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

But he was rattled as he vaulted out of the Jeep. Protecting a woman was one of the maxims of his life. Getting her stranded in the midday heat of the desert had definitely not been on the day’s agenda.

  He flipped the catch on the hood. Kansas bounced out of the passenger side and slapped on a hat—a silly big-brimmed hat with giant yellow flowers. It was so whimsical and pure female—and just like her—that for a second, he had to grin.

  Quickly, though, he yanked the rod in place to hold up the hood so he could peer in the engine. Heaven knew how it happened. Maybe he’d been looking at that hat. Or maybe his conscience was shooting panic darts at the idea of anything happening to her in his care. But somehow he must not have secured the rod well enough, because the hood came slamming down. He jerked back fast enough to save his head—but not his wrist. The hood smashed down at such a wrong angle that he saw stars.

  Dammit, he wasn’t a man to see stars. And he sure as hell wasn’t a man prone to carelessness. Ever.

  “My Lord!” Kansas rushed toward him.

  “It’s nothing. I’m fine.”

  “Horseradish, you’re fine!” It only took seconds for his wrist to turn red and start swelling big time.

  “I’ll be all right in a minute,” he said, yet he could feel all the nuisance symptoms of shock—clammy hands, light-headedness. Nothing he had the patience or time to cope with.

  “If it were me, I’d be crying my eyes out…subjecting you to a whole tantrum of moans and noisy, pitiful groans. Don’t you want to vent a little?”

  Kansas was cracking jokes, but of course she didn’t realize how much trouble they were in. His mind cataloged the situation with reeling speed. The Jeep was good and dead. He guessed a stone must have caused the hole in the radiator, and naturally he carried emergency water, but even a full jerrycan couldn’t overcome a leak that size. There was no way to call for help, because he’d never transferred the car phone from his Explorer. Hell, he’d never expected to need a phone for a few short hours, and he wanted this time alone with Kansas without the risk of interruptions.

  There were no good options in sight. Pax didn’t think his wrist was broken, but temporarily he couldn’t move it for love or money. They couldn’t hike. Not in this heat. Dehydration was too serious a risk with the distance they’d have to walk back to a civilized road.

  In the cool of the night, they could hike out, but for now, their best choice was to rest in cool shade until the heat of the day passed. Since there was no shade, that meant they literally had to create some—which, as he explained to Kansas, meant digging a hole under the Jeep and lying directly in it.

  “I don’t think I can do it, Red,” he said gruffly.

  “Well, of course you can’t, Doc. Good thing you brought me along, huh? And heavens, I haven’t had such a terrific adventure in a blue moon!”

  This was a catastrophe, not an adventure. She was never going to understand the joy or beauty he found in the desert, not when every experience she’d had was a pit load of stress.

  Yet Kansas made out like she’d never been happier. She found the minisurvival shovel in the back of his Jeep and set to work like an intrepid female Indiana Jones. His city slicker should have balked at the idea of lying under the Jeep for hours—it wasn’t precisely a romantic view, looking up at the stinky, cramped, dirty underside of a vehicle. Her white shorts were destroyed before it was done; she had sand on her hair, on her neck; she’d lost a nail, her hat and an earring.

  Yet by four in the afternoon, she was still having a party. She had to be starving, but she never complained. She’d wrapped his wrist in a rag soaked in canteen water and told him every dirty joke she knew—her repertoire was extensive. She was moving into sick, sick limericks when they both suddenly heard the sound of a car engine.

  “Well, darn. I hope the mounties haven’t arrived. Right when we were having so much fun!” She scooched out, looked up, and then reported back. “It’s not the mounties,” she said gloomily, “but it sure looks like a potential rescue vehicle. I suppose I’d better get out there and flash some leg.” She ducked her head and blessed him with a cheeky grin. “Although with these skinny legs, we’re probably risking the guy speeding up instead of stopping.”

  The rancher didn’t speed up. He stopped to help, used the cellular phone in his pickup to call a tow truck, and then insisted on driving them all the way back to Pax’s place. Kansas pushed that plan because Ms. Bossy was determined that his wrist get medical attention ASAP. As soon as they arrived home, she took the wheel of the Explorer and aimed straight for the emergency room.

  Pax was used to rescuing. Not being rescued. A long, tediously exasperating two hours later, the doctor had put him through X rays, stuffed him with painkillers and anti-inflammatants, and ace-bandaged his wrist. Kansas was still listening to the doctor’s instructions when Pax had had it with all the mollycoddling and took off like a bat out of hell.

  She drove him home, and just as if she owned the place, came right in. The cats swarmed all over both of them like locusts. Red fed them first, crooning baby talk to even the mangiest, then foraged in the fridge for a makeshift dinner for the two of them, cleaned that up faster than a dizzy whirlwind and then—out of nowhere—stopped abruptly in the middle of the kitchen and looked him over head to toe.

  “Pax,” she said critically, “you look like something one of your cats would be ashamed to drag home. I swear you could scare small children if you went out in public.”

  “Ah, Red? You’re lacking a little glamour yourself right now.”

  “Exactly my point. A shower’s in order. You want some more of those pain pills first?”

  No, he didn’t want any more pain pills. He wanted this Murphy’s Law of a horrible day erased off the map. She’d never said one word about his being a klutzy screw-up. But it bit. Like wolf teeth. He’d needed this day, needed it to be right, for her, with her. He’d taken care of people his whole adult life with no sweat, when the only woman in the whole damn universe he wanted to take care of was her—and he’d flopped like a dead pansy.

  Kansas had taken to ordering him around like a pint-size marine sergeant—a marine sergeant with the devil in her eyes. “Poor baby, we’d better cover that wrist with a plastic bag to keep it dry in the shower—and you’ll probably need a little help stripping.”

  His wrist was annoyingly immobile and it hurt, but it was never an injury he was going to die from. No one ever pampered him in his entire life, for pete’s sake, and he could peel off his own clothes. Still, there was no stopping her from fussing and flying around. She hustled up a plastic bag, ferreted out thick, fresh towels, nosed in his closet for clean clothes, then turned on the shower. Apparently she planned to supervise his stripping down, too, because she stood there with her hands on her hips and a bulldog-determined tilt in her chin.

  So he kissed her. It was a wild impulse, that kiss, but a tornado couldn’t have stopped it—or him. The impulse seemed to have been stored up all day, maybe as long as the last time they’d made love, maybe…all his life.

  She quit moving like a dizzy-fast magpie. She quit flying around like a flashy hummingbird. She just stood there then, quiet like she hadn’t once been quiet all day, her face lifted to his, inhaling that tender, deep, dark, endless kiss until neither of them had a lick of air in their lungs.

  “Pax…” Her voice had turned slow and soft, but the question in her eyes never got said.

  “Hey, I’m not the only one who needs a shower,” he teased her…and when he climbed in, pulled her in with him. The drenching spray muffled her startled gasp of laughter. She was still clothed. Temporarily. He fumbled one-handed to peel off her sodden duds under the warm deluge. It took a while. It took a while for all the desert sand to sluice down the drain, too, but by the time they were both squeaky clean, Kansas was no longer chortling with laughter. She was just looking at him, with a yearning invitation in those vulnerable china blue eyes.

  He couldn’t carry her, but he wrapped her
warm and dry in one towel and lassoed her with a second one. Possibly he didn’t need to rope her into following him into his bedroom—Kansas knew the way.

  She shimmied out of that towel like a born stripper and came to him, still damp, her half-dried hair flying every which way, and leveled him on the king-size bed. “Now listen, slugger, you’re not up for a wrestling match,” she told him. “Not with that wrist. So you’re just going to have to suffer being spoiled.”

  Kansas had that real, real wrong. She was the one who needed spoiling and treasuring, and a sprained wrist wasn’t about to stop him. His whole life, he’d sought peace. She’d ruined any chance he could find it without her. Before Kansas, he’d buried his emotions like roots in hibernation. She’d dragged them all out and exposed them to the sun. She’d scared him with her fool hardy impulsiveness. She’d nosed into private corners of his life. Worst of all, she’d generously and openly accepted him—not for what he could do, not for his strength and the hundred things people counted on him for. But for just who he was.

  She seemed to love him the most when he was at his worst, his weaknesses laid bare. Kansas just never understood that she was entirely different than any other woman in the universe—at least his universe—and it hurt like a sword slash that he’d failed to tell her what she meant to him.

  He wanted her to know she was loved. He wanted her to feel loved, with everything that was in him. He showed her his heart with kisses and caresses, and by taking her, with languid-liquid cherishing slowness, the way he should have made love to her a long time ago.

  “Oh, Pax,” she whispered when it was over. “Oh, Pax.” And then she murmured in the darkness, “I love you.”

  Wrapped in his arms, she fell into a doze before he’d returned the emotion in words. It didn’t matter, he thought. It was something he hadn’t understood before. No matter how insurmountable any problem appeared, nothing mattered more than being with her. Tomorrow, they would have time to talk, but this whole day had been an exhausting blinger for both of them. Snuggling her closer, he closed his eyes.

  But in the morning, when he woke up, she was gone.

  By sheer luck Kansas found a flight that still had empty seats. She bought her ticket, checked her bags and then headed for the airline waiting area. Most of the plastic chairs were empty—her flight wouldn’t leave for more than an hour—but she couldn’t sit. She made her way to the long glass windows, her gaze fixed on the bleak, hot, blue desert sky.

  Her eyes were stinging dry and her stomach was knotted in a lump of loss. Climbing out of Pax’s bed and leaving him was one of the hardest things she’d ever done. But at five in the morning, she’d been at her brother’s place, boxing the last of his clothes, then packing her own. Case’s other business chores would have to be handled long distance. She couldn’t stay. Not even a day longer.

  Kansas told herself that it was way past time she accepted that she had gambled her heart…and lost.

  Yesterday kept replaying in her mind, because their Jeep breaking down in the desert seemed to underline the bridge they couldn’t cross. Pax, she’d always known, perceived needing others as a weakness. When he injured his wrist, he’d been stuck needing her. She’d tried to joke and make him laugh, but she could see how badly it bothered him. Pax would never willingly depend on her. The right to be there was a privilege that came with love, but Kansas couldn’t force him to see that.

  “Flight 346 is now boarding through Gate Six,” a woman’s voice announced over the loudspeaker.

  Her flight. Woodenly Kansas plucked at her purse straps and aimed for the back of the line, noting vaguely that the waiting area had filled up with passengers. Typically she didn’t fit in. Most of the crowd were dressed in khaki and neutral colors, compared to her overbright green jumpsuit. Clothes had been the last thing on her mind that morning, but she wouldn’t have worried about it anyway.

  People had always seemed determined to judge her on surface appearances, never realizing that a shrimp-size set of bones or a showy exterior might not be the whole picture. She was strong. She just wasn’t strong by the rules most people played by. Funny, but she’d really believed Pax saw that. She’d really believed he was the only one, ever in her life, to respect and value the kind of strong woman she was…and wanted to be.

  Someone barreled through the doors behind her. She ignored all the jostling as she pawed through the debris in her purse, searching for the plane ticket that should have been in plain sight and wasn’t. She glanced up. There. Over by the windows on the floor. She’d dropped it like a scatterbrained ditz.

  Tears sprang to her eyes. Pretty darn crazy to cry over an almost-lost ticket, yet she blinked back the first round, and the bucket filled again. Well, spit. It appeared she was going to wimp out in public big time. Worse, she couldn’t care less.

  She headed blindly for the ticket, yet even with her vision blurred and slurred, she never anticipated the sudden collision with a brick wall. Big strong hands clutched her shoulders, steadying her, and then squeezed around her so tightly she couldn’t breathe or see. “Dammit, Kansas. You stole my Explorer, and with the Jeep dead, I had to track down a neighbor who could loan me a set of wheels. I didn’t know where you were. When I didn’t find you at your brother’s, I thought you’d left. I thought I’d missed you.”

  She forgot the plane. She forgot the ticket on the floor. She struggled to believe the emotion she heard in his voice. “I didn’t mean to steal your Explorer, but I didn’t have any other way to get back to my rental car. And I thought it’d help. I thought it’d be easier for you…if I just made a clean break.”

  “Well, you had that real wrong, Red. Because I don’t want a break from you. Ever.” Pax gently eased his knuckles under her chin so he could see her face. And she saw his. Grave lines of strain were harshly etched on his brow. His whole face was stiff with anxiety. And his eyes were so black and vulnerable with such fierce love that she suddenly couldn’t swallow. “I’m asking you to stay.”

  “Stay?”

  “I know how you feel about the desert. But if you’ll just give it some time—give me some time—I think we could change your mind about it. We could try. And if that doesn’t work, we could give your big green woods in Minnesota a try.” He sucked in a breath. “Hell, I don’t care if we live on the North Pole. Please stop crying, Red.”

  “I was just crying because I thought I’d lost the plane ticket.”

  “No doubt.” The pad of his thumb smoothed away a salty tear. “I’m guessing you’re always going to cry for important things like that. Just like you’re always gonna scream bloody murder for a spider. You really are a hopeless wimp, Red.”

  “I told you I was. I told you that from the very beginning.”

  “I know you did.” His fingertips soothed away another tear. “And the first time I met you, I thought holy kamoly. Someone’s got to protect that woman or she’s going to get herself seriously hurt. Every time I turned around, you were diving off a cliff for your brother. You dove off a cliff for me, too. You’re the most reckless woman I know, Kansas. And the strongest, even if it took me forever to figure that out. And I don’t know how I could love you more.”

  A door opened somewhere. The scream of jet engines firing up was earsplitting loud for a second, and then the door closed. The plane was about to take off, she realized. And so was her heart.

  “I never thought you’d say it.” She looped her arms around his neck. She kissed his chin, to make him smile. And then surged up on tiptoe, to give him more kisses. Rich, warm, wildly impulsive kisses, until that horrible anxiety disappeared from his face and the tension eased out of his shoulders. “I never thought you’d see it.”

  “I saw it. I just didn’t know how to tell you. Words come real rusty to a man who’s been living in a barren desert.” He smoothed back her hair, touching her, unable to stop touching her. “I think I loved you before I even met you. I think I was waiting for you in every lonely moment in my life. But you may have
to be patient, Red. Believe me, I’ll work on it, but it may take me fifty, sixty years of practice before I learn to be as open and loving as you are.”

  “Fifty years?” If her throat wasn’t jammed with so much emotion, she might have been able to say something more coherent.

  “I know. It’s a long time. We should probably start with a ring and follow that up with a houseful of kids.” He upped the ante fast. “I swear I’ll get rid of the cats.”

  “I love the cats.”

  “Okay, we’ll keep the cats.”

  “I like your desert just fine, too. I never thought it would happen, but somehow I’ve be come fond of your Arizona heat. Um, Pax? I don’t know if you noticed that plane just taking off, but I’m afraid it has all my clothes on it.”

  He didn’t look at the plane. He didn’t even glance out the window. His eyes were on her face, and for a man who once fought to never show emotion, the depth and fierce tenderness in his expression was more than enough to make her heart tumble and soar. “You won’t need to worry about clothes for a long while, Kansas.”

  The same thought crossed her mind. Eventually she’d need clothes. Eventually she’d have to trek north to settle her job and her apartment and introduce Pax to her family. But right now she had other priorities.

  Pax had been a warrior for a long time, she thought. He was used to being strong. But he wasn’t used to believing anyone would be there for him. He had finally figured out that the source of real strength was the courage to reach out and share your heart. The rest would come. If it took her a lifetime of spoiling that man, she was more than up for the job.

  She reached up to kiss him…a kiss that started out soft and sweet and swiftly turned intimate and deeply private. The kind of kiss that belonged only to Pax, the kind he’d always inspired in her and with her. “I hope you weren’t counting on a peaceful life, Doc, because I plan to give you a lot of trouble,” she whispered.

  “I hope that’s a promise.”

  “You bet it is.” She smiled for him. “Take me home, love.”