Heaven's Touch Read Free Page A

growing-up years. This didn’t surprise her. “Don’t tell me it’s broken and you’re walking on it?”
    â€œWalk on it? I hiked ten miles to an LZ, a landing zone, and didn’t bat an eye.”
    Good try, but you’re not impressing me, cowboy. Cadence folded her arms across her chest and did her best to glare at him. He was using that charming grin of his, the one he figured could make even the angels forget his every transgression.
    She, however, was immune. Immunity gained long ago.
    He reached one big hand for the crutches she held. “Contrary to popular opinion, if a fracture isn’t too severe, you know, like a compound with the bone sticking through your skin, you can walk on it. Some of us are tough enough to fight bad guys, secure a perimeter and treat wounded with all sorts of ailments in spite of an injury or two.”
    Some things never changed, and that was Ben McKaslin. The grown man in his thirties standing before her was essentially no different from the eighteen-year-old she remembered. The one with an attitude and an overly high opinion of himself. Was she surprised? Well, she shouldn’t be.
    She thrust his crutches at him to keep him as far away from her as possible. “You need to have the paramedics look at your back.”
    â€œI’m good to go.” He took the crutches from her, and his nearness snapped between them like static electricity.
    Like the tiny spark that had ignited the gasoline fumes from the van’s gas tank, the result shocked her. And had her stepping away from what had to be danger. “Your shirt’s started to smolder again.”
    â€œI’ve had worse.” He said it as if he walked through flames every day.
    Ben McKaslin was everything dangerous in a man. He was too handsome, too charming, too everything. She’d made sure their fingers didn’t touch as she handed off the crutches. The sticks of aluminum clanked as he took them in one hand, leaning now on his good leg as if the injured one was only starting to pain him just a bit.
    Just like old times. Only Ben could turn a stop for gas into a three-alarm blaze, and it was never his fault. Where there was smoke, there was Ben.
    Although something had changed about him, but she couldn’t place what. Everyone knew he’d joined the military—and not a moment too soon, lots of folks had said. Maybe it had done him good. One could only hope. “They’ve got the flames out.”
    â€œSo I see.” He reached into his shorts pocket, leaning awkwardly on one crutch as he did it. Then he shook his head, scattering short shocks of thick dark hair. “The keys are in the truck, not my pocket. Habit.”
    She took one look at his dimples as he smiled more broadly, deepening them on purpose.
    Right, as if he could actually charm her. She wasn’t even affected. Not in the slightest. She’d learned to be strong long ago. Ben McKaslin was no man to trust. Besides, he wasn’t here to stay. It was as plain as day he was injured on duty and so he’d probably be home for a visit for, what, a couple of weeks? Eight at the most, to heal that injured leg of his, and then he’d be racing back to wherever it was he was stationed.
    Sure, Ben had always possessed great and admirable qualities, despite his flaws, but he wasn’t a stick-around kind of man.
    She was beginning to think they’d stopped making men like that sometime before she was born, because she had yet to meet one man she thought would stick. One who would be responsible and honorable enough to depend on for the long haul.
    Not that she had trust issues, of course, although on many occasions, her coworkers had pointed out that she did.
    Okay, so maybe she did, but her trust issues had never been the only reason he’d left the day after graduation for boot camp. And never looked back.
    Forgiveness, Cadence. It was sometimes the hardest part of her faith.