by Dana Marton
“Staying here. I’m applying for another grant.”
All right, work talk she could handle. “For?”
“Zip-line course in the woods. More of an obstacle course, actually, with some zip line.”
“That’d be great. Some people grow bored with the gym and yoga classes after a while.” The men and women at Hope Hill were all military vets, used to a higher level of action. “And exercise out in fresh air, in the woods, will do a world of good for mental health too.”
Kate didn’t add, Let me know if you need help.
She didn’t want to work late with Murph, then walk out together. She didn’t want to feel that draw toward his apartment on the premises, a place that a short while ago used to be theirs.
The living room with its big masculine leather couch where they’d made love a dozen ways: lying down, sitting up, her bent over the soft round arm and Murph behind her, and…
Then the kitchen… She couldn’t bear thinking about the table, the counter, or the fridge door cold against her back.
And, God, she could definitely never face the bathroom—the tub or the shower—ever again.
To say nothing of the bedroom and the bed. Or any horizontal surface in the apartment really. And also any vertical.
Heat spread through her.
Let’s go back there, her body said.
Fortunately, her body didn’t get to make decisions for her. She was a grown-ass woman. At work.
She cleared her throat.
“Good luck,” she told Murph. “I hope we get the grant.”
There. Everything all professional. And now they could be done.
Except, Murph rubbed a hand over his mouth as he watched her, and she knew he wasn’t going to let it go.
He didn’t. He dropped his hand and asked, “So, we’re just going to pretend everything’s all right?”
Kate braced herself for what he was going to say next, but her first patient for the day appeared in the doorway, thank God, saving her from an uncomfortable conversation.
“Hey, Murph. Ma’am. Dan Washington.” The former Navy SEAL—Kate had read his file already—glanced between her and Murph, not missing the tension in the room. “I have an appointment?”
“Hi, Dan. Please call me Kate.” She stood to shake his hand, then gestured toward the open door that led to her treatment room. “Why don’t you go in and get comfortable? Take off everything except your underwear, then slip between the sheets on the table. I’ll be with you in a minute.”
As Dan limped by them, Kate headed to the door behind her desk, the small private bathroom that opened from her office. “I’d better change.”
She worked in scrubs to save her regular clothes from the massage oils.
For a second, Murph made no move to leave, and it was all there in his eyes, how she’d undressed in front of him a thousand times before.
She couldn’t now. “We need to find our boundaries.”
“Why?”
She needed to find out who they were without the sex, which they’d fallen into pretty fast at the beginning. The chemistry between them had been instant. It had distracted them from everything else in Ohio too. But she’d carried her own baggage into their relationship, and Murph had carried his. “Using sex to distract ourselves from our problems isn’t healthy. If we want to move forward together, we’ll need to build a better foundation first.”
He shoved his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “What problems, exactly?”
“Our relationship has been completely unrealistic. We’ve never even had a fight. We couldn’t. We were in an emergency situation. We had to stick together.”
“You want to fight?”
“Don’t make me sound like I’m crazy. Most couples break up and make up all the time. I don’t even know what you look like when you’re mad at me.”
“I’m not going to break up with you,” he said. And then he strode away.
Kate changed in her bathroom, cursing the stupid tears that burned her eyes.
She was tugging up her pants when boots scuffed on the floor outside, somebody stepping into her office. Not Murph. She knew the sound the black sneakers he wore at work made.
“I’ll be right out!”
She yanked on her shoes, but by the time she walked out of the bathroom, her office was empty. She looked out into the hallway. Nobody there either.
No big deal. If somebody needed her, they’d come back.
She crossed to the treatment room and knocked on the door. “Okay if I come in?”
“I’m ready.”
Dan Washington waited on the table, covered to his neck. He was twenty-eight, an underwater demolition expert injured in an explosion. He still wore his black hair regulation short, his eyes darting away from Kate.
“Have you ever had a therapeutic massage before?” she asked.
He blushed. “No, ma’am.”
“Ma’am is not necessary.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She smiled. “So, this is the treatment room. This is where we’ll have our sessions, once a week, for the next twelve weeks. I’m going to evaluate any issues while we work together today. You can ask me questions you might have, at any time. Any concerns before we start?”
“No, ma’am.” He winced. “Sorry, ma’am.” Cleared his throat. “Kate.”
She lit a candle. “Lavender. It’s nice, isn’t it?” Then she folded the sheet down from Dan’s back. “I won’t go straight to the injury. We’ll work around it at first.”
As she poured the prewarmed massage oil into her hands, she noted the smattering of scars on her new patient’s skin. Nothing out of the norm. She treated warriors. She was used to wounds, old and new.
“All you have to do is relax.” She placed her hands on him and began to work his tense muscles, gently, then applying more pressure.
He sniffed the air. “The lotion smells good too.”
“Scented with tea tree oil. Our ecotherapist has information on aromatherapy, if you’re interested. Annie Murray. She’s not in this week, but you’ll be meeting her too, at one point.”
She worked over Dan’s wide muscular back, covered it up with the sheet again, then uncovered his left leg first and smoothed out the knots in his muscles. Only then, half an hour into the session, did she move on to his injured leg.
The second she touched the sheet on that side, Dan stiffened. He put a hand over the fabric to hold it in place. “You shouldn’t have to look at all that ugliness.”
“I’m not going to do anything you’re not comfortable with, but I’d like to ask you to trust me. We have people here with all kinds of injuries: shrapnel wounds, burns, amputations, other stuff.” She didn’t say torture, ever, since the word itself could be triggering.
“I see about six patients a day,” she told Dan. “So that’s thirty just last week. I’ve seen every kind of scar there is. I have five more appointments after you today. One with a former pilot who has burn scars over almost seventy percent of her body from a helicopter crash. You don’t need to worry about sparing my sensibilities. I see scars every day just from looking into the mirror.”
She stepped into his line of sight and pulled the neckline of her scrubs away from the white lines on her shoulder, courtesy of the woman who’d given birth to her then beat her every day until Social Services had finally intervened.
Dan’s eyes focused on the spot, and she let him have a long look before she tugged the shirt back into place. “What are you most worried about?”
He responded in a voice thick with embarrassment. “It’s ugly.”
“You healed. You’re walking. That’s as beautiful as it gets.”
A second passed, two, then he moved his hand out of the way. “Okay.”
Kate stepped back to his leg, then drew up the sheet with slow care. “Skin injuries improve a lot with time. There are excellent pharmaceutical creams now. Aloe gel does wonders too, if you’d like to try something natural.”<
br />
She began to feel her way around the damage, and, little by little, Dan relaxed under her hands again.
He had scars that were two feet long, some from the original injury and some from repeated surgeries. His file said he had pins in his bones. Burn marks ran up the side of his leg, his skin bunched up and rough.
“Let me know if anything I do hurts.” Kate worked every muscle, smoothed out every knot.
“Is this what you always wanted to do?” he asked, maybe because he was interested, or maybe because he wanted distraction.
“Pretty much.” She was always happy to talk about her work. “Kind of. I started with traumatized horses before moving on to people.”
“You’re a horse doctor?” Dan gave a weak laugh, relaxing some more.
“That’s what got me into it. Then I went for special training with a man who was one of the original practitioners of this type of therapy, and for a long time, I worked with abused children.” Children who’d been victims of physical or sexual abuse who were scared to death of human touch. “I did rehabilitative work. The ability to accept physical affection is important for mental development, for healing.”
“That had to be hard,” Dan said. “I mean, to see kids suffer. I don’t know if I could do it. I’d get angry. Might be tempted to track down the bastard…” He fell silent.
“Thinking about how the kids got hurt was difficult. But watching them recover, if I did my job right, was immensely rewarding.”
And she did do her work right, because it meant way more to her than just a job.
“And now you have patients here who can’t stand being touched,” Dan closed his eyes. “Couple of guys don’t even like if anyone’s sitting next to them in the cafeteria. I’m not that bad, at least. You can help everyone?”
“For the most part, yes. PTSD is a difficult thing. Luckily, I know what I’m doing. I trained in various therapeutic methods. I can usually find something that works. And the other therapists are even better than I am.” Kate finished untangling a particularly stubborn knot of muscles. “You’re in good hands.”
“This place is lucky to have you.”
“Thanks. But it’s the other way around, Dan. I’m lucky to have this place.”
When she finished with the leg, she had him turn around and worked on the same muscles from the front. “What will you do when you go home from here? Any big plans?”
“College. Maybe.” He kept his eyes closed. “After high school, I thought about a nursing degree but then talked myself out of it. Joined the Navy instead. It’s a family thing. My daddy, my granddaddy.” He opened his eyes. “Then I was lying on that deck after the accident, losing blood fast. I wasn’t sure I’d live. I was sure I’d never walk again. There was a doctor at the Navy hospital, Dr. Bankole. He put me together. Right off, he told me I was going to be fine; I was too young to spend the rest of my life lazing around in a wheelchair. And then he made sure I didn’t.” Dan paused. “If I can, I thought I’d try premed. I always liked biology. Chemistry too. Science in general. You think I’m too old?”
Kate laughed. “I’m older than you, and if you start talking about age as an obstacle, you’re going to push me right into a midlife crisis. We’re young, beautiful, and we kick ass. We can do whatever we damn well want.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
They talked more about med school, while she mentally mapped all the trouble spots and began outlining his treatment plan.
“One of the guys said he goes to the sauna before he comes for treatment. To relax his muscles?” Dan brought up when they finished.
“You could try that if you’d like. It might help. Do you know where the saunas are?”
He shook his head.
“In the pool complex. It should be empty right now. After you get dressed, I’ll walk you over and show you.” She covered him with the sheet, up to his chin. “Feel free to stay for a few more minutes and relax.”
At her desk, she wrote up her notes for their next session. By the time she finished, he was coming out of the treatment room with a smile.
“I’ll be honest. I wasn’t sure what good any of this would do. My sisters get massages. Spa days.” He shrugged. “I never thought that stuff was for guys. But you made me a new man.”
When he walked through her office—shamelessly showing off—his limp was barely there.
And that was why she loved her job, Kate thought as she stepped from behind her desk and clapped.
She glanced at the clock on the wall. She had fifteen minutes before her next patient. The pool complex was at the very back of the facility, but she could make it there and back.
“Let’s go and see about that sauna, then.”
Chapter Four
Murph
“You coming to Finnegan’s tonight?” Harper stopped in front of Murph on his way to the water cooler at Hope Hill’s very own gym.
Murph sat on his bench, but instead of lying back down to lift another few reps of the weights, he braced his elbows on his knees and hung his head. He was covered in sweat. He’d probably pushed himself harder than he should have. “Might as well.”
He made time every day for at least a brief workout, in between handling the million management tasks that running Hope Hill required. He had shrapnel damage in his shoulder that tended to stiffen up. He needed the exercise to keep everything in good working order.
“Kate coming with you?” Harper wiped the glistening sweat off his face with the back of his hand, equipment clanging all around them.
“Probably not.” Murph was at his wit’s end with her. He had told her he was staying late because he had hoped she would offer to stay with him. Truth was, the grant application was nearly complete.
“Bro.” Harper grinned. “Whatever you did, just apologize already. Bring her flowers. If it’s beyond flowers, fancy bonbons. If it’s beyond fancy bonbons, jewelry.”
“Aren’t you the relationship expert? Because you’re, what, in your first ever serious relationship finally?”
“Hey, when I’m hanging out tonight at Finnegan’s, my woman will be by my side. And then we’ll go home together. And then…” He made a va-va-voom face.
Murph bit back a laugh. “Feel free to spare me the details.”
Harper puffed his chest out as he sauntered away, while Murph shook his head.
He didn’t know how to fix what he’d done wrong, because he didn’t know what he’d done wrong. He’d proposed. Kate had run away. She’d asked for time and space, and then she bought a house and moved out of their apartment at Hope Hill.
Murph was no expert on women either, but her leaving didn’t seem like a sign that she wanted to work things out with him.
He did his best not to bring up their relationship, or rather, the lack thereof, to her, because she would only remind him that they had agreed to this break. And she would say it as if it’d been as much his idea as hers.
Like hell it’d been. He’d only accepted her pronouncement because anything else—pushing, demanding answers—would have made him a jackass.
How much damn time could a woman need?
A deadline would have been nice, knowing when she’d put him out of his misery. Like, tomorrow. He could survive another twenty-four hours. Maybe.
“I’ll be working a shift behind the bar,” Harper said on his way back, a paper cup in his hand. His family owned Finnegan’s. “Jerry’s out. Emergency appendicitis surgery. Didn’t tell anyone he was in pain and drove himself to the freaking hospital instead of asking for help.”
“Sounds like Jerry.” This was the guy whose doctor once told him he should have a suspicious mole checked out on his arm, and he went home and cut it off with his pocket knife.
Harper moved on, but called back over his shoulder, casting a meaningful glance at the weights set up for Murph. “Try not to pull anything, old man.”
The words required a response, but instead of returning the smartass comment with one of his own, Murph sat ther
e dumbstruck. Dan, the new patient, was walking across the yard with Kate, the stupid pink bag of chocolates from Sweet Beginnings swinging from his hand.
As they passed out of sight, Murph dropped back onto the bench, grabbed the bar, and pushed it up so violently that the weights rattled. Then he did it again, and again, and again.
By the time he was finished with his set, sitting up and breathing hard, Kate was walking back. She glanced over. Saw him through the window. Stopped.
He stared like the poor, hapless sap he was.
She’d let her hair grow, the thick locks now falling past the middle of her back. The breeze blew a few stray strands into her face. She didn’t bother brushing them away.
While they’d lived in Ohio as Murphy Andrews and Katie Milano, she’d worn her hair short, colored black, but then gone back to auburn when they’d returned to Broslin, the same color she had when they’d first met.
Her sky-blue gaze held Murph’s as she stood outlined against the greenery behind her. She was more beautiful in shapeless scrubs than any other woman he’d ever met in their skimpiest party gear. How often did he fantasize about peeling her out of those scrubs and the sports bra and simple cotton underwear he knew she had on underneath? Every damn night.
For a hopeful moment, he thought she might come over to talk to him, and his heart gave a big, solid bang in his chest. But instead, she pulled her cell phone from her pocket and answered a call. Right. She’d only stopped because her phone had been ringing in her pocket.
Murph watched as shock spread on her paling face, could read her lips as she said, Oh my God. What?
He grabbed his sweatshirt from the floor and was through the door and next to her just in time to hear her add, “I don’t have my car. I’m stuck at work.”
“Let me help.” He tugged on the navy-blue sweatshirt that had the Hope Hill logo printed on the front in white. “I can give you a ride.”
Her torn expression killed him. How in hell had they gotten to the point where she was hesitating to accept his help?
