Broken Hero

“Hmm.”

She glances at me with a smile. “Hmm?”

“I’ve never seen you around. I would have remembered if I did.”

“Auntie said that you were serving elsewhere for a long time. I guess we were just never here at the same time.” She has spoken to her aunt about me. The idea gives me a strange rush of satisfaction.

“I was away for nearly eight years, so it makes sense that I missed you.” I glance at her long legs, just lightly tan from the spring sun, and add what I’m thinking without censure. “It’s a shame I did, though.”

Lucy grins, but I grip the wheel tighter. Why did I say that? It’s been forever since I’ve done this. This kind of hesitant, flirty, sober conversation with a woman. We turn onto on Main Street, and I pull the truck to a stop in front of the bakery.

“I’ll get the bike.”

She thanks me after I’ve lifted it down, as if I’ve done something difficult. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Thanks for the ride, Oliver.”

“Don’t mention it.”Còntens bel0ngs to Nô(v)elDr/a/ma.Org

I stay in place, watching her roll the bike towards the bakery’s front door. She pauses, her keys in her hand, and turns back to me.

“I would have remembered you, too,” she says. “If I had seen you before.”

It’s amazing how quickly the spa comes together. A week and a half from our first meeting and there’s a fully functioning therapy room, an updated bathroom with a rain shower head and a changing room.

Oliver is rarely around. I see him sometimes, from the large glass windows in the spa, striding across the courtyard or signing off deliveries. He doesn’t walk-he always strides. Like he has a purpose, and he knows you want to know what it is, but he’d be damned before he deigned to share it with anyone. It takes me a while to admit it to myself, but seeing glimpses of him are some of the best parts of my days.

But if he’s making himself scarce, his sister is decidedly not. Sarah pops into my studio at least four times during my first day, wearing a crazier hairstyle each time. Half the time she just wants to say hi and the other half she has a brilliant suggestion for an air diffuser or a name suggestion for a treatment.

She’s growing on me.

I’ve got my first client in nearly two solid months. Nerves and excitement had mingled in my stomach all morning, but once I started the treatment, my hands remembered exactly what to do.

The client tenses under my hands and I rub the offending muscle a bit extra. “This bit is sore.”

She gives a weak laugh into the massage table. “Tell me about it!”

“You work at a desk?”

Her ponytail bobs as she nods. “All day.”

“I’m guessing the riding this morning didn’t exactly help with the pain?”

She mumbles something I don’t catch, but it sounds like ‘made it worse.’

“I’ll focus on your upper back and neck for the remainder of the session,” I say. “Let’s see if we can get some of those knots out. Just let me know if the pressure is too much.”

She gives another nod and I get to work.

From her accent, I’m guessing she’s from the north-east, and Mandy told me this morning that her sister might want a massage tomorrow as well. Apparently they had come here for some time away from city life, to disconnect and reconnect.

I can see the newly installed hot tub outside from the window in my therapy room. Oliver has talked about building a deck around it-something about spotlights and deck chairs-but so far it’s just sitting out there, right by the forest glen.

The more time I spend up here, the more I think the ranch might truly be a small sliver of paradise. Little wonder Oliver rarely leaves it!

I let my mind wander as I knead the tension in my client’s shoulders and neck. Inevitably, as it so often does these days, it is wandering back to my old life in Dallas.

My ex-boyfriend texted me again this morning. This time it was the outrageous kind, not so much begging for me to come back as telling me I’d been terrible for not letting him explain his reasons.

I didn’t want to hear Kyle’s reasons. What the hell did he mean, really? Reasons for why he had slept with my best friend? A lifetime seemed to have passed since that dreadful day all those weeks ago. His nearly daily texts made it more than clear that I’d been a fool for a good long while.

What hurts more is that none of my coworkers have been in touch. It ended ugly between me and the spa, sure, but the fact that no one reached out at all… Not even a single, short text message. I’d spent nearly every lunch break laughing with Lindsey and Tom, but they dropped me immediately after the news broke.

I’ve made new friends in Claremont. Sarah was as sweet as she was occasionally mad, and she gives me her full support in nearly every creative idea I have. I’ve gone from being unemployed to essentially running my own little spa. Mandy and I have eaten lunch a couple of times over the last week and it turns out that we have a lot in common.

And then there’s Oliver.

I didn’t know why, couldn’t pinpoint the reason, but I feel alive when he’s around. The way his eyes settle on me without mercy or pretense-as if he sees everything I am. Or maybe it’s the fact that he is nearly a head taller than me and so handsome it stops you dead in your tracks.

I’ve been hooked from the beginning; from the first time he came into the bakery.

I’m sure it got old-he had to have learned to recognize the tell-tale signs, the blushing cheeks and the lingering looks. The sudden pause in a woman’s conversation when she sees him. I’ve seen it myself with some of the female guests catching sight of him striding across the courtyard, though Oliver never seemed to care.

If he’d been living in a bigger city, he would have women throwing themselves his way. Maybe he does, even out here. It wouldn’t surprise me.

It doesn’t help, either, that he seems so modest about his good looks. He could exploit them to high heaven and yet I haven’t seen the trace of a girlfriend or a female friend.

I shake my head and return my focus on what’s before me. Treating a neck and shoulders damaged from hours in front of a computer has been a daily occurrence at all places I’ve worked at. So many people spend months living with headaches and poor sleep, all from tensions here.

I grab a hot towel from the towel warmer and gently wipe away most of the massage oil from my client’s upper back. She groans again, and I smile. “You’ll be sore here as well, now. Do you have a heating pad at home, by any chance?”

“Yes. I use it across my stomach sometimes.”

“Try warming it up and draping it over your shoulders after a long day of work. It’ll help your muscles relax after the continuous strain from computer work.”

She thanks me and I leave the room, gently shutting the door behind me to let her dress and finish up. The room outside is beautiful. Soft flooring, soft lighting-a sofa for waiting. Through the floor to ceiling windows in the back, there’s a wide-open view to the meadows. The tall grass is golden under the midday sun.

I’d been so lucky in coming here.

After Anna leaves, I toss the used towels in the laundry and make sure to leave the space clean and locked. I triple-check that the lights are off and the hot tub isn’t running: everything’s in order. I’m running a one-woman spa and the buck stops with me.

The sunlight is warm on my face and the scent of freshly mowed grass hangs in the air. I never want to leave this ranch. It has everything-everything I had missed in Dallas but never admitted to myself.

Grabbing my home-made lunch, I make my way through the buildings. It took me days just to stop getting lost in the vastness of the Morris Ranch, the many outhouses and pens and cabins.

I stop at the sound of a horse neighing loudly. Jack and Tim are working with one of the mares, using a long-line to warm her up. They wave hello and I hold up my lunch bag.

“You guys up for a break anytime soon?”

Tim hands the reins to Jack and jogs towards me. “I wish! We have to prepare some of the horses for a party of trail riders this afternoon.”