Her Honor-bound Lawman

He didn’t have something else he’d rather do. That was the hell of it. He liked being with her. “A movie will be good for us both. What do you want to see? The theater here only has two screens, so we don’t have much of a choice.” Tucker mentioned the names of the two movies. One was full of gunfire and bombs, the other was purported to be a romantic comedy. They chose the romantic comedy.

But once inside the theater, Tucker felt as if he’d miscalculated on a lot of fronts. Only about ten people sat in the whole place, and there was an intimacy in the theater that might not have existed in a packed house. Tucker guided Emma to two seats in the middle of the center row. If they were going to have the place practically to themselves, they might as well pick the best vantage point.

Emma folded her coat on the seat next to her, and Tucker did the same with his jacket and hat. When they sank onto the cushioned seats, their arms brushed and they both moved away. Tucker sincerely hoped he could get engrossed in the movie so he’d forget about the woman beside him.

But forgetting didn’t come easy, not when her perfume wafted toward him on a cold draft, not when she looked so delicate and exciting outlined in the shadows. He tried to concentrate on the characters on the screen and their dialogue, but he glanced at Emma often and felt a strange longing to hold her hand. What a ridiculous notion for a thirty-seven-year-old man who’d sown wild oats, gotten married, divorced and sworn off relationships!

His long legs didn’t quite have enough room and after a while, he shifted. But his trouser leg brushed Emma’s skirt, and the charge that jolted through him could have lit up all of Storkville. The few people in the audience laughed from time to time but Tucker was too distracted to let clever quips sink in. And when the couple on the screen had their first prolonged kiss, his shifting had nothing to do with his long legs.

The movie seemed never-ending. Finally the music swelled and the couple on the screen jet-setted into the sunset. Tucker breathed a sigh of relief. But when he looked over at Emma, he saw she was brushing a tear away.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I love happy endings.”

“It’s a shame they’re not true to life,” he murmured.

“You don’t believe love conquers all?” Her eyes were wide with innocent curiosity.

“No. I believe we survive the best we can.”

“Tucker!” she scolded. “Life is about more than surviving.” A certainty in her soft voice enfolded his heart.

The lights went on in the theater and Tucker saw Emma’s belief shining in her eyes. What would it be like not to have a past, to have a slate as clean as a field of fresh snow? Would Emma change when she remembered who she’d been? Or would she still have an ideal notion of the way the world should be?

Rather than responding, he stood, set his hat on his head and shrugged on his jacket. Before she could protest, he lifted her coat and held it for her. With a murmured thanks, she slipped into it. His fingers lingered on her collar under her hair. Such soft, silky hair. He could imagine it spread across his pillow—

With a mental oath, he pushed up his seat and crossed the aisle.

They walked to Tucker’s truck in silence. At the passenger door, Emma looked up at the sky. It was a velvet black, sprinkled with hundreds of stars. A crisp wind blew her hair across her cheek. Tucker resisted the urge to gently finger it, to brush it away, and he opened her door.

Once he was seated beside her in the truck, he didn’t start the engine. Unlike the sheriff’s SUV with the bucket seats, his truck had bench seats and Emma was less than six inches away. “Emma, in the restaurant, I didn’t mean to be so…”

“Blunt?” she filled in. “That’s okay, Tucker. You’re right. Your life isn’t any of my business. It’s just hard for me to remember that when we’re living under the same roof and when you know every…detail about me.”

The way she said it, he knew she had something specific in mind and he could guess what it was. “Does it bother you that I know you’re a virgin?”

“No…yes…I don’t know,” she murmured as if she was embarrassed by discussing it. “I think it makes you look at me in a certain way, and that makes you think I need your protection.”

“Someone protected you before me, Emma. The doctor says he thinks you’re in your early twenties. It’s rare nowadays for girls to be virgins past high school graduation.” He shifted to face her more squarely. “I know you belong to someone.”

She shook her head. “You don’t know anything of the sort, and neither do I. Sometimes in the middle of the night, I think about where I came from, and you know what I’ve decided?”

“What?”

“That maybe I was a princess kept hostage in a high tower and somehow I escaped and ran to Storkville, and now here I am.”

In the glow of the parking lot lights, he could see her smile. Nothing in the world could keep him from brushing her hair away from her cheek, from leaning closer. “I wish I could believe in your version,” he said, his voice husky.

“Believe it, Tucker.” She raised her chin slightly and although he knew he shouldn’t, he couldn’t keep his lips from meeting hers.

Even though she’d told herself she wasn’t expecting another kiss, and she shouldn’t even want another kiss, she waited for Tucker and let the heat of his lips engulf her. There was so much heat in him, so much passion that swept through her as his tongue stroked hers.

Yet as easily as he’d bent to her, he abruptly pulled away. She wondered why…if he still thought another kiss was a mistake, until she became aware of voices and saw a couple approaching the truck on the driver’s side. Tucker’s lawman instincts must have alerted him.

As the couple passed Tucker’s window, Emma recognized them. They had been sitting a few rows in front of her and Tucker inside the movie theater. The girl’s hair was thick, auburn and straight, drifting down her back. It blew in the wind. Suddenly Emma’s head started to pound. A pain lanced through her right temple, and she brought her hand up to it reflexively.

“Emma? What’s wrong?”

She heard the murmur of Tucker’s voice, yet not his words. She was lost somewhere, somewhere black that turned to gray and then a picture. She was brushing auburn hair and braiding it. The pain in her temple became worse and she saw herself tying a small blue bow on the end of the braid. Just as quickly as the vision had come, it vanished, and Emma felt breathless and shaken.

Tucker was clasping her arm now. “Emma, tell me what’s happening.”

“I saw…I saw something.”

“That couple who passed by?”

“The woman…she…her hair—” She knew she wasn’t making any sense and she tried to think past the throbbing in her head. “I got a headache and then, and then I was brushing someone’s hair and braiding it. It was auburn, just like that girl’s.”

Tucker reached up to Emma’s temples and massaged gently. “Did you see anything else?”

“A blue ribbon. I was tying a blue ribbon on the braid.”

Tucker’s voice remained steady and calm. “Can you see yourself? How old you are?”

“It’s gone, Tucker. I can’t see anything now.”

His fingers were comforting and sensual and although her head still pounded, the pain was diminishing.

“See if you can get it back again.”

She tried. She tried to see it once more. But she couldn’t, and she shook her head.

Yet he kept probing. “How old were you?” he asked again.

“I…I don’t know.”

“Could you tell how old the girl was? Was she a child, a teenager?”

“Tucker, I don’t know,” she responded, frustrated now. “I could only see her hair…my fingers on her braid…and the ribbon.”

“Okay,” he murmured, pulling her close to him, letting her head rest on his shoulder. “Try to relax. If you let your thoughts scatter, maybe it will come back.”

She knew what he was thinking, that she was trying too hard to remember, that the harder she tried, the less she’d see. He was probably right. But her heart was still pounding, and her head hurt, and he felt so good and safe and strong as she leaned into him.