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Lettie and Marlowe both chuckled.
“I like it. A man of adventure,” Marlowe crooned.
The tone of her voice streaked straight to my cock. Then she put her straw in her iced tea and took a delicate sip, and I knew I was in big trouble.
9
He was giving me a strange look. His gaze was so intense, it made my heart race. Why was he looking at me like that? I tilted my head, seeing if he would tell me what he was thinking, but he didn’t. Instead, he shook his head.
“Sounds like I really stepped in it,” he finally said.
“When you say it that way, it makes it sound like you stepped in something by accident. You were totally aware of what you were signing up for.”
His smile was rueful. “You’re right. I did.”
“Why did you?”
“I’ve been where Sam is.”
“You mentioned Walter Reed. Now I’ll admit that Lettie already said you were in the military. But she hadn’t said you’d been badly injured.”
“Only Little Grandma knows about my injury. Well, and you,” Kai said.
“I’m not surprised she didn’t mention it. She seems like the type of lady who keeps her own counsel.”
Kai nodded in agreement.
“I wonder just how much she knows about this town?” I pondered.
“I would guess, everything.”
I laughed. “I’m thinking you’re right about that.” I paused, feeling the weight of the next question.
“Go ahead and ask. I already liked how up front you were up in the woods the other day. You just said it was a tough break, and we moved on. Don’t start pussyfooting around things now.”
“I gotcha. So how long were you in Walter Reed?”
“I got injured overseas. To begin with I was airlifted to the American military hospital in Germany. That’s where they did the original surgeries. They weren’t sure that I was going to make it.”
I sucked in a deep breath. “What was wrong?”
“Two sniper bullets hit close to me. The shards from the concrete that blew off the building hit me. I had my Kevlar on, but it hit me along the back of my neck, or what the docs call the cervical spine. I don’t remember much of anything after that happened.”
“How long were you in Germany?”
“Two months. They don’t usually keep you that long at Landstuhl, but I ended up with an infection. When they sent me to the US, they told me that I wasn’t going to walk again. I stayed at Walter Reed for eight months. Six months was in rehab.”
The grin on his face was really something to behold. It made my stomach flip in a way I wasn’t prepared for. He was telling me something serious, and here I was, feeling like a teenager.
“So you enjoyed your physical therapy?” I asked, trying to get myself back on track.
“I enjoyed the results of the PT, that’s for damn sure. But to give you an idea of how much I liked the physical therapy, to this day I refer to my physical therapist as the demon from hell. But by God, he got me to the point that I can jog and bicycle. So I’m damn happy.”
“That’s amazing, Kai.” I couldn’t imagine being in his shoes. I admired his strength, his determination. “What did you do in the service? Do you think that helped you push yourself to walk?”
“Here’s your food,” Lettie said. She put a big plate in front of me that smelled heavenly, but it was piled to the moon.
“Lettie, I’m not going to be able to eat all of this,” I protested.
