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

  “Have you ordered?”

  “I’m on my second round,” she informed him. She lifted her hand, and the cocktail waitress came to take his order. Then they were alone.

  Antoinette had promised that this would be quick. She had no intention of breaking that promise. “I won’t ask how you’ve been or how the investigation is going,” she began. “I’ll get right to the point.”

  “How have you been?”

  She tried to weigh his words. They had sounded genuinely concerned. But then, she shouldn’t be too surprised by that. Sam had feelings for her; that had never been the issue. The issue had been whether he would let them grow and risk the possibility of a solid commitment.

  “Actually, I haven’t been doing too well. I’ve been waiting for the phone to ring for two weeks now, and the waiting has been difficult.” She searched his eyes, but he was too good at hiding his feelings for her to fathom what they might be. “Sam, it’s clear you’ve made a decision about us and that you’ve neglected to inform me what it was. I’d like you to spell it out.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  The waitress came with his drink, and Antoinette shook her head as he reached for his wallet. She nodded, and the young woman left.

  “I’m doing it because I believe in people being up-front with each other. Obviously it’s just one of the ways we differ.” She folded her hands in front of her and realized her knuckles were white. She forced each finger to relax.

  “I was up-front with you right from the start. I’ve never lied about the possibilities of a future for us.”

  Antoinette listened to the carefully neutral tone of Sam’s voice. This was not the man she knew. This was not even a man she wanted to know. Determined to get this over quickly, she riveted her eyes on her fingers.

  “What you’ve been is ambivalent. You want me, you don’t want me. You want me, you don’t want me. Let me hear it from you loud and clear for once, please. If we’re really finished this time, please tell me. I’d like to get on with living.”

  “There’s no place for a woman in my life.”

  She nodded, although the words had felt like daggers. But the words had only backed up what she’d already known. “There was a place for one two weekends ago. Did that meet all your needs for a while?”

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  “Wasn’t it?”

  “I didn’t invite you down to my cabin just to work off my sexual appetite, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Then why did you invite me?”

  Sam had asked himself the same question, over and over, hoping each time for a new answer. But the truth was simple and insulting to both of them. He had invited her because he couldn’t stop himself. He had picked up the telephone a dozen times since for the same reason. The calls had never been completed because now he knew he cared too much about her to hurt her anymore. He only wished he had cared that much before. He should never have taken her to Bayou Midnight, never made love to her, never let her into his life.

  “Inviting you was a mistake.” Sam finished half his drink in one swallow, but it was no fortification for what he knew he must say. “You’re very vulnerable, very serious about the commitments you make. I knew that, but I was too selfish to let that guide me. I wanted you, even though I knew it couldn’t last, and I took what I wanted. It was wrong, and I’m sorry. I’m not going to make it worse for either of us. This has to end, and it has to end now.” He finished the rest of the drink before he finished his sentence. “Before you fall in love with me.”

  If he hadn’t been so absolutely on target about her feelings, she would have laughed at the conceit in the last sentence. As it was, the only mistake he had made in his analysis was the timing. “You’re too late,” she said, looking up from her hands. “I’m already in love with you.”

  “Don’t be!” His words were harsh and to the point.

  “Wouldn’t it be nice if it were that easy?”

  “I have nothing to offer you. You’re a psychologist, damn it, you should have seen that.”

  “You have everything to offer, but I should have seen that you wouldn’t offer it,” she corrected him. “It’s a funny thing about love, though, it just happens, and analyzing the whys and wherefores doesn’t seem to help.”

  “I should never have touched you.”

  “No,” she agreed, “you shouldn’t have. But you did, and I fell in love with you.” She met his gaze directly. “It wasn’t such a bad thing, Sam. Love is worth giving, even if it’s not returned.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. I’m a big girl.” She pushed her chair back from the table and gave him a smile that didn’t even tremble. “I love you, Sam, but I love myself, too. I’m not going to punish myself for what happened, and I’m not going to beg you to change your mind. I’m going to walk out of here and get on with life. And the next time I fall in love, I’m going to be more careful.”

  She stood, hesitant for a moment, then stepped to his side and bent to kiss his cheek. She wasn’t sure whose benefit the gesture was for. She only knew she wasn’t going to end this with anger, even if it would be easier for them both. “Good luck on the Omega Oil case. Call me when it’s over and let me know how it turned out.” She straightened and walked away, without looking back.

  Sam watched Antoinette stop at the bar to pay their bill. She had been in control of the whole scene, right from the beginning. He’d been through scenes with other women, wheedling, tearful scenes that had left him stone cold and glad to escape. This time he felt empty.

  He had avoided Antoinette because he hadn’t wanted to face the end of their relationship. Now he had to face it. She was gone. His life could return to normal. His energies could go back into the job that needed them.

  A brunette with a pouty expression was watching him from the bar. Antoinette was no longer in sight, and the brunette made it clear that she would welcome his company. She was attractive in an overblown, soap-opera-vixen way, and Sam knew he could have her in his bed before the night was over. He stood and walked out the door without a backward glance. He had been ruined by the combination of class and compassion that was Antoinette Deveraux. He knew it would be a long, long time before he looked at another woman.

  Chapter 13

  Sam looked up from the patch of water hyacinth where his fishing line was tangled, in time to see the familiar form of his uncle’s pirogue move soundlessly through the water. Nonc Claude rarely visited him at his cabin, judging accurately that, if Sam was there, he needed his privacy. Now Sam watched his uncle pole through the water and step onto the barge deck.

  “I hope you’re here to tell me the case I’ve been working on is solved and the chief called Didi’s house to let me know I can take an extended vacation.” Sam’s line came unsnagged with one vicious tug, and he reeled it in, setting the rod beside him.

  “Mais non. I jus’ heared you was here, Sam-son. Came to find out if it was the truth.”

  “I’m here.” Sam felt ashamed that he hadn’t even left his uncle a note when he’d gotten his canoe. That had been two days before. He had paddled straight to his cabin, and he hadn’t been anywhere else since.

  “Been a while since we seen you here.”

  It had been exactly a month. One hellish, miserable month. “I’ve been working around the clock on the Omega Oil case,” Sam apologized. “This is the first weekend I’ve had off. I probably won’t have another one for a month.”

  “Don’ have to say sorry to me, Sam-son. Didya think I was askin’ why?”

  “No, I didn’t.” Sam faced his uncle and tried to smile. “You never pry.”

  “Not even when you was sixteen and mad as a mosquito who can’t find nuthin’ good to eat.”

  Sam hadn’t thought about being sixteen for a long time. “I was mad all the time that first year,” he recalled. “Mad because you made me get up every morning and paddle miles down the bayou to the school bus, and because I had to come
back to Bayou Midnight every afternoon.”

  “Mad ’cause I made you fish, mad ’cause you never caught nuthin’.”

  “I learned, though. In school and out.”

  “Nobody could tell you nuthin’, but I was stronger’n you. Only way to git you to do anythin’.”

  “I’d be in jail somewhere now if you hadn’t taken over,” Sam said. “Instead, I put people in jail. When I can find them,” he added, thinking about the Omega Oil case.

  “Mebbe sometimes you look in the wrong places.”

  “Maybe I do.”

  “Gotta look for answers where you don’ think they gonna be.”

  “Do you know something I don’t?” Sam searched his uncle’s face, but Claude’s expression was as carefully neutral as Sam kept his own.

  “Nuthin’ I can put a finger on. Talk. That’s all.”

  “Talk about what?”

  “Omega Oil.”

  “I know there’s no love lost for the company here.”

  “I was a boy, swampers made the laws here. Some things, they change. Some things don’.”

  “We worked on that angle,” Sam said finally. “We had reason to suspect a man from down here somewhere was involved, at least on some level, but nothing turned up. The sheriff tried to help.”

  “Sheriff.” Claude spat in the water at their feet. “Don’ know nuthin’ ’bout what’s here. Come in on the weekends, does a little fishin’, throws a few nets. That’s all.”

  “Have Martin or Leonce talked to you about any of this?”

  “Martin, he don’ talk ’bout nuthin’. Leonce, he don’ talk ’bout nuthin’ serious. Mais non, this, it’s only a say-so. Stuff I heared ’cause I keep my ears open and my mouth shut.”

  And having said the last, Claude turned back to his pirogue.

  “Nonc Claude. I’ll throw what you said into the gumbo pot.”

  “You do that, Sam-son.” Claude hesitated and then faced his nephew. “Where’s ’Toinette? I could git to like that one. Might not have Cajun blood, but she’s good enough to be Cajun.”

  “She won’t be back.”

  “Life without a woman, nuthin’ harder.”

  The sentiment seemed strange coming from Claude, the perennial widower. “You made it all these years,” Sam reminded him.

  “You never saw your Tante Louise. Looked a little like ’Toinette. I still hear her voice in my dreams. She be waitin’ for me when I die.”

  Sam was moved by the longing in his uncle’s voice. In all the years they had been close, his uncle had never mentioned his aunt. Now Sam understood why. “I always thought you didn’t remarry because you didn’t want a woman messing up your life.”

  “I’m still married. Always was, always will be.”

  Sam watched Claude’s descent into the pirogue. The long boat disappeared into the trees as silently as it had come.

  Sam felt strangely restless. For two days he had felt perfectly content to sit and brood. He’d brought a case of beer and a cooler of junk food with him, and he’d consumed more of both than he should have. He had lain on the mattress where he and Antoinette had made love and listened to the sounds of the swamp. He’d heard them—as if through her ears but with none of her enthusiasm. Her presence was tangible everywhere.

  He was right to have ended their relationship. One weekend together and he could think of little else. A month had passed since that weekend, and two weeks had passed since he’d last seen her. It had taken a week to put his guilt in perspective, another to convince himself that she would adjust. How many weeks was it going to take before she wasn’t the first thing he thought of in the morning and the last thing he thought of at night?

  There was no point in continuing this self-imposed exile. Being here made matters worse, not better. Sam stood and headed inside the cabin to get the few things he would take back to the city with him. He had come here to force himself to forget Antoinette Deveraux. The trip was an unqualified failure, just as working night and day at his job had been. Time and only time would take care of his problem. Now he just had to find a way to make it pass more quickly.

  Antoinette blew a smoke ring over her head and watched it float toward the light fixture in the ceiling. She was getting good at smoke rings again, almost as good as she’d been before she quit smoking. And she didn’t cough anymore when she inhaled deeply. She was firmly back on the path of self-destruction.

  The return to cigarettes was only temporary, or at least that’s what she told herself every time she lit one now. Physiologically, a month or two more of smoking couldn’t make much difference in her health. And right now it was making all the difference in her mental health. She was sleeping, eating, concentrating—all the things that a normal person does. Without the cigarettes she wasn’t sure she could have managed to do any of them.

  Smoking was one little setback, but that was all. When Sam was out of her mind for good, she’d quit again. Rosy could make another strudel, and life could get back to normal.

  Antoinette put her head in her hands at the sound of a knock on her office door. She may have started smoking again, but no one in the office knew it yet. That was about to change. “Come in.”

  Rosy took one look at the smoke-filled room, marched to the window and threw it open to let in fresh air. For once, however, she had no comment to make. “I’m going. There was a phone call for you while you were in session. It was long-distance, and I didn’t want you to miss it.” She handed Antoinette the pink message slip and stood by her desk as she read it. Antoinette was surprised to find that it was from Didi. “She says she’s been trying to reach you at home, but she couldn’t get you,” Rosy said helpfully.

  Antoinette heard the curiosity in her secretary’s voice. “I haven’t been home a lot. My friends have never seen so much of me.”

  “Better than working too hard.” The self-control that had allowed Rosy to avoid commenting on the obvious ended. “Better than smoking.”

  “I know.”

  “Why don’t you come home with me for dinner, dahlin’? I’ll fry some soft shell crabs. You can eat them on French bread if you want,” she added generously.

  “I’m okay.” Antoinette flashed Rosy a smile to convince her. “I really am. Lonely sometimes, and sad a lot, but I’m okay. And I’m not the only woman in the world who’s had an unhappy love affair.”

  “If that weasel ever sets foot in this office, I’ll…”

  “He won’t.”

  Rosy nodded, fists still clenched. “Good thing.”

  “Thanks for the message and the invitation. If I don’t go home tonight, though, my dog will think I’m a stranger and gobble me up next time I walk through the door.”

  “Have a good weekend, dahlin’.”

  “I’m going to, I promise.”

  Antoinette denied herself another cigarette before she dialed Didi’s number. The call was a link to Sam, and as such, she wanted to get it over with quickly.

  The phone rang ten times before Didi answered. Antoinette pictured the pretty blonde outside hanging the laundry or scrubbing the porch with whirlwind energy. She might even have been fishing for dinner.

  “Didi, it’s Antoinette. It’s nice to hear your voice.”

  “’Toinette. I been callin’ for days. Glad I got smart and called you there.”

  Antoinette sat back in her chair and listened to Didi chatter at full speed. In a minute she had been caught up on all the bayou news. “Sounds like you’ve been busy,” Antoinette said at the first break. “Leonce is on the rig this week?”

  “Mais yeah. That one, he couldn’t wait to go. Workin’ an extra shift just ’cause he loves it so—” she paused, and her voice softened “—and ’cause the money will buy things for the baby.”

  “Baby?” Antoinette smiled. “You’re going to have a baby?”

  “About time. We been tryin’ for years. I think it’s Omega’s fault we don’t have one yet. Leonce’s never home at the right time.”

 
Antoinette decided that was the most unique gripe she’d ever heard against Omega Oil. “Sounds like that changed somewhere along the line.”

  “Must have,” Didi agreed. “Anyhow, I don’t know how to ask you this, so I’m just gonna ask. I wanna talk to you. And I can’t do it over a phone. I hate phones. Never got no news I liked over the phone. Never said anything I wanted to say, neither. Could you come here, ’Toinette? I know it’s a long way to drive….”

  “Didi, did you know that Sam and I aren’t seeing each other anymore?”

  There was a short silence. “Yeah, chere. I guessed.”

  “I don’t know if I should come under the circumstances.”

  “Sam, he won’t be here. He was here last weekend.”

  Antoinette thought of all the reasons she shouldn’t make the trip. The time involved, the hassles, the reminders of Sam. And then she thought of the young woman who obviously needed to talk to her. Being needed by somebody connected to Sam suddenly seemed a very precious thing. “When did you want me to come?”

  “Tomorrow? I’ll make a bed for you here.”

  “May I bring my dog?”

  “Mais yeah. Lemme give you directions.”

  Antoinette hung up a few minutes later, wondering what had possessed her to agree to such a long trip. The answer was perfectly obvious, however. She still wanted to be close to Sam. She was willing to inflict pain on herself just to be with someone who would talk about him. It didn’t seem a very healthy thing to do, but falling in love with him hadn’t been healthy, either. She would survive this, just as she’d survived that. And maybe it would be easier to put him out of her mind after she’d been back to Bayou Midnight. It would be one more way of saying goodbye.