The Good Race: Book One of the Grayson Falls series

by A. M. Mahler

  He’d been devastated when she didn’t answer his letters. He knew now that she’d never received them, but then, her silence had meant only that she couldn’t forgive him for leaving her without saying goodbye.

  What she had awoken in him died with that realization. From that point forward, he did nothing but simply go through the motions of his life. That he joined the Army to piss off his father was true enough, but it wasn’t the only reason. He could admit now that maybe he’d also had a bit of a death wish. He hadn’t cared if he was sent to war zones because he’d had nothing at all to lose.

  But none of that had turned out to be true, and now he was with Jackie again, back where they’d started all those years ago. It all still seemed like a dream. Sometimes, he thought that he was in a coma and that he’d wake up one day and discover she’d never been there, and he’d be all alone in life again.

  Well, alone with the exception of Eric. They’d served in Afghanistan together and they were closer than brothers. But relationships between men were vastly different. Eric had been there both times Danny had been shot, and they were the only two instances in almost a decade that Eric had ever seen Danny vulnerable.

  Danny watched Jackie in the open kitchen and eating area from his vantage point on the couch. How could this feel so new, yet at the same time so familiar? She was really here. He had finally found her—albeit not the way he’d wanted to—and here they were together.

  So, what exactly was his plan? He’d resigned from the force in New York and had let Jackie whisk him away to recover. But what was he going to do after that? Stay in New Hampshire, obviously, because that’s where she was. And do what? He’d hardly touched his inheritance, so he could, in theory, do nothing. If he wanted to, he could go back to being a burden on society, but that wasn’t for him anymore. He liked police work. But small-town police work? Would that interest him enough?

  Who are you kidding, McKenzie? Jackie’s here. Do you really care what you do to occupy your time? You could run the damn farm if you had to.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked, startling him out of his thoughts.

  He shook himself out of his ruminations and looked over to her. Even dressed casually in jeans and a T-shirt, she took his breath away. Hell, she’d knocked him out in medical scrubs. He had always associated her with a soft light, but he could see just by looking in her eyes that she wasn’t the naïve girl he’d fallen in love with so long ago.

  So, who was she now?

  He pushed himself up to more of a seated position.

  “I’m famished.”

  “Can you handle a sandwich?”

  “I think I could handle half a moose. What’s the upstairs like?”

  “Those stairs are too much for you right now,” she immediately scolded.

  She was probably right, but that wouldn’t stop him from going up to check it out as soon as he was alone. Sooner or later, she was going to have to go over to the hospital, and he would do a thorough check of the house, injury or not. He was healing, and he’d accommodate her orders—when she was at home.

  “There are three bedrooms and an office. One of the rooms has some exercise equipment in it. I prefer to run outside, but before long, the weather isn’t going to accommodate me anymore, so I’ll have to use the treadmill.”

  “You run? Miss I-Prefer-To-Have-My-Nose-In-A-Book?”

  “I still prefer to have my nose in a book, smart-ass,” she replied.

  That was something else he couldn’t remember her doing before—swearing.

  “But, yes, I do enjoy running. I’m cooped up a lot at the hospital. As the only doctor in this town, I imagine it will be much the same here, so it’s nice to get out a bit.”

  “How far do you run?”

  “About three or four miles, depending on how much time I have.”

  “When my doctor clears me for exercise, I’ll go running with you.”

  “Well, you’re a long way from there.”

  “I’ll get there,” he said.

  He’d always been a physically active guy. Sitting idle wasn’t the way he was wired. He understood that he needed to recover, and so he’d do what he had to—within reason—to make that process go faster, but he also needed to get back into shape. He didn’t know what Eric was going to uncover, but if Willis thought Jackie needed a gun, then Danny needed to be ready for any eventuality.

  “Just don’t rush yourself,” she said, as she came into the living room carrying a tray with sandwiches and drinks.

  “I don’t suppose one of those glasses has beer in it,” he said hopefully, reaching out for a plate.

  She responded with a dark look.

  “Not with those painkillers you’re on,” she replied. “This is exactly what I’m talking about. When patients are so hot to trot to resume their normal life after a serious injury like yours, they do more damage than good. They think just because the pain is gone, they’re better than they really are. Then they end up setting themselves back. You’ll get your strength back faster if you take it easy and don’t push yourself.”

  “Do you see me pushing myself?” He stretched out his legs on the couch and took a large bite of his sandwich.

  “You walked up the front steps, didn’t you?” She glared at him and sat down on the oversized chair.

  “That was nothing.” He waved it off, even though he still felt sore and tired from the exertion. He wasn’t going to admit that to her, though. “I’ve been to this rodeo before, Doc. I know my limits, and I know my body.”

  “First of all, you don’t have the same injury you did before. Secondly, I wasn’t your doctor then, but I’m your doctor now. And since I am, and you’re living in this house with me, I’ll be damned if you’ll do something stupid that might injure you or aggravate your injury. If you don’t like the way I work, that’s too bad, buster.”

  Danny raised his eyebrows at her strong reaction, then a slow smile spread across his lips. “You’ve gotten a lot feistier than you used to be. You’re so…aggressive now.”

  “I think we’ll find we’ve both changed a lot in the last twelve years.”

  “I like it,” he smiled, watching her blush. “When we met, you were afraid of your own shadow. Now, you’re dressing me down. I like this new you. I’m sorry that girl is gone, but this woman is equally as intriguing.”

  “I never was as delicate as Ryan—and maybe you—liked to believe.”

  “No, I never thought you were. Losing your dad, gaining a brother, and uprooting your life was pretty traumatic, Jacks. I thought you handled all it pretty well. Someone delicate, as you say, would have just fallen to pieces, but you didn’t. You may have been shy, but delicate or weak you were not. And I never—not once—thought you were.”

  “No,” she agreed quietly. “You always saw me for me, and that was so refreshing. I miss that time, Danny, and I miss the time we didn’t get together.”

  “We’ll get it now.”

  “But we’re not the same.”

  “I should hope not,” he agreed. “But maybe we’re better. I already know that I like what I see in you. When I planned to come find you, I was fully expecting you to slam the door in my face. Of course, this way turned out to be foolproof since you can’t exactly turn away a patient.”

  “Clever of you.”

  “You know how I like to be different from all the other guys,” he quipped. “I didn’t know you never got my letters, though. As far as I was concerned, you hated my guts for leaving you high and dry on prom night. I was prepared to grovel, Jacks, and I still am.”

  “I could never hate you,” she assured him. “I found out what had happened that night. I didn’t understand why I never heard from you. I wrote you letters myself.”

  “I never got them either.”

  “There seems to be a lot of nevers in our lives.”

  “We can change that, you know. This is our opportunity for a second chance. Will you give us one, or is this over when I’m fully recovered?�
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  “If I said yes, would you go?”

  “Would I leave the house? Yes. Would I leave this town? Not on your life. Why would I leave you after I’d just found you? If you said we were done, I’d spend the rest of my life trying to convince you that you were wrong. I’d be a pain in your ass until I wore you down.”

  “Funny,” she said on a half laugh. “That’s exactly what you did when we first met.”

  “Seems like a good strategy to stick with, then.”

  JACKIE EXITED THE bathroom attached to her bedroom wearing pajama pants and a T-shirt. She’d left Danny downstairs in the room she had set up for him. When she returned, she watched him as he took in his surroundings. His eyes finally fell on the hospital bed. His gaze lingered there, and she couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

  When she asked if he needed anything, he said no and disappeared into the connecting bathroom. He used to be pretty easy to read. Maybe she didn’t know exactly what he was thinking these days, but she still had a pretty good sense of it.

  Thirteen years separated the boy she’d fallen in love with and the man downstairs. He had fought in a war and he’d had to have seen horrific things she could only imagine. How much had it changed him? On the surface, he seemed like the same Danny she knew and loved, but a man didn’t go to war and come back emotionally unscathed.

  He had no family, and his father all but abandoned him at birth. There had never been anyone there to show him right or wrong, to lead by example, or to help the boy become a man. The old feelings she’d experienced when she thought of Commander McKenzie suddenly resurfaced. If she ever met him, she’d spit in his eye and tell him he could rot in hell. How could he turn his back on his child?

  Her heart broke for Danny as it always did when she thought of his upbringing. Once, she had planned to be his family. True, they had been the dreams of a fanciful teenager in love for the first time, but they were still her dreams. She had planned to marry him out of college. Then they’d have a big family, and he’d finally be surrounded by people that loved him.

  Of course, she didn’t have any real way of knowing if he even wanted that. At sixteen and seventeen, they’d just never discussed something like that. She knew he cared about her—loved her, even—but that didn’t always equate to marriage and a crate of kids.

  Just because he was the first boy she’d ever kissed—the first love she’d ever had—it didn’t mean that he owed her that now. But she still wanted that with him—and for him.

  Since he’d rolled into her ER, she had discovered that she was still very much in love with him. When she’d decided that she wanted him to come to New Hampshire with her, it had never occurred to her that he might have been married. She had asked, but she hadn’t really believed that he could have wed someone that wasn’t her.

  In her heart, she knew they were earmarked for each other. She had dated a bit over the years, sure. She’d even had a few lovers along the way, but nobody had come near to touching her heart the way he had. Looking back, it had probably been impossible for anyone to get too close. She had walls around her heart that had gone up the night Danny was taken from her. And he was the only one they’d come down for.

  She was still standing in her room between the bathroom and bed, lost in thought when she heard him say, “Nice digs.”

  “Holy Jesus!” she shrieked, jumping at his unexpected voice. She turned to the doorway with a hand on her heart and saw Danny casually leaning against the doorjamb. “I told you not to take the stairs!”

  “It wasn’t so bad,” he said, but she knew he was lying because of the light sheen of sweat on his face, not to mention his pale complexion.

  “Tomorrow night, Daniel, I will restrain you to that bed. Do you understand me?”

  “I don’t mind you tying me to a bed, Doc, but I’d rather you be in it with me when you do.”

  Jackie’s eyes widened and she felt herself blush. One thing Danny continued to be, all these years later, was outrageous.

  “You’ve exhausted yourself,” she snapped.

  He paid no mind to her tone of voice as he walked slowly into the room. When he reached the foot of the bed, he rested his hand on the footboard and let it take his weight.

  “Then it would be a very bad idea for my doctor to send me back down those stairs again, right?” He looked at her hopefully as she glared at him. “Please, don’t make me sleep down there in a strange place all by myself. You took the IV out. I don’t need a hospital bed.”

  “You’ve been in a war zone, as you reminded me recently. I don’t think a guest room in the downstairs of a house is all that scary in comparison.”

  “Be that as it may, I’m up here now, and it would definitely be a bad idea for me to go back down.”

  “There’s also a guest room up here, you know.”

  “I’ll sleep in there if you make me,” he said reluctantly. “Please, don’t make me, Jacks.”

  She let out a sigh and knew she was defeated. Honestly, it was a battle she didn’t mind losing. She liked waking up in his arms. She always had. And she missed it. But she was wary of his injury. Still, she did have a king-size bed, and there was plenty of room for them both to roll around without bumping into each other.

  She waved him to the bed, and then went downstairs to retrieve his meds and a bottle of water. When she returned, he was under the covers and almost in the middle of the mattress.

  “How do you know I don’t sleep on that side?”

  “I don’t. That’s why I’m in the middle.”

  “Yeah, sure it is,” she muttered. She put the meds and the water on the nightstand opposite hers and climbed in next to him.

  As soon as she was settled, he reached over and linked their fingers.

  “Are you really mad?”

  “I’m just worried about you,” she confessed.

  “It’s been a while since someone’s been worried about me. You were probably the last one. It’ll take some time getting used to.”

  “You’ll come around.”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Anything.”

  “How does a shy girl like you become a doctor? And an ER doctor in a big city, where you’re constantly talking to patients and families? It just seems the extreme opposite profession from what I imagined you in.”

  “We’ll get to what you imagined me doing another time,” she smiled. “Do you want the truth?”

  “Hasn’t there always been truth between us?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, then hesitated. “The truth is—and I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone this before—is that I felt so helpless the day of my dad’s crash. I was running to the car to help him when Ryan stopped me. He did the right thing, of course, but it didn’t stop how utterly inadequate I felt watching it all. I have no idea what I actually would have done to help. They said he had a massive heart attack, and CPR wasn’t started when they got him out of the car. He was pronounced dead in the helicopter, but why didn’t anyone start CPR? It seems such an obvious thing now, but I didn’t know CPR then. I couldn’t have done it, but I could make sure I knew it in the future. Similarly, I couldn’t make sure he didn’t die alone, but by being a doctor, I could make sure I helped someone else’s dad not feel so alone in the future when it was his turn.”

  “That’s so incredibly you,” he said softly. “Only you would think that way. Only you would put aside your personal fears of noisy, jam-packed places to help people.”

  Jackie blushed at his praise. She’d never shared her real reason for becoming a doctor with anybody. Ryan had never questioned her reasons; he just supported her choice. If he’d thought it was an odd career for her, he’d never said anything.

  Danny winced as he reached around her waist and tried to pull her closer with his injured arm.

  “You’re overworking yourself,” she chided softly, but she could hardly be mad at him when she was now in his arms and cozied up to him.

  “It’s worth it,” h
e whispered, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “It’s all worth it.”

  Fourteen

  AS THE DAYS stretched into weeks, Danny got stronger. He did all the therapy exercises Jackie instructed him to do, and when she was at the hospital, he did more. He began walking on her treadmill when she was gone, just a little in the beginning, and gradually increasing the duration and the pace. He was careful to take it at an easy walk in the beginning with a flat elevation. He was tired when he was finished, but he felt good. He could feel his strength coming back to him, and he was no longer winded going up and down stairs.

  They fell into a routine of sorts since Jackie worked long hours. The hospital opened early and closed late. He would prepare breakfast for her in the morning and have dinner ready when she returned. If she was surprised by his culinary skills, she didn’t mention it.

  While he could understand the need for downtime, it was beginning to make him stir-crazy. When she cleared him to drive again, the first thing he did was head out and buy a Ford F-350. When she needed physical assistance getting into the passenger seat, he took it back to the dealer and traded it for a smaller model instead. She had also purchased a new Jeep to drive when it snowed.

  They continued to sleep in the same bed at night, holding and kissing each other. Though he reached new levels in restraint, he was determined not to go any further until he was cleared for all of it. She made room for his clothes and what little else he brought with him. Once he was given permission for travel and heavy lifting, he’d head back down to New York to pack up the rest of his apartment, sell his furniture, and ship the rest up to New Hampshire. He’d never thought he’d call it home again, but that’s exactly what was happening.

  He explored Grayson Falls extensively. Sixty-four square miles of mostly farmland, it was picturesque and nestled in the White Mountains region. The downtown section was two square miles of brick storefronts, white churches with picket fences, the smallest post office Danny had ever seen, and an equally small town hall and courthouse.