The Reckoning. Christie Ridgway
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