Her Honor-Bound Lawman by Karen Rose Smith

Author:Karen Rose Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2013-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

Tucker was cruising the streets of Storkville, looking for a copper-haired woman carrying twins, when the call came in for him about a half-hour later. One of the deputies had spotted her at Vern’s Diner.

Vern’s Diner? What was she doing there? With the babies?

Covering the few short blocks to the diner in record speed, he parked much too near to the corner in front, then hurried inside. Deputy Ed Barnes was waiting for him, motioning toward the back corner. “She’s back there. I came in for a cup of coffee and spotted her.”

Tucker’s gaze swept to the corner and there Emma was at a table with the twins on booster seats with…Cal Swenson. What the hell was she doing with him?

When he swore, Ed looked at him speculatively. “Do you want me to stay?”

Tucker felt like an absolute idiot. He’d practically put an APB out on Emma and here she was on a lunch date. “No, you can go,” Tucker snapped.

The middle-aged deputy, with his thinning brown hair and potbelly, had a twinkle in his brown eyes. “I guess I’ll tell the guys you found her.”

“Yeah,” Tucker muttered, “you do that.” Then he strode toward the table in the corner, not sure what he was going to say.

As he approached the foursome, a burst of laughter came from first Emma, then Cal. Steffie had taken a French fry dipped in ketchup and smeared it across her face. She looked as if she had a red mustache. Tenderly, Emma leaned close to the baby and dabbed the ketchup away with her napkin. On the other side of Sammy, Cal looked on fondly—too fondly, Tucker thought.

When he’d gotten close enough to the table to hover over her, Emma looked up at him, surprised. “Tucker, what are you doing here?”

“More to the point,” he said, “what are you doing here? I stopped at home. The place looked as if it had been ransacked and there wasn’t hide nor hair of you or the babies.”

Cal straightened in his chair. “I thought she could use an outing. Besides, we had some catching up to do.” The blond man was defensive and protective of Emma, and that made Tucker even more annoyed.

“I thought you’d lost your memory again. I thought maybe you’d wandered off,” he blurted out.

Looking embarrassed, Emma apologized. “I’m sorry, Tucker. I never thought you’d be home in the middle of the day. I didn’t even expect you—”

No, she wouldn’t have expected him. He’d been avoiding her like the plague, and he had no right to be here scolding her like a jealous suitor. Since Emma had come into his life, he wasn’t sure he even knew himself anymore.

“Did you come home because you had news about Josie?” she asked hopefully.

“No. No news yet. That probably means she’s not in a hurry to be found.”

Disappointment showed on Emma’s face. “Why did you come home then?”

“Just to check up on you—make sure everything was going okay,” he added grudgingly.

Cal’s brows arched. “As you can see, she’s just fine.

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