Page 9 of Calling All Angels
Aubrey squeezed Emma’s hand as the nurse popped her head back in the door. “There are some police officers out here who would like a word with you, Ms. Wilhelm.”
“With me?”
“They’re waiting outside.”
Emma shot Connor a questioning look.Police?
He glanced at his wrist again: -6 percent now?Oh, for the love of all that’s—
Aubrey patted Emma’s hand, then left with the nurse.
“I’m going with her,” Emma told him, starting to follow her niece.
“Don’t,” he warned.
“Why not?”
“Because.” He indicated her body on the bed, clarifying, as if it was obvious.
“No. I’m walking outside that door now.”
“Ye canna.” He narrowed his best intimidating look at her. He didn’t have the patience for games like—
She took a small, testing step toward the door, watching for his reaction.
Then another.
“Listen to me—”
She took another, reaching the threshold of the doorway, then lifted her shoulders in awho’s going to stop me—you?gesture.
“Emma—” he warned.
If she scared easily, she certainly didn’t show it. Not a bit. Instead, she deliberately placed her bare toe on the other side of the doorway. When nothing dire happened, her mouth quirked in a victorious grin.
Stubborn as a bairn bent on testing her limits.
Once she’d crossed a foot over that imaginary boundary he’d drawn, it was clear there’d be no stopping her.
Connor scowled as she disappeared into the corridor to listen in on her niece’s conversation.Headstrong, obstinate, perverse.Just a few of the words that came to his mind as he watched her hover over her niece’s shoulder in the hallway as the girl conversed with the two officers in blue. But then,disloyalhad always been a favorite of his when it came to her. Although he supposed he didn’t have the supporting evidence for that word yet as it applied to Emma James.
She wasn’t Violet, he reminded himself. Not exactly anyway. Except in all the ways that counted: the way she looked, the touch of sadness in her eyes, the way his body reacted to her…
He did his best to avert his gaze from the woman lying in the bed, hooked up to machines. Surprisingly, but for a few cuts and abrasions, her poor broken left leg elevated in a sling, and the nasty bruise around her eye, she looked like the Violet he remembered—a paler, more docile version of the Emma in the hallway.
How often had he found himself mentally rewriting the last days of their history together or composing what he might have said to her if he’d had half the chance? A thousand times, he reckoned. Now was his opportunity to say it to her face. But this woman, this Emma had no memory of him. No soul memory at least. That would come later.
Now she was hovering somewhere between worlds, trying desperately to stay in this one as the other beckoned her, with him as her erstwhile traffic cop, pointing her toward the path of least resistance.
With a final look at the woman on the bed, he followed Emma into the hallway.
*
“There’s evidence thatthere was another vehicle involved in the crash,” the officer was telling Aubrey as Emma appeared at her shoulder. “From the looks of the crash scene, Ms. James—”
“Wilhelm. My name. It’s Aubrey Wilhelm. My aunt’s last name is James.”
He wrote that down in his little book. “So, we’ve determined that an encounter took place over approximately sixty feet of road.”
