A Soldier's Heart

“You went to high school with him.” Carl Dickson, the P.T. center’s director, had frowned at the file in front of him before giving Mary Kate a doubtful look. “Maybe you can get him in here for an assessment. He’s refused every therapist we’ve sent. You certainly can’t do any worse.”

She had read between the lines on that. She was new and part-time, so her hours were less valuable. Dickson didn’t want to waste staff on a patient who wouldn’t cooperate, but he also didn’t want to lose the contract from the U.S. Army if he could help it.

She pressed the bell again and then rapped on the door, her uneasiness deepening to apprehension. What if Luke had fallen? His determination to reject every professional approach, even simple acts of kindness, left him vulnerable.

She grabbed the knob, but it refused to turn under her hand. Kicking the door wouldn’t get her inside, tempting as it was, and if Luke lay helpless, he couldn’t answer.

She stepped from the stoop and hurried around the side of the house toward the back door. She’d grown up less than two blocks away, in the house where her parents still lived. Luke had been at their place constantly in those days, shooting hoops on the improvised driveway court. A frayed basketball hoop still hung from the Marino garage, mute testimony to Luke’s passion for sports.

The back porch had the usual accumulation—a forgotten rake, a trash can, a couple of lawn chairs leaning against the wall. She hurried to the door and peered through the glass at the kitchen.

At first she thought the figure in the wheelchair was asleep, but Luke roused at her movement, fastening a dark glare on her. He spun the wheels of the chair, but she didn’t think he was planning to welcome her in. She opened the door and stepped inside, closing it behind her.

“Don’t you wait to be invited?” The words came out in a rough baritone snarl. Luke spun the chair away from her, as if he didn’t want to look at her.

Or, more likely, he didn’t want her to look at him.

Her throat muscles convulsed, and she knew she couldn’t speak in a normal way until she’d gotten control of herself. But Luke—

The Luke she remembered, as a high school football hero, as a police officer, as a soldier when his reserve unit was called up, had been all strength and muscle, with the athletic grace and speed of a cheetah and a relaxed, easy smile. Not this pale, unshaven creature with so much anger radiating from him that it was almost palpable.

She set her bag carefully on the Formica-and-chrome table, buying a few more seconds. She glanced around the kitchen. White-painted cabinets, linoleum on the floor, Cape Cod curtains on the windows—Ruth hadn’t changed anything in years.

“I didn’t think I had to stand on ceremony with an old friend,” she managed to say, her voice gaining strength as she spoke. “Besides, I thought you might not let me in if I waited for an invitation.”

He didn’t answer the smile she attempted, sparing her only a quick glance before averting his face. “I don’t want company, Mary Kate. You must have heard by now that I’ve made enemies of half the old ladies at church by rejecting their casseroles.”

“Mom wouldn’t appreciate being called an old lady, so you’d better not repeat that in her hearing.”

Her mother had tried, and failed, in her quest to see that Luke had a home-cooked meal delivered by the church every night. Luke had apparently slammed the door in the face of the first volunteer and then refused to answer the bell for anyone else. After a week of refusals, her volunteers had given up.

“I didn’t mean—” he began, and then stopped, but for just an instant she’d seen a glimmer of the old Luke before his face tightened. “I don’t want visitors.”

“Fine.” She had to make her voice brisk, or else the pain and pity she felt might come through. She knew instinctively that would only make things worse. “I’m not a visitor. I’m your physical therapist.”

He stared for a moment at the crest on her shirt pocket, swiveling the chair toward her. His legs, in navy sweatpants, were lax against the support of the chair.

“Doesn’t your clinic have rules against you barging in without an invitation?” Once again the old Luke peeked through in a glimpse of humor.

“Probably.” Definitely, and as the newest member of the staff, she couldn’t afford to break any of the rules. On the other hand, she couldn’t go back and admit failure, either. “Are you going to report me, Luke?”

His dark brows drew down like a slash over deep brown eyes. He’d once been the guy most often talked about in the girls’ locker room, mostly because of those eyes. Smoky eyes, with a hint of mystery in them. Combined with the chiseled chin, firm mouth, jet-black hair and the glow of his olive skin, his looks and that faintly dangerous charm had had the girls drooling over him.

And he’d picked her. For a brief time, she’d gone out with the most sought-after guy in school. She hadn’t thought of that in years, until today. Seeing him now brought it all flooding back—those days when you were up in the clouds one minute because that special guy had smiled at you and down in the depths the next because he’d smiled at someone else, too.

It hadn’t lasted, of course. Maybe, in her naive first love, she’d been too clingy. Luke had made excuses, failed to return phone calls and finally had been seen in the back row of the movie theater with Sally Clemens. She’d given him back his class ring, kept her chin up and done her crying in private.

Luke just stared at her. Maybe he was remembering that, too. Finally, he shook his head, the stubble of his beard dark against the pallor of his skin. “No, I won’t turn you in. Just beat it, okay?”

“Sorry, I can’t.” She pulled out one of the chrome kitchen chairs and sat down, reaching for the forms in her bag. “You’re two weeks past due to report to the clinic for your evaluation and therapy. Why?”

His jaw clenched. “I’ve spent the last three months being poked and prodded by army experts. If they couldn’t get me out of this chair, I don’t think your outfit can. Just go back to your boss and tell him I appreciate it, but I don’t need any more therapy.”

His words twisted her heart. What he’d gone through would be horrible for anyone, but for Luke, who’d spent his life relying on his strength and skill on the playing field, then in the military and on the police force—well, this helplessness had to be excruciating.

Showing the pity and compassion that welled up in her was exactly the wrong way to react. To offer him sympathy would be to rub salt into an already agonizing wound.

But she couldn’t walk away. He needed her help, or someone’s help, whether he wanted it or not.

And she needed to make a success of this. A little flicker of the panic that had visited her too often since Kenny’s death touched her. She had to provide financially for her kids, and that meant she had to prove herself at the clinic.

She took a steadying breath. “Sorry, Luke. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

“Why not?” He shot the words at her, swinging the chair closer to her in one fierce movement. “I don’t need your therapy and I don’t want it. Why can’t you just understand that and leave me alone?”

His anger was like a blow. She stiffened in response. She couldn’t let him chase her off, the way he had everyone else.

“I can’t. And you don’t really have a choice, do you? If you continue refusing to cooperate, the army will slap you back into a military hospital. And I don’t think they’ll let you bully them.”

Bullying? Was that really what he was doing? All Luke knew was that he had to get rid of Mary Kate the way he’d gotten rid of everyone else who’d come to the door since he’d returned home.

And of all the people he didn’t want to meet while sitting in a wheelchair, Mary Kate Flanagan Donnelly had to be somewhere near the top of the list.

He lifted an eyebrow, trying to find the right attitude to chase her away. “Looks like sweet little Mary Kate learned how to play hardball.”

Judging by the annoyed look in those big blue eyes, she didn’t care for that comment, but which part of it she disliked, he wasn’t sure.

“It’s been a long time since anyone’s called me sweet and little, Luke. Welcome to the twenty-first century.”

“Sorry.” Funny to be alone with her now. He’d hardly seen her during the years after high school. She’d gone away to college—he’d enlisted in the service. When he’d come back and taken the job with the Suffolk Police Force, she and Kenny were already married, starting a family and moving in completely different circles. And then his reserve unit had been called up and he was gone again, this time to Iraq.

Once, he and Kenny had played football together. He and Mary Kate had dated. Funny to remember that now. They’d all been a lot more innocent then.

“I heard about Kenny.” He pushed the words out, a reminder that he wasn’t the only person suffering. “I’m sorry.”

She paled under those Flanagan freckles, her lips firming as if to hold something back. When she’d walked in the door, slim and quick as the girl she’d been, he’d thought she hadn’t changed at all.

Now he saw the differences—in the fine lines around her intensely blue eyes, in the determination that tightened her soft mouth. The hair that had once fallen to her shoulders in bright red curls was shorter now, curling against her neck, and it had darkened to an almost mahogany color.

She gave a curt nod in response to the expression of sympathy, as if she’d heard it all too many times. Well, then, she ought to understand how he felt. No help, no pity. Just leave me alone.

“The kids must be getting pretty big by now. Are they doing all right?” He put the question reluctantly, knowing that old friendship demanded it, knowing, also, that the more he treated her as a friend, the harder it would be to get her to leave.

Her face softened at the mention of her children. “Shawna’s eight and Michael is six. Yes, they’re doing fine. Just fine.”

Something, some faint shadow in her blue eyes, put the lie to that repeated assertion. Tough on kids, to lose their father at that age. At least Kenny hadn’t had a choice about leaving, like his father had.

He studied her, drawn out of his own circle of pain for a moment. Mary Kate’s hands gripped the pad of forms a bit too tightly, her knuckles white. She still wore a plain gold band on her left hand.