Defender for Hire. Shirlee McCoy

in sight, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that the person who had left the rose was following her; that the past was running toward her and one day it might catch hold and refuse to let go.

      She shuddered as she pulled into the nearly empty parking lot of Centennial Physical Therapy. The small white building gleamed in the early morning sunlight. Tessa had been working there part-time as a physical therapist for five months. She didn’t need the money—she needed the distraction.

      And today, she needed it more than ever.

      She jumped out of the car and jogged to the small reception area, the hair on the back of her neck standing on end. The memories were too close, and she wanted nothing more than to lose herself in her work. To forget what day it was, bury what had happened five years ago in flurry of activity that would exhaust her.

      “Finally!” Dana Langtry looked up from the computer. Small and compact, her blond hair cropped short, Dana was energetic, efficient and friendly. She was also blunt and tough—a good combination for a physical therapist’s assistant.

      “I’m fifteen minutes early,” Tessa pointed out as she went through the motions of shrugging out of her coat and pulling her hair into a ponytail, trying to pretend it was any other day rather than the day.

      “Well, our first patient beat you by ten minutes.” Dana handed Tessa a clipboard with the patient’s chart.

      “This is the new client that called last week, right?”

      “Yes. I put him in room one.” Dana glanced over her shoulder, then leaned close. “And, just between you and me, I think he looks like trouble.”

      “How so?” Tessa asked absently, her heart still thumping too hard, her pulse thrumming in the aftermath of her frantic drive from home.

      “Just a vibe that I’m getting.” Dana lowered her voice a notch. “Too bad Sam isn’t here. I’d rather he deal with the guy.”

      “I’ll be fine, Dana.” The last thing she needed was Sam Marne coming to the office to take a patient that he’d assigned to her. Sam had opened Centennial Physical Therapy five years ago and had slowly been building his clientele since then. The fact that he’d needed help at the same time that Tessa had wanted a part-time job had worked out well for both of them, and Tessa had no intention of messing with the arrangement.

      “Probably, but I could just call Sam and—”

      “It’s his day off. If we call him in, he won’t have any use for me, and I’ll be out of a job.” Tessa forced a smile as she glanced through the chart. Seth Sinclair. 34. Recovering from shoulder surgery.

      “I still think we should call him,” Dana huffed.

      “I’ve been a physical therapist for a long time, and I’ve dealt with a lot of patients who look like trouble. There’s no reason to call for backup,” Tessa responded. “Besides, Darius Osborne referred the guy. He wouldn’t have done it if he thought the man was a serial killer.”

      Darius, a childhood friend, was the reason Tessa had moved to Pine Bluff, Washington. She’d attended his wedding the year before and fallen in love with the area. After so many years of wandering, it had seemed like the perfect place to settle for good.

      Now, it just felt like another pit stop.

      “I didn’t say he was a serial killer. I said he was trouble,” Dana protested, glancing over her shoulder again. Obviously, the guy had her spooked, but Tessa had dealt with a lot worse than troublesome patients in her life.

      “I’ll holler if I need help,” she joked as she walked down the narrow hall.

      Her smile fell away as soon as she was out of Dana’s sight. She didn’t feel like joking. She felt like going home, packing her things and leaving town. She was tired of moving, though. Too many places, too many faces, all of it fuzzy and muddied by her constant need to outrun the past.

      She wanted to put down roots, but maybe that dream—the one she’d been holding on to since her parents had passed away when she was ten—had died with Daniel.

      She knocked on the door to room one, pushing it open without waiting for a response.

      “Good morning—” She glanced at the chart as she stepped into the room. “Seth. I’m Tessa Camry.”

      “Ma’am.” One gruff word, tinged with a hint of Southern charm.

      She looked up from the chart into the most amazingly blue eyes she’d ever seen.

      Seth’s face didn’t match his voice. There was no charm there, not even a hint of a smile. Just dark blond hair, those blue, blue eyes and a faint scar that ran from his ear to under his chin. Another scar edged his hairline, deep purple and much newer than the first one.

      Dana had been right. He looked like trouble, but Tessa couldn’t pinpoint why. Aside from the scars and the unusual color of his eyes, he was average—average build, average features, nondescript hair. Better than average muscle tone, though. She could see that in the corded strength of his shoulders and biceps.

      She looked at the chart again. Better to focus on that than her new patient’s bulging muscles.

      “You’re a friend of Darius’s, right?” she asked, hoping she’d get more out of him than another ma’am.

      “We’re coworkers,” he explained.

      “So, you’re in the private security sector?” She met his eyes and was shocked again by the vivid color of his irises.

      “That’s right.”

      “You work as a bodyguard?”

      “I work as whatever my boss asks me to be. Until my shoulder heals, that’s desk duty.”

      He didn’t smile, but she had the distinct impression that he was amused—by her or the conversation or whatever situation had put him on desk duty.

      She took a seat in one of two chairs next to the exam table and motioned for him to do the same. “I take it you’d like to get back to a more active job. Let’s come up with a plan to make that happen.”

      “The sooner the better,” he murmured, dropping into the other chair, his legs stretched out so that his feet were almost touching Tessa’s.

      She didn’t shift away, but she wanted to. At first glance, she’d thought Seth was average, but the more she studied him, the more obvious it became that he was anything but that.

      Maybe Dana had been right. Maybe he was going to be trouble.

      She frowned, thumbing through his paperwork and reading the information he’d provided. There wasn’t much. A shoulder injury that had required extensive surgery and therapy. A concussion. He’d marked a level seven pain in the affected shoulder and shaded a pain-point indicator through the shoulder and up into the neck, but he hadn’t specified a cause for the injury.

      “Were you in a car accident?” she asked, glancing up and straight into his eyes. Blue flecked with silver and rimmed with thick gold lashes.

      “No.”

      “Sports injury?”

      “No.”

      “I could spend the rest of the day guessing, or you could just tell me what happened and save us both some time.”

      He smiled, amusement flashing in his eyes.

      “You know, Tessa, I think we’re going to get along just fine,” he said, leaning forward so that his elbows rested on his knees. “Here’s the deal. I was in Afghanistan. My convoy was attacked and my shoulder got blown to bits. I came back to the States, had surgery and then rehabbed for a year.”

      “How long ago was that?” Tessa asked, making a production of taking notes because she didn’t want to look in his eyes again. He was way more than she’d thought when she’d first seen him. Way more...interesting. Today of