ANOTHER day, and apparently this was the one on which Mitch intended to get serious about Anna’s training, because she’d been watching him walk back and forth through the house for the past half hour, carrying all sorts of weight equipment, setting it up in the room Lanli had already designated for her therapy with mats, ropes, and other exercise odds and ends. He was real optimistic, Anna thought, since that other stuff had been sitting there taunting her for weeks, as yet unused. And now there were the weights Mitch was arranging to suit himself. Not exactly the way she’d intended to use her dining room. Once upon a time she’d entertained the notion of cozy dinners with good friends in there. That had been when she’d had a dining-room table instead of a portable therapy table. She still did have a dining-room table technically, but it was sitting in the garage, along with pretty much all the other furniture that had once made this place cozy. Now her house was sparse, barrier-free, impersonal. Just like her life. But, hey, she had a…Well, she didn’t know the name for it, but it was some kind of bench with pulleys.
Anna wheeled herself into the doorway of her new training room in time to see Mitch pull off his sweat-stained knit polo shirt and toss it onto the back of a chair. Standing there in his low-riding jeans, the crisp, golden brown hair covering his chest a stark contrast to his deep umber tan, he was the best thing she’d seen in years. The flood of plain old hormonal appreciation was rising in her and she wondered if it showed. She hoped not, because to Mitch she was merely another patient to train, no matter what he was calling it. And she didn’t want to get caught up in a transference—namely infatuation. Time to dig down deep and find a scrap of professionalism, she decided. Drag it out and tie herself up in it, since that infatuation transference was nudging at her in a big way.
Besides, there was still that other situation in her life that needed resolving. The Kyle situation. And realistically why would someone like Mitch be attracted to her anyway? Especially when the man who loved her wasn’t?
“Ready to start?” Mitch asked, tugging a sleeveless mesh shirt over his head. It didn’t hide much and, if anything, it accented the muscles of his arms. Anna knew they would be rock hard beneath her fingertips if she touched them, and her mind stopped short of a good mental feel.
“Is that how my arms will look when we’re through with this?” she asked, the corners of her mouth tugging upwards.
“I sure hope not.” He chuckled, taking in the appreciative looks coming from her. “Unless it’s your intention to beat me at arm wrestling.”
In a sleeveless shell top, Anna looked at her own arms. Skinny right now. And pretty limp. The only way she’d ever beat Mitch at arm wrestling would be to hire a stand-in. She took one more look at her arms, tried to flex muscles that simply wouldn’t pop up and define themselves, then braced herself for the next phase of her life. “So let’s get started.”
“You gotta get rid of the rock.”
“Huh?”
“The ring. Take it off. It’ll wear blisters on your hand.”
Anna stared down at it. Once it came off it would never go back on, and she knew that. It was the last vestige of hope for all the things she’d planned for her former life, the only remaining piece of her past she was still clinging to. Laying her fingers on it, she tried to recall the evening Kyle had given it to her, but the memory didn’t rush right back to her like it should have. She had to dig for it, and somewhere in that digging she twisted the ring to the end of her finger. She shut her eyes and gave the irrevocable tug, then finally the ring was just an ostentatious chunk of jewelry in the palm of her right hand. Nothing more, nothing less. And she wasn’t surprised by her lack of emotion over removing it. In fact, she was almost relieved by the lack of sentiment and feeling. A small step, but in many ways a very big one.
“Here,” she said, holding the ring out to Mitch. “Would you put it in the drawer next to my bed? There’s a ring box in there.”
“Are you sure? The magazine stand in the other room—I could just set it there so you could get it—”
“I’m sure,” Anna interrupted. Two little words, but they were forceful and decisive. And in her future life, also irreversible. A melancholy smile brushed across her lips. “Absolutely sure. And when you get back, I’m finally ready to work.”
Clearing his throat, Mitch nodded, then left. Once he’d returned a minute later, Anna’s engagement ring wasn’t mentioned again.
“OK,” he said, tossing Anna a pair of black leather half-gloves. “From now on, you wear them when you exercise and when you wheel or else you’ll get blisters. And if you get blisters you’re out of commission, so put them on and wear them.” His voice was a little rough. Not unfriendly. Just rough.
Anna tugged on the gloves, wiggling into the fingers that barely came to her first knuckle, leaving two-thirds of her fingers exposed. Then she fastened the straps at her wrists. The palms were reinforced, she noticed as she studied the gloves on her hands. Kind of an awesome biker look, she thought, not that she was the biker type. But they didn’t look bad. “Leather’s not quite my style,” she commented, flexing her fingers.
“I’ve always liked a lady in leather myself,” Mitch commented.
“Most men do, don’t they? But I would have chosen something in pink or powder blue. They’d go better with my pasty complexion.”
“Which is soon to be fixed,” Mitch stated, pulling on some gloves similar to Anna’s. “Old habit,” he explained. “When I used to work with patients I couldn’t afford the blisters either.”
“You still do work with patients, Mitch. Actually, with patient, although nobody’s accused me of being patient for months.”
“You need discipline,” he returned, smiling. “And I love to discipline.”
“Yeah, I’ll just bet you do.” Anna grabbed her wheels and rolled her chair over to the rack of hand weights Mitch had set up. “So, what should I do to get started before I incur some of that discipline?”
“We’ll start with light weights. One and a half pounders, and work your way up from there.” Grabbing two small weights, he thrust them at Anna. “Let’s see what you can do with these. Start with some lifts straight out in front. One at a time, slowly. You need to warm up.”
“I can handle something heavier than these,” she challenged.
“Yep, but it’s not about what you can handle. It’s about what it’ll take to retrain your muscles the right way, and by the time you’ve worked out with these for several minutes, I promise you’ll be feeling like you’ve been lifting twenty pounders for several hours.” He pulled a heavier set from the rack and demonstrated the technique he expected her to use. “Elbows to your ribs, forearms up then extend slowly. Once you’re there, bring it back to the upright, then do the other arm. And repeat until I tell you to quit.”
“Or until I can’t do any more,” Anna added.
“Until I tell you to quit,” Mitch corrected her.
Anna watched Mitch go through several reps then did the same. Stretch it out, then bring it back. Other arm repeat. Occasionally, Mitch reached over to guide her arm to a better position when she got sloppy, especially when, after three minutes, she could barely lift the combined three pounds. “Gotta rest,” she gasped, totally winded, letting her arms, and the weights, drop to the sides of her chair. “I can’t believe how hard this is.”
Mitch laughed. “And it’s only going to get harder. Trust me.”
She did, and by the middle of her second three-minute set, sweat was drizzling down Anna’s face, dripping off her chin, and wet stains were soaking the fabric under her arms. A slight stain was also beginning to dampen the fabric over the valley between her breasts, giving her the look of a marathon runner after twenty-six grueling miles, not a drooping weightlifter after a couple of mediocre minutes. Midway into the first good, hard sweat since she couldn’t remember when, Frank appeared with a towel full of ice cubes for her, then several minutes later, as the stains in her armpits was spreading out over more fabric than was dry, he came back with a glass of cold water. By the time Anna was completely soaked, front and back, her dad was at her side once more with a damp cloth, a dry towel and a clean shirt. Finally, when her salty sweat was stinging her eyes, he produced a sweatband for her head—it still had its tags. “I’m fine, Dad,” she kept telling him each time, but each time he would merely pat her hand, smile kindly, then disappear into the folds of the floor-length country tan and blue checkered drapes so he could keep watch.
So much expectation, she thought. He was the delighted daddy in the audience as his little girl came forward to recite a one-sentence poem in the kindergarten play. It didn’t matter what she was saying, how she was saying it, or even if she remembered all her words: Daddy was glowing with pride in the front row, taking pictures. Right now her daddy was glowing with pride in the curtains, and she wouldn’t have been surprised to see the flash of a camera.
“I’m really out of shape,” she admitted to Mitch, toweling off. “Guess I didn’t realize how much until now. Kind of sneaks up on you.”
Mitch took her weights and replaced them in the rack. “You’ve had six months of downtime. Anyone would be out of shape, sitting around doing nothing for half a year. Especially someone who was physically active before.”
“I never used to work out,” she admitted. “Never exercised.”
“But you were on your feet ten, twelve hours a day, five or six days a week. And that’s exercise, believe me. You don’t realize how much until you’re not doing it anymore. And you’re right. It sneaks up on you. I got caught in that trap now I’m not…” He paused, smiling almost wistfully. “Now I’m not working the way I used to. Put on ten pounds in the first couple of months before I realized I was going to have to fight to keep myself in shape.” He patted his six-pack belly, grinning. “Doesn’t come easy for some of us.”
Maybe it didn’t come easy, Anna thought, but on Mitch it definitely came good. “Mind if I take a quick shower?” she asked. “Then I’ll fix us some lunch. That is, unless you have to go somewhere.” A simple lunch, and actually it would be her first time fixing anything in the kitchen since…
“I’m free all day,” he said, grabbing a towel Frank was holding out from his station in the curtains. “And I thought later we’d get some weight on your ankles and start with some leg lifts. Try and build up those quadriceps.”
Yeah, right. That was a hopeless cause, Anna knew. Lanli had been trying the leg lifts for weeks. Big waste of time because her legs didn’t want to lift. Sure, they had a bit of movement—weak, restricted movement, a little to the left, a little to the right, an inch up then, plop, right back down like deadweight. Nothing that would get her up and walking. But she wasn’t going to tell Mitch. He’d accuse her of being afraid to try, or quitting before she gave it a chance, or just plain chickening out. So she’d let him find out on his own that her arms were one thing and her legs completely another.
Anna’s shower went better than it had the first time Mitch had stood guard outside her bathroom door. What had that been? Just a few days ago. It seemed like forever already, like he’d been in her life as long as she could remember. Or maybe like her life had actually started over the day he’d entered it.
Wait! Was that a brush of hope creeping in? No hope. She knew better than that. No expectations meant no disillusionment. In her life, that was the safest place to live.
When Anna returned to the living room, Mitch was clicking off the cell phone, and the strained expression on his face told her she was off the hook for fixing his lunch. Oddly, a little wave of disappointment slid over her, meaning there’d been some of that expectation she didn’t want. Bad mistake. She wouldn’t go there again.
“Something wrong?” she asked.
He nodded. “It’s my mother. She’s been arrested. I’ve got to go bail her out…again.
“Want to come with me?” Mitch asked, heading to the front door. “We can get her then grab a sandwich at the pub over by the campus.”
“Nah, I’m fine. Not really hungry.”
“Go with him,” Frank said, stepping out of the curtains. “Does she need a lawyer?” he asked Mitch.
“She hasn’t in the past. Normally they release her on her own recognizance, then she antes up a few hundred dollars in fines when she’s summoned to court. But if she does, I’ll give you a call.”
Anna took advantage of those seconds of interchange between Mitch and her dad to slip into her room. She was in the process of backing her door shut when Mitch pushed it open, butting her chair halfway across the room to her bed. “Come on,” he said, grabbing the wheelchair handgrips. “You need the fresh air, and I need the company.”
“You sure you want to drag me along?” she asked. “That’s an awful lot of effort.” Secretly, she wanted to go—kind of, sort of. Lunch at a pub—a normal place—sounded so good. But getting her there wouldn’t be easy, and deep down she wanted it to be a real lunch date, not an obligatory make-good because he’d changed their plans. So it was better declining. That way she didn’t have to be a burden, and didn’t have to find out that he was just being nice or, worse, dutiful.
“Wouldn’t have asked you if I didn’t want to take you along. That’s not my style, Anna.”
Three minutes later, Mitch was lifting Anna into the cab of his truck. “What’s she in jail for?” Anna ventured, not sure he would consider it any of her business. She certainly didn’t mind the feel of his arms around her, the feel of her own arms around his neck. Under different circumstances it might have been considered intimate, but under these circumstances it was just the most efficient way to transfer her from one place to another—darn it. In this case, from wheelchair to truck seat. And it was over within seconds. She was out of his arms, scooching herself into position.
“Criminal mischief,” Mitch said, hopping in next to her once he’d placed her wheelchair in the back. “She’s an environmentalist, against deforestation this year, I think. Chains herself to trees when the loggers come through, stuff like that.” He grinned. “Last year she was protesting the overcrowded conditions at one of the state’s fish hatcheries. Got herself arrested scooping buckets of catfish out of the hatchery and turning them loose in the reservoir.”
Anna laughed. “You’ve got to admire the dedication. Sure wish my dad would get himself a life.”
“Hook him up with my mom and he’ll have a full-time job.”
“He needs a full-time something…something other than me,” Anna commented, tugging her seat belt across her shoulder as Mitch pulled away from the curb. “My mom died almost five years ago now, and he’s been at a loose end ever since. I know he wouldn’t have wished the accident on me, but it’s given him a new purpose. Freeing the catfish would be a step up.”
“Sometimes I wish my mom would step down a little. I spent my childhood being dragged from cause to cause. It was a great childhood, always different. But sometimes a kid needs stability.”
“Your dad?”
Mitch flipped on the turn signal, then shrugged. “Couldn’t keep up with her, I guess. He was gone by the time I was five, and completely out of my life by the time I was seven.”
“And she never remarried?”
“She was always married to a cause. Still is.”
“Well, too bad Dad can’t find a cause other than me.”
“He will, once you can take care of yourself.”
“I was thinking more in terms of this century.” Anna settled back into her seat and stared at the passing scenery for the next five minutes. Then she was briefly back in his arms on her way into her chair. Too briefly. He had a much nicer touch than Kyle’s.
“Well, Doc, she’s getting processed out right now,” the police officer wheezed through a chuckle. “No property damage, so it ain’t gonna cost ya as much as it did last time.” He glanced at Anna, smiling. “Ma’am,” he said in friendly greeting, giving her a brief salute. “I’m Detective Ed Benedict.”
“I’m Anna Wells,” she replied, smiling.
“Well, Anna Wells, it’s mighty nice to meet you. It’s about time ol’ Mitch got himself hooked up with a pretty little thing such as yourself.” He handed a stack of release papers over to Mitch then directed him to the clerk. “You know the drill.”
“Unfortunately,” Mitch grumbled, automatically putting his name in the correct places without even reading what he was signing.
Detective Benedict pushed back in his cracked vinyl chair. “So, Anna, how long you two been together? Izzy didn’t say nothing about it, and that’s not like her.”
He actually thinks Mitch and I are together. That surprised her. And it was a pleasant surprise, having someone suppose that she could be involved with Mitch. Or, better, that Mitch would choose to be involved with her. “He’s helping me rehab,” she explained. “Nothing else.”
“Now, that surprises me, young lady. After what he went through that made him quit being a doctor, I didn’t figure him to ever go back to it. You must be mighty special, getting him to do that for you.”
Anna would have asked Detective Benedict why Mitch had quit, but there wasn’t time. Just as the notion hit her, he reappeared. “You ought to let me sign a blanket form so I don’t have to keep coming down here,” Mitch said, handing his mother’s release papers back to the detective.
“But we love your company,” Ed Benedict said, standing, “especially when you have someone so pretty with you.” He patted Anna’s hand and winked. “Like I said, mighty special.” He turned back to Mitch. “So let me see what I can do about rousting that mama of yours. She’s passing out pamphlets or something, said she wasn’t ready to leave yet.”
“Nice man,” Anna said, watching the detective plod down the hall. “He sure knows a lot about you.”
“My mother likes to talk,” Mitch said, waving to a sixty-something woman bedecked in tight jeans and tight, tight white T-shirt. Her blond hair was short, spiked. And she was a knock-out who could have passed for Mitch’s sister. Not exactly the mother image Anna had expected. “Anna, I’d like you to meet my mother, Isadora Durant. Mom, this is Anna Wells.”
“Izzy,” the woman chirped, holding out her hand to Anna. “Nice to meet you, even though Mitch hasn’t said a word about you and I had to learn all about it from Ed.” She leaned over and whispered to Anna, “Mitch is a good boy, but not very outgoing. I hope you won’t hold that against him.”
“He’s helping me rehab,” Anna said, looking up at Mitch for guidance.
Izzy winked at Anna. “Whatever you want to call it, dear. Now, if you two wouldn’t mind, I need a lift over to the county home. I hear the food they serve those poor people is a crime. I may have to chain myself to the stove or something. In fact…” She whooshed around and plopped herself down in the chair next to Ed Benedict’s desk. “Can I just fill out all the paperwork now, sweetie, since I’m already here? Save me some time later on?”
“And deprive me of the pleasure of arresting you again?” Ed Benedict smiled. “You know how much I look forward to that, Izzy. Makes my day.”
Moving to Anna’s side, Mitch commented, “See why my dad walked out on her?”
“Different visions, dear,” Izzy responded. “That’s all it was. He saw things one way and I saw them the right way. Thank God you turned out just like me.” She looked at Anna. “He makes bowls, you know. Sits out there in the woods and carves wooden bowls.” She switched her look to Mitch, narrowing her eyes. “It makes a mother proud to know her boy is doing something so useful in this world. Everybody needs a good bowl. Of course, everybody needs a good doctor, too. But as long as Mitch is happy, I’m happy.”
Lots of mother-son tension on his career change, Anna decided as the looks that passed both ways went from indulgently tolerant to bluntly waspish.
“Mitch, you said something about lunch.” Anna cut through the silent mother-son argument. “Maybe we should get your mother out to the county home so she can get chained to the stove, then we can go get that lunch you promised me.”
“Lunch?” Izzy’s rankled expression snapped immediately into interested mother. “You two are going out to lunch? Maybe I’ll just take a taxi.”
Hopping up from her seat, she gave Ed Benedict a quick peck on the cheek. “Later, sexy,” she said, sprinting out the door. Before she was outside, though, Isadora Durant turned back to Anna, blew her a kiss and gave her a thumbs-up.