Falling for the Cop

by Dana Nussio

  Shane did the only thing he could do—he started laughing. “She’s right. The PT’s not even bothering with regular steps. I’ll be dancing en pointe in no time.”

  When a collective groan replaced the awkward silence, he was relieved. The elephant in the room had at least garnered a mention.

  A short while later the waitress delivered their orders, and they all got down to the business of consuming too many late-night calories. Shane couldn’t help watching them as he ate. These unique individuals shared something larger than any one of them: the commitment to serve and protect.

  With a gesture toward his phone, Shane signaled to Vinnie that his thirty minutes had run out. Instead of stalling, Vinnie stood up from his seat.

  “I’m gonna call it a night. Days off are exhausting.” He glanced Shane’s way. “You ready to go?”

  “I could go, I guess.”

  After zipping his coat, Shane backed away from the table, waved and started toward the door. He wouldn’t think about not being able to work with these people again, of losing a family built on mutual respect and shared risk. He would have to find his way back to this work and these people, just like Ben had. And he would look at these past few months as more a temporary detour than a permanent road closure.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “SO WE MEET AGAIN.”

  A startled sound escaped Natalie’s throat as she froze in front of the closed curtain. She didn’t need to see the spoked wheel and the running shoes beneath to identify the voice that filtered out like a sneaky caress from the base of her neck to her tailbone, but she peeked anyway.

  Shane.

  Her mouth was suddenly dry. Of course, his name was on the appointment schedule. She’d set those appointments herself. And two days had seemed like plenty of time to prepare herself to have to work with him again. Apparently it wasn’t long enough.

  How had he known she would be the one passing by his exam room right then, anyway, and not one of the other PTs or the office staff? In her navy scrubs and basic white tennis shoes, she could have been any one of them. Was there something unique about her shoes or the way she walked? And had he been watching her closely enough to notice? But then her gaze caught on the narrow opening where the two curtains met. He grinned out at her.

  She schooled her surprise into a frown, but she couldn’t stop the sudden rush of her pulse or the dampness on her palms. Proving what a coward she was, she opened the chart in her arms and studied it as if she hadn’t just reviewed it with her last client. She hoped he wouldn’t notice it wasn’t his.

  “What are you already doing in here?” She stepped to the counter outside his visual range and switched charts. Once she opened his, she pulled the curtain wide.

  “That young receptionist helped me out since you were running late.” He waved a hand in the general direction of the front desk. “She was very helpful.”

  “I bet,” she said under her breath and then grimaced, hoping he hadn’t heard. But he was reading an exercise chart on the wall, the one designed for clients with knee injuries. She would speak to Anne-Marie about her helpfulness later, though she wasn’t sure what she would say beyond hands off the clients. She could have used that reminder herself the other day.

  “My last appointment ran over. Sorry.” She stepped to the sink and washed her hands, even though she’d just done so prior to switching clients. She spoke over her shoulder as she dried them. “Did one of your chauffeurs have to get back on patrol?”

  “Four-car pileup on Interstate 96. Trooper Cole took the call. Priorities.”

  “Trooper Cole?” She pursed her lips, trying to recall the name of the attractive woman she’d met the other day. “So it wasn’t...either of the officers from last time?”

  His smile was slow, knowing and so sensual that it was all she could do not to fan her face with the chart. Heat rose up her chest and neck. If only she’d worn a turtleneck under her scrub top. She didn’t even want to think about any of the other places she felt warm.

  She wished he would look away, and at the same time, she dreaded the moment he would. What the hell was wrong with her? Why couldn’t she stop asking dumb questions? She shouldn’t even be thinking the things she had been. She was acting as if he was the first guy she’d ever met. Well, he wasn’t, and she refused to get all flustered by this guy, who had probably turned that sexy smile on every woman in the office by now, including dowdy Beverly Wilson.

  She cleared her throat, banishing thoughts that could only get her into trouble. “Have you been doing your exercises?”

  “I was supposed to do them at home?”

  “Are you—” But she stopped herself before adding “kidding” as Shane’s grin spread wide.

  “Gotcha.”

  Natalie rolled her eyes and looked at the chart. She couldn’t just keep staring at him.

  “You’re not the first of my clients to say something like that on a return visit,” she said without looking up.

  “I’m not like your other clients.”

  He had that right in more ways than he could know. “How do you know you’re different?”

  “Because I did my homework. Five times a day.”

  She set his chart aside, stood and opened the curtain. “You put in the work. Probably more than you should have. Let’s see how much improvement you’ve made.”

  Deftly maneuvering his chair out of the tight space, he followed her into the hall.

  “You’re about to be impressed. Which of the exercises do you want me to demonstrate first? I’m an expert at each.”

  “None of them.”

  When the grind of his rotating wheels stopped behind her, she turned to find him watching her.

  “What do you mean?”

  She started forward again, hoping he would follow. He did. Continuing into the activity room, she led him past some of the machines they’d used the first time to a low-tech area filled with gym mats. She stopped in front of a pair of parallel bars on a wooden platform.

  “I thought we’d give these a try.”

  He just stared at the contraption. “Already?”

  “Why not already?”

  But he was still looking at those parallel bars the way some people gawked at a line of fire trucks and ambulances racing toward someone else’s tragedy.

  “I just thought we’d build up to that,” he said finally. “You know...try some other things first.”

  He still wasn’t looking at her when he said it, but she couldn’t stop watching him. This didn’t fit. For the first time since he’d appeared in the clinic, Shane exuded something less than unshakable confidence. His face looked downright ashen.

  “You were already using the parallel bars at the intermediate treatment center, weren’t you?”

  “Just once.” He paused and licked his lips. “It was too soon.”

  “But you’re stronger now.”

  “Maybe.”

  He didn’t sound convinced. Which didn’t make sense. He’d been so determined to get back to work. And he’d worked so hard in the clinic and at home. So why was he reluctant to even try the most important step? Why was he stalling? Was he afraid of trying to walk again...or terrified he never would?

  Natalie turned her head toward the wall of windows as if she could find answers in that angry sheet of gray. She shouldn’t become personally involved. Her only job was to use her skills to help an injured client become stronger. If he chose not to—or was too scared to—improve the quality of his life, that was none of her business.

  It couldn’t matter that his reticence reminded her of her mother’s choice not to reclaim her life. She couldn’t go there. Shane and her mother might both be in wheelchairs, but they couldn’t have been more different. One knew the risks when he’d put on that uniform. The other had just bee
n living her life until she became collateral damage in a public-sanctioned joy ride.

  She shouldn’t allow herself to be drawn in by someone who represented all her family had lost. She shouldn’t wonder if he was hurting in a way that had nothing to do with the bullet-size scar on his back. She shouldn’t stick her nose into other people’s problems when she had enough of her own. But something was keeping Shane from walking when he should have been, and now that something was keeping him from even taking the critical first steps. And, God help her, she had to find out what it was.

  * * *

  SHANE STARED UP at the pair of parallel bars and then lowered his gaze to his gripped hands, his nail beds turning white halfway down from his tight squeeze. He could feel the sweat building just under his hairline, but there was no way he would reach up to swipe his forehead. Not with Natalie already watching him closely enough that she had to know what he was feeling, and it wasn’t confidence. Chicken, maybe? He hated like hell that he couldn’t shake off all those feathers.

  Of course his PT would expect him to stand up from that chair eventually. Had he expected to walk again from a seated position? Maybe he should have tried it while lying flat on his back.

  No, he hadn’t expected either of those things, but like he’d told her, maybe it still was too soon. It probably didn’t say anywhere in his file that he’d had a bad fall the first time the hospital PT staff had used that sling thing to lift him out of his bed and that half of his sutures had to be sewn again. If he’d believed that just by changing his treatment location he could exorcise his fear of falling again, he was dead wrong.

  Was this why his recovery had stalled?

  He glanced at the bars again, and a seed of panic embedded itself in his gut.

  “Okay. Have it your way. For today, anyway.”

  Natalie had closed the file now, her steady gaze seeming to judge him a coward.

  “You know, the sooner we get you up on your feet—”

  “I know. I know. It’s just...” He shook his head, the truth too embarrassing to share. He was like a toddler who’d fallen once and decided to settle in as a permanent crawler.

  “I guess we can continue a few more days with your first group of home exercises. But by the end of next week—”

  “Yes. Next week,” he said to cut her off. The sooner they stopped talking about it, the sooner he could stop sweating like a marathon runner hitting a wall near the twenty-two-mile marker.

  “Well, let’s get started.”

  She flipped open his file again to the sheet of exercise instructions she’d given him on Wednesday. He didn’t need to see it to begin the stretches he’d already memorized. Filling the role his coworkers had taken during his home sessions the past few days, Natalie lifted his leg, straightening and bending it several times before lowering it to the ground.

  “I’m getting an idea why the muscles in your upper body haven’t atrophied as much as we would have expected by now,” she said as she lifted the other leg. “You’ve only been working out from the waist up.”

  He couldn’t help grinning at that. “So you noticed my upper body?”

  She frowned up at him, the color in her cheeks deepening.

  “It’s my job to pay attention to such details about my clients.” Without looking at him again, she repeated the stretch on his other leg. “Besides, who could avoid noticing when someone looked like a cartoon character?”

  “I guess there are worse things to be compared to than a cartoon hero.” He’d take her words as a compliment, even if she hadn’t intended them that way.

  “Whoever said hero?”

  “It was one of the few things I could still do in bed.”

  Her lids fluttered, her blush deepening over his comment about his activities in bed.

  “What was?” she managed.

  There were so many things he could say, but he gave her a break this time. “Low-weight strength training. Sometimes I couldn’t watch another minute of TV, and my eyes were strained from reading. So I had a friend bring over her hand weights. I started with the five-pound ones.”

  “You should have been exercising under a medical professional’s care. It might have caused more damage—”

  “More damage than a bullet?”

  She shrugged. “Well, not that much.”

  “Anyway, there was hardly any moment when at least one medical professional wasn’t watching me or telling me what to do.”

  “We tend to do that.”

  Shane smiled at that. At least some of the tension between them had dissipated. He just hoped she didn’t ask him now why he was putting up roadblocks in the path of his recovery—because that would only multiply the stress again.

  If he knew the answer to that question, he would be pushing the obstacles out of the way as fast as his arms could move them. It wasn’t that he was afraid of walking again—he couldn’t think of a single thing he wanted more.

  But what if it just wasn’t in the cards? What if he got up there on the parallel bars and nothing moved, ever, except his arms as they dragged his legs behind him? How could he repay his debt to society then? He had to make some progress, had to have some good news to share with Kent. Especially now, since his mentor’s cancer had failed to respond to the most recent round of chemo.

  But he couldn’t tell Natalie that. It probably wouldn’t come off as such a great story, since Natalie definitely had something against police officers. He’d been wondering what it could be for the past few days, but had told himself he would only be opening a can of worms if he asked. But suddenly he had an irrepressible urge to pop open that can’s lid.

  “So, what do you have against cops, anyway?”

  She dropped the file and had to pick it up again before she could look at him. “I don’t have anything against cops. Why would you ask something like that?”

  “That’s the story you’re sticking to after the other day with the cops and robbers comment and the question about whether or not I bothered to wear a vest?”

  “It was just a bad—”

  “A bad day. So you’ve said. But most of us have our bad days without offending an entire profession.”

  Instead of answering, she shrugged.

  “Is it about the problems law enforcement has had with the African-American community?”

  Her eyes widened as she stared at him.

  He cleared his throat, his face suddenly hot. “I mean...well... I thought that maybe you might be...”

  “Biracial?”

  “Sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed. It’s just—” He cut off his words, but he couldn’t stop his gaze from gliding over the smooth-looking skin of her neck before returning to her gleaming eyes. “Again...sorry.”

  But the side of her mouth lifted. “Usually I pass.”

  “For white?” Immediately, he wanted to know why she would want to pass for anything other than the amazing beauty that she was.

  Her chuckle surprised him.

  “It’s only fair since my main exposure to the African-American side of my heritage is the two boxes I check on applications.” She glanced at the exercise list, not meeting his gaze. “But race issues aren’t the only reason I’m not a fan of cops.”

  “Then why not?”

  “People become police officers for the excitement of shooting suspects or driving fast cars to chase down criminals,” she said and then pulled her sweater tighter over her shoulders.

  He lifted a brow. “That’s it. Really? Even after the number of high-profile police shootings involving unarmed young black men, that’s your reason?”

  “I said those weren’t the only reasons.”

  “Did you know that the majority of police officers work a full career without ever having to discharge their weapons, except in training? And in some
cities, they don’t drive fast cars or motorcycles at all. Some are on horseback. Or even riding bicycles in crowded areas.”

  She sighed as if she realized he wouldn’t give up the point—she was right about that.

  “I just hate...hate when they act like cowboys, racing around like no one else matters.”

  For several seconds he could only watch her. What wasn’t she telling him?

  “Present company excluded, right?” he asked when she didn’t say more. “Lately, I don’t drive anything fast or get to race around anywhere.”

  She shrugged. “Forget it. Let’s get back to work.” She stared pointedly at him. “And you’d better keep up your upper-body regimen, because you’ll need those arms to support you on the bars next week.”

  “Guess so.”

  He shifted again, as she’d probably guessed he would. She was deflecting, and that told him that she was hiding something. Had something happened between her and a police officer? Had she dated a cop who turned out to be a creep? Just the thought of that had him strangely unsettled. He knew plenty of guys who wore the uniform and were jerks in the dating department. Some women he’d flipped through in his continual rounds of speed dating might include him in that category. But what bothered him more? That some cop might have burned her or that another officer might have dated her?

  Too many questions, and he shouldn’t have been wondering about any of them, let alone asking them. He had enough of his own problems right now. Natalie didn’t appear to be in the mood to answer his questions, anyway. She’d suddenly become engrossed in his file, though nothing inside it had changed in the two days since his last appointment.

  As Shane waited for her to finally look his way again, his gaze shifted around the room. The same machines and mats and gadgets that had been there during his last appointment had been left idle, waiting for PTs to begin torturing their patients. An open doorway led to another activity room with a miniature set of mats and equipment for children. Shrill laughter filtered from the room as if to clarify the space’s purpose. A couple of glass-walled offices lined the opposite side of the room, their blinds tightly closed, rendering the open layout moot.