“The spotlight was long gone by then. I’d changed my name. And using my real name at that point would only have made everything worse.” She took a deep breath and sighed, reaching forward to mirror his actions and tuck a strand of his too-long hair behind his ear. Noah covered her hand with his, drawing her wrist to his lips for a kiss.
“I love what I do,” she said. “I love working one-on-one with athletes. I love helping them heal and achieve. I love watching them get back to what they were born to do. Holding on to this career for the rest of my life was more important than proving that asshole wrong. It still is.”
Julia reached down and refastened his pants, sliding the belt into place and tucking the tail beneath a belt loop. The gesture was sweet and intimate.
“Why didn’t you tell me about your swimming and your medals?” he asked, trying to keep his tone light, like it didn’t bother him. “I mean, it’s relevant to training. It’s infinitely more impressive than your degrees, though those are pretty sick too. But hundreds of thousands of people get through college. Very few become gold medalists.”
“I couldn’t tell you one thing without telling you everything, which is why I’ve tried to distance myself from the past.”
“Where’d your last name come from?”
“Bailey’s my middle name.”
“Hmm. How did you accomplish so much in so little time? You can’t be more than twenty six, twenty seven.”
“I’m twenty eight. While I was training for the Olympics, I got through my studies fast with dedicated instructors. Had finished my first two years by the time I should have graduated high school. When I hurt my shoulder, I went back to college and double majored. Because the courses were so closely related, I only had to take a handful of extra classes. Then I got my job with Performance—the only thing I used my Olympic history to help with—and finished my masters at night while I worked there.”
“Fucking impressive.” He was awed by her tenacity. Her ambition. And her resistance to put up with the shit he’d given her early on totally made sense. “Why swimming?”
“I was good at it at an early age, which thrilled my parents—and nothing I ever did was good enough for them. So I clung to that golden nugget and continued to swim. It worked
when I was winning but came back to bite me in the ass when I wasn’t. And when I hurt my shoulder in the plane crash, then blew it out at the Olympics because I swam when I should have rested and healed…”
She heaved a breath. “Everything fell apart. My boyfriend ran off with the latest rising star, taking all my money with him. My sponsors yanked all my financial support. And my parents blamed me for their sudden lack of social invitations. I all but evaporated for everyone. You’re everyone’s darling on the way up, and everyone’s dirty little secret on the way down.”
“Amen,” he murmured. “So many things about you make sense now.” Including how deeply they’d clicked, and why she was so different from other women.
“Aside from our families’ financial statuses,” she said, “I imagine our young lives were very similar. I grew up in the same specialized independent boarding schools for Olympic athletes that you did. Lived with the same daily expectations and pressures. The mindset and all the fears and insecurities that go along with it were burned into my neural pathways for most of my life.
“So when I made a new life after swimming, I let go of all the expectations and disappointment.
But to do that, I also had to let go of the relationships that went with them. And for the first time in my life, I just wanted to be Julia. I wanted to be normal. Unfortunately, my parents didn’t want a normal daughter. They wanted an extraordinary daughter.”
The car finally turned into the hotel’s parking lot, and Noah slid a hand over Julia’s hair, pulling her in for a gentle kiss. “No matter how you slice it, they got an extraordinary daughter. If they don’t realize that, it’s their loss.”
She smiled and eased off his lap but threaded their fingers as they waited for the driver to stop in front of the hotel.
“Who was that guy you were talking to when Phillips approached you?” he asked.
She turned a thoughtful frown on him.
“The guy I thought you’d given your number to,” he reminded her.
“Oh right.” She reached over and stroked his cheek, the affection in her eyes burrowing into Noah’s heart. “He was a sports medicine doctor who’s heard about the cement your surgeon used and knows someone who works at the lab that makes it. Said he’s used it himself in a few delicate surgeries where a screw needed more traction in the bone. He was going to see if he could get more information for me.”
“Good to hear.” He leaned in and kissed her forehead. “Thought I’d lost you to some brilliant venture capitalist.”
“Hardly.” She tipped her head back and looked him in the eyes, a soft smile turning her lips. “Besides, I’m yours, remember?”
And she kissed him, a lingering, sweet kiss that made him think of hearts and candy and flowers and forever—insane things that never entered his mind.
But as she turned to accept the driver’s hand and rose from the car, Noah knew without a doubt, he’d finally found himself an extraordinary woman.
One he wanted to think about a future with.
Julia woke languidly to the tickle of Noah’s warm mouth teasing the nape of her neck and his cock riding the small of her back. She smiled and stretched, then relaxed as he tightened the arm lying across her waist, drawing her naked body back against his. The slide of soft skin and warm muscle hazed her mind with a dreamlike quality. He was just too good, too perfect to be true. But their last few days together had been as damn near a fairy tale as she’d ever experienced, and if she hadn’t already fallen for him weeks ago, she would have hit hard over the last few days.
“Mmm.” She reached back and wrapped her arm around his head, sinking her fingers into his hair and pressing her ass against his erection. “What a beautiful way to wake up.”