The Interpreter

Daunted but determined, she nodded. “Certainly.”

She could only wish her knees weren’t so damned wobbly and her head wasn’t throbbing like a finger slammed into an automobile door. She managed to take about five shaky steps before the American gave a put-upon sounding sigh and scooped her into his arms.

Her head whirled as the rapid shift in position exhausted all remaining equilibrium.

“Excuse me!” she still managed to exclaim hotly.

“You really think I’m going to let an injured, delusional Brit loose in these mountains? You need a doctor.”

She opened her mouth to argue, but she couldn’t seem to form any coherent thought, not when the cowboy held her so close. Heat radiated from him and he smelled earthy and masculine, of leather and sandalwood and something else ineffable.

Anyway, it was ridiculous to squabble with the man, especially when he was perfectly right. She wasn’t sure she could have made it another step, much less trudged seven miles to the nearest town.

Her eyes drifted closed as he carried her to the large vehicle. Though she told herself it was to hold the vertigo at bay, in truth she was aware of a wonderful—but supremely foolish—sense of safety in his arms.

The cowboy opened the passenger door to the lorry and ordered the children to slide over, then set her inside with a careful gentleness that for some ridiculous reason brought tears to her eyes.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

He paused, studying her with an inscrutable look, then with an odd sigh he closed the door, walked around the vehicle and climbed inside. He worked the gears and the lorry surged forward. A moment later he had turned the huge beast around and they were headed in the opposite direction.

They rode in silence for several long moments. Through the ache in her head, she was aware of furtive looks sliding in her direction with some frequency from the two younger occupants of the vehicle.

They were darling children, small and slender with huge dark eyes. Given their use of Tagalog, she had to assume they were Filipino and she wondered what they were doing with this large, formidable man.

“I am Miriam Betran,” the girl said after a few more moments. She spoke in solemn, careful English, as polite as if she were performing introductions at a garden party. “This is my brother, Charlie. I am nine, he is only five.”

“Almost six,” the little boy piped up.

“Hello,” she replied, wishing she had some kind of name to offer in return.

“Our mama and papa are dead. Mr. Mason says he is our papa now. That is why we come to United States.”

She shifted her gaze to Mr. Mason and saw a muscle twitch in that masculine jaw. He offered no explanation and she couldn’t summon the energy to request one, even if any of this had been her business.

“Thank you for helping me, Mr. Mason,” she said instead.

“Just Mason. Mason Keller.”

“Are you a cowboy, Mr. Keller?”

His mouth curved slightly. “Something like that. My family ranch is on the other side of these mountains.”

“I’m sure it’s lovely,” she murmured.

“I don’t know about that. Mostly sagebrush and dust. But I like it.”

She wanted to answer but couldn’t seem to make her brain communicate with her mouth to squeeze the words out. She also couldn’t for the life of her figure out why she was so drowsy suddenly but her eyelids seemed to weigh five stone each.

The urge to close them was overwhelming. Perhaps only for a moment, just long enough to ease the strain a bit….

She must have drifted to sleep. Her dreams were full of fear that tasted like bile in her mouth and the rapid pulse of blood through her veins. She needed to run, to get away. From what?

A sudden cessation of sound and movement finally awakened her, to her vast relief. She opened her eyes and found her escort had parked before a small single-story building of pale-red brick. A carved wooden sign out front proclaimed the structure to contain the Moose Springs Medical Clinic. Below it was the name Dr. Lauren Maxwell.

“She is awake, I think,” the boy pointed out, peering around his sister to be sure.

“Yes. I’m awake. I’m sorry I fell asleep.”

“It would really make my day if you could tell me you woke with crystal-clear memory of who you are and what you were doing in the Uintas,” Mason Keller said.

She poked around in her mind again but found it empty beyond that moment earlier when she had opened her eyes and found him staring down at her. That beastly panic returned to gnaw at her control. “No,” she whispered, her head still pounding.

He blew out a resigned breath. “Yeah, I figured that’s what you’d say. Let’s go see if Lauren can fix you up.”

“The doctor is nice,” Charlie confided in Tagalog. “She gives candy if you do not cry.”

She had to smile at the little boy, despite the nerves fluttering in her stomach. “I’ll try not to cry, then,” she responded.

The something-like-that cowboy climbed out of the truck then moved around to her side to open the door. He reached a hand inside to help her out and she had to admit she was grateful. Without his assistance she would have stumbled on knees that seemed as wobbly as a bowl of pudding.

The medical clinic was airy and bright, painted a cheerful yellow. The reception area seemed empty of patients but two women stood talking behind a desk, a matronly brunette who looked to be in her fifties and one at least a couple of decades younger, wearing jeans and a casual T-shirt.

She would have guessed the older woman to be the doctor but soon learned her error. The young woman’s features lit up when she saw Mason and the children, and she came out into the reception area through a door to the left of the desk.

She smiled at the children, touching Miriam gently on the shoulder. “Hey, kids. Great to see you again!”

The girl gave her a tiny smile in return, but Charlie turned suddenly shy, hiding behind the tall cowboy.

“Who’s your friend, Mase?” the woman asked.

“Hey, Lauren.” He stepped forward and kissed the lovely young woman on the cheek. “I brought you a little business. Jane Doe. The kids and I found her up in the Uintas. Damnedest thing. She was just lying in the middle of the logging road up near Whitney Reservoir. Claims she doesn’t remember who she is or how she got there.”

Beside him, her spine stiffened at his choice of words and the inherent suspicion in them. “I don’t remember! Why on earth would I lie?”

He ignored her heated defense of herself as if she were an annoying little bug. “I did a little triage on the scene. Looks like she cut herself somehow on her face—a while ago, I’d guess, judging by the dried blood—and she’s got a heck of a goose egg on the back of her head.”

“But no ID?”

“Nothing. No car, no purse, no nothing, at least not that I could see. I didn’t reconnoiter the whole area, though. I’m wondering if she might have taken a wrong turn up there somewhere, then had an accident and wandered away from the scene.”

“What a mystery.” The doctor gave her a curious look that made her feel a bit like a primate in a zoo exhibit.

“She seems to think little green men in a spaceship dropped her off,” Mason said.

“I do not!” she exclaimed. “I was merely responding to your suspicions with sarcasm.”

For some reason, that seemed to amuse him. A corner of his mouth lifted then he turned back to Dr. Lauren Maxwell. “On the way out of the mountains I put in a call to Daniel, since mysterious Brits with head injuries are his territory. He should be here any minute. I figured maybe you could check her out in the meantime, see if anything’s permanently busted.”