“I see.”
She did see, entirely too clearly. This would obviously not be the last she would see of Eli Sanderson.
“I need to go. Thanks for your help,” she said quickly.
“I didn’t do anything except take a look at your injury. At least promise me you’ll raise it up and put some ice on it.”
Considering she was scheduled to work at his father’s clinic starting in just over an hour and still needed to shower, she wouldn’t have time for much self-pampering. “I’ll do my best. Thanks.”
“How far do you have to go? I can at least help you walk your dog home.”
“Fiona isn’t my dog. She belongs to my neighbor. We were just sort of exercising each other. And for the record, she’s usually very well behaved. I don’t quite know what happened earlier, but we’ll be fine to make it home on our own. I don’t want to disturb your run more than I already have.”
“Are you sure?”
“We don’t have far to go. I live at Brambleberry House.”
His expression registered his surprise. “Wow. You’re practically next door to my dad’s place.”
They couldn’t avoid each other, even if they wanted to. She didn’t necessarily want to avoid him, but considering she was now bedraggled and covered with sand, she was pretty sure he wouldn’t be in a hurry to see her again.
“Thanks again for your help. I’ll see you later.”
“Remember your RICE.”
Right. Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation. The first-aid prescription for injuries like hers. “I’ll do my best. Thanks. See you later.”
This time as she headed for the house, Fiona trotted along beside her, docile and well behaved.
Melissa’s wrist, on the other hand, complained vociferously all the way back to the house. She did her best to ignore it, focusing instead on the unsettling encounter with Dr. Sanderson’s only son.
* * *
Eli told himself he was only keeping an eye on Melissa as she made her slow way along the beach toward Brambleberry House because he was concerned about her condition, especially whether she had other injuries from her fall she had chosen not to reveal to him.
He was only being a concerned physician, watching over someone who had been hurt while he was nearby.
The explanation ring hollow. He knew it was more than that.
Melissa Blake Fielding had always been a beautiful girl and had fascinated him more than he had wanted to admit to himself or anyone else when he was eighteen and she was only fifteen.
She had been a pretty cheerleader, popular and well-liked—mostly because she always had a smile for everyone, even geeky science students who weren’t the greatest at talking to popular, pretty, well-liked cheerleaders.
He had danced with her once at a school dance toward the end of his senior year. She had been there with her date—and future husband—Cody Fielding, who had been ignoring her, as usual.
While his own date had been dancing with her dad, the high school gym teacher and chaperone, Eli had gathered his nerve to ask Melissa to dance, hating that the nicest girl in school had been stuck sitting alone while her jerk of a boyfriend ignored her.
He remembered she had been everything sweet to him during that memorable dance, asking about his plans after graduation.
Did she know her boyfriend and future husband hadn’t taken kindly to Eli’s nerve in asking Cody’s date to dance and had tried to make him pay? He still had a scar above his eyebrow from their subsequent little altercation.
It had been a long time ago. He was a completely different man than he’d been back then, with wholly different priorities.
He hadn’t thought about her in years, at least until his father had mentioned a few months earlier that Melissa was back in town and working for him.
At the time, he had been grieving, lost, more than a little raw. He remembered now that the memory of Melissa had made him smile for the first time in weeks.
Now he had to wonder if that was one of the reasons he had worked hard to arrange things so that he could come home and help his father out during Wendell’s recovery from double knee-replacement surgery. On some subconscious level, had he remembered Melissa worked at the clinic and been driven to see her again?
He didn’t want to think so. He would be one sorry idiot if that were the case, especially since he didn’t have room in his life right now for that kind of complication.
If he had given it any thought at all, on any level, he probably would have assumed it wouldn’t matter. He was older, she was older. It had been a long time since he’d felt like that awkward, socially inept nerd he’d been in the days when he lived here in Cannon Beach.
He had been deployed most of the last five years and had been through bombings, genocides, refugee disasters. He had seen things he never expected to, had survived things others hadn’t.
He could handle this unexpected reunion with a woman he may have had a crush on. He only had to remember that he was no longer that geeky, awkward kid but a well-respected physician now.
In comparison to everything he had been through in the last few years—and especially the horror of six months ago that he was still trying to process—he expected these few weeks of substituting for his father in Cannon Beach to be a walk in the park.
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New York Times bestselling author RaeAnne Thayne invites readers to Cape Sanctuary, where she weaves together the stories of three women—two sisters and the young aunt who raised them—each facing her own crossroads. Can they let go of past mistakes and welcome joy and love into their lives?
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ISBN-13: 9781488052033
Star Valley Winter
First published as The Valentine Two-Step by Silhouette Intimate Moments in 2002
This edition published in 2019
Copyright © 2002 by RaeAnne Thayne.
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