Free Joker's Wild by Sandra Chastain

our coach had decided it was too risky.”
    “But you did it anyway.”
    “Yes. We’d completed the move several times back in Colorado. Then in practice I landed off balance and twisted my knee. For the next two days I couldn’t even rehearse. They gave me a shot so I could perform and, well, the bottom line is we won.”
    “But your knee was badly injured, wasn’t it?” Joker winced as he considered what she’d said. He’d heard the story before, from every professional sports player he’d met or read about.
    “Who knows? In any case, it didn’t matter. I had to go on.”
    “Why?”
    “Mar … Too many people were counting on me. I would have taken any risk. We didn’t have a chance without it.”
    “And you pulled it off. I saw the pictures of the two of you wearing the gold medals.” He didn’t tell her that he’d been drawn to that picture first. She had been smiling in the photo, but her eyes had seemed vacant, dulled with the tension of choked back pain. She’d been hurting even then, and he’d felt her hurt, just by looking at her. The newspapers had said she’d twisted her knee when she stepped down from the box, but he’d known that only sheer willpower had kept her upright during the ceremony and the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
    “Yes. We won. We won the gold medal, and it wasworth it.” There was a fierce pride in her voice, and the trace of a dare.
    “Do you still think it was worth it?”
    “Of course,” she defended hotly. “How many people in the world have ever been the best—at anything? I may never be again, but for that one moment I was the best.”
    “Yet even hurt you kept on skating afterward?”
    “Yes, we knew that it was only a matter of time before the public would forget about us, and we had to consider the future. It wouldn’t have been fair to Mark for me not to go on. We’d worked too hard to quit. After we joined the Ice Follies, we skated all over the world. Even Princess Diana and Prince Charles came to see us.”
    “And you kept on hurting that knee, didn’t you?”
    She didn’t want to answer him. Even to herself it was hard to justify her actions now. At the time she’d have done anything to hang on to the spotlight and Mark. But now it seemed foolish and terribly sad. Masking the pain had caused her injury to worsen and had cost her the very thing she’d wanted most. Kill the pain? No. She’d never do that again. That’s why she’d thrown her medication away.
    “What about your partner?” Joker asked quietly after a long moment.
    “Mark? Mark and I … we split up.”
    “I know. Where is he now?”
    “He’s skating with Dance Europe. He couldn’t be expected to retire just because I couldn’t skate any more. I mean,” her voice rose, “skating is his life.”
    Joker finally understood. Whatever had happened to Allison was more than a knee injury. And if he didn’t misread the sudden tension in her body, Markwas still part of her problem. “But why didn’t you stop? Didn’t you know you were courting disaster?”
    “No! Yes. I don’t know. Injury is always a risk to an athlete. There’s nothing unique about what happened to me.”
    Joker shook his head. He wanted to draw her back into his arms, but he didn’t. Instead he concentrated all his energy on the sadness he sensed in her. As if he were a sponge, he soaked up her fear, and little by little she leaned back until her neck was resting comfortably on his arm again.
    “Why did you stay away for so long, Allison? You could have come home any time.”
    “Joker, I can’t answer any more questions. But I’d like to ask you a few. What exactly is it that you do? I can’t believe that the income you’d earn as a gardener would allow you to buy this place.”
    “I’m a gardener all right, but I’m also a landscaper, and”—he pursed his lips wondering how far to go, then decided to tell it all—“and I do a little gambling now and then.”
    “You