tried. “There’s a Denver address on your driver’s license but we haven’t been able to try contacting anyone there because the phone lines are down. Do thoughts of Denver spark any memories?”
Jenn could only shake her head woefully.
“What do you think?” Matt’s query was aimed at his brother, but Jenn’s glance went to the doctor, too, hoping he had an answer not only to Matt’s question, but to her own dilemma, as well.
“I don’t have a lot of experience with this but I’d say we’re looking at selective amnesia,” Bax McDermot said to the room in general. Then more directly to Jenn he said, “There weren’t any signs of a concussion when I examined you when Matt brought you in and there still aren’t now even though you took a bad bump on the head. And because it doesn’t appear to be an injury serious enough to have caused the amnesia on its own, I’m wondering if you may have suffered something emotionally disturbing or traumatic. Maybe something that spurred you to come to Elk Creek in the first place if this is where you were actually headed. Maybe that, coupled with the blow to the head, has put you into a psychological amnesia. But one way or the other, amnesia is a tricky phenomenon that can obliterate certain parts of memory while other portions are left intact. I’m guessing that’s what we’re dealing with.”
“So what do we do about it?” Jenn asked, hating that she sounded so weak, so small, so afraid.
“We’ve already sent word to the sheriff. He’ll be here any minute,” Carly offered. “But what if we get a message to the local radio station and have them put out an announcement asking if anyone knows a Jenn Johnson?”
Both men agreed that was a good idea and Jenn was more than willing to go along with it. To embrace it, in fact, hoping someone would come forward and fill in a few blanks for her.
And while she waited, left alone in the examining room to rest, she put some effort into working up to sitting in a chair without feeling as if she might faint and regaining some warmth by sipping hot tea that Carly brought in to her.
When the sheriff arrived he asked her much the same questions the doctor had, with no more success. Then he confirmed that with the phone lines down their hands were tied for the time being in regards to trying to reach anyone in Denver. But he assured her that as soon as possible he’d do what he could.
Carly dug up a portable radio for Jenn to listen to after the sheriff left so she could hear the message the disc jockey sent out after each song. Over and over again the D.J. gave her name and pertinent information and asked anyone in town who knew anything about her to get word to the station.
But at the end of two hours there hadn’t been any notification of either to the radio station or the doctor’s office and it seemed clear that no one listening to the radio knew who Jenn Johnson was or why she’d come to Elk Creek.
And even though by then Jenn had managed to gain some control over her fear and come to grips with what was happening to her, she still felt like a lost puppy at the pound that nobody had claimed.
Until Matt McDermot seemed to do just that, reappearing from somewhere outside the examining room as sounds of the office closing for the day drifted in to her.
And even though she didn’t understand it any more than she understood what was going on in her brain, seeing him again made her feel infinitely safer.
He leaned a broad shoulder against the door frame, crossed his arms over his chest and said, “Doesn’t look like anything’s going to break for the time being to let us know who you are. Bax says what you really need for tonight is some sleep, so what would you say to coming out to the ranch and staying there until we sort through this or you get your memory back? There’s plenty of room and nothin’ we McDermots like better than having a pretty woman around or a puzzle to solve.”
“I seem to qualify as a puzzle all right.”
He smiled, and when he did, the left side of his mouth went higher than the right, giving it an appealing tilt. “Is that a yes?”
She didn’t have to think about it. Although maybe she should have when she realized that the thought of remaining anywhere near Matt McDermot went a long way toward making her feel better.
She didn’t think about it, though. She just said, “That would be really nice. Thank you. And thank you for everything else, too. I think you saved me from freezing to death.”
“It all worked out,” he said, seeming slightly uncomfortable with her gratitude and with taking the credit he was due.
For a moment their eyes locked and Jenn felt a kind of connection to him that she couldn’t fathom. A nice kind of connection that helped stave off the fear that kept threatening a return.
But Matt McDermot only lingered over that glance for a moment before he drew himself up to what looked to be his full six feet two or three inches of height and said, “Let’s get going, then. Elk Creek’s plow has just made a swipe at the roads so we should be able to reach the ranch if we leave before too much more snow accumulates.”
And with that Jenn seemed to become Matt McDermot’s charge.
Something that felt more right and more comforting than anything had since she’d opened her eyes.
She just hoped that she could trust her instincts more than she could trust her memory.
Chapter 2
Too much snow had already fallen for the plow to get down to bare pavement on the roads. Instead it had left them densely snowpacked with new drifts piling up to replace the old.
But inside Matt McDermot’s truck the heater was on and the view through the windows was of pristine white flakes swirling in a mesmerizing dance.
And even though Jenn tried to stay awake, she just couldn’t.
So one minute she was staring out at the golden swath the headlights cut through the snow and the next thing she knew Matt McDermot’s deep molasses voice was saying, “Jenn? Wake up. We’re here.”
She apparently hadn’t been asleep long enough to have forgotten who he was or the fact that they were going to the McDermot ranch where she’d been offered refuge because when she awoke it wasn’t to any kind of startled confusion about where she was or whom she was with. Instead she slipped out of sleep to the irresistible lure of that rich voice that seemed to roll over her in a sweet, beckoning refrain. And Jenn’s first thought was that she should probably feel less comfortable and at ease with this man whom she had just met.
She didn’t, though.
When she did open her eyes this time it was to the view from the passenger side window. And what she saw was a big ranch-style house with a covered porch that wrapped around twin wings stretching out on either side of the main entrance. All the porch railings and pillars were wound with evergreen boughs and tiny white lights, and more tiny white lights dripped from all the eaves, turning the snow that blanketed the place into glimmering crystal.
It was a warm, welcoming sight.
“When Buzz Martindale owned this ranch the house was only a small two-bedroom farmhouse,” Jenn said, the words spilling out as if from a speech she somehow knew by rote. “But after he turned the place over to his grandchildren—and you all became wildly successful with a new breed of hardy cattle—the original
