Father Found. Muriel Jensen
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was a mistake, she knew. It would take a crane to get her out of this chair when she was ready to go back to bed.
Her left hand encountered leather. She peered over the side of the chair and saw Bram’s backpack tucked into the shadows between the small table and the chair. Thinking Bram might have misplaced it, she lifted it and leaned it against the front of the chair.
And as the pouch gaped when she caught it by the sides, she spotted what appeared to be the pencil-shaped antenna of a cell phone. She pulled the bag up into what was left of her lap and pulled out the instrument.
She stared at it in disbelief.
“We have no way to contact anyone unless we go to town,” Bram had said when she’d asked how they would call for help if they needed it. “We could give away our location by making calls. So we have to depend upon ourselves.”
No way to contact anyone and there’d been a cell phone in his backpack all along.
She looked deeper into the bag and saw a floral, very feminine looking address book. She pulled it out and opened it, guessing it was hers and not his. Or maybe one she kept for both of them.
She opened it and the first two names leaped out at her. Alexis Ames. Athena Ames.
She read them again, greedily searching for clues to her sisters’ personalities and possibly her own in the simple letters of their names.
Alexis had a European address and phone number, but Athena lived in Washington, D.C. Her eyes ran over the numbers.
“Interesting reading?” Bram asked. He stood in the living room doorway, long legs in sweat bottoms braced a foot apart, muscular arms crossed over a formidable chest clad in a simple white T-shirt.
“It’s our address book,” she said unnecessarily, to hide her guilt. Why did she feel guilty, she asked herself impatiently. She was rummaging through his things, but he’d been guilty of lying.
“Yes, it is,” he said.
She held up the phone. “You told me we had no way to contact anyone,” she accused, “unless we went to town.”
He held her gaze intrepidly. “I didn’t want you to try,” he replied calmly. “I was afraid that if you started remembering things and tried to call your sisters or a friend, Mendez would track us down.”
“You could have trusted me to understand that,” she said with an air of injured dignity, “and to behave accordingly.”
He raised a rueful eyebrow. “I might have if I didn’t know you better. You have a tendency to do what you want to do regardless of the possible consequences.”
“Then how do we get along,” she asked, her chin at a testy angle, “if you don’t trust me?”
He grinned. “I keep an eye on you.” He indicated the backpack with a jut of his chin. “You’re welcome to dump everything out and look through it. I have nothing to hide.”
“Except the phone you lied about.”
He nodded with no apparent guilt. “Which you found by looking through my bag. I think that makes us even.”
Indignant because he was right, she tried to pull herself out of the chair. She imagined she looked a little like a whale attempting a backbend.
Bram came to help her.
She tried to slap his hands away. “I can manage.”
“Let me help you,” he insisted. “I’m fond of that chair.” Placing one hand on her arm and his other arm around her back, he pulled firmly and drew her to her feet.
“Thank you,” she said with precarious dignity. “I’m going back to bed.”
“Good idea.” He walked her to her bedroom. “What woke you? Are you warm enough?”
“I was hungry,” she admitted, rubbing her knuckles against the back of her waist. Or where she used to have a waist. “And the baby loves to stretch out when we sleep and push against my backbone.”
She was walking into the room as she spoke, but Bram caught her arm and splayed his other hand against the small of her back. “Here?” he asked.
She felt several things at once—a little frisson of sensation that seemed to bounce from one vertebra to another, then the simple comfort of his broad, warm hand against her aching back.
“Yes,” she replied, her voice barely there. She reached to the doorjamb for support as both the sensation and the warmth began to spread.
“Let me see if I can encourage him to move.” He went to her bed, drawing her with him, and sat down on the edge. He patted his knee, encouraging her to sit on it.
She eyed him skeptically, concerned on several levels. She could explain only one. “I’ll cripple you,” she warned.
He laughed. “I don’t think so. I’ve been running five miles a day for twenty years.” He pulled her between his legs and sat her on his right knee. “And there’s not that much to you, even with the baby.” He placed his hand over the spot she’d indicated before and rubbed gently but firmly.
She pitched forward at the strength of the first stroke and he put his free arm around her to anchor her.
In a matter of seconds she became his willing slave. She couldn’t help the “aah” of relief as his left arm supported her uncomfortable weight and his right hand rubbed that pressure point until she felt like a puddle of oatmeal.
“Better?” she heard Bram ask.
She considered answering no, because if she said yes, he’d stop.
Reluctantly she made an affirmative sound and pushed herself to her feet. “Thank you,” she whispered, the air suddenly electric around them. They should be sharing a bed, a life, a baby. But there were too many unknowns here for her to settle comfortably into life as it should be.
All she knew about herself was what he’d told her—and if he’d lied about the phone, he might have lied about anything else—or everything else.
He stood, also, and gestured her into bed. “I’ll tuck you in,” he offered.
She complied and he lifted her feet for her, pulling the blankets over them, then over her.
She lay on her side, the only position that was comfortable, and he tucked the blankets in at her neck.
He turned out the light. “Sweet dreams,” he said into the darkness.
“Thank you for the massage,” she replied.
“All part of the service.”
The door closed quietly and she expelled a deep sigh of relief. When she knew who she was, she wondered, would she know what to make of him?
BRAM WAS ALMOST GLAD to see rain the following morning. It was cold and damp and they went through a lot of wood, giving him something to do that afternoon.
He chopped enough wood to replace the power of Bonneville Dam. He was frustrated on so many levels he was about to implode. But he had to bide his time.
In his other life, the government had directed him to a point, but he’d been the best security officer they had and they’d let him do things his way.
When he’d hooked up with Dave and Trev, they’d worked together like a well-maintained machine, each moving in harmony with the other, each mind reading the others’ so that there was seldom a bad move.
Until Afghanistan and Farah’s death.
Bram remembered explaining to them why they shouldn’t use her, that while she was valuable as a translator, she was outside the unit and therefore a potential danger.
But they’d needed her, and he’d fallen under the spell of her intelligence and her sweetness just like Dave had—though neither