He was trained to persevere, to withstand anything he needed to withstand.
Anything.
Even if what he needed to withstand were the most beautiful blue eyes in the world and a beautiful face and hair and body to go with them...
* * *
“It’s entirely up to you, Colonel. Your doctors want you on oxygen at night but if you don’t want to do it, you have that option,” Kinsey said to her new patient.
She’d been at the Knightlingers’ house since late afternoon when Sutter had finally gotten his mother home. Oxygen tanks and equipment had been delivered and set up in the colonel’s bedroom, and Kinsey had done her own intake routine, interviewing, examining, taking the colonel’s full medical history and getting to know her.
Kinsey was not surprised to find that the colonel was obviously accustomed to being in control and in authority, and unwilling to give up any of that control and authority to anyone else.
There was nothing weak about the seventy-six-year-old’s will. She had a strong personality, she was blunt and obstinate and she was obviously dissatisfied at finding herself physically weakened to the point where she was forced to contend with a pacemaker, a regimen of medications and the prescribed nighttime oxygen usage. She clearly did not like feeling fragile or unwell, or being treated as if she was.
But she was fragile and recovering from a heart attack in addition to the procedure to clear four blockages in her heart and a minor surgery to implant the pacemaker.
She was also somewhat vain and with good reason—her face sported only shallow lines and wrinkles that did little to diminish what had no doubt been great beauty in her youth and middle age.
Between her high rank in the marines and those looks, Kinsey was reasonably sure that the colonel was accustomed to always getting her own way. Which told Kinsey that trying to force anything on her was a mistake.
“Here’s my recommendation,” she said. “Give it a week. See if you don’t get used to the feel of the tubing and sleep better and feel more rested in the morning. If none of that happens, then we’ll forget it. I’ll call and have it picked up and taken out of here. The choice is yours. You always have the right to refuse any medical advice or treatment.”
“Yes, I do,” the colonel said, aiming that bit of mulishness at her son, who stood in the doorway watching the interaction between them. Sutter had already tried arguing with her and gotten nowhere.
Then, to Kinsey, the colonel said, “I’ll give it a week. But don’t think I’m some pushover old lady who’ll just give up the fight. If I don’t like it, it goes!”
“No question,” Kinsey confirmed.
“Now if you’re finished,” the colonel said as if they’d exhausted her patience, “both of you get out of my room so I can read my book and get some sleep without somebody waking me up a hundred times during the night.”
“If you need anything—” Sutter began.
“If you hear a thud that sounds like I’ve hit the floor, come running. Otherwise I can take care of myself.”
“Or you can call me if there’s anything you need,” Sutter said anyway.
The colonel shooed them out of the room.
But as Kinsey headed for Sutter and the door, she still said, “I’ll be back in the morning.”
The colonel’s only response was, “Catch that dog! He has my bookmark!”
Sutter nabbed Jack before he could slip past him and retrieved the bookmark, handing it to Kinsey to pass to the colonel.
“Insubordinate animal!” the colonel muttered disapprovingly.
“I’m going to take care of that, too,” Kinsey assured her.
But the colonel did not respond and Kinsey didn’t wait for her to. Instead she went with Sutter out into the hallway, closing his mother’s bedroom door behind them and following him down the stairs to the first floor.
When they reached the entryway he said under his breath and facetiously, “And that would be my mother.”
Kinsey laughed. “Basically what I expected,” she said.
“She didn’t fluster you,” he observed with some surprise in his tone.
“I was raised by a retired marine, I have three brothers serving right now.” She laughed again. “I hate to tell you, but you all run a pattern that I’m pretty familiar with.”
His eyebrows arched. “Are your brothers here or—”
“They’re all overseas.”
“Ah, that makes more sense. You said yesterday that you wanted to get to know the Camdens to have family around. I wondered what that meant if you had three brothers.”
“It means that I’m all there is here,” she said. Then, offering no more than that, she switched gears. “You texted that you need stitches removed?”
“It’s been more than ten days since the second surgery and they’re pinching bad. I’d do it myself if I could find any scissors around here but I can’t. I tried to get a nurse at the hospital to do it—I figured they were in and out of my mother’s room every five minutes anyway, why couldn’t they? But no chance of that. They were going to send me to the emergency room to see a doctor and waste my whole day.”
“I need a look at your injury anyway to figure out an approach for your physical therapy. If the stitches are ready to come out, I can do it. I brought another kit for that but it’s in my car. I’ll run out and get it while you take off the sling and your shirt.”
“You want to do it in the kitchen?” he asked.
Take out his stitches in the kitchen, Kinsey mentally amended when her mind went to another meaning of doing it. What was it with her brain making everything risqué?
“Wherever I’ll have the brightest light,” she said as she shoved her thoughts onto the right track and left him in the entryway to step into the evening air.
Where she could cool off.
Really, what’s going on when it comes to this guy?
Maybe the same thing that had caused her to debate about what she wore and how she did her hair for this initial meeting with his mother.
Kinsey was disgusted with herself for the amount of time and consideration she’d put into her appearance today. Since she wasn’t affiliated with a home–health care company, there was no dress code. It was her choice whether to wear scrubs or street clothes. She used whatever she would be doing on any particular day as the decider—something messy, scrubs. Something not messy, street clothes.
Today, the first day of meeting a difficult patient whose respect she needed, she knew she had to go with her lab coat over business attire.
Yet something in her had wanted to dress casually, in something cute. And that impulse had come complete with the image of Sutter Knightlinger in the back of her mind.
Okay, so he was a good-looking guy. So what? She couldn’t let it interfere with her job with his mother or her goal with the Camdens.
That’s what she’d told herself as she’d stood in front of her closet and it was what she told herself again now.
Of course it had only partially worked earlier.
She had put on the tailored navy blue pantsuit she wore as business attire, with the lab coat over it.
But then, instead of putting her hair up to make her look competent and efficient, she’d worn it down, losing that battle with herself completely. Along with the one against using a little eyeliner and a touch of highlighter on the crest of her cheekbones above her blush.