Men Made in America Mega-Bundle
The Redemption of Deke Summers
Found: His Perfect Wife
Arizona Heat
Deceptions
Dr. Dad
Send Me a Hero
Tangled Lies
Love by Proxy
The Temptation of Rory Monahan
Mysterious Stranger
Bayou Midnight
Table of Contents
The Redemption of Deke Summers
by Gayle Wilson
Found: His Perfect Wife
by Marie Ferrarella
Arizona Heat
by Jennifer Greene
Deceptions
by Annette Broadrick
Dr. Dad
by Judith Arnold
Send Me a Hero
by Rita Herron
Tangled Lies
by Anne Stuart
Love by Proxy
by Diana Palmer
The Temptation of Rory Monahan
by Elizabeth Bevarly
Mysterious Stranger
by Patricia Rosemoor
Bayou Midnight
by Emilie Richards
The Redemption of Deke Summers
by Gayle Wilson
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Epilogue
Prologue
Deke Summers slid the ten-dollar bill across the counter to the tall gray-haired man behind it.
“Ten dollars worth of regular,” he said. His voice was soft, but the accent was right, the slow cadence of his childhood found again in the months he’d spent in the South. He had known there would be nothing in his speech to draw unwanted attention, and that was important. As always, he needed to blend into his background like the shadows melted into the dark corners of this room.
“Pump’s on,” the owner answered, opening the cash register drawer to deposit the ten, the bell loud in the quiet dimness of the small filling station.
“Thanks,” Deke said.
He turned from the counter and walked to the screen door and then through it to the outside. There had been nothing in the exchange that had triggered any alarms, no instinctive recognition of threat, but he had used this station at least three times in the months he’d lived in the small Alabama town of Muscova, and he knew that was pushing the limits.
Last time, Deke thought as he disengaged the hose from the old-fashioned tank. This was the last time to show his face here. He didn’t want to become familiar to anyone, recognizable, a memory.
The silence he had left behind him in the station didn’t last long. The combat boots in which the tall man crossed the wooden floor were touched around the soles with mud, dried and hardened, out of place with their military-style gloss, and his footsteps echoed across the pleasant gloom of the small room. He no longer noticed the smells that surrounded him, the wooden floor itself permeated by years of gasoline fumes and the odor of the sweeping compound that was sprinkled over it weekly in an effort to remove grease and stains. The owner stood behind the screen door that had just banged shut, eyes slightly narrowed against the brilliance of the afternoon sunshine.
He watched as his customer unscrewed the gas cap on the mud-splattered pickup and began to fill its tank. The man stood beside the truck, left forearm resting against the cab’s roof, his stance throwing into prominence the muscles in the broad shoulders and long back, clearly revealed by the thinness of the navy T-shirt he wore. The sun glinted on his downturned head, highlighting platinum streaks that blended through the darker gold. Ancient jeans, riding low on his narrow hips, followed the line of well-developed thighs and calves, bunching slightly over the tops of scuffed work boots, worn heels testifying to their age.
The man inside, concealed by the darkness of the sheltered interior, did not refocus his attention when he was joined in the doorway. The newcomer took a long drink from the green glass bottle he had removed from the refrigerated case in front of the counter, tilting his head back as he swallowed, the muscles in his throat moving smoothly under the tanned skin. He reached across to the revolving rack and pulled down a narrow package of peanuts, ripping open the cellophane with his teeth. He carefully poured the stream of nuts into the dark liquid in the bottle he held, and only then did he allow his eyes to find whatever it was on the other side of the screen that had attracted the attention of the station’s owner.
They watched in silence as Deke Summers finished filling the truck, allowing the gauge to inch upward to the ten-dollar mark. He replaced the hose and the cap of the tank, each movement carried out with a powerful, fluid grace that was not lost on the men inside the building.
“You know him?” the newcomer asked, taking another swig of the soda, allowing a few of the bobbing peanuts to enter his mouth with the liquid.
“I ought to,” the original watcher said softly. “Somehow I know I ought to.”
The eyes of the one with the bottle returned to the man outside, who was now climbing into the truck. They watched, again in silence, as Summers started the pickup, the ancient motor coughing in protest a couple of times before it caught. He put it into gear and pulled out onto the empty blacktop. They watched as the truck disappeared behind the heat waves shimmering upward from the asphalt.
“Always pays with cash,” the tall man said. “Don’t use a card or ask to make a bill.”
“A lot of people pay with cash,” the other said dismissingly.
“Something ain’t right,” the owner offered.
It was as far as he could go in expressing aloud what he had felt from the first time the stranger had come into the store. It was like when you were in the woods, in a stand or hidden by the foliage, and despite the care you’d taken, you suddenly felt something was there, watching from the dawn darkness with eyes you couldn’t see. Something dangerous. It had been that same weird feeling. Maybe it was his eyes. Pale blue. And cold. The kind of eyes that could look through a man.
“Somewhere…” the owner said, and then he hesitated, knowing he was making a fool of himself, but the feeling was too strong to deny and had been building now for weeks. “Somewhere I’ve seen his face before. And I ought to remember where.”
“It’ll come to you,” the other man reassured, smiling, and then he downed the last of the concoction in the green bottle and set it on the counter beside him, along with a folded dollar bill he’d fingered out of the front pocket of his jeans.
“I don’t ever forget a face,” the tall man said, his hand automatically pushing open the screen for his companion to step through; then he allowed the door to close behind the departing customer. He put his hand flat against the pocket on the side of the camouflage pants he wore, to feel the reassuring bulge of his cigarettes. As he lifted the flap to reach his smokes and the disposable lighter, he pushed open the screen door with his elbow. He stood on the covered porch, watching the second customer leave with far less interest than he had expended on the first.
He lit his cigarette, allowing a deep, satisfying draw before he removed it from his lips, using his thumb and forefinger to hold its unfiltered length. Eyes squinting against the risin
g smoke, he tried to think where he had seen that face. Unconsciously, he shook his head, no closer to remembering than he had been from the first time, several weeks ago, when he had noticed the cold blue eyes. Finally his hand lifted, bringing the cigarette back toward his mouth.
Suddenly the automatic motion was arrested, and it was not until the smoke drifting upward began to sting the widened eyes that he moved again. He pitched the half-finished cigarette into the dirt between the narrow porch and the gas tanks. He stepped down with one foot and ground it out beneath the rounded toe of his boot.
He opened the screen door, hurrying now, retracing his journey across the echoing boards to the small office where he kept his business records. It was not to the neatly organized file drawers he headed. Instead he punched on the switch of the computer system that covered a substantial portion of the desk, incongruous in the confines of the rural station.
There was no hesitation in his search, no fumbling to retrieve the information he sought, obviously comfortable with the technology. And when he had found what he was looking for, he took a moment to relish it.
“Son of a bitch,” he said softly, his deep tone touched with awe, unaware of the small smile of triumph that lingered at the lined corners of his mouth as he began to take the steps to utilize the information he’d discovered. “I told you I don’t ever forget a face.”
Chapter One
“Sleep tight,” Becki Travers said firmly, pulling the sheet up over the pajama-clad body of her six-year-old son as she bent down to drop a kiss on his nose, “and don’t let the bedbugs bite.”
“You forgot to kiss Bear There,” Josh said, holding up a disreputable-looking teddy.
“A ploy,” she accused, ignoring the one-eyed bear, large patches of its plush skin worn off from a couple of generations of cuddling, to turn determinedly toward the door.
“Prayers,” he reminded, not bothering to hide his satisfaction as the word halted her progress.
“You really are an awful child,” she said, but she recrossed the short distance between them.
“Because I want to say my prayers?” Innocence dripped from the question, brown eyes wide and dark with feigned hurt.
“Because you will use any excuse to put off going to sleep. And you know it. Okay, but it better be something beyond ‘Now I lay me down,”’ Becki threatened, sitting beside him on the edge of the narrow bed.
“A good prayer,” he suggested.
“A sincere one,” she corrected. “And not too creative.”
“How can a prayer be too creative?” he asked, interested in the concept. “If you’re praying for what you want, you ought to be able to imagine whatever will make you happy and ask for it.”
“Shut up and pray,” she ordered, knowing this entire conversation was delay-of-bedtime trickery.
Josh closed his eyes, dark lashes fluttering over the lightly tanned peach of still baby-soft cheeks, and began to intone piously, hands angelically folded over the leaping figures of Batman and Robin on his pajama top, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray—”
The prayer was abruptly cut off as his mother’s fingers stole under the sheet to gently nip his bottom.
“Ouch!” he said, indignantly.
“I will not have you make a mockery of praying. Do it right or I’m gone,” she threatened again. Dark eyes, almost exactly matching hers, studied her face a moment, evaluating the seriousness of the warning. She met his assessment with her schoolteacher look, the one that said she meant business, and finally his eyes closed again. He began to pray earnestly for every relative he could think of, enumerating the slightest ailment or problem that each had ever had and offering it up for the Almighty’s consideration.
Becki opened her eyes to watch his face, strands of the fine, shining black hair falling over his forehead, lids squeezed tightly together to hold them shut through the endless minutiae of his litany. She was enjoying, despite her end-of-the-day tiredness, being with him. Bedtime was very important for them both. This was when they talked, shared things they would never have told another member of the very extended family he was praying for so fervently.
She sometimes worried that they were too close, but she had made a determined effort not to turn him into a mama’s boy. Josh had begun T-ball at four and would play soccer as a seven-year-old in the fall. He went on fishing trips and vacations with aunts and uncles and cousins, automatically invited, thoughtfully included in the activities of the two clans who loved him.
“And bless my Daddy, wherever he is. Amen,” he finished solemnly.
“Wherever he is?” she questioned. That was a new phrase.
“How do you know he’s in heaven?” he asked.
“Because I know.”
“That’s not an answer,” he complained. “How do you know?”
“I believe he’s in heaven,” she amended.
“But you can’t know.”
“Some things you take on faith. You just believe in your heart they’re true.”
“But you don’t have any proof?”
“Like scientific proof? Something I could show you?”
“Yeah,” he breathed, agreeing that was the exact word. “Scientific.”
“Nope,” Becki affirmed. “Nothing scientific. Just a feeling that he’s always watching over us.”
“You still miss him?”
“What do you think?”
“Yeah,” Josh said, too softly.
“Yes, ma’am,” she corrected automatically, but when he didn’t repeat the habitual correction, she knew something more was going on in the too-quick mind that functioned behind those dark little-boy eyes. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I don’t think I remember him any more. I try, but I don’t think I do.”
It hurt. The truth often did, but that was part of the bond they shared—being able to speak the truth.
“It was a long time ago,” she comforted. “You were just a baby.”
“But you remember?” he asked.
She knew his question was a desire for reassurance that if he couldn’t, it would be all right. She was still remembering, still guarding the flame.
“Yes,” she said. And then knowing there was more she should explain, she added, “It’s all right if you don’t remember everything. Just remember something. Pick out one memory and hold on to it. Like catching a firefly in a jar. And every once in a while, it will light up, and you’ll remember.”
“When do you miss him the most?” he asked, his voice drowsy with the warmth of the bed, the comforting familiarity of his room and her presence, the sound of the tree frogs coming through the open screen window.
Her mind flickered errantly to the image of sunlight glinting in the blond hairs on John Evans’s forearm this afternoon. The tips of his fingers had whitened, curling around the railing he had held on to as he squatted on his heels to look under the small deck, so dilapidated it was dangerous, which she had just hired him to replace. His hand had been strong and brown, the nails close trimmed and very clean. When he stood up, he had propped his arm casually along the top of the railing, looking up at her with blue eyes surrounded by a thick fringe of dark gold lashes, shading to white at their tips.
Her body had reacted, the feelings so unfamiliar they were almost unidentifiable, almost forgotten in the years since a man had touched her. In the years since she had wanted a man’s touch. And the most disturbing thing was that it was not the first time it had happened. Her reactions to John Evans had caught her unprepared, without protection against emotions she had somehow thought she might never feel again.
“Mom?” Josh questioned the long delay.
“I don’t know,” she stalled. Almost a lie, she thought, honest with herself if not with him. But she couldn’t tell her son that she missed his father most at times when she was aware of her attraction to another man, a man who was almost a stranger. A man who, by his every action, had made it clear he wanted to stay that way. Some other woman might u
nderstand the aching loneliness. Lonely for the intimate connections of mind and body and spirit that marriage had been for her. But not Josh, not for a long time yet. Not her family. And certainly not Tommy’s.
“It’s hard to decide. When do you miss him the most?” she asked instead of answering.
“When everybody’s around,” Josh said. “Like at the ball park. When we win and all the dads are there, and everybody’s hugging and high-fiving. When everybody belongs to somebody.”
His words recreated the scene he described, too vivid, almost with sound and color. The fathers reacting to the boys’ victory with physical contact, unusual for some of them in their relationships with their sons.
“I’m there,” she offered.
“You’re a mom,” Josh argued with undeniable logic.
“Chopped liver?”
“Close,” he agreed, smiling up at her.
A certain type of loneliness, she thought. An indefinable sense of not belonging. She knew exactly what he meant. She had felt it even in the heart of their family. The babble of laughter and conversation surrounding her, so loud it was hard to hear what was being said. The house crowded with the odors of the covered dishes they’d all brought. Crowded, too, with standing adults, tea glasses or coffee cups in hand, waiting to be called to dinner. Crowded with children, flitting dangerously between them, cautioned sharply by first one aunt and then another.
She and Josh were always included, loved and wanted she never doubted, but sometimes the aloneness was more intense there than anywhere else. Seeing the wordless invitation, given and accepted, in the eyes of a couple who had been married only a few months. Or the soft, unthinking curve of an older, work-hardened hand over a too generously rounded bottom and the knowing, unthinkingly sensuous smile of reaction. Or the tender, caress-in-passing touch of arthritis-swollen fingers in a partner’s white hair. And then she wished she were anywhere but there. An outsider. Not by choice, but by circumstances.
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