The Reckoning Read Online Free

big, so male, in his casual slacks and open-throated dress shirt. It wasn’t as if he tried to crowd her, but he just seemed to be so close, so there, as she led the way toward her room.
    He was loud, too. Not in the usual sense—as a matter of fact, he didn’t even make an attempt at small talk—but the quiet way he moved, the confident aura attached to him made his very presence noisy. There was no way to ignore someone like that.
    She couldn’t wait to get rid of him.
    â€œYou didn’t say why you wanted to meet with me,” she ventured. If she hadn’t been so surprised and confused when he’d called the day before, she would have insisted on finding out the reason then.
    â€œI didn’t?” His expression remained unreadable as heglanced into one of the rehab classrooms. Three of the center’s clients sat at different tables, one working on a computer game, another inserting pegs in a pegboard, another putting together a simple puzzle. “Is that the kind of thing you’ve been doing the past year?” he asked.
    â€œYes,” Linda answered. There was no point in pretending otherwise. “Computer games and puzzles to improve dexterity and memory and focus. And then there have been sessions of physical therapy, speech therapy and occupational therapy. In many respects—most, maybe—I was like a child when I came here. There was a lot I had to relearn.”
    â€œBut now you’re… What would you call it? Up to speed? Cured?”
    Anxiety washed over Linda again like a cold sweat. “I’ll never be cured,” she admitted. It was the hard truth that the rehab center tried to make the head-injured understand. “I’m a different person now than I was before the car accident.”
    But exactly who was that new person? The question was only exacerbated by the decade that she’d lost. With her past nearly as hazy as her future, she continued to struggle with developing her identity—even believing that she could. Leaving the rehab center, she worried, would only make that problem more overwhelming.
    More frightening.
    Finding Nancy and Dean Armstrong already waiting in the small sitting area of her room didn’t ease the feeling. They were wonderful, generous people who had always cared for Ricky and her, including visiting her regularly during her rehab and taking her out on day trips around the area and to their San Antonio home. But seeing them today only served to remind her that soon, so soon, she would be moving into their household and she would be expected to not only begin making a life for herself, but begin making herself into a mother for her son.
    â€œNancy, Dean. It’s good to see you.” Linda exchanged brief hugs with them.
    â€œI brought more pictures.” Nancy pressed a packet of snapshots into her hand. “Soccer photos and some from the field trip I chaperoned last week.”
    Linda’s fingers tightened on the pictures. The Armstrongs were so conscientious about integrating her into Ricky’s life. They shared photos and stories and the boy’s company at every opportunity. It wasn’t their fault she had trouble accepting herself as a mother.
    Ducking the thought, she gestured toward her companion. “And do you two know Emmett Jamison?”
    They apparently did, which puzzled Linda even more. So with everyone seated, she decided to get the situation straightened out. “Mr. Jamison—”
    â€œEmmett,” he corrected.
    â€œEmmett, then. What can I—” she looked at the older couple “—what can we do for you?”
    On the love seat across from the straight chairs that she and Emmett were seated upon, Nancy and Dean exchanged glances. The big, bad wolf kept his gaze trained on her. “It’s what I can do for you.”
    She did not like the way he said the words. She did not. “But I don’t need