Praise for Christie Ridgway:

“Ridgway’s smart, peppy style is reminiscent of Jennifer Crusie.”

—Publishers Weekly on Wish You Were Here

“Christie Ridgway is delightful…clever and charming.”

—Bestselling author Rachel Gibson

“Hot and sassy! Ridgway rocks!”

—Bestselling author Susan Andersen

“Taking a story from today’s headlines, Christie Ridgway’s creative skills add engaging characters, strong chemistry and the happily-ever-after ending.”

—Romantic Times

“Ms. Ridgway pens a pleasant tale full of strong sexual chemistry, good character development and an interesting premise.”

—Romantic Times

“Christie Ridgway’s spirited heroine, touches of humor and likable hero combine to create an animated romantic read.”

—Romantic Times

The Reckoning
Christie Ridgway

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Dear Reader,

What I like about participating in a continuity series such as THE FORTUNES OF TEXAS: REUNION is that the experience always stretches me as a writer. Connecting with the other authors in the series broadens my imagination as we hash out details and share insights into our characters, making the world we develop feel even more real.

As the lucky “anchor” author for this particular series, I’ve had the additional pleasure of learning about what has happened in the previous books and incorporating a little bit of eleven other happy endings into the one I’ve written for my characters, Emmett Jamison and Linda Faraday.

Ah…Linda Faraday. Talk about broadening my horizons. She is a character who has touched my heart and brought me to an understanding and appreciation of people who have suffered a traumatic brain injury and then gone on to build new futures. She challenges Emmett’s notions of strength and weakness, as well. Emmett and I are both better people for letting Linda into our lives.

I hope you enjoy this last installment of THE FORTUNES OF TEXAS: REUNION. It was written with great pleasure.

To the other authors on THE FORTUNES OF TEXAS: REUNION loop who have made this project such fun.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Bonus Features

One

Inside the rambling Texas ranch house were a profusion of flowers, tables groaning with food and two bars stocked with plenty of liquor. All the makings of one hell of a great party, Emmett Jamison thought from the shadowed corner where he stood. That is, if the guest of honor hadn’t been dead.

“I can’t believe he’s gone,” he overheard a tiny, gray-haired lady by a punch bowl say to her companion. “I just can’t believe that Ryan Fortune is gone.”

Emmett’s eyes closed. He wished he couldn’t believe it. But the older man had been diagnosed with a brain tumor several months before and despite his big, vital personality and all the family and friends who cared about him, just that morning Ryan Fortune’s ashes had been spread across the lands of his beloved Double Crown Ranch.

The tragedy of it didn’t surprise Emmett. All hope and optimism had been swept out of him months ago. He expected no happy endings. He was becoming accustomed to funerals.

“Trying out for the undertaker’s job?” a new voice murmured in his ear. “You’ve got the morose expression for it.”

“I don’t take offense at your ugly mug,” he answered automatically, “so you shouldn’t take offense at my unsmiling one.”

The “ugly” insult didn’t have much meat to it, though, not when the man who had come up beside him was his cousin, Collin Jamison, and not when all agreed that Collin was a slightly older version of Emmett himself. They were both six feet tall and had the solid build of men whose fitness and training kept them employed—and alive. They wore their dark hair in no-nonsense military cuts, and Collin’s hazel eyes were only a touch lighter than Emmett’s green ones.

“You’re not offending me,” Collin replied. “You’re worrying me. You’ve got that let-me-escape-to-the-mountains look about you.”

Emmett shoved his hands into the pockets of his dark trousers. He’d holed himself up in the Sandia Mountains of New Mexico following his brother Christopher’s funeral last September and the tragic ending to one of his FBI cases. There, he’d tried deadening himself to that pain and all that had come before with cheap tequila and stubborn solitude. Neither had lasted long enough. When his father had brought the news that his other brother, Jason, who had been implicated in Chris’s murder, had escaped from jail, Emmett had sobered up and returned to Texas. “When Dad found me in New Mexico, he confiscated the keys to the cabin and threatened to burn the place down.” Though lack of keys wouldn’t stop anyone from getting into that shack. “I won’t be going back there.”

“Good,” Collin said, then surveyed the crowded room. “I haven’t seen Uncle Blake and Aunt Darcy, but it’s wall-to-wall people. Are they here?”

Emmett shook his head. “I’m the sole representative of our branch of the Jamisons. Mom and Dad didn’t feel comfortable attending, considering their son was the one who kidnapped Ryan’s widow just a couple of months back.” Jason’s kidnapping of Lily Fortune was what had brought his cousin Collin to Red Rock, Texas. Emmett had called him after the older woman’s recovery and his brother’s escape. Emmett had wanted Collin’s help in stopping Jason. That job wasn’t done.

Collin seemed to read his mind. “We’re going to get him, Emmett.”

“I’m going to get him,” Emmett corrected, though he and the authorities on the case were fresh out of leads and they all knew it. Though Lily had been recovered, Jason had taken off with the ransom money, killing an FBI agent in the process. There hadn’t been a sign of him since.

“You have Lucy to focus on now, Collin. But come hell or high water, I’m not going to let my brother make a victim of anyone else.” Jason’s ugly criminal tally also included the death of his own girlfriend, Melissa, and that of a prison transport guard. Though a prison guard in on Jason’s plan— McGruder—had been arrested and would stand trial for his part in the escape, it wasn’t nearly enough justice. Emmett’s voice lowered. “If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to make Jason pay for all the pain he’s caused.”

“You’re going grim on me again, buddy,” Collin warned softly. “By all means, let’s get Jason safely behind bars, but not at the cost of your heart.”

Emmett had to shake his head at that. Falling in love with Lucy had done a number on his tough-natured cousin. “Romance has made you soft. You know I don’t have a heart.”

And Emmett didn’t feel like talking about it anymore, either. Without bothering to make an excuse, he wandered away from his cousin, avoiding the eyes of those around him. Turning a corner, he almost knocked over an easel that held a poster-size photo. He reached out a hand to steady the smiling image of Ryan Fortune. “Husband, Father, Friend” was printed on the cardboard beneath it. “Loved By All.”

Emmett’s fingers lingered on the edge of the poster. Ryan’s eyes seemed to glitter as they had in life, and then Emmett felt a warm weight on his shoulder, as if the man were holding him there with a ghostly hand. To tell him something? To remind him of something?

Struck by a new, vague disquiet, Emmett hurried off, heading for the ranch house’s foyer. He pushed open the heavy front door, undeterred by a blast of chilly April wind. The sky was as dark as his mood and it smelled like rain, but he needed fresh air. More, he needed to be alone. He didn’t need a reminder of what he owed Ryan.

Loved By All. That phrase flitted into Emmett’s mind as he stepped outside. His brother Chris’s headstone read Beloved. Jessica Chandler’s family had carved In Loving Memory onto hers.

The last few years had taught that those stock phrases didn’t solve one damn thing, though. They didn’t make it any easier for the living to carry on. Love didn’t make it any easier for the living to carry on. And love certainly didn’t wake the dead.

Oblivious to the cool temperature, he leaned against one wall of the covered entryway, staring at the terra-cotta pots filled with flowers that lined the stone walkway in front of him. A few brave blooms were already showing their faces, but in May the April showers would really pay off. Emmett wondered if he’d still be in Red Rock to see it—and then admitted to himself he more than likely wouldn’t notice if he were. It had been winter inside him for what seemed like aeons now.

From around the corner of the entryway, a soft, rhythmic thup thup thup caught his attention. Curious, he shoved his hands deeper in his pockets and drifted down the steps to take a look at what was making the noise.

It was a kid, medium-sized, in an expensive navy blazer and a pair of khakis with a streak of mud on one knee. Between his shiny loafers was a fist-size, black-and-white ball that the boy tossed upward with one foot three times, thup thup thup, before it fell to the stone pathway and he had to start all over again, lifting it with his toe, juggling it for a few moments, then losing it again.

Emmett’s mind flashed back three months, maybe four. Then, he’d seen that same child, in a diner in Red Rock, sitting with an older couple and across from a blond woman. Emmett had only seen the blonde’s back but he’d seen the tension on the boy’s face.

A gust of wind tossed the kid’s blond bangs around his forehead and shook a few raindrops out of the low clouds above. The kid looked up, shivered, but went back to his game. The next blast of cold wind started the rain in earnest. Emmett stepped back toward the front door, almost calling to the boy to come inside, but then he shrugged. Hell, the kid wasn’t his concern.

He had other priorities.

Behind him, he heard the door open. “Richard?” a female voice called. “Richard, are you out there?”

The kid ducked his head and kept juggling the ball, despite the rain and despite the person obviously seeking him out. Shrugging again, Emmett turned toward the entryway. He’d wanted fresh air, not a fresh soaking. It was time to go back inside, find Lily and mumble some more condolences, then leave.

“Richard?” The voice floated closer.

And then, from around the corner of the house, a woman came into view.

And brought out the sun.

It was just the capricious spring weather, Emmett knew that, but it halted him midstride anyway, as a warm beam of light broke through the clouds to spotlight the woman’s long blond hair, her soft white dress, her slender, delicate body.

He blinked. She was an angel, a candle, a…

A sign that he needed to get more than three hours of sleep a night, he thought, disgusted. Her gaze bounced off Emmett and then zeroed in on the boy.

“Richard—”

“Ricky, I keep telling you,” the kid muttered. “Ricky, Ricky, Ricky.”

The woman’s forehead wrinkled and Emmett wondered if she might actually cry. He took a step toward her, driven by the sudden thought that he should comfort her, care for her, something, but then she squared her shoulders and her mouth turned up in a little half smile.

“Well, Ricky-Ricky-Ricky, you shouldn’t be outside in the rain.”

“It’s not raining anymore.”

Emmett said that. He couldn’t believe he’d insinuated himself into the strangers’ conversation. But then again, he couldn’t believe that odd compulsion he’d had to take the woman into his arms, either. More sleep was definitely a necessity.

The woman shot him a puzzled glance, then tipped her face to the sky, like one of those flowers he’d been looking at before. Light bathed her features, illuminating her clear pale skin, her small nose and her pretty mouth.

He thought of springtime again, actually remembered springtime, with its warmth and sweet scents and green newness. His feet took another step closer to her before he stopped them.

“I guess you’re right. It isn’t raining anymore,” she said, closing her eyes. She swayed a bit, as if slightly unbalanced. “Doesn’t the sunshine feel good?”

Emmett refused to answer the question; instead, he asked, “Who are you?” Immediately, he was aware he sounded abrupt and hostile—quite a feat for someone as naturally abrupt and hostile as himself. But the woman unsettled him, ruffled him somehow, and he wanted to figure out what it was, exactly, she did to him. And why.

To his surprise, it was the truculent kid who answered. While he had seemed peeved at the woman himself, now he moved to stand between her and Emmett, a purely protective stance. “She’s Linda Faraday,” the boy said. “I’m Ricky. Who are you?”

Linda Faraday. Her son, Ricky. Emmett’s gut tightened. He’d forgotten about them in the days since Ryan’s death. Perhaps it explained the disquiet he’d felt when looking at the older man’s photo. And perhaps it was why he’d reacted so strongly to the woman a few minutes before—his subconscious had recognized her and remembered his promise. Not the one he’d made for Ryan, about capturing Jason, but that promise he’d made to Ryan.

“Well?” the kid said. “Who are you?”

Emmett took in a long breath, then gazed into Linda Faraday’s wide blue eyes. Springtime. He had to shove the thought away before it derailed him. “I’m the man who’s going to be looking after you,” he told her.

Back inside the house, Emmett didn’t waste any time. Rather than wandering about, Emmett asked the first person he knew if he’d seen Dr. Violet Fortune. That person had, and Emmett strode through the somber crowds to find Dr. Fortune in the dining room, putting fruit salad on a small plate.

“I need some of your time, Violet,” he told her.

She set down the silver serving spoon, then turned and studied his face. “What you need is more rest, less guilt and a good meal or two. That’ll be two hundred dollars. You can mail a check to my home office.”

“Ha-ha.” He didn’t crack a smile. “I want to talk to you about Linda Faraday.”

“Oh, well, I’m not her doctor, and even if I were, I couldn’t—”

“Ryan spoke to you about her, didn’t he?” Linda Faraday and her son, Ricky, had been Ryan’s source of guilt for over a decade, thanks to the car accident caused by his brother, Cameron, who had been driving drunk. Cameron had died in that accident, and Linda, his passenger, had been terribly hurt. Ryan had kept that secret from the public and from his family, except for Lily and Violet. Linda had been pregnant with Cameron’s child. That boy was Ricky.

Violet gave a little nod. “Ryan talked about her situation more than a time or two, but it was with the understanding that the situation was confidential. I wouldn’t feel right discussing—”

“Discuss traumatic brain injury with me, then.” Because that was what Linda Faraday had suffered ten years before. “And discuss comas and recovery and rehabilitation and—”

“Okay, okay.” Violet put a cool hand on his arm. “Am I to assume you mean you want to discuss these things now?”

Maybe he should have felt guilty for insisting, but he didn’t. He’d felt helpless in the face of Ryan’s death and stymied in discovering Jason’s whereabouts, but here was something, finally, he could take action on. “Yes, now. Please,” he added as an afterthought.

Half smiling and shaking her head, Violet patted his arm. “How about we meet in the study after I give Peter a heads-up? Celeste is at home, so we didn’t plan on staying long.”

Emmett grimaced. Celeste was the little girl that Peter and Violet were adopting, and she’d recently gone through serious back surgery and rehabilitation of her own. “Tell your husband I’ll make it as brief as I can.”

Violet gave another shake of her head and another half smile. “You’re not long-winded, I can say that for you, Emmett.”

Which meant he was brusque to a fault. But he could live with that, especially when Violet got back to him so quickly. Emmett had secured a private place for their chat on a short leather sofa in a far corner of the study. When she settled beside him, he took his eyes off the massive burl wood desk at one end of the room. “The last time I was in here, Ryan seemed to take up more space than that desk of his,” he murmured.

Violet handed him one of two cups of coffee she held. “We’re all trying to grasp the fact that Ryan’s gone.”

But Emmett, on the other hand, was going to do something about it. He couldn’t bring the man back, of course, but he could follow through with the pledge he’d made to him. “Traumatic brain injury,” he prompted without more ado.

“I just love these little social niceties of yours, Emmett,” Violet said, grimacing. Then she seemed to take pity on him. “All right. I’ll stop wasting your time. Traumatic brain injury.”

She sipped from her cup, then began. “Otherwise known as TBI, or head injury, it’s simply damage to the brain caused by an external force. It’s common in vehicle accidents, when impact can cause the brain to bounce back and forth against the skull. That causes bruising to the brain and, later, swelling. Head injuries are the number-one killer of Americans under the age of forty-four. They kill more under the age of thirty-four than all diseases combined.”

Emmett absorbed the numbers, but at the moment only one person with a head injury mattered to him. “Do all people with a TBI go into a coma?”

“Serious injury can occur without a loss of consciousness, but in a TBI, usually the brain stem is injured and that produces a period of coma that may last for some time.”

“But in a coma for years? Is that usual, Violet?”

The good doctor hesitated, because, Emmett knew, they were getting into Linda Faraday-specific territory. She’d gone into a coma following the car accident. Then the doctors had discovered she was a couple of months pregnant. She’d given birth in that state and stayed in that state until a little over a year ago.

“What’s more unusual, Emmett,” Violet finally said, “is for a patient to recover enough to make an independent life for herself after so long.”

“It’s not like the movies, huh? Snoozing away until one day the patient awakes, refreshed and alert?”

Violet shook her head. “Maybe for Sleeping Beauty, but in the real world that doesn’t happen. In the case of Linda—” She stopped herself. “Emmett, I don’t feel right about this.”

He didn’t waste his breath arguing with her. “Let’s talk hypotheticals, then. If a hypothetical patient were in a coma…”

Violet was shaking her head again.

“She wasn’t in a coma?”

“The technical definition of a coma is an altered state of consciousness in which the patient’s eyes don’t open and the patient doesn’t react to pain or commands, or doesn’t speak in recognizable words. So while the hypothetical patient might start out that way, once she can react, respond or speak, then she’s no longer in a coma, though she may not yet be returned to full consciousness. In that semiconscious state, patients can be fed, or feed themselves, and get some kinds of physical therapy to keep their muscles from atrophying. There are people who remain in that twilight state for the rest of their lives.”

“So what brought Linda out of—excuse me—what might bring a hypothetical patient out of that twilight and into full consciousness?”

Violet shrugged. “No one knows. After so many years, I suppose the best explanation is…a miracle.”

He frowned at that, miracle not being in the vocabulary of a been-there, seen-every-horror FBI agent. “Ryan seemed to think that Linda still needs some kind of help. I promised to provide that.”

Violet opened her mouth, closed it, then sighed. “All right. Linda. Let’s talk about Linda. Ryan was right that she’ll need help. Ten years have passed. The world isn’t the same as Linda remembers. She’s not the same as she remembers. She’s been in a rehab facility for the past year, relearning old skills and acquiring new skills to cope with those ways in which she’s changed, but it can’t be easy.”

“Ryan said she was being released from rehab soon. He wanted me to…protect her.”

“That sounds like Ryan. But you’ll have to find out from Linda if protection is what she wants—or will accept. From what I understand, she’ll be going to the home of Nancy and Dean Armstrong, the couple who have taken care of Ricky since infancy.”

Emmett thought of the truculent Ricky and the ethereal Linda. “It doesn’t matter what she wants. I promised Ryan. It’s the least I can do for him.”

“There’s that guilt again,” Violet said. “Any woman, even one who has been in Linda’s shoes, won’t appreciate being an obligation to you.”

“She’s not an obligation. She’s a…” Compulsion. The light. Springtime. In his mind’s eye, he saw her face turned up to the sunshine and again he felt that warm weight of Ryan’s hand on his shoulder. She needed him, and he was being directed to take care of her. God, how could he explain it to Violet without her calling for the men in white coats with straitjackets? “She’s just something I know I’m supposed to do right now.”

Violet toasted him with a little dip of her coffee cup. “Then good luck convincing her of that.”

Linda consulted the notebook on her bedside table the moment she woke up. It was chubby, with a no-nonsense blue tagboard cover. Today’s place was marked with a simple paper clip. She read the words she’d penciled in the evening before to aid her in those first, often confusing moments of awakening.

Today is Tuesday, May 2.

YOUR ROOM HAS MOVED.

You live in the south wing now. Bathroom is on the right.

If it’s morning, get up, shower, dress. Go to breakfast.

Turn left for the dining hall.

Tuesday, May 2. The date hadn’t been a revelation, though the year might take her an instant or two to conjure up. She was even already aware that her room had moved. But she still kept up the habits that had gotten her through the first months at the rehabilitation facility, when blinking could cause her to lose her train of thought—or worse, a day or two of short-term memories.

She stretched, then climbed out of bed and took in the outfit she’d laid out for herself the night before. Yoga pants, T-shirt, running shoes. She had physical therapy scheduled for the late morning, which meant time on the elliptical machine and stretching on the mats. A year ago, she’d been learning to walk again; these days, she was itching to take a run on the sidewalk.

In a few days, she might do just that.

At the thought, anxiety tripped up her heart. She ignored the feeling, though, and continued into the bathroom. The rehab facility was a comfortable, comforting place, but her counselors assured her she was ready to move out into the big, bad world.

She wished they wouldn’t refer to it like that. They meant it as a joke, of course, but she didn’t find it all that funny.

In the big, bad world, she had to create a new life for herself. An independent life…well, as independent as a life could be that also contained the ten-year-old who was her son, Richard. Ricky.

She thought of him and the corners of her lips tipped up as she stepped under the shower spray. He might scare her to death—he did scare her to death—but he could still make her smile. Her fingers closed around the bar of oatmeal soap, and she brought it against her body.

And froze.

“Damn, damn, damn,” she muttered, slamming the bar back into place. Then she reached toward her knees and grasped the wet hem of her sopping nightshirt to pull it over her head. It landed in the bottom of the shower stall with a splat.

The small mistake put her in lousy mood that the bright dining hall and the excellent breakfast menu couldn’t dissipate. One of the rehab counselors noted it, apparently, because she came to sit beside Linda during her second cup of coffee.

“Bad dreams? Headache?” she asked.

Those were a couple of lingering ailments, but not today’s problem. Linda felt heat warm her cheeks. “Showered in my nightgown.”

The counselor smiled. “Is that all?”

“Isn’t that enough? What kind of grown woman steps under the spray of the shower wearing her clothes? It’s bad enough that I have to have routines to remind myself to wash and rinse my hair. Now I’m forgetting to get naked first.”

The woman leaned closer. “Don’t tell anyone, but once I came to work in my pink fuzzy slippers. When we have a lot on our minds, sometimes we let the simple things slip by.”

But how was she supposed to be independent, let alone a mother, if she couldn’t remember the simple things?

The other woman must have read the question on her face. “You handled the situation, didn’t you, Linda? You recognized the error, coped with it. That’s all any of us can ask of ourselves.”

Linda had never been a whiner, but still… “It was a shower,” she muttered. “You’d think I could get that right.”

“Is there something else bothering you, Linda? Some worry? You know that can put you off your game.”

Linda drummed her fingertips against the tabletop. A few months back, she hadn’t had the dexterity to do such a thing. The hours of drilling with computer games had paid off. “It’s…it’s a man,” she admitted.

“Ryan Fortune?” The counselor rubbed Linda’s shoulder. “Grief is perfectly normal, too.”

Linda gave a vague nod. She did grieve for Ryan. He’d been a gentle friend to her, like a kindly uncle, and he’d given her a much-needed anchor in those first months after she came fully, miraculously conscious. It had been Ryan who had found this wonderful facility, and had paid for it. It had been Ryan who, she learned a few days after his death, had set up trusts for both herself and her son that gave them financial security for the rest of their lives.

“But it’s a different man I’m thinking of,” she told the counselor. Her hand automatically reached for her notebook and flipped it open to the most recent page. It was what she’d written after the breakfast reminder.

9:00 a.m., you have a meeting with the Armstrongs…

The Armstrongs were another miracle in her life. After Ricky’s birth, Ryan had met the couple through the Mothers Against Drunk Driving organization. They’d lost their daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter to a drunk driver. Learning of what had befallen Linda, they’d opened their home to Ricky and their hearts to his mother, as well, even though for long years she hadn’t been aware of their weekly visits or their prayers and hopes for her recovery. They were going to bring her to their house when she was released from rehab and assured her that she and Ricky had a place with them for as long as she liked. She knew they regarded her as a daughter and Ricky as their treasured grandson.

The Armstrongs didn’t worry her.

9:00 a.m., you have a meeting with the Armstrongs and Emmett Jamison.

Emmett Jamison. Now he worried her. Her finger nervously tapped the page beneath his name.

“Who’s Emmett Jamison?” the counselor asked.

“What is more like it,” Linda said under her breath. FBI agent. Tough guy. So take-charge he had made her feel flustered, hot and confused with just one level look from those searing green eyes of his. A woman who’d been half-asleep for so many years didn’t have one technique on hand to cope with him.

The day they’d met, he’d been adamant about who he was. “I’m the man who’s going to be looking after you,” he’d said, then stalked off, leaving her staring. She would have dismissed him as a loony or some figment of her misfiring memory if Ricky hadn’t discovered the intriguing FBI agent, tough-guy tidbits from some others attending Ryan’s memorial. And then yesterday, Emmett had phoned to tell her he’d arranged to speak with her and the Armstrongs. She had no idea why. She was afraid to guess.

“Linda, who is this man?” the counselor prodded.

“Emmett Jamison is…” Her hand lifted. “Emmett Jamison is…”

“Early,” filled in a deep voice from the doorway of the dining room.

Linda shivered, because there he was, staring at her with those intense green eyes of his and looking dark and determined. A big, bad wolf from the big, bad world.

Two

Linda discovered that the hallways of the rehab facility weren’t wide enough when Emmett Jamison was walking by her side. He seemed so big, so male, in his casual slacks and open-throated dress shirt. It wasn’t as if he tried to crowd her, but he just seemed to be so close, so there, as she led the way toward her room.

He was loud, too. Not in the usual sense—as a matter of fact, he didn’t even make an attempt at small talk—but the quiet way he moved, the confident aura attached to him made his very presence noisy. There was no way to ignore someone like that.

She couldn’t wait to get rid of him.

“You didn’t say why you wanted to meet with me,” she ventured. If she hadn’t been so surprised and confused when he’d called the day before, she would have insisted on finding out the reason then.

“I didn’t?” His expression remained unreadable as he glanced into one of the rehab classrooms. Three of the center’s clients sat at different tables, one working on a computer game, another inserting pegs in a pegboard, another putting together a simple puzzle. “Is that the kind of thing you’ve been doing the past year?” he asked.

“Yes,” Linda answered. There was no point in pretending otherwise. “Computer games and puzzles to improve dexterity and memory and focus. And then there have been sessions of physical therapy, speech therapy and occupational therapy. In many respects—most, maybe—I was like a child when I came here. There was a lot I had to relearn.”

“But now you’re… What would you call it? Up to speed? Cured?”

Anxiety washed over Linda again like a cold sweat. “I’ll never be cured,” she admitted. It was the hard truth that the rehab center tried to make the head-injured understand. “I’m a different person now than I was before the car accident.”

But exactly who was that new person? The question was only exacerbated by the decade that she’d lost. With her past nearly as hazy as her future, she continued to struggle with developing her identity—even believing that she could. Leaving the rehab center, she worried, would only make that problem more overwhelming.

More frightening.

Finding Nancy and Dean Armstrong already waiting in the small sitting area of her room didn’t ease the feeling. They were wonderful, generous people who had always cared for Ricky and her, including visiting her regularly during her rehab and taking her out on day trips around the area and to their San Antonio home. But seeing them today only served to remind her that soon, so soon, she would be moving into their household and she would be expected to not only begin making a life for herself, but begin making herself into a mother for her son.

“Nancy, Dean. It’s good to see you.” Linda exchanged brief hugs with them.

“I brought more pictures.” Nancy pressed a packet of snapshots into her hand. “Soccer photos and some from the field trip I chaperoned last week.”

Linda’s fingers tightened on the pictures. The Armstrongs were so conscientious about integrating her into Ricky’s life. They shared photos and stories and the boy’s company at every opportunity. It wasn’t their fault she had trouble accepting herself as a mother.

Ducking the thought, she gestured toward her companion. “And do you two know Emmett Jamison?”

They apparently did, which puzzled Linda even more. So with everyone seated, she decided to get the situation straightened out. “Mr. Jamison—”

“Emmett,” he corrected.

“Emmett, then. What can I—” she looked at the older couple “—what can we do for you?”

On the love seat across from the straight chairs that she and Emmett were seated upon, Nancy and Dean exchanged glances. The big, bad wolf kept his gaze trained on her. “It’s what I can do for you.”

She did not like the way he said the words. She did not. “But I don’t need anything.”

Emmett’s gaze flicked toward Nancy and Dean. “You’ll be leaving the rehab facility shortly. I want to be a help to you.”

Was he offering his services as a mover? That was the only thing that made any sense. “I’m going to be living at the Armstrongs’ house, and I have very little to bring with me there from here. Some clothes, a few books, that’s all.”

He didn’t answer right away, leaving a silence to well in the room. Her stomach gave a nervous jump, and she withdrew the photos from their envelope to give her fingers something to do. The glossy images fanned across her lap.

“I promised Ryan,” the man said.

She frowned. “Promised him what?”

“That I’d look after you. That I’d do what I could to make things easier for you.” He finally looked away from her face. “I’ve made a couple of promises, and I intend to keep them.”

Oh-kay. “That was very…nice of Ryan, and typical of him to be worried about me, but I don’t need to be looked after. I don’t need anyone to make things easier.” Well, of course she did, but she doubted there was a person in the universe who could make her feel like a real mother and a complete woman instead of the jumble of unconnected puzzle pieces she regarded as herself.

“More convenient then,” he put in. “I could make things more convenient for you.”

Uncertain how to reject his offer, she looked over at the Armstrongs in mute appeal. It was then she read the worried expression on Nancy’s face. “What is it?” she asked. “What aren’t you telling me?”

The older woman sighed. “I think we’re all confusing you, Linda, and we certainly don’t mean to do that. It’s just that we came up with a new plan that we thought might work out better for you.”

“A new plan? A new plan that involves him?” She pointed at Emmett. “Now I really am confused.”

Dean cleared his throat. “When Emmett contacted us about his promise to Ryan, we thought his offer was a timely one. It presents an opportunity for you to gain a greater degree of independence than you could find if you simply moved into our home. You know your counselors weren’t sure that was such a good idea.”

Linda swallowed. She knew full well that the counselors at the rehab facility weren’t one hundred percent behind her move to the Armstrongs’. The couple had household help—a housekeeper, a cook. With all that available assistance, there was a worry that Linda might not get enough practice at the life skills she’d been working so hard on during the past year.

“You think I shouldn’t move in with you?” Her voice came out almost a whisper. If the Armstrongs cut her loose, could she put the pieces of herself together? Could she take care of Ricky and forge together a Linda Faraday?

“No, no, Linda. We want you with us,” Nancy hastened to say. “What we’re proposing is that you move into the guest house beyond the pool. It has three bedrooms, a bath-and-a-half, a full kitchen. There, you’d have the chance to take care of yourself, from grocery shopping to cooking. Emmett could stay in one of the other bedrooms, as a…a backup, say, for the first few weeks.”

Linda rubbed her forehead and the throbbing beginning to grow there. Changes—of plans, of routines, even of the faces that surrounded her—could throw her off. Adapting to new ideas and situations was one of those life skills that she was supposed to work on as she moved into her new life.

She looked down, her gaze landing on the photos in her lap. A dozen or so pictures of kids, one in particular. She was so disconcerted, it took her a moment to realize what she was seeing. Whom.

Ricky. Of course, Ricky. Moving down the soccer field. With his arm around two other boys. Pointing at some out-of-focus exhibit in a museum. Not just some anonymous little boy, but Ricky. Ricky, her son.

Dean must have noticed the direction of her gaze. “While you’re getting your bearings in the guest house, he would remain in his own room in our home, Linda, but visit with you as often as he likes, of course. It could be the best of both worlds.”

The best of both worlds. The phrase stuck in her head. The best of both worlds. The best.

The best part of the whole idea of moving into the guest house, the most tempting part, was that it would allow her more distance and more time. More distance from her scariest fear. More time, she thought, shame and relief intertwining, to not be Ricky’s mother.

Her mind made up, she didn’t bother glancing over at Emmett again. It wasn’t noble, it wasn’t brave, but it was the truth. She would even put up with the big, bad wolf if he’d get between her and the big, bad world of being a mother to her child.

Today is Friday, May 8.

YOU HAVE MOVED.

You live in the Armstrongs’ guest house now. Bathroom is across the hall.

If it’s morning, get up, shower, dress.

The few lines in her notebook cut through the anxiety of awakening in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar room. Her mind easy again, she watched the play of sunlight over the yellow-and-violet wallpapered walls. She’d moved her belongings into the pretty little room the afternoon before, and then, worn out by the excitement and the change of scenery, had put on her nightwear, stretched out on the bed and promptly fallen asleep. Luckily, she’d remembered to pencil in the next day’s pertinent info before heading for dreamland at the early hour of 6:00 p.m.

Her stomach growled, a reminder that she hadn’t eaten since yesterday’s lunch. Food would wait, though.

If it’s morning, get up, shower, dress.

She found it simpler to follow the instructions in her notebook. Improvisation could lead to disaster, like the time she’d ignored the direction to dress before her morning appointment. She’d showed up for a meeting with one of Ryan Fortune’s attorneys in baby doll pajamas. Lucky for her, it had been in a conference room at the rehab center, rather than a downtown San Antonio law office.

Climbing out of bed, she noted she was wearing those very same baby dolls. Nancy had picked them out, as she’d picked out most of Linda’s limited wardrobe. These were a pale peach, thin cotton. Little shorts barely covered her rear, while the top was sleeveless, with tiny pintucks on the bodice. She made a face at her reflected image in the mirror over the dresser on the other side of the room. Her body was still too thin, and the childish pajamas made her look twelve instead of thirty-three.

In addition to having the figure of a preteen, the years she’d been semiconscious didn’t show on her skin. She had the complexion of a twenty-something, and she supposed she should be grateful for that.

Her stomach growled again.

Shower, dress, she reminded herself again. Bathroom is across the hall.

As she pushed open the bedroom door, the door across the hall—the bathroom door—opened.

A man stood before her.

Her mouth dropped, but no sound came out. He was big. Big and naked, except for a pale green towel wrapped low on his hips. Damp, curling hair was scattered across his wide chest and more of the stuff created a thin line between rippling abdominal muscles. As she stared, steam curled out from behind him. He looked like an erotic genie emerging from a bathroom-size bottle.

Too late, she crossed her arms over the thin cotton that covered her breasts.

Not that he was looking at them. Instead, he was studying her face, his body perfectly still, as if she were a wild animal he was trying not to startle.

“Good morning,” he said softly. “I thought you were still asleep.”

She took a step back.

He went even stiller, if that was possible. “I’m Emmett, do you remember?”

“Of course I remember,” she scoffed, taking another step back into the bedroom. Then she slammed the door shut between them.

She did remember who he was. But in the confusion of the move, she’d forgotten something else. She reached for her pencil and her notebook and sat down on the edge of the mattress. There, she scratched out some lines she’d written and wrote some new ones.

YOU HAVE MOVED.

You live in the Armstrongs’ guest house now WITH EMMETT JAMISON. Bathroom is across the hall AND REALIZE THAT HE MIGHT BE IN THERE AHEAD OF YOU.

If it’s morning, get up, shower, dress.

DON’T FORGET TO WEAR A ROBE.

Her turn in the shower gave her time to reabsorb the fact that she had a housemate. The small tiled enclosure retained a masculine scent that she found not unpleasant, and she was happy to see that he hadn’t rearranged the various bottles that she’d set upon the high window ledge.

After adjusting the spray and getting inside—making sure she was properly naked—she removed the red cap of the shampoo, the blue cap of the conditioner and the yellow cap of the finishing rinse. As she completed using each one, she’d replace the cap. That way, by the shower’s end, she’d be certain she’d completed her hair routine and not emerge with a head of soapsuds as she’d done a time or two before.

The little ritual freed her concentration to focus on Emmett again. He was going to act as her net for her first four weeks of living in the Armstrongs’ guest house. If she “fell” in any way, he was supposed to be there to catch her. To that end, she’d given him permission to talk to her rehab counselors about what to expect during this transition period. It was embarrassing, but she’d had plenty of practice dealing with embarrassment in the last months.

It wasn’t as if he was really a man. Not to her, anyway. To her he was a tool, that was all. While they lived together, she’d consider him like…another appliance. Blow-dryer, toaster, Emmett Jamison. An appliance that appeared incredibly sexy when he was half-naked, sure, but an appliance all the same.

It wasn’t as if he appeared impressed with, or even aware of, her femaleness, which only made it simpler to overlook the fact that he was a living, breathing, very attractive male specimen. It made it easier to face him, too, when she found him in the kitchen after she’d finished her shower and changed into a pair of jeans, T-shirt and running shoes.

“Coffee?” he offered, standing beside the countertop, a glass carafe in his hand.

Appliance, all right, she thought, suppressing a smile. She took the mug he held out to her with a murmured thanks. Then they both sat down at the small kitchen table. He pulled a section of the newspaper toward him at the same time that he pushed a heaping basket of fruit toward her.

She took a banana as he proceeded to read. Yes, her very own vending machine, one that dispensed coffee and fruit at convenient intervals. She could get used to this.

Then she thought with an interior grimace, she was used to this. One of the reasons she was supposed to live independently was to learn to do for herself. To that end, she pushed back her chair to top off her coffee mug. Then she took the few steps across the room to refill Emmett’s.

He looked up. “Thank you.”

Not one appliance she’d ever been acquainted with had eyes as green as bottle glass. Nor those inky lashes that looked as soft as the matching dark hair on his head. Without thinking, she put out her hand and ran her palm over the tickly, upstanding brush.

He froze.

Too late, she snatched back her hand. Heat burned her face. “Sorry. I’m sorry.”

Those lashes dropped over his green eyes. “Don’t worry about it.” He turned the page of the newspaper, seemingly fascinated by a full-size ad for the grand opening of a quilting store.

“I just wanted to feel your hair,” she said, trying to explain the unwarranted action. Her face burned hotter. “I mean, I—”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said again. Calmly.

At the rehab center, the counselors and therapists very likely told him that sometimes brain-injured people did inappropriate things because their injuries affected their impulse controls. She’d heard about it from her counselors and witnessed it herself among other patients. Before now, she’d never personally shown that particular symptom.

Linda slipped into her seat and slunk low in her chair, willing her embarrassment away. It was no big deal, she told herself. Not when he was a mere helper, like a toaster, like a vending machine.

He was still staring at the quilting store ad. And she could smell him now, too. Over the scent of the coffee beans she caught that tangy, masculine fragrance that she’d inhaled in the shower. Appliance? Nice try, Linda, but he was all too obviously a man, not a machine.

A man who had willingly given up four weeks of his personal life to live with her.

Why? For the first time, the question blazed to life in her mind. She straightened in her chair.

It should have made her wonder before, she realized, that day at the rehab center. But brain-injured people were often self-centered. As they struggled to recover what skills they could and to learn coping mechanisms for those they’d never regain, their focus was inward, their energy directed toward themselves. That day when he’d volunteered to stay here with her in the guest house, she hadn’t really stopped to consider what the situation meant to him.

It had to be a sign of the progress she’d made that she was suddenly, unquenchably curious about the man seated across the table from her.

It might even explain her fixation on his scent and her odd compunction to explore the texture of his hair.

“Emmett?”

He grunted; then, when she didn’t continue, he looked up.

God, those green eyes were incredible. She almost lost her train of thought. “Why are you here?” she asked.

His eyebrows lifted. “You don’t remember?”

She shook her head. “You never said, not really. You mentioned a promise, actually two promises, that you’d made, but not why you’d made them.”

He took a moment to wrap his hand around his coffee mug and take a deep drink. “Ryan was a not-so-distant relative of mine. We became close during the last few months of his life. When he asked me to do something for him—which meant promising to help you—I couldn’t say no.”

She frowned. There was more, she was sure of it. “Are you from around here?”

He shrugged. “Not really. I’ve not lived in Texas for a long time. My last permanent address was Sacramento, California. I was assigned to the FBI field office there. But I’ve been on personal leave from the Bureau for the last several months.”

In her long-ago life, she’d been a government agent herself. It was part of that muzzy past of hers, and another of those jagged-edged pieces that she was trying to integrate into some sort of current identity. But as distant as those memories were, she didn’t think an agent taking personal leave for several months was a usual thing. For some reason, she hesitated to voice the question.

“Why would Ryan choose you to make such a promise?” she asked instead. “And why couldn’t you say no?”

He waited a beat, staring down into his coffee. Then he looked back up, straight into her eyes. “I don’t know why he chose me, but the reason I couldn’t say no was because of the hell my brother put him through in those last weeks of his life. The man known as Jason Wilkes, the man who has murdered four people and the man who kidnapped Lily Fortune in February, is my brother.”

The bleak expression in his eyes and the raspy note in his voice told her more. Told her more than she wanted to know. It made clear that it was no machine across the table from her. No, she couldn’t dismiss him that easily. For the next four weeks, she’d be sharing close quarters with a living, breathing, feeling man.

Emmett knew he had to be gentle with Linda, but then he’d gone ahead and put her in startled-doe mode twice during their first morning together. Once, when he’d surprised her in the hall outside the bathroom; the second time, when he’d told her about Jason.

He was still trying to apologize for it later that morning as he drove her to the grocery store. “Look, I’m really sorry about springing that information about my brother on you.”

She waved her free hand as she scribbled another item on her grocery list in her lap. “You didn’t spring anything on me. I knew about Lily, of course, and have heard mention about the other crimes. I just didn’t know of the connection with you.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

“Will you stop that? I’m not some fragile flower, Emmett, that you’re duty-bound to shield from the sun and wind. I’m supposed to be getting used to the world, remember?”

But, damn it, he knew the world was full of fragile flowers and the deadly forces out to do them in. The Jessica Chandler case had proved that to him beyond all doubt. The evil done by his brother Jason only underscored it.

Still, Linda could be as stubborn as she was fragile. Once inside the store, she insisted on pushing the cart, her grocery list clutched in one hand. “I can handle this,” she told him, wrestling with the cart’s wobbly wheels. “Do me a favor and keep your distance.”

So he trailed her, never losing sight of her blue jeans and the wave of blond hair that fluttered down her back. She was thin, but with a few more pounds she’d be rounded in all the right places, he decided. And despite her slenderness, her breasts were full. He’d noticed them beneath the transparent cotton of those girlie pajamas she’d been wearing that morning—and then immediately felt guilty for it.

But the young man standing nearby and stocking the breakfast cereal didn’t seem to suffer the same pangs of conscience. Emmett watched his bold gaze flick over Linda, checking off face, breasts, legs, then wander back to linger on her chest.

Forgetting her admonition, Emmett strolled up behind her. “Everything okay, honey?” he asked, shooting a warning look at the cocky kid and placing a hand on Linda’s shoulder.

She jumped. “What?”

He soothed her with a gentle stroke of his palm. “Everything okay?”

“I…sure. What…?” A flush tinged the fair skin of her cheeks.

Emmett smiled when the stock boy took the hint and returned to his work. “The what is that pimple-faced Lothario who was leering at you a second ago.” Beneath his hand, her arm felt warm and her bones delicate.

Her gaze jumped to the kid, then back to his face. “No,” she said. “I’m old enough to be his mother.”

He laughed and couldn’t stop himself from stroking her arm. “Not a chance.” There was nothing the least bit matronly about the soft mouth, the gleaming length of blond hair, those breasts that didn’t show much beneath the T-shirt she wore but that he could remember so well from the morning—

He dropped his hand with a silent curse at himself. He was supposed to be Linda’s protector, not another lecher like the damn kid up the aisle. “Go on ahead with your shopping.”

Another wide-eyed glance, and then she turned away from him to push the cart onward. In the next aisle she paused again, staring at the array of soup cans and sauce jars. Emmett kept his distance, staying several paces behind as she moved on to the bread and rolls, and then the produce section.

It was when she’d lingered there for several frozen minutes that he realized there was nothing in the bottom of the cart. Nothing. Not one item had made it from the shelves into her basket. In that same instant, she started pushing the cart again, moving in rapid strides down the aisle and then out the doors of the store. In her wake, her shopping list fluttered to the blacktop parking lot. He swooped it up, then broke into a jog, catching up with her just as she shoved the cart into a corral of others.

“Linda?”

She whirled, staring at him as if it were the first time she’d seen him. In her wide eyes he saw the unmistakable sheen of tears. Her lower lip trembled.

“Are you all right?” he asked. Stupid question. She wasn’t all right. She looked frightened and upset and he didn’t know what she needed or how to help her. Without knowing what else to do, he offered her the page of lined paper with its neat column of items. “You dropped this.”

Her fingers drew the list from his. “There’s so many choices,” she whispered, staring down at it. “I wrote cornflakes, but there is more than one brand and then so many other kinds of flakes that I couldn’t make up my mind which box I wanted. And bread. Wheat bread, white bread, butter-top, multigrain…”

Her voice trailed off as a single tear tracked down her cheek.

She was killing him. Killing him. “It’s okay. We’ll figure it out.” He should have taken her to a smaller store her first time, he thought. A mom-and-pop place where she wouldn’t be overwhelmed. “We’ll go home now and figure it out later.”

“No.” Her spine straightened and she lifted her chin, the wet trail of that tear still evident. “No, I can do it.”

And damn if she didn’t. With that stem of hers stiffened, his fragile flower took herself back into the grocery store. This time he stayed by her side, directing the cart through the aisles and limiting her selections to one or two when she seemed confused or uncertain. They made it back to the car thirty-five minutes later, both of them, he figured, exhausted.

But she still helped load the bags into the back of his truck. Then, as he approached the passenger’s door to unlock it for her, he caught sight of her tired, yet elated grin.

“What?” he asked, but he was almost smiling himself, infected by the sense of accomplishment he could see she was feeling. “Pretty proud of yourself, huh?”

She nodded, her grin widening. “Pretty proud of myself, huh. I know it might seem like a small thing to you, but—”

He put his hand over her mouth. “It’s no small thing, I know.” The warmth of her lips moved against his fingers, and shafts of heat raced across his skin and down his back. He thought of her in those flimsy pajamas again and had to step away.

He looked down at his still-tingling hand. “Did you say something?”

She closed the gap between them. “I said thank you.” And as if it were the most natural thing in the world, Linda Faraday went into his arms.

Technically, he supposed she hugged him, but because his hands closed around her slender back, she was against him, warm and secure within the circle of his body.

It was innocent gratitude on her part, that never-say-die protective instinct on his.

Except that when he breathed in the golden-sunshine scent of her hair, when he felt her heartbeat through his palms, it was more than protection that rose within him.

It was lust, and it was only going to complicate everything.

Three

Linda’s first day of “independent” living included more dependence than she’d counted upon. But Emmett—the man, not the machine—helped make her first grocery store experience a success. After unloading the food, a light lunch and a much-needed nap, she decided that the morning’s accomplishment had given her the courage to take a first step toward tackling the most difficult item on her make-a-life-for-herself list.

It was time for her to try acting like a mother.

She found Emmett in the spare bedroom, tightening the bolts on a treadmill that sat in one corner of the room. He was dressed as she was, in jeans and a T-shirt, though he filled his out much better than her. It took her another moment to look away from him and notice the other pieces of gym equipment in evidence—a pyramid of free weights, three sizes of stability balls, a large, rolled-up mat. “What’s all this?” she asked.

“I like to work out,” he answered. “You need to. Nancy and Dean agreed to let me outfit this room as a home gym.”

“I used to pride myself on my good condition,” she remembered, frowning at her reflection in the mirrored closet doors. “Now I’m more stick girl than cover girl.”

“You’ve missed the new trend in cover girls,” Emmett replied, leaning one arm against the machine. “For your information, stick is in. But the treadmill is ready to go if you want to give it a whirl.”

She shook her head. “Not now. I came to ask another favor of you.”

“That’s what I’m here for, Linda.”

It didn’t sit well with her, his promise to Ryan or not. “I’m going to find some way to pay you back.”

“Maybe I can think of something myself,” he said.

She stilled. There was a deep note in his voice that made her think… But no, he wasn’t thinking of her in female terms. Why would he, when she was a woman who couldn’t pick out cornflakes without crying first?

“Well, um, until then…” Heat was crawling up her neck and she cursed the silly turn of her thoughts. “I was hoping you could give me a ride to Ricky’s school. I thought I’d pick him up today.”

“Sure.” Emmett straightened and then reached down and stripped off his T-shirt.

Linda stepped back, staring at the broad expanse of male body caught in her gaze. “W-what are you doing?”

His eyebrows lifted. “Changing my shirt. I got grease on this one.”

“Oh. Well.” She couldn’t argue with that, nor could she take her eyes off her second up-close-and-personal view of a half-naked man in one day. Now that she thought of it, it was her second up-close-and-personal view of a half-naked man in a decade.

Another flush of heat rushed over her skin, and her breath made a silent whoosh of escape from her lungs. The fact was, she hadn’t been thinking of herself in female terms, but now it seemed as if her freedom from the rehab facility had freed something else—the knowledge that the past ten years hadn’t damaged her hormones.

Emmett paused beside her on his way out of the room. “Do you feel okay?”

His skin was golden and smooth, and the route from his muscled shoulder to the bulge of his rock-hard bicep was fascinating. She swallowed. “I, um, I’m fine.”

He reached out a finger and tapped her nose in a big-brotherly gesture. “Give me two minutes and then we’ll go.”

She spent the two minutes telling herself it was perfectly normal to have sexual feelings. It was a good thing. Another sign of progress, another optimistic portent that she could be a complete person at some future date, that she could be a whole woman—which would include, most importantly, being a mother.

Mother.

Just thinking the word caused her hormones to evaporate and everything else inside of her to freeze up. But she managed to follow Emmett to the car and tried to appear composed as he pulled into a parking spot near the school.

Linda checked her watch, licked her dry lips. “We’re early.”

Unrolling the windows with the electronic controls, Emmett shrugged. “No problem. We’ll wait.”

But waiting made her nervous. To distract herself, she scanned the cars nearby, checking out the other mothers waiting behind their wheels. They all seemed to be doing three things at once—talking on cell phones and filing their nails and scanning small calendars, or talking on cell phones, sipping bottled water and handing toys to small children in car seats. They wore their hair in perky short cuts or high perky ponytails.

She combed her fingers through her long, straight fall of blond hair. “Maybe I should do something with all this.”

“It’s beautiful.”

Her chin jerked toward Emmett. She’d forgotten he was there. “What?”

“Your hair. It’s beautiful. You’re beautiful.”

She felt herself flushing again. “You…I…I wasn’t fishing for compliments.”

“I’m stating facts. I saw how you were looking at the other women and it wasn’t so hard to follow your train of thought. You don’t need to worry about how you measure up.”

“You’re quite the observer,” she said, not sure that she liked that about him.

He shrugged. “Just some of Uncle Sam’s fine training. But you’re familiar with that, aren’t you? Ryan said you were an agent with the Treasury Department before your accident. That you were looking into some discrepancies in the books at Fortune TX, Ltd. and that’s how you met Cameron Fortune, Ricky’s father.”

“Cameron Fortune.” She repeated the name, then looked away. “I’ll bet your Uncle Sam training made it clear you shouldn’t get personal with the target of an investigation. That you shouldn’t fall in love with him and then do something as stupid as sleep with him.”

“Is that what happened?” Emmett asked quietly.

“I don’t know.” She scrubbed her hands over her face. “That’s what Ryan pieced together in the days after the accident. But when I came fully conscious, I couldn’t add any more to the story. My memory of those months at the Fortunes’ company are completely gone. I remember crossing the stage to receive my master’s degree when I was twenty-one years old. I remember going straight from there to the fifteen-week new agent training course. The next thing I remember is Nancy Armstrong talking to me, her face starting to sharpen in focus. I looked her straight in the eye and told her I wanted a Diet Pepsi, the first clear words I’d spoken in nine years. But between the diploma and the diet drink…almost nothing.”

“Nothing of your feelings for Cameron?”

Lifting her hands, she shook her head. “No.”

“Must make it hard to believe you’re a mother, then.”

She was afraid to admit to it. “But I am. Ricky’s been blessed to have Nancy and Dean. They’ve raised him as their grandson. But I’m his mother.” And, please God, let me start feeling like one any moment now. She cared about the little boy. It wasn’t hard to enjoy a rambunctious, normal kid, but mothering him… How did one learn the rules of that?

In the distance, a school bell rang. Around them, car doors opened and those confident, perky-haired mothers emerged, cell phones still in one hand, satchel-sized purses or bottles of water or toddlers in the other.

Taking a deep breath, Linda pushed down on the door handle. “I’ll be right back,” she told Emmett.

“I’ll come with you.”

A real mother wouldn’t need his presence, but she didn’t bother putting up even a token protest. Instead, she shoved her hands into the front pockets of her jeans and followed the trail of women heading toward the front gates of the school.

A troop of kids in yellow plastic hard hats emerged first, some carrying Stop signs. Linda glanced over at Emmett.

“Traffic patrol,” he said.

The traffic patrol! Of course it was the traffic patrol—the older kids of the elementary school who were charged with getting the littler ones safely across the street. As she watched, individuals peeled off the small crew to stake out the corners of the nearby intersection while more little kids poured out of the gates. Some headed for yellow school buses, some ran into the arms of the cell phone mothers, and groups gathered to cross the streets.

In the streaming parade of children emerging from the school, Linda couldn’t find Ricky.

Studying the faces around her, she made her way toward those open front gates, her shins bumped by plastic lunch boxes, her thighs thumped by backpacks that gave each little kid linebacker shoulders. “Ricky!” she heard a high voice yell, and she spun left to follow the sound, but lost the speaker in a sea of pigtails and porcupine-spiked hair.

She whirled back, telling herself she’d find her son, telling herself not to panic, telling herself even a person without a brain injury might be confused within the mass of chattering voices and afternoon exuberance. Breathe, Linda, breathe.

“Grrrr!” Something knee-high and wearing a gruesome, paper-plate-with-poster-paint mask came at her, eyes glittering, bitty fingers curled into claws. Linda drew instinctively away from it, and her back hit someone else’s solid frame.

Emmett’s. He held her against him with an arm across her waist. “It’s a jungle out here, isn’t it?” he said against his ear.

Even as his warm breath sent goose bumps sprinting down her neck, Linda relaxed against him. Just as it had in the grocery store, his presence calmed her and gave her renewed strength.

“I don’t see Ricky,” she said. “Could we have missed him?” The cell phone moms hadn’t missed their kids. Already they were climbing back into their cars, their kids in tow, their mouths still moving as they continued their calls.

“We didn’t miss him.” Emmett placed a hand atop each of her shoulders and turned her back to the intersection of streets. “See that Stop sign over there?”

Attached to the Stop sign was Ricky, his features almost lost beneath the plastic yellow brim of his hard hat. Her son, Ricky. Star of the traffic patrol.

At least, that was how it seemed to her. A swell of warmth rose inside her as she watched him nod to the group of children waiting on his corner. They hurried through the crosswalk under his serious gaze.

She looked up at Emmett. “He’s very good at that, don’t you think?”

“Truly a prodigy.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Are you laughing at me?”

He shook his head. “No. You just sounded so motherish.”

She considered the notion. “No, I don’t have the cell phone for it.”

“What?”

“Never mind.” She returned her gaze to Ricky, watching as he monitored the last of the crossers, then tucked his Stop sign under his arm and headed back for the school. She realized the instant he saw her.

“Hi,” she said, hoping she still had that motherish tone that Emmett had noted. Maybe if she sounded like a mother and acted the part, she’d really begin to feel like one. “Good day at school?”

“What are you doing here?” he asked, his eyes darting toward his patrol buddies and then back to her face.

“I thought maybe you’d like a ride home today, instead of taking the school bus. We could stop for…ice cream or something.” She glanced up for Emmett’s approval, but he’d drifted away from her and Ricky.

“I want to take the bus.” His glance flicked over to another boy, who was standing shoulder to shoulder with him. “Anthony and I always take the bus home together.”

She shrugged. “We could take Anthony with us. For the ice cream, too.”

Anthony’s dark-chocolate eyes widened. “I can’t go home with a stranger. My mother would kill me!”

“I’m not a stranger,” Linda started to say, but Ricky was pushing his friend toward the school.

“C’mon, Anthony, we have to put our signs and stuff away,” he said, herding the other boy off.

“Ricky, wait!”

He turned back reluctantly. “What do you want now?”

“I—” She sighed. “You really want to go home on the bus?”

“Yeah.”

She rubbed her palms against the front of her jeans. “Well, then, I guess that’s what you should do. I apologize for coming here without checking with you first. And I apologize about thinking I could take Anthony with us. I didn’t think. I didn’t realize—”

“That he’d get in trouble. A real mom would know that.” He turned and walked away from her.

A real mom would know that. A real mom.

She couldn’t fool Ricky, could she? Even if she sounded like a mom, acted like a mom, learned all the mom rules, none of those would get her anywhere if Ricky himself didn’t want the mother in his life to be her.

Emmett didn’t need the skills of observation he’d honed through his FBI experience to know that Linda’s conversation with Ricky hadn’t gone well. Not only had she walked away without the boy, she’d spent the entire ride back home in a deep silence.

He’d let her stew, because he didn’t know what else she needed.

Back at the guest house, when she asked him to show her how to use the new treadmill, he’d hoped the exercise would exorcise the demons that were plaguing her.

Instead, they seemed to be punishing her.

She’d already been on the machine for thirty minutes, her speed increasing from a walk to a fast walk to a brisk jog, as if she were trying to outrun whatever was bothering her. The shorts and T-shirt she’d changed into clung to her perspiring body and the tendrils of hair around her face were wet.

Still, she kept on moving, her long ponytail swishing behind her back, her running shoes slap-slap-slapping against the treadmill’s belt.

Under the pretext of doing his own workout, he’d kept an eye on her. But he couldn’t pretend any longer that he wasn’t worried.

“Maybe you should quit,” he called from across the room over the machine’s hum.

She acted as if she didn’t hear him, so he set down the free weights he’d been pumping and strolled over to her. He stood right in front of the piece of equipment, ducking his head a little so that their gazes met. “Maybe you should quit,” he repeated.

“Believe me…I’m thinking…about it,” she panted out.

“Quit running,” he clarified, then leaned forward to reach the keypad where he could reduce the speed of the belt. “It’s time for your cooldown.”

She frowned at him, though her feet slowed. “Don’t need…a keeper,” she got out. “Used to be…fit. Very fit.”

“You’ll be fit again.” He punched the pad a second time, reducing the speed even more. “Unless you give yourself a heart attack first. And I charge extra for CPR.”

She made a face at him, even as she sucked in a couple of long breaths. “You don’t believe me… Used to be one tough woman.”

Her pace had slowed to a walk, and he let his gaze linger on her slim legs and their long stride. Toughness wasn’t an antidote to evil and tragedy, he thought to himself, frowning. Ryan had been tough. Lily Fortune was tough. But they hadn’t escaped the darkness the world could deal out. Jessica Chandler had been tough, too—the sweetest, toughest victim he’d ever tried to help—but in the end she’d been just that—a victim.

“Secret agent accountant.”

That brought his attention back to the present. “What did you say?”

Walking with her hands on her hips, she took another deep breath. “That’s how I saw myself. Sure, I had degrees in the dry fields of finance and business, but when I was recruited as an agent for the Treasury Department, I saw myself as Linda Faraday, secret agent accountant.”

It made his lips quirk. “You were young, weren’t you?” he murmured.

“Our new agent course included firearms as well as physical training. Not as intense as what you G-men go through, but I thought I could handle myself.”

Her fingers touched the keypad, and the treadmill’s hum stopped. Linda stepped off the machine and grabbed the small towel hanging on its handrails. She blotted her face with it, her words coming out muffled. “Apparently it wasn’t physical training that I needed, but emotional.”

She was talking about her affair, her affair with the subject of an investigation—Cameron Fortune. Sudden anger snapped inside Emmett, surprising him with its stinging lash. Ryan’s brother had been twice her age and canny, no doubt. The son of a bitch, Emmett thought. The son of a bitch took advantage of Linda and then irrevocably changed her life.

But Emmett kept his emotions off of his face and out of his voice. “He was a handsome and charming man, by all reports.”

She looked at him over the towel, strangling it between her hands. “That’s supposed to make me feel better?” she asked, her voice bitter. “The person I thought I was wouldn’t be swayed by good looks and charm.”

Though he was lousy at light banter, he tried to ease the tension of the moment. “Oh, good. Then maybe I have a chance with you.”

She didn’t crack a smile. “As if I would know what to do if I had you. I was no good as Linda Faraday, secret agent accountant. Ricky doesn’t think anything of me as a mother. I doubt I’m much of a woman, either.”

Despite those words, her flowery, female scent was in the air, tickling his nose, shaking awake the lust that he’d felt when he’d held her in his arms that morning. He couldn’t stop himself from pushing back a damp tendril of her bright hair. “Give yourself time.”

“I can’t, don’t you see? I’ve lost so much time already. In another ten years, Ricky won’t need a mother.”

What could he say to that? What could he do to help? Unfortunately for Linda, he wasn’t the pep-talk type. His true expertise lay in looking at the dark side of life. “What’s the alternative?” he asked.

She spun away. “Giving up.”

The two words froze him. Not because he didn’t understand the impulse, but because he’d done it himself. After the Jessica Chandler case, so closely following his brother Chris’s murder, he’d given up and run away to the cabin in the Sandias. If he had his way, he’d probably still be there. Still be half-drunk. Still be full of pain.

Now he was sober. And still full of pain.

Linda spun back. “But I can’t. I won’t. I have a responsibility to Ricky, an obligation to Nancy and Dean who never gave up on me. Do you see?”

“I do.” It was the truth. “Sometimes what keeps us going is not what we want, but what we owe to other people.”

She studied his face. “The promise you made to Ryan.”

“And to myself. To my parents. To the memory of my brother Christopher.”

Linda winced. “I’m sorry.” She touched a hand to her forehead, then laid her fingers on his arm. “The injury…I’m still working on not thinking everything revolves around me, me, me. I’m complaining, but you’re in a bad place, too, and yet you’re here, playing Mary Poppins to me.”

He raised his eyebrows. “As long as you don’t ask me to fly you around with my umbrella.”

Her fingers tightened on him and her touch was once again warming his blood, that lust distracting him. “Seriously, Emmett. I know I’m not quite a whole person, let alone a sounding board, but I’m here if you want to talk.”

“I’m not much of a talker. I was always the lone wolf in the family.”

“You’re in luck,” she said with a half smile. “I practiced my silence for many years.”

Then she showed him how good she was at it. She sat down on the edge of the treadmill’s ramp, then patted the spot beside her. He surprised himself by obeying, seating himself next to her while the quiet grew around them.

She crossed her arms on top of her bent knees and rested her cheek there. He gazed at the back of her head while listening to the sounds of spring outside. Birds were trilling, peeping, cheeping. A branch, jostled by the warm wind, scratched against the glass of the window. Dogs barked in the distance.

A sense of the season settled over him. Springtime. Renewal. Hope.

Linda’s eyes were closed and he wondered if she was asleep. Her lashes were dark brown and curled against the soft pink of her cheeks.

“You’re still a woman, you know,” he murmured.

She wasn’t asleep, at least not all the way. Her lashes rose and she sat up, slanting him a half-drowsy glance. “You think?”

“I know.” Their gazes held. Darker pink color tinged her fair skin. His hand reached out and he palmed her warm cheek. “Shall I prove it to you?”

She swallowed. “Not because you’re obligated.”

He shook his head. “Not because I’m obligated.” But because he didn’t like to see her sad. Because he thought he could take one worry off her mind. Oh, yeah, and then there was that lust. He’d known it would complicate things, but right now he didn’t care.

Leaning close, he touched his lips to hers.

She jerked against his hand, as if he’d stung her, but he’d been gentle. He was gentle. So, so gentle.

For a moment, she kissed like a child might, her mouth pursed and stiff, but then she softened. Her lips parted, but he didn’t pretend it was an intimate invitation. Instead, he let her warm up to the kiss, let her warm up to him, without doing any more than keeping his mouth pressed close to hers.

“You should breathe,” he whispered against her mouth. “You still need air.”

“Is that why I see stars?”

It made him smile, and he drew back to look at her.

She traced his lips with two fingers. “You don’t do that often enough. Smile, I mean.”

“Keep kissing me and maybe I will.”

But she was shaking her head. “I have your number, you know. I’m getting smarter by the minute when it comes to you.”

“How’s that?”

She straightened away from him. “You’re sweet.”

He stared at her. “Sweet? You’re kidding, right?”

“You’re sweet.”

“I’m cynical. Cold. Distant. Determined. Ask anyone.”

Shaking her head, she rose to her feet. “I don’t need to. I was feeling low and not very confident and you kissed me. That’s sweet.”

“I didn’t do it to be sweet!”

She had the wide blue eyes of a baby. “Then why did you?”

“Because…” It had nothing to do with sweetness. It was because he thought she was beautiful and sexy, which, if she wasn’t so sweet herself, she’d see proof of in the tight fit of his now uncomfortable jeans.

“Told you.” With a little grin, she spun on one foot and sauntered out, her hips swishing with a sassy little twitch.

That womanly touch was almost worth being called sweet. Almost.

“Don’t fool yourself,” he called after her. “I’m cynical. Cold. Distant. Determined. Just wait and I’ll prove it to you.”

The bathroom door closing was her answer.

He was still smiling—smiling again!—when his cell phone rang. It sat on a low table he’d pushed to the side of the room, so he made a long reach for it.

“Jamison, here.”

“And here, too,” a voice said.

Emmett forgot about spring and sunshine. Darkness closed in on him again. He felt it, smelled it, sensed the sulfur whiff of evil in the air. Striding to the doorway of the exercise room, he glanced down the hall to keep watch on the bathroom door. To make sure Linda was safe.

“Where the hell are you, Jason?”

“Do you think I called to tell you, little brother? Then you’re stupider than I thought.”

Emmett gritted his teeth at his brother’s taunting. In a perverse sense, Jason was entitled to his arrogance. The police had had him in custody once and then he’d escaped to kidnap Lily Fortune. Later, even with experienced men like Emmett in the mix, the FBI had lost him during the ransom exchange. And an agent had lost his life.

“We figured you’d be on your way to the South Pacific or South America with the ransom money by now,” Emmett said, calming his voice.

“You’d like me out of the country, wouldn’t you?”

What Emmett would like was to find his brother and stop him once and for all. It was what he’d vowed to do. Cynical, cold, distant, determined. If Linda could look inside him right now, she’d have no doubt about the kind of man he was.

“I’d like to know why you called, Jason.”

“I read this morning’s Red Rock newspaper.”

There was a clue. His brother was near enough to Red Rock to have easy access to the local paper. What it might have said, though, Emmett had no idea. Since he was in San Antonio now, he read the San Antonio paper. But Jason couldn’t know what city he was in and Emmett certainly wasn’t about to tell him. His brother was smart enough without providing him any aid. “I didn’t get a chance to read it yet myself.”

“Didn’t get a chance to read it,” Jason mocked, his voice rising. “You don’t need to read it to know that Ryan Fortune left you a bundle of cash and stock options.”

Apparently some of the details of Ryan’s will had been leaked to the press. It might have irritated Emmett if it hadn’t also brought Jason out of the woodwork. “Hey, it wasn’t my choice, Jase. That was Ryan’s doing.”

“Why should you get any of the Fortune money when it was me who worked so hard for it?”

Jason had thought himself entitled to the Fortune wealth since they were kids, and their grandfather, Farley Jamison, had been obsessed with the money as a means to fund his grandiose political aspirations. “But you have some of the Fortune money—Lily’s ransom,” Emmett pointed out.

“I don’t care about that,” Jason snapped.

Emmett frowned. “You don’t care about the money?”

“Not as much as I care about taking you down, little brother. Keep looking over your shoulder, Emmett, because I’m coming after you. Then I’ll have my reward. And my revenge.”

The call clicked off. Emmett remained standing, staring at the phone in his hand. Well, well, well. This put a new spin on things.

The man Emmett had promised himself to stop had just promised to stop him.

Fine, he thought.

May the best man win.

Four

Emmett sat at the kitchen table the next morning, the last of a pot of coffee now a final swallow in the bottom of his mug. The dregs of black liquid were as dark as his mood after a sleepless night going over Jason’s phone call.

I’m coming after you, his brother had said.

As if Emmett were like the proverbial sitting duck, waiting for his brother to take him out.

He wasn’t afraid of Jason. But there was no doubt the other man was wily and Emmett had others to think of besides himself. However, Jason didn’t have a clue as to where Emmett was residing at the moment and would never think to look for him in the Armstrong’s guest house. Jason didn’t know that the older couple or Ricky and Linda even existed, so Emmett was reasonably sure they were safe from Jason’s latest threat.

But damn, the truth was Emmett was just sitting around.

Taking care of this promise regarding Linda meant he wasn’t taking care of the problem that was Jason. It put the ball in his brother’s court—I’m coming after you—and Emmett didn’t like it. At all. He was used to controlling the action, not letting others control him.

“G’morning.”

His gaze lifted in time to see a sleepy-eyed Linda enter the room. She was wearing a thick robe and terry-cloth slippers, had bedhead and a pillowcase crease across her left cheek.

He grunted, tightening his grip on his coffee mug as desire pinballed through his system. For some inconvenient reason, she gave him a bad case of the gimmes.

She squinched her eyes at him and pushed back a hank of her iron-straight, golden hair. “You are Emmett Jamison, yes?”

Was this another symptom of her brain injury? Had she forgotten him, or was she joking around? “The last I checked, that’s me.”

She nodded. “Good. I thought so, but the way you greeted me set me off my stride for a second.”

“The way I greeted you?”

“That cheerful good morning grunt.”

“Oh.” She was joking around. “Sorry.”

Her hand waved. “No apology necessary. I’m not much of a morning person myself. It’s just that after I came out of my…condition, I found myself often confused by new and unfamiliar faces. So I learned to gauge whether I was already acquainted with someone by the warmth of their response to me. Yours was a sort of stranger-type grunt.”

Funny, how she could make him half grin and feel guilty at the same time. Then more guilty when he saw that she was staring at the now-empty coffeepot. “Let me,” he said, starting to rise.

“No, no, no.” She waved him down again. “I can do this. I can make coffee. We had a practice kitchen in rehab. Like kindergarten class, you know? We played house in order to relearn how to do simple tasks.”

He watched her trudge to the counter. She pulled close the bean grinder he’d left on the tiled surface and lifted off the clear plastic top to reveal plenty of freshly ground beans. Then she removed the basket from the coffeemaker. Inside was the used filter and a mess of wet grounds.

She stared at them. Then her gaze moved to the grinder. Back to the full basket.

Like yesterday in the grocery store, he could feel the confusion radiate off her slim body. Her spine became as straight as a steel rod, and her shoulders looked stiff. Something in the middle of his chest hurt.

He was almost out of his chair when she spoke, her voice tight. “Remind me again. What should I do?”

Breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding slid out of him in a silent whoosh. “Throw the old grounds and filter into the wastebasket under the sink,” he said, careful to keep his voice free of anything but information. “We put the fresh filters in that clear jar over there by the grinder.”

She crossed to the sink and he watched her reach for the wastebasket even as he pretended not to. He held his breath again and caught himself—barely—before telling her not to throw out the plastic basket along with the old filter and beans.

She caught herself—barely—before doing just that. Emmett let out a silent cheer as she rinsed the basket and then crossed back to the coffeemaker. “I knew that,” she said conversationally as she fitted in a clean filter. “That part about throwing away the used filter and grounds. But we’d only practiced with a clean coffeemaker in rehab and little things like that can stump me. I know there’s something I should do, and if it was on a multiple-choice test, I would recognize the answer. But sometimes I can’t dredge up the information from wherever it’s sleeping in my consciousness.”

His chest was hurting again and he said the first thing that came into his head. “I admire you for being able to ask for help. That can’t be easy.”

“It isn’t easy.” She finished preparing the coffee, then set the switch to On. “I don’t want to need help. I don’t want to admit I need help almost as much. But it’s a fact of life until I get more practice.”

She moved to the oven and set the timer, then turned to meet his gaze. “Strategies. Props. That’s how I get by. One of my strategies is to set a timer to remind myself to stay on task. Five minutes for coffee. When it goes off, I’ll check the maker. Without the alarm I might sit here for a while and never remember what I’m waiting for. Unless I write it down in my notebook—another of my favorite props.”

Her matter-of-factness was just something else to admire. No whining, no play for pity. The counselors at her rehab facility had told him about Linda’s strategies and props in order to prepare him for helping her out—and they’d also let him know that she was well on her way to needing them less and less—but they hadn’t prepared him for how watching her use them would leave him feeling so…

There weren’t words for it.

So, ignoring that ache in his chest, he grunted again and pulled a section of the San Antonio paper in front of him. He didn’t look up until the kitchen alarm went off and she was back at the table after filling up his mug and then her own.

“Thank you,” he said.

“That’s my line,” Linda replied. “I don’t think I was that good at being grateful pre traumatic brain injury, but it seems to be another skill I’m slowly learning to acquire.”

“You don’t—”

“I am, Emmett. Grateful and beholden. To the Armstrongs. To you. I don’t know how I’ll ever repay any of you.”

“Linda—”

“Don’t tell me I’m wrong. My brain isn’t that dead.”

“Wait a sec—”

“Oh, come on.”

“But—”

“Emmett, what could you possibly get out of this situation?”

“Lessons in how to edge a word into the conversation when sharing the breakfast table with a woman?”

Her velvety blue eyes rounded over the rim of her coffee mug. Then she laughed. “Okay. Apologies next.”

“Those are unnecessary, too.”

“Well, I’m certain you don’t need practice facing women across a breakfast table.”

“What about across a kitchen table?” He leaned back in his chair to study her. “Outside of my mother, you might be my first, come to think of it.”

Her eyes registered surprise again. “No wife? No ex?”

“Never married.”

“Fiancée?”

He shook his head.

“No lovers?” she asked, her eyes rounding even more.

“Of course I’ve had lovers!” Maybe she was joking around again, but he discovered his ego couldn’t take the chance.

“Ah.” That little smile playing around her mouth told him she had been joking after all. “But no long-term lovers. Nobody you wanted to share a bathroom or a breakfast with.”

“I’m a pretty solitary guy. Have been my whole life.”

She nodded. “How old are you?”

“Thirty-one.”

“Hah,” she said, that little smile reclaiming her pretty lips. She put one elbow on the table and leaned toward him. “I’m older than you. Maybe you can learn something from me.”

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