Claiming Emma (2 page)

She told herself it would be a bad idea to get into a complete stranger’s car, no matter how comforting the woman Emma seemed, or how good her grape juice was.  It was ridiculous to trust a complete stranger as far as she had, let alone farther.  If she was smart she would stand up out of that soft chair and put down the crackers, tangy cheese and pretty faceted glass and escape while the going was clear, even if it meant taking her feet out of the heavenly water and putting back on her dirty Ked’s and walking all the way home, dizzy, hungry and hot.  That would be the smart thing to do.  But she was so tired, and she could not remember the last time someone had taken care of her.  Certainly not her mother, who did everything appropriate and nothing extra where her only child was concerned. 

Even that so called care ended when Hannah acted in a way her mother found embarrassing and unacceptable. So this soft but no nonsense treatment was totally foreign to Hannah.  She sat there knowing she should get up and escape before something bad happened.  She didn’t realize she’d started to cry until she felt the tears start to trail down her face. 

She didn't want to get up and leave; she wanted to sit there in that chair and drink juice and eat crackers and pretend someone cared enough that her feet were blistered to put lotion on them.

Hannah didn’t notice Emma had returned until she felt her feet lifted from the water and dried.  Then, saying nothing while Hannah cried, Emma applied the lavender scented lotion to her poor feet and rubbed away the lingering aches in her calves while Hannah wept silently.  Emma handed her a box of tissues and let her cry herself out. 

They stayed like that for a long time, Hannah for the first time in a long time feeling not so alone sitting next to a stranger.  Then when Emma's friend Marley returned to the shop she introduced Hannah and only smiled when the fire haired old lady in the flowing purple caftan who owned the tea shop, and apparently an apartment above it, tisked and went to get Hannah some slippers to wear home, since she was "not putting those dirty things back on your poor feet,".

Emma, Hannah was informed, was just passing through on a visit to some of her vendors and had offered to watch the shop for Marley since her regular girl was sick and Marley had a doctor appointment she didn't want to cancel.  Emma had her own home further up into the mountains where she grew flowers and herbs and sold the soaps and lotions for shops like Marley’s.

Hannah tried to argue about taking the slippers and was over-ruled by both women.  Then Emma took her out to eat, and when Hannah tried to feebly argue, not because she wanted to, but because she thought she should, she was overruled again. 

By the time dinner was over Hannah had told her life story to the woman with the pretty eyes and Emma had talked about her herb farm that sat on twenty acres in the mountains and had a stream that flowed year-round, with horses and an old cow named Lazy Maize she never had the heart to replace after it died.

"Lavender Farms" was as pretty and foreign sounding to Hannah as a woman who grew grapes and squeezed lemons to make ice cubes, but two days later and a few more meals out with Emma, Hannah felt as if she could see the place if she closed her eyes. 

When Emma offered her a job at the farm that included on the job training and room and board, Hannah accepted.

Noah hung up the phone with a grim face and dropped it to the car seat beside him when the answering machine picked up for the third time.  Like every previous call he'd made to the number his father’s widow reluctantly provided him, he did it without leaving a message.

He turned the key in the trucks ignition and the Chevy Colorado rolled over and growled smooth for him.  He appreciated the power of the 2.8-liter turbo diesel of his new truck as much as the clean brown leather seats that were big enough for even his massive six-foot six-inch frame.  Buying it was the first thing he did when he retired from the Rangers after twenty years at the age of forty.  A forty that felt far older than it should. 

The second was to visit his half-sister Hannah.

He glared out the windshield at the house where she had grown up.   The porch was decorated for the Spring, the yard well maintained.  The house looked like every other house on the block with its small yard and wide front porch.  A house his father had bought his second wife when he left his first wife for a younger version and started a new family two states away.  Somehow the spring decorations seemed particularly insulting to him after what he had just found out.  Hannah had been gone six months.

Noah had joined the army after two years trying college and realizing a classroom was not where he wanted to be.  He didn't have much to do with the new family, but he had always assumed his father had chosen better the second time.  After all, it would be difficult for him to have chosen worse than Noah's narcissistic bitch of a mom, but after what he just heard he was revising his opinion.

Marcella Gregory Hale had kicked her pregnant fifteen-year-old daughter out onto the streets.  Canceled the girls cell phone as soon as she shut the door in her face, and even months later with no word from her pregnant teenage daughter, when a strange woman left a message to call about Hannah and "complications of early labor," Marcella blew it off.

The only thing that Noah could be grateful for was that Marcella, for some reason he could not fathom, kept the number and nothing else.  Not the woman's name, not the town she had mentioned, or the hospital she had listed.  Out of all that, she had kept only the number that she never intended to use. 
What The fuck?

Thinking about what he had found out, and what he still didn't know; Noah picked the phone back up while the truck rumbled away in park.  He found the number he wanted and pressed the screen of his phone and waited.

The call went to voicemail as Noah knew it would.  It was rare that Brady answered his phone.   After he left the rangers a few years back with the Congressional medal of honor, and a barely noticeable limp, he had started his own business using the skills he had learned in his specialized field.  That business was doing well by all accounts, which kept the man busy, but he called back quick enough when it was important.  Noah intended to leave no doubt how important this was.  After the automated voice told him to leave a message, Noah spoke.  As was his way, he kept it brief and blunt.

"I need a trace on a number, fast.  A name and address, and anything else you can get quickly."  Noah growled out the number.  "I'll owe you big on this one.  My sister is in trouble.  She's sixteen."  He added the last so that there was no doubt this was high priority.  He ground his teeth.  "Call me."

He hung up and dropped the phone back on the seat.  He hitched the truck into drive with a little more force than necessary and pulled out into the early morning traffic. 

Unfortunately, until he heard from Brady he had no fucking clue where he was going.

***

When the call finally came, Noah put down the coffee he was holding and grabbed the phone off the table.  Pressing the button to answer it, he took one look at the caller ID and pulled it to his ear.  "Talk to me," he said curtly.

"I have what you need," came the reply in Brady's deep voice.  The man sounded as cold as his Nordic blond looks and ice blue eyes made him appear.  Just over six four, and all of that solid muscle, Brady was not a man you wanted as an enemy.  As a friend there was none better.

"Tell me."

"Emma Grace Younger.  Age 36.  Mailing address is a P.O. box but I found the physical for you.  15526 Lavender Lane, Little Town CA.  When I plugged in the information I got a hit for a business.  Lavender Farms.  According to the website she sells garden supply, flowers, herbs, garden art, soaps, homemade creams, candles, girly shit like that."

Emma Grace of Lavender Farms, on Lavender Lane? Little Town?
Noah grunted his acknowledgment even as his mind was taking in the ridiculous sounding information. 

Brady seemed to agree because Noah heard the rare trace of humor in his voice when he spoke again.  "You sure you want to take this on without back up?  She sounds fierce."

She sounds like a god damn Disney character. 
But Noah only grunted.  Until he found Hannah and could see for himself that she and the baby were alright nothing was going to be funny.

"I owe you one," was his only answer.

"You owe me shit," Brady growled back, all business again at the words that had clearly insulted him.

Noah nearly smiled.  Brady hung up before he could argue the point with a short, “Let me know if you need more."

Address memorized, Noah plugged it into the GPS on his phone even while he was dropping money on the table and heading out.  It had been a long wait killing time all day, and he still had a drive ahead of him.

Nearly three hours from his current location.  Lavender Farms wasn't just in the mountains it was deep in the mountains.  While he was at it he pulled up the information on the nearest hospital from that location and got two pops, neither of them significantly closer than the other.  He could call them both to find out if she had given birth at one of them but he didn't want to waste the driving time, and he had yet to set up his hands free Bluetooth and did not plan to stop to take care of it right at the moment.

Emma Grace of Lavender Farms.
 
How the hell had Hannah ended up three hours away at an herb farm in the mountains?  And who was this woman to her?
  Marcella had certainly had no fucking clue, nor did she seem to care, but Noah would assume the worst until he could see for himself what the fuck was going on.

***

Lavender Farms on Lavender Lane in Little Town Ca. Looked exactly like what it sounded like:  A flower bedecked fairy tale.  Any minute some woodland creature was going to bust from the forest that backed the place and break into song.

Pulling up the lane, next to the waist high iron fence with fancy scroll work that was half hidden by the abundant roses growing all along it, Noah had to shake his head.  He had begun to imagine herb farm was a euphemism for pot and he would find his sister trapped in the clutches of a drug queen or other equally ugly possibilities.  But this was not that.  He had no clue how big the operation was, but from here he could see acres of lavender that glinted an almost painful purple in the last light of the day.  It looked like something from a postcard.

There was still enough light left when he rolled to a stop beside the wide porch of the old white farmhouse, to see that the picturesque quality of the fields and gardens extended to the home.  He took in the porch swing and the profuse pots of blooming plants that surrounded the long porch and had to shake his head at the picture it all made.  In his experience pregnant teenage girls tossed out into the streets did not end up in fucking Brigadoon, but he couldn’t exactly argue with his own eyes.

Further back on the lane a large sign had read Lavender Farms, so he knew he was in the right place.  The sign pointed to the left hand fork in the road that led to greenhouses and an old barn in the distance.  Since the hours on the sign showed them closed for the day, he had taken the right fork that led to this sprawling farmhouse.  From here he could see there was another, smaller greenhouse just beyond the house alongside another barn and some fenced horse pastures, but this area was clearly not part of the retail space

He was half thinking no one would be home or there would be no sign of Hannah if they were, when the front door opened and a woman stepped out onto the porch.  She was bouncing a baby on her shoulder while she eyed him, clearly ready to retreat back into the house if need be.  Noah felt a clutch in his stomach as his eyes went to baby in her arms.

"Can I help you?" she called out as soon as he opened the truck door.

Noah stepped out of the truck and closed the door.  Taking his time before speaking to study the woman, since he couldn't see the baby. He knew this had to be Emma Grace, just like the farm, she matched her name.

Soft all over, and curvy with it, she looked supremely right on that pretty farm porch with a baby in her arms.  Her brown hair almost as dark as his own was thick and shiny falling nearly to her waist, held back from her face with a clip.  A hank of it had come lose and was being held in one little baby fist.  Her dark eyes were slightly slanted, but from the distance he couldn’t see the color.

He walked towards the iron gate that separated him from her front yard.  The closer he got the more he liked what he saw.

Simple and sweetly pretty, nothing flashy or attention grabbing about her, other than those eyes which as he got closer he noted were an unusually dark green. She looked younger than the thirty-six that Brady had told him, but he still did not doubt this was the woman.  Then his eyes arrived at her feet.  She was barefoot and her toes, he noted with a long look, were painted in a soft pale rose.

Sexy toes,
he found himself thinking.
Sexy woman.
Noah had to force himself to look away from those distracting toes, scowling as he did so.  Whoever this woman belonged to, and there was no way a woman like that was unclaimed, he was one lucky fucking bastard.  A lucky fucking bastard that Noah had an unprecedented and immediate soul deep hatred for.

"I'm looking for Hannah Hale," he said gruffly, aware that the woman had clutched the sleeping baby tighter in reaction when she got a good look at him.  It was not the first time his size had intimidated, and for all her generous curves and average height she was a tiny thing compared to him, and probably alone with the baby since no man would have allowed his woman to answer the door to a stranger if he was in the house.

She blinked at him in surprise, a stillness coming over her at his words that he could measure.  He watched her lick her pretty full lips, pressing them together, a look on her face he could not read.  She seemed to steel herself, taking a deep breath. "And you are?"

"Noah Hale," he answered, narrowing his eyes at her reaction.  "Hannah's my sister."

She seemed to deflate a bit and he caught a look of sad regret in her eyes before she smiled at him.  A smile he noted didn’t reach those expressive eyes. 

"Hannah spoke of you," she said, finally stepping away from the door and letting it bang closed behind her.

"Spoke, past tense?" 
God damn it!  What the fuck happened to Hannah?

He watched the woman walk to the top of her porch stairs, and standing at the bottom, Noah didn't have to look up much to meet her expressive eyes.

She ignored his question, or so it seemed when she looked down at the sleeping baby.  From the color of the blanket and the little hat it wore on its head, it had to be a girl.  "This is Lucy, your niece."

Noah looked from her to the baby briefly with an inward curse.  How bad was this going to be?

"And Hannah?"

She swallowed and he watched her eyes fill with sadness and it looked like she was going to cry but she held it back,
thank fuck
.

"Hannah," she said, her voice low and soft.  "Went into labor nearly seven weeks early."  Her words trickled down to a whisper as if she was having as hard a time saying it as he was hearing it.  "Lucy, as you can see is fine, though she spent nearly six weeks in the NICU in Sacramento before she could come home.  Hannah hemorrhaged after the delivery. She lost blood faster than they could replace it.  They managed to save her but..."  She took a deep breath and finished it. “She went into a coma.  The doctors don't know why she hasn't come out of it yet, but there is a chance that if she does wake up it will be with permanent brain damage, or she may never wake up at all."

Feeling the words in his belly Noah closed his eyes and took that hit.
Shit. Fuck. Mother fucker. God Damn it.  I fucking knew it!

He knew she could read the anger on his face because she backed up a step and pulled the baby to the side so that she was between him and the baby.  The sight had Noah clenching his teeth even more that before.  Not liking her reaction, at the same time it was telling.  Clearly she would protect the baby from him if she felt the need.  Which was admirable at the same time it irritated.  He did not want this woman scared of him. 

And why the fuck am I thinking about this? 
He grumbled to himself and got his ass back to the matter at hand. 

"Where is she?" 

Emma Younger looked him over for a full minute before she came to whatever decision had been working behind her eyes.  No doubt wondering if he was dangerous.  He was, but not to Hannah, her daughter, and if she was what she appeared to be, which he was nearly 100% on, Emma Grace Younger.