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

  “Why not?” she asked, looking up again into his eyes, crystal as a mountain stream.

  She was so beautiful, he thought. Leaves tangled in her hair. Dirt on the perfect curve of her cheekbone. And garish against the soft purity of her skin, a smear of blood on her chin from where it had rested against his neck.

  Already marked with blood. And at the image, he finally found the strength to turn away from what she offered. There would be no other sacrifice for his failures. No more broken and bloodied bodies.

  “Because I can’t,” he said simply.

  He pushed up off his knees, the movement awkward. He staggered, the effects of blood loss, exertion and a too-sudden change of position. He stumbled backward into the roots of the stump they’d hidden behind. Using the thickest of those for balance, he stepped upward, out of the depression.

  She felt naked without the warmth of his body. Aware for the first time that she was wearing her bra. Had lain beneath his arousal. Had asked him to make love to her. She closed her eyes against the hot rush of embarrassment. He had made it clear that he wasn’t interested, had made it clear from the first. And now, of course, she understood why. He was still in love with the woman his enemies had destroyed. A woman whose death he felt responsible for. A woman named Lila.

  “We have to go,” he said, his voice coming from above her. Ridiculously, she nodded, feeling the debris caught in her hair moving against the dirt. She had not even thought about what she must look like. Dirty. Sweaty. Unappealing. Especially unappealing, coming on like a sex-starved spinster to a man like Deke Summers.

  She put her hands on the ground under her body and sat up. Deke had already turned back to the direction they’d been heading, ready to move on. Always have a destination.

  She stood up, feeling the trembling exhaustion in her thighs. She brushed the earth from the back of her shorts and legs and made some attempt to pick the junk out of her hair and then wondered what it mattered.

  She used the root he’d touched to pull herself up out of the hole, the dirt shifting and falling back into the shallow depression that had briefly sheltered their bodies. She didn’t meet his eyes again, hers focused somewhere around his knees, but when he finally turned and moved again into the tangled undergrowth, she was following.

  EXCITED OR NOT, none of those men had thoughtfully left his keys. The three cars that lined the road in front of the motel were all locked. There was another parked by the office, but the exposed position made it impossible to check. She and Deke had edged carefully along the highway, hidden by the thickness of the woods. When they got to the parked vehicles, he had eased down into the ditch, crouching low, hidden by the cars themselves, until he’d checked all three.

  Watching him from the relative safety of the undergrowth, she could read the expletive he mouthed in frustration when he’d reached the last. She was almost too bruised by what had happened in the woods to worry about what came next. She had made her attempt to have some direction over events and had been quickly reminded that she was not in control. This was not her game. She was only along for the ride. An unwanted passenger. A burden. No more in control of whatever was happening than Josh. Wherever he was.

  God, she prayed, closing her eyes tight to prevent the sudden weakening rush of tears. Please dear God, keep him safe. He’s just a baby. Only a baby. There was nothing she could do. Nothing to protect him. Except hope that Deke Summers knew what he was doing.

  When she opened her eyes, Deke was almost beside her again, still moving in a deep crouch until his body was swallowed up by the thick brush in which she was hiding.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Locked up tight.”

  He had somehow found the calmness once more during the return journey, and if she hadn’t been watching his reaction to the frustration of this denied avenue of escape, she would have thought the setback no more than he had expected.

  “Now what?” she asked, the first words she’d spoken to him since her invitation. Too embarrassed to speak. Shamed by the realization of what she had done. And by his response.

  “There’s a café a little way down the road. It’s where I bought breakfast. We check out the cars parked there.”

  She nodded, aware that he was again examining her features. She forced her eyes up and hoped that the humiliation she was feeling wasn’t reflected there.

  “I’m going to get you out of this,” he promised. “And Josh. Just hang on, Becki. Just trust me.”

  She held his eyes a moment, reading in them, she knew, only what he intended her to read. Confidence. That damned calm surety that he had control.

  “Since you got us into it, that seems fair,” she said, fighting for her own control.

  The corner of his lips began to tilt and then he stopped the movement. “That’s what I thought,” he said, agreeing with her accusation.

  Except she had admitted now, to herself at least, that she’d been as responsible for what had happened that Sunday morning as he. Inviting what had happened. Welcoming his kiss. Because, she had been forced to acknowledge as they had lain together in the dirt today, she wanted him to make love to her.

  “You ready?” he asked.

  He wanted to touch her. To put his fingers under her chin, against her cheek. To bring back the woman who had followed, bravely and uncomplainingly, since he’d snatched her from her own safe backyard. He was aware of what he’d done. A rejection of something that he wanted more than she could imagine. Something that was too far beyond his reach. But that didn’t stop the desire to reach out for it.

  Forbidden, he reminded himself again. All of it. Forever forbidden, because never again would he watch someone he loved die in his place.

  THEY FOUND WHAT THEY needed behind the café. Probably one of the workers’ cars, keys and cigarettes left in the central console. Easier than unlocking the car each time he wanted a quick smoke, maybe. Or perhaps forgotten, just this once.

  Neither of them examined the permutation of chance that had given them this gift. They simply climbed in, holding the unclosed doors, although the air conditioner jutting from the window above the parked car was loudly furnishing cold air to the restaurant. She held her breath as Deke started the engine. He drove out of the lot and back onto the same road that fronted the motel. There was no outcry behind them, no guns, no movement.

  Because she had expected him to head back toward the interstate they’d turned off the day before, she was surprised when he continued to head away from it, still traveling north.

  “Where are you going?” she finally asked. She might be only a passenger on this odyssey, but they had another person to consider, and this road wasn’t taking them nearer to Josh.

  “This direction until I find some kind of highway back east.” His eyes remained on the two-lane ahead, although he was driving slowly, obeying the speed limit.

  “East?” she repeated. “But I told you—”

  “And somebody told them,” Deke said.

  “Told them what?”

  “Where we’re going. Where Josh is.”

  “Nobody told them anything. Nobody knows where Josh is. We don’t even know. Why would you think—”

  “They’ve picked us up too quickly. All along. They have to be getting information about where we’re heading. They have to.”

  “You said not to worry about how they found you. That anyone could spot you, recognize you, and put out the word. What makes you think they know where Josh is?”

  “Instinct, maybe,” he said softly.

  She thought about that. Instinct hadn’t led him to that conclusion.

  “No, damn it, you still think somebody’s helping them. Somebody in my family.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Then who else? There are maybe five people, all related to me, who knew about Mike and Bill’s plans to head west.”

  “You can’t be sure of that. They could have told anybody.”

  That was true, of course. The community was small enoug
h that people would be interested in the unusual vacation. Who knew how many people her mom, Louise and Mary had talked to in the meantime? At the beauty shop, the grocery store, the dentist’s office. A hundred people might know by now. Maybe Deke was right. Maybe the people who were following them did know that they would traveling on one of the major highways west.

  “And this morning?” she asked. “How did they find us this morning?”

  “Someone estimated the distance we’d cover in a day and then alerted the members in that broad area? A few phone calls. My picture and updated information posted on the electronic bulletin boards I told you about. It could have been recognition by the motel owner. Another guest. The people in the café where I got breakfast.”

  Becki realized that he hadn’t mentioned as a possibility that someone had recognized her. She hadn’t told him that she’d gone outside. Maybe someone had seen her make her phone call. Maybe someone looking out the window of the office. She had been so close to those windows. So stupid because she had been afraid. Afraid, at that time, of Deke himself. Stupid, she thought again, trying to decide if she should tell him about leaving the cabin. It would necessitate an explanation of whom she’d called. And why. The why would be the hardest part, but also, she knew it would make him again suspect a member of her family.

  Mary hadn’t betrayed her. There had been nothing out of place in her sister’s responses this morning, nothing suspicious. Mary didn’t have any clue what was going on, and if she didn’t, then there was no way she could have been responsible for their having been discovered.

  Deke himself had told her: It doesn’t do any good to worry about how they found you. Even if someone had seen her making her phone call, which she knew now she shouldn’t have placed, it didn’t matter. Let it go, she commanded her mind. Worry about something that matters. Like how they were going to find Josh before anyone else did. Getting to Josh, she told herself, was the only thing that was important now.

  Chapter Eight

  “I think you’d better drive,” Deke said.

  They had been traveling almost an hour on the eastbound state road he’d turned onto. Becki had been fighting the despair that had grown with each mile they traveled in the opposite direction to the one in which her brothers were headed. She couldn’t help feeling that she was deserting her son, leaving him unprotected, Mike and Bill unaware of the danger they faced.

  “All right,” she agreed, realizing that Deke was as exhausted as she. As hungry. And injured. She had lost her previous concerns about him in his strength and confidence, in her worry about Josh. Deke Summers could take care of himself, she knew, but suddenly, seeing the grayish cast to his skin, apparent even beneath the tan, she knew she had again been stupid.

  With her agreement, he had already begun to slow the car, preparing to pull off the two-lane highway in order to make the exchange. She watched his eyelids drift downward and then lift, the effort he made to keep his gaze focused on the road obvious.

  “Deke?” she questioned. “You okay?”

  The corner of his mouth ticked upward at her use of that word, and he took a deep breath. The car was still moving, but very slowly now, beginning to edge off the blacktop. His eyelids lowered almost in slow motion, like a sleepy owl’s, and then opened again to right the path of the car, to hold it on the shoulder.

  “Brakes,” she ordered calmly, not wanting to startle him. Just ease them off the road. As long as he didn’t run the car into a ditch, they’d be all right. She should have seen this coming.

  Finally the car stopped, outside wheels still safely on the apron. Deke put his left hand on the top of the steering wheel, and then rested his face against his forearm a moment. He was working up the energy to climb out, knowing it wasn’t going to be pretty. He should have let Becki drive from the café, but somehow the uncertainty that had been in her eyes had made him feel he couldn’t demand anything more of her. Nothing more than what he had asked from the beginning. Follow me. Trust me.

  He had offered her protection and with what was happening now, he knew he was not in a position to make good on that promise. All they could do was go to ground. Hide again. Somewhere where they wouldn’t have to come in contact with anyone. Somewhere they could stay put until he could once more carry out the promise he’d made.

  “We need a house,” he said, fighting the debilitating weakness that had grown with each mile he’d put between them and the Louisiana town where they’d spent the night, with each drop of blood that had seeped out onto her makeshift bandage.

  “A house?”

  “Vacation. A house where the people are gone.” He made his brain create the words and push them out of his mouth. It was too hard to think, to plan. “And will be gone for a few days,” he finally remembered to add, to warn her.

  “How can we know how long they’ll be gone?” she asked. She could find a deserted house. He’d told her before how to do that. But as for knowing how long the owners would be gone…How were they going to find out how long someone would be away? And why did that matter? Surely he wasn’t planning to spend any length of time in one place. They had to get to Josh.

  Instead of trying to formulate an answer, Deke opened the door. He put his left foot on the pavement and began to pull himself out. He gasped a little with the cost of that movement. He put his left hand over the top of the door to help lift his unresponsive body out of the car.

  When he finally was standing outside the sedan, Becki watched him lean against the car’s frame. And then she wondered why she was still sitting inside watching. She opened her door and hurried around the car. She lifted his left arm over her shoulders and guided him around the front end to the other side. He eased carefully into the passenger seat.

  Once they’d accomplished the maneuver, she glanced up at his face. Despite the efficiency of the air-conditioning, his forehead was beaded with sweat. Of their own accord, her fingers touched his cheek, her thumb under his chin, directing his face upward. The blue eyes, slightly out of focus, rose to meet hers.

  “I’ll find somewhere. I promise you, Deke. I’ll get us somewhere safe. I promise.”

  He nodded, trusting her because he had no choice. His gaze held a moment, and then giving in, the eyelids fell downward, like the closing eyes of a doll.

  And the blue had been exactly like that. Like the glass eyes of a doll. Unaware.

  The heavy swish of a passing truck brought Becki out of the sudden, useless indulgence in fear. She pulled the shoulder belt she’d been using across Deke’s body. Although he made no protest, she knew she was probably hurting him, pushing the injured shoulder against the seat, but she slipped the metal connections together anyway. If nothing else, the belt would help to hold him upright, prevent the chafing of his shoulder against the seat, the movement that had elicited that gasp of pain, which he would never have allowed had he been more in control.

  In control, she thought, closing her eyes. Deke Summers was no longer able to control this situation, but she had made him a promise to keep them safe until he could.

  A COUPLE OF NEWSPAPERS at the end of the concrete drive. The grass a little long. There were no outside lights burning and no car in the driveway. But maybe, she thought. Maybe.

  Deke’s eyes were closed, his head against the headrest. She wondered in quick panic if he might be unconscious. He had made no response when she’d turned north again, unable to bear driving any farther away from where she thought Josh might be. She needed a map, but when she had opened the glove compartment of the stolen car and one-handed, eyes on the road, rummaged through the contents, she hadn’t found one. She could only hope that the highway they were following would lead back to a major east/west artery, would lead somewhere.

  She had almost missed the house in worrying about all she needed to consider. After she’d cruised past, she turned the car around, as they had done before, to get a better look. On the third pass before the two-story white colonial, a little way outside the town they’d jus
t driven through, she stopped at the mailbox. She opened it and found that it was reassuringly full of what was obviously more than one day’s mail. Mail that no helpful relative had been sent to pick up. Nobody was checking on things here, keeping the papers gathered up and the letters brought inside.

  It seemed almost too perfect. Since there were no other cars on the road, she backed up and into the driveway, brazenly driving all the way to the two-car garage. Through the car windows she took a quick survey of the property and the road in front. Nothing. Nobody. She left the motor running, walked to the garage door and shading her eyes with her hand peered in through the row of small windows that stretched, uncurtained, across the front. A dark green convertible, some kind of vintage sports car, up on blocks, occupied one half. No one had come to the front door, which she could see from where she was standing, to investigate the strange car in the drive.

  Without giving herself time to back out, she pushed up the heavy garage door, surprised to find it unlocked, and then got back into the idling sedan, driving it into the empty half. She sat a second in the car, again waiting for someone to challenge her right to be here.

  Finally, hands trembling, she turned off the key and got out to retrace her steps and pull the double door down, effectively hiding the car from the road. She believed that no one had driven by after she’d pulled into the driveway. She didn’t know if traffic would have convinced her to move on, to find somewhere else, but it was reassuring to think that she wouldn’t have to make that decision. Instead, all she had to worry about was how to get them inside.

  She glanced again at Deke and found his head turned toward her, eyes open, but he was making no attempt to get out of the car.