Men Made in America Mega-Bundle

by Gayle Wilson, Marie Ferrarella, Jennifer Greene, Annette Broadrick, Judith Arnold, Rita Herron, Anne Stuart, Diana Palmer, Elizabeth Bevarly, Patricia Rosemoor, Emilie Richards

  “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 Cab4.” 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 tem
porarily 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.

  Even though he had no way of knowing for sure, something told Luc that he was accustomed to a less frantic pace. But then, probably everyone was. “You people always talk this fast?”

  Kevin looked at him and then laughed. He dragged his hand through his hair in a way that was reminiscent of Alison. “Only when we’re stirred up,” Kevin apologized. “Can I get you anything? Just name it.”

  “He needs a place to stay,” Alison interjected before Luc could demur the offer. “If it’s okay with you, I told him he could have the room over the garage. Until his memory comes back.”

  Kevin glanced in Luc’s direction. “His memory?”

  Alison nodded, pressing her lips together. “He has amnesia.” And it was all her fault.

  Kevin could only stare at her.

  Chapter Three

  “You can’t remember anything?”

  Kevin thought of all the things that were crowded into his life, all the treasured memories he had of precious moments. The idea of suddenly losing his grasp on all of them was devastating. Sympathy flooded through him for the young man sitting on the guest side of his small, cluttered desk.

  “No.” The single word echoed, dark and lonely, in Luc’s brain. Drawing nothing into the light in its wake except frustration.

  Blowing out a breath, Kevin passed his hand over his hair.

  “Man, that has got to be awful for you.” At a loss as to what to say, Kevin looked toward his sister. “How long do these kind of things last?”

  Alison hesitated, then purposely kept her voice upbeat for Luc’s sake. “Jimmy said it might clear up in a day or two.”

  Or longer, she added silently. There was just no telling. Even though she’d asked the same question of Jimmy, Alison knew that there was no blueprint for amnesia to follow. It varied from person to person, a product of cause and effect. It could be gone by tomorrow, or last forever. There was just no telling.

  For Luc’s sake, she crossed her fingers and hoped for the first.

  “Day or two, huh?” Kevin was a dyed-in-the-wool optimist. He shifted his eyes to look at Luc. “Sure he can stay over the garage,” he told Alison. “You can stay for as long as it takes. Nothing’s too good for the man who saved my little sister.” As if to underscore his sentiment, Kevin threw an arm around Alison, hugging her to him.

  Embarrassed, Alison tried not to flush. “We’re a very close family,” she told Luc.

  Luc noticed that she subtly shrugged her brother’s arm off and then stepped back. It reminded him of something. Small spaces and claustrophobia. Cave-ins. What did all that mean?

  Behind him, he heard the door being opened. “Hey, Kevin, can I see you a sec?” Turning in his chair, he saw a man in stained, zipped-up coveralls peering into the office.

  Kevin waved the mechanic back out. “In a minute, Matt. Can’t you see I’m busy?”

  Grunting, Matt retreated. “It’ll keep.”

  An idea suddenly hit Kevin. Perching on the corner of his desk, he looked down at Luc. “Have you been to the police station?”

  “No, but I called 911,” Alison told him. “The police came to take down the information about the robbery.”

  “Yeah, that.” He dismissed the robbery as unimportant. What mattered was that Alison wasn’t hurt. Money was replaceable, she wasn’t. “No, I mean about Luc here. They’ve got a Missing Persons Bureau, maybe they’ve got something like a Found Persons Bureau.” It made perfect sense to him. There had to be more people wandering around with amnesia than just Luc.

  Alison pressed her lips together, holding back a smile. She didn’t want Kevin to think she was laughing at him. There were times when she envied her brother, the simplicity of his soul.

  “He’s only had amnesia for less than half a day. That means if he’s ‘missing,’ he’s only been so for that amount of time. If he’s supposed to meet someone, they probably think he’s just been delayed.”

  “Meeting someone.” Kevin rolled the idea over in his head. There had to be possibilities they weren’t seeing or tapping into. “Were you on your way to a meeting?”

  “Well, he was on his way to a hotel,” Alison told him. Told both of them, she realized. Luc was listening to her as intently as her brother was. She had to remind herself that this was news to him, as well. She wished he had talked more to her when he’d gotten into the cab. Some fares never stopped talking from the moment they got in until she brought them to their destination. But after the exchange of names, Luc had been fairly quiet.

  “I picked him up at the airport.”

  The information felt like a depth charge aimed at a submarine. Kevin felt disappointment wash over him. “So you don’t even live around here?”

  Luc considered the question, turning it over in his mind. Trying to find a bit of information that might begin to answer the query. But not even a glimmer pushed forward.

  He sighed. “Not that I know of.”

  “There has to be something you remember.” Kevin saw Alison opening her mouth, undoubtedly ready to launch into some sort of medical terminology. He was going with common sense. “People don’t lose their total memory when they get amnesia. I mean, you still speak English and you know how to walk, right?” Eagerness built in his voice. “There’s got to be something else rattling around in your head. You just don’t know, you know.”

  There was that simplicity again, cutting to the heart of things. Alison looked at her brother with affection. “Sometimes, Kevin, I think you should have been a Rhodes scholar.”

  He had no time for compliments, though it was nice to be appreciated once in a while. “I know all the roads I need to, right here in Seattle.” In his enthusiasm, Kevin leaned in closer to Luc. “Think. Is there anything? Anything at all?”

  There was no harm in giving Kevin’s theory a whirl, Alison thought. “Maybe if you closed your eyes, it might make you focus better.”

  Luc was game to try anything to jar at least a few thoughts loose. He did as she suggested. After a moment he opened his eyes again.

  “Anything?” she pressed, eager. There was something there, she thought. In his eyes. He’d remembered something.

  “Snow.”

  Alison stared at him, confused. “Excuse me?”

  “I had an image of snow.” But even as he said it, the image was fading into oblivion. “Or maybe just a huge expanse of nothingness.” Brought on by wishful thinking, he added silently. “I can’t tell.”

  She placed a hand on his shoulder, leaving it there for a single beat before realizing what she was doing. Alison let her hand drop to her side. �
�It’ll come to you. You’re probably just trying too hard. Maybe after a good night’s sleep—”

  “It’s only five o’clock in the afternoon,” Kevin pointed out.

  Maybe, but Luc had been through a lot and he was undoubtedly exhausted. Some of his color was returning, which was a good sign, but she didn’t want to push it. Noticing his color, she realized that it looked as if he was tanned. Did he live on the coast? Near a beach? His way of speaking was relaxed, laid-back. Did that make him a Californian?

  God, but she was lousy at playing detective. Where was Sherlock Holmes when you needed him?

  “He can still get some rest, Kevin. C’mon, I’ll take you home.” Walking out of the office, she stopped abruptly. The space where she’d parked her car this morning was empty. She turned around to look at her brother. Kevin, she noticed, was walking slow, as if he expected the man beside him to collapse at any second. “Where’s my car?”

  “Oh.” In all the excitement, he’d forgotten. “Matt parked it over by number 2. I had him do an oil change for you.”

  She’d purchased the secondhand car with money she’d earned doing odd jobs since she was sixteen years old. She treated the car as if it were a beloved pet. “I can do my own oil change.”

  “Yeah, I know.” It was an old story. She always balked whenever he tried to do something for her, acting as if he was impinging on her independence. She was that way with everyone. “But I enjoy doing little things for you.” He glanced at Luc. “She likes to act feisty.”

  “No, just my age,” she countered. And then she sighed, looking at Luc. She’d been over this ground before, more times than she could count. “Being the youngest, they all think they have to take care of me.”

  “We do,” Kevin confided to Luc, winking broadly for Alison’s benefit. “You know how it is.”

  “No,” Luc replied, a wave of regret washing over him. “I don’t.”

  “Yeah, right. Sorry.” Embarrassed at his blunder, Kevin looked away. He dug into his pocket, extracting his wallet and handed two twenties to Luc. “You gotta be hungry. Get yourself something to eat—on me.”