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“I mean Troop—”
She was relieved when he dropped his arm and cut off her comment. It didn’t feel right calling him by his title, anyway.
“Don’t mind him.” Warner gestured toward his friend. “He’s all out of whack, having to start his shift here instead of stopping by the doughnut shop for a vanilla cream with frosting and sprinkles.”
Then Warner flipped on a smile so dazzling that it hit Natalie like an elbow to the diaphragm and spread warmth over her skin faster than a steaming bath. She blinked. What was that all about? Maybe the rest of female society might have joined in a collective swoon at the sight of this guy’s sculpted jaw, aristocratic nose and lips that were fuller and softer looking than any tough guy’s should be, but she wasn’t like other women. She could never be. They hadn’t lived her life. Or experienced the guilt she carried.
Still, when the other officer chuckled, Natalie startled. Had she been caught staring at him? Ogling the last type of man she should have been seeing through anything other than the most remote, clinical lens. Her face warmed, and her pulse rushed to announce her humiliation.
The officer, who looked barely old enough to shave, kept laughing. “I’m a raspberry-filled man, and Trooper Warner knows it.” He pointed at Natalie. “We miss his humor around the Brighton Post lately, but you’d better watch out. If he’s already starting with the cop jokes, you’re going to have some long sessions ahead of you.”
He didn’t know the half of it.
One side of Warner’s mouth lifted as he allowed his friend to help him out of his coat. Even without the extra padding, Warner still looked like a football player, his broad shoulders and burly arms pulling at the sleeves of his warm-up suit. His lack of muscular atrophy suggested he’d been rolling that wheelchair around all by himself.
“Thanks, buddy.” Warner glanced up at Natalie. “You see the quality of help you can find after you get your butt shot? Anyway, before the rookie’s rude interruption, I was going to tell you to call me Shane.” He gestured toward the other officer. “And this is Trooper Jamie Donovan. But he’s just leaving.”
The younger man gave a shy wave of hello, the introduction barely registering as Natalie glanced down at the information on the file folder.
Warner, Shane. Age twenty-eight.
It was all she could do not to roll her eyes. Of course, the officer recovering from a gunshot wound would have a name like Shane. He even looked like a Shane. Like he could have acted the part of the gunslinger in that old Western with the same title. Only this guy’s version of the Wild West was a sanitized suburban wilderness some fifty miles from downtown Detroit.
Clearly, Trooper Shane Warner was just another cowboy in blue. Another risk-taking police officer who thought of no one but himself, just like—
Natalie cut off the thought with a firm clamp of her jaw. She couldn’t let herself go there. Even if the cavalier way he’d referred to his injury basically proved her point. Even if every minute of working with him would force her to relive the worst day of her life. She still had a job to do.
“Well, let’s move you to one of the exam rooms so we can do some range-of-motion and manual-muscle tests.” She shifted so she was behind his chair. “Let me help—”
“No!”
At Shane’s sharp tone, Natalie’s hands stopped inches shy of the wheelchair’s push handles.
He cleared his throat. “I mean, no, thank you. I can do it. Just tell me where you need me to go.”
Natalie frowned. As if this assignment wasn’t hard enough, now her client was going to be a difficult patient.
But Jamie only chuckled again. “It’s not easy for this guy to accept help, so he’s pretty grouchy.”
She could figure that one out for herself. He probably also hated looking up to Trooper Donovan like hell, who was no more than average height, when Shane must have towered over him...before.
“Didn’t I just say you were leaving?” Shane didn’t even look at him as he said it.
“Guess those are my walking orders.” Jamie snapped his heavy jacket over his uniform. “Oh. What time do you need me to be back?”
Shane turned to him this time. “Thanks, but you’re off the clock. Kelly’s picking me up.”
Kelly? Natalie’s gaze flicked to Shane, expecting him to answer the question she would never ask. The name shouldn’t have surprised her. Of course, a guy with his looks and his mastery in the art of flirtation would have a Kelly. Or a Jenny. Or a Kelly, a Jenny and a Jill. But that made no difference to her. She didn’t care if they all carpooled over in a minivan to pick him up as long as they showed up as soon as his appointment ended.
“Whew. That’s a relief.” Jamie brushed his hand back over his hat in an exaggerated gesture. “I don’t know how much longer I could’ve put up with this guy.”
But he paused to pat Shane’s shoulder. “Text if you need anything. Seriously. Day or night. Just ask.”
Shane couldn’t have looked more uncomfortable, but he nodded. “Thanks, man.” He waved and then watched as Jamie crossed to the door.
Natalie should have been going through a mental list of the exercises she might use to increase Shane’s flexibility. She should even have been checking her watch and counting down the minutes until this session would end. Instead, she found herself watching her client. Trooper Warner was exactly what she’d expected, right?
But the obvious friendship between these two officers didn’t fit well with the mental image she’d painted earlier. Was that bond just some extension of the “blue code” that police officers used to cover for each other? Maybe, but she couldn’t help wondering if it was more than that. The rookie appeared to have genuine respect for Shane, the type that self-centered jerks seldom earned. It didn’t fit.
Shane glanced over at her, catching her watching him. Her cheeks burned so badly that she could only hope the waiting room’s low lighting helped to hide it.
“Well, let’s get to work then.” She buried her nervous hands in the pockets of her cardigan.
“Good, because I thought we were going to spend the hour standing around in the waiting room.”
He didn’t crack a smile as he said it, though one of them was clearly not standing.
Instead of responding, she stepped over to the sliding window of the receptionist’s desk. “Anne-Marie, could you—”
She stopped as the receptionist and the longtime office manager, Beverly Wilson, stared out from the suspiciously open desk window. At Beverly’s wink, Natalie tightened her jaw and her hold on the medical file.
“The buzzer?” she prodded.
“Oh. Right,” Anne-Marie said.
She reached below the counter, and a short buzz was followed by a click.
Natalie pulled the door wide. “After you, Mr. Warner.”
He glanced up at her again, those unnerving eyes trapping her and searching for stories she wasn’t prepared to tell. Her pulse dashed toward some unknown finish line, and her hands were so damp that she could barely grip the door handle.
“You mean...?” he prompted.
“Shane,” she choked out.
He smiled as if he’d won a competition and then carefully rolled his chair past her and through the door. Annoyed, Natalie stepped in behind him. She shouldn’t let this guy get under her skin any more than she should notice how his shoulders and arms flexed as he rotated the wheels. If only she could stop looking at those things.
“Which way?”
She didn’t know why he bothered asking for directions when he didn’t even pause as he rolled down the hall. He probably didn’t look both ways before crossing the street, either. Or check the date on the milk before chugging it right from the carton.
At the intersection where the hall and the activity room connected, Shane stopped so suddenly that Natalie bumped into the back of his chair. A whoosh of air escaped her where the handle hit her at the top of her thigh, and his file fell from her hands, pages fluttering to the ground.
“Sorry,” he said with a muffled chuckle. “You didn’t say which way.”
She crouched to pick up the papers. So much for the nice guy. And so much for streamlining his clinic visit. At the slow rate they were moving, they might as well forget ever getting a treatment plan set up today. In fact, they would probably spend the rest of their lives in this hall...
Natalie took a deep breath to keep from directing him through the nearest window. “Turn left. Then go to the open evaluation room on the right.”
Shane wheeled to the part of the clinic with laminate floors and curtained cubicles.
“About time! All right, let’s do this,” he said with another of those grins.
She couldn’t agree more. She might not have this police officer running marathons overnight, but she would work tirelessly to help the man to walk again. Then she could get the guy who reminded her of everything she’d lost out of the clinic and out of her thoughts for good.
* * *
SHANE FOLLOWED NATALIE’S movements as she closed the evaluation-area curtain, moved to the tiny desk to grab a clipboard and then crouched near the foot plate of his wheelchair. She moved one of the feet he should have been able to at least lift for himself, pushed the foot plate to the side and rested his shoe on the ground. Afterward, she repeated the whole process on his other foot.
It was bad enough having to accept help from people, but what bothered him most this afternoon was that the therapist he was counting on to help him get out of this damn chair seemed to want nothing to do with him. He’d picked up on it the moment they’d met. Sure, she was doing her job in a distant, clinical fashion, but he was trained to pick out liars.
He was looking at one of those right now.
Unfortunately for him, Natalie Keaton also happened to be an exotic beauty with the kind of willowy body that could tempt a guy to tell a few lies of his own. Her café au lait skin, with a dusting of freckles across her nose and cheeks, made him think of Spanish coffee with whipped cream and nutmeg sprinkles. And those eyes, wide-set and nearly black, challenged him to take a deeper look.
One look too many, he guessed, from her frown when she glanced up from the floor and caught him watching her. Her loose bun was doing its job of keeping her mass of black-brown hair out of the way, but she shoved a loose tress behind her ear, anyway, as if she needed something to do with her hands. Oh, he could think of a few things... Clearly, they weren’t on the same page, he decided, as she lowered her gaze again to his feet.
Shane closed his eyes and opened them again. Why was he looking at his physical therapist like some item on the menu? What did chasing after a beautiful woman have to do with him learning to walk again? No. Run. He needed to be able to sprint if he ever hoped to be approved for patrol. Besides, there wasn’t a chance that a woman like Natalie Keaton would actually look back at him now. What did he plan to do, sweep her off her feet with his wheelchair?
“Today, in addition to looking at range of motion and doing a manual-muscle test, we’re going to check sensation, coordination and balance,” she said without looking up from the form on her clipboard. “Regarding balance, we’ll look at seated and standing balance and static and dynamic.”
“Thanks for not making me change into one of those cute little hospital gowns,” he said instead of asking for more details. “Quick costume changes don’t work well for me lately.”
“Both for here and for the home exercise program I’ll be giving you today, the sweat suit you’re wearing is fine.”
“And a whole lot less breezy.”
He grinned, but she didn’t look up to see it. Her jaw tightened, the same way it had when he and Jamie were joking in the waiting room. Those full, kissable lips curled in to form a grim line above her chin. She obviously didn’t appreciate his brand of humor. Or much else about him.
Well, why the hell not? He’d never done anything to her. Was it because he was a police officer? He would never understand why some people hated the cops without any good reason. But then, not everybody owed as much to heroes in blue as he did. Not everyone knew without a doubt that the police—or one officer in particular—had saved his life. Even if Shane would never understand why the guy had gone to so much trouble.
Without responding to his joke that even he no longer found funny, Natalie lifted his right leg and extended it from the knee until it was nearly straight. He couldn’t help but smile at the amount of effort it took for her to hold the weight of his leg. Maybe the muscle loss from inactivity wasn’t as bad as he’d expected, but it would only be a matter of time until his leg was as skinny as one of her arms.
“That’s pretty good, really,” she said as she rested his foot back on the floor.
“Flexibility is not my problem. Walking is the problem.”
“I know. But we have to start somewhere.” She lifted the other leg, extended it and then set it down again.
But did she know? Did she understand that he probably needed a shrink now more than a PT, since his continued paralysis might be in his head? Even his doctors had hinted at it. Did she have any idea how critical it was for him to get back on the job and at least work toward restitution over a debt he might never be able to fully repay?
Kent Sawyer’s silly grin slipped into his thoughts then, as it often did when he was feeling sorry for himself. Kent had always been the first to tell him to buck up, but his argument was even stronger now that he gave it from his hospital bed, where Kent was giving cancer the battle of his life and losing a little more every day.
Where would he be now if the police officer hadn’t stuck his neck out for him with the courts and refused to give up on a juvenile delinquent like everyone else had? He’d deserved to be forgotten after he’d been responsible for another kid’s death, whether he could be held legally accountable or not.
Natalie cleared her throat, his silence clearly making her uncomfortable.
“Why don’t we back up for a minute?” She did just that, backing away from him and then reaching for the rolling chair behind her. Once she was seated, she grabbed his file and flipped it open. “Let’s talk a little about your injury.”
“Okay.”
“How long has it been since the accident?”
His gaze lowered to the file that probably contained all the information she could have asked for, but he decided to humor her...to a point. “It wasn’t exactly an accident. That gun didn’t go off by itself.”
“Of course. I mean the incident. So how long?”
“Over three months.” The longest thirteen weeks of his life.
“Three months,” she repeated as she wrote something on the paper. “According to your file, you sustained an incomplete spinal cord injury between L5 and S1, and the surgeon was successful in removing the bullet.” She looked up from the file. “You were lucky it was so low in your spinal cord.”
“Yeah, the doctors also said if it had been a complete spinal cord injury, I would have permanently lost all movement and sensation beneath the point of injury.” He used air quotes to indicate he was repeating the doctor’s clinical explanation.
She nodded. “And were you wearing a Kevlar vest when it happened?”
Shane blinked, the off-topic question hitting him fast and low. He was the one gritting his teeth now, but she didn’t notice. It wasn’t the first time someone had asked that, but her question sounded more like an accusation. Was she suggesting that getting shot was somehow his fault?
“I don’t see what that has to do with—”
She lifted her head and blinked several times. “Forget I asked that. I was just curious.”
He studied her, noting again her light brown skin. Could she possibly be biracial? If so, she would have a better reason than most to resent those few bad apples in law enforcement who’d committed wrongs against the African-American community. But, again, that had nothing to do with him. The least she could do was get to know him before she hated his guts.
She fidgeted under his scrutiny. “I said forget I asked.”
“Then to ease your curiosity, yes, I was wearing a vest. Funny thing about so-called bulletproof vests. They’re really only bullet resistant.”
“Oh.”
“That was my thought.”
“Sorry...that it happened.” Natalie glanced down, becoming engrossed with the file she held. She tapped the paper with her pen. “How long were you in inpatient rehab?”
“Eight weeks. And then four weeks of in-home PT after. Yet here I am.” He gestured toward his chair. “I need to get back to the force now. No. Sooner than that.”
“You have to be patient,” she said. “Every recovery is different.”
“Well, this one is taking forever. I mean, the doctors assured me I would walk again, but...” He shrugged.
“I’m sure you’ll be back to playing cops and robbers in no time.”
She chuckled when she said it, though her eyes darted to the right, as if she was suddenly uncomfortable. But he wouldn’t let her get away with a comment like that again. Even if she had a good reason to dislike cops, she didn’t get to take it out on him.
“I’m more concerned about getting back to work so I can help people.”
Her gaze lifted to meet his. “Sorry. Long day.”
“The day’s only half over.”
