Chapter Thirteen
“He’s been waiting for you.” Alice stood at the kitchen sink scooping hard boiled eggs from the biggest pot Aiden had ever seen.
“Excuse me?” If he didn’t know this was a cattle ranch, the mound of eggs piled by the sink would have shouted chicken farm.
Her arm waved to the screen door. The back door was open and Romeo lounged on the porch like a doormat in front of the screen door.
A smile tugged at Aiden’s lips. Truth be told, he missed the dog too. Opening the door and stepping outside, he hunched down by the dog now swishing his tail like a metronome. “How are you doing today, fella?”
Rising to a seated position, the dog’s tail picked up speed and to Aiden’s surprise, the dog’s head came to rest on his leg.
“Well I’ll be.” Alice stood at the other side of the screen door. “Maybe if you left the house more often, he’d come around faster.”
He knew she was teasing, but he couldn’t help but wonder if there wasn’t a grain of truth in her words.
“As much as I’m enjoying this love fest, I have four dozen more eggs to boil.” She blew on her finger tips and preening, brushed them against her shoulder. “My deviled eggs are in high demand.”
“I don’t doubt it.” He watched her return to the massive pot of boiled eggs then stayed crouched by Romeo longer than his hip appreciated, his hand moving along the dog’s neck in the long slow strokes that Romeo had decided were now acceptable.
That bit of progress made Aiden almost as happy as having spent the day with Colleen—well, maybe not quite almost. His phone buzzed in his pocket.
Romeo’s ears moved at the sound but he didn’t lift his head.
Aiden straightened carefully and checked the screen. Kade Sweet. “Hey.”
“Morning.” Kade’s voice had the easy authority of a man who was never fully off duty even when he was. “How’s the hip?”
“Better than yesterday. Worse than tomorrow.”
“Good answer.” A pause. “You got a minute?”
“I’ve got nothing but.” He moved to the porch steps and sat, Romeo shifting to stay within range, his nose finding Aiden’s knee. “What’s going on?”
“Hanson.”
The name settled between them the way names from that day always did. Aiden waited.
“TBI.” Kade didn’t need to explain to Aiden what it stood for—traumatic brain injury. “He’s been in the system since the blast. Standard rehab, standard protocols. Not improving the way they need him to.”
“How bad?”
“Bad enough that his doctors are looking for something different.” Another pause. “Mom agrees he should come to the ranch.”
Aiden looked out at the paddock where Boots was already watching the yard with the patient attention of a horse who understood schedules better than most people. “Same setup as me?”
“Same setup. Calm, structure, something to do, room to breathe. His docs are on board—quiet rural environment has documented benefit for TBI recovery. The current situation isn’t cutting it.”
“When?”
“Sooner than later would be better.”
“Agreed.” Being here the last few weeks had made all the difference in his life. Not just the therapy, but the therapist. Colleen had become very important to him, more than he had a right to allow.
“You know how military paperwork is. Could be two or three weeks. Think you’ll still be there?”
Would he? His mind drifted to Colleen, to how important she’d become to him, to how much he didn’t want to leave her.
His hand stilled, his gaze locked on a point in the distance and he almost dropped the phone.
He didn’t want to leave Colleen. Not now, not ever.
Holy crap. He was falling in love with the woman.
“You still with me?” Kade’s voice broke into his thoughts.
“Uh, yeah. Sorry. Just thinking. Things are going well, but hard to say when I’ll be clear to leave.”
“Is it a problem if he comes while you’re still there?”
“Not for me. I haven’t spoken to him since I left rehab, but if it’s okay with him and your mom, it works for me.
” He thought about that. Hadn’t taken the time to call and check on the others wounded in the blast. The ones still in rehab or recovery of some kind.
What an idiot he was. Every time Josh or Kade called or visited it had made his day.
Reminded him that he mattered. That his recovery was important. “I think I’ll give him a call.”
“Good idea.” The smile came through in his voice. “Let me know what the doc says at your next checkup.”
“Will do.” They exchanged a few brief pleasantries before ending the call. Aiden stared at the phone in his hand for a long moment.
Romeo nudged his hand. Smart dog.
“Yeah.” He scratched behind the dog’s ear. “No feeling guilty. Just call. Got it.” He found the number and dialed. It rang four times. He was calculating whether to leave a message when the line picked up.
“Yes?” Hanson’s single terse word reflected a man who had stopped expecting good news from phone calls.
“Hey. It’s Aiden.”
A beat. “Boglioli.” Something in tone shifted. “What the—how are you?”
“Better.” He meant it. “Listen, whatever you’re thinking, don’t. There’s no place like the Sweet Ranch. Don’t argue. Just come.”
“That’s what Kade and Josh said.” Silence hung longer than Aiden liked. “They make it sound like one step short of heaven.”
“Whatever you’ve heard, it’s better.” He looked out at the yard, at Brady trotting past with a stick that was approximately half his size, at the barn sitting solid in the distance, at Boots watching the paddock gate with her particular brand of patient certainty.
“I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking it’s going to be two months of people feeling sorry for you and trying to get you to talk about your feelings. ”
A sound that might have been the beginning of a laugh came through the phone. “Something like that.”
“It’s not.” He scratched Romeo’s ear. “It’s more like a working vacation where a mother who could have been a general helps you see the world in a different light.”
Silence.
He stood, carefully, Romeo rising with him. “Just come. As soon as you get your papers, pack a bag and get your ass here. Trust me.”
“Okay.” Simple. Quiet.
“Okay.” He smiled. Hanson didn’t have a clue how healing this place is. “Keep me posted.”
“Will do.”
The call ended and he stood looking around once more.
From inside the house came the sound of voices—two, maybe three—carrying through the kitchen from the direction of the living room.
He recognized Alice’s laugh, which meant company, and then another voice, higher and self-possessed and faintly familiar from a Millers Creek sidewalk. He opened the screen door.
Romeo followed him inside.
Alice Sweet couldn’t stop laughing at the chicken egg dishes that Abigail Fine had brought her.
“I saw those and thought they would be perfect for your famous deviled eggs. I only regret they didn’t have more.”
“I have to agree, I’ve never seen anything like this.
” One looked like an artist palette with all the egg holes around the perimeter, an egg on each tail feather.
Another had ceramic chickens ‘nesting’ in the middle surrounded by egg holes, but her favorite were the two red devils perched on either end of the large dish holding pitch forks. “They’ll be the talk of the day.”
Just then, the screen door opened. Aiden walked inside and to her surprise, Romeo remained on his heel.
“Oh my.” Abigail’s grip on her poofy pooch tightened.
Shoo Shoo’s response was to start yapping like the small snippy dog she was. Romeo, on the other hand, tipped his head to one side and rather than retreat or charge, merely stared at the barking pup. Barking being a word Alice used very loosely around the pocket pooch.
“Nice to see you again so soon.” Aiden gestured for Romeo to stay, and being the well-trained dog that he once was, Romeo remained seated in place. “Nice to see you again too, Shoo Shoo.” Slowly extending his hand, Aiden made an effort to make nice when the dog snapped at him and Aiden jumped back.
“Nothing against you, it’s the dog making her nervous. I should get going. I just wanted you to see the plates.” Turning to a protective angle, Abigail slowly backed up. “It’s going to be the best festival ever.”
The dog was still yapping loudly when Alice closed the front door behind her friend. Leaning back against the door, she shook her head. “If I ever turn into a doting pocket pooch lady, for the love of all that is golden—shoot me.”
Chuckling, Aiden rested his hand on Romeo’s head. “Duly noted, ma’am.”
A warm cup of tea cradled in Colleen’s hands, she stood alone in the garage taking in the boxes, the equipment, and just… thinking.
Taking a long sip of the Earl Gray brew, she walked the perimeter slowly, deliberately, the way she walked a paddock before a session.
The corner where the changing room would go.
The wall where the mirrors would hang once the floor was down.
She stopped at the corner and studied it the way he’d studied it—with the particular attention of someone who could see the finished thing inside the unfinished one.
He’d known in thirty seconds what she’d been circling around for weeks.
Not just what it needed but in what order and why.
Tell me this. If the room were finished and ready for multiple patients, would you be ready?
She hadn’t answered properly because the question had caught her completely off guard. Everyone else asked about the timeline, the equipment, the money. He’d asked about her.
Her hand straightened the edge of the paper roll on the nearest treatment table—a purely unnecessary adjustment, something for her hands to do while her brain caught up with the rest of the day.
Millers Creek. The antique shop. Four movie posters wrapped carefully in the back of his truck like he was transporting something that mattered.
Eating. Dancing. The way he’d led—firm enough to know exactly what he wanted, gentle enough that following felt like her own idea.
The way he’d held her hand when they walked, the feel of his hand along the small of her back, and how it sent tiny tingles up her spine.
Taking another sip, she considered what was to come.
Her mind could see Aiden working. The same way he worked at the Sweet ranch.
With precision. With confidence. With strength.
The thoughts sent shivers up her arms. This was really going to happen and happen soon.
Her dreams were coming together—all thanks to Aiden.
Aiden. She could see it all. The movie posters on the finished walls.
The patients who would sit in this room and have no idea that the man who built it had hummed Puccini at a dry creek bed, danced the jitterbug in a honky tonk in Millers Creek, and hand fed a grieving dog until something in both of them came back to life.
The man lit up with every inch of progress Romeo made.
Just one more thing to love about the guy.
Love. The word landed in the middle of her chest and sat there with the particular stillness of something that had been true for a while and was only now saying so out loud.
“Well, how about that?”