Melissa: A Hathaway House Heartwarming Romance Read online

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Especially in a place like this. Lots happening on all different levels.” He lifted his hands, then called the other dogs back with him.

  She kept walking, loving the fresh air and sunshine with a bit of a breeze. It was just enough to lift the tendrils of hair from the back of her neck, cooling her off a bit. She should probably go down to the swimming pool eventually and really cool down, something she hadn’t done yet. She’d been in the hot tub but hadn’t really done any water lessons with Shane. There’d been a lot to work on, and she’d never asked.

  Just one of the things that Shane had recently mentioned, about speaking up for herself. If she wanted something, she needed to say so, and, if she didn’t want to do something, she needed to say so. She’d gone along with that tribe mentality for a long time. The navy was like that. They went in groups, large groups. They followed orders; your day was a block of time, and it was all laid out for you. Now here she was, with more time on her hands than she’d ever had in her life, and she was a little bit at loose ends, not sure what to do. Not that it had to stay that way, but it made her wonder just what she should be doing.

  Finally she came to a spot that had a little bit of a rise in a bit of a flat spot, so she got off the path very carefully, took several steps down onto the grass, and sat down, careful of her picnic basket. She still didn’t know what was in it, and curiosity was killing her because Dennis was such a great guy at producing food, even though she knew a full kitchen team was in the background. But, if anybody could pull off something to put a smile on her face, she was pretty sure it was him.

  She opened the basket to find a little tablecloth. With a chuckle she spread it out, even as Helga immediately laid down on top of it. “I don’t think that’s what it’s meant for,” she said, reaching out to scratch Helga on the back of the neck.

  Helga just gave her a light woof and rolled over, exposing her belly. Melissa accommodated her, giving her a nice rub on her belly. When Helga seemed satisfied, Melissa chuckled and went back into the basket to find more items wrapped up there, things not easily identified. She pulled out the one on the top and realized it was a small pot pie. It looked like a chicken pot pie, and it smelled delicious, and it was still warm.

  Her stomach immediately started growling, and, whereas she hadn’t been hungry before, now she was ravenous. Her appetite was taking advantage of being outside with the fresh air. She kept pulling out more and more items. Realizing that she couldn’t eat half of this, she shook her head and said out loud, “What on earth were you thinking?”

  “Knowing Dennis,” a man said, “he was thinking that you probably wouldn’t be alone.”

  She looked up to see Shane walking toward her, a broad smile on his face. She laughed with delight when he asked, “May I join you?”

  Helga gave a soft woof and thumped her tail, but she didn’t stray from her spot on the tablecloth covering the ground.

  Melissa chuckled. “Helga says, yes. Please,” she said. “I just needed to get outside for a little bit. The walls were closing in on me. Everybody’s telling me to figure stuff out, but I’m not getting any answers, so feeling a little bit like a failure …” she admitted.

  “Ah,” he said, “we all have down days.” He sat down near Helga, giving her a gentle ear rub.

  “And I know I shouldn’t let these down days get to me,” she said, “but that doesn’t seem to stop them from showing up, even though I tell them to stay away.”

  “None of us have all the answers,” he said. “All we can do is give you suggestions. The answers are inside you, and it doesn’t matter what we say. It’s all got to be your way.”

  “I get that,” she said. “It’s just a little frustrating when the answers aren’t coming.”

  “Understood. We’ve all been there.” He looked at the basket and the contents she’d spread out and said, “Wow. Dennis really did fill you up, didn’t he?”

  “He’s deadly,” she said. “A lot of food here.”

  “Not that that’s a problem,” Shane said, “if you’re sharing.”

  Helga let out another woof.

  They both chuckled, as they shook their heads at the completely relaxed dog in their midst.

  “I’m surprised she’s not interested in our food,” Shane noted.

  “Looking at her,” Melissa said, “I would say she gets plenty of feedings during the day.”

  Shane nodded. “I suspect all the animals are spoiled here, if Dani has anything to do with it.”

  Melissa laughed, and they each reached for a separate pot pie. “It looks like there’s definitely two of everything,” she frowned. “Did he tell you that I was out here?”

  “Nope. But I was in the lunchroom, looking for you, wondering if you were going to eat or how your day was going,” he said. “I didn’t have a session with you today, so I didn’t get my daily top-up.”

  “I know,” she said. “It’s funny just how much I miss our connection on a day that we don’t have something together.”

  “Well, we don’t have to rely on scheduled sessions though,” he said. “We can have lunches together, coffee together, dinner together.”

  She smiled. “That almost sounds like a date.”

  “It absolutely sounds like a date,” he said. “The question is whether that’s something you’re interested in or not?”

  She looked at him, smiled, and said, “Absolutely. I wasn’t kidding when I said that I really wanted to figure all this out. That I didn’t want to lose track of you.”

  “Not losing track of me,” he said, “leaves an awful lot open to interpretation.”

  She frowned as she thought about that and then nodded. “I want to continue getting to know you,” she said. “It feels like I know you, but I don’t know as much as I would like to.”

  “And how do you get to really know somebody?” he asked curiously.

  “Spend a lot of time with them.”

  “Or seeing them in tough times,” he said with a gentle grin. “That can shorten that time frame really fast.”

  “Back to that’s why the relationships here flourish on a very different level, isn’t it?”

  “Absolutely. Just think of a real soul-deep relationship and how many layers are involved, and then think about how different a social more superficial relationship is and how long it takes to get through all those layers.”

  She nodded in understanding. “Who knows how many layers because of the surgeries and just not dealing with that superficial level anymore.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “So I ask you again. How do you feel about it being a date?”

  She smiled, took a deep breath, and shyly said, “I’d love it.”

  “Perfect,” he said. “So now that we’ve got that settled, what else is bothering you?”

  “It’s not so much bothering me,” she said, “as much as I’m still feeling rootless, directionless.”

  “And why is that?”

  She winced.

  He caught the look that crossed her face and said, “You know that you can tell me anything, right?”

  “I know,” she said, “and it goes back to needing to tell you something important, needing to tell you what’s happening, when I’m ready to stop or when I’m ready to start something or if I want something and haven’t asked for it. It’s all wrapped up in itself.”

  “So that sounds a bit ominous. I’m glad we got the date part through first.”

  She laughed. “Well, we did, but it’s connected.”

  He stared at her, one eyebrow raised, waiting.

  But she wasn’t quite ready. She shrugged and said, “It’s not that easy.”

  “None of this is,” he said. He finished his pie, rooted around inside the basket, and said, “What else have we got here?”

  “You tell me,” she said, digging in beside him. “It looks like a lot, but I’m not exactly sure.”

  He smiled. “Looks like we have a bunch here.” He pulled out small bowls with tops on t
hem. “Salads,” he immediately handed her one and kept himself one, pulling out two forks from the bottom of the basket.

  “I can tell you one thing I’d like to do though,” she said, “and I’m not used to asking for stuff, so this isn’t an easy one.”

  “If you’re not used to doing it, nothing’s easy,” he said. “So what are you asking for?”

  “Can I get in the pool?”

  She said it in such a sad contemplative tone that he burst out laughing. “Absolutely you can get in the pool,” he said. “It was on my notes to ask you last week, and I completely forgot about it.”

  “Yeah, it’s been a little busy around here, hasn’t it?”

  “It’s been busy, but it’s been great because you’ve moved ahead so fast.”

  “Do you think that I’m slowing down now?”

  “Maybe this last week, yeah. I wasn’t sure if there was a reason for it or not.”

  “Well, there’s a reason, but it goes back to that … I’m not really sure how I should be dealing with some of this.”

  “Okay, that sounds ominous again.”

  “Maybe I’m just not sure that I’m ready.”

  “Then no pressure,” he said, surprising her.

  She smiled at him. “You know something? You’re a really nice man.”

  He stopped and stared at her. “Somehow that doesn’t sound terribly complimentary.”

  “Well, it’s meant to be,” she said.

  “So are you, a nice woman, that is.”

  They sat, eating in comfortable silence. She wondered just how much she could tell him, and she wasn’t sure that she even knew all the answers.

  But her progress had definitely slowed down, and she’d noticed it. Everybody kept talking about her progress up until now, and she figured that that was part of what put her mood off. Some kernel remained in the back of her mind as to what might be going on in the background, but she didn’t really have any way to work through it.

  Shane studied Melissa’s face, as he tried to enjoy his salad. He had noticed her lack of progress this last week, almost ten days now, but he wondered if she had. He hadn’t brought it to her attention because it was often a mistake to point out the negative things. But something was going on. “Are you upset about your lack of progress?”

  “Well, I guess plateaus happen,” she said with a shrug. “Like any weight loss, you lose a bit, and then you plateau. But you carry on.”

  He laughed at the analogy, but it was fairly accurate. “That’s true enough,” he said. “I don’t really have any rhyme or reason at the moment for why there’s a slowdown overall on the progress, particularly after we made progress with your walking. So it could be a combination of things.”

  She nodded thoughtfully, staring at the horses.

  He could sense almost as if she’d pulled an invisible cloak around her, keeping her thoughts to herself. “And this is one of the reasons why,” he said, “you need to open up to let other people in.”

  “Do you think it’s me?” She looked at him suddenly.

  “I don’t know,” he said, staring back steadily. “It’s possible. It happens, and it can happen for all different kinds of reasons.”

  “I don’t want it to be me because that means I don’t want to get better,” she said, the words rushing out of her.

  “I don’t think that’s the reason at all,” he said, understanding a little of what was happening. “Any number of things from your past could be running around in your head, even right now, that’s slowing you down or making you doubt yourself or causing all kinds of things that would slow your progress. And it could be just that your body needs time to catch up.”

  “I like that last one,” she said with relief.

  He smiled at her, then dug back into the basket. “So we have giant cookies, and a thermos is in here.”

  “You think that’s coffee?” she asked in delight.

  He opened it up, sniffed, and said, “Absolutely it’s coffee.” He smiled at two cups but said with a frown, “There’s no cream.”

  “And no sugar?” she asked. “I don’t take either.”

  “Neither do I,” he said. He opened the thermos and poured both of them a cup.

  They sat here, sipping their coffee, and she asked, “So the cookies are our dessert?”

  “You take a look,” he said. “I’ll lie down and close my eyes.” And he put his coffee cup beside him, stretched out on the grass because Helga still had the entire tablecloth. When she realized Shane was lying down, her tail thumped him hard, whacking him in the arm, but she then continued to snooze right beside him.

  He just lay here, watching the clouds above float, letting his whole body ease back. It was so nice to be here in Mother Nature with Melissa—and Helga and the other animals. He knew in his mind he worried about Melissa’s lack of progress, but, at the same time, his heart was happy about it, as it meant she would be here longer. The faster she recovered meant the better for her, but, if it took her away from him earlier, before they had a chance to really figure out where they were at, that wouldn’t make him happy.

  The silence hung in the air for a long time, and he wondered if he would be allowed to just snooze here, when she said suddenly, “I think I’m doing it to myself.”

  “Interesting,” he said. “And why do you think that?”

  “I’m not sure. Something in the back of my head tells me that it’s me. That I’m holding myself back.” She looked at him. “Who does that?”

  “Everybody does that,” he said. Immediately he rolled over and propped himself up on an elbow. “That’s what you have to realize. Everybody does it.”

  She looked at him with a serious gaze. “Are you just saying that to make me feel better?”

  He chuckled. “I have better things to do than that. I deal with lots of patients every day. I’ve seen hundreds since I’ve begun working here, probably thousands,” he said. “Almost everybody has a crisis of faith in themselves, in the world around them, in their own spiritual path, in a relationship. But particularly in the relationship they have with themselves.”

  She stared at him and then turned toward the pastures. “You see? If I were a horse,” she said, looking at the horses in front of them, “I could just eat, sleep, and the biggest problem I would have to work out is which blade of grass to pick up and eat.”

  “And, if you were a horse,” Shane said immediately, “you would have your face to the sun, and you would enjoy the peace and quiet. You would be living in today, whether you had an injury or not. You wouldn’t be worrying about how other horses would see you. You wouldn’t be worrying about past horses you might have known, and neither would you be worrying about future horses that you have yet to find.”

  She started to laugh and laugh and laugh.

  He grinned at her.

  “Oh, that’s good,” she said. “That’s really good.”

  “And it’s true,” he said. “Remember. Stop pushing yourself so hard to find answers. What do you want right now?” he asked.

  She rolled over so she could look at him and said, “Peace of mind.”

  “That sounds good to me, and what is it that’s stopping you from achieving peace of mind?”

  “Trying to figure out why I have stopped progressing.”

  “And you can’t just let it be and realize that it’s a natural state of affairs?” he asked curiously.

  She grimaced at that. “It feels like a cop-out when you say that you think it’s because of me, that I’m the one who slowed down my healing.” She nodded. “That’s how it feels.”

  “Okay. Go with that,” he said. “What else is it that you need to do in order to change that?”

  “I need to understand why I would slow my progress.”

  “Because you’re afraid to succeed,” he said instantly.

  “Oh, that’s a big one, isn’t it?” She flopped over on her back, put her arms up above her head, and smiled at the green grass tickling her fingers. �
�It’s so beautiful out here, and it’s so odd to think that we set ourselves up for failure.”

  “We do it all the time,” he said.

  “What are you afraid of?” she asked suddenly.

  He smiled and said, “Not being good enough. That, should I end up in a place like this someday, would I handle it as well as the rest of you have? And another big one is not getting something that I really, really want.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “It doesn’t have to be anything specific,” he said, “but whenever I really, really want something, a part of me is terrified that I won’t get it. And, if I don’t get it, I’ll walk through life always feeling the lack of not having it.”

  “Are we talking commercial things? You know? Like stuff. Like a teakettle?”

  He bolted upright on his elbows and stared at her, saying, “Do you think I really, really want a teakettle?”

  But she had a sassy grin on her face.

  He shook his head. “No, but it’s like getting to be the physiotherapist that I am right now,” he said. “That was a goal. It was a really big goal, and it worried away at me for a long time—even when I graduated, and I had that piece of paper—that I wasn’t a physiotherapist until I had a job, working in this field.”

  “Ah,” she said. “So achieving things.”

  “Yes. But it’s not just about achieving things,” he said, “because there’s more to life than that.”

  “I guess,” she said. “I can’t think of anything that I really, really wanted and couldn’t have.”

  “Maybe you’re not the person who dares to care,” he said.

  She rolled her head over to look at him. “No,” she said. “I think I care so much but know I can’t have what I want, so I already sabotaged my ability to have it. So, knowing I can’t have it, therefore, I don’t want it.”

  He stared at her, then worked his way through the convoluted explanation. “Ah, so you refuse to think about it before you start? You won’t allow yourself to want because you already know you can’t have it?”

  “Exactly.”

  Chapter 13

  Melissa knew it was foolish, but that’s how she felt. He picked a blade of grass and separated the leaf from it. She watched those very capable fingers as he worked away, his gaze obviously dropped down to study the grass. Yet she didn’t think he saw the grass but something else in his head. “What?”