“We should go,” Haylee said softly.
Mal wanted to protest, but Wolf was already standing up. “Yeah, we’ll get out of your hair for now.”
Haylee leaned down and pressed a kiss to his cheek. Mal closed his eyes and breathed in her scent. Vanilla and something flowery. Damn.
“Don’t overdo it, Mal,” she said. “We’ll come back and visit again.”
“I won’t,” he said gruffly.
Once they were gone, Mal closed his eyes tight. It wasn’t until he heard movement that he realized someone was still there. Scarlett.
He opened his eyes. Scarlett was standing over him now, her long blonde hair held back in a neat ponytail. She had blue eyes and pale skin. She was tall, about five eight or so, and slender. Too slender in his opinion. Haylee was curves and lushness. This woman was a stick in comparison. Not that he cared.
“Are you in pain? I can check and see if it’s time for another dose of meds.”
“No. I’m fine.”
Scarlett frowned. “Okay. You don’t look fine though. It’s best to stay ahead of the pain, especially as we begin therapy. I’ll be pushing you to use your leg again, and your muscles are going to protest.”
“I’m fine. It’s not pain.”
She shrugged. “All right.” She put her hand on his leg, checking the bandages. Her touch was soft and cool. Not burning like Haylee’s hand had been. But it was soothing somehow. “I’ll be removing this bandage when we start. You’ll be able to keep it uncovered, but no getting it wet until the staples come out.”
“Makes it hard to shower.”
“We can improvise something for you. Plastic wrap, or a plastic bag taped around the leg. You’re not going to be able to get up or down on your own for a couple of days, so you’ll need help in the shower. But we can get it done.”
Great, now he had to have someone help him shower. Better than living in his own stink though.
“When am I moving to rehab?”
“Sometime this afternoon. We’ll start your therapy right away.”
Mal blinked. “Really? I can’t even get up and down on my own and I have to start PT?”
Scarlett nodded. “I know it seems crazy, but the doctor likes you to get those muscles moving as soon as possible. All they’ll do is grow weaker if we don’t work them. Don’t worry, we’ll start easy enough.”
“I don’t need easy,” he growled. “I’m a warrior. I’ve endured worse.”
She arched an eyebrow. “It’s not about your endurance. It’s about what your muscles and ligaments can handle. You just had surgery to repair shattered tissue and tendons. There are screws in your body, and healing takes time. Therapy takes time too. This isn’t a quick fix situation, Mr. McCoy.”
He jolted at her use of mister instead of sergeant, but there was no rank on his file in this place. There wouldn’t be. “Call me Mal.”
“Okay, Mal. But you get my point, right? Slow and steady wins the race. We’ll increase the load as therapy progresses.”
He could feel the scowl on his face. “Whatever you say, ma’am.”
Her eyebrow stayed arched. “Oooh, way to patronize me.”
Mal snorted a laugh. He didn’t want to react, but he couldn’t help it. Not a single nurse or doctor had clapped back at him the way Scarlett just had. He’d been grumpy since he’d awakened in the hospital, and he’d apologized for it when it was particularly bad, but nobody ever sassed him back. They just kept doing their jobs as if he wasn’t even there. Well, okay, they knew he was there, but they didn’t react to his temper.
Until now. He took another good look at her. She was pretty in a girl-next-door way, but not drop-dead gorgeous. And sassy. He liked sassy. Kept things interesting.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m kind of annoyed with the whole thing, to be honest. One minute I was doing my job and the next I was on the ground, hurting like a motherfucker—sorry. Didn’t mean to swear.”
She shrugged. “I don’t mind. I expect you to swear at me quite a lot over the coming days, truth be told. I said we’d start easy, and we will, but I intend to push you to your limits too. You won’t like me much some days.”
“You can’t be as tough as the instructors I had when I decided to try out for Special Ops.”
He thought she stiffened a little.
“I guess we’ll see, won’t we?” She said it with a smile, but he had a weird feeling that she’d flipped a switch inside. Like what he’d gotten so far wasn’t what he’d get from now on. She’d be calmly professional. No more clapping back at him when he irritated her.
“I guess so.”
She took a step backward. “I need to get going. I’ll see you in rehab later today.”
“Can’t wait,” he deadpanned.
After she was gone, he lay back and stared up at the ceiling, trying to remember every single moment of Haylee’s hand on his. But he kept mixing it up with Scarlett’s hand on his leg.
The pain meds eventually kicked in and he drifted off to sleep. He hoped he’d dream of something pleasant. Instead, he dreamt of being shot—only this time it was in the heart.
Chapter Three
Scarlett was waiting when Mal entered the room on crutches. He was a big man, tall and muscled, but not overly huge. He was, as he’d said, a warrior. She’d been fine with that—was fine with that—right up until the minute he’d said he’d tried out for Special Ops. Memories of Josh had come flooding back then. He’d bragged to her about his training. About how many ways he knew to kill a person. She hadn’t taken it as a threat back then, when she’d been starting his physical therapy, but she knew differently now.
So, so differently.
She’d been rattled at the reminder of Josh and she’d had to get out of Mal’s room. Once she could breathe again, she’d told herself how stupid she was being. She’d worked with a lot of military personnel, and only one of them had ever been a psychopath. Besides, though Mal was going to be the first military man she’d worked with since arriving at Riverstone, he wasn’t going to be the last. She had to buck up and get used to it.
Mal was angry and in pain, but that didn’t make him a psychopath. Not that she intended to get close enough to find out. That’d been her mistake with Josh. She’d let him charm her, and she’d finally agreed to go out with him. Big mistake.
She wasn’t making that mistake ever again. Maybe she should have asked Dr. Saunders to help her find a position in a facility that wasn’t affiliated with the military in any way, but the truth was she liked working with veterans and active-duty personnel. She felt like she was helping do her part in a small way. Making sure she honored her mom’s sacrifice every day. She’d only been a kid when her mom deployed to Iraq. And when she hasn’t come home again, well, Scarlett and her dad had fallen apart. Dad had done the best he could and they’d managed to figure it out, though he was gone now too. Plowed his damned motorcycle into an embankment taking a curve too fast when Scarlett was still in college.