Christie Ridgway – The Reckoning (страница 7)

“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?”