Page 9 of Wicked Healing

Chapter 3

Luca looked at the email,fear and excitement fighting within him. Yes, he wanted to see Boss, more than anything else right now. Seeing his dog was the priority in his life and just the thought of it got him excited. He wanted to see with his own eyes how his partner was doing. It was why he’d been working in rehab so hard.

He was man enough to admit, though, that he was feeling vain. He’d looked Knox Kennels up online, and Erin Knox was a beautiful woman. Like, seriously beautiful. She had basic training videos, too, working with a beautiful Border Collie dog named Greta. She seemed petite compared to the dogs, but he could tell that she had a huge personality. She also trained problem dogs and housed animals for the military and she’d been in business for several years. When he looked up her recommendation page it was loaded with people singing her praises.

Luca had appreciated every single word she’d written him, but he couldn’t expect her to drive all the way out here.

And that was how he started the email. Telling her that he couldn’t ask her to do that. It was too great of a gift.

But she affirmed that she would be happy to do it. She thought it would be good for Wicked.

Yes, that was what they needed to remember. Her interests were for the dog, and his needed to be as well.

So, they set a date, a week out. By that time she got things arranged for her mother to come out and stay with her animals while she was away.

Luca did his rehab like a crazy man, falling into bed exhausted every night. They’d fitted him with a prosthetic for his leg, but it was taking a while to get used to. Because he’d lost his leg above the knee, losing the joint itself was a real blow. The prosthetic was amazing. It had its own knee joint. But it was hard getting used to walking on it, even with the mechanized component.

And it had been a struggle getting used to the movement in his right side. Most of his ribs had been crushed on that side, and his lung collapsed, so it was taking a long time for them to heal. His face, well… he’d pretty much gotten used to the patch of burn scars on his right cheek and jaw. The helmet had protected his eyes from most of the damage but he doubted his jaw would ever look the same. And he doubted he would ever grow beard hair there again.

For the most part he’d gotten used to his looks and the feel of his skin, but the thought of exposing himself to someone non-medical was a little daunting. His Navy SEAL bravado had taken a serious hit.

Three days before Erin and Wicked were due to arrive, his parents came to the rehab facility for a visit. Luca was still angry that they hadn’t told him about Wicked, but he knew that it wouldn’t do any good to dwell on it. His mother would always do what she thought best, though she seemed to sense that something had changed. At thirty years old he should be beyond his mother’s machinations, but as soon as she walked in the door people acted like she was the queen. It was infuriating.

His father, a tall man with salt and pepper hair and a Van Dyke beard, drew a completely different kind of attention, mostly from the female population. Not that his father noticed. Tony Carmichael thought the moon and stars set with his wife, Leona. He had put up with her eccentricities for thirty years and seemed to thrive with her.

While he was growing up, Luca had thought his parents were amazing. They’d grown up in an affluent area in upstate New York and he’d had a good life. Nothing had been denied him and he would admit he’d been more than a little spoiled. Schooling had been a priority, then finding the perfect girl to raise a family with. Luca found himself living what his parents thought was the ideal life, and it just didn’t jive with him. It had broken his mother’s heart when he’d left school and joined the Navy, desperate for something that was his own choice.

When she found out he’d enlisted, Luca had had to listened to her wail about losing her son. Oh, the drama. What were her friends going to think, and what about the girl he’d been seeing? Luca had shaken it all off, explaining to her that it was his life and his choice. His father had been the one to surprise Luca. His support had landed squarely on Luca’s side. Tony’s father and grandfather had both been in the military, so he had seen Luca’s service as a way to honor his family. That had mollified Luca’s mother, somewhat. As he’d worked his way through the ranks and into the more exclusive areas of the service, she became more and more proud of him. Tony admitted to Luca that she was scared of what he did, of course, but proud of the path he’d chosen.

For some reason, though, she just couldn’t seem to let him grow up. This deal with Wicked was a perfect example. She thought she knew what was best for him so she manipulated the situation to protect him. And she paid for the problem to be out of sight and out of mind. It was what she’d done all her life, first in building the realty company with Dad, then in raising him.

Luca knew she loved him, but man she stressed him out more than anything else he was dealing with.

“How are you walking,” his mother asked. “Are they feeding you enough here? I brought you some food, just in case.”

She leaned in for a tentative hug, obviously worried about hurting him. It pissed him off. He wasn’t made of glass.

“They’re feeding me fine, Mom. It’s not like I’m expending a lot of energy right now.”

“But you need energy to heal,” she said stubbornly, pushing a wave of her blond hair back with a finger. For as long as he could remember, Leona Carmichael’s hair had been the same shade of blond, the same shape. He used to tease her about it when he was a kid, but it was the way she preferred it. He knew she had to be turning as gray as his dad, but you would never know by the golden color.

Luca sat back in his chair when she pulled away, but reached out to shake his dad’s hand. “You’re looking better,” Dad told him, looking him up and down.

Luca had the prosthetic on, so he was a little self-conscious about it. His parents hadn’t seen him with a prosthetic yet. The one he’d been fitted with was called a C-leg. There was a tiny microprocessor in the knee joint that helped adapt the gait to any terrain or speed. And if something was out of whack, he could literally log onto an app on his phone to adjust the issue. It was seriously cutting edge, and one of the reasons he was doing as well as he was.

His father knelt down in front of him, obviously curious. “So, this has a computer chip in it?”

Luca nodded and showed him the highlights of the streamlined silver leg.

“That’s fascinating. And you’re walking okay?”

“Well, getting better. A few things still catch me, like stairs,” he admitted. “And sitting down. But I’m getting the hang of it.”

“It seems like history repeating itself. Your great grandfather had a fake foot, but it was archaic compared to this.”

“Great-Grandad lost a leg?” Luca asked incredulously.

His dad nodded. “You probably don’t remember because he died when you were about seven or eight, but he always walked with a limp.”

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