If she was going to run away from home, this was the place to go, thought Lucy MacKinley. Though it was nearly summer, the cool morning air smelled like early spring; all pine forests and waking earth. If there were ever a better place for fresh starts than this remote Northern town, Lucy couldn't imagine it.

Though she stood in a parking lot, Lucy could turn her back on the small office building, lift her chin and believe she was in the middle of nowhere; it was practically the truth. Thick evergreen forest spread as far as she could see from the small rise the town stood on. The greenery was uninterrupted by roads, houses or any other sign of human habitation.

Lucy could hear a car, though, and turned to see one headed her way. Once parked, Lucy's friend Violet bum-shuffled her way out of the driver's seat, maneuvering her eight-month belly around the steering wheel. Lucy jogged to meet her.

"Have you got it?" asked Lucy after saying her hello's.

"Right here." Violet patted her purse.

The two women walked through the outer door of the office building, then stopped before an inner door that read 'Violet Herbertston, Physiotherapist.' Lucy resisted the urge to hop from one foot to the other as Violet dug in her purse for a key, then pressed it into Lucy hand. "Take good care of my baby," Violet said.

"You'll be far too busy taking care of your actual baby to care what I'm doing with your clinic," Lucy teased. She took the key and stood in front of the door, pausing to take a deep breath.

"Are you waiting for me to take a picture?"

"This is a big moment! Don't rush me." With a sense of ceremony, Lucy slid the key in the lock and turned the handle.

The room inside was small and well-worn, but tidy and clean. A battered wooden desk, two matching chairs, and a set of shelves crammed with manuals and binders sat along the left-hand wall. Next to an open space in the center of the room, an exam table stretched along the right-hand wall.

"So that door on the back wall, that leads to the staff room? Or the cafeteria, maybe?" Lucy asked.

The room was about what Lucy had expected, actually, but her habit of giving Violet a hard time about choosing to work in such a remote location was hard to break.

"I forgot how funny you big city girls were. It's a bit different than what you're used to, I know, but you'd be surprised how much we can accomplish here in the sticks with just the basics."

Violet took Lucy on a short tour of the record-keeping system and therapy equipment. Lucy hardly needed it; the two women had become friends during their first year of training to become physiotherapists and Lucy used most of the same systems Violet did.

"Thanks again for starting so quickly," Violet said.

"Not a problem. My boss was more than happy to let me use a few vacation days and leave a bit early." In fact, the woman had practically danced with glee when Lucy had asked to leave before her notice was up.

"I thought you'd have a chance to settle in and unpack before you started. I didn't mean to throw you straight to the wolves."

"Doctor's orders trump unpacking. I don't mind one bit, I promise. Besides, it doesn't look like there's much of a night life to distract me from getting my apartment set up in the evenings."

"Actually, it's pretty busy here this summer. There's a whole whack of people in town shooting a movie on Mrs. Kittington's property. I don't know too much about it. I've been distracted with getting ready for this one," she said, patting her belly. "I've heard it's got monsters or aliens or something though."

"A B-movie with rubber-mask aliens? They film those sorts of things on the streets every other weekend back home. It's not like Frederick Asherton will be in it or anything.

Violet rolled her eyes. "What is it with you and your British actors?"

"Well, I have no love life of my own anymore, so they're like my romantic stand-ins."

"You never know, maybe you'll meet someone here. I did."

Lucy liked what she'd seen so far of Squirrel Falls, but she didn't think too highly of her romantic prospects. Eight-hundred-odd people sounded like a lot, but when you subtracted the people who were over forty, under twenty-one, female, and married, she didn't think she had much chance at all.

"Oh!" Violet exclaimed. "You've got two of my regular clients this morning, and this afternoon, you'll get to meet someone new. Apparently, one of the stuntmen from the movie hurt himself."

"Wow, that's more appointments than I expected."

"People drive a long way to see me. You know the hospital in Holloway?" Lucy nodded. It was over three hours away by car. "That's the next-closest physio, and they've got a waiting list a mile long. It's a special thing to be the one people drive a couple of hours to see."

"Oh, good. I was worried I'd run out of human clients by ten A.M. on my first day and resort to treating cows out of boredom."

"I did that one time. ONCE!" Violet insisted. "And it was a really pretty cow."

Lucy laughed. "Heck, I don't care if I am treating cows. I've got my very own clinic!"

"Only for a year," Violet warned.

"Only for a year," Lucy agreed. She'd quit her job, given up her apartment and sold everything that wouldn't fit in her car. What she'd do when the year was up, though, she had no idea.

* * * * *

Frederick Asherton flipped through the dog-eared script in his hand, searching for some lines.

"Got it," he said. He knew the lines cold, but his friend Chase had asked for help with his own lines. It never hurt to run them through once more.

"Ready?" asked Chase. They were the only two in the room, which was the small sitting area of Chase's private on-set trailer.

Frederick nodded, sitting up taller and adopting the stiff posture of his nineteenth-century character.

"Come, Darcy. You must dance with someone," Chase read, affecting an airy British accent.

"I certainly shall not. You know how I detest it, unless I am particularly acquainted with my partner," said Frederick, exaggerating his own polished British accent to the point of pompousness.

"Upon my honor, I never met with so many pleasant girls in my life as I have this evening, and several of them are uncommonly pretty." Chase tried to keep his eyes on Frederick, but glanced down at the blue binder containing his own copy of the script half-way through his line.

"You are dancing with the only handsome girl in the room."

Chase's eyes twinkled with mischief and he turned a page. " 'Heartthrob Frederick Asherton spoke to Fancy Pants Magazine only days after his second Academy Award nomination. 'It's an honor, to be sure. Unexpected, but most welcome,' Asherton says with his usual grace'."

"Oh, God," said Frederick. He laughed and dropped his face into hand. Frederick had done what he'd thought was a serious interview, only to have it written up as a fawning puff piece. Frederick's friends seemed determined to bring it up every time they could.

" 'Looking more like a runway model than an accomplished actor, English-born Asherton is attracting attention from those beyond the Academy'." Chase had broken character completely and was now speaking in a silly, adoring voice.

Frederick raised an eyebrow. "Are you quite finished?"

"No, we're just getting to the good parts! 'Actress and fellow nominee Neva Straughter herself has been heard publicly fangirling over the perpetually-single Asherton. 'He is the epitome of the gentleman actor breed', gushed Neva in her own recent interview with Fancy Pants."

"Those perfect teeth, were they expensive?" Frederick asked. He balled up his fist and pretended to line up a punch.

Chase grinned and held an elbow up for protection, but kept reading. "This one is my favorite. 'I am so grateful for my recent success,' said Asherton before making this writer melt with a heart-stoppingly charming smile.' "

Grateful only for his greater height, Frederick reached across the kitchen table and snatched the binder from the man's hands. A copy of Fancy Pants magazine fell onto the artificial wood with a crunch as the paper crumpled. Frederick slapped his hand down on top of the glossy sheets before Chase could yank them back and, after a brief tussle, Frederick victoriously pulled the magazine from Chase's hands.

"I should take my 'charming smile' over to the scriptwriter, see if she'll throw in a scene where I get to pummel you with a sword."

"Don't you dare! I saw you fighting Emile Petran in 'Executing Minnesota.' That dude is huge, and fast. This is too pretty for scars," Chase said, gesturing to his boyish face.

"So we both understand that I can kick your arse anytime?"

"And we both know that you never would, either."

Frederick glanced as his photo next to the article. A sparkle effect decorated the corners of the pink frame that surrounded his face. Frederick scoffed, flipped the magazine closed and pushed it to the far corner of the bench. He knew that doing publicity was part of the job, but it was hard for anyone to take Frederick seriously with twaddle like that popping up everywhere he looked.

"Seriously, man, that is the first time I've ever read 'heartthrob' and 'perpetually single' on the same page before. What is that all about? I mean, you're no Chase Flannery, but for some reason women seem to find you attractive anyways."

"Finding women is easy. Finding women who can see past articles like that," Frederick said, looking at the magazine beside him with annoyance, "Is more of a challenge."

* * * * *

Lucy's first two appointments in her new clinic had gone well, she thought as she popped the last bite of her lunch in her mouth. Lucy put away the containers from her meal, then glanced around the clinic room for anything she'd missed. Satisfied, she swept her hands down the front of her fitted red t-shirt; bagel crumbs did not give one an air of authority. Lucy wasn't looking forward to the appointment. She didn't think that a sweaty, beefed-up adrenaline junky would take kindly to being told what to do by a young, slender-ish, 5'6" woman.

She knew she would never be mistaken for a starlet, what with her sturdy thighs (she was a runner), a nose that was just a bit too big for her face (genetics), and un-polished nails (she just didn't care), but she was content with how she looked in her work uniform of exercise gear and sturdy sneakers, and she had gotten her light brown hair cut by a decent salon just before moving up North. Some men were more amenable to, sometimes literally, bending over backwards for a woman if she was reasonably attractive.

She was just dabbing on a bit of tinted lip gloss when there was a knock at the door.

"Come in!" she called, stuffing the lip gloss back into a desk drawer and plastering a warm, yet authoritative smile to her face. The door opened a crack.

"Ms. MacKinley?" asked a deep, male voice in a smooth British accent. A small shiver of delight ran through her at the sound as she walked to the door. She loved a good British accent.

"Lucy, please." She pulled the door open. Her practiced smile stayed put, but her eyes widened with surprise as they locked onto a pair of delicious pale green ones. No, she must be imagining things. It was chance resemblance, or a stunt double. It couldn't possibly be him standing in front of her...

Frederick Asherton.

* * * * *

Frederick saw the young woman's brain screech to a halt so hard that he was surprised sparks didn't fly out of her ears. He waited for the young woman to speak. She did not make a sound, nor did she move. Nothing else in the small room moved, either, and he had the oddest sensation that time had stopped and he was the only one unaffected.

Frederick wondered if he'd gotten the address wrong. He cast his eyes around the room and spotted a door on the back wall. Perhaps the person he was supposed to meet was in there.

"Ms. MacKinley?" he asked. The woman was still frozen. She blinked at him, but didn't respond. She had pretty eyes, he noticed, warm and brown with long lashes untouched by mascara, and her plump pink lips were parted in surprise. Her snug red shirt and black pants showed off her athletic yet feminine body. She was quite a bit shorter than he was, but most women were.

"Are you Ms. MacKinley, the physiotherapist?" he asked. This was the problem with booking appointments and hotel rooms and such under his pseudonym. It afforded him more privacy when he arrived, but it often shocked people when his famous face appeared at the allotted time.

This woman seemed more than shocked. He feared he'd broken her. It was a shame to break someone so beautiful.

* * * * *

Lucy had now officially spent far too much time drooling over hot British actors; now she was hallucinating them. The mirage in front of her was tall and fit with tousled brown hair and a face that looked like it had been lovingly carved by an old master with modern tastes.

He said some words she didn't understand, but two of them, 'MacKinley', and 'physiotherapist', seemed to be familiar. Important, somehow.

"Are you alright, Lucy?" The hallucination peered at her with hypnotic green eyes.

She repeated his pronunciation in her mind: she pronounced it 'Loo-see', but he'd said 'Lieu-see'. Her name sounded wonderful in his refined, deep voice. Her name! Lucy MacKinley, physiotherapist, that was it.

"Yes, I'm Lucy," she said, as her brain spluttered back to life and started chugging along again. Once she was able to speak those first few words, more came. "Please, come in."

Lucy peeked out the door, afraid her imaginary actor was accompanied by real camera flashes or rubbernecking locals, but the hallway ways, thankfully, empty.

"Frederick Asherton, pleased to meet you."

He walked into Lucy's small clinic room, a little stiffly, she noticed. But even limping, his every move screamed self-confidence. He even, be still her beating heart, smiled at her when she stepped back to let him in.

"Have a seat, please. It's your knee, is it?" she asked, thinking of his gait.

He confirmed that it was, then sat, dropping a small gym bag on the old linoleum floor beside his chair. He was wearing a dark blue polo shirt and had aviator-style sunglasses hanging from the collar, giving her a peek of his muscled chest with its sprinkling of dark brown curls. He also wore a pair of gray warm-up pants that tied with a drawstring, and slip-on loafers; the unofficial uniform of lower body injuries.

Lucy reached for a clipboard that contained the information she'd gotten over the phone and sat across from him on the only other chair in the office.

"So you booked the appointment as Todd Alsotte?" she asked.

"Yes, that's me. Privacy reasons."

"Of course." The hallucination was speaking again. Maybe Lucy was actually in her bed, sound asleep and dreaming right now. If she was, in fact, awake, Lucy could have done with a bit of warning, but she understood. She was grateful, actually. If she'd known that one of her favorite movie stars would be showing up on her doorstep at work, she wouldn't have slept a wink last night, never mind been able to eat breakfast, and she would be a complete mess right now. Not that she was at her best since she answered the door. Her fluttering stomach and shaking hands made her theory that this was just a dream seem less likely.

The clipboard rattling faintly in her hands drew her attention and, reminded of the responsibility it signified, she slipped into her familiar intake routine. "You fell three days ago during a fight scene, it says here?" she asked.

"Yes. I was trying to jump up onto a stone wall. Not high, but it was wet from the rain overnight. I was trying to do too many things at once: land my jump, keep my hat from falling off, slay a zombie, protect my leading lady, and down I went. I landed on the wall, knee-first."

Lucy scribbled on her clipboard. "Wait, top hats and zombies?"

"Yes, for PPZ." To Lucy's delight, he pronounced the final letter 'zed,' like a proper Englishman.

"PPZ?" Lucy asked, mimicking his pronunciation.

"Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I play the prideful, yet deadly, Mr. Darcy," he said, with a devilish slash of an imaginary sword.

Lucy's pen halted. "That is so cool!"

She loved being carried away by a good book almost as much as she loved a good movie, and she had a soft spot for the English classics, but monster movies were her guilty pleasure. As a kid, she'd alternated between Jane Austen's characters and Bram Stoker's or Mary Shelley's each Hallowe'en. Frederick Asherton had played a number of historical roles, some of which involved horses and sword fights. His range was enormous, from hard and distant to funny and playful to just plain smoldering. He was perfect for the role, she knew at once.

She imagined the man in front of her in a top hat, old-fashioned coat and tight riding pants, looking like righteousness incarnate with fierce intensity on his handsome face as he swung his sword through the neck of a moaning zombie. Lucy, of course, played the leading lady, standing back to back with him, a sword in her own hand.

The image of herself fighting off zombies with Frederick faded when she realized that the love interest, the vivacious Elizabeth Bennet, would of course be played by Neva Straughter. Lucy had a better chance of growing wings than being Frederick's love interest. She was just Lucy MacKinley, small town physio.

But if her role was only a bit part, she would still play it to the best of her abilities, just as she would have if the man before her were any other patient.

She was mollified when she realized this meant that she was going to get to touch Frederick Asherton. If he were real, that was.

"I'll need to examine your knee. Did you happen to bring a pair of shorts with you?" she asked, looking at the gym bag he'd brought. She hoped he hadn't. She had a lovely mental image of him wearing one of her shorter hospital gowns.

"Yes. The set medic requested that I wear shorts every time he examined me, so I brought some."

"I'm glad you thought of it," Lucy lied. "There's a change room just through there," she said, nodding to the door on the back wall.

"Knee brace off as well?"

"Please."

Frederick took his time getting up so that he didn't put any sudden stress on his injured knee, Lucy was pleased to see. He limped towards the change room like an action hero after a good bar fight.

"Let me know if you need any help," Lucy said automatically. Some of her older or less mobile patients needed assistance getting in and out of their clothes.

A vivid image of undoing his drawstring and sliding those pants down from his lean hips flashed through her mind. "Oh! Not you, of course. Just, some other people...I'll be here if you need anything," she finished lamely.

"I appreciate your concern, Ms. MacKinley," he said over his shoulder without a hint of sarcasm.

Lucy stuck a gel pad in the tiny microwave over her desk and shut the door with more force than necessary, grateful he had spared her dignity after her slip of the tongue.

She needed to calm down. She'd learned early in her career how to handle patients that were scared, angry, hairy, smelly, sexist, even all of the above on one unfortunate occasion. She could handle hot.

Hot, famous, talented, British. Crap. Get it together, MacKinley.

Frederick Asherton walked out of the change room in a pair of lightweight gray shorts. He was barefoot.

My, oh my.

* * * * *

"If I could get you to sit on the exam table, please?" Lucy asked in her best clinical voice: bossy, yet cheerful. He was so tall that he sat down easily on the exam table, bare feet dangling just above the floor.

She had Frederick show her where he hurt, watching as his long elegant hand moved up and down over his sore knee. He did not complain, nor did he play down his injury. A sign that he would be a compliant patient and get better as fast as possible, Lucy hoped.

"Now, I'm going to manipulate your knee to find your range of motion. I want you to tell me when it hurts. Not when it hurts more than you can bear, but when it starts to hurt. We want you to feel better, not worse, when you leave."

"I like that plan. Our medic was doing his best, but was under the impression that the cure for pain was more pain."

"Well, that is not my philosophy. Seriously, if anything hurts, let me know."

"Understood, boss," he said, giving her a mock salute that made her heart skitter with glee. "In fact, I have already told the set manager that I want him to hire someone more thoroughly trained."

"Good idea. I bet people get hurt, or sore, all the time doing stunts," she said, pulling up her chair and sitting so that she was looking across his knees. "Now, if I can hold your leg just here?" Lucy asked, hovering her hands just below his knee.

Lucy was going to get to touch Frederick Asherton. Women had been arrested for less.

He nodded and she grasped his leg, which felt solid and real. Holy crap. Not a hallucination. She didn't know whether to be pleased or terrified. In for a penny, in for a pound, she decided, and continued.

She moved his leg, trying not to get distracted by the warmth of his skin, the firmness of his muscles, or the intriguing dark shadows inside the far leg of his gym shorts just a short distance from her face.

Don'tlookdon'tlookdon'tlook.

After a time, Lucy said, "I'm pleased to announce that you've got moderate bruising and swelling plus some stubborn muscle cramping."

"Brilliant! It felt like I'd torn a tendon again."

"The tendon seems to be intact. I'd like to treat with heat and see if we can relax those muscles for you," she said, taking the gel pack from the microwave and kneading it to ensure the heat was distributed evenly.

"Feet up, please," she said. He twisted and reclined on the table.

Lucy set the warm gel pack on the injury. "You've hurt this knee before?" she asked, gesturing in the direction of the three-inch scar on his knee that was now covered by the gel pack.

"Motorcycle crash, about ten years ago. The motorbike was old, the tires were bald and the roads were wet."

"How bad was the injury?" She wanted to know more. It was even -- partly -- for professional reasons.

"I was lucky, just an injured tendon. I wouldn't have fallen at all if I wasn't mad as hell at my brand-new ex-girlfriend."

"I'd lose half my clients if people didn't do foolish things when they were mad."

"And I was mad," he said, gripping the edges of the exam table. "I'd just found out that she'd been lying to me about, well, everything. Where she went, who she was with, why she was putting in so much 'overtime' at work, and whether she was with me because she thought I could get her an audition with my director."

"Ouch." Lucy understood that kind of pain better than she wanted to.

"I couldn't bend my knee for a month. 'Ouch' indeed."

Lucy nodded sympathetically, but didn't say any more. She had seen this before; aggravating an old injury sometimes brought old emotions to the surface. She let Mr. Asherton's anger run its course as she made a show of checking her notes. Over the top of her notebook, she noticed that on top of all her patient's other charms, he had nicely shaped feet at well. Did the man not have any flaws at all? It was impolite not to, she was pretty sure.

Lucy glanced at the clock. "Let's see if those muscles have relaxed," she said, removing the gel pack. She flexed his knee experimentally. "How does it feel?"

"Better. Not loads, but better."

"If we're lucky, a bit of deep tissue work should improve your range of motion. You might not even need the knee brace after today."

"Excellent. We've kept the injury out of the press so far, and I'd like to keep it that way."

"Your knee injury could make the papers?!" Lucy gasped, then took a quick, steadying breath. "They wouldn't follow you way up here, would they?"

"Not so far, but never say never."

Lucy asked Mr. Asherton to lie back so that she could try to massage the cramp out of the muscle. The heat, plus the emotional release, had done its work and the tissue was softer now. After doing some coarse work with a foam roller, she was working a particularly tight muscle bundle with her fingertips. Too much pressure and she'd cause him pain; too little and she wouldn't relieve the pain he had. At last, she felt the muscle become long and smooth again.

Frederick made a sound of relief.

"You have good hands. Mr. MacKinley is a lucky man."

"Oh, there is no Mr. MacKinley. It's just me."

He made a satisfied noise deep in his throat. Trying not to think too hard about what that meant, Lucy asked him to stand up.

Frederick bounced lightly on his knee, then nodded his approval. "It still hurts some, but much less. You're a wonder, Lucy, truly you are."

Her cheeks warmed at his praise. She was good at her job, but it was always nice to hear it. It sounded especially good in Frederick's voice.

"That's all I want to do today. You can head to the change room and put your pants back on," Lucy said, nodding to the little door.

"My pants? Was I supposed to have taken them off?" Frederick asked, patting his hips.

She wondered about his question for a moment, then slapped a hand over her mouth to hide her smile. She had forgotten that in England, 'pants' meant underpants.

"Trousers," she corrected, squeezing the word out between her lips as she struggled to keep a straight face.

"Trousers," he drawled, moving towards the bathroom with as much dignity as he could muster.

The professional part of her was pleased to see that, though he still walked slowly, he was less stiff than he had been when he arrived. The less professional part enjoyed a leisurely gaze up and down the back of her patient as he walked away.

"I'd like to see you again," she said when he re-emerged, fully dressed. "Your knee, I mean!" she amended, a little too loudly. "I'd like to have another look at your knee in a few days. And if the swelling has gone down enough, I can take you through some stretching and strengthening exercises."

" 'My knee' and I would like very much to see you again," he said. He gave Lucy a devastating half-smile, his eyes lingering on hers before he walked out the door.