Chapter Ten
Another week had slipped by. Aiden kept track without meaning to—the way he’d kept track of everything in the hospital, in rehab, in the long institutional sameness of recovery where days blurred unless you anchored them to something.
Somewhere in the past week, that anchor had shifted from the pain and the struggle to Colleen, and now, Romeo.
Standing on the back porch, coffee cup in hand, Aiden took in the morning routines in the nearby barn and paddock as Clint and the hands did what they did so well.
From the moment Aiden had set foot out the back door, Romeo sat at his feet like he’d been assigned there by military order.
The crate was still tucked beside the porch wall, its door propped open the way Alice and Sarah Sue preferred, but Romeo barely used it anymore once Aiden stepped outside.
The dog would come out, stretch, shake off sleep, and then, as if he had one job in life and Aiden was it, attach himself like Velcro.
It should have bothered him. A few weeks ago, maybe it would have.
Now he found it oddly reassuring. Brady trotted across the yard with a stick in his mouth and dropped it near Romeo.
At least the dog no longer cowered at Brady’s presence, but Romeo had no intention of doing anything that did not include Aiden.
He had to give Brady points for trying. With the sigh of a put-upon saint, Brady picked the stick back up, and carried it away to enjoy his game without help.
Aiden took another sip of coffee and shifted his weight.
Careful. Automatic. By now he noticed the difference without trying.
He still limped. There was no use pretending otherwise.
But these days it felt less like he was dragging one side of himself behind the other and more like his body was beginning to remember what to do.
Not consistently. Not gracefully. But enough that some mornings, like this one, the ache in his hip felt familiar rather than punishing.
Progress. Maybe. Then again, maybe he was fooling himself.
Sometimes, like this morning, he caught himself wondering if this was just who he was now.
A man with a limp. A man who moved carefully.
A man no longer in Uncle Sam’s army. He thought about the parallel bars, the months of effort that had produced—this.
He thought about Colleen on the paddock fence watching him ride Boots with the expression of someone seeing something she’d been looking for, and wondered if she was seeing progress he couldn’t feel yet, or if she was simply optimistic the way good therapists were optimistic because the alternative wasn’t useful.
He didn’t know. He only knew he was walking a little easier, sleeping a little better, and thinking a whole lot more than he ought to about a woman with sky-blue eyes and enough football knowledge to make a ref question his calling.
A waste of time? His mouth tilted. Anything that put him in Colleen’s orbit was far from a waste.
The porch door opened behind him. “Aiden?”
He turned to find Alice coming outside, wiping her hands on a dish towel, her expression pleasant but purposeful. That usually meant she needed something and had already decided he was her man for the job.
“Yes, ma’am?”
She came down the porch steps slowly, glancing once at Romeo, who stayed planted beside him like a sentry. “Would you mind running an errand for me?”
“Not at all.”
“That’s what I hoped you’d say.” She folded the dish towel over one arm. “I ordered a dress online for the fundraiser next week. At least I thought I had enough sense to ship it here. Turns out I sent it to the store in Millers Creek.”
Though he didn’t get away from the ranch much, he still knew that Millers Creek was a good drive away from Honeysuckle.
“It’s a bit of a drive, and if you think it’ll be too much for your hip—” Leave it to Alice to say out loud what he had been thinking quietly.
“Nonsense.” The word came out fast enough that even he didn’t quite believe it.
Alice noticed. Of course she noticed. She noticed everything. Still, she only smiled. “Well, if you’re sure.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He looked down at Romeo, then back at her. “I’ll call Colleen and postpone today’s session till tomorrow.”
Alice patted his arm and turned back toward the house. “The pickup slip is on the counter.”
Nodding, he went back inside, Romeo shadowing him to the threshold before peeling away to settle in his crate with one eye on the kitchen door. Aiden grabbed the slip, found his phone, and stepped back toward the porch where reception was a little better.
“Hello?” Colleen answered on the third ring. Her voice put that same ridiculous smile on his face every single time.
“Morning. It’s Aiden.”
“Well, hello there.” He could hear a smile in her voice. “Everything all right?”
“Alice has me on dress retrieval duty. Some mix-up with a store pickup in Millers Creek. It’ll cut into this afternoon, so I figured I should let you know I’ll miss therapy.”
“How about that for a lucky coincidence. I have a few things I’ve been putting off driving to Millers Creek for. Would it be okay if I tagged along?”
“Of course.” She’d barely finished the sentence when the reply tumbled from his lips.
“Great. I’ll be ready by the time you get here.”
“Sounds good. See you soon.” He’d almost disconnected the call when he realized he’d never been to her house. “Wait.”
A chuckle sounded in his ear. “401 Willow Street.”
“Got it.” His smile widened. Whether it was because she knew what he was going to ask, or that she could read a phone book and still make him smile was up for debate—another time.
Hanging up, he stared at the phone for half a second like it had just handed him a winning lottery ticket.
A drive with Colleen. No horse. No dog. No family dinner.
Just the two of them and a Texas road. Definitely not a waste of time.
The rumble of a noisy muffler could be heard before Colleen spotted the Sweet Ranch truck.
While she waited for Aiden, she’d stood at the garage door with a cup of coffee going cold in her hand, looking at the same boxes of wood flooring she’d been looking at for two weeks.
She still couldn’t decide if it made more sense to return the boxes and pick out a sturdy vinyl.
As if flooring would make or break her efforts at establishing her own business.
Turning to the curb, her gaze settled on Aiden, carefully exiting the high vehicle.
To her, it looked like today there was something different in the way he moved.
Less negotiation in it. Like the conversation between his body and his hip had shifted from an argument to something closer to an understanding.
She filed away the observation without letting herself react to it.
“Morning.” He came up the driveway, entering the empty garage as she waved him in.
Slowly, he walked through the space, reading the room.
He looked from the adequately lit ceiling to the bare concrete floor to the mirrors wrapped in moving blankets against the far wall, the stacked boxes of flooring beside them.
Colleen resisted the urge to squirm as his gaze shifted to the folding table she used as a makeshift desk, and the two treatment tables she’d managed to get in and set up that made the space look almost intentional if you didn’t look too closely.
“How many patients can you take right now?”
“Not many.” She leaned against the doorframe. “I’m not advertising until it’s finished.”
“How long has it been like this?”
She considered lying. “A while.”
He crouched beside the flooring boxes—carefully, she noted, but without the rigid caution of weeks ago—and read the label.
Stood back up. Looked at the wall where the mirrors would eventually go.
Looked at the corner and focused with such intensity she almost expected whatever he envisioned to appear at the snap of his fingers. “Changing room in the plans?”
She bobbed her head. “In that corner. I need a wall of mirrors but installation has to be precise not to crack such large pieces. Beside the changing room I plan to put all the weight equipment.”
His gaze drifted around the room, slowly his eyes narrowed. “Where is the equipment?”
“I haven’t ordered it yet. No sense having it just sit here while I pay interest.”
His lips pressed closed and his head bobbed up and down. “I can help with this.”
“Your hip—”
“Is better than it was and will be better tomorrow than it is today.” The words came out without defensiveness, just stating a fact the way he stated most facts.
She looked at the space, then at him. The pantry drawers Alice hadn’t asked for and the paddock gate Clint hadn’t asked him to fix and the back door hinge that had been quietly repaired one morning without announcement all tumbled to mind.
“Tell me this. If the room were finished and ready for multiple patients, would you be ready?”
That gave her pause. She was always ready. It was her new therapy location that wasn’t. Not sure what to say, she merely nodded.
Aiden did the same and she knew as his hand rested along the small of her back, urging her forward, that the man was making mental lists on how to do exactly what she needed.
Colleen had barely settled into the passenger seat before she found herself smiling. She could get used to having this man around. A true partner in crime, or in this case, renovation.
The drive to Millers Creek took less than an hour.
They talked the way they’d learned to—without filling every space, without performing conversation, just following whatever thread turned up and dropping it when it ran out.
He told her about his cousin Joe’s latest disaster, a bathroom renovation in the Bronx that had somehow compromised a load-bearing wall.
She told him about a patient at Farraday’s who’d been so convinced Hannah was wrong about his timeline that he’d secretly started riding again three weeks early and set himself back two months.
“The drive isn’t too much for your hip is it?” She’d debated bringing this up at all, they’d been having such a pleasant drive, but she couldn’t deny that she was concerned about his hip after this much time in the car.
“Fine.”
She didn’t say a word, but cocked one brow higher than the other and waited for him to glance her way.
“Okay. Suffice to say, it’s better than it was.”
“Would that be before the accident or since the accident?”
“You mean the blast?” His harsh words gave her chills.
“It must have been awful.”
He blew out a deep sigh, stared momentarily at a distant unfocused point, and then heaving another sigh, she knew he’d made up his mind.
“I don’t remember much about the explosion.
It was a normal convoy like any other when suddenly everyone was shouting orders and scrambling.
Next thing I knew the world went quiet as the truck door blew away and I went flying. ”
“Probably the sound of the blast temporarily affected your hearing.”
He shrugged. “That’s all I remember. I don’t remember the fire, or the others, or even landing on the hard dirt. The next thing I remembered was waking up in a sterile environment and staring at the acoustic tiled ceiling and wondering why the hell did I hurt so much.”
“Your hip.”
“My everything. Radiant pain shot up and down my leg, my back. Some days I’d have sworn I could feel the pain all the way to my teeth.”
She tried not to grimace.
“When I finally realized where I was and what was going on, I saw my entire life crumble before me.”
That she didn’t understand. “What do you mean your entire life?”
“I’m a career soldier. At least that had been the plan. But if I can’t walk without a limp, if ordinary tasks send pain shooting in every direction—I won’t be any good to Uncle Sam.”
None of that had occurred to her. Especially not that this man was mentally dealing with the possible end of a planned career. “Do you still feel that way?”
“No. Well, yes. Okay, sometimes.”
That made her laugh. “Gotta love that military precision.”
He chuckled and then, to her surprise, the discussion over, he fiddled with the radio stations and settled on a University station that was playing Broadway favorites. The man had very eclectic taste and before she knew it, her toes were keeping rhythm with her fingers tapping on the arm rest.
“You like Broadway tunes?”
“My grandmother had all kinds of original cast albums going as far back as Bye Bye Birdie and West Side Story.”
“Wow, that is going back.”
“Did you know that they changed the lyrics for the movies?” He smiled, not the same smile she’d begun to get used to, but a coy, lazy grin that felt more like keeping secrets than grinning.
Clearing his throat, the melodic lyrics came forth, “An English teacher is really someone. How proud I’d be if you had become one. ”
Colleen was sure her jaw had hit the floor. “Yes. Bye Bye Birdie. In the show Albert was supposed to be an English teacher not a chemist.”
His head bobbed and the smile spread a little wider. “I’m sure the sensors had something to do with removing the line about bullets flying from West Side Story.”
“America!” she was almost bouncing out of her seat. She knew he knew opera, but show tunes?
“Hey, I’m a man of many talents.”
That she was beginning to figure out for herself.
Before she could say another word, Aiden opened his mouth and the soothing tones of a talented tenor filled the cab space.
She wasn’t a fan of opera, but she recognized the tune about a poor clown.
Not understanding a single word, the simple melody in his voice had her almost in tears.
And then, when he stopped, she really felt like crying.
Folks had always said that opera was moving; she was starting to get an inkling of how that worked.
“Sorry. All this talk of music reminded me of my grandfather. My grandmother may have been a Broadway fan, would go to the theater every chance she got, and often dragged one or more of us with her. But my grandfather… that man played opera records every chance he got. Most of my siblings hated it. Called the music shrill noises, they much preferred going to the city with my grandmother. At first, I think I listened to Grandpa’s music because I loved my grandfather and he was so happy when he was singing along to the songs.
Then one day I realized, I liked the music too. Really liked it.”
“And you can sing.” That didn’t hurt any.
For the first time that she’d seen, pink tinged his cheeks. If that wasn’t just as endearing as the beautiful voice, she didn’t know what could be.