A Soldier's Return

“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.”

Melissa could feel her vertebrae stiffen and nerves flutter at the deep voice from behind her.

Oh, it was going to be a long two or three weeks if she didn’t take control of this ridiculous crush she had suddenly formed for Eli Sanderson.

“I guess that makes sense,” Carmen said.

“Yes,” he answered. “Think how confusing it would be if an army doc had to go before the licensing board every time he was called to an emergency or had a new assignment.”

“That would be a serious pain.” Melissa hated the slightly breathless note in her voice. She sounded ridiculous, like the kind of brainless bikini-clad groupies who used to follow the pro surfers on the circuit.

She cleared her throat, wishing she could clear away her nerves as easily.

“Good to know. I’ll file that little tidbit away, in case I’m ever on a game show where ‘Army Doctors’ is a category.”

Tiffany snorted, and Eli’s mouth quirked up into a little smile, teeth flashing. She had the strangest feeling he hadn’t found that many things to smile about lately, though she couldn’t have said exactly why she had that impression.

“That would be the most boring game show ever,” he said. “Unless you love learning about regulations and protocol.”

“I really don’t. As long as you can legally see your father’s patients, that’s all I care about.”

“I’ll do my best. I know he’s been worried about his caseload.”

“Your dad is a great doctor, but he worries too much about his patients,” Tiffany said.

“Is that possible?” Eli asked.

“He should have worried a little more about himself. He could barely stand up the last few weeks before the surgery.”

Tiffany was a bit rough around the edges but like everyone else, she adored Dr. Sanderson and frequently told patients how cool it was that she now worked for the doctor who had delivered her twenty years earlier.

“Your father was so worried about taking time away from his patients he almost didn’t have the surgery, though his specialist has been urging him to for months. At least as long as I’ve been here,” Melissa said.

“Longer,” Carmen said, her expression exasperated. The older woman liked to mother everyone, even their boss, who was at least two or three years older than the office manager.

“I think he would have continued putting it off and hobbling around if he hadn’t injured the right one so badly two weeks ago,” Melissa said. “Then the surgery became not only urgent but imperative.”

“Everything worked out for the best,” Eli said. “I was able to create a gap in my schedule and here I am, at least for a few weeks.”

Yes. Here you are.

She had thought him gorgeous in skintight workout clothes. That was nothing compared to the sight of him in khaki slacks, a white exam coat and a crisply ironed button-down shirt a few shades lighter than his blue eyes.

She had been a nurse for years and had never been particularly drawn to a physician, until right this moment.

“How’s the wrist?” he asked.

At his words, the pain she had been staving off seemed to rush back. She held up the brace and wriggled her fingers. “Still aches but it’s bearable. I agree with you that I should hold off a day or two before I have it x-rayed.”

“Did you have any time to put ice on it?”

“A few minutes. Which is the main reason I’m late.”

“Good. That’s the best thing you can do.”

They lapsed into silence and she tried to keep from gawking at him. She loved her job, working with Wendell Sanderson. The man had been nothing but kind to her since the day she’d come back to Cannon Beach. She hated thinking things would be awkward and uncomfortable with Eli here.

She could handle anything for a few weeks, Melissa reminded herself. Even working for a man for whom she had developed a serious thirst.

“Can you give me the charts of those who have appointments today? I’d like to try familiarizing myself with their files.”

His words were directed to Carmen yet still provided Melissa the reminder she needed. He was her boss and she couldn’t forget that.

“I’ve already pulled the charts of those coming in this morning. They’re on your dad’s desk, since I figured you would be setting up in there,” the office manager replied. “I’ll find the rest and bring them in for you.”

“Thank you.” He gave the woman a polite smile, and Melissa could swear she felt her ovaries melt.

When he walked back down the hallway toward his office, Melissa slumped into one of the chairs in the waiting room.

Oh, this was not good. At all. She might have silently wished for a man this morning, but in truth she didn’t have time for that kind of complication. She had Skye and work and friends, not to mention the online classes she was taking to work toward her nurse practitioner license. There was no room left for her to be stupid about Eli.

“Are you okay?” Carmen asked.

“I will be.”

Eventually.

“He seems nice, doesn’t he?” Tiffany said. “Dr. Sanderson talks about his son like all the time, but I always pictured him different, somehow. Since he’s in the army, I thought he’d have a buzz cut and be all harsh and by the book.”

She hadn’t pictured him at all, hadn’t really given Eli Sanderson much thought over the years. Now she was afraid she would be able to think about little else.

Even her throbbing wrist couldn’t seem to distract her.

* * *

“How did your first day go? Any problems or unique diagnoses you think I need to know about?”

Eli adjusted his dad’s pillow, giving him a stern look. “Your only job right now is to focus on healing from this surgery. I can take care of your patients, got it? You don’t need to worry about them.”

“I have no concerns on that front,” Wendell assured him. “You’re a better doctor than I ever could have dreamed of being at your age.”

Eli knew that was far from true. How could it be? His own dreams were haunted by the ghosts of all those he couldn’t save. Miri. Justine. Those ghosts at least had names and faces, but there were scores of others who drifted through, anonymous and lost.

He let out a breath, wondering when the hell the sense of guilt and loss would leave him. It had been six months but still felt like yesterday.

He turned his attention back to his father, instead of that war-battered market town.

“Dad, I could never be half the doctor you are. We both know that. I’ll be trying my whole life to catch up.”

His father rolled his eyes. “We could be here all day patting each other on the back, but I know what I know. And what I know is that you’re a damn fine doctor and I’m proud to call you my son. There’s no one else on earth I would trust more than you to fill in for me while I’m laid up. When I ask about my patients, it’s only because I’m concerned about them, not because I don’t think you can care for them the way I would.”

His father had been the best doctor Eli knew. Wendell and his genuine concern for his patients had been the main reason Eli had gone to medical school in the first place. He had wanted to help people, to deliver babies and diagnose illnesses and give little kids their first shots.

He had never expected that his first years of practicing medicine would be in a series of emergency shelters and refugee camps, but that was the path he had chosen and he couldn’t regret it.

“If I’m not mistaken, that sweet Julia Garrett was supposed to come in today for a prenatal checkup. She and Will had an early-term miscarriage during her last pregnancy, so I’ve been watching her closely. How did things look today?”

Though he instinctively wanted to tell his father to put all his patients out of his head, Eli knew that wouldn’t happen. Wendell wanted to stay current on all the people he had cared for over thirty-five years of practicing in Cannon Beach. Eli had a feeling that was the only way his father would be able to endure the long recovery from his double knee replacement.

“Everything looked good today. The baby measured exactly where she should be at this stage in the pregnancy, the heartbeat sounded strong and steady, and Julia appears healthy and happy. She didn’t report any unusual concerns.”

“Oh, that’s good. This is her fourth pregnancy—fifth, if you count the baby they lost and sixth if you count the fact that her first were twins—and I wanted her to feel confident and comfortable.”

As far as Eli was concerned, his father was the iconic family physician. Wendell was dedicated to his patients, compassionate over their troubles and driven to provide them the best possible care. He had delivered some of his own patients—like Will Garrett—and was now delivering the second generation and providing care over their children.

Those patients had saved his father, plucking him out of the deep depression Wendell had fallen into after Eli’s mother died following a short but hard-fought battle against breast cancer when Eli was twelve.

They had both been devastated and had dealt with the blow in different ways. Eli had retreated into books, withdrawing from his friends, from baseball, from social activities. His father had done the same, focusing only on his patients and on his son.

The pain of losing Ada Sanderson had eased over the years but hadn’t left completely. Eli suspected it never would.

“And how are you, son? I mean, how are you really? You haven’t talked about what happened with that friend of yours, but I know it still eats at you.”

The question, so intuitive, seemed to knock his own knees out from under him. It had always seemed impossible to conceal his inner struggles from his father’s gimlet gaze. Still, Eli did his best. He had never told Wendell how close he had been to Justine, or how her death and Miri’s had been his fault.

Somehow he managed to summon an expression he hoped resembled a smile. “I’m good. Why wouldn’t I be? It’s a beautiful time of year to be home in Oregon. I don’t remember the last April I was here. I’m not sure what I’m looking forward to more—watching the spring storms churning across the water or savoring the explosion of flowers.”

Wendell saw right through him, as usual. His father gave him a searching look even as he shifted on his hospital bed to find a more comfortable position.

“After all the exotic places the army has sent you, are you sure you won’t be bored out of your mind treating cold sores and high blood pressure?”

“No. I’m looking forward to that, too, if you want the truth. It will be a nice, calm change of pace. Just what I need to decompress.”

“Maybe this will help you figure out whether you’re going to stay in the military or settle down somewhere and open a practice. Or maybe join a practice that’s already busy with tourists and locals alike.”

Since the day Eli finished his residency, Wendell had been after him to become his partner here.

It had always been in his long-range plan, but how could he walk away now, with this heavy sense of responsibility he carried everywhere? He felt the weight of it even more on his shoulders now, after what happened to Justine. She had been dedicated, compassionate, completely driven to help those in turmoil. Her dedication had been silenced forever and she could no longer carry out her work. He had made a vow to carry on in her place.