The Reckoning. Christie Ridgway

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СКАЧАТЬ 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. СКАЧАТЬ