Melissa: A Hathaway House Heartwarming Romance Read online

  Melissa

  Hathaway House, Book 13

  Dale Mayer

  Books in This Series:

  Aaron, Book 1

  Brock, Book 2

  Cole, Book 3

  Denton, Book 4

  Elliot, Book 5

  Finn, Book 6

  Gregory, Book 7

  Heath, Book 8

  Iain, Book 9

  Jaden, Book 10

  Keith, Book 11

  Lance, Book 12

  Melissa, Book 13

  Nash, Book 14

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  About This Book

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Epilogue

  About Nash

  Author’s Note

  Complimentary Download

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  About This Book

  Welcome to Hathaway House. Rehab Center. Safe Haven. Second chance at life and love.

  Health-care worker Shane has been at Hathaway House since the beginning. He’s watched patient after patient scratch and claw their way to recovery and has watched relationship after relationship blossom into love and marriage. He believes in love. Wants a true love of his own. Yet he wonders now whether anyone is out there for him.

  Until Melissa walks into his gym.

  Broken and beaten by life and overwhelmed with endless pain was never part of Melissa’s long-term plan. But a year after an accident sidelined her navy career, she’s still fighting her way back to a normal life—if such a thing exists for the woman she’s become. Her transfer to Hathaway House is a lifeline to her oldest friend, but, even with Dani’s encouragement, Melissa’s journey back to health is long and hard and maybe just a pipe dream. But she’ll try again. One more time.

  Separately, Shane and Melissa have been battling their own personal demons. When they meet at Hathaway House, the tough physiotherapist vows that his newest client will reach successes unimaginable to her. Together, working through her rehab plan, Shane and Melissa find a special tenderness behind each other’s strength.

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  Prologue

  At times in Melissa’s life, she’d made rash decisions. Most of them had turned out okay. Sometimes not. Then sometimes she deliberated for so long that the opportunities passed her by.

  She stared at the crumpled letter in her lap. Not just crumpled but also tearstained. Her one and only friend had gone to the trouble to track her down, even after years of silence. Then Dani had known Melissa before her parents’ death. Afterward she’d moved into Dani’s place as a retreat. They’d finished school together. Then Melissa had entered the navy and what she had hoped would be a brand-new life.

  And it had been, … until her accident.

  Now she was at a crossroads yet again. And this time, once more, Dani offered a pathway open to Melissa. Back then Dani had pleaded with Melissa to continue staying with her and her father and to not go into service. She’d chosen the navy over her friend back then.

  Now Melissa had a chance to choose Dani this time. She had spent the last many years building up a VA rehab center called Hathaway House—originally set up to help her father regain a life after his own injuries had sidelined his military career. With the upstairs part of this center growing quickly to assist human patients, Dani had quickly installed a veterinarian clinic down below. Then that was Dani; she couldn’t help herself from trying to save the world, one person, one animal at a time.

  Just as Dani had tried to save Melissa back then, she was trying to save Melissa now.

  She had refused back then, but now …

  Looking around her four-person room, Melissa took in the apparatus attached to her bed, the wheelchair, and the crutches close by. The life she lived here, while recovering from her latest surgery, was filled with hopelessness at the thought of staying here. In reflection, going into the navy had felt like she was running away instead of running to a new future.

  Now it felt the same again.

  On impulse she picked up her phone and called Dani. When Melissa heard her friend’s voice, her throat closed.

  “Hello? Hello?”

  “Dani,” she finally got out.

  Silence. Then Dani exploded, “Melissa?”

  “Yeah,” she said, half in tears, half in laughter.

  “Oh my, I’m so glad you called. I’ll be even happier if you have filled out that application to come here. Have you?’

  “No, I haven’t. At least not yet.”

  “Please do it,” Dani pleaded. “We can help you here.”

  “I don’t know if you can,” she whispered back. “I’m in pain all the time. The journey itself will be incredibly hard.”

  “Yes, it could be,” Dani said quietly. “But, once here, we have specialists on staff who can help you.”

  Melissa sniffled back her tears. She wanted to believe her friend. She really did. But hope was a little thin on the ground.

  “Please,” Dani said into the phone. “Take a leap of faith. Let me help. Last time I pleaded with you to stay. This time I’m asking you to come. You needed someone back then and walked away. You need someone now. Please don’t walk away from me this time.”

  Melissa took a deep breath and capitulated. “All right. I just hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “I do,” Dani said. “Come. You won’t regret it.”

  Chapter 1

  Melissa Deverol opened her eyes, hating the hot tears that still rolled down her face. Her gaze frantically searched the room around her to confirm what she already hoped. She was alone. Thank heaven.

  The trip to Hathaway House had been brutal. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. She was supposed to arrive here in good shape, just the next stop in her healing cycle. But, instead of that, the trip had become something more than just a transfer from one facility to the next. It had become a raging bridge that she struggled to cross.

  Even before that was the struggle with her application. It had been denied, then accepted, then denied, then accepted, with the doctors causing the difficulties by determining she wasn’t ready for such a step forward. And thinking that she would never make it, she’d finally given up, and then it all came together.

  But the transfer itself had been beyond painful. Her most recent surgery left her weak and with more muscle damage than she had even thought was possible, and here she was in agony as she lay on her bed, finally at Hathaway. It should have been a triumph; instead it was just sheer torture. Then what did she expect with hip, knee, foot, and shoulder injuries from getting hit in an intersection. The doctors had done what they could. Now it was up to her body to do the best it could. She could only hope it would be enough.

  When she heard a knock on her door, she deliberately closed her eyes, hoping that nobody would come in. But when the door opened, she peered through her damp eyelashes to see a tall blond male step forward.

  “Are you okay?” he asked in a warm liquid voice. “I saw you in the hallway when they brought you in. I could see your pain levels. Your team will be here soon, and I’m one of that team,” he said. “I’m Shane Roster.”

  His words came out so smoothly, they almost melted her heart. Actual emotions and genuine concern were in his voice. Which shouldn’t surpris
e her. After all, the two busy nurses she’d dealt with here so far were a nice change.

  “I’m the head of the Physiotherapy Department here at Hathaway House.”

  Her eyes opened fully as she looked up at him. “How did you know I wasn’t asleep?”

  He gave her the gentlest of smiles and said, “Experience.”

  She winced. “Are we all such a mess when we arrive?”

  “No,” he said. “Not at all. But I could see your pain. I could see the stiffness in your spine. I just want you to know that it will get better.”

  Her eyes widened. “Well, thank you for that,” she said, “because I’m not sure it can get much worse.”

  At that, he shook his head. “It can,” he said, his voice firm. “It can get much worse. But we’re here to help you get to be the best that you can be.”

  “Well, first, it’d be nice to stop crying,” she said, hating that it always devolved to some female weakness of crying. “I’m not normally so weepy,” she explained.

  “Tears are just a release,” he said, stepping farther into the room. “They’re natural. They’re normal, and they’re good to help you let go of pain, tension, and stress. You need that release. Don’t hold it back. It will just add to your own trauma.”

  She stared at him, marveling at his words, yet questioning it all.

  He smiled and shrugged.

  “I thought guys hated women’s tears,” she said.

  “Then they’re in the wrong business, if that’s the case here,” he said, “because tears are a very necessary part of your healing. You need to let them go.” He took several steps to the doorway. “I’ll come back and talk to you in a little bit, but is there anything I can get you now?”

  “A new life?”

  “Order received,” he said, with a big smile that lit up his whole face. “It just takes a little while to process.” And, with that, he stepped out and walked down the hallway.

  She lay there, surprised not only at his attitude but in the light way that he spoke about her life. It was different from everything else she’d heard and had experienced up until now. Maybe that was a good thing because surely she didn’t want to deal with any more bad events in her life. It had been a pretty rough year already, that distant dream of a normal life always delayed by one more surgery, so that her normal future looked a long way off. But now that she was here, maybe she would eventually see her new future.

  The next day Shane stopped back in at Melissa’s room again. For some reason, watching her arrival and transfer had touched him. He’d immediately read her case file. She was almost heartbroken that she couldn’t be who she wanted to be, something he’d seen time and time again in patients of his.

  But something about her had struck a chord and had pulled at his heartstrings. The fact that Melissa reminded him a lot of his sister, whom he rarely got to see now, was another big aspect to it, and Melissa had looked so much like she needed a friend last night. Just someone to tell her that she would be okay. He knew everyone here had a different version of what that looked like, and it rarely matched reality. Acceptance was part of the process.

  When he walked into her room today, he looked around. She was still tucked into bed, hardly having shifted from the previous night, but her eyes were open, and her gaze was clear. “Good morning,” he said, noting a spark in her eyes, which was also good. His spirits lifted.

  “Good morning, Shane,” she said. “I am feeling better today.”

  “Are you?” he asked. He motioned at the way she was positioned in bed. “Do you shift at all during the night?”

  She slowly shook her head. “No. I try not to.”

  “Because of the pain?”

  She nodded slowly again.

  “And yet lying in the same position like that,” he said, “causes all kinds of other problems. We have to get you up and moving. And we have to get you so that you can shift in the night without that pain. Are you taking medications for it?”

  “Yes,” she said, “but a lot of times they don’t touch the pain.”

  “Ah,” he said. “That figures. Pain is debilitating and causes stress, which then slows healing.”

  She shrugged. “It doesn’t seem to make any difference though, does it?”

  “It can,” he said. “We just need to keep working on everything that’s going on in your world. I haven’t done a full assessment, so I can’t really see what that looks like yet.”

  “At this point in time, I think every doctor must come from a completely different program because they all seem to have varied ideas of what to do.”

  “And have you liked any of your doctors?”

  “I did like one,” she said wistfully. “But then he ended up working in a new area, and I couldn’t go to him anymore.”

  “And the next doctor?”

  “He had another plan for me and changed my program, changed some of the medication, added two new surgeries, and, next thing I know, I’m still not any better.”

  Such a note of defeatism was in her tone that he worried about her. “How’s the depression?”

  Her gaze flipped up to his. “I didn’t say I was depressed.” An almost defensive note was evident in her tone.

  “How could you not be?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. “Your whole world has been this struggle to get back to normality.”

  “And here everybody tells me this is normal,” she said on a broken laugh. Inside she wondered at his wording. She was afraid to hope that life here could offer much, but at least Shane was approachable and easy to talk to.

  “There is no normal anymore,” he said. “Normal is what you make it. Normal is when you stop trying to change your condition. Are you ready to stop trying to change this?”

  She looked at him, frowned, then slowly shook her head. “No. That’s why I’m here.”

  “Good answer,” he said, his smile bright.

  She frowned at him. “Do you think you can help?”

  “Absolutely,” he said. “I just don’t know what, how much, or how long it’ll take. Remember? It’s a journey.”

  “And if I’m not up to traveling?” She hated to be negative, but she’d heard so much from so many that she’d more or less lost hope.

  “We’ll take the journey at your speed,” he said, staring intently at her.

  She nodded slowly. “You know something? I want to believe you.”

  “Meaning, you’ve been let down before, and you’ve been disappointed by the results of your surgeries, and you haven’t found the same optimism that everybody else was trying to cheer you up with?”

  “Exactly.” She laughed. “It’s almost like you’ve heard this a time or two.”

  “Much more than a time or two,” he said. “And the thing is, one doctor will have one opinion, and another doctor will have another opinion. But individually, it’s your body, and what works for you and how a procedure will turn out is something that nobody can tell you with any degree of certainty. And we have to work with what the result is, so we can improve on it.”

  “And again, it all sounds good,” she said. “And I want to believe you, but …”

  “Then do,” he interrupted quietly. “First things first though, we have to get you to the point that you’re not in so much pain.”

  “I don’t even recognize the pain anymore,” she said.

  “I can see that, and that’s part of the problem too,” he said, “because then you’re not shifting to get away from it anymore. You’re just locking yourself down and ignoring the pain receptor messages coming to your brain.”

  “Yes, but, if I listen to the messages, it hurts,” she said. “Remember? I’m trying to get away from the pain.”

  “I remember,” he said cheerfully. “How much of your team did you meet and see last night?” he asked, changing tactics.

  She frowned. “I saw a couple people, but I don’t necessarily remember who they were.”

  “That’s normal. It’s a bit overwhelming when you fir
st get here,” he said, “but it will improve.”

  “You sound … Are you always this positive?” she asked.

  “No, not always, but there’s nothing wrong with being positive,” he said. “It helps get you where you need to go. You should meet the rest of your team today.” He sounded confident but stopped, studied her for a long moment, then asked, “How ambulatory are you?”

  “I can walk fine,” she said with a shrug.

  “I wonder what that means to you. And if it means the same thing to me.”

  She turned toward him. “Sorry?”

  He smiled and changed the subject. “Have you had a tour of the place?”

  She winced at that. “No. That sounds like too much work.”

  “Because walking is too much work?”

  “I can, though, but would prefer not to. Walking hurts, so I don’t do much of it.”

  He nodded, walked to the side of the bed, pulled out the wheelchair that was in every room, and brought it closer to her. “Let’s do a quick tour.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she protested.

  He noted her fingers, gripping the sides of the bed until her knuckles turned white. “Is the pain bad right now?”

  She took a long, slow, deep breath. “Sometimes.”

  “Have you eaten?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t eat much.”

  “Another reason why your body isn’t doing as well as you would like.”

  “They say I’m supposed to feed it,” she said, “but food isn’t anything I particularly like. It’s like everything in my world has changed. My taste buds are different. Food tastes different.”

  “That’s not uncommon either,” he said. “However, we do have good food here, and it’s very important that you get up and move around.”

  “But sitting in a wheelchair isn’t moving around,” she said.

  He looked at her, pinned her in place with his gaze, and asked, “You want to walk?”

  Her lips thinned. “This isn’t a question as to whether I want to leave my room,” she protested. “You’re saying it’s not a choice.”