Embattled Hearts 1 (2 page)

He held out his hand and was entranced as she pumped energetically. Without blinking, he watched for any hint that the chair or his disability bothered her, but she seemed almost oblivious to the fact that he could not stand up to shake her hand. For the first time in longer than he could remember, he had met a person that not by word or deed made him feel like less than a man.

Even her height made him feel manlier. She was tiny. In her bare feet, she was
maybe
an inch over five feet. With heels on, she stood about five-four. Before the accident, he’d been six-three in his stocking feet. Sitting in his modified chair, he was only a bit shorter than she was. And no shorter when she sat in her own office chair, which she seemed to do a lot when he entered the office. She seemed to sense that it put him more at ease, to be on an equal level. John appreciated her thoughtfulness more than she knew. It infuriated him and frustrated him beyond belief to be stuck in this chair, especially when he had to look up at men he could not tolerate.

The Texans stood to make their goodbyes, and John pulled his attention back, glancing at his watch. He was eager to leave Duncan’s office and join Shannon for lunch. As often as he could he tried to join her in the break room. Even such casual contact calmed him, and made him appreciate relating to another person. They didn’t talk about anything in particular. For the most part, Shannon carried the conversation, and he was content to just sit and listen. And wonder. It sounded like she had an interesting life, with her animals and her family, and the house she’d moved into last year. Totally different than his own boring day-to-day routine. She didn’t badger him with questions about what had happened to his legs or try to dance around his disability. The only time she hesitated was when she told him she jogged occasionally. He knew by the reaction on her face that his own must have reflected a crushing desire to feel the hot asphalt beneath his pounding feet. Smiling softly, she had left the table, but not before she rested her hand gently on his shoulder. “Believe me,” she told him softly, “you’re probably faster in that chair than I’ll ever be on my feet. Maybe you can join me sometime.”

And, just that easily, she made one of his greatest losses just a bit easier to bear.

He powered out of Duncan’s office. He didn’t care if he was abrupt. They usually shook their heads at him no matter what he did.

Shannon wasn’t at her desk when he rolled by, nor in any of the other offices down the hallway. His heart began to pound as he pulled up to the break room door and looked in the half window. There she was. Laughing and gesturing with her hands to Roger Stottsberry, one of the Night detectives. Roger had been coming in every Friday for Shannon’s lunch since she started the practice. And John didn’t blame him. When not at the agency, it seemed he just sat at home and stared at the walls. There was only so much brainless TV you could watch before you slowly went insane. It was hard to go out in public, both physically and mentally, and these offices had turned into a haven for the men who worked here. Duncan had let them convert one of the empty offices into a multi-purpose room, with a couple of bunks in one corner in case somebody needed to crash. There was also exercise equipment and a TV and game system on the opposite wall to help them relax. The refrigerator was always stocked with easy, microwaveable foods. John found himself occupying that room more and more. As did a lot of the other guys.

Every week the shift teams—Day, Night and Graveyard— got together for some kind of tournament, be it darts or Jeopardy or anything they could think of to be competitive. It built camaraderie between the teams and was a great way to blow off steam. At first they’d tried to separate into whichever branch of the military they’d been discharged from, but because there were so many more Marines than any other branch, it hadn’t always worked out.

He rolled through the break room door and was immediately warmed by Shannon’s broad smile. Any aggravation she felt earlier in the day had apparently faded away. The tension in his own body eased.

“I was just telling Roger about my niece naming one of my kittens Boohini. I had called him Houdini because he kept getting out of wherever I put him, and somehow she changed it around to Boohini.”

That was kind of cute, and he chuckled along with them, before he wheeled around the table to the large Crockpot on the counter. His mouth watered before he even lifted the lid. Shannon’s food was phenomenal. But by the time he got his meatball sandwich made and situated on his lap for the return trip, Shannon had gathered up her things to leave. He almost dropped his plate as she stretched behind herself for a cola, her luscious breasts outlined by the cloth of her peach-colored sweater. Man, she looked nice in that sweater. Dragging his gaze away, he situated himself at the table. She plunked the cola in front of him, threw her stuff away and told the men goodbye.

He watched intently until she disappeared down the hallway, curvy hips swinging.

Roger had his head tilted to one side, and his dark brown eyes were squinted in laughter. “Oh, so it’s that way, huh?”

John picked up his sandwich. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The former Marine laughed and slapped his leg with his good hand. The molded right hand rested on the table, currently immobile. John admired Roger, because his amputated arm had been replaced with a state-of-the-art prosthetic that was actually wired into the nerves of his arm. It was truly a wonder to watch, because it was so lifelike. Even the skin tone was incredibly close to Roger’s dark walnut color. It was seriously cutting-edge stuff. There were military medical trials going on with paraplegics and quadriplegics using stem cells and spinal implants, but John had chosen not to participate in them. If he’d had a family, maybe it would have been a different story.

Roger had leaned down to try to catch his eye.

“What, damn it?” John shoved his plate away and sat back in his chair, ready to fight. Adrenaline coursed through his veins, disproportionate to the situation.

Roger held up his hands before sitting back in his own chair. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I think Shannon is a great girl. Why do you think I get myself out of bed so early every Friday?”

John narrowed his eyes and tried to breathe deeply. Was Roger interested in her like he was? He could understand some women would be attracted to him. The man wasn’t bad looking, even with the shrapnel scars covering one side of his face and the prosthetic forearm.

And Roger at least had legs.

“I didn’t realize you had a claim on her.”

“I don’t,” John grumbled. That was the whole problem in a nutshell. He had no claim on her. He didn’t even know if he wanted to claim her. Yeah, she turned him on, but what could he offer her? Certainly nothing long-term. What would an active, vibrant woman like her want with a broken man like him?

John tried to think of other things as he finished his sandwich, and ignore the ache in his chest.

*****

Shannon hated to leave the break room. She saw John so little, but they were all busier recently. LNF Investigative Services was expanding exponentially as more people learned of their ability and dedication to get a job done. Contracts were rolling in or extending out for the security division. The agency had gone from the three partners when they first started five years ago to almost twenty men now. Shannon knew that Duncan had stacks of résumés from other disabled vets who would love to work here. New ones came in every day.

Just this week they’d hired a brash young Marine that had been a canine officer in Afghanistan. Two weeks before that they’d hired a former helicopter pilot.

Settling into her chair, she began typing up Chad’s dictation notes from his surveillance on the Malone divorce case. A couple of weeks ago she’d found him in the spare office hunting and pecking on the keyboard with his good right hand. He admitted that the report writing was difficult, because he did not have the same mobility in his left hand and arm he used to.

The scars that wrapped around his left arm showed that he had been burned terribly, and Shannon’s soft heart had gone out to him. All of the men that worked at the agency had been in their prime when they were injured. Most were adapting to their injuries, but a couple still visibly struggled. As the only woman around, she tried to make it a point to bring hominess and comfort to the office. Several of the men had left their families to come to Denver to work for Duncan, because he had been a great Company leader. He’d evoked enough loyalty for several members to move from several states away.

Chad walked into the office and through the reception area to her desk, smiling broadly. Shannon could not help but return his smile as she reached for the candy container in her lower desk drawer. Chad Lowell had a sweet tooth that would not stop and Shannon found that the candy needed to be hidden or it would all mysteriously disappear. In jest, she had tried to hire him to find the missing candy, but he gravely told her it would be a waste of her money, because he did not think the candy was ever coming back. Occasionally, giant bags of his favorites would materialize on her desk. Chad was already turning into a great friend, in addition to a fabulous boss.

“Hey, Chad,” she greeted. “What are you up to?”

Chad put on a wounded look that was totally ruined by his twinkling blue eyes. “I don’t know what you mean. Why would I be up to something?”

Shannon laughed outright and put the plastic container at the edge of the desk within easy reach. “Right…”

Chad dug a couple of pieces of caramel out of the container. “We have an interview in a while. Boss man wants to talk at us before the kid gets here.”

“Jennings?”

“That’s the one. Duncan wants to see what we read from him.”

Shannon gave a single nod, and kind of hoped that they didn’t hire the recently discharged young Marine. There was something that nagged at her about his eyes. Almost as if there was a disconnect there and he seemed to be going through the motions to present himself correctly.

But it wasn’t really her place to say anything. If he got hired, she’d do her best to make him as welcome as she did the others.

She saved the work on her computer and printed off the notes she’d just typed up for Chad’s case, then attached them with a paper clip and handed them to him.

“Oh, Shannon, you are a doll. That would have taken me two hours.” His pretty eyes lost their twinkle.

“It only took me ten minutes. And it was no big deal. I’m trained to do it. You aren’t. I do appreciate you using the dictation machine, though.”

Chad shifted in front of her and grimaced. “I don’t like talking into that thing. Feels weird. Don’t be surprised if I’m knocking on your desk again before too long,” he told her as he slipped into Duncan’s office.

John wheeled in seconds later as she put the lid on the candy container. He chuckled as he pulled alongside her desk, making her shiver convulsively. The man was sex on wheels, literally, and it was all she could do not to jump into his lap. A hint of his deodorant wafted over her. Shannon clenched her teeth in an effort to control her roaring response but it was always the same. And he seemed totally oblivious. Of course.

“Hi, John.”

“Shannon. I see Chad’s already been here.”

She nodded and held the dish out to him, but John declined. His sweet tooth leaned more toward baked goods. Fridays she usually brought in some type of cake or cookies. She’d brought in his favorite today, German chocolate.

“Hey, I wanted to see if you could find a copy of an invoice for me.”

Shannon sat back in her chair, fingers ready at her keyboard.

He reeled off the company name and the list of what he’d ordered, and Shannon frowned. “I just put a copy of this on your desk yesterday. You lost it already?”

John glowered, clamped his jaw and scrubbed a broad hand over his short black hair. His heavy chest expanded in a slow breath. He didn’t say anything for several long seconds, and when he looked up, his dark brown eyes were calm. “My desk is pretty terrible right now. Maybe it is there. I’ll look after I talk to Duncan. Thanks, Shannon.”

He turned and powered his chair through Duncan’s doorway.

“Lunch was awesome, by the way,” he said just before he disappeared.

Shannon could not keep the goofy grin from spreading across her face. John very rarely commented positively on anything. Within thirty seconds she had gotten an “ok, I’ll check” and a “lunch was awesome” out of him. That was a new record. Not that he was a grouch or anything. Well, maybe he was a bit on the grumpy side. It seemed like he was genuinely trying to be a little friendlier, though. They’d had to go through some growing pains when she was first hired.

There’d been an incident a couple of months ago when she’d gone off on him. She wasn’t even sure what the original conversation had been about, but he had demanded some paper or another that she had already given him. John had said flat out that it was not on his desk. Shannon had to physically walk to his office and pull the paper from his overloaded desk before he believed her.

As she left his cluttered office, she’d snapped at him, “And you could be a little nicer about it, too,” before she slammed his office door shut.

Since then, John had tried to temper his snappishness, at least with her. The men were another story entirely. If one of them did something wrong, John let them know immediately. But constructively. She had to give him that; he always yelled with a purpose.

Shannon strongly believed that his paralysis had darkened his already reserved demeanor. And she didn’t blame him in the least. If Shannon were in his place, it would have done the same to her.

With his shorn hair, serious eyes and shadowed jaw, John’s dour expressions seem to fit his dark coloring naturally. His heavy brows drew down when he was upset, and his olive complexion darkened. More than once, she had compared him in her mind to a swarthy pirate yelling at his crew, or a Bedouin chief directing his desert army. In her daydreams, though, the anger changed easily to lust.