The town might be small, but they did have a health club that was open twenty-hour hours, specifically for folks who worked shifts.

Grabbing his swim shorts, he pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. Throwing on his leather jacket, he was at the club in less than five minutes. A swim would be the only thing to burn off the excess energy. It was his substitute form of meditation since he couldn’t run. The club was nearly empty at four in the morning, and for that he was grateful. He didn’t have to make conversation or smile. The sleepy girl at the desk waved him by when he flashed his membership card.

Diving into the water he struck out hard, his arms and legs going at a blistering pace. After twenty or so laps, he slowed down and cleared his mind. The blank slate, his therapist suggested to calm his nerves, was hard for him to find some days. Tabula rasa, she’d called it. It was a challenge to find it when the sexy woman’s face kept popping up over and over again.

Then there was his mother who had waited up to pepper him with questions when he’d returned the night before. Macy had nothing on his mom, who kept giving him strange looks and then smiled when he said he was tired and needed to sleep.

He’d never understood women, and his mom was the most confusing of them all.

“I don’t know what that water ever did to you, but I hope you’re never that mad at me.” Macy’s voice penetrated his concentration. He nearly gulped a mouthful of water as he stopped abruptly. He was at the end of a lap, and she stood above the lane in a formfitting navy swimsuit.

Hell. The woman was trying to kill him.

His cock was so hard it hurt. He leaned up against the wall and put his arms on the side of the pool to hide the evidence.

What was he, twelve?

Get yourself under control, Marine.

“I have to give up running for a few more weeks and this is the way I meditate.”

She chewed on her lip. “I thought you did yoga, or sat and chanted to mediate.”

He smirked. “That’s awful closed-minded for someone who has traveled the world. Some people do. But I have trouble shutting off my brain if I’m not moving. When I sit still— Well. I have insomnia and sometimes exercise is the only way I can get myself to calm down.”

She sat down and dangled her legs in the water. “I hope it’s not because of what we talked about last night,” she said worriedly. “It’s my nature to push at people until they give me what I want. I tried not to do that with you, but sometimes I just can’t help myself.”

He couldn’t tell her the truth, so he lied. “No, it wasn’t that. Well, maybe a little. But not in the way you think.” He’d made a fool of himself. “Why are you here?”

She pointed through the window where a man had Harley on a treadmill. “One of the trainers from the rescue shelter is working with Harley. The treadmill is made for people who have bad joints.”

“She didn’t seem to have any trouble running around the other day.”

“No, but she shouldn’t have done it. Running like that is bad for her. We’re trying to teach her to walk at a fast pace on the treadmill. This was the only time Jack could do it. He’s a vet tech at the shelter and his shift starts at seven.

“I thought while they worked out, I’d come do some laps. I didn’t realize it was you until you made that last turn. I guess, though I never thought of it that way, swimming is my meditation, too. I do it more to make the puzzle pieces of my life and the stories I tell fit together. When I’m doing something physical, it helps me figure stuff out. And like Harley, I have a bad knee. I like running, but it doesn’t like me.”

He glanced at her left knee, there was a round puckered scar there, and then a long line that intersected it. His head snapped up, his eyes met hers. “You were hit.”

She nodded. “About three years ago. It was a through-and-through, but did some ligament damage on the way out. Nothing like what you’ve experienced.”

The thought of her being harmed brought out his protective instincts. He pulled himself up out of the water and sat beside her. “You don’t have a limp.”

“Nah. I had some great physical therapists.” She traced the scar on his right leg. “Wow, that’s nasty. Must really hurt.”

Her touch had an instant affect on him. Thankfully her eyes were fixed on his right leg and knee. The scars went from his midthigh through his knee and calf. In all he’d taken three bullets in the one leg. And another one in his back. “It’s a lot better than it was six weeks ago. What were you doing when you got hurt?”

“Researching a feature on the Arab spring. A demonstration I was covering got out of hand. Had to run for the border the first chance I got, and we were attacked. We were lucky that the marines were waiting on the other side.

“I got hit. They fired back. Luckily a navy surgeon fixed me up right away and then sent me to a good surgeon and physical therapist in Florida where he had a practice.”

“You shouldn’t have put yourself in danger like that.” The words had more of a bite than he’d meant them to. “You could have been killed.”

She pulled her fingers away from his leg as if he’d shocked her. “Uh, it’s my job to report the tough stories. And trust me, I’ve been through worse.”

Lifting her curls, she pointed to an ugly scar on the back of her neck.

The air left his lungs.

“That was the one that really scared me.” She stared at the water.

He reached out and touched the wound.

She jerked away. “But that’s a story for another day. I need to get my workout in. I’m sorry I interrupted yours.” She stood and he noticed her toenails were painted a violet color. Something about that made him smile. Then he remembered what he’d done.

“Sorry I touched you. I can’t stand violence against women. It—It’s one of my triggers.”

“Triggers for what?”

“A story for another day,” he repeated the phrase back to her. Then he grabbed a towel and wrapped it around his waist. “Have a good swim.”

4

WHEN BLAKE TOUCHED Macy it was all she could do not to wrap her arms around him. No one had ever looked at her so tenderly or been so concerned. Her ex had been the one who sent her out on some of her roughest assignments. He’d expected her to be able to handle herself, and she did. But there was a small part of her that wished he’d worried about her once in a while. She should have known something was wrong when she called to tell him that she’d been shot and all he’d worried about was how she was going to get him the story.

She’d made the surgeon wait an hour so she could pound out ten pages and email it to the paper.

Blake would have been frantic worrying about her.

Hey, you are not turning into one of those women.

She refused to be the type of woman who needed the man in her life to save her. Macy prided herself on her independence.

Jumping into lane five, she sluiced through the water. When she thought of the marine, she tried to focus on the story she wanted to tell. But it was complicated. She didn’t quite have all the pieces yet. She needed to talk to his mother and others who knew Blake. Well, duh, the whole town knew him.

She wanted a different perspective.

The idea was just out of her grasp. She pushed herself harder and harder until ten laps later she was out of breath and hanging on to the edge of the pool in the same way Blake had earlier.

She glanced through the window to see how Harley was doing. Jack gave her double thumbs-up and she smiled.

Why couldn’t she go for a guy like Jack or even his boss, Josh? They weren’t the subjects of a story and, as far as she knew, they didn’t have any battle scars. Though, she sometimes wondered about Josh. He’d been wounded in some way. It was that haunted look in his eyes.

No one knew better than she did how those scars and secrets could weigh a soul down.