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

“Looks like we have a bunch here.” He pulled out small bowls with tops on them. “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