Emmett (2 page)

She managed to clear her desk of work before Emmett showed up, late, to pick up the kids.

“Aw, do we have to go?” Polk groaned. “Mr. Rogers is coming on!”

“Yes, we have to go. We're leaving for home in the morning, thank God. Only one more event to go tonight—bareback bronc riding.”

“Isn't that one of the most dangerous events?” Melody asked.

His eyebrows arched under the wide-brimmed Stetson he hadn't bothered to remove from his dark hair. “Any rodeo event is dangerous if a contestant is stupid or careless. I'm neither.”

She knew that already. He was something of a legend in rodeo. He wouldn't be aware that she'd followed his career. She was a rodeo fan, but Emmett's attitude toward her had kept her silent about her interest in the sport.

“Thank you for letting us stay with you, Melody,” Amy said, smiling up at her.

Melody smiled back. She liked the little girl very much. She was open and warm and loving, despite her mischievous nature.

Emmett saw that smile and felt it all the way to his toes. He couldn't have imagined even a minute before that a smile could change a plain face and make it radiate beauty.
But he saw the reality of it in Melody's soft features. Involuntarily his eyes fell to her body. She was what a kind man would call voluptuous, her form and shape perfectly proportioned but just a tad past slender. Adell had been bacon-thin. Melody was her exact opposite.

It irritated him that he should notice Melody in that way. She was nothing to him except a turncoat. She and her brother had disrupted and destroyed his life. Not only his, but his children's, as well. He could easily have hated her for that.

“I said, let's go,” he told the children.

“Okay.” Polk sighed.

“I'll wait in the hall,” Guy murmured. He avoided even looking at Melody.

“Guy hates you,” Amy told her with blunt honesty. “But I think you're wonderful.”

“I think you're wonderful, too,” Melody replied.

Amy grinned and walked up to her father. “We can go now, Emmett. Can I write to my friend Melody?”

“We'll talk about it,” Emmett said noncommittally. “Thanks for watching them,” he said as an afterthought.

“Oh, it was my plea…sure!” She tripped over a tomahawk that someone had left lying on the floor and ended up on her back. Guy picked up the weapon, and the kids and Emmett made a circle around her prone body. She glared up at them, trying not to think how a sacrificial victim in an Indian encampment might have felt. In those Indian costumes, the kids looked eerie.

“Whose tomahawk?” Emmett asked as he reached down and pulled Melody up with a minimum of strain. His hand made hers tingle. She wondered if he'd felt the excitement of the contact, too, because he certainly let go of her fast.

“It's mine, Emmett,” Amy said, sighing. She looked up at him, pushing back her pigtails, and her green eyes were resigned. “Go ahead and hit me. I didn't mean to make Melody hurt herself, though. I like her.”

“I know you didn't mean it,” Melody said, and smiled. “It's okay, nothing dented.”

“Next time, be more careful where you put that thing,” Emmett muttered.

“That's right, Amy,” Melody said, nodding. “Between your father's ears would be a good place.”

He glared at her. “You didn't hear that, Amy. Let's go, kids.”

He herded the children out the door and closed it. Melody sat by herself with no ringing phones, no blaring television, no laughing children. Her life and the office were suddenly empty.

 

She closed up precisely at 5:00 p.m. and went by the grocery store to get enough for the weekend, which was just beginning. Thanksgiving Day had been quiet and lonely. She'd had a turkey breast, but she and Alistair had finished it off for supper the night before. So she bought ground beef for hamburgers and a small beef roast and vegetables to make stew and, later, soup. She lived on a budget, which meant that she bypassed steak and frozen éclairs. She would have loved to indulge her taste for both. Maybe someday, she thought wistfully…

She fed Alistair, her big marmalade tabby, and then made herself a light supper. She ate it with little enthusiasm. Then she curled up with Alistair on the sofa to watch a movie on television. During the last scene, a very interesting standoff between a murderer and the police, the telephone started ringing. She grimaced, hating the interruption. If she answered it, she'd surely
miss the end of the movie she'd been watching for two hours. She ignored it at first. The only people who ever telephoned her were people who were selling things. But whoever was calling wouldn't give up. It stopped, briefly, only to start ringing insistently again. This time she was afraid not to answer it. It might be Kit or Logan or Tansy or even her brother.

She picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

“Is this Miss Melody Cartman?” a crisp, professional voice asked.

“Yes.”

“I'm Nurse Willoughby. We have a Mr. Emmett Deverell here at city general hospital with a massive concussion. He's only just regained consciousness. He gave us your name and asked us to call and have you pick up his children at the Mellenger Hotel.”

Melody stood frozen in place. The only thing that registered was that Emmett was hurt and she'd become a babysitter. She could hardly say no or argue. Concussions were terribly dangerous.

“The children are…where?”

“At the Mellenger Hotel. Room three hundred and something. He's very foggy at the moment and in a great deal of pain.”

“He will be all right?” Melody asked, hating herself for being concerned.

“We hope so,” came the crisp reply.

“Tell him that I'll look after the children,” she said.

“Very well.”

The phone went dead before she could ask another question. She stared around her like someone in a trance. Where in the world was she going to put three renegade children, one of whom hated her? And how long was she going to have them?

For one insane moment, she thought about calling Adell and Randy, but she dismissed that idea at once. Emmett would never forgive her. At the moment, he deserved a little consideration, she supposed.

She got her coat and took a cab to the hotel. It was very late to be driving around Houston, and her little car was unreliable in wet weather. Houston was notorious for flooding, and the rain was coming down steadily now.

She asked at the desk for Emmett's room number, quickly explaining the circumstances to a sympathetic desk clerk after giving Emmett's condition and the hospital's number, so that management could check her story if they felt the need to. In fact, they did, and she didn't blame them. These days, one simply couldn't turn over three children to a total stranger who might or might not intend them harm.

When she got to the hotel room, there were muffled sounds from within. Melody, who knew the kids all too well, knocked briefly but firmly on the door.

There was a sudden silence, followed by a scuffle and a wail. The door flew open and a matronly lady with frazzled hair almost fell on Melody with relief.

“Are you their mother?” the elderly woman asked. “I'm Mrs. Johnson. Here they are, safe and sound, my fee will be added to the hotel bill. You
are
their mother?”

“Well, no,” she began.

“Oh, my God!”

“I'm to take charge of them,” Melody added, because it looked as if the woman might be preparing to have a heart attack on the spot.

A wavery smile replaced the horror on the woman's lined face. “Then I'll just be off. Good night!”

“Chicken,” Amy muttered, peering around Melody to watch the woman's incredibly fast retreat.

“What have you three been up to?” Melody asked, glaring at them.

“Nothing at all, Melody, dear,” Amy said sweetly, and grinned.

“She just wasn't used to kids, I guess,” Polk added. He grinned, too.

Behind them there were the remains of two foam-filled pillows and what appeared to be the ropes that closed the heavy curtains.

“We had a pillow fight,” Amy explained.

“And then we went skiing in the bathroom,” Polk said.

Melody could barely see the bathroom. The door was ajar and the floor seemed to be soaked. She was beginning to understand her predecessor's agile retreat. Days and days…of this. She wouldn't have an apartment left! And all because she felt sorry for a man who had to be her worst enemy.

“Why are you here?” Guy asked belligerently. “Where's Dad?”

That brought her back to her original purpose for being there. Emmett's accident.

She sat down on the sofa, tossing her purse beside her, while she struggled to find the right words to tell them.

“Something's happened,” Guy said when he saw her face. He stiffened. “What?”

Even at such a young age, he was already showing signs of great inner strength, of ability to cope with whatever life threw at him. Amy and Polk looked suddenly vulnerable, but not Guy.

“Your father has a brain concussion,” Melody told them. “He's conscious now, but in a lot of pain. He'll have to stay in the hospital for a day or so. Meanwhile, he wants you to come home with me.”

“He hates you,” Guy said coldly. “Why would he want us to stay with you?”

“Because I'm all you've got,” Melody replied. “Unless you'd rather I called the juvenile authorities…?”

Guy's massive self-confidence failed. He shrugged and turned away.

Amy climbed onto Melody's lap and clung. “Our daddy will be all right, won't he?” she asked tearfully.

“Of course he will,” Melody assured her, gathering her close. “He's very tough. It will take more than a concussion to keep him down.”

“Yes, it will,” Polk said. He turned away because his lower lip was trembling.

“Let's get your things together and go,” Melody said. “Have you had something to eat?”

“We had pizza and chocolate sundaes.”

Melody could imagine that the elderly lady in charge of them had agreed with any menu that would keep them quiet. But she'd have to get some decent food into them. That would give her something to work toward. Meanwhile, she found herself actually worrying about Emmett. The first thing she was going to do when they got to the apartment was phone the hospital and get an update. Surely Emmett was indestructible, wasn't he?

She looked at the children and felt a surge of pity for them. She knew how it felt to be alone. When their parents had died, Randy had worked at two jobs to support them, while Melody was still in school. She'd carried
her share of the load, but it had been lonely for both of them. She hoped these children wouldn't have the same ordeal to face that she and Randy had.

T
he nurse on duty in Emmett's ward told Melody that Emmett would have to be confined for at least two days. He was barely conscious, but they were cautiously optimistic about his condition.

Melody was assured that she and the children would be allowed to see him the next day, during visiting hours. In the meantime, she scoured her apartment to find enough blankets and pillows for three sleepy children. She put two of them in her bed, and one of them on a cot that had belonged to Randy when he was a boy. She slept on her own pullout sofa bed, and was delighted to find that it wasn't terribly uncomfortable.

It was fortunate that she had the weekend to look after the children. Having to juggle them, along with her job, would have been a real headache. She'd have coped. But how?

They had a change of clothing.
Getting
them to change, though, was the trick.

“This isn't dirty—” Guy indicated a shirt limp and dingy and smelly from long wear “—and I won't change it.”

“I'm all right, too,” Polk said, grinning at her.

“We're fine, Melody,” Amy agreed. She patted the woman's hand in a most patronizing way. “Now, you just get dressed yourself and don't worry about us, all right?”

Melody counted to ten. “We're going to see your father,” she said calmly. “Don't you want him to think you look nice?”

“Oh, Emmett never notices unless we go naked, Melody,” Amy assured her.

“And sometimes not even then,” Polk said with a chuckle. “Dad's very absentminded when he's rodeoing.”

“He sure doesn't seem to notice what the three of you get up to,” she said quietly.

“We like our dad just the way he is,” Guy said belligerently. “Nobody bad-mouths our dad.”

“I wasn't bad-mouthing him,” Melody said through her teeth. “Can we just go to the hospital now?”

“Sure,” Guy said, folding his thin arms over his chest. “But I'm not changing clothes.”

She threw up her hands. “Oh, all right,” she muttered. “Have it your way. But if your clothes set off the sprinkler system, I'm climbing into a broom closet so nobody will know who brought you.”

 

At the hospital, Melody herded them off the elevator and down the hall to the nurses' station.

“Look at all the gadgets.” Polk whistled, peering over
the counter at the computers. “Wouldn't I love to play with that!”

“Bite your tongue,” Melody said under her breath. She smiled at an approaching nurse. “I'm Melody Cartman. You have an Emmett Deverell on this floor with a concussion…?”

A loud roar, followed by, “You're not putting that damned thing under me!” caught their attention.

“Indeed we do,” the nurse told Melody. “Are you a concerned relative anxious to transfer him to another hospital?” she added hopefully.

“I'm afraid not,” Melody said. “These are his children and they want to see him very much.”

“Do you have him tied up in one of those white things?” Amy asked.

“No,” the nurse said with a wistful sigh. She turned. “Come on, I'll take you down to his room. Perhaps a diversion will improve his mood.”

“I really wouldn't count on it,” Melody replied.

“I was afraid you were going to say that. Here we are.”

“Dad!” Guy exclaimed, running to his father as a practical nurse laid down a trail of fire getting out the door. “How are you?”

Emmett stared at his eldest blankly. His pale green eyes were bloodshot. His dark hair was disheveled. There was a huge bump on his forehead with stitches and red antiseptic lacing it. He was wearing a white patterned hospital gown and looking as if he'd like to eat half the staff raw.

“It's almost noon,” he informed Melody. “Where in hell have you been? Get me out of here!”

“Don't worry, Dad, we'll spring you,” Guy promised, with a wary glance toward the nurse.

“You can't leave today, Mr. Deverell,” the young nurse said apologetically. “Dr. Miller said that you must stay for at least forty-eight hours. You've had a very severe concussion. You can't go walking around the streets like that. It's very dangerous.”

Emmett glared at her. “I hate it here!”

The nurse looked as if she might bite through her tongue trying not to reply in kind. She forced a smile. “I'm sure you do. But you can't leave yet. I'll leave you to visit with your family. I'm sure you're glad to see your wife and children.”

“She's not the hell my wife!” Emmett raged. “I'd rather marry a pit viper!”

“I assure you that the feeling is mutual,” Melody said to the nurse.

The woman leaned close on her way out the door. “Dr. Miller escaped. When he comes back, I'll beg on my knees for sedation for Mr. Deverell. I swear.”

“God bless you,” Melody said fervently.

“What are you mumbling about?” Emmett demanded when the nurse left. “And why haven't these kids changed clothes? They smell of pizza and dirt!”

“They wouldn't change,” she said defensively.

“You're bigger than they are,” he pointed out. “Make them.”

She glanced at the kids and shook her head. “Not me, mister. I know when I'm outnumbered. I'm not going to end my days tied to a post imitating barbecue.”

“They don't burn people at the stake,” he said with exaggerated patience. “That was just gossip about that lady motorist they kidnapped.”

“That's right,” Polk said. “Gossip.”

“Anyway, she got loose before she was very singed.” Amy sighed.

Melody gave Emmett a speaking look. It was totally wasted.

“Are you really okay?” Guy asked his father. He, of the three children, was the most worried. He was the oldest. He understood better than they did how serious his father's injury could have been.

“I'm okay,” Emmett said. His voice was different when he spoke to the children; it was softer, more tender. He smiled at Guy, and Melody couldn't remember ever being on the receiving end of such a smile. “How about you kids?”

“We're fine,” Amy told him. “Melody has a very nice apartment, Emmett. We like it there.”

“She has a cat,” Polk added. “He's a big orange tabby named Alistair.”

“Alistair?” Emmett mused.

“He was a very ordinary-looking cat,” Melody said defensively. “The least he deserved was a nice name.”

He leaned back against his pillows and closed his eyes. “Saints deliver us.”

“I don't think the saints like you very much, Mr. Deverell, on present evidence,” she couldn't resist saying.

One bloodshot pale green eye opened. “The saints didn't do this to me. It was a horse. A very nasty-tempered horse whose only purpose in life is to maim poor stupid cowboys who are dim enough to get on him. I let myself get distracted and I came off like a loose hat.”

She smiled gently at the description. “I'm sure the horse is crying his eyes out with guilt.”

The smile changed her. He liked what he saw. She was vulnerable when her eyes twinkled like that. He opened the other eye, too, and for one long moment they just looked at each other. Melody felt warning bells go off in her head.

“When can you come home, Emmett?” Amy asked, her big eyes on her father.

He blinked and looked down at her. “Two days they said,” he replied. “God, I'm sorry about this!” He glanced toward Melody. “I had no right to involve you in my problems.”

That sounded like a wholesale apology. Perhaps the head injury had erased his memory so that he'd forgotten her part in Adell's escape.

“I don't mind watching the children for you,” she said hesitantly. She pushed back her hair with a nervous hand. “They're no trouble.”

“Of course not, they were asleep all night,” he replied. “Don't let them out of your sight.”

“Aw, Dad,” Polk grumbled. “We'll be good.”

“Sure we will,” Guy said. He glanced at Melody irritably. “If we have to.”

“It's only for a day or two,” Emmett said. He was feeling foggier by the minute. “I'll reimburse you, of course,” he told Melody. He touched his head with an unsteady hand. “God, my head hurts!”

“I guess it does,” Melody said gently. She moved closer to the bed, concerned. “Shall I call the nurse?”

“They won't give me anything until the doctor authorizes it, and he's in hiding,” he said. His eyes closed. “Can't say I blame him. I was pretty unhappy about being here.”

“I noticed.”

He managed a weak chuckle. “If Logan had been at home, you wouldn't be landed with those kids….”

He was asleep.

“Is he going to be okay?” Amy asked. She was chewing her lower lip, looking very young and worried.

Melody smoothed back her hair. “Yes, he'll be fine,”
she assured the girl. “Come on. We'll go home and I'll make lunch for all of you.”

“I want a hot dog,” Polk said. “So does Amy.”

“I hate hot dogs,” Guy replied. “I don't want to stay with you. I'll stay here with Dad.”

“You aren't allowed to,” Melody pointed out.

He took an angry breath.

“I don't like it any more than you do,” she murmured. “But we're stuck with each other. We'd better go.”

They followed her out, reluctantly. She stopped long enough to assure the nurse at the desk that she'd bring the kids back the next day to visit their father. She was concerned enough to ask if it was natural for Emmett to go to sleep, and was told that the doctor would check to make sure he was all right.

 

Guy's dislike of Melody extended to her apartment, her cat, her furniture and especially her cooking.

“I won't eat that,” he said forcefully when she put hot dogs and buns and condiments on the table. “I'll starve first.”

She knew that it would give him the upper hand if she stooped to arguing with him, so she didn't. “Suit yourself. But we'll have ice cream for dessert and you won't. It's a house rule that you don't get dessert if you don't eat the main course.”

“I hate ice cream,” he said triumphantly.

“No, he doesn't,” Amy said sadly. “He just doesn't like you. He thinks you took our mom away. She won't even write to us or talk to us on the telephone.”

“That's right,” Guy said angrily. “It's all because of you! Because of your stupid brother!”

He got up, knocking over his chair, and stomped off into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.

Melody took a bite of her own hot dog, but it tasted like so much cardboard. It was going to be a long two days.

 

She didn't know how true her prediction was going to be. Guy sulked for the rest of the day, while she and the other two children watched television and played Monopoly on the kitchen table. While they were going past Go for the tenth time, Guy opened the apartment door and deliberately let Alistair out….

 

Melody didn't discover that her cat was missing until she started to put his food into his dish.

She looked around, frowning. “Alistair?” she called. The big cat was nowhere in sight. He couldn't have gone out the window. The apartment was on the fourth story and there was no balcony. She searched the apartment, including under the bed, but she couldn't find him.

“Have any of you seen my cat?” she asked.

“Not me,” Amy murmured. She was watching cartoons with Polk.

“Me, neither,” he said absently.

Guy was staring out the window. He jerked his head, which she assumed meant he hadn't seen the cat.

But he looked odd. She frowned. Alistair had been curled up on the couch just before Guy had stormed off into the bathroom. She hadn't seen the cat since. But surely the boy wouldn't have done something so heartless as to let the cat out. Surely he wouldn't!

Melody had found Alistair in an alley on her way home from work late one rainy afternoon last year. He'd had a string tied around his neck and was choking. She'd freed him and taken him home. He was flea-infested
and pitifully thin, but a trip to the veterinarian and some healthful food had transformed him. He'd been Melody's friend and companion and confidant ever since.

Tears stung her eyes as she searched again, her voice sounding frantic as she called her pet's name with increasing urgency.

Amy got up from the carpet and followed her, frowning. “Can't you find your cat?”

“No,” Melody said, her voice raspy. She brushed at a tear on her face.

“Oh, Melody, don't cry!” Amy said. She hugged her. “It will be all right! We'll find him! Polk, Guy,” she called sharply. “Come on. Help us hunt for Melody's cat! She can't find him anywhere!”

“Sure,” Polk said. “We'll help.”

They scoured the apartment. Guy looked, too, but his cheeks were flushed and he wouldn't meet Melody's eyes.

In desperation, Melody went to the two apartments nearby to ask her neighbors if they'd seen her cat, but no one had noticed him. There was an elevator and a staircase, but there was a door that led to the stairwell and surely it would be closed…

All the same, she checked, and was disturbed to find that the stairwell door was propped open while workmen carried materials to an apartment down the hall that was being renovated.

Leaving the children in the apartment, she rushed down the steps looking for Alistair. She called and called, but there was no answer, and he was nowhere to be found.

 

Defeated, Melody went back to the apartment. Her expression was so morose that the children knew without asking that she hadn't found the cat.

“I'm sorry,” Amy said. “I guess you love him a lot, huh?”

“He's all I have,” Melody said without looking up. The pain in her voice was almost tangible. “All I…
had.
”