was. She seemed vaguely familiar, but he summarily dismissed that thought. How could he possibly know her?
As Cassie’s large, brown eyes caught and held his, she insinuated herself through the door, forcing Lee to wheel backwards. She shut the door behind herself, saying in a professional, no-nonsense tone, “As soon as you show me to my room, we’ll discuss the exercises you’ll be doing. Oh, I was told you have a completely equipped rehab gym, plus an indoor lap pool. That’s good. Swimming is a great way to keep in shape while we build up those leg muscles. I hope your rehab gym includes an Exoskeleton suit.”
“What the hell is an Exoskeleton suit?” Lee snapped.
Hiding her triumphant smile, proud that she’d at least gotten him to speak, Cassie said nonchalantly, “Oh, that’s something you’ll be using before long to walk again.”
Lee snorted in disgust, the gentleman in him demanding he withhold the string of expletives that were on the tip of his tongue. He’d never disrespected a woman in his life and whatever else this therapist was, she was definitely a woman.
