Found: His Perfect Wife

His hand on her shoulder to prevent another embarrassing dip, he walked slowly to the cab.

“No, I don’t.” He looked at her, his head pounding. “But if I came to your rescue, I’m glad, even if it did cause everything to disappear.” Concern entered his eyes. “Did they hurt you?”

He was asking about her. His memory had been reduced to that of an eggplant because of her and he was still asking if she was hurt. She couldn’t make up her mind if he was for real or a figment of her imagination.

“They didn’t have time. You were too quick.”

He lowered himself into the back seat, his legs giving out at the last minute. What had that guy hit him with, anyway?

“I don’t feel very quick now,” he confessed. He stopped, considering. “Jean-Luc, huh?”

“That’s what you said.” She remembered something else. “But you added that everyone calls you Luc.”

“Luke.” He rolled the name over in his mind, waiting for a familiar ring. And then something seemed to gel. “Luc,” he said suddenly. “It’s not Luke, it’s Luc.”

She heard no difference, but as long as it made one to him, that was all that mattered. She looked at him eagerly, not wanting this man’s condition on her conscience. She had just attained her life’s dream of becoming a nurse. That meant helping people, not putting them in harm’s way. “Do you remember?”

He knew she meant more. But there was only that. “Just that Luc is my name.”

She wasn’t about to give up easily. “Luc what?” she prodded.

He tried, he really tried, but nothing came. Trying to move his head from side to side, he instantly aborted the effort, regretting it. “I haven’t got the vaguest clue.”

Chapter Two

Detective John Donnelley stared at his notepad. Twenty-five minutes of questioning had resulted in less than half a page of writing. It was hot and muggy and he was struggling to keep his irritability from showing. Passing his hand over a near-bald pate that had once sported more than its share of hair, he shook his head.

“Not much to go on.” He looked at the man he’d been questioning as he flipped the book closed.

Alison resisted the urge to place herself between the two men. It was her natural mothering instinct coming to the fore, an instinct she’d acquired ever since her own mother had passed away over sixteen years ago.

“It all happened very fast,” she interjected. Luc had been through enough, and in her estimation, he wasn’t looking all that good right now. He didn’t need to be grilled any longer. “Five minutes, tops. Probably more like three.”

The bald head moved up and down slowly, thoughtfully. “Usually the way.” Donnelley eyed Luc. The impression that Luc might be a suspect didn’t appear to be entirely out of the detective’s range of thought. “And there’s nothing you can add?”

Luc tried to think, to summon a memory. Something. It was like trying to find angel food cake in a snowdrift. “’Fraid not.”

Still, Donnelley pressed one more time. “Height, weight, coloring—?” Dark eyebrows rose high on an even higher forehead, waiting. Moderately hopeful.

There was no point in pretending. “I wouldn’t know them if they were part of that crowd,” Luc admitted honestly, gesturing toward the people who had gathered behind the sawhorses that defined the crime scene, separating it from the rest of the alley.

Why was the man going over the same thing again? Luc needed a doctor, not a badgering police detective who looked as if he was ten years past weary. “We’ve been through all that,” Alison pointed out.

The protectiveness welled up within her. It would have been funny if she’d stopped to analyze it. She was slight, almost petite in comparison to Luc, yet she felt as if he needed her to run interference. At least until he was himself again. Whoever that was.

“He told you, Detective, he can’t remember anything that happened. Why do you keep asking him the same questions?”

The slight shrug wasn’t a hundred percent convincing. “All I’m saying is that it seems awfully convenient, this loss of memory.” His eyes met Luc’s. Something within him relented. He could feel the girl’s eyes boring into him. She seemed convinced enough for both of them, he thought. “Hey, listen, I’m just trying to do my job here. You don’t push, you don’t get answers, right?”

“Sometimes you don’t get answers even when you do push,” she replied quietly. But he was right, she supposed. The man had probably seen it all. Certainly far more than she ever had. That made everyone suspect in his eyes. Even her. She shrugged. “Sorry, it’s just that he needs to see a doctor.”

Donnelley looked at Luc’s face. His pallor was almost ghostly. No point in beating a dead horse, at least for now.

“Okay, you can go,” he told Luc. His voice was almost casual as he asked what sounded like an afterthought, “Where can we reach you, in case there’s something else?”

Luc slipped his hands into his pockets. If there’d been money there originally, there was none now. His pockets were empty. All he had, as far as he knew, were the clothes on his back.

“I don’t know.”

Luc frowned. He was getting very sick of the sound of that. Perforce, it was his reply to almost everything. Because he didn’t know. Didn’t know his name, didn’t know where he’d been or where he was going. Didn’t even know how old he was or if there was someone waiting for him. Someone getting increasingly worried as the minutes slipped away.

Frustration ate away at him, filling up all the empty spaces.

The detective paused, considering. And then he reached back into his pocket for his notepad. Writing something down quickly, he tore off the page and held the single sheet out to Luc.

“Here’s the address of a shelter in the area.” Donnelley tried to distance himself from what he was saying. There was a hot meal waiting for him at the end of his shift. A hot meal and a good woman in a tidy, three-bedroom house he’d almost paid off. He wouldn’t have liked to be in this kid’s place now. “Cleaner than most. They can fix you up with a meal and a cot. Maybe it’ll come back to you by morning.” The note in his voice said he had his doubts.

Luc took the page. Standing on her toes, Alison managed to look over his shoulder at the address. It was an area she tried to avoid when she drove the cab. Her eyes met the detective’s. “Not the best address.”

Donnelley laughed shortly, avoiding Luc’s eyes. “As a rule, rich people don’t generally need shelters in their neighborhoods.”

Right now, he didn’t have the luxury of being choosy. Folding the sheet, Luc tucked it into his shirt pocket. “Thanks.”

Alison was getting antsy. “And you have my number.” It wasn’t a question.

Donnelley held up his notepad. He’d written the information down on top of the page. “Right here.”

She began to back away. Being the center of attention had never sat well with her, and the crowd kept growing rather than diminishing. “Then we can go?”

The detective gestured toward the taxicab. “Already said you could. Feel free.”

Free was the last thing she felt, but it was all she needed to hear. “Let’s go,” she tossed over her shoulder at Luc.

For a second, he’d thought she was going to leave him behind. Apparently she thought of them as being in this together. He found that oddly comforting, considering that they apparently hadn’t known each other before the fateful cab ride.

He followed behind her. But when he started to open the passenger door in the front, she looked at him in surprise. “What are you doing?”

He stopped. It seemed pretty clear to him. “Getting in.”

Her eyes indicated the back seat. “Why aren’t you getting in the back?” After all, that was where fares were supposed to ride. In the back. Away from her.

He hesitated, then decided to put the matter to her. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather sit up front with you. I feel too isolated sitting back there.” He’d sat there earlier, waiting for the police to arrive and there had been this pervading feeling of being cut off. He couldn’t successfully deal with that right now.

Alison caught her bottom lip between her teeth. She didn’t know if it was a line, or if he was being serious. She supposed it wouldn’t do any harm. He looked far too unsteady to try anything in his present condition. And these were unusual circumstances.

“Okay,” she murmured, getting in on her side. “You can ride up front.”

Luc stared at the seat belt a full moment, as if analyzing it, before he slid the metal tongue into the groove. “Where are we going?”

Picking her way through the alley, she turned the car to the south and prayed for no traffic. “To get you checked out.”

That was going to cost. “I don’t have any money,” he pointed out needlessly.

She flipped her blinker on, easing into the turn lane. “Don’t worry, I know the doctor there.”

The doctor she knew turned out to be an intern. And her brother. Alison knew for a fact that Jimmy, three and a half years her senior, was on call in the emergency room at University Medical Center. With any luck, Luc could be quickly walked through this ordeal.

And then what?

The question drummed through her head as she brought the taxi to a halt in the tiny lot.

And then, she told herself, she’d take it one step at a time. Who knew? Maybe he’d get his memory back by the time they walked out through the doors again.

She was on nodding terms with half the staff on duty during the early-afternoon shift. It was something she was counting on.

“We’re here,” she announced needlessly to Luc.

Getting out, trying not to move quicker than his head, Luc looked around. “Shouldn’t we be going through the front?”

This was the back entrance, reserved for ambulances and paramedics. And the staff. “This is faster.” She ushered Luc in through the electronic doors.

The receptionist glanced up from her book as Alison hurried by. Her fingers marking her place, she appeared vaguely annoyed at the sudden disturbance.

“Jimmy around, Julie?”

It took the young woman a couple of seconds before recognition set in. A smile followed. “Sure. He’s in the lounge. Slow morning,” she commented just before returning to her book.

“Not anymore,” Alison muttered.

Realizing that Luc wasn’t beside her any longer, she glanced over her shoulder. She’d lost him at the entrance. There were two nurses in front of him, questioning his presence. And just possibly, she observed, trying to draw a little personal information from him, as well.

You’re out of luck, girls.

Not that she could fault them for trying. Luc was definitely in the cute category, she allowed. Actually, she decided, scrutinizing him, he was more than cute. A lot more. Not that that was either here or there. At least, not for her.

Retracing her steps, Alison planted herself between the two nurses and Luc. She knew one of the women. “Grace, I’m looking for Jimmy.”

“In the lounge.” Grace hardly spared her a glance. “Anything we can do?” The question was directed at Luc. “A sponge bath while you’re waiting?”

Without thinking, only reacting, Alison laced her hand through his and pulled Luc away. “He can give himself his own bath.”

Despite his condition, Luc couldn’t help smiling. “Are they always that friendly?”

She led him down a hallway whose walls were long overdue for a painting. Cracked in a number of places, the paint was beginning to peel here and there along the perimeters.

“They usually don’t have enough time to be that friendly. Looks like you picked the right time to be mugged.”

He doubted if there was such a thing. At least, not from the way his head was feeling.

“This way.” Pushing open the unlocked door, she called out to her brother. “Jimmy.”

He looked like her, Luc thought, picking Jimmy Quintano out of the small cluster of men in green livery sitting or standing inside the stuffy room. They had the same color chestnut hair, the same blue eyes and the same winking dimple in their right cheek.

Right now, Jimmy looked a good deal more indolent than his younger sister.

Half turning from the program he was watching on a small, beat-up television someone had donated to the cause, Jimmy leaned back in one of the chairs that framed the kitchen table, another donation.

“Hey, Aly, what’s up?” He looked back at the screen. “I thought you were driving the cab today.”

“I was.” She would have preferred sharing this with him alone, but she couldn’t always pick her locations. Besides, she knew how fast word spread within the infrastructure of the hospital’s staff. “Until two guys decided they wanted the fare money.”

The easy smile vanished. Jimmy was on his feet instantly, crossing to her. “You hurt?” Even as he asked, his eyes washed over her as he passed his hands over her arms.

“I’m okay, but I probably wouldn’t have been if he hadn’t come to my rescue.” For the first time, Jimmy noticed that his sister hadn’t come in alone. He wasn’t accustomed to Alison being with a man. Not since her divorce. “Jimmy, this is Luc. Luc, my brother Jimmy Quintano.”

A few of the others in the room clustered around them, silently giving their sympathy to Alison, respecting her space. Jimmy focused on Luc. Grateful, Jimmy grasped Luc’s hand in both of his. “Hey, man, thanks. I mean it.” Sincerity clouded his mind for a second. “I didn’t catch your last name. Luc what?”

She wanted to spare Luc as much as possible. “That’s part of the reason we’re here,” Alison told Jimmy.

He looked from Luc to his sister. “I don’t understand.”

Before Luc could say anything, Alison began explaining the situation to her brother.

“Luc can’t remember anything. One of the muggers hit him from behind and he went down on the sidewalk.” She indicated the gash on his forehead. “He hit his head. Hard. When he came to, he didn’t know where he was. Or who.”

Jimmy tried to fill in the blanks. “And I take it they took his ID.”

She nodded. “Cleaned him out.” Alison flashed an apologetic look at Luc. “Suitcase, wallet. Everything but the lint in his pockets.”

Jimmy could hear the frustrated tone in his sister’s voice. “Excuse me for a minute.” Making his apology to Luc, he took Alison aside. “You’re not to blame, you know.”

Though she appreciated what he was trying to do, she’d always been willing to take responsibility for her own actions. And this was lying right at her doorstep. “He came to my rescue. He was defending me, Jimmy. If I’m not to blame, then who is?”

He knew she had more than enough to deal with as it was. He was careful not to show it, but he worried about Alison. They all did—he, Kevin and Lily. His younger sister was friendly and outgoing, but there’d always been this definite cut-off point for her past which she wouldn’t allow men to venture. The only exception had been her husband. But that union had been short-lived, not lasting out a year. Ever since then, she’d become even more withdrawn than ever as far as her social life went.

There were times when he thought of her as a wounded sparrow. A hint of the very idea would have probably had her beating on him with both fists just to show him how unsparrowlike she was.

But he knew better. “Society, lax laws, the muggers—I can give you a list.” His eyes were kind as he looked at her closely. “You sure they didn’t hurt you?”

He’d look into her soul if he could, she knew that. But that was a closed area, even to him. “I’m sure. Just take care of Luc, all right? I really feel responsible for him, Jimmy.”

“All right.” Slipping his arm around her shoulders, Jimmy turned toward Luc. “Let’s get that head X-rayed, Luc. Make sure there isn’t something going on we should be aware of.”

Jimmy shut off the back light and pulled the two X rays off the display. Alison had shadowed his every move, insisting on looking at the X rays herself. He knew that her goal was to become a nurse-practitioner, but he wished she would give him a little space right now.

Slipping the X rays into a large manila envelope, he looked at Luc. The news was excellent. “No evidence of any swelling. In my professional opinion, you just got banged up a bit.”

“And the amnesia?” Alison pressed.

Since Luc and not his sister was the patient, Jimmy addressed his words to him. “Should clear up. Day or so.” He paused, then qualified. “With luck.”

“Should,” Luc repeated slowly, absorbing the word into the vast abyss that existed in his mind. “But no guarantees.”

Jimmy knew there was no way he could actually commiserate with his patient’s situation. How would he have felt, waking up, finding his whole world erased? It was a scary thought. “Nothing in life is.”

“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 Cab 4.” 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.”