Page 4 of A Veteran’s Second Chance

I’ll just have to put on my big girl pants and face the man who broke my heart.

Four hours later, I wipe my sweaty palms on my trousers and take a deep breath. The wall clock ticks over to one, and I watch the seconds tick by.

Logan is waiting in reception to be called into my treatment room. I know he’s there because military patients are never late for their appointments.

I should go out there and feign surprise at seeing him and smile, and ask how he’s been and pretend like I hardly remember him at all, then get on with the business of giving him the treatment he needs.

But instead, I watch as the second hand reaches twelve, and then as it goes around again.

“He’s just another patient,” I say into the empty treatment room.

I square my shoulders and stand up taller before I open the door. I will not let Logan Winslow see that I am anything but a professional woman who has not thought about him in eleven years.

He’s pacing the reception area like a caged tiger. He’s taller than I remember, and when he turns toward me, he stops. His eyes widen, and he grins.

“Savanna Hart. I heard you were working here.”

He doesn’t look at all flustered as he stands, hands on hips with a wide grin on his face.

His face carries more lines, and there are flecks of silver in his hair, but they only make him look more handsome. So handsome that for a moment I’m as giddy as that eighteen-year-old I once was. Then I snap out of it. I’m not eighteen. I’m twenty-nine and a health care professional.

“Logan Winslow. It’s nice to see you again.”

I’m pleased with how steady my voice sounds, although I can’t control the smile that spreads across my face. He’s good to look at, and I drink him in.

He takes a step back, and his gaze rakes over my body from head to toe. “You look good.”

Heat floods my cheeks, and I look down so he doesn’t see. Thirty seconds with Logan, and I’ve reverted to being a blushing schoolgirl. I won’t let that happen. I’m a grown-ass woman, and he doesn’t deserve my blushes.

I can keep this friendly yet professional.

“My treatment room is down here.” I spin on my heel and march down the corridor, not checking that he’s following.

I hold the door open for him, as I do for all my clients, which is a big mistake. Logan brushes past me and his shoulder brushes my arm, causing small shocks of heat to jump across my body. I catch his scent, spicy and woodsy and something that’s all him that floods my mind with memories. Lying out on the hood of his Ford pickup, watching the stars, kissing on the front porch when he dropped me off at my parents’ house, dancing slowly around a bonfire while Cassie played guitar and stars twinkled above us, and I clung to his chest as if he was the only thing anchoring me to this earth.

“You became a physio.” I’m pulled out of the memories by the very real man before me and the deep rumble of his voice. “Just like you said you would.”

Logan does a slow circle of my treatment room, taking in the posters of the human skeleton and muscles, the treatment bed, and the shelves with heavy reference books and replicas of joints.

I close the door behind him, and now we’re in the room together, him taking up more space than what seems usual for a client.

“Take a seat.” I indicate a chair, and I sit in my office chair in front of my desk. I turn to the computer because looking at Logan brings back too many memories.

But I have to look at him. He’s my patient, a veteran who needs my help. That’s how I need to view him. And if he starts asking me about my life and chatting as if we’re friends, it’s going to open up too many wounds. We’re not friends. He’s just someone I used to know.

I sit up straight and turn to Logan as I school my features into indifference.

“Tell me about your injury.”

He regards me for a moment, and I look him straight in the eye, not wavering, not blushing. I will not let Logan Winslow be anything more to me than just another patient.

4

LOGAN

Savanna’s indifference is worse than if she’d yelled at me. I left her like an asshole and never contacted her again. I deserve her anger and her hurt; I expected her to hate me. But this professional indifference is worse.

“My shoulder was dislocated. It’s happened before, but this time it won’t heal right. It might be a permanent injury.”