The Embattled Road (Lost and Found Series)

by J. M. Madden

  The meeting finally began to pull to a close. The automatic cringe on Duncan’s face when he heard the proposal had said it all. How were they supposed to be effective investigators if their faces were plastered everywhere, as well as their disabilities? That was the part that turned his stomach. Why on earth would he want more people to know he was damaged? He could hardly stand the stares now. He had taken the on-line crimes section and the technology side, the bugs and wires the guys used every day, deliberately so he wouldn’t have to deal with the public.

  To offer them money for doing the shit jobs nobody wanted was just crass.

  Chad, ever the happy-go-lucky Texan, deflected the conversation to a favorite sports team and Duncan told the men they would consider their proposal. John knew by the sound of his voice, though, that they would do no such thing.

  The business had flourished as soon as it started. There was a period of adjustment he’d had to go through when they first opened. He couldn’t be part of the detectives out on the street. Chad had been responsible for a lot of the running in the beginning. Looking down at his worthless legs, he was once again swamped with anger. As a Marine, it had been standard practice to run for five or ten miles a day. Now he was lucky if he could get his thigh to twitch on command. It was historic if he could even get a hard-on.

  Although, he thought with a slight smile, it happened more and more often when Shannon was in the room. The first time he’d seen her, more than six months ago now, she and Mrs. Harrison had been kneeling on the floor going through files. Mrs. Harrison planned to retire and Shannon had been brought in to replace her. She’d straightened and arched her back to work out the kinks. She’d been wearing a cute little pink outfit thing that clung to her lush curves. The lust that had fired through his veins caught him totally unaware.

  For the first time in five years, he’d gotten excited looking at a woman’s ass. He had sat silently in his chair and soaked up her subtle beauty and the exhilaration of being turned on. The women hadn’t seen him, so he’d used their distraction to his advantage and cataloged everything he could about Shannon Murphy. Mrs. Harrison had told them she was extremely intelligent and competent at her job, but she hadn’t told them how exceedingly beautiful she was, with her trim form and curly brown hair laying gently on her shoulders. She was a good bit smaller than the older woman beside her and had a laugh that gave him chills. His own lips curled up in shared humor, even though he had no idea what she laughed about. Without conscious thought, he had pushed his chair forward to get their attention.

  Mrs. Harrison saw him first and pushed herself to her feet. She urged the young woman up beside her. John barely heard the introduction as his eyes hungrily took in the details of her face. In honest fact, she was not classically beautiful. Actually, cute would more likely be applied to her mobile features and dancing hazel eyes. Her broad smile started with up-tilted lips on one side, then spread to encompass her whole mouth. He held out his hand automatically and was entranced as she pumped energetically. Without blinking, he watched for any hint that the chair or his disability bothered her, but she seemed almost oblivious to the fact that he could not stand up to shake her hand. For the first time in longer than he could remember, he had met a person that not by word or deed made him feel like less than a man.

  Even her height made him feel manlier. In her bare feet, she was maybe an inch over five feet tall. With heels on at work, she stood about five four. Before the accident, he had stood six three in his stocking feet. So sitting in his modified racing chair, he was only a bit shorter than her. And no shorter when she sat in her own office chair, which she did a lot when he entered the office. She seemed to sense that it put him more at ease, to be on an equal level. John appreciated that more than she knew. It infuriated him and frustrated him beyond belief to be stuck in this chair, especially when he had to look up at men he could not tolerate.

  The Texans stood to make their goodbyes, and John pulled his attention back. He wanted to leave Duncan’s office and join Shannon for lunch. A couple of times a week he tried to join her in the break room. Even such casual contact soothed his emotions. They didn’t talk about anything in particular. Actually Shannon usually did most of the talking. He was content to just sit and listen. And wonder.

  It sounded like she had an interesting life, with her animals and her family, and the house she moved into a year ago. Totally different than his own boring day to day routine. She didn’t badger him with questions about what had happened to his legs or try to dance around his disability. The only time she hesitated was when she told him she jogged occasionally. He knew by the reaction on her face that his own must have reflected a crushing desire to feel the hot asphalt beneath his pounding feet. Smiling softly, she left the table, but not before she rested her hand gently on his shoulder. ‘Believe me,’ she told him softly, ‘You’re probably faster in that chair than I’ll ever be on my feet. Maybe you can join me sometime.’

  And just that easily, she made one of his greatest losses just a bit easier to bear.

  He rolled out of Duncan’s office. He didn’t care if he was abrupt. The others usually shook their heads at him no matter what he did.

  Shannon wasn’t at her desk when he rolled by, nor in any of the other offices down the hallway. His heart began to pound as he pulled up to the break room door and looked in the half window. There she sat. Laughing and gesturing with her hands to Roger Stottsberry, one of the night detectives. Roger had been coming in every Friday for Shannon’s lunch since she started.

  John didn’t blame him. When he wasn’t at the agency, it seemed he just sat at home and stared at the walls. It was hard to go out in public, both physically and mentally, and these offices had turned into a haven for the men who worked here. Duncan had let them convert one of the empty offices into a multi-purpose room, with a couple of bunks in one corner in case somebody needed to crash, and a TV and game system on the opposite wall to help them relax. The refrigerator had been stocked with easy, microwaveable foods. John found himself occupying that room more and more.

  He shoved through the break room door and immediately, Shannon’s broad smile warmed him. Any aggravation she felt earlier in the day had apparently faded away. The tension in his own body eased.

  “I was just telling Roger about my niece naming one of my kittens Boohini,” she told him. “I had called him Houdini because he kept getting out of wherever I put him and somehow she changed it around to Boohini.”

  That was kind of cute and he chuckled along with them, before he wheeled around the table to the large crock pot on the counter. His mouth watered before he even lifted the lid. Shannon’s food was phenomenal. But by the time he got his meatball sandwich made and situated on his lap for the return trip, Shannon had gathered up her things to leave. He almost dropped his plate as she stretched behind herself for a cola, her phenomenal breasts outlined by the cloth of her peach colored sweater. Man she looked nice in that sweater. Dragging his gaze away, he situated himself at the table. She plunked the cola in front of him, threw her stuff away and told the men goodbye.

  He watched intently until she disappeared from sight.

  Roger had his head cocked to one side, and his dark brown eyes danced. “Oh, so it’s that way huh?”

  John picked up his sandwich. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  The former Marine laughed and slapped his leg with his good hand. The molded left hand rested on the table, currently immobile. John admired Roger, because his amputated arm had been replaced with a state of the art cyber skin prosthetic that was actually wired into the nerves of his arm. It was truly a wonder to watch, because it was so lifelike. Even the skin tone was incredibly close to Roger’s dark walnut color. There were military medical trials going on with paraplegics and quadriplegics using stem-cells, but he had chosen not to participate in them.

  Roger was leaning down, trying to catch his eye.

  “What, dammit?” John shoved his plate away and
sat back in his chair, ready to fight. Adrenalin coursed through his veins, disproportionate to the situation.

  Roger held his hands up placatingly before sitting back in his own chair. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I think Shannon is a great girl. Why do you think I get myself out of bed so early every Friday?”

  John narrowed his eyes and tried to breathe deeply. Was Roger interested in her like he was? He could understand some women would be attracted to him. He wasn’t bad looking, even with the shrapnel scars covering one side of his face and the prosthetic forearm.

  “I just didn’t realize you had a claim on her.”

  “I don’t,” John grumbled. That was the whole problem in a nutshell. He had no claim on her. He didn’t even know if he wanted to claim her. Yeah, she turned him on, but what could he offer her? Certainly nothing long term. What would an active, vibrant woman like her want with a broken man like him?

  John tried to think of other things as he finished his sandwich, and ignore the ache in his chest.

  Shannon hated to leave the break room. She saw John so little. Duncan had added responsibility to everybody recently, which kept them busy. LNF Investigative Services had expanded exponentially as more people learned of their ability and dedication to get a job done. The service had gone from the three partners when they first started to almost twenty now, five years after they opened. Shannon knew that Duncan had stacks of résumés from other disabled vets who would love to work here. New ones came in every day.

  Just this week they’d hired a brash young Marine that had been a canine officer in Afghanistan.

  Settling into her chair, she began typing up Chad’s dictation notes from his surveillance on the Malone divorce case. A couple of weeks ago she’d found him in the spare office hunting and pecking on the keyboard with his good right hand. He admitted that the report writing was difficult, because he did not have the same mobility in his left hand and arm he used to have. Everybody in the office had physical therapy appointments, and Chad was no exception. The scars that crisscrossed his left arm showed that he had been burned terribly, and Shannon’s soft heart had gone out to the former Marine. All of the men had been in their prime when they were injured. Most were adapting to their injuries accordingly, but a couple still visibly struggled.

  As the only woman in the office, she tried to make it a point to pay everybody a little special attention. Several of the men had left their families to come to Denver to work for Duncan. He’d evoked enough loyalty for several members of the agency to move from several states away.

  Chad walked into the office and through the reception area to her desk, smiling broadly. Shannon could not help but return his smile as she reached for the candy container in her lower desk drawer. Chad Lowell had a sweet tooth that would not stop. The candy needed to be hidden or it would all mysteriously disappear. In jest, she had tried to hire him to find the missing candy, but he gravely told her it would be a waste of her money, because he did not think the candy was ever coming back. Occasionally, giant bags of his favorites would materialize on her desk. Shannon knew that Chad would be a great friend, not just a boss.

  “Hey, Chad,” she greeted. “What are you up to?”

  Chad put on a wounded look that was totally ruined by his twinkling eyes. “I don’t know what you mean. Why would I be up to something?”

  Shannon laughed outright and put the plastic container at the edge of the desk within easy reach. “Right….”

  Chad dug a couple of pieces of caramel out of the container. “We have an interview in a while. Boss man wants to talk at us before the kid gets here.”

  “Jennings?”

  “That’s the one. Duncan wants to see what we read from him.”

  Shannon gave a single nod, and kind of hoped that they didn’t hire the recently discharged young Marine. There was something that nagged at her about his eyes. Almost as if there was a disconnect there and he seemed to be going through the motions to present himself correctly.

  But it wasn’t really her place to say anything. If he got hired, she’d do her best to make him welcome as she did the others.

  She saved the work on her computer and printed off the notes she had just typed up for Chad’s case, then attached them with a paper clip and handed them to him.

  “Oh, Shannon, you are a doll. That would have taken me two hours.” His pretty green eyes lost their twinkle.

  “It only took me ten minutes. And it was no big deal. I’m trained to do it, you aren’t. Besides, Duncan doesn’t keep me too busy,” she lied. “Why don’t you try the dictation machine I gave you?”

  “I will, I promise,” he told her as he slipped into Duncan’s office.

  John wheeled in seconds later as she put the lid on the candy container. He chuckled as he pulled alongside her desk, making her shiver convulsively. The man was sex on wheels, literally, and it was all she could do not to jump into his lap. A hint of his deodorant wafted over her. Shannon clenched her teeth in an effort to control her roaring response but it was always the same. And he seemed totally oblivious. Of course.

  “Hi, John.”

  “Shannon. I see Chad’s already been here.”

  Shannon nodded as she held the dish out to him, but John declined. His sweet tooth leaned more toward baked goods. Fridays she usually brought in some type of cake or cookies.

  “Hey, I wanted to see if you could find a copy of an invoice for me.”

  Shannon straightened in her chair, fingers ready at her keyboard.

  He reeled off the company name and the list of what he ordered. Shannon frowned. “I just put a copy of this on your desk yesterday. You lost it already?”

  John glowered, clamped his jaw, and looked down at his lap. He didn’t say anything for several long seconds, and when he looked up, his dark brown eyes were calm. “My desk is pretty terrible right now. Maybe it is there. I’ll look after I talk to Duncan. Thanks, Shannon.”

  He turned and powered his chair through Duncan’s doorway.

  “Lunch was awesome, by the way,” he said, just before he disappeared.

  Shannon could not keep the goofy grin from spreading across her face. John very rarely commented positively on anything. Within thirty seconds she had gotten an ‘ok, I’ll check’ and a ‘lunch was awesome’ out of him. That was a new record. Not that he was a grouch or anything.

  Well, maybe he was a bit on the grumpy side.

  It seemed like he was genuinely trying to be a little friendlier, though. They’d had to go through some growing pains when she was first hired. She wasn’t a Marine and she didn’t appreciate being yelled at like one. There’d been an incident a couple of months ago when she’d gone off on him. She couldn’t even remember what the original conversation had been about, but he had demanded some paper or another that she had already given him. John had said flat out that it was not on his desk. Shannon had physically walked to his office and pulled the paper off his cluttered desk before he believed her.

  Before she left his cluttered office, she snapped at him, “And you could be a little nicer about it, too,” before she slammed his office door shut.

  Since then, John had tried to temper his snappishness, at least with her. The men were another story entirely. If one of them did something wrong, John let them know immediately. But constructively. She had to give him that. He always yelled with a purpose.

  Shannon strongly believed that his paralysis had darkened his already reserved demeanor. And she didn’t blame him in the least. If Shannon were in his place, it would have done the same to her.

  With his black crew cut, dark brown eyes, and shadowed jaw, John’s dour expressions seem to fit his dark coloring naturally. His heavy brows drew down when he was upset and his olive complexion darkened. More than once, she had compared him in her mind to a swarthy pirate yelling at his crew, or a Bedouin chief directing his desert army. In her daydreams though, the anger changed easily to lust.

  And there was no wheel chair.

&
nbsp; Not that being in a chair seemed to have slowed him down at all. He was such a dominant personality and the chair was such an integral part of him that she hardly even noticed it after a couple of days. She’d seen him race Chad down the long office hallway and beat him. She’d walked into his office one day and found him rocking backward on two wheels, with the front dangling in the air. It had scared her a little and she’d asked him if he’d ever fallen over backward that way. She’d snapped her mouth shut the moment the words hit the air, because she hadn’t meant to sound so informal with a man who was technically one of her three bosses. The twinkle in his dark eyes had brightened, though, and he’d grinned at her. ‘I have, but not in front of anybody.’ It was one of the friendliest interactions they’d had at that point, and the beginning of her infatuation.

  *****

  About the Author~

  I am a wife and mother of two. I currently stay home to take care of the farm and family, which I love. I was a deputy sheriff in Ohio for nine years, and I found myself tapping that experience as I wrote Second Time Around, my first book. No, I didn't tackle and cuff my husband, although there was that time in K-mart... Anyway, it was quite a change going from writing technical reports with diagrams, witness statements, inventories, etc. that would stand up in court to writing contemporary romance. I've always written, though, and it was always a dream to do something with that huge, leaning stack of spiral-bound notebooks.

  Second Time Around was my first release and The Embattled Road is my ninth. I thank you so much for taking an interest in my work...

  Stay tuned. There's a lot more coming!