Her Honor-bound Lawman

Fifteen minutes later, Emma was sitting on the floor, holding Steffie and watching Sammy awkwardly push a walking toy in the shape of a train engine. He wasn’t taking steps on his own yet, but it wouldn’t be long. He’d just fallen and was deciding whether to cry or laugh when Tucker suddenly towered above them.

“I came to take you to your doctor’s appointment.”

“I can walk, Tucker. It’s only a few blocks. You didn’t have to interrupt your work.”

“You’re part of my work,” he said briskly.

She wished that weren’t so. She wished he’d come to drive her simply because he wanted to. “We have a few minutes before my appointment. There’s coffee in the kitchen if you want some. I’ll get the twins busy with something in the playpen and then we can go.”

Tucker looked down at the floor at Sammy and then at Steffie in Emma’s arms. “Right. A cup of coffee would be good. Come get me when you’re ready to leave.”

As Emma watched him walk away, she again wondered what made him so uncomfortable being in the midst of children. She vowed to herself she’d find out what it was.

Soon.

Chapter Two

On the way to the doctor’s office, Emma noticed Tucker was driving his truck rather than the sheriff’s vehicle. “Do you have any leads on the twins?”

He shook his head. “They seem to have dropped out of midair the same way you did. I thought finding the monogram on that rattle left with them was a real clue.”

Everyone but Tucker had missed the faint monogram on the sterling silver rattle that had been tucked in with the babies. It had led him to the McCormack estate and Quentin McCormack. But a DNA test had proved Quentin wasn’t the father.

“What happens now?” Emma asked.

“I have one more lead. Someone I haven’t interviewed yet. He’s the butler on the McCormack estate who hires additional help for parties and the like. He’s been away the past month or so on a family emergency, but he’s expected back soon. I’m hoping he might have seen or heard something, or has some clue as to why that rattle was with the babies.”

“Hannah’s talking about adopting them,” Emma said wistfully. “I’d love to consider it myself, but I can’t. Not until I know who I am.”

“I’m working on it, Emma,” Tucker said, his mouth forming a straight, terse line.

She reached over and touched his arm. “I know you are. I know you’re doing all you can.”

Some of the tension went out of his shoulders. “You should be hopping mad I haven’t found a clue about you.”

“I know you work hard at your job, Tucker. I just have to trust that something will turn up when it’s supposed to. Maybe I’ll get my memory back on my own. I’m going to talk to the doctor today about working harder on that.”

“He told you before not to push.”

“Yes, he did. But he didn’t say why. I need to feel I’m doing something positive to get my life back.”

When Tucker pulled up in front of the office complex where several doctors were housed, he didn’t let Emma off at the curb but climbed out and came around.

“Don’t you have to get back to the office?” she asked.

“I’ve been putting in a lot of late hours. My time is my own this afternoon. Unless they page me.”

“I don’t want you to waste your time waiting. I can find my way home…I mean to your house.” Tucker’s house was starting to feel like a home and she knew that was dangerous.

“You let me worry about my time. I’ll catch up on the latest issue of People magazine.” A small smile played across his lips.

She laughed. Once in a while she saw a lighter side of Tucker, a side that might have been prevalent at one time. Something else to explore, she thought as they walked up the sidewalk, side by side, her elbow gently brushing his. Even that faint contact was enough to make her totally aware of him, totally aware of herself as a woman.

Inside the doctor’s reception area, Tucker helped Emma with her royal blue coat, hanging it on a rack. It had been a present from Dana McCormack, Quentin’s wife, when the weather turned colder. Only the clothes she’d worn the night of the mugging were hers. Hannah and Dana, almost the same size as she was, had given her spare garments that were seeing her through. But she wished she could get a job and start earning money again. She loved volunteering at the day-care center, but she didn’t like depending on anyone else for the roof over her head and the food on her plate.

Tucker placed his hat on the rack above the coats and ran his hand through his hair. It was such thick, vibrant hair and she’d love to run her fingers through it. She’d love to…

Cutting off the thought, she headed for the receptionist’s window and checked in. Tucker had taken a seat, picked up a magazine and unzipped his jacket but hadn’t shed it.

She’d no sooner taken the chair beside him when the door opened from the inner offices and the nurse called her name. She followed the white-uniformed woman to an examining room where the brunette took her blood pressure and pulse and told her the doctor would be in in a few minutes.

When Dr. Weisensale came in, he gave her a broad smile. “How are you today?”

A fatherly gentleman with white hair and a gray-white beard, he had always been kind to her. “I’m frustrated. I need to get my memory back so I can get on with my life. Can we try hypnosis?”

Dr. Weisensale studied her pensively. “Have you had anymore flashbacks?”

She’d called him about the shadowy remembrance of hanging baby clothes on a washline, how it had seemed like a memory, but yet unreal, too. Maybe something out of her imagination instead. “No, not since I phoned you.”

“Do you ever feel as if you might remember? As if your last name and where you’re from are teetering right on the edge of your consciousness?”

“Sometimes. Especially when I’m with the twins at the day-care center. That’s what’s so confusing. I know I can’t be a mother, but maybe I was a nanny. Maybe I watched over children in my job. Everything about taking care of them comes so naturally.”

Again he studied her. “Emma, I want you to think about something. Sometimes amnesia has a physical cause and sometimes it doesn’t.”

“You’ve mentioned that before.”

“Your tests all came back clean and I want you to consider something. Sometimes amnesia around a trauma is self-induced. It’s a possibility that you had a life you don’t want to remember.”

Emma’s dismay must have shown on her face.

“I’m not saying that’s the actuality,” he went on, “but it’s something to think about.”

“I do want to remember, doctor.”

His expression was kind. “You think you do, but your subconscious might think otherwise. Still, the fact that you’re having any flashbacks is positive. I’d rather you waited to try hypnosis at least another month or two. I know how frustrating this must be, but you must be patient. It truly is better if you remember on your own.”

“But what if I never remember? I need to have a life, and I can’t have a life without a Social Security number!” When she said it, she realized how preposterous that sounded. But in a way it was true. She couldn’t work without one. She didn’t even know if she could take a driving test without one.

“I’m sure you fall under some kind of special circumstances and that can be remedied if the amnesia lasts.”

“I don’t want to owe other people, doctor. First Aunt Gertie took me in, now Tucker. It’s embarrassing sometimes.”

“Something tells me, Emma, that you were a very independent woman, whoever you were before this bump on the head. I’ll tell you what. Give it one more month. If you don’t have any significant flashbacks, if nothing has changed, I’ll contact a psychologist I know who’s trained in hypnotherapy. Fair enough?”

Another month under Tucker’s roof…unless she remembered on her own, unless he found another lead to her identity. But there was really nothing else she could do right now. “All right, another month. But then I see a hypnotherapist.”

When Emma appeared in the waiting room, Tucker saw she was frowning, and after she went to the receptionist’s window and spoke with her, she looked upset. But there was a couple sitting in the waiting room now and he wanted to talk to her in private. She took her coat from the rack with a determined yank and didn’t wait for Tucker to help her with it. Then she was out the door and down the walk toward the truck before he zipped his jacket.