LITMIR.BIZ

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liked. ‘No exercise. That’s not good. I’m going to lose muscle mass.’ And fitness. Which would delay his return to the army even longer.

      ‘No push-ups, no pull-ups, no burpees, no weight training,’ Ethan said.

      Oh, great. That was pretty much his workout routine out of the window. And it definitely confirmed that Ethan Hunter had trained in the army.

      ‘Running? Any form of cardio?’ he asked, trying not to let the desperation show in his voice.

      Ethan shook his head. ‘You need to use your arm muscles to hold your arm across your chest with your hand to the opposite shoulder. So you’ll be off balance for running or using an elliptical.’ He shrugged. ‘No fencing, either, Zorro.’

      Because with one arm strapped up he wouldn’t be able to balance himself properly. ‘So that’s a no.’ Marco rolled his eyes. ‘I’m going to go insane.’

      ‘Very probably, Zorro,’ Ethan agreed. ‘No horse-riding, no guitar-playing, no.…’

      ‘No sex?’

      Ethan grinned. ‘Not if you insist on being on top, no.’

      ‘I think I hate you,’ Marco said.

      ‘No, you don’t. I fixed your hand. And I’m good at my job.’

      ‘You’d better be, Clavo,’ Marco said through gritted teeth.

      Ethan raised an eyebrow. ‘Clavo?’

      ‘It’s Spanish for Spike.’ Marco gestured with his free hand. ‘Face. Attitude. The thing you use to cut people open.’

      ‘Technically, that would be a lancet.’

      Marco shrugged. ‘Clavo will do. You’re sure my hand’s fixed?’

      ‘Yes. Unless you do something stupid, like try to use your hand too early.’

      Marco groaned. ‘You’re telling me that I’m going to be stuck here for a whole month?’

      ‘I didn’t say that. I said you’ll wear the splint for a month. You’ll have physio every single day. Several sessions. I want to make sure there aren’t any contractures to your palm, so you need to do stretches and gentle work. You do what the hand therapist says, when she says it, and nothing else. Got it?’

      ‘Because, if I don’t, then my hand’s gone for good.’

      ‘That’s about it.’

      So he had no choice. ‘OK. I’ll do what you say. And the hand therapist,’ he added with a grimace.

      ‘Good. Think yourself lucky it wasn’t a severed thumb, Zorro. I would’ve had to replace it maybe with your big toe, and stick leeches all over you.’

      Marco gave Ethan a reluctant smile. ‘Remind me, which century is this again?’

      Ethan laughed. ‘I’ll have you know leech saliva is the best anticoagulant ever—it’s a hundred times more effective than heparin.’

      ‘So I’ve got nothing to do except pace this room?’ And, for the umpteenth time, wish to hell he’d out-thought the enemy. Wish his men hadn’t died. Wish he’d managed to get them all to safety.

      ‘Like a caged tiger,’ Ethan agreed. He paused. ‘There’s a gym in the basement. It’s really for the staff, but patients can use it.’

      ‘I thought you just said I couldn’t run or do weights?’

      ‘You can’t. The treadmill and elliptical are both out of bounds, ditto all the free weights and the machines.’

      ‘Right.’ Everything he was most likely to use. ‘Which leaves me what, precisely?’

      ‘The static bike,’ Ethan said. ‘And don’t use your arms.’

      That was Marco’s idea of tedious. A proper bike in the mountains, yes, with steep inclines and rough terrain to challenge him; a static bike, even if it had programmes to change the resistance, wouldn’t challenge him at all. ‘Great,’ he said, curling his lip.

      ‘You can do walking lunges,’ Ethan said. ‘But that’s bodyweight only. Just to be clear, that means not having a bar across your traps, and no using dumb bells, even with your good hand. Got it?’

      ‘Got it.’ Marco rolled his eyes again. ‘Marvellous.’

      ‘And you can do squats—again, bodyweight only, with a stability ball against your back.’

      ‘What? Like a total novice?’ Marco asked in disgust.

      ‘No, like someone who’s going to have one arm strapped up so his balance is going to be out and he’s not going to be stupid enough to risk damaging his tendons again before they heal. You cross your other arm across your chest like this—’ Ethan demonstrated ‘—and at least this way you can keep your core strong.’

      Which was something, Marco supposed. Bodyweight exercises. ‘Floorwork?’ he asked.

      ‘No. But you can do sit-ups on the stability ball.’

      Marco couldn’t bring himself to say anything.

      ‘It’s better than nothing at all,’ Ethan said, and there was a brief flare of sympathy in his eyes.

      ‘I guess.’ But Marco was pretty sure that this next month was going to be the longest of his life.

      Becca pulled herself out of the pool and squeezed the water from her shoulder-length hair before padding through to the showers. One of the things she loved about working at the Hunter Clinic was the pool in the basement; a swim after work always got the knots out of her muscles and her head in the right place before she headed for her stint at the rehab clinic.

      On her way out of the building, she glanced through the glass doors of the gym. There was a man doing lunge walks down the length of the gym; his back was to her, but given the evidence she could see of a strapped-up arm he was clearly one of the patients.

       Dark hair, tall, just like Seb …

      Her heart skipped a beat.

      Stupid.

      It had been years since she’d last seen Seb. Years. It was about time she put him out of her head and stopped thinking about him every time she saw a tall, dark-haired man. Particularly as he’d made it very clear that he hadn’t returned her feelings. He’d left the children’s aid camp in South Africa without so much as a word to her. Dump and run.

      ‘Get over it, Becca,’ she told herself sharply. ‘You’ve got a new life now. And you don’t need a man to make it complete.’ Besides, she had work to do. Somewhere she was needed.

      Shaking herself, she walked up the stairs to the reception area and out into Harley Street.

      Over the next couple of days, Marco was thoroughly bored. He tried to be charming to the nurses who came to check on him, but he hated all of this. Being fussed over. Smothered. Suffocated.

      Even the gym wasn’t a respite. Yes, it meant he could still work out. Of sorts. But he would have been much happier using the top-of-the-range free weights available, lifting until he’d reached his maximum one rep and then pushing himself just that little bit more. Doing a novice type programme just wasn’t satisfying. The only reason he’d been able to keep himself in check was the fear of rupturing the repair work on his tendons and being permanently without the use of his left hand. Three months would be tough enough. For the rest of his life would be unbearable.

      ‘You hate this, don’t you, Zorro?’ Ethan asked when he dropped in to see Marco at the end of the day.

      ‘Sitting here, being useless, when I know I’m needed elsewhere?’ Marco scowled. ‘Wouldn’t you?’

      ‘It’s not the easiest thing to deal with,’ Ethan agreed. ‘You just have

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