he looked at her chart and then he looked at her. “What do you remember?”
She shook her head, swallowed the fear. She could go dark and not discuss this. That MO had worked for her for years now.
And how had she remembered that?
“Talk to me,” the doctor said, no longer in a playful mood. “We need to get you well.”
Emma nodded and decided it might be wise to cooperate. “Doc, I... I don’t remember anything much.”
“Do you know your name?”
She blinked, thought long enough to make the hammers go into overtime. “Emma?”
“Yes, you’re Emma Langston. That’s a start.” He gave her chart to the nurse. “Give it some time. We’ll do more tests and see how you progress. You’ve suffered a moderate but serious concussion, but you woke up within the one-to twenty-four-hour period, and that’s a plus. No swelling or bleeding on the brain. Another good thing. Temporary amnesia is common after a head injury, but we’ll monitor you while we wait it out.”
“I don’t have time to wait it out,” she replied, trying to get out of the bed. She knew one thing: she had to be somewhere. But where and why?
The doctor pushed her back down. “Whoa, you can’t go anywhere just yet. You’ve been unconscious for close to fifteen hours now.” Showing an edge of compassion, he added, “You’ll need some therapy. Head trauma is serious stuff.”
“I’ll be okay,” Emma said, already dizzy again. “I’ve been here that long?”
The doctor nodded. “They brought you in around midnight and now it’s five in the afternoon.”
“That’s long enough for me.”
“Let me be the judge of that.”
He asked some more questions. She gave feeble, weak answers. She couldn’t bluff her way out of this one.
Why am I here?
“Where am I?” she finally asked, wishing she could remember. “What city is this?”
He named the hospital. “You’re in Dallas, Texas. Do you remember where you came from?”
Shards of memories danced just out of her reach.
Dear Lord, help me. Help me in my time of need.
Funny, she remembered praying that same prayer long ago. For some reason, Emma wanted to cry. To curl up and cry, long and hard. But she didn’t cry, she reminded herself. That much she knew.
“That’s a loaded question,” she retorted, pushing away the lump in her throat. “But right now, I can’t answer it.”
Emma had to get out of this hospital. She’d come to Dallas for a reason, obviously. But...she couldn’t remember what she was doing here.
Then she did remember something. Grabbing the nurse’s arm, she said, “You mentioned a detective. What’s he got to do with this?”
“He’s been waiting most of the day to talk to you,” the nurse replied. “I can send him away.”
“No. Send him in,” Emma said. “Maybe he can help me piece things together.”
The nurse looked skeptical but finally nodded. “I’ll ask Dr. Sherrington.”
“No. I said let me speak to the detective. Now.”
“I’ll go and find him,” the nurse responded.
Emma sank back against the pillow, drowsiness tugging at her consciousness. She had to talk to that detective. Had she done something wrong? Or did he know who’d done this to her?
She waited, holding her breath, her prayers as scattered as her memories. The detective might be the one person who could tell her why she had such a strong urgency in her heart to get out of here.
He flashed his badge. “Detective Ryder Palladin.”
Emma stared up at the man standing at the foot of her hospital bed. He filled the room and made it shrink until she felt his too-close appraisal.
To mask her fears and confusion, she turned things back toward him. “Palladin? Really?”
His wry grin told her he got that a lot.
“Yep. It’s my real name. But with two Ls.”
“Like the cellular palladin, not the gunslinger Paladin?”
“So we’ve established you know your chemistry and that you remember that old Western series.”
Surprised at herself, she nodded, a memory of sitting on a sofa with some other children when she was tiny hitting her in the gut with a sweet intensity. Did she have a family somewhere? “I guess so. The doc told me I’d have little clusters of memories. Islands of memories, he called them.”
Ryder Palladin didn’t look like a big-city detective. More like a cowboy straight out of that old Western. Complete with a cream-colored hat, plaid button-up shirt and nicely worn jeans. With dark longish wavy hair and glinting bronze-brown eyes that held a gold mine of secrets.
He took off his hat and allowed her to enjoy all that luscious wavy hair. “Do you remember who you are?”
“Emma. Emma Langston, according to the doctor.”
“But not according to you?”
“I’m remembering bits and pieces. Why are you here?”
Lifting a dark slanted brow, he chuckled while his secretive gaze did a round on her. “You get right to the heart of things, don’t you?”
“I don’t have time for idle chatter.”
He absorbed that with classic detective disdain. “Need to be somewhere in a hurry, Emma Langston?”
She didn’t like his smug attitude or the way he made tiny little shivering sensations float down her spine. “What do you know about me?”
“I’m the one who asks the questions,” he retorted, throwing his hat in a nearby chair. He had the kind of hair a woman wanted to grab onto and hold. Silky, shining, unruly.
“I’m the one who needs to know what happened,” she replied, her head hammering and grinding in pain while her heart jumped in a fast-beating tempo.
“You got hit with a baseball bat.”
He watched her cringe. “Yeah, the nurse told me. But I think I can almost remember that. I need a few more details.”
He put his hands against the foot of the bed. His big, tanned hands. “You were at the Blue Bull Bar—the Triple B to the locals. Do you almost remember that, too?”
Emma swallowed away
