“Are you ready, Dee?”
“What?” Dee roused herself from a blatant stare at his bare head with its beautiful hair and reddened ears. “Yeah, just let me grab one more thing from inside.”
Dee gripped the rail for balance as she dashed up the steps. Without giving herself time to think why, she headed straight for the coatrack and snatched Jacob’s hat.
Chapter 6
“W ho’s your doctor friend?” After over a half hour of ten-ton silence, Dee tried yet another attempt to jump-start a conversation. This guy had pensive down to an art form, and she needed a distraction from the nerves eating up her stomach lining.
“What?” Jacob glanced from the road to Dee sitting in the truck cab beside him. The knit cap lay between them on the tan tweed seat.
“Tell me more about the doctor I’ll be seeing.” She shifted to face Jacob.
Jacob hooked his wrist over the steering wheel. For a moment, it seemed he wouldn’t answer, merely let the telephone poles whiz by at a monotonous pace. A toolbox in the backseat rattled in the silence. “Like I said before, she’s the wife of an old crewmate from South Carolina. He’s stationed here at McChord Air Force Base in Tacoma now. Actually they both are since she’s a military doctor—Kathleen Bennett.”
From the solemn set of his jaw, he probably wanted to drop her and all her problems. Although it stung being considered little more than a nuisance, she couldn’t blame him for not wanting to chat it up with his annoying amnesiac tenant. “I’ve imposed on you enough. Let’s go straight to the police station.”
His gaze slid from the road to her with the slow shake of his head. “Your health comes first.”
“I’m tired of waiting for answers. I need a name, a real name.” She couldn’t stop the notion that she wanted to meet Jacob on a more even footing, as an independent woman meeting an intriguing, sexy man, rather than the whole dependency scenario. “Besides, I won’t have insurance until we know who I am.”
“Doc Bennett won’t charge you anything. I already called ahead.”
Frustration made her want to clench her fists and pitch an unholy tantrum. “While I appreciate your help, I should have some say in my own life.”
“Sorry.” His mouth curved into one of those rare, one-sided smiles. “Of course you should.”
What would a full wicked smile that twinkled in his eyes look like? This wasn’t the kind of distraction she needed. “Let’s go to the station now, please.”
“Think for a minute. You’ve been in contact with the Tacoma PD every couple of hours and nothing’s coming through. They’re running the license plate from the Suburban now. I didn’t want to scare you when we discussed it before, but we need to be sure nothing’s seriously wrong. Finding out who you are won’t be worth a damn if you pass out on the precinct floor.”
Perhaps his one-word answers hadn’t been so bad after all. “But wouldn’t I have already—”
“That’s for the doctor to say.”
“Fine.” She waved a hand. “You’re right, and I’m irritable. There’s so much beyond my control, I can’t stop grasping at any little thing I can manage. Does that make any sense?”
His smile faded altogether. “Yeah.”
Back to one-word answers. So much for conversation.
Dee stared out over the endless stretch of snow road, mountain peaks just visible through the misty fog. She monitored the mile markers, city limits now only ten miles away.
Anticipation tingled through her at the notion of discovering her identity and hopefully answers about a possible child. Even so, she couldn’t stop a sliver of regret from mingling into the mix. Regaining her memory could mean saying goodbye to Jacob.
Jacob was more than ready to say goodbye to whoever had been following them since they’d left the Lodge.
The snowy haze made it difficult to keep track of cars around them beyond headlights beaming through soupy weather. But he’d seen the same light-colored SUV peek through the fog again and again. He couldn’t be sure of the paint job with all the sludge on the vehicle, but he also couldn’t stop thinking about Mr. Smith’s white Suburban.
Of course with so many SUVs around here, the odds of seeing slush-covered Suburbans were high. It could be coincidence. He’d tried slowing, speeding up, even taking a side road and still he could swear they had a tail.
He didn’t want to stress out Dee further, especially not before a doctor’s okay on her health. At least she wasn’t pressing for conversation anymore and he could keep his full attention on making sure they made it to the base safe and sound.
No one would get through the front gate without proper identification.
He checked the rearview mirror again. Nothing but snow and a sedan now. Still, the unease itched. Maybe he was being overly cautious.
But until he knew what had happened to Dee, he couldn’t relax his guard.