Melissa: A Hathaway House Heartwarming Romance by Dale Mayer (good book club books txt) 📕

“He is, indeed.”

“But why is he here with you?”

“Well, he needs some extra care. He’s missing a leg,” he said. “He had an injury that we were working on, but then we had to amputate the leg because it just wouldn’t heal like it needed to. We’ve got a big pen for him downstairs, but I do like to bring him up and around to see people. It’s good for him to have the interaction, and it’s good for the people to have the interaction.”

She reached out a hand, then hesitated. “May I?”

Stan smiled. “Absolutely. Hoppers loves people.”

She reached out a hand to let Hoppers sniff. His head lifted, and his nose went crazy. She reached out to gently stroke one of his long ears. “He’s so silky,” she whispered.

“He is, indeed. He’s also a big baby,” Stan said with a chuckle. “But the baby I can handle.”

“You’re lucky you work with animals so much.”

“Well, it’s the field I went into,” he said with a smile. “We all have reasons for doing what we do. We just don’t always understand what it is until later.”

She frowned at his words.

He stood and said, “I’ll take Hoppers around to visit a few other people. Then I’ll take him back down and let him out into his pen.” And, with that, he walked away, carrying Hoppers in his arms.

“It’s fascinating,” she said, turning to face Shane. “Dani told me that she had animals here, but I thought we were talking about horses, like Midnight.”

“Midnight and a llama called Lovely and all kinds of other critters,” he said quietly. “Because it’s not just a place for people to recover, it’s a place for animals to recover too.”

“But how could anyone give Hoppers away?” she asked, still watching Hoppers say hi to other patients.

“Often they don’t. A lot of the animals stay here permanently. And that’s something that Dani plays a big role in. Her charitable contributions go a long way to keeping these animals safe.”

“The things you don’t really know about a person,” she said. “I had no idea that Dani had created something so special.”

“You probably haven’t kept too close an eye on her in the last few years, have you?”

She shook her head. “No, I guess not. But I hadn’t realized that I’d gotten quite so far away from what was going on in her life. I mean, I knew about this place, but I didn’t really know—if you understand what I mean,” she said. “This is stunning. To think that she’s done all this makes me wonder what I did with my life.”

“Ah,” Shane said. “No heading down that pathway. You went into service, and we all appreciate that.”

She looked up, smiled, and said, “And yet now I don’t really feel like I have done anything.”

“That’s because you’ve come from one world to the next. What did you do in the navy?”

“Communications officer,” she said quietly. “I did it because I fell into it, and I was good at it. I’m not sure it’s something I would want to continue to do.”

“Good enough,” he said. “Nobody said that you had to do the same thing all the time. Variety is often the spice of life. And sometimes, when we make a change, like you’ve done right now, some people cling to the old world because it’s familiar. For many others, they just want something completely different from what they used to do. Sometimes they don’t have a choice. Sometimes what they did is something they can no longer do, and they’re looking at a complete career change.”

She nodded. “Well, I certainly could do some of what I was doing back then,” she said, “but I’m not sure it’s what I would want to do.”

“Any idea what you would want to do?”

She smiled and shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. At this point in time, just getting healthy and back on my feet seems like a big-enough issue.”

“Not an issue,” he said, “but definitely something you have to commit to.”

“I guess that’s what I meant,” she said. “It’s a big-enough commitment right now that it’s hard for me to look past it.”

“Nobody said you had to,” he said comfortably.

She smiled at him. “Are you always this amiable?”

His eyebrows shot up. “Most of the time, yes,” he said. He studied her features, wondering what was his attraction to Melissa because he had a lot of patients around here. He could certainly have sat with anybody, but just something about being with Melissa intrigued him. Maybe it was the absolute brokenness of her body that attracted him. And, man, that said, he needed to rethink where he was mentally. But it wasn’t that her body was so broken as much as it was the struggle with her spirit. She was trying to get her body back together again and functioning the way it needed to. Her spirit was there; it was just hiding, and he wanted it to come out of hiding and do so much better than what it was right now. “Are you ready for today?”

“Is today something I need to be ready for?” she asked.

He smiled and said, “Yes, absolutely.”

“Okay,” she said. “Well then, I guess the answer is no, I’m not ready.”

“Too bad,” he said cheerfully, as he stood up. He checked his watch. “I’ll see you in fifteen minutes in the exercise room.” He turned and walked away. He lifted a hand to Dennis and called out, “See you at lunchtime.”

“I’ll be here,” he said with a big chuckle.

And that was the thing that Shane loved about this place—the people in it, the consistency of the work they did, and the growth and joy that they could bring to the patients’ faces. It didn’t come easy, and often it took a long time to happen, but, when it did, it was worth every moment he put into it.

Chapter 5

Melissa was a little trepidatious as she sat in her wheelchair at the entrance to the