The Returning Hero by Soraya Lane

a day, but she’d been more than a little distracting. The fact that she was working and could look out at him wasn’t exactly helping his powers of concentration, but he needed to block her out.
    How many times had he had to just focus and get on with a task for work? Ignoring one woman shouldn’t have been a struggle, but it was.
    Brett ran through the exercises, lifting both legs separately, tightening and releasing and then jumping up and down as he’d been shown to do.
    “What do you think?” he asked, slightly out of breath once he’d finished the series of reps.
    The physical therapist nodded. “Good work. Just keep it up and extend yourself a little bit more every day. You’ll get a feel for how hard you can push your body.”
    They said goodbye and he stood up, slowly stretching before doing some fast sprints back and forth across the lawn. His leg twinged when he stopped too quickly, but he kept it up, taking care not to strain anything. Bear was watching him from the edge of the grass like he was crazy to be using so much energy in the heat, and he had a feeling Jamie might be watching him, too. He didn’t indulge himself in looking in her direction, not yet. Because staying focused was already proving to be a task he wasn’t excelling at.
    When he finished he dropped to the ground to do two sets of crunches, then press-ups, before shutting his eyes and just lying in the sun. Maybe he was getting old, or maybe his body had just been through a more serious trauma than he was letting himself admit. But he was definitely ready for a shower, or a swim in a cool pool would have been even better.
    “You look exhausted.”
    Brett opened his eyes and stared up at Jamie. He rolled to his side and pulled up to a sitting position.
    “I thought you were chained to your desk for the rest of the day?” he asked.
    She sighed. “Watching you out here wasn’t helping to keep me stuck in there.”
    “If you’d rather I went…”
    “No,” she replied, holding out a towel and a bottle of water before he could continue. “What I want is to forget about work and just enjoy the day.”
    He wiped his face and neck with the towel, before twisting the top off the water and guzzling it down.
    “When’s your deadline?” he asked as she flopped down to sit on the grass with him.
    “End of the week,” she said, as Bear came over and leaned against her, looking for attention. “I’ll make it, I just can’t concentrate today. Or at all, lately, if I’m completely honest. My brain just doesn’t want to switch into the right gear.”
    Brett watched as she tried to push the dog away, laughing as he leaned on her and wouldn’t give up. In the end she gave up and Bear laid upside down beside her for a belly scratch.
    “For someone who keeps saying she doesn’t know a lot about dogs, you’re sure developing a good friendship with this one.” Bear had his eyes closed now, in heaven at all the attention he was receiving.
    “It’s not that I don’t love him, because I do,” Jamie said, smiling with her eyes as she stared at him. “I just haven’t ever had a dog before, and I wasn’t confident with telling him what to do. Or what to expect from him.”
    “Love is a pretty good start,” Brett said, wishing he’d chosen his words better as soon as they came out of his mouth.
    “Yeah? Well I’ve never found it hard to love, so maybe we’ll be okay after all.”
    Brett stayed silent, wasn’t sure what to say. Just because he was thinking about last night, wishing that he hadn’t been so damn honorable and pushed her away when she’d kissed him, didn’t mean he needed to bring it up. The only consolation was that she didn’t have anything to regret now that she was sober, because if he’d let things go too far she might not have the same smile on her face that she did right now.
    “As much as I’d like to enjoy the day with you, I think you need to get some more work done.”
    She groaned. “Have you