She glanced at Sam, who was still enamored with the snowmobile. “I’ll spare you all the fancy medical jargon and say he understands words, but his brain can’t plan and sequence the movements to say them. Apraxia of speech is the official term.”
Des nodded. “And this hippotherapy you mentioned helps?”
“Not with speech but it helps with muscle memory and balance,” she said. “Plus, he enjoys it. Being with the horses is more of a reward than just another therapy session like with the speech-language pathologists or physical therapy.”
“Is that why you left in such a hurry yesterday?”
“Yeah, that’s one appointment he doesn’t like to miss. Sam, don’t climb up there. It’s—”
“It’s fine. He won’t hurt anything,” Des interrupted and motioned to Sam. “You can sit on the seat if you want, bud.”
Natalie tamped down the automatic protest that sprang up and pressed her lips together. It wasn’t easy, but she needed to allow Sam room to explore. Smothering him only helped her, not him.
Des shifted his stance, bringing her attention back to him. She longed to ask what had happened to him, but politeness made her hold her tongue. Telling him she’d noticed his limp seemed a bit too forward, despite his mentioning Sam’s lack of verbal skills. Her Southern mother had drilled proper manners into her with the zeal of Natalie’s drill sergeant father. Plus, she was enjoying the sunshine on this final day in November. Not to mention being in the company of a male over the age of five. She didn’t want to spoil either with awkward questions.
“Is he in school?”
She shook her head. “I held him back an extra year. You can do that with kindergarten. He still had a lot of weekly therapy sessions and he’s made great strides in almost everything this year, which was why I felt comfortable enough to pick up and move here.”
“So will he ever be able to…” Des trailed off and winced.
“Every individual’s recovery is different.” Even to herself, her answer sounded rote and unconvincing. “We’re working with an AAC device. Sorry, that’s his augmentative and alternative communication device. Ha, my dad was career army so I grew up with all those military acronyms, but I must say medical experts love them just as much.”
“Ah, an army brat. That explains it.” He weighed her with a critical squint.
She shifted under his scrutiny. “Explains what?”
“You have a slight accent, but I haven’t been able to place it.”
“Yeah, I guess my speech patterns are a mixture of everywhere. My mom is from Georgia, so I have a bit of her accent but did my best to fit in wherever we were living at the time.” Her stomach did a little fluttery thing. He’d tried to pick out her accent? That meant he’d thought about her. A little thing like that shouldn’t please her as much as it did. Why not? her inner voice demanded, because she’d given him enough thought since yesterday. Des Gallagher had occupied a lot of headspace for such a brief meeting.
His face was impassive, but his gaze roamed over her. “Georgia? Huh, maybe that explains it.”
“My accent?”
He shook his head. “Nope.”
“Sorry? You’ve lost me.” Her knees wobbled under his examination. What the heck was he on about?
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-six. Why?” She stood straighter. Despite a few silver strands threaded in his thick, lustrously black hair, he seemed no older than his midthirties. They were contemporaries.
He grunted. “There’s eight years separating us. Hardly calls for you to sir me.”
“When did I call you sir?” She couldn’t recall a faux pas like that.
He rubbed the back of his scalp. “Yesterday. When you first walked in.”
“You must have flustered me.” Should I be admitting that? “Between my drill sergeant father and Southern mother, sir and ma’am comes naturally. I—I sometimes fall back on that if I feel like I’ve been put on the spot.”
He swiped a hand across his mouth, his dark eyes amused. “In that case, I apologize for flustering you.”
“Bless your heart, you can’t help it,” she said in a perfect imitation of her mother, not that he would know that.
His eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Am I detecting an insult in there somewhere?”
“If you are, then that’s on you.” Natalie shook her head, doing her best to look innocent. “Are you from Loon Lake?”
“Colorado. I settled here after leaving the navy three years ago.”
Her gaze went to his white American foursquare home with its hip roof, black shutters and wide brick steps leading to the front entrance. The house seemed large for one person and she wondered if he’d planned to share it with someone when he’d invested in the property. Tavie had mentioned he lived alone. Again, not her business if he had a dozen girlfriends. “So have I changed your mind about those ornaments?”
“Not a chance, Ms. Pierce.” He took a step back as if needing to put distance between them. “Don’t waste your time on a lost cause.”
Great. She’d managed to kill the camaraderie they’d shared moments ago. She plastered a smile on her face. “I gotta warn you. I’m a champion of lost causes. A regular St. Jude.” Holding out her hand, she said, “Come along, Sam, I think we’ve taken up enough of Lieutenant Gallagher’s time for one day.”
Des watched them walk away and felt…what? Relief, that’s what you feel. He shook his head and limped toward the house. He didn’t need or want a woman in his life, especially one with a child. Sam was a cute kid and seemed bright and curious, despite his lack of verbal skills. No, this had nothing to do with Sam. His reluctance was all down to Natalie. She was making him feel things, think about a future he’d given up wanting a long time ago.
Natalie’s gingerbread men.
Halfway toward the house, he stopped. That plate of delicious cookies was still on his workbench. Heaving a sigh, he turned back toward the barn. Those were too good to take the chance of some critter getting them. He’d caught a crow hanging around the barn and had had small items go missing from his workbench. No proof the bird was the thief but he had his suspicions. Yeah, that wasn’t crazy or anything.
He retrieved his cookies, eating one on the way back to the house. In his mind’s eye he could see Natalie’s striking blue eyes, pert nose and Cupid’s bow lips that kept forming a smile. From the first words she’d uttered, her voice had grabbed him in the gut…and elsewhere. Damn. He needed to stop thinking about the beautiful Natalie Pierce. A blind man could see she was a white-picket-fence-kids-dog-soccer-practice type of woman.
He might have had a similar dream once upon a time, but it died the day he had to punch out of his aircraft. Those three seconds, the most violent experience of his life, had changed the course of his future. That was the amount of time it had taken from pulling the lever until he was under the chute. A textbook low altitude ejection. Except for the part where his parachute lines had gotten twisted and he’d lost precious time correcting them while plummeting toward the earth.
He’d hit the ground hard, shattering his left leg and fracturing his spine. After two surgeries and endless months of PT, he’d regained his ability to walk but not to fly jets. Although Ashley had stuck by him during his recovery, once she realized he’d no longer be flying jets, she began voicing concerns over their engagement. She’d said perhaps they