A Soldier's Return. RaeAnne Thayne
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by the sun on her face, the low murmur of the waves, the crunch of sand under her running shoes. All of it helped calm her.
By the time she and Fiona made it the mile and a half to the end of the beach and she’d turned around to head back, the rest of her frustration had abated, and she focused instead on the endorphins from the run and the joy of living in this beautiful place.
She paused for a moment to catch her breath, looking out at the rock formations offshore, the towering haystacks that so defined this part of the Oregon Coast, then the craggy green mountains to the east.
It was so good to be home. She had friends here, connections. Her dad was buried not far from here. Her mom and stepfather were here most of the time, though they had just bought an RV and were spending a few months traveling around the country.
She would have thought being a military wife to Melissa’s dad would have cured her mother’s wanderlust, but apparently not. They would be back soon.
Melissa didn’t envy them. After moving to a new base every few years during her childhood and then following Cody around from continent to continent, she loved being in one place. This place. She had missed it more than she even realized, until she finally decided to bring Skye here.
She should have done it years ago instead of trying so hard to stay close to her ex-husband for Skye’s sake. She had enjoyed living on Oahu, his home training location, but the cost of living had been prohibitive. Most of her salary as a nurse had gone to housing and the rest to food.
When he decided to move to South America on a whim, she had finally thrown up her hands and opted not to follow him. Instead, she had packed up her daughter for one last move and come home to Cannon Beach.
She started her run again, not wanting to spend more time than she already had that morning dwelling on her mistakes.
It made her sad, wondering if she should have tried harder to make things work, even though she was fully aware both of them had left the marriage long before they finally divorced.
Now wasn’t the time to obsess about her failures or the loneliness that kept her up at night.
He had gotten married again. That was what he called to tell her earlier. It had been a spur-of-the-moment decision and they’d gone to St. Croix for their honeymoon, which had been beautiful but expensive. He’d spent so much on the honeymoon, in fact, that he couldn’t make that month’s child support payment, but he would make it up to her.
He was coming back to Oregon to stay this time, and was willing to finally step up and be the dad he should have been all along. She’d been hearing that story or versions of it for fifteen years. She hoped it would happen, she really did.
Cody wasn’t a bad man. She wouldn’t have loved him all those years and followed him from country to country to support his dreams if he were. But with the birth of their child, her priorities had changed, while she was afraid his never would.
Enough about Cody. She was genuinely happy for her ex, even if hearing about his new marriage did make her wish she had someone special in her own life.
She sighed again and gripped Fiona’s leash. “Come on, Fi. Let’s go home.”
An odd wind danced across the sand, warmer than the air around it. She almost thought she could hear laughter rippling around her, though she was virtually alone on the beach.
She was hearing things again. Once in a while at the house, she could swear she heard a woman’s laugh when no one was there, and a few times she had smelled roses on the stairwell, for no apparent reason.
Maybe the ghost of Brambleberry House had been in the mood for a run today, too. The thought made her smile and she continued heading home.
Few people were out on the beach on this off-season morning, but she did happen to catch sight of a guy running toward her from the opposite direction. He was too far away for her to really see clearly, but she had the random impression of lean strength and fluid grace.
Ridiculous, she told herself. How could she know that from two hundred yards away?
She continued running, intent now only on finishing so she could go into work.
Fiona trotted along beside her in the same rhythm they had worked out through countless runs like this together. She was aware of the other runner coming closer. He had a dog, too, a small black one who also looked familiar.
They were only fifty feet apart when Fiona, for no apparent reason, suddenly veered in front of Melissa, then stopped stock-still.
With no time to change course or put on the brakes, Melissa toppled over the eighty-pound dog and went flying across the sand. She shoved her hands out to catch her fall instinctively. Her right arm hit sand and she felt a jolt in her shoulder from the impact, but the left one must have made contact with a rock buried beneath the sand, causing a wrenching pain to shoot from her wrist up her arm.
This day just kept getting better and better.
She gasped and flopped over onto her back, cradling the injured wrist as a haze of pain clouded her vision.
Fiona nosed her side as if in apology, and Melissa bit back her instinctive scold. What on earth had gotten into Fiona? They had run together dozens of times. The Irish setter was usually graceful, beautifully trained, and never cut across her path like that.
For about ten seconds, it was all she could do not to writhe around on the ground and howl. She was trying not to cry when she gradually became aware she wasn’t alone.
“Are you okay?” a deep male voice asked.
She was covered in sand, grabbing her wrist and whimpering like a baby seal that had lost its mama. Did she look okay?
“I’m fine,” she lied. “Just a little spill.”
She looked up—way, way up—and somehow wasn’t surprised to find the other runner she had spotted a few moments earlier.
Her instincts were right. He was great-looking. She had an impression of dark hair and concerned blue eyes that looked familiar. He wore running shorts and a formfitting performance shirt that molded to powerfully defined muscles.
She swallowed and managed to sit up. What kind of weird karma was this? She had just wished for a man in her life, and suddenly a gorgeous one seemed to pop up out of nowhere.
Surely it had to be a coincidence.
Anyway, she might like the idea of a man in her life, but she wasn’t at all prepared for the reality of it—especially not a dark-haired, blue-eyed runner who still somehow managed to smell delicious.
He also had a little dog on a leash, a small black schnauzer who was sniffing Fiona like they were old friends.
“Can I give you a hand?”
“Um. Sure.”
Still cradling her injured wrist, she reached out with her right hand, and he grasped it firmly and tugged her to her feet. For one odd moment, she could swear she smelled roses above the clean, crisp, masculine scent of him, but that made absolutely no sense.
Was she hallucinating? Maybe she had bonked her head in that gloriously graceful free fall.
“You hurt your wrist,” he observed. “Need me to take a look at it? I’m a doctor.”
What were the odds that she would fall and injure herself in front of a gorgeous tourist who also happened to be a doctor?
“Isn’t that convenient?” she muttered, wondering again at the weird little twist of fate.
He gave her an odd look, half curious and half concerned. Again, she had the strange feeling that she knew him somehow, but she had such a lousy memory for faces and names.
“Melissa. Melissa Blake?”
She narrowed her gaze, more embarrassed at her own lousy memory than anything. He knew her so she obviously had met him before.