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

  “Personally, I don’t think there’s anything more sexually exciting than skinny.”

  “Good answer, big guy.” She pushed a thick lock of hair off his brow. “I also meant to ask you ahead of time how you felt about scars. Afraid I have some doozies left over from that accident.”

  “I am extremely fond of doozy-type scars.”

  “Another good answer.” She beamed approval for his tact—but she wasn’t through with him yet. “I also meant to ask you ahead of time if you were a breast man. I’m no Mae West. Which I realize you already knew. But geezle beezle, we definitely hadn’t been this close before, and you were doomed to a major disappointment if you had any illusions about—”

  “Red?”

  “Hmm?”

  He kissed her eyelids, then the tip of her nose. “There is nothing about you that could disappoint me in a month of Sundays. And I’m not sure, but I think that horse is already out of the barn. If you look down, I believe you’ll discover that it’s a little late to get nervous about being naked together.”

  “I already looked down. And I’m not the least nervous about you being naked. I am insanely crazy about your body. It is a gorgeous male body. Prizewinning hunk material.”

  “No one,” Pax said wryly, “has ever called me a hunk.”

  “Well, it’s about time then. And you should have had more brains than to date women who didn’t appreciate you. You’re irresistible. Trust me on this.”

  “Could we divert this conversation to something a little more serious?”

  “More serious than how gorgeous your body is?”

  “Kansas.” He touched the beating pulse in the hollow of her throat. From the look in his eyes, he hadn’t been fooled by her teasing—or by her. “I never meant to be rough,” he said gruffly.

  “You weren’t. You were wonderful.”

  “I was damn fast, and I’m a hundred pounds bigger than you are, and I showed all the finesse of a bull.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Well, you’re entitled to your opinion. But I was there. Participating actively, as I recall. I don’t believe either one of us were really in the mood for finesse.”

  For an instant humor sparkled in his eyes. “May you never learn finesse, Red. And I sure as hell hope you always feel free to do anything you want around me.” The humor died, replaced by something softer, quieter, darker in his eyes. “But I shouldn’t have lost control.”

  “You’re so right. How dare you be human, Doc? How dare you have needs just like anybody else? Personally I think we should skip the trial and hang you on the spot.” She wooed another smile from him—but it didn’t last long.

  “I think you’ve got a few reasons to hang me,” he said. “This shouldn’t have happened. You’ve been running on anxiety and stress because of your brother. So maybe you needed someone, and maybe I was here. But you’re going home in a hell of a short time—which I knew. Somehow I don’t think you go to bed with anyone lightly, and to add an emotional complication to your plate—it wasn’t right.”

  The sudden lump in her throat felt thicker than glue. “I’ve never gone to bed with anyone lightly,” she agreed. “As beautiful as this skinny, scarred body is, it seems to take a mountain for me to trust a man with it. Truth is, the only time I ever went near a man’s bed was if I were messily, stickily in love. That would sure be a nightmare, though, wouldn’t it, Doc? If I fell in love with you?”

  She saw the sudden stillness in his expression, and swallowed hard. No, he didn’t want to hear that she’d fallen in love with him. And she could have sworn she had no illusions about their future together. She could have sworn that she had knowingly chosen the risk and joy of loving him, no matter what his feelings were for her. But damnation, the sword-sharp ache in her heart ripped at all those lies she’d been telling herself.

  “Well, you don’t have to worry.” She smiled brightly. “I’m not about to cause you any messy complications, Pax, but I want you to know—making love was no impulse and no mistake. Not for me. And there are reasons why I thought this was right…reasons that stem back to when you told me about your father.”

  “My father? What on earth does he have to do with this?”

  “Well, nothing. Directly. But when you told me about your dad, that was the first time I’d ever felt that someone else on this planet understood what I’d been through. When your father deserted ship, didn’t you feel overwhelmed by feelings of anger and hurt?”

  He went real still. “I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”

  “I’ve been down that exact same road,” she said softly. “After the accident, I felt so over whelmed by feelings of anger that it scared me. I hated being helpless. I was in a rage this had happened to me, when I hadn’t done one thing to deserve it. I was angry that something could tear up my life that I had absolutely no control over. You know exactly what those emotions feel like, don’t you?”

  “Kansas—”

  She laid a fingertip on his lips, unwilling to let him interrupt. Not yet. “After that, I decided I wanted to be an island. I wanted to be strong and invulnerable. If I couldn’t control fate, I could sure as hell control me. So I bottled up all my feelings and tried to shut down my heart. I came up with the darnedest problem, though, Doc. I discovered that when you shut down like that—if you never take a risk and trust someone—you never give them a chance to be there for you.”

  Pax cleared his throat. “Are you…um…subtly trying to give me a lecture, Red?”

  She lifted her brows. “Heavens, no. I wasn’t talking about you, big guy, I was talking about me. I was trying to explain why I made love with you—it’s that rare that I find someone I can trust, really trust and feel safe with. But that trust doesn’t come with strings, it just comes with un derstanding. You never had to worry about messy complications with me, Pax. I learned the same life lesson you did. No one can love you. Unless you open the door and let them.”

  She watched him absorb that idea for a moment—his eyes studied hers, his forehead etched with a frown of concentration. But when he started to respond, she swiftly bounced off his chest and climbed out of bed. “Kansas…hey, where you going?”

  “We can’t talk about love all day, Doc.” Her voice was light, but her heart felt thick and heavy. She had told him no lies. Pax was free, and she wanted him to believe he had no obligation or responsibility because of making love with her. Caging a man was no way to love him.

  He’d battened down the emotional hatches every time she’d come close before. Pax was as wary as a porcupine about anyone who came close, and Kansas understood perfectly well why she was probably the worst risk on earth for him. Still, those beautiful, fathomless dark eyes saw too much—and not enough. Allowing him to see how deeply she cared could only make him feel protective and responsible and obligated—not what she wanted from him at all.

  “I don’t know why you’re flying around the room at the speed of sound, Red, but we’re not done with this conversation.”

  She paused in the doorway, but only long enough to flash him a brilliant smile. “Sure we are. As exquisitely and unforgettably wonderfully as you took me out this morning, Dr. Moore…time’s awasting. I’m going to hit the shower, throw together some lunch and then pack.”

  “Pack?”

  “You didn’t forget, did you? I’m going with you after Case.” The urgency and need to find her brother had never been far from her mind. Now, though, she felt an urgency for herself as well. Most of her life, she’d had to be so emotionally strong that she never doubted her ability to handle trial or trouble. With Pax, she seemed to be shooting straight for heartbreak. If there was no controlling her feelings for him, it was best she get away from him, fast and soon. “If you’re worried about my holding you back, Pax—don’t. Trust me, I’ll keep up with any pace you set. I won’t cause you any problems in any way.”

  She couldn’t keep up if her life depended on it. When Pax realized she’d fallen behind again, he stopped, dr
opped his backpack to the ground and waited.

  Although Kansas had been gung ho hot to take off on this venture into the Coronado, in reality he’d had two days to talk her out of it. Rearranging his work schedule and planning supplies took time—just not enough time. A century of solid arguing couldn’t dent that redhead’s determination when she had her mind set. He gave her credit. She didn’t nag. She just cajoled and bribed and teased until a man gave in from sheer exhaustion.

  Pax rolled his shoulders, his eyes peeled on the twisting, steep path below. If she didn’t show in another minute, he’d backtrack to find her.

  A red-tailed hawk soared overhead, backdropped by a hot white-blue sky. The terrain was rough, with sharp hills and canyon-squeezed paths and unpredictable footing around every corner. Scrub trees and brush grew as impenetrably as a thicket in places, yet there was little growth tall enough to provide shade from the baking sun. Still, this was cupcake-easy country compared to many areas of the desert he’d explored. Any risk of danger could be reduced with some basic common sense and caution. He would never have taken Kansas otherwise—no matter how lethally she’d poured on the feminine wiles.

  He frowned when she still failed to show. He’d only left her alone once, parking her in a shady overhang to rest while he’d gone ahead to scout the area around Valle de Oro. He came within a mile of where he suspected the kids might be camped and determined exactly where they were going to spend the night. Leaving her alone, though, had been a mistake. He’d found her with a full-blown case of the heebie jeebies over a seven-foot-long grayish-blueish snake she’d claimed to see.

  Pax knew of no “grayish-blueish” snake species in this neck of the woods—much less any that grew to such epic lengths. Didn’t matter. He wasn’t leaving her alone again. As he knew too well, the lady had the potential to both find and create trouble faster than the flip of a dime.

  He was braced to take off after her when, finally, a bouncing red mop showed over the rise. A sweat-damp face with a shiny nose appeared, followed by a droopy T-shirt hanging as limp as a dishrag over rag-tail cutoff shorts. His shrimp was huffing and puffing harder than the big bad wolf. “I’m coming. I’m coming. People do this for sport, huh? They actually hike this kind of country for fun?”

  “Now just take your pack off and sit down a minute, Red.”

  “The last time I sat down, a tarantula crawled out from under a rock. No, thank you. I’m not sitting down again until we get back home.”

  “Just one more hour until we get to the place where we’re going to stop for the night.” He dug a tube of zinc cream from his pocket—which she saw.

  “I’ve already got five pounds of that on my face,” she objected.

  “Yeah, well you rubbed all five pounds off. Again. Stand still.” She lifted her face for him. Even this late in the afternoon, her ivory skin couldn’t survive the sun. Kansas had bought some pansy sunscreen that wouldn’t protect her worth squat. Still, he only dabbed a streak of the white cream over her nose and cheeks. The physical contact was minimal, yet his pulse suddenly bucked harder than a frisky colt.

  “I think you like making me look like a ghoul.” She camped a witch-face to make him chuckle. “Pretty scary, huh?”

  She scared him, all right, but it had nothing to do with the white zinc paint on her cheeks. Standing this close, it was her eyes he noticed. Those soft, endless blue eyes and the way she looked at him—with desire, with a woman’s sensual awareness, and dammit. With love.

  As sure as his heartbeat, Kansas had lied to him. She’d laughed at the whole idea of being messily, stickily in love, but Pax would have to be blind and drugged to miss all the signals. The emotion was naked on her face. So was her vulnerability. And a woman didn’t make love the way she had, not based on chemistry and hormones alone. She’d laid her heart bare in those short, tumultuous, unforgettable hours in bed. She’d loved him as no woman had ever loved him, wrenched emotions from him that he hadn’t known existed, wrung him inside out with the force of her passion—and the power of her honesty.

  The wimp had stolen his heart.

  And Pax was starting to feel damn terrified that he’d never get it back.

  He jammed the zinc sunscreen back into his pocket. “Good thing you don’t live in the desert all the time, huh, Red?”

  “I violently, vociferously hate it,” she agreed amiably.

  Pax kept telling himself that her enthusiastic revulsion for the desert—for his whole world—was one of the serious reasons why a future between them couldn’t work. His father’s desertion had irrevocably taught him that you couldn’t force someone else to be happy, couldn’t talk someone else into accepting or loving what you did. Such things were matters of the heart—and no one could have a more vulnerable or impulsive heart than Kansas.

  A dozen times over the past few days, her words had come back to haunt him. No one can love you, she’d said. Unless you let them. Kansas saw love as a choice.

  Pax saw a choice, too. The power to make a choice not to hurt her, not to be swayed by anything as uncertain as love, not to buy into a pipe dream about a future that had little prayer of working in reality.

  “You need a drink,” he told her, and uncapped his canteen.

  She shook her head. “Not thirsty. Not right now.”

  “Yeah, well, you use up a ton of water when you’re hiking, sweet pea. And you don’t mess around with dehydration. A couple of sips. Come on.”

  “I am only obeying you, Mr. Bossy,” she informed him, and took a quick slug from the canteen, “because I feel so guilty.” She motioned to his pack…and hers. His weighed in around sixty pounds. He was carrying food for two, water for two, a sleeping bag, a range of first-aid sup plies, emergency and cooking gear. She was carrying a sleeping bag and some personal items. “This isn’t fair,” she said—for about the tenth time.

  “Fair isn’t always equal. I built up stamina from doing this for years. No reason for you to feel guilty.” He’d pared down her pack to less than fifteen pounds, and still she looked bedraggled and dead beat. No way she could have handled more. “Your leg holding up okay?”

  “My leg’s fine.”

  She met his eyes squarely, which made him suspicious. He’d seen Kansas meet his eyes be fore and hand out a bald-faced lie without a qualm of conscience. He hadn’t caught her limping yet, and their slow pace would compensate for the rugged track if she’d just let it. Unfortunately Kansas—being Kansas—was so busy looking for snakes and gila monsters that she wasn’t really inclined to notice where she was walking.

  “If the leg acts up, we stop. Period.”

  “Hey. Just because I’m a wimp and a wuss, Doc, don’t start thinking I’m prissy. I’m doing fine. And you warned me this would be my worst nightmare, didn’t you?” Muttering and groaning, she pulled on the straps of her backpack again. “Let’s get this show on the road and get it over with.”

  The worst nightmare for her wasn’t the hiking trek, but the worrying about her brother. Pax knew every time Case crossed her mind. The dance and sparkle left her eyes, and like now, she plowed ahead with her jaw locked in a determined line. He strongly suspected that an avalanche had better not try to get between her and Case at this point. He also suspected she’d keep going if both her legs were broken.

  When Kansas loved—she loved—with no glance at the cost or risk to herself. Pax knew that intimately well after making love with her, but that memory replaying in his mind was both a wonder and a curse. Her giving nature was unforgettable…but it also aroused his sense of honor. Kansas had no instinct at all for protecting herself. Either he took care of her, or it wasn’t going to happen.

  She started limping ten minutes before they reached the campsite, but he had her settled and off her feet in short order. Dinner was simple—Apache fried bread, dried meat, fruit. The site he’d chosen was the natural shelter of a limestone ledge; the ground beneath was harder than stone but flat enough to set up sleeping bags.

  Pax had a
lready explained to Kansas why he’d made certain choices about routing and timing. Because the kids needed to carry in supplies, they had probably chosen the northern route into Valle de Oro, which was easier and smoother and could have accommodated horses. He’d chosen the tougher, hiking route because it cut down more than a day of traveling. No matter what shape her brother was in, they could get in and out faster, and he’d planned an overnight because a sleepover gave them an advantage in timing. Neither knew what they were getting into with this group. If the kids were messing with hallucinogens and drugs, it made the most logistical sense to hit the camp at daybreak, when everyone would likely be sleeping.

  Kansas hadn’t argued with any of his plan—beyond giving him credit for having the miraculous brilliance to find the place.

  There’d been no miracle or brilliance involved. Back in Nogales, Miguel only had to mention a few details about this Valle de Oro to stir Pax’s memory bank. As a young man, he had hiked these mountains endlessly. Although the name was unfamiliar, he clearly recalled coming across a “golden valley”—a mesa bathed in gold, a magical, mystical trick of the morning sunlight. The silence and beauty of the place was unforgettable. He’d guessed then that it had to be a holy spot for the ancients, and especially in those years, he’d felt a strong simpatico with those who’d sought a private haven for meditation.

  When his father left him, he’d had a lot of emotions to work through. For a long time, he’d wondered what the hell kind of worthless, unlovable son he’d been to make his father desert him. He’d dwelled on what he might have done, should have done, to reach his father, who’d been restless and melancholic ever since his mother died.

  He really hadn’t been conscious of verbally sharing those old memories until Kansas piped up.

  “You don’t have any idea if he’s dead or alive, Pax?”

  “No.” They’d finished eating and cleaning up and set out the sleeping bags side by side. The sun was dropping fast now, the temperature plum meting with it. He dropped a sweatshirt over her shoulders, then stretched out next to her. “In the last years before he left, he drank his share, couldn’t hold a job. But that wasn’t the dad I grew up with. He completely changed after my mother died. He just wasn’t the same man. It was like she was the thread that held him together. He lost all his laughter, all meaning in life.”