Page 6 of A Soldier's Return

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 hehadgiven 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.hadbeen 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.

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