“Did you have valuable jewelry or cash around the house?” Wade asked Emily, who had been listening intently to everything Officer Marley had said.
“I had a little cash in a drawer of the writing desk in my bedroom. Not much, less than a hundred dollars. And I don’t really have any valuable jewelry. Just my diamond-stud earrings, and I’m wearing them. And my mother’s...”
She glanced down at her arm and felt her voice catch in her throat.
“Your mother’s...?” Wade prodded gently.
“My mother’s gold bracelet,” she whispered.
“It was in your jewelry box?”
“It was on my arm.”
There was a moment of silence as everyone suddenly realized that whoever had knocked Emily down had paused to take the bracelet from her arm before running away. Emily watched as Wade’s face, which had already been hard with anger, darkened even further.
She wouldn’t want to cross him when he looked like this, she realized.
She hadn’t really seen him in cop mode before. Even when he’d questioned her about the embezzlement of Sam Jennings’s office funds, he’d seemed mild mannered and self-possessed.
He looked downright dangerous now.
A few minutes later, Wade walked the two uniformed officers outside while Emily leaned back against the cushions of her sofa, her eyes closed, her headache now settled into a persistent, dull throb. She was having trouble thinking dearly; she blamed the painkillers the hospital staff had pumped into her, though she knew that shock was a good part of it. Never in her wildest dreams had she ever imagined that she would be attacked in her own home, here in the little town where she’d spent her entire life feeling utterly safe, if increasingly restless.
She wondered if she would ever feel so naively sheltered again.
“Emily? Honey, are you okay?”
She opened her eyes to find Wade bending over her, not looking dangerous now, but touchingly concerned. “I’m okay,” she said. “Just tired.”
“I’ll call your aunt.”
“Wait.” She spoke without even stopping to think. “Not yet.”
Wade hesitated. “What is it?”
“I know you probably have other places to be, but...would you sit with me, just for a minute?” she asked apologetically. “I need just a little time to recuperate before Aunt Bobbie comes to fuss over me.”
“There’s nowhere else I need to be rightnow,” Wade assured her, taking a seat beside her on the sofa. “Can I get you anything? Something to drink?”
“No, thank you.” She only wanted to sit with him for a little while, to know he was there. And that he cared.
What she really needed, she thought with a lump in her throat, was to be held. But that was something she couldn’t bring herself to ask him.
She didn’t have to ask. Wade reached out and pulled her into his arms, tucking her wounded head gently into his shoulder. His warmth enveloped her, wrapping her in a safe, snug cocoon.
She hadn’t intended to cry. At least, not in front of anyone. She’d told herself she had more courage, more dignity than that. After all, she was lucky. She hadn’t been badly harmed. Nothing of great value had been taken....
She buried her face in Wade’s throat and felt the tears spill out, wetting his skin and her own.
Wade held her closer, murmuring something comforting and incoherent, except for the endearments scattered among the reassurances.
“My mother’s bracelet,” she said brokenly, naming the only thing that had been taken that truly mattered to her. “It was all I had of her.”
“I wish I could promise that I’ll get it back for you,” he murmured against her hair. “But all I can promise is that I’ll try.”
Without drawing away from him, she lifted one hand to swipe at her face. “It shouldn’t have mattered so much to me. I don’t even remember her. She abandoned me when I wasn’t quite two. I should hate her.”
“But you don’t.”