Claiming Emma (3 page)

Finally, she relaxed noticeably and took a calming breath.  "Lucy was a preemie so her immune system is compromised.  I can't take her to the clinic until the Doctor okay’s it, but if you’d like to come in for some tea I can get my neighbor to come sit with her until I get back.  She’s done it before and she has fifteen grandchildren so she’s well qualified.  I’d take Lucy to her but she has cats.”

She said the last part as if it made perfect sense, but Noah didn't like the idea of someone he didn't know alone with his niece, here or somewhere else, whether they had cats or not.  Which even he knew was ridiculous given the circumstances.  Still.  "You tell me where; I can go on my own."

He watched her brows lower, her eyes flashing a stubbornness that belied the worry that sprung up behind her expressive eyes.  A worry that her next words confirmed was for him.  "You are not going to go alone the first time you see your sister in a coma.  Annie will be fast, I promise you, she only lives a few minutes away and she loves Lucy."

Since Noah couldn’t remember the last time someone worried for his emotional state it took him a moment to realize she was serious.  She also didn't give him a chance to argue.  She was already on the move, assuming the conversation was done. 

He decided to let her have that play and asked the question he had wanted to know since he clapped eyes on her.  "Won't your man have a problem with you taking off with a complete stranger alone?"

He heard a snort and then she was back at the door, phone at her ear as she waited for it to be picked up.  "I don't have a man, so luckily, not an issue."

Right. 
Noah thought watching her answer the phone through the screen door and then walk away.  She had put Lucy down somewhere so he got an unobstructed view of her both coming and going and had a hard time picking which view he liked more. 

No man?  How the fuck was that possible?

Hannah's room at the Briar Rose Clinic was small and filled with a single bed and a few machines that beeped and hissed.  The room was evenly broken up into two sections.  A bed set up identical to Hannah's took up the other half of the room, but at present hers was the only bed filled.  She looked well trenched, which was anything but reassuring despite the relief Noah felt that she wasn't breathing through a tube.  In fact, besides the sensors for detecting brain activity, oxygen and heart beat there was only the single IV line leading to a drip.  Noah had seen a lot of hospital time, whether for himself or his buddies.  Hannah was not strapped into life support or anything else that was keeping her alive barring the IV for fluids and nutrients she wasn't eating herself.  But until he talked to the doctor, who Emma assured him would meet them here, he would hold judgment.

She looked like she was sleeping and she was just going to wake up and start her day any moment.  Impossibly small in that bed, her usually golden skin seemed bleached white under the harsh florescent lights.  She looked younger than the sixteen he knew her to be, but remembering the last time he had seen her at eleven, he knew she had changed in significant ways.  Not the least of which was that she was a mother now.  Ridiculous to think about when she was still a child herself.   

She looked peaceful, at least, without obvious pain or the slackness of expression he had been dreading.  As if the mind was gone, but the body hung on.

Noah noticed with even more relief that she looked well taken care of, her hair clean and braided, her hands resting on the top of the covers had a pretty pink gloss on them that looked new, and there were pots of plants placed by the bed and at the window scenting the air of lavender and roses.  They neatly disguised the underlying disinfectant hospitals always smelled like, if they didn't smell of worse things.

"I'm so sorry Noah,” Emma said stepping close until she could put her hand on his arm.  “The only person I knew to contact was her mother and she refused to listen.”

Her touch drew his attention from his sister and his own thoughts, which was such a relief he latched onto her words, letting the anger they produced distract him from other, less tenable emotions.  Not the least of which was helplessness.

Noah watched a tear escape Emma's pretty green eyes while he absorbed her words.

"Why didn't Hannah contact me when she was in trouble?  My information was in my letters."  He tried not to blame Hannah for not writing him back, then and now, but he could have used the connection.  And he would have fucking helped.

Emma's brows dropped and she looked both surprised and then a little angry.  "When we discussed her family Hannah told me she hadn't heard from you in years, but that when her mother put her out of the house she threw five hundred dollars at Hannah and told her it was from you, for her birthday."

Emma dropped her hand from his arm when Noah tensed.  He barely noticed through the surge of anger locking his muscles.  He tried to reign it in when she licked her lips nervously and hesitated to continue.

"Hannah didn't know you were writing her until then.  And that the was first she heard of any money.  If her mother knew how to contact you, she didn't share it with Hannah."

Noah nearly growled his displeasure.  He had written her, not religiously or often, but at least every couple of months, along with money on birthdays and Christmas.  She’d never written him back.

He should have followed up with a call and spoken to Hannah herself, but he never gave it serious thought, she was a teenage girl, what the fuck did he know about how their minds worked.  The thought of trying to carry on a conversation with one was daunting so he kept putting it off. 

He should have fucking followed through.

***

Emma watched the expression wipe from Noah's face. But even without the scowl, she could read his anger in every line of that big hard body.  He was pissed, and he was not the only one.  Emma had really disliked Hannah's mother without having ever met the woman because of the way she treated her daughter, adding to her plight by kicking her out of her home, canceling her cell phone, and her health insurance.  The last they came to find out at the worst possible moment.  Feeling the anger radiating off Hannah’s brother she decided to keep that information to herself for now.  He was already seriously displeased without piling on more.

Fortunately, Hannah had qualified for retroactive Medicare and it had not caused her too much undo damage.  Though the thought of a mother canceling the insurance on her pregnant and homeless daughter had Emma wanting to hop in her car and track the woman down.  Lucky for Marcella Hale, Emma had had bigger fish to fry at the time.

It might be petty of her, but Emma got some consolation out of the thought of this man confronting Hannah's mother now that he knew what Marcella Hale had done.  And she had no doubt he would.  Army ranger retired, Noah Hale was not a man who avoided a confrontation.  Besides being seriously tall, seriously broad shouldered and packed with hard muscle, there was a look in his deep brown eyes that said he was not a man you wanted to mess with.  She would pay good money to see
that woman
facing off against this big angry man about her crimes.

Turning to look at Hannah, spread out across the hospital bed with only Emma and the girls at Lavender Farms visiting or caring whether she lived or died, Emma considered it a crime what Marcella Hale had done, and continued to do.  Now, here finally was a family member who seemed to care about Hannah. Finally.

Hannah had spoken of her brother briefly, a few times, with cautious affection.  Emma got that.   The man before her was intimidating just standing there.  He seemed to speak little in that super sexy gruff voice of his and his face seemed to wear a perpetual scowl that did nothing to make him less intimidating.  She didn't think it was just the situation, either.  She had a hard time picturing the man with a smile on the craggy uber masculine face under any circumstances

Emma shook off impossible thoughts of Noah Hale happy and focused back on the moment and Hannah.

"She was going to look for you," she assured him and then clarified.  "Hannah.  After the baby was born.  She started trying as soon as she realized you had been writing her and her mother had kept it from her.  That was when she was kicked out.  It was your five hundred dollars that kept her off the street and fed before I found her.  But after she came here she put it off because she was safe for a while.  But she was going to start looking again when the baby was born."  Emma petered off.  "Then this..."

"Right. Then this."  The grim bite to his words showed quite clearly he was not ready to let go of his perceived blame in this.

Emma was touched by his obvious care for his sister, a sister she knew he had never really known.  Most people would have said something along the lines of 'if only I had known', that sort of thing.  But then after having only known him for this small bit of time, Emma could already tell Noah Hale was a lot of things.  'Most people' not being one of them.

Before she could say anything else, though really she had no clue what to say to the man, Doctor Nicolette Brown came through the door.

Nicolette was one of two doctors in the town limits.  Most people saw her at her office in Little Town.  She and the other Doc Brown, her father, who everyone just called Doc were the only Doctors in town.  So they took turns seeing to the care of the community, and sometimes farther afield, small places like Briar Rose which were outside the town limits but close enough to commute.

Nicolette was usually just Nicki, or with the old timers, "that pretty little doctor gal".  Both Doctors worked shifts at Briar Rose and shared emergency call outs, as well as kept office hours a few days a week.  Unless it was fishing season, then you were lucky to find old Doc Brown at all.

Nicolette was also gorgeous.  A leggy, blue eyed blond with subtle curves, long hair, and a body that looked great in whatever size four skinny clothes she wore, even if that was a pair of jeans and a white lab coat.

Emma liked Nicolette Brown, always had.  And besides the years they were both away pursuing completely different college careers (Nicki much longer than herself), she had known her all her life.  Been friends since they were kids.  They found themselves two of only a small number of young (ish) single females residing in a heavily male populated Little Town, so that friendly had blossomed to true friendship.  So, she had experience in what to expect when a single man of a certain age came into Nicki's sphere of influence.  That age being between puberty and death.

Emma sighed inwardly and looked to Noah, expecting Hannah's brother to react to the pretty doctor.  And had to blink when he barely gave her a once over before jumping into an intense and scarily efficient interrogation, covering everything from his sister’s medical prognosis to her future worst case scenarios and everything in between.

When he was finished milking all the info he could from her friend he turned immediately back to his sister.  It was as if the other woman ceased to exist.  Very unexpected, even in these circumstances Emma had expected...something.  But Noah was still the intense, scowling, intimidating, seriously smoking hot, wonderfully hard man who had stepped out of his shiny truck a short while ago.  Again, she wondered what he would look like when he smiled.

If he smiled, which she had some doubts about.

Emma realized she was staring at the man, again, and looked away.

Nicki was looking at her with wide questioning eyes.  Clearly Emma was not the only one who found the big man intimidating.  She raised and dropped her shoulders, giving the only answer she could to the unasked questions in the other woman’s eyes.

Nicki motioned to the hall with a tilt of her head and with one more look at Noah, Emma followed her into the hall.  She was quiet right up until the second Emma had the door closed behind them.

"What was that?" Nicki whispered sounding less like a doctor and more like a single woman of a certain age who would definitely notice a man like Noah Hale.  Which would be roughly, Emma figured, any female between puberty and death.

"You mean the interrogation?" Emma shrugged.  "He's an army ranger who just found out his little sister is in a coma.  I don't think he intended to be rude."

"I get that," Nicki said her eyes narrowing at Emma.  "I meant the looks."

"He glares,” Emma shrugged again.  "I noticed it too, but again, I don't think he's trying to be scary either."

"Not him, you," Her friend said clearly exasperated. "You were looking him over him like a prize bull at market."

Emma opened her mouth and blinked at the unexpected words.  "I was?"

"Uh, yeah!" She shook her head and her eyes went straight to worried.  "And you never look at anyone.  Please do not start looking at a man like this one after a lifetime of being careful."

Emma felt her chin jut out and knew she looked at shocked as she felt.  "I barely know the man."

"And trust me," Nicki said.  "You do not want to know him."

"What does that mean?"  For some reason her friends immediate dislike of Hannah's brother rankled.

"It means I have spent a lot of time around the wounded and the dying," her friend stated quietly.  All seriousness.  And she definitely had.  Every few years she did Doctors without borders and went places that put shadows in her eyes for months after she returned.  "I know what I'm talking about when I say that man has seen and done things that have scarred him more obviously than the marks on his body.  He's the walking wounded Em.  It took exactly one conversation to see he has death in his eyes, and it's more than what has happened to his sister that put that look there.  Not to mention he’s a soldier
, all soldier
.  And they are not exactly known for happily ever after’s.
Don't go there.
"

"I'm not...I didn't,” Emma huffed out a breath and then forced her usual calm into place.  "You think he has death in his eyes?"  That surprised her enough to distract her from her attempts at denial.  Death was not what she saw when she looked into the man’s intense eyes.  A watchful silence, banked fire, and maybe too much control, but death?  Then she teased. “What does death look like anyway?"

"Trust me," her friend said quietly not letting the slight humor in Emma's tone derail her.  "You know it when you see it."

Emma shook her head.  "Well. I appreciate you're worried about me, but he's here for Hannah, not me."  Emma laughed a little without much humor.  "And I might like to look at the man, but I have no plans to throw myself at a stranger who looks like he eats small children for breakfast."

When her friend’s eyes continued to bore into her Emma rolled her eyes in exasperation.  "Nicki!"

"Fine," Nicki said, finally backing off.  "But remember what I said.  That man is not for you."

As if there was the smallest chance that Emma did not know Noah Hale, army ranger, was out of her league.  Wounded soul or not.  She shook her head with another eye roll but turned to re-enter the room without another word.  Nicolette right behind her.

They both stopped dead when Emma nearly ran into the imposing figure standing right inside the door.  In fact, Emma stopped so fast that Nicki ran into her back and she teetered.  Noah caught her arm to steady her, pulling her a step closer to him as he did so, and Emma was off balance just enough to let him.  His eyes were blank of emotion.