The Marine Makes His Match

by Victoria Pade

  Todd laughed. “Give young Jack here a chance—he’s a new recruit who needs to be whipped into shape like all new recruits.”

  Then Todd wrapped up the training session with assignments as Jack tried to enlist Reggie into play, front paws outstretched, hind end in the air, tail wagging, at the ready for mischief while Reggie sat regally beside his master, pretending the puppy wasn’t there.

  “Jack is a good pup, he’ll make a good dog,” the trainer concluded.

  The colonel huffed under her breath as if she’d have to see it to believe it.

  What Kinsey could see was that the elderly woman was tiring, and since their lessons were over she thanked Todd for everything and suggested she get the colonel settled for the night.

  As Kinsey and the colonel left, she heard Sutter asking about the Pets for Vets organization itself, lamenting that he hadn’t known about the group when he had been looking for a dog for the colonel.

  “Good man,” the colonel said once they were in her room, referring to Todd.

  “He is.”

  “Boyfriend?”

  Not only didn’t Kinsey mind answering most personal questions, she was glad to have any show of interest from this particular patient. The colonel wasn’t one to make polite chitchat. If she was asking, it was because she wanted to know more about Kinsey, which was a sign that the colonel was warming to her.

  “No, he’s only a friend,” she said, thinking as she did how true that was and wondering why, in comparison to Sutter, Todd’s good looks had no impact on her whatsoever. He was an attractive guy, after all—tall, blond, Nordic-looking. But nothing about him had ever inspired in her what she was struggling with over the colonel’s son.

  “Todd is actually one of my brother’s friends,” she said, shying away from analyzing that phenomenon. Instead she forced herself to concentrate on the colonel and went on to explain how Todd knew Liam.

  That led to the colonel’s asking about all three of her brothers and their military careers as Kinsey prepared the older woman for bed.

  The fact that Kinsey had such close ties to the military in her brothers and her late stepfather—who had just retired from the marines when he’d met her mother—went a long way toward establishing greater rapport with the colonel, and by the time Kinsey was finished and the colonel was situated with a book and the remote control for her television, the atmosphere between them was considerably friendlier.

  Friendly enough for the colonel to confide on the sly, “You know, I like a little brandy before bed...”

  “I can’t call your doctor for permission for that now, but I’ll check with him first thing in the morning to make sure it won’t interfere with any of your meds. If we get the go-ahead, I’m fine with that. Even though you seem to sleep without it, I’ll tell him you need a little help and that should do the trick,” Kinsey offered.

  For the first time she saw a small smile cross the older woman’s lips, apparently appreciating Kinsey’s willingness to conspire with her. “You do that,” the colonel said with the arch of one eyebrow.

  Then, as Kinsey headed for the door after making sure the older woman didn’t need anything else, the colonel said, “Glad your other brother made it through his surgery this morning.”

  “Thanks. Me, too. See you tomorrow.”

  Apparently Sutter had found quite a bit to talk to Todd about because he was just closing the front door as Kinsey came from the colonel’s room. He had Jack slung under his good arm.

  “Jack wanted to go home with Reggie?” Kinsey guessed as Sutter bent over to set the dog on the floor now that the opportunity to make a run for it was taken away.

  “Yes. And I thought Todd might be tired of this puppy pestering his dog. I think there’s some hero worship going on there,” Sutter said. “Maybe Reggie can be his role model and Jack will work at improving himself to impress him.”

  “Looked more to me like Jack was trying to corrupt Reggie, but let’s think positive,” Kinsey said.

  “The colonel’s down for the count?”

  “She’s in bed but not asleep if you want to say good-night, then we can do your physical therapy since we didn’t get to it earlier.”

  “Yeah, we can’t skip that,” Sutter agreed with more enthusiasm than the prospect usually brought on in most of her patients. Not that that was a surprise to her—recovering meant he’d be able to return to combat, and her experience with her brothers had taught her that that was all the motivation a marine needed. “Meet you in the living room.”

  Jack followed Kinsey while Sutter went to his mother’s bedroom. Once in the living room the puppy promptly leaped onto the sofa.

  “Todd says you’re not supposed to do that unless you’re invited,” she whispered.

  Jack wagged his tail and stayed put.

  “Come on, get down,” she said before she recalled that she was to use one-word commands, and repeated only, “Down!”

  Jack still didn’t budge so she picked him up and set him on the floor while saying, “Down!” again and then adding, “I bought you a reprieve from going back to the breeder, you’d better use it wisely.”

  Jack wagged his tail again and she took that as encouragement. Until he jumped on the sofa again.

  “Jack, down!” came Sutter’s deep voice from behind Kinsey as he joined them.

  This time the puppy actually got off the couch.

  When Sutter didn’t respond to that Kinsey whispered a reminder to him. “Praise...”

  “Good boy!” Sutter said while Kinsey leaned over to pet the pup, too.

  Then Sutter asked, “Shirt on or off?”

  Oh, off, please!

  He was wearing a pair of loose-fitting workout pants and a short-sleeved crew-necked gray T-shirt that could have been painted on him. It had been a terrible distraction to Kinsey all day and evening but since it didn’t create much of a barrier now it wasn’t really necessary for it to come off. Despite her every inclination to have him remove it.

  Reminding herself that she wasn’t supposed to notice things like those incredible shoulders and that mile-wide chest and those muscular pecs, she resisted the urge to have the shirt disappear, and said, “I think we can work with the shirt on. Just take off the sling.” Then forcing herself into work mode, she said, “How’s everything feeling today?”

  “The incision feels better with the stitches out. The shoulder and arm? Doesn’t seem possible for such a small thing but I can feel it all the way to my neck when I squeeze the ball.”

  All the way to that neck that was thick but not too thick.

  “But you’re able to squeeze the ball,” she pointed out. She’d watched him do it and—on top of everything else—realized that he had great hands, too. Big and strong and capable, with long fingers and thick wrists that led up to impressive forearms and those biceps...

  Oh, those biceps...

  Kinsey mentally took herself to task and again yanked her attention back. “Being able to squeeze a ball might seem like a small thing but it isn’t.”

  And she needed to stop thinking about him squeezing more than the ball, squeezing parts of her...

  Stop it right now!

  “Why don’t you sit down?” she said then, deciding she needed to do her job and get out of there.

  He did as he was told, sitting on the coffee table in front of the sofa where Kinsey could go to work.

  “Todd says there are a lot of organizations out there for vets,” Sutter said as she did an initial warm-up of his arm and shoulder. “He works for Pets for Vets, but volunteers for a couple of others and has used the services of one or two more. Apparently getting back into civilian life can have complications for servicemen who decide not to be career military—I never really thought about it since I grew up surrounded by people who were either military-f
or-life or civilian employees of the military. I guess I just didn’t think about anything in between.”

  “It can be difficult. Health, mental health, getting a job, a place to live, just getting used to not having the military calling the shots, and getting back into a civilian mindset—there’s a lot involved for people when they get out, and it can be kind of a rocky road sometimes.”

  “You know this how?” he asked.

  “Before I got swamped with my stepfather’s and my mom’s health problems I... Well, I was in a relationship that left me a whole lot of time on my own, so I did pro bono physical therapy for veterans who needed more than their benefits would cover—and more than they could pay for outside of their coverage. I saw and heard a whole lot of things that they and their families needed help with above and beyond what I could do for them.”

  “I really have just never thought about life outside of the military.”

  “Because you don’t have plans to leave it?” Kinsey asked.

  “I’m definitely a lifer,” he confirmed.

  His use of the term struck a chord with her. A lifer. She needed to not forget that.

  “Is this what you’ve always wanted to do—be a marine for life?” she asked as she proceeded to guide him through his therapy.

  “I can’t remember ever even thinking about being anything else. My mother’s family has never had a generation without at least one—and usually more than one—career marine in it. My dad was a marine, too.”

  “Is that how he and the colonel met?”

  “It is. He served until he was injured in Vietnam a year after they were married. He had a head injury that left him with some weakness on one side that ended his military career or he would have been in right to the finish the way the colonel was. He still always considered himself a marine and between him and the colonel—”

  “There was no question that’s what you would be, too,” Kinsey guessed.

  “And it was what I wanted.”

  “Even as a little boy? You never wanted to be a cowboy or a fireman or a superhero?”

  “Nothing but a marine. I think it’s in my blood. That was even my Halloween costume every year.”

  He was a hopeless cause if ever she’d heard one.

  “Rank?” she asked.

  “Lieutenant colonel,” he said with pride just before he melted into a flinch when she raised his arm slightly higher than she had before.

  “So you have a college degree.”

  Kinsey knew that without a college degree opportunities to rise within the ranks were limited.

  “I graduated from Annapolis, majored in economics—”

  “But all degrees awarded there are bachelors of science because the courses of study are so intense that you come out well educated in the whole spectrum of math, science and engineering no matter what you major in,” she finished for him. Then she explained her knowledge. “Two of my brothers—the twins—graduated from the academy, too. They’re younger than you are so it would have been after you were out. My stepfather enlisted at seventeen and it was a big deal to him that my brothers go in with more opportunities than he’d had.”

  “Did your brothers always want to be marines?”

  “We were all very young when Hugh came into the picture—my oldest brother Conor was eight when they started dating, nine when my mom married Hugh and he adopted us. My brothers’ wanting to be marines evolved under his influence, so I don’t think any of them would say that it was always what they wanted to be, but since it started when they were so little it seems that way.”

  “Was your stepfather old-school and against women in the military?”

  “Because I didn’t end up there, too? No, he tried to persuade me to do it.”

  “But you had other ideas,” Sutter surmised, his expression showing some strain at the therapy.

  “Just a little more,” she assured before she said, “The military didn’t appeal to me, no. How many times have you been deployed?”

  “I’m on leave from my third. My troops are in Afghanistan as we speak.”

  “And you can’t wait to get back to them.”

  “It’s where I have an obligation to be,” he answered simply.

  “And not even three deployments has you thinking about getting out?”

  “Nah. I told you, I’m a lifer.”

  Which meant that any woman who ever got involved with him had to know that there would come many days when she would kiss him goodbye, knowing months would pass before she saw him again.

  And why, when Kinsey knew unwaveringly that that was not something she would ever accept in any man, was she suddenly wondering what it might be like to kiss him? To have him use his uninjured arm and hand to reach over and pull her down onto his lap...

  “Okay, I think that’s enough for today,” she said, her voice the tiniest bit breathy as she escaped that lapse in her thoughts.

  The hand she’d just imagined him using to pull her into his lap went to the upper biceps of his injured arm, cupping it, kneading the muscles.

  And before she even knew she was going to utter the words, she heard herself say, “Let me do that.”

  Oh, if only she could call those words back!

  He can rub his own arm!

  But the words couldn’t be recalled and there was nothing she could do then but put her money where her mouth was.

  So, using both hands, she performed a tender but firm massage that she swore to herself was therapeutic and professional, something she would offer any patient.

  She started at his hand and went from there to his wrist, from his wrist to his forearm, and on up to his biceps where she spent the most time, pressing her fingers into those massive muscles until they began to relax. Then she skipped over his incision and went to work on his neck and trapezius muscles.

  “Oh, yeah...” he groaned as Kinsey felt the tightness in him begin to ease.

  It reassured her that she was doing something medically helpful. Even if, for some reason, she was more aware of the texture and warmth of his skin than she ever had been with any other patient.

  Then all of a sudden he tensed up even tighter than he’d been before and bent over, maneuvering himself out of her grip, and using his uninjured hand to scoop the sleeping Jack up from the floor to set in his lap as he said in a hurry, “That’s okay... I’m good now.”

  There was no question that he meant for her to stop but she was worried she’d done something wrong.

  “Did I hurt you?” she asked, confused.

  He laughed wryly. “Uh, no,” he said as if that was out of the question. “I’m fine.”

  With a sleepy-eyed Jack stunned to have been awakened for lap duty.

  Oh.

  Kinsey was a little slow on the uptake but it finally occurred to her that the massage might have had somewhat more than therapeutic results for him.

  Much the way it had affected her more than it should have.

  Alarmed by herself then, Kinsey handed him his sling to put back on and busied herself gathering her purse and putting on her jacket with her back to him.

  Which was better for her, too, because the simple sight of him kept getting to her even when she was trying so hard for it not to.

  “So you have housecleaners and yard work going on tomorrow?” she said, seizing something innocuous to talk about.

  “Crews for both,” he confirmed in a clipped tone. “The colonel isn’t happy about it—she doesn’t like people in her house. But this place needs work whether she likes it or not.”

  “You also need a trip to the grocery store,” Kinsey said, sticking to business. “You’ll both get better faster with some more nutritious food. Neither of you should be eating a regular diet of what you’ve been ordering in, and your cupboards are pr
etty bare.”

  He cleared his throat and when he spoke again his tone was less agitated. “Is that something you’re on board for? Helping me grocery shop and cook? Because I haven’t done much of either of those.”

  “Sure. We can shop tomorrow and work on the food preparation together—”

  “In other words, you’re not our cook.”

  There was humor in his tone now and she heard him set Jack back on the floor so she assumed he had...things...under control. She was better, too, enough to turn and face him again as she said, “No, I’m not. But I like to cook and if we make it a joint effort—and include the colonel when she’s up to that, too—then you both come away with some KP skills.”

  “That’s either a demotion or a punishment, you know,” he said in a teasing tone.

  “But I think you’ll probably live through it,” she countered the same way. “Then—also when the colonel is a little stronger—I’ll try to get her to the store, too, so she can get the hang of shopping and cooking for herself after you’re gone.”

  “Yeah, she needs to know how to do that.”

  “Think about the kinds of foods the two of you like and we’ll make a list tomorrow,” Kinsey advised.

  With the air seemingly cleared of whatever had inadvertently happened before, they headed for the front door. Sutter walked Kinsey to her car, parked in the driveway today.

  “Thanks for getting Todd in here,” Sutter said. “He thinks we can have Jack pretty well trained before I leave.”

  Which he would be doing, Kinsey reminded herself when she discovered that she was gazing up into that handsome face and once again thinking about kissing. He would be leaving. So no kissing. Or even thinking about it.

  “We’ll work on it,” she confirmed. On training Jack and on not thinking about kissing.

  Or on any of the rest of the things that kept tormenting her when it came to this guy.