A Soldier’s Return Page 2

  Surely it had to be a coincidence.

  Anyway, she might like the idea of a man in her life, but she wasn’t at all prepared for the reality of it—especially not a dark-haired, blue-eyed runner who still somehow managed to smell delicious.

  He also had a little dog on a leash, a small black schnauzer who was sniffing Fiona like they were old friends.

  “Can I give you a hand?”

  “Um. Sure.”

  Still cradling her injured wrist, she reached out with her right hand, and he grasped it firmly and tugged her to her feet. For one odd moment, she could swear she smelled roses above the clean, crisp, masculine scent of him, but that made absolutely no sense.

  Was she hallucinating? Maybe she had bonked her head in that gloriously graceful free fall.

  “You hurt your wrist,” he observed. “Need me to take a look at it? I’m a doctor.”

  What were the odds that she would fall and injure herself in front of a gorgeous tourist who also happened to be a doctor?

  “Isn’t that convenient?” she muttered, wondering again at the weird little twist of fate.

  He gave her an odd look, half curious and half concerned. Again, she had the strange feeling that she knew him somehow, but she had such a lousy memory for faces and names.

  “Melissa. Melissa Blake?”

  She narrowed her gaze, more embarrassed at her own lousy memory than anything. He knew her so she obviously had met him before.

  “Yes. Actually, it’s Melissa Fielding now.”

  “Oh. Right. You married Cody Fielding, Cannon Beach’s celebrity.”

  And divorced him, she wanted to add. Don’t forget that part.

  “I’m sorry. You know me, but I’m afraid I don’t remember your name.”

  He shrugged. “No reason you should. I was a few years older and I’ve been gone a long time.”

  She looked closer. There was something about the shape of his mouth. She had seen it recently on someone else...

  “Eli?”

  “That’s right. Hi, Melissa.”

  She should have known! All the clues came together. The dog, whom she now recognized as Max, the smart little dog who belonged to Eli’s father. The fact that he said he was a doctor. Those startling, searching blue eyes that now seemed unforgettable.

  How embarrassing!

  In her defense, the last time she had seen Eli Sanderson, he had been eighteen and she had been fifteen. He had graduated from high school and was about to take off across the country to college. The Eli she remembered had been studious and serious. He had kept mostly to himself, more interested in leading the academic decathlon than coming to any sporting events or social functions.

  She had been the opposite, always down for a party, as long as it distracted her from the sadness at home in those first years after her father died of brain cancer.

  The Eli she remembered had been long and lanky, skinny even. This man, on the other hand, was anything but nerdy. He was buff, gorgeous, with lean, masculine features and the kind of shoulders that made a woman want to grab hold and not let go.

  Wow. The military had really filled him out.

  “I understand you work with my dad,” he said.

  She worked for his father. Melissa was a nurse at Dr. Wendell Sanderson’s family medicine clinic. Now she realized why that mouth looked so familiar. She should have picked up on it immediately. His dad’s mouth was shaped the same, but somehow that full bottom lip looked very different on Dr. Sanderson Jr.

  Her wrist still ached fiercely. “How’s your dad?” she asked, trying to divert her attention from it. “I stopped by to see him yesterday after his surgery and was going to call the hospital to check on him today as soon as I finished my run.”

  “He’s good. I was trying to be here before he went under the knife, but my plane was delayed until last night. I did speak to the orthopedic surgeon, who is happy with the outcome so far. Both knee replacements seem to have gone well.”

  “Oh, good. He won’t tolerate being down for long. I guess that’s why it made sense for him to do both at the same time.”

  “You know him well.”

  After several months of working for the kindly family medicine doctor, she had gained a solid insight into his personality. Wendell was sweet, patient, genuinely concerned about his patients. He was the best boss she’d ever had.

  “Let’s take a look at this wrist,” Eli said now. Unlike his father, Wendell’s son could never be described as kindly or avuncular.

  “I’m sure it’s fine.”

  “Again, I’m a doctor. Why don’t you let me be the judge of how fine it might be? I saw that nasty tumble and could hear the impact of your fall all the way across the sand. You might have broken something, in which case you’re going to want to have it looked at sooner rather than later.”

  She was strangely reluctant to hand over her wrist—or anything else—to the man and fought the urge to hide her hand behind her back, as if she were caught with a fistful of Oreos in front of an empty cookie jar.

  “I can have the radiologist at the clinic x-ray it when I go in to work in an hour.”

  “Or you can let me take a look at it right now.”

  She frowned at the implacable set of his jaw. He held his hand out and she sighed. “Ugh. You’re as stubborn as your father.”

  “Thank you. Anytime someone compares me to my father, I take it as a compliment.”

  He gave his outstretched hand a pointed look, and she frowned again and, cornered, held out her wrist. The movement made her hurt all over again, and she flushed at the unwilling tears she could feel gather.

  His skin was much warmer than she might have expected on a lovely but still cool April morning. Seductively warm. His hands were long-fingered, masculine, much longer than her own, and he wore a sleek Tag Heuer watch.

  Her stomach felt hollow, her nerves tight, but she wasn’t sure if that was in reaction to the injury or from the unexpected pleasure of skin against skin. He was a doctor taking a look at an injury, she reminded herself, not a sexy guy wanting to hold her hand.

  Melissa aimed a glare at Fiona, who had started the whole thing. The dog had planted her haunches in the sand, tail wagging, and seemed to be watching the whole episode with an expression that appeared strangely like amusement.

  “It doesn’t feel like anything is broken. You can move it, right?”

  He held her hand while she wiggled her fingers, then rotated her wrist. It hurt like the devil, but she didn’t feel any structural impingement in movement.

  “Yes. I told you it wasn’t broken. It’s already feeling better.”

  “You can’t be completely sure without an X-ray, but I’m all right waiting forty-eight hours or so to check it. I suspect a sprain, but it might be easier to tell in a few days. Do you have a way to splint it? If you don’t, I’m sure my dad has something at the office.”

  “I’ve got a wrist brace I’ve worn before when I had carpal tunnel problems.”

  “You’ll want to put that on and have it checked again in a few days. Meanwhile, ice and elevation are your best friends. At least ten minutes every two hours.”

  As if she had time for that. “I’ll do my best. Thanks.”

  A sudden thought occurred to her, one she was almost afraid to entertain. “How long will you be in town?”

  When he was making arrangements to be gone for his surgery, Wendell had hoped Eli might be able to cover for him at the clinic. The last she had heard, though, Eli’s hadn’t been able to get leave from his military assignment so his father had arranged a substitute doctor through a service in Portland.

  Given that Eli was here, she had a feeling all that was about to change—which meant Eli might be her boss for the foreseeable future.

  “I’m not sure how much time I can get,” he answered now. “That depends on a few things still in play. I’m hoping for a month but I’ll be here for the next two to three weeks, at least.”

  “I see.”

  She did see, entirely too clearly. This would obviously not be the last she would see of Eli Sanderson.

  “I need to go. Thanks for your help,” she said quickly.

  “I didn’t do anything except take a look at your injury. At least promise me you’ll raise it up and put some ice on it.”

  Considering she was scheduled to work at his father’s clinic starting in just over an hour and still needed to shower, she wouldn’t have time for much self-pampering. “I’ll do my best. Thanks.”

  “How far do you have to go? I can at least help you walk your dog home.”

  “Fiona isn’t my dog. She belongs to my neighbor. We were just sort of exercising each other. And for the record, she’s usually very well behaved. I don’t quite know what happened earlier, but we’ll be fine to make it home on our own. I don’t want to disturb your run more than I already have.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “We don’t have far to go. I live at Brambleberry House.”

  His expression registered his surprise. “Wow. You’re practically next door to my dad’s place.”

  They couldn’t avoid each other, even if they wanted to. She didn’t necessarily want to avoid him, but considering she was now bedraggled and covered with sand, she was pretty sure he wouldn’t be in a hurry to see her again.

  “Thanks again for your help. I’ll see you later.”

  “Remember your RICE.”

  Right. Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation. The first-aid prescription for injuries like hers. “I’ll do my best. Thanks. See you later.”

  This time as she headed for the house, Fiona trotted along beside her, docile and well behaved.

  Melissa’s wrist, on the other hand, complained vociferously all the way back to the house. She did her best to ignore it, focusing instead on the unsettling encounter with Dr. Sanderson’s only son.

  * * *

  Eli told himself he was only keeping an eye on Melissa as she made her slow way along the beach toward Brambleberry House because he was concerned about her condition, especially whether she had other injuries from her fall she had chosen not to reveal to him.

  He was only being a concerned physician, watching over someone who had been hurt while he was nearby.

  The explanation rang hollow. He knew it was more than that.

  Melissa Blake Fielding had always been a beautiful girl and had fascinated him more than he had wanted to admit to himself or anyone else when he was eighteen and she was only fifteen.

  She had been a pretty cheerleader, popular and well-liked—mostly because she always had a smile for everyone, even geeky science students who weren’t the greatest at talking to popular, pretty, well-liked cheerleaders.

  He had danced with her once at a school dance toward the end of his senior year. She had been there with her date—and future husband—Cody Fielding, who had been ignoring her, as usual.

  While his own date had been dancing with her dad, the high school gym teacher and chaperone, Eli had gathered his nerve to ask Melissa to dance, hating that the nicest girl in school had been stuck sitting alone while her jerk of a boyfriend ignored her.

  He remembered she had been everything sweet to him during that memorable dance, asking about his plans after graduation.

  Did she know her boyfriend and future husband hadn’t taken kindly to Eli’s nerve in asking Cody’s date to dance and had tried to make him pay? He still had a scar above his eyebrow from their subsequent little altercation.

  It had been a long time ago. He was a completely different man than he’d been back then, with wholly different priorities.

  He hadn’t thought about her in years, at least until his father had mentioned a few months earlier that Melissa was back in town and working for him.

  At the time, he had been grieving, lost, more than a little raw. He remembered now that the memory of Melissa had made him smile for the first time in weeks.

  Now he had to wonder if that was one of the reasons he had worked hard to arrange things so that he could come home and help his father out during Wendell’s recovery from double knee-replacement surgery. On some subconscious level, had he remembered Melissa worked at the clinic and been driven to see her again?

  He didn’t want to think so. He would be one sorry idiot if that were the case, especially since he didn’t have room in his life right now for that kind of complication.

  If he had given it any thought at all, on any level, he probably would have assumed it wouldn’t matter. He was older, she was older. It had been a long time since he’d felt like that awkward, socially inept nerd he’d been in the days when he lived here in Cannon Beach.

  He had been deployed most of the last five years and had been through bombings, genocides, refugee disasters. He had seen things he never expected to, had survived things others hadn’t.

  He could handle this unexpected reunion with a woman he might have had a crush on. He only had to remember that he was no longer that geeky, awkward kid but a well-respected physician now.

  In comparison to everything he had been through in the last few years—and especially the horror of six months ago that he was still trying to process—he expected these few weeks of substituting for his father in Cannon Beach to be a walk in the park.

  Chapter Two

  “You’re late.” Carmen Marquez, the clinic’s receptionist and office manager, gave an arch look over the top of her readers, and Melissa winced but held up her braced wrist.

  “I know. It’s been a crazy day. I’m sorry. Blame it on this.”

  “What did you do? Punch somebody?” Tiffany Lowell, one of their certified nursing assistants, gave her a wide-eyed look—though the college student and part-time band front woman wore so much makeup, she had the same expression most of the time.

  “I tripped over a big, goofy Irish setter and sprained my wrist. I’m sorry I’m late, but I was on strict orders to rest and put ice on it.”

  “That’s exactly what you should be doing. In fact, it’s what Dr. Sanderson would be telling you to do if he were here,” Carmen said.

  Dr. Sanderson Jr. had been the one to give her the instructions, but she wasn’t ready to share that interesting bit of gossip with the other women.

  “You look like you’re either going to puke or pass out,” Tiffany observed.

  “We don’t have any patients scheduled for another half hour,” Carmen said with a great deal more sympathy in her voice. “You should at least sit down.”

  “I’m fine. I need to get ready for the new doctor. He should be coming in today.”

  Carmen angled her head in a strange way, her mouth pursed and her eyes twinkling. “He’s already here. Oh, honey. Have we got a surprise for you.”

  The butterflies that had been dancing in her stomach since earlier on the beach seemed to pick up their pace. “The substitute doctor is Dr. Sanderson’s son, Eli.”

  “Whoa! Did your fall make you psychic or something?” Tiffany asked with much more respect than she usually awarded Melissa.

  “In a way, I guess you could say that. Sort of. I bumped into him on the beach this morning. He was a firsthand witness when I made my graceful face-plant into the sand, and he ended up kindly helping me up.”

  The memory of the concern in his blue eyes and of his strong fingers holding her hand, his skin warm against hers, made her nerve endings tingle.

  She firmly clamped down on the memory. She would have to work closely with him for at least the next few weeks while Wendell recovered. It would be a disaster if she couldn’t manage to keep a lid on her unexpected attraction to the man.

  “I keep forgetting you grew up in town,” Carmen said. “You must know Eli, then.”

  While Cannon Beach could swarm with tourists during the summer months, it was really a small town at heart. Most permanent residents knew one another.

  “We went to school together. He was older. I was a freshman the year he was a senior. I didn’t know he was going to be filling in until I bumped into him this morning. Last I heard, we were getting a temp from the Portland agency.”

  “That’s what I heard, too,” Carmen said. “I guess we have to roll with what we get.”

  “I’m pretty sure plenty of women in Cannon Beach will want to roll with Doc Sanderson’s son when they see him.” Tiffany smirked.

  Melissa turned her shocked laugh into a cough. “He told me he wasn’t sure until the last minute whether he’d be able to make it back to fill in.”

  “You know where he’s been, right?” Carmen asked.

  “Some kind of war zone,” Tiffany said.

  Wendell had told her something about what his son was doing, how since finishing his internship in emergency medicine several years earlier, Eli had been on a special assignment from the military to work with aid agencies, setting up medical clinics and providing care to desperate, helpless people whose countries were in turmoil. He had been deployed almost constantly over the last five years.

  Wendell had been so proud of his son for stepping up, even though his service put him in harm’s way time and again. He had also been worried for him.

  “He feels things so deeply,” her boss had said. “I can’t imagine it’s easy, the kinds of things he has to see now.”

  She remembered feeling great sympathy for Eli and admiration for him, though at the time she had pictured him as the nerdy, scholarly, skinny teenager she remembered, not the buff, gorgeous man she had encountered that morning on the beach.

  “One thing I need to ask, though. Maybe you know the answer,” Carmen said. “How can he just show up in Cannon Beach and start practicing medicine here? Do I need to check with the licensing board? Doesn’t he need an Oregon license or something?”

  “Fun and interesting fact. The particular license given to U.S. Army doctors allows them to practice medicine anywhere.”