The Marine Makes His Match

“Sorry,” she apologized. “You were right that this should have been done days ago. I think that one was the worst, though. They shouldn’t be as bad from here.”

“So after your mom passed, that was when you went into private nursing?” he asked, apparently wanting the diversion of her history to go on.

“Not intentionally. I was closing down my mom’s house until my brothers and I can decide what to do with it when one of the Northbridge doctors called. He asked if I could do some home health care for neighbors of his—the Tellers. They needed help but they were also in the process of moving to Denver. The Northbridge doc knew I wanted to get back here so he thought I could start with the Tellers in Northbridge then transition along with them to Denver.”

“And the Tellers are somehow hooked up with the guy Livi Camden is engaged to, right?”

“Callan Tierney, right. He was kind of a foster son of theirs. He was best friends with their son, and lived with the Tellers after his own parents died. When their son was killed in a car accident, Callan stepped in to see that they were taken care of, along with their granddaughter who is his godchild.”

“And that’s how you met Livi—nursing the Tellers. Livi, who you think is your half sister.”

“And Livi recommended me to you, so I’m here on what’s only my second home–health care job,” Kinsey concluded.

“Do you like it?”

“I do,” she said with some surprise. “I guess it lets me be sort of like family for a little while—and it’s nice working in a home environment. Oh!” she said, startled when Jack suddenly attacked her foot. Then she laughed and added, “And I would never have had a terrier puppy trying to chew on me while I worked at the hospital, so what fun is that?”

“Jack! Stop it!” Sutter commanded the dog, who elected to go on doing what he was doing.

Kinsey stopped her work on Sutter’s shoulder to kick the ball Jack had dropped nearby into the other room to distract him, too.

Jack took the bait and chased the ball so Kinsey could return to the stitches.

“You told my mother you were going to take care of the puppy problem, too—does that mean you have a plan? Because today she told me to take him back to the breeder,” Sutter said ominously.

“Ohhh, poor Jack!” Kinsey said sympathetically.

“We’ve always had this breed, but it was my dad who trained and took care of them. I’ve managed to housebreak this terror, but that’s it. I don’t know how to fix the rest—training a whole platoon of men is easier than getting Jack to behave. And if I don’t find a way to get him into shape before I leave, the colonel won’t keep him.”

A big tough marine daunted by a puppy—the idea of that amused Kinsey to no end.

“Actually,” she said then, “there’s an organization called Pets for Vets that pairs shelter animals and former military dogs with veterans. That way either the dogs already have military manners or the shelter dogs have been trained with them so they kind of fit a little more comfortably with a vet’s lifestyle and expectations. An animal like that might have been a little more to your mom’s liking at this point.”

“I didn’t even know that existed.”

“But now that you have Jack, we can’t give up on him—he’s just a puppy being a puppy. I know someone who works for Pets for Vets and I called him. I thought he could teach us—and the colonel, too, if we can get her onboard—what to do with Jack.”

Jack brought the ball back, dropped it and jumped against Kinsey’s leg, jarring her into yanking too hard on the stitch she was removing and causing Sutter to flinch.

“Ooh, I’m sorry! Again,” she apologized. “But that’s the last one.”

The only relief Sutter showed was in the cautious and slight rolling of that shoulder as if to ease the tension out of it.

“It looks good, though,” Kinsey said, meaning his wound, though the movement caused her to notice once more just how good everything else looked, too.

“I need to do a little bit of an exam—can you wiggle your fingers? Make a fist? Squeeze my hand?”

He could, wiggling long, thick fingers, making an impressively tight fist and then taking the hand she offered, showing more strength than she’d expected.

And at the same time causing her to feel her temperature rising again.

She ignored her own reaction to him.

“Good,” she said.

That seemed like signal enough for him to let go but he didn’t until she told him he could. And even then it seemed as if there was a split second more of lingering.

She put him through a few more exercises, then she bent over and picked up the ball Jack had abandoned, handing it to Sutter. “You can start therapy with a few squeezes of this. Tomorrow when I come, I’ll bring you one of your own and we’ll add a few other things.”

“It’s all gonna work again, right?” he asked.

“I think we can get you back to a hundred percent range of motion. You’re even healed enough to shower without being bandaged, but you might want the incision site covered just to avoid any irritation from the sling.”

“Great, let’s give it air tonight—I don’t sleep in the sling, I just rest the arm on my chest. Tomorrow I’ll slap some gauze over the wound after I shower in the morning.”

So very many mental images ran through Kinsey’s head, but she shoved them away, washed her hands again and then began to clean up as Sutter retrieved his shirt.

Being careful to keep her eyes to herself, she said, “Todd—he’s the dog trainer—can come tomorrow evening after he leaves work if I give him the go-ahead.”

“Sounds good to me. The sooner the better.”

“Then I’ll call and tell him. And maybe we can save Jack from exile.”

She’d repacked her suture kit by then and—still without a glance in his direction—she told him she wanted to peek in on the colonel one last time before she left.

The colonel was asleep with her glasses on and her book resting on her chin, so Kinsey silently went into the room to remove both, managing not to disturb her patient in the process.

Sutter was waiting for her when she returned to the kitchen, his shirt on again but only one button fastened.

Kinsey tried not to look, instead noting that he’d replaced the sling, too, which told her that he still needed it. “The colonel is asleep,” she informed him. “So unless you need anything else—”

“I don’t.”

“Then I’ll get going and let you rest, too.”

She leaned down to pet Jack where he was trying hard to open a cupboard door with his nose. “You rest, too, Jack, because you’re in for a big day tomorrow.”

Sutter surprised her by walking her to her car.

“Feel free to park in the driveway. Nearest to the house,” he said as they reached her small sedan at the curb and she unlocked her door. “If I need to get out I can use the far side.”

“Okay,” she said, appreciating that he was trying to save her a few steps.

She tossed her purse and bag and suture kit across the console into the passenger seat and then glanced over the car’s roof to Sutter. “You have my number—don’t hesitate to call anytime during the night if there’s any problem or you have any question—this is round-the-clock care even if I don’t live in.”

“We’ll be fine.”

“Just in case,” she persisted, recognizing in herself a certain unfathomable lack of eagerness to leave.

But then Sutter said, “See you tomorrow,” giving her no other option.

Kinsey nodded and got behind her steering wheel, closing her car door behind her.

But as she put the key in the ignition, she glanced in Sutter’s direction once more, thinking to catch sight of him returning to the house. Instead he was merely taking slow steps backward. Slow enough that her view was of his belly button just above the waistband of his slacks. His very sexy belly button there amid those rock-hard abs.

And up went her temperature all over again before she turned on the engine, put the car in gear and hit the gas.

Telling herself to get away as fast as she could.

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