A Soldier's Heart

Her mother’s brow wrinkled. “Brendan thought we should respect his wish to be left alone.”

“Brendan doesn’t know everything, even if he is a minister.” After having been raised with her cousin Brendan, she didn’t have quite the same reverent attitude toward their minister that the rest of the congregation did. “Anyway, this was business.”

“Poor Luke.” Her mother’s fund of sympathy was unending. “How did he take it?”

“Not well.” She still trembled inside when she thought about that encounter. Had she handled it the right way? Someone with more experience might have done it differently, but at least she’d gotten results. “He finally agreed to the therapy. But he put some conditions on it.”

“Conditions?”

She swallowed, trying to ease the tension that tightened her throat. “He’ll go through with the therapy, but he insists on home visits. And he’ll only do it if I’m his therapist.”

Her mother clasped her hand. “That’s fine, Mary Kate. You’re a good therapist. He couldn’t be in better hands.”

“I’m not sure Mr. Dickson will agree with that.” She gave a wry smile.

“Then you’ll just show him how good you are.” Siobhan always had high expectations of her kids, and more often than not, they managed to meet them, maybe feeling they couldn’t let her down.

“I hope so, but—”

The back door flew open to allow Shawna and Michael to surge through. “Is it almost time for supper?” Shawna surprised Mary Kate by diving into her arms, face lighting up with a smile. “We’re starving!”

“In a minute.” Mary Kate hugged her and then opened her arms to include Michael. “Group hug, please.”

The feel of those two warm, squirming bodies against hers chased away the doubt she’d been about to express. Of course she could succeed. Fueled by the fierce love she had for her children, she could do anything.

Chapter Two

The silence stretched in the clinic director’s office when Mary Kate finished describing her visit with Luke—stretched just like her nerves. She fixed her gaze on Carl Dickson’s face, determined not to look at the floor like a kid called into the principal’s office.

Dickson had a smooth, expressionless face, rather like an egg. It was the perfect mask for a bureaucrat, impossible to read. Why would someone go into physical therapy, the essence of hands-on helping, and then choose to be an administrator?

He cleared his throat. “Well, Mary Kate, you’ve brought us to a difficult place.”

Her heart sank. He was reacting negatively, probably thinking that she was trying to use her one-time friendship with Luke to grab extra hours of work.

“I don’t see what else—” she began, but the telephone rang.

Dickson held up his hand in a stop signal. “One moment, Mary Kate. I should take this.”

She subsided. That was another, separate annoyance—Dickson’s use of her first name. It had been made clear that he was Mr. Dickson to her, and the inequality irked. He was probably about her age, but he was already running the clinic.

He’d also shown that he didn’t consider her age an advantage. Most of the other therapists were a good ten years younger than she was. She’d started late, and whether she’d catch up was still up in the air.

She surveyed Dickson’s degrees, framed and hung on the wall behind his desk, trying to ignore his phone conversation. The glowing recommendations from the instructors of the refresher courses she’d taken had made him willing to give her the part-time position. If she did well, he’d implied that she’d be considered for a full-time job opening up in September. If not…

Given his reaction to the way she’d handled Luke Marino, that had begun to look doubtful. Tension tightened her hands on the arms of the chair. She had to provide for the children. Kenny hadn’t carried much life insurance—after all, the only way he’d ever thought he’d go was fighting fire, in which case there was a department policy.

Her family wouldn’t let them be in need, but providing for her children was her job. She couldn’t be a burden to her parents or brothers or sister. As for Kenny’s elderly, ailing parents—they must never imagine that Kenny hadn’t left her well-provided-for.

Dickson hung up and turned back to her, so she focused on him, steeling herself. But he looked ever so slightly more approachable.

“Well, as I was saying, this is not quite the result I expected, but perhaps we can make it work.”

She blinked, sure that was not at all what he’d intended to say. “I tried to convince Mr. Marino that the equipment here would be far better than anything I could provide for home therapy.”

“Let’s not worry about that. We’ll arrange for rental of any necessary equipment and we can spare you to work with him at home as much as needed.”

Granted, she was the most expendable of the staff, but still—“Will the army cover the cost of rented equipment?”

“Perhaps, but under the circumstances we don’t have to rely totally on the army.” He nodded toward the telephone. “That was Marino’s father on the line. We’ve been talking about the situation for several days. He’s offered to pick up the tab for anything his son needs that the army won’t cover.”

That startled her into silence. Certainly Phillip Marino could afford it. Several businesses in Suffolk carried the Marino name, including the largest auto dealership. But his estrangement from his former wife and the son of that marriage was almost as well-known as his car ads.

“I don’t know that Luke would agree to that,” she said slowly. “He and his father—well, they’ve never seen much of each other.”

“That’s hardly our concern.” Dickson’s voice sharpened. “Our focus must be on what’s best for the patient, not on the source of our payment.”

He was only too pleased at the prospect of collecting from both the army contract and Phillip Marino. She closed her lips firmly. It was not her place to criticize his decisions. At least this meant that she had a job to do and a chance to prove herself.

Dickson rose, signaling the end of the conversation. “Meet with the senior therapist and draw up a treatment program and a list of the necessary equipment. You have my authorization to put in whatever extra hours are needed. All right?”

She stood, as well. “Of course.”

What else could she say? But she was uneasily aware that she was being manipulated from both sides.

Dickson thought he could use her to collect from both the army and Luke’s father. And Luke thought he could use her to skate through the mandated therapy with as little effort as possible.

She wasn’t sure which she disliked more.

“That’s as far as it will go.” Luke managed the words through gritted teeth, trying not to sound like a wimp.

Mary Kate, kneeling on the living-room floor next to his mat, just shook her head and continued to press his leg up with both hands. Those small hands of hers were a lot stronger than he’d have expected. The dead weight of his leg had to be a strain, but she hadn’t lost that serene expression throughout the whole torturous hour.

He clenched his fists against the mat. “I can’t do it.”

“Sure you can.” Her tone was as gentle and reassuring as if he were a preschooler learning how to tie his shoes. “Just try a little more. We have to do better than yesterday.”

“We?” He grunted the word. “I’m the one doing all the work.”

That wasn’t true. He knew it, but he wasn’t about to admit that she’d been struggling as hard as he was to shove him through the exercises, with him arguing all the way.

Well, he had a right to complain. He hadn’t asked for this. He didn’t want it. Mary Kate would have to accept the bad temper that went with forcing a man to do something he didn’t want to do.

Something that hurt. His leg, protesting, stretched a bit farther and he couldn’t control the groan that escaped.

“Very good.” Mary Kate eased off immediately, bringing his leg back down and massaging it with long, smooth strokes that soothed away the pain. “You went a good half inch farther today than yesterday.”

He lay back on the mat Mary Kate had brought with her. Three times they’d done this, and three times she’d pushed him more than he’d have thought possible. Maybe he’d been wrong about Mary Kate being easier to manipulate than the staff at the army hospital. She was quieter, but there was iron beneath her soft exterior. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected of a grown-up Mary Kate, but she certainly wasn’t the gentle girl she’d been.