Found: His Perfect Wife

by Marie Ferrarella

  Alison caught her bottom lip between her teeth. She didn’t know if it was a line, or if he was being serious. She supposed it wouldn’t do any harm. He looked far too unsteady to try anything in his present condition. And these were unusual circumstances.

  “Okay,” she murmured, getting in on her side. “You can ride up front.”

  Luc stared at the seat belt a full moment, as if analyzing it, before he slid the metal tongue into the groove. “Where are we going?”

  Picking her way through the alley, she turned the car to the south and prayed for no traffic. “To get you checked out.”

  That was going to cost. “I don’t have any money,” he pointed out needlessly.

  She flipped her blinker on, easing into the turn lane. “Don’t worry, I know the doctor there.”

  The doctor she knew turned out to be an intern. And her brother. Alison knew for a fact that Jimmy, three and a half years her senior, was on call in the emergency room at University Medical Center. With any luck, Luc could be quickly walked through this ordeal.

  And then what?

  The question drummed through her head as she brought the taxi to a halt in the tiny lot.

  And then, she told herself, she’d take it one step at a time. Who knew? Maybe he’d get his memory back by the time they walked out through the doors again.

  She was on nodding terms with half the staff on duty during the early-afternoon shift. It was something she was counting on.

  “We’re here,” she announced needlessly to Luc.

  Getting out, trying not to move quicker than his head, Luc looked around. “Shouldn’t we be going through the front?”

  This was the back entrance, reserved for ambulances and paramedics. And the staff. “This is faster.” She ushered Luc in through the electronic doors.

  The receptionist glanced up from her book as Alison hurried by. Her fingers marking her place, she appeared vaguely annoyed at the sudden disturbance.

  “Jimmy around, Julie?”

  It took the young woman a couple of seconds before recognition set in. A smile followed. “Sure. He’s in the lounge. Slow morning,” she commented just before returning to her book.

  “Not anymore,” Alison muttered.

  Realizing that Luc wasn’t beside her any longer, she glanced over her shoulder. She’d lost him at the entrance. There were two nurses in front of him, questioning his presence. And just possibly, she observed, trying to draw a little personal information from him, as well.

  You’re out of luck, girls.

  Not that she could fault them for trying. Luc was definitely in the cute category, she allowed. Actually, she decided, scrutinizing him, he was more than cute. A lot more. Not that that was either here or there. At least, not for her.

  Retracing her steps, Alison planted herself between the two nurses and Luc. She knew one of the women. “Grace, I’m looking for Jimmy.”

  “In the lounge.” Grace hardly spared her a glance. “Anything we can do?” The question was directed at Luc. “A sponge bath while you’re waiting?”

  Without thinking, only reacting, Alison laced her hand through his and pulled Luc away. “He can give himself his own bath.”

  Despite his condition, Luc couldn’t help smiling. “Are they always that friendly?”

  She led him down a hallway whose walls were long overdue for a painting. Cracked in a number of places, the paint was beginning to peel here and there along the perimeters.

  “They usually don’t have enough time to be that friendly. Looks like you picked the right time to be mugged.”

  He doubted if there was such a thing. At least, not from the way his head was feeling.

  “This way.” Pushing open the unlocked door, she called out to her brother. “Jimmy.”

  He looked like her, Luc thought, picking Jimmy Quintano out of the small cluster of men in green livery sitting or standing inside the stuffy room. They had the same color chestnut hair, the same blue eyes and the same winking dimple in their right cheek.

  Right now, Jimmy looked a good deal more indolent than his younger sister.

  Half turning from the program he was watching on a small, beat-up television someone had donated to the cause, Jimmy leaned back in one of the chairs that framed the kitchen table, another donation.

  “Hey, Aly, what’s up?” He looked back at the screen. “I thought you were driving the cab today.”

  “I was.” She would have preferred sharing this with him alone, but she couldn’t always pick her locations. Besides, she knew how fast word spread within the infrastructure of the hospital’s staff. “Until two guys decided they wanted the fare money.”

  The easy smile vanished. Jimmy was on his feet instantly, crossing to her. “You hurt?” Even as he asked, his eyes washed over her as he passed his hands over her arms.

  “I’m okay, but I probably wouldn’t have been if he hadn’t come to my rescue.” For the first time, Jimmy noticed that his sister hadn’t come in alone. He wasn’t accustomed to Alison being with a man. Not since her divorce. “Jimmy, this is Luc. Luc, my brother Jimmy Quintano.”

  A few of the others in the room clustered around them, silently giving their sympathy to Alison, respecting her space. Jimmy focused on Luc. Grateful, Jimmy grasped Luc’s hand in both of his. “Hey, man, thanks. I mean it.” Sincerity clouded his mind for a second. “I didn’t catch your last name. Luc what?”

  She wanted to spare Luc as much as possible. “That’s part of the reason we’re here,” Alison told Jimmy.

  He looked from Luc to his sister. “I don’t understand.”

  Before Luc could say anything, Alison began explaining the situation to her brother.

  “Luc can’t remember anything. One of the muggers hit him from behind and he went down on the sidewalk.” She indicated the gash on his forehead. “He hit his head. Hard. When he came to, he didn’t know where he was. Or who.”

  Jimmy tried to fill in the blanks. “And I take it they took his ID.”

  She nodded. “Cleaned him out.” Alison flashed an apologetic look at Luc. “Suitcase, wallet. Everything but the lint in his pockets.”

  Jimmy could hear the frustrated tone in his sister’s voice. “Excuse me for a minute.” Making his apology to Luc, he took Alison aside. “You’re not to blame, you know.”

  Though she appreciated what he was trying to do, she’d always been willing to take responsibility for her own actions. And this was lying right at her doorstep. “He came to my rescue. He was defending me, Jimmy. If I’m not to blame, then who is?”

  He knew she had more than enough to deal with as it was. He was careful not to show it, but he worried about Alison. They all did—he, Kevin and Lily. His younger sister was friendly and outgoing, but there’d always been this definite cut-off point for her past which she wouldn’t allow men to venture. The only exception had been her husband. But that union had been short-lived, not lasting out a year. Ever since then, she’d become even more withdrawn than ever as far as her social life went.

  There were times when he thought of her as a wounded sparrow. A hint of the very idea would have probably had her beating on him with both fists just to show him how unsparrowlike she was.

  But he knew better. “Society, lax laws, the muggers—I can give you a list.” His eyes were kind as he looked at her closely. “You sure they didn’t hurt you?”

  He’d look into her soul if he could, she knew that. But that was a closed area, even to him. “I’m sure. Just take care of Luc, all right? I really feel responsible for him, Jimmy.”

  “All right.” Slipping his arm around her shoulders, Jimmy turned toward Luc. “Let’s get that head X-rayed, Luc. Make sure there isn’t something going on we should be aware of.”

  Jimmy shut off the back light and pulled the two X rays off the display. Alison had shadowed his every move, insisting on looking at the X rays herself. He knew that her goal was to become a nurse-practitioner, but he wished she would give him a little space right now.<
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  Slipping the X rays into a large manila envelope, he looked at Luc. The news was excellent. “No evidence of any swelling. In my professional opinion, you just got banged up a bit.”

  “And the amnesia?” Alison pressed.

  Since Luc and not his sister was the patient, Jimmy addressed his words to him. “Should clear up. Day or so.” He paused, then qualified. “With luck.”

  “Should,” Luc repeated slowly, absorbing the word into the vast abyss that existed in his mind. “But no guarantees.”

  Jimmy knew there was no way he could actually commiserate with his patient’s situation. How would he have felt, waking up, finding his whole world erased? It was a scary thought. “Nothing in life is.”

  “Except death and taxes.” Luc stopped abruptly to examine the line that had come to him out of the blue. He’d heard that somewhere. But where, when? He squelched down the frustration and concentrated, instead, on the fact that he had remembered something, no matter how trivial. Progress.

  “Yeah.” Jimmy made one final notation in Luc’s chart before closing it. He wondered how the receptionist was going to file this, given that there was no last name. Her problem. “Except for that.” Setting the chart aside, he picked up a small white packet and handed it to Luc. “I’m giving you ten pills. Take one every four hours for the pain if it gets too much. It’ll make you sleepy,” he warned, “but then, it doesn’t look as if you’re about to operate any heavy machinery in the immediate future.”

  Luc stared down at the packet before putting it away. “If it’s all the same, I’d rather keep alert. My head’s already fuzzy enough as it is.”

  Jimmy could empathize with that. Luc had described one killer of a headache. “Up to you.” He paused, thinking. Without a clue as to who he was and with no money, Luc had nowhere to stay. “You know, there’s a shelter not too far from here—” He began reaching for a pen and something to write on.

  “He already has an address to a shelter,” Alison cut in. “The police detective gave it to him.” She had no firsthand knowledge of what one of those places looked like, but she’d watched a documentary. It was enough to help her make up her mind.

  Jimmy missed the look in her eyes. “So I guess you’re set.”

  “Looks like,” Luc agreed.

  “Thanks again for saving the runt.” He nodded at Alison as he shook Luc’s hand. “We’ve gotten used to having her around.”

  Luc had a feeling that he had no idea what to do with gratitude. At least, he didn’t know how to respond now, so he merely nodded, letting the words pass. Focusing, instead, on the unspoken affection he heard in the intern’s voice. The same note that existed in Alison’s when she’d first mentioned her brother.

  Did he have a family? Was that kind of filial affection part of his life, too? He had no way of proving it right now, only the vaguest hint of a feeling, but he thought that he did. Or maybe it was just wishful thinking on his part.

  Saying goodbye, Luc walked out of the hospital with Alison. He noticed that for once she wasn’t talking very much. Probably trying to decide whether to drive him to the shelter, or let him walk there, he thought.

  Alison held her tongue until they were outside in the parking lot again and alone. She unlocked the car doors, and then, unable to stand it any longer, her conscience pushed out the words.

  “Look, I don’t like the idea of your staying at one of these places.”

  “You don’t,” he repeated. He didn’t know her. He had no way of knowing where she was going with this.

  She looked at him, torn between guilt and the need to protect her privacy. Guilt won.

  “No, I don’t. I don’t know if you saved my life or not, but you very well might have and I would be callous and ungrateful for the sacrifice your coming to my rescue apparently cost you if I let you stay at a flophouse overnight.”

  He took out the address the detective had given him and looked at it. “Flophouse?”

  He was repeating things again. Alison didn’t know how much clearer to make it for him. “Work with me here,” she retorted.

  The look on his face was innocent and compounded her guilt. “I would if I knew what we were working on.”

  Trying again, she enunciated each word. “I live at home. With my brothers. You just met Jimmy. There’s Kevin, too. He’s the oldest.” Not that that mattered, she thought, except maybe to Kevin. But they each had a vote on what went on in the house. She knew she could count on Jimmy to back her up. “There’s this room over the garage. It’s not much, but it’s clean and you wouldn’t have to share your space with forty other people.” And any assorted bugs and/or vermin that might decide to spend the night, as well, she added silently.

  In his present state, with not even a glimmer of a memory to fall back on for guidance, Luc didn’t want to presume too much. “Are you asking me to stay at your place?”

  “No, I’m telling you you’re staying at my place,” she corrected tersely. “My garage,” she amended. “That is—” Frustrated, she dragged a hand through her hair. “Look, I owe you, and I wouldn’t feel very good about myself if I let you stay in one of these places.”

  The smile that came to his lips was slow in its progress, a little like sunrise when the sun reached up over the mountain range to clear a path for itself in the sky. She found herself staring at it. At him. And getting lost.

  “Can’t have you feeling bad about yourself,” Luc agreed.

  For the life of her, Alison couldn’t tell if he was putting her on, teasing her or just being honest with her. In any case, she didn’t have time to straighten it out right now. Glancing at her watch, she realized that she was overdue getting the cab back. Her shift had been over for ten minutes and she had nothing to show for it.

  Except Luc.

  She doubted that Kevin would think the afternoon had been very profitable.

  He was out of his small, windowless office before she brought the cab to a full stop within the large garage where Kevin kept the five cabs that he owned. Slightly shorter and broader than his brother, Kevin Quintano gave the impression of a bulldozer plowing through the underbrush.

  He was plowing in her direction now.

  Having spent the better part of the last couple of hours trying to reach her on the two-way radio when she didn’t arrive to pick up her next fare, Kevin had been vacillating between furious and frantic. She was, after all, his baby sister, and the city was large. All the maniacs were not confined to cities with more than a million in population.

  Now that he saw she was all right, he went back to furious.

  “Okay, what the hell’s going on? I’ve been trying to reach you all afternoon. Where the hell did you disappear to? I felt like someone in that old sitcom. You know, Car 54, Where Are You? Except in this case—” he jerked a thumb in the cab’s direction “—it was Cab 4.” He waved one of his drivers over. “What are you waiting for? Christmas? Go, go!”

  With a nod of his head, the driver eased past Alison and got in on the driver’s side.

  Hands on his hips, Kevin turned toward his sister. He didn’t miss the opportunity to glare at the man with his sister, either. He knew it couldn’t be a boyfriend. Gorgeous though she was, Alison didn’t have boyfriends. He and the others had tried, in vain, to fix her up time and again, but she’d stubbornly refused to have any part of it.

  When being yelled at, Alison had a tendency to yell back. It didn’t affect the way she felt about her brother at all. “I didn’t have time to call in.”

  “Why, why didn’t you have time to call in?” Kevin found himself walking behind her as Alison retreated to his office, the stranger beside her. “Was it because of him? He get fresh with you?” Not waiting for an answer, Kevin moved Alison aside and commandeered the man’s attention. “Listen, buddy, just because she was driving a cab doesn’t make her an easy mark—”

  Alison wedged herself between them, glaring at her brother. “Kevin, you’re getting carried away again.”


  Deep-seated affection flickered in Kevin’s eyes for a second as he looked at her. The ideas that had been running through his head these last few hours… “You’re my baby sister. I have a right to get carried away if some guy—”

  “He saved me, Kevin.”

  The barrage of words came to a sudden, skidding halt. Dark brows came together over a Roman nose. “Saved you? Saved you from what?”

  “From being mugged.” She’d wanted to find a way to tell him, a nice, calm way, but apparently Kevin wasn’t going to allow that. “Two guys stole the fare money. And all his things. I’m sorry, Kevin. The money’s gone.”

  He didn’t give a damn about the money. Only Alison. He looked from Luc to Alison, words temporarily refusing to come. And then they came. In a flood.

  “That does it! No more driving the cab. Not full-time, not part-time. Not from here to the edge of the garage—”

  “Kevin—”

  But he wasn’t listening. “I told you that wasn’t a job for a woman, but no, you wouldn’t listen. You always thought you knew what was best.” When he thought of what could have happened to her, his blood ran cold. “Well, I’ve got news for you. You don’t know—”

  She placed her hand on her brother’s shoulder. “Slow down, Kevin. Luc has a headache.”

  Working up a full head of steam, he was just getting started. “I don’t care—”

  But she did. “He got it defending me.”

  “Oh.” The words finally penetrated. Chagrined, Kevin looked at the man who had earned his eternal gratitude. “Oh,” he repeated. “Hey, sit down.” He dragged a chair closer, urging Luc to sit. “You want an aspirin?” Kevin pulled open a drawer in his desk, reaching for a half-empty bottle. “Did you take him to see Jimmy—?”

  Alison reclaimed the bottle and put it back in the drawer. “He has painkillers and yes, I took him to see Jimmy. I am a nurse, you know.”

  “A nurselet,” Kevin corrected fondly. Ten years older than Alison, it was hard for him to think of her in any sort of adult capacity. “But you’re coming along,” he added when he saw the storm clouds gathering in her eyes.