The Heiress and the Sheriff

by Stella Bagwell

  “I guess there’s little else I can do then, is there?” she said quietly.

  “Nothing else,” he agreed, then reached for her arm.

  Gabrielle wanted to jerk away from him. But she didn’t have the strength. And he was the sheriff, she reminded herself. It wouldn’t help her cause to have him riled at her.

  “Everything will be all right, Gabrielle,” the woman assured her as the three of them walked to Wyatt’s pickup.

  “Wyatt will take good care of you.”

  Gabrielle didn’t want to think about being under the sheriff’s care. He was harder to deal with than the pain in her head.

  “Do you need a lift back to the ranch?” Wyatt asked the woman.

  “No. I’m going to walk back,” she told him. “Maybe I’ll find my horse on the way. You will let us know about Gabrielle?”

  “I’ll call the ranch and let you know something as soon as I can. In the meantime, you might let your father-in-law, Ryan, know what’s happened.”

  “I will.” The woman waved and headed down the road in the opposite direction from the charred car.

  Gabrielle suddenly felt even more lost and alone without her rescuer. At least with the Fortune woman, she’d felt she had someone on her side. With Sheriff Grayhawk she felt anything but safe.

  He opened the door of the vehicle and helped Gabrielle up on the bench seat, then skirted around the hood and slid behind the wheel.

  “Buckle up,” he ordered as he started the engine.

  She pulled the straps of the seat belt across her lap, but her fingers were shaking so badly that she couldn’t make the two ends catch.

  Suddenly two dark-brown hands were pushing her fumbling fingers aside. “Here, let me do it, or we’ll never get where we’re going,” he said gruffly.

  She bit down on her lip and turned her face toward the window, but his closeness couldn’t be ignored. She could smell the faint scent of his cologne and feel the brush of his warm hands as he latched the seat belt against her.

  He was a forceful man in looks and presence. And though her past was a blank, she had a feeling she’d never encountered anyone like him before.

  “Thank you,” she murmured, once he’d straightened away from her and set the pickup in motion.

  He didn’t acknowledge her words. Instead, he turned the pickup around and headed back toward what was left of her burned car. The flames and smoke had finally been doused, and the firemen were rolling up their hoses.

  Wyatt stopped the pickup. “I’m going to talk to the firemen. I’ll be right back,” he said without glancing her way.

  Through a blur of pain Gabrielle watched the tall, dark sheriff walk over to the two firemen. After a brief moment of conversation he returned to the truck.

  “Is there anything left inside the car?” she asked hopefully.

  “The metal is still too hot to search through the thing. I’ll come back later and see what I can find. Unless you want to tell me what all this is about right now?”

  At the question, she snapped her head around, causing even more pain to crush the middle of her forehead. She frowned at him. “What do you mean?”

  His brows arched and then he rubbed a hand over his face. “So, you’re still determined to play innocent with me. I thought once we got away from Maggie you might decide to come clean.”

  Gabrielle realized she was in a partial state of shock from the accident, but try as she might she couldn’t unravel the strange things this man was saying to her.

  “Come clean? I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She turned slightly toward him, her expression desperate. “Do you know who I am? If you do, why don’t you tell me?”

  Her voice was rising as though she were very near to hysteria. If she was faking this whole thing she was doing a damn good job, Wyatt thought. But hell, most women were good actresses. Lying to a man came as naturally to them as breathing.

  “Calm down, lady. If you’ve got a concussion, it won’t do you any good to get all excited.”

  Gabrielle’s lips parted as she stared at him in stunned fascination. “Excited! How would you feel if your head was cracking and you didn’t know who you were or where you were? Oh, I’m sure a big strong man like you would take it all in stride,” she sneered. “It would probably be just another day in the life of a Texas sheriff.”

  His nostrils flared as his eyes left the highway long enough to glance at her. “That ache in your head doesn’t seem to be affecting your tongue.”

  She straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin. “I don’t like being accused. And you were trying to accuse me of something!”

  Except for a faint lift of his brows, his features became deceptively passive. “If you don’t know who you are, how can you be certain you aren’t guilty?”

  She opened her mouth to defend herself, but then a slow, sickening realization struck her. She might be a criminal. She might be anything. She just didn’t know!

  “You’re right. I can’t be certain of anything,” she said wretchedly, then dropped her head in her hands.

  Behind the wheel, Wyatt tried not to let the despair on her face soften him. She was a hell of a looker, but she could very well be up to no good. In his work he had to be suspicious of everyone. Personally, as a man, there was no woman he trusted. And he was doubly on his guard because of all the trouble the Fortunes had encountered lately.

  “You have no idea what you were doing on the road to the Double Crown Ranch?”

  Gabrielle strained to remember, but all that came to her mind was waking up with the floorboard of the car pressed against her face and the smell of gasoline choking her.

  “No. The name means nothing to me.”

  “Does the name Fortune register with you?”

  She looked at him hopelessly. “If I’ve ever heard of it, I don’t know it now. Who are these people? Could I have been going there to do a job?”

  His lips thinned to a grim line. “That’s what I’m wondering.”

  The sarcasm in his voice stung her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing,” he said bluntly. “We’ll talk about it later. After you’ve seen a doctor.”

  That was fine with her. She was more than a little tired of his innuendos. The pain in her head was making her nauseated, and thinking more than ten minutes into the future was terrifying. She simply wanted to close her eyes and forget the laconic sheriff beside her. She didn’t want to be reminded of the fact that she knew nothing about Gabrielle Carter.

  A few moments later, his deep voice jerked her out of her jumbled thoughts. “I wouldn’t go to sleep if I were you.”

  She opened her eyes, but didn’t bother to lift her head from the back of the seat. “Why?”

  “If you’ve got a concussion you shouldn’t sleep.”

  “I thought you said you were no doctor.”

  “I’m not. I’m just a lawman.”

  Her gaze lingered on his rigid profile. “Grayhawk,” she repeated. “Is that a Native American name?”

  He didn’t answer immediately. Finally he said, “My father was Cherokee.”

  “And your mother?”

  “White. Like you.”

  Even through the haze of her pain, Gabrielle picked up a sharp bitterness in his words. She wondered why, then just as quickly told herself it didn’t matter to her if he hated white people, or women, or even her. He was just one man in a big world. Once her memory returned, Sheriff Wyatt Grayhawk would be well and truly out of her life.

  Two

  The remainder of the trip passed in silence. At the hospital Wyatt escorted Gabrielle into the emergency unit and grabbed the attention of the first nurse he came upon.

  “Can he come with me?” Gabrielle asked as the nurse helped her into a wheelchair. She didn’t know why she wanted the sheriff to remain at her side. Only minutes ago, she had wished him out of her sight. Yet he was the only familiar face around her, and even if he was unfeeling about her pligh
t, his presence was steadying.

  The nurse glanced at Wyatt. “Is he your husband?” she asked Gabrielle.

  “No. But—”

  “Then it would be better if he didn’t. If he’s needed, I’ll come after him.”

  He cast Gabrielle a dry glance. “Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere.”

  Even though the tone of his words was far from gentle, his promise calmed her somewhat. She nodded jerkily at him, and then the nurse wheeled her away.

  Wyatt watched her disappear down the hallway, then through a door on the left. For a brief second he almost followed and told the nurse he was going to stay with Gabrielle whether she liked it or not.

  Hell, Wyatt, what are you thinking? he asked himself. The woman doesn’t need you. Yet, just for a moment, when she’d looked at him with those big pleading eyes, she’d reminded him of a little lost lamb about to go to slaughter.

  With another silent curse, he turned and headed to a busy nurses’ station across the room. He showed them his badge and asked one of the nurses to page Dr. Matthew Fortune.

  She quickly complied and he thanked her, then headed to the waiting area. Even though he didn’t want to go there. The frightened look on Gabrielle’s face when the nurse had taken her away was lingering in his mind, and oddly enough he was still fighting the urge to go back to the examining room and make sure she was all right.

  Forget it, Grayhawk, he muttered to himself. She wasn’t a child. Although she was young, he figured she was at least twenty-one or two. And for all he knew that frightened look could have been an act. Just like the loss of memory.

  With a tired sigh, he went over to the coffee machine and filled a cup. The strong burnt smell assured him it had been made hours ago, but he took a sip of it anyway. He’d been going since three o’clock this morning—he needed something to fortify him.

  Ignoring the vinyl chairs and couch where several people sat flipping through worn magazines, he walked over to a plate-glass window and stared out at the parking area stretching away to the city street. It wasn’t often Wyatt personally hauled someone to the hospital. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the accident happening on Fortune land, he would have sent a deputy out to handle the investigation.

  But the Fortune boys had been his closest friends since childhood. They had stood behind him when others had shunned him for being a half-breed. Without their solid support, he never would have been elected sheriff. And now that trouble had fallen on the family, he was personally checking out every movement on or near the Double Crown Ranch.

  In the background, he could hear the nurse on the intercom paging Matthew to come to Emergency. He was still sipping on the bitter coffee when the doctor’s voice sounded behind him.

  “Wyatt! What are you doing here? Has something happened to Claudia or Taylor? Have you heard something about Bryan?”

  Wyatt turned to see the tall, dark-haired doctor hurrying into the waiting room. Wyatt desperately wished he could tell the oldest of the Fortune brothers that he’d located his missing son. But the sad truth was that he was no closer to finding the baby now than he had been six months ago.

  Matthew’s baby, Bryan, had been taken from his crib during his christening party at the Double Crown nearly a year ago. A special FBI agent had been sent in to handle the case and he’d recovered a baby and the ransom money. But when he’d gotten the child home, everyone was shocked to discover the baby wasn’t Bryan. They’d kept the other baby though, since a blood test showed he had the rare Fortune blood, and had named him Taylor.

  Wyatt tossed the cup in a nearby trash bin and crossed the small area of the waiting room to greet the other man. “Don’t get upset, Matthew. This isn’t about Claudia or Bryan or Taylor. Or at least I don’t think it is. Do you have a few moments?”

  Matthew gestured toward the double doors leading out to the parking lot. “Of course. Let’s go outside.”

  The two men walked out into the heat and took refuge under the shade of a sycamore.

  “The reason I’m here, Matthew, is that I brought a young lady into Emergency a few minutes ago. She’s had a wreck on the Double Crown. Her car burned, and she has no idea who she is. Or so she claims.”

  Matthew’s finely chiseled features were suddenly frozen with shock. “Oh, my Lord! Was she hurt badly?”

  “I don’t think so. There was a small cut on her forehead, and she was complaining of a severe headache.”

  “Didn’t she have any identification?”

  Wyatt shook his head. “It must have been in the car. I’m going to search it after it cools down, but I doubt there’s a chance in hell I’ll find anything. Your sister-in-law, Maggie, saw the accident. She was still with the young woman when I got out there to investigate.”

  “Maggie didn’t know her?”

  “No. The woman says her name is Gabrielle Carter. I thought it mighty odd she could remember her name but nothing else.”

  “Gabrielle Carter,” the young doctor repeated. “The name doesn’t ring a bell with me. Do you think she might have some connection to my son? Maybe the kidnappers sent her to the ranch for some reason?”

  Losing baby Bryan had put a strain on the whole family, but Wyatt could see it was beginning to crush Matthew and Claudia’s marriage. Especially now that the DNA testing to determine paternity of Taylor had shown Matthew was the father. Matthew claimed it could only be the result of a sperm bank donation he’d made years ago, but Claudia was distraught and skeptical. Wyatt was checking out the sperm bank lead, though.

  “I can’t rule that possibility out, Matthew. Or she might even have some connection to Taylor. We really won’t know until she comes clean with her memory or I can find out who she really is.”

  “Then you think she’s lying?” Matthew asked.

  Wyatt grimaced. “I don’t know. I just have a gut feeling something’s not quite right. But I could be wrong. You’re the doctor—is it possible the accident caused her to lose her memory?”

  Matthew thoughtfully rubbed his chin. “It’s possible, though amnesia is certainly not something that happens routinely. You say she has a head injury?”

  “Her forehead was cut at the hairline and she was complaining of a headache. Could you examine her, Matthew? I’d like to have your opinion before I do anything. And who knows—you might recognize the woman.”

  The young doctor glanced at his watch. “I’m not due for rounds for another thirty minutes. Let’s go in, and we’ll see what we can find out.”

  The two men left the shade and as they approached the entrance of the building, Wyatt placed his hand on Matthew’s shoulder. “Matthew, when you first see this woman, don’t let on that you’re a Fortune. I want to see if there’s any sign of recognition on her face.”

  Matthew frowned. “You sure are a suspicious cuss.”

  “I have to be.” Wyatt grimaced. “And you should be, too, after all that’s been happening to your family.”

  The doctor sighed. “Yes, I know. I just hate all this mistrust. Every time a stranger comes to the ranch, I look at them and wonder if they know where my son is, or if they know something about baby Taylor. I’m even starting to look for clues with my patients here at the hospital! And Claudia—you know what all these unanswered questions are doing to her.”

  Wyatt squeezed the other man’s shoulder. “Believe me, Matthew, I understand how hard all of this has been on you. But you can’t give up hope now. This woman might just be the lead we’ve been looking for.”

  Back in Emergency, the two men discovered Gabrielle had been admitted to the hospital and taken up to the fifth floor. They headed up together.

  Much to Wyatt’s surprise, when they walked through the door of her room, she gave absolutely no outward sign of recognizing Matthew. Rather, she planted an accusing look on Wyatt as though he were the direct cause of her being restricted to a hospital bed.

  “I take it you haven’t done enough to me?” she asked Wyatt. “You’ve come up here to take my fingerp
rints or something?”

  Wyatt went to the head of her bed and stared down at her. The cut on her forehead had been covered by a bandage, but he could see the whole spot had begun to swell and redden. Someone had undressed her and put her into a flimsy hospital gown. He tried not to notice the shape of her bare breast beneath the thin cotton. But it was next to impossible to keep his gaze from dipping to the full roundness pushing against the fabric.

  “Or something,” he said, while fighting the odd urge to reach down and brush the tangled hair away from her cheek. He’d been around a lot of pretty women in his thirty-one years—Texas was full of them. But there was something different about this one. Something that, God help him, made him want to protect her.

  “I told you I wouldn’t leave. What did the doctor say?” he asked.

  Sighing, her gaze dropped to the sheet spread across her legs. “He said I had a concussion and that I’ll have to stay in here for observation. At least until tomorrow.”

  “Have you remembered anything?”

  “No. But he thinks everything will start coming back to me soon.”

  She glanced to the foot of the bed where Matthew was busily scanning her chart. “Who are you?” she asked him.

  He glanced at Wyatt, then to Gabrielle. “I’m—one of the staff doctors here at the hospital.”

  “Are you going to be my doctor?”

  He smiled gently at her. “That depends.”

  She motioned to the chart in his hand. “What does that say?”

  “It says you’ve had a trauma to your head. But you’re going to be all right.”

  She looked up at Wyatt and flashed him a crooked smile. “Sorry to disappoint you, Sheriff, but the doc here says I’m going to live.”

  She was obviously trying to be flip and indifferent, but Wyatt didn’t miss the quiver at the corner of her lips. She was as frightened as hell. But whether it was from her loss of memory or because she was up to something, he had no way of knowing.

  He pulled his gaze from hers and glanced at Matthew. “Have you seen enough?”