calling his name.
As he drove back to the house, he reached under his seat and pulled out a notepad. So maybe he hadn’t been completely honest about not needing that. Kane parked the car and grabbed a tape measure from his tool bag in the backseat. Because he had issues focusing, Kane had a tendency to get so absorbed in a project that he would forget about his surroundings and tune out everything and everyone around him. And when that happened, he preferred not to have potential clients think he was off his rocker.
Since he hadn’t given the key back to Freckles yet, he could spend some more time in the house on his own, exploring it and making notes.
He just hoped that when he made those notes and calculated the costs, he didn’t spell anything wrong or add incorrectly on the formal estimate.
Concentrating on schoolwork had never been his strong suit, and he’d rather have a busload of newscasters from ESPN roll into Sugar Falls and reveal his hiding spot than have Just Julia look down her cute, smarty-pants nose at him.
* * *
By the time he pulled into a visitor parking spot at Shadowview Military Hospital the second Thursday in November, Kane was already five minutes late for his group session. Well, not his group session—one run by his brother-in-law, Drew.
He stopped by the Starbucks kiosk in the lobby and ordered a decaf Frappuccino because he hated sitting still in those introductory meetings with nothing to do, nothing to hold on to. Unable to wait, he stuck his tongue through the hole of the domed plastic lid to taste the whipped cream, then kept his head down as he walked through the large, plain lobby. Kane navigated his way down the fall-themed decorated corridors of the first floor until he found the psychology department, which was directly across from the physical rehab department.
Dr. Drew Gregson had explained that he wanted his patients with PTSD to understand their therapy was no different than someone learning how to walk again after losing a limb. Tonight he was meeting with a new group in a classroom-like setting—and Kane hated classrooms. They would eventually meet out on the track, in the weight room and on various courts and fields.
When Kane had been doing physical therapy after his shoulder surgery, his sister, Kylie, had talked him into coming to work out at the hospital. Drew had been looking for innovative ways to assist his PTSD patients in their recovery, and helped his wife convince Kane that exercising with them would be a great motivator for some of the men and women who used athletics as a physical outlet. Especially since most of the group’s sessions ended up in some challenge that usually provided one of the patients with bragging rights that they’d competed against Legend Chatterson.
Good thing his ego could take it. Being at Shadowview—seeing the world through the eyes of the wounded warriors and the staff who helped them—always put things into perspective for Kane. These people were dealing with legitimate life-or-death situations. Brawlgate, his former baseball career, being attracted to his new client...none of that seemed as important when he was faced with real obstacles to overcome.
Kane looked at the number he’d written on his hand to make sure he was going to the right meeting room. Which was why he didn’t see the shapely blonde exiting the gym facilities until she’d bumped into him.
“Sorry, darlin’,” he said before thinking about it. The flirtatious endearment sounded as out of practice as his pitching arm. His first instinct was to pull an orange pumpkin-shaped piece of construction paper off the nearby bulletin board and hide his face behind it, but then he recognized those round green eyes.
Whoa. His hand flew to his mouth to make sure he didn’t have any whipped cream stuck to his face. He hadn’t seen her since she’d signed off on his estimate and he’d started work on her old house a few days after they first met. Neither time had she looked so flushed, and sexy, and...hell, feminine, as she did now.
Not that he wasn’t well aware of how attractive she was. But Just Julia in her boxy hospital scrubs only served as a reminder that she was some smart doctor with a fancy education. In this outfit—he let his eyes travel down her form-fitting workout clothes—she looked like the kind of woman who would hang out in hotel bars and throw herself at the visiting professional baseball team.
“Mr. Chatterson?” she asked, and Kane tried not to look at the straps of her sports bra as he shifted the cold drink to his other hand, then back again.
“Sorry. I didn’t recognize you dressed like...” Dressed like what? One of Beyoncé’s backup dancers? Nothing he could say at this point would make him sound like less of an infatuated idiot. “Anyway, I wasn’t expecting to run into you here.”
“Sorry for running into you at all,” she said, then held up her smartphone. “I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going because I have this new fitness monitor on here, and I somehow programmed it wrong. It’s telling me that I’ve only burned thirty calories but that my heart rate is 543. Now, I’m trying to just delete the whole thing, because really, I know how to check my own pulse and multiply and... Sorry. You probably don’t want to hear about this.”
She tapped harder on the display. Kane, always a sucker for video games and electronics, eased the phone out of her hand. “Here, let me.”
She leaned in and watched over his shoulder as he made a few swipes and closed out the app. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that touch screens didn’t seem to be her forte. Or that standing this close to her still-damp skin made him think of a different type of physical exertion he wouldn’t mind engaging in with her.
He finished and handed the device back to her, cursing to himself for having such an inappropriate thought. “What are you doing here, anyway?”
“Well, I do work here.” It might’ve come off as defensive or stuck-up from any other woman, but Just Julia’s response seemed more like a schoolteacher trying to explain a new concept to a first grader.
And Kane Chatterson had always had a soft spot for his first-grade teacher, who’d been the only one who hadn’t treated him like a below-average student with problems sitting still in class.
“Are you working now?” He finally allowed himself to look down at the form-fitting sports tank that tapered down to her small waist. He brought his straw to his lips, needing something to relieve the sudden dryness in his mouth. He got the paper wrapper instead.
“I had back-to-back surgeries this morning and needed to loosen up and relieve some tension before I started on my post-op reports. Normally I do laps in the pool, but there was a water aerobics class going on, so I used the cardio equipment instead and accidentally set the program for the inverted pyramid. The incline level got stuck on high, which is why I tried to use my phone to calculate my heart rate. Wait. Why am I explaining all this to you?”
“Because I have the kind of face that makes people want to open up?” Why was he being so damn flirty? It was as if he couldn’t stop the asinine comments from flying out. But she’d caught him off guard, looking like that. Plus, she was much more down-to-earth and endearing when she rambled on about nothing.
“Your face is perfect. It’s your eyes that make people feel as if they’re strapped to a polygraph machine.” That was an interesting revelation. Did he make her nervous?
“So you like my face?” He reached up to stroke his trademark beard, then remembered he’d shaved it several months ago when he’d moved to Sugar Falls. Instead he touched a bristly jawline that felt like eighty-grit sandpaper.
“I’m not going to answer that.” But
