Killer Calories

“Because if you are, I have to tell you, I’m very disappointed in—
    “ Savannah !” Dion knelt by her side. “What’s wrong?’
    “I think I pulled something,” she said through gritted teeth. “My ankle... shooting pains... o-o-o-o, it hurts!
    He peeled down her sock and studied the appointed ankle. “Really?” he said.
    “Of course, really.” She gave an indignant snort. “Do you think I’d lie about a thing like that, just to keep from getting up in the middle of the night and coming out here to jump, push up, squat, and thrust with you fools?”
    He cleared his throat and gave her a devilish grin. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
    “Well, if I say my ankle’s sprained, it’s sprained, dammit. Now I wanna see the doctor.”
    She glanced over at Tammy, who seemed to be wearing a new look of awareness.
    “Yeah, I think we’d better have Dr. Ross examine her,” Tammy told Dion with great gravity. “She slipped on a snow-cone wrapper and fell in a Kmart, and she sued their asses off. She won, too.”
    “Okay, okay. Can you walk?” he asked, pulling Savannah gently to her feet.
    She felt his arms, hard and muscular around her waist. Sliding her hand along his equally developed shoulders, Savannah gave him a deep-dimple smile and donned her silkiest Southern accent. “Why, I don’t believe I can. I’m afraid you’re just going to have to carry me.”

    Thrown over his shoulder, like a sack of potatoes wasn’t what Savannah had in mind, when she suggested Dion transport her to the clinic. By the time he got her there, so much blood had rushed to her head that she felt like her face was going to explode.
    “Gee, thanks,” she told him, as he deposited her at the front door and left with some murmured excuse about having to continue the exercise session with the others.
    Dr. Ross arrived moments later, his wavy, dark hair boyishly mussed, his shirttail half-out. He looked deliciously bedraggled.
    “I see not everybody around here gets up at the crack of dawn,” she said dryly. “I guess you reserve that privilege for your guests.”
    “Of course. Who, in his right mind, would want to get up at this ungodly hour and jump around like a lunatic? That is how you hurt yourself, isn’t it?”
    “Oh, yeah,” she said, remembering her supposed injury. “I think it was that last jumping jack that put me over the edge.”
    He unlocked the front door—quickly, because he had a real key—offered her a supportive shoulder, and guided her inside the clinic, where she had been only a few hours before.
    “Let’s set you down right over here,” he said, leading her to the examination table. “And we’ll have a look at you.”
    He flipped on an overhead light, then walked by the counter where his instruments were laid in tidy rows.
    Except for his ear thingamabob, she thought as she spotted it, lying crooked and on top of his tongue depressor thingamajigs... just where she and Tammy had left it.
    He noticed, too. He paused beside the counter, looked puzzled and maybe a little irritated, then straightened the arrangement to his liking.
    A second later, he seemed to have forgotten all about it, his attention fully on her. She breathed an inward sigh of relief.
    “A wayward jumping jack, you say?” He grabbed his stool, rolled it over to the table where she was, and sat down on it. “Yep. That was the culprit.”
    “Would you say it’s more of a throb or a sting?”
    Was this a trick question? The mercury in her paranoia thermometer rose.
    “Maybe a bit of both.”
    “A bit?”
    “Okay, a lot... of both, that is.”
    “Sounds serious. We may have to amputate.”
    “How about if you just write me a note, excusing me from P.E. class for about a week while it heals?”
    He gave her a searching look with those great eyes that were the same rich amber as his tortoiseshell glasses. She felt herself melting. In fact, if he kept holding her ankle like that and looking at her that way, she might just turn into a big, warm, wet puddle right there on his examination table.
    “Is that what you want from me, Savannah ?” he asked, every word, every syllable, dripping with sexual innuendo. Or was it just her hormone-stimulated imagination? It was hard to tell. “You want me to write you a note to get you out of class?”
    “Oh, Doctor,” she said, leaning toward him, her eyes trained on his full, sensitive-looking lips. “I do want that from you. I do.”
    “You do?”
    “More than