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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.”
Deep-seated affection flickered in Kevin’s eyes for a second as he looked at her. The ideas that had been running through his head these last few hours… “You’re my baby sister. I have a right to get carried away if some guy—”
“He saved me, Kevin.”
The barrage of words came to a sudden, skidding halt. Dark brows came together over a Roman nose. “Saved you? Saved you from what?”
“From being mugged.” She’d wanted to find a way to tell him, a nice, calm way, but apparently Kevin wasn’t going to allow that. “Two guys stole the fare money. And all his things. I’m sorry, Kevin. The money’s gone.”
He didn’t give a damn about the money. Only Alison. He looked from Luc to Alison, words temporarily refusing to come. And then they came. In a flood.
“That does it! No more driving the cab. Not full-time, not part-time. Not from here to the edge of the garage—”
“Kevin—”
But he wasn’t listening. “I told you that wasn’t a job for a woman, but no, you wouldn’t listen. You always thought you knew what was best.” When he thought of what could have happened to her, his blood ran cold. “Well, I’ve got news for you. You don’t know—”
She placed her hand on her brother’s shoulder. “Slow down, Kevin. Luc has a headache.”
Working up a full head of steam, he was just getting started. “I don’t care—”
But she did. “He got it defending me.”
“Oh.” The words finally penetrated. Chagrined, Kevin looked at the man who had earned his eternal gratitude. “Oh,” he repeated. “Hey, sit down.” He dragged a chair closer, urging Luc to sit. “You want an aspirin?” Kevin pulled open a drawer in his desk, reaching for a half-empty bottle. “Did you take him to see Jimmy—?”
Alison reclaimed the bottle and put it back in the drawer. “He has painkillers and yes, I took him to see Jimmy. I am a nurse, you know.”
“A nurselet,” Kevin corrected fondly. Ten years older than Alison, it was hard for him to think of her in any sort of adult capacity. “But you’re coming along,” he added when he saw the storm clouds gathering in her eyes.
Even though he had no way of knowing for sure, something told Luc that he was accustomed to a less frantic pace. But then, probably everyone was. “You people always talk this fast?”
Kevin looked at him and then laughed. He dragged his hand through his hair in a way that was reminiscent of Alison. “Only when we’re stirred up,” Kevin apologized. “Can I get you anything? Just name it.”
“He needs a place to stay,” Alison interjected before Luc could demur the offer. “If it’s okay with you, I told him he could have the room over the garage. Until his memory comes back.”
Kevin glanced in Luc’s direction. “His memory?”
Alison nodded, pressing her lips together. “He has amnesia.” And it was all her fault.
Kevin could only stare at her.
Chapter Three
“You can’t remember anything?”
Kevin thought of all the things that were crowded into his life, all the treasured memories he had of precious moments. The idea of suddenly losing his grasp on all of them was devastating. Sympathy flooded through him for the young man sitting on the guest side of his small, cluttered desk.
“No.” The single word echoed, dark and lonely, in Luc’s brain. Drawing nothing into the light in its wake except frustration.
Blowing out a breath, Kevin passed his hand over his hair.
“Man, that has got to be awful for you.” At a loss as to what to say, Kevin looked toward his sister. “How long do these kind of things last?”
Alison hesitated, then purposely kept her voice upbeat for Luc’s sake. “Jimmy said it might clear up in a day or two.”
Or longer, she added silently. There was just no telling. Even though she’d asked the same question of Jimmy, Alison knew that there was no blueprint for amnesia to follow. It varied from person to person, a product of cause and effect. It could be gone by tomorrow, or last forever. There was just no telling.
For Luc’s sake, she crossed her fingers and hoped for the first.
“Day or two, huh?” Kevin was a dyed-in-the-wool optimist. He shifted his eyes to look at Luc. “Sure he can stay over the garage,” he told Alison. “You can stay for as long as it takes. Nothing’s too good for the man who saved my little sister.” As if to underscore his sentiment, Kevin threw an arm around Alison, hugging her to him.
Embarrassed, Alison tried not to flush. “We’re a very close family,” she told Luc.
Luc noticed that she subtly shrugged her brother’s arm off and then stepped back. It reminded him of something. Small spaces and claustrophobia. Cave-ins. What did all that mean?
Behind him, he heard the door being opened. “Hey, Kevin, can I see you a sec?” Turning in his chair, he saw a man in stained, zipped-up coveralls peering into the office.
Kevin waved the mechanic back out. “In a minute, Matt. Can’t you see I’m busy?”
Grunting, Matt retreated. “It’ll keep.”
An idea suddenly hit Kevin. Perching on the corner of his desk, he looked down at Luc. “Have you been to the police station?”
“No, but I called 911,” Alison told him. “The police came to take down the information about the robbery.”
“Yeah, that.” He dismissed the robbery as unimportant. What mattered was that Alison wasn’t hurt. Money was replaceable, she wasn’t. “No, I mean about Luc here. They’ve got a Missing Persons Bureau, maybe they’ve got something like a Found Persons Bureau.” It made perfect sense to him. There had to be more people wandering around with amnesia than just Luc.
Alison pressed her lips together, holding back a smile. She didn’t want Kevin to think she was laughing at him. There were times when she envied her brother, the simplicity of his soul.
“He’s only had amnesia for less than half a day. That means if he’s ‘missing,’ he’s only been so for that amount of time. If he’s supposed to meet someone, they probably think he’s just been delayed.”
“Meeting someone.” Kevin rolled the idea over in his head. There had to be possibilities they weren’t seeing or tapping into. “Were you on your way to a meeting?”
“Well, he was on his way to a hotel,” Alison told him. Told both of them, she realized. Luc was listening to her as intently as her brother was. She had to remind herself that this was news to him, as well. She wished he had talked more to her when he’d gotten into the cab. Some fares never stopped talking from the moment they got in until she brought them to their destination. But after the exchange of names, Luc had been fairly quiet.
“I picked him up at the airport.”
The information felt like a depth charge aimed at a submarine. Kevin felt disappointment wash over him. “So you don’t even live around here?”
Luc considered the question, turning it over in his mind. Trying to find a bit of information that might begin to answer the query. But not even a glimmer pushed forward.
He sighed. “Not that I know of.”
“There has to be something you remember.” Kevin saw Alison opening her mouth, undoubtedly ready to launch into some sort of medical terminology. He was going with common sense. “People don’t lose their total memory when they get amnesia. I mean, you still speak English and you know how to walk, right?” Eagerness built in his voice. “There’s got to be something else rattling around in your head. You just don’t know, you know.”
There was that simplicity again, cutting to the heart of things. Alison looked at her brother with affection. “Sometimes, Kevin, I think you should have been a Rhodes scholar.”
He had no time for compliments, though it was nice to be appreciated once in a while. “I know all the roads I need to, right here in Seattle.” In his enthusiasm, Kevin leaned in closer to Luc. “Think. Is there anything? Anything at all?”
There was no harm in giving Kevin’s theory a whirl, Alison thought. “Maybe if you closed your eyes, it might make you focus better.”
Luc was game to try anything to jar at least a few thoughts loose. He did as she suggested. After a moment he opened his eyes again.
“Anything?” she pressed, eager. There was something there, she thought. In his eyes. He’d remembered something.
“Snow.”
Alison stared at him, confused. “Excuse me?”
“I had an image of snow.” But even as he said it, the image was fading into oblivion. “Or maybe just a huge expanse of nothingness.” Brought on by wishful thinking, he added silently. “I can’t tell.”
She placed a hand on his shoulder, leaving it there for a single beat before realizing what she was doing. Alison let her hand drop to her side. “It’ll come to you. You’re probably just trying too hard. Maybe after a good night’s sleep—”
“It’s only five o’clock in the afternoon,” Kevin pointed out.
Maybe, but Luc had been through a lot and he was undoubtedly exhausted. Some of his color was returning, which was a good sign, but she didn’t want to push it. Noticing his color, she realized that it looked as if he was tanned. Did he live on the coast? Near a beach? His way of speaking was relaxed, laid-back. Did that make him a Californian?
God, but she was lousy at playing detective. Where was Sherlock Holmes when you needed him?
“He can still get some rest, Kevin. C’mon, I’ll take you home.” Walking out of the office, she stopped abruptly. The space where she’d parked her car this morning was empty. She turned around to look at her brother. Kevin, she noticed, was walking slow, as if he expected the man beside him to collapse at any second. “Where’s my car?”
“Oh.” In all the excitement, he’d forgotten. “Matt parked it over by number 2. I had him do an oil change for you.”
She’d purchased the secondhand car with money she’d earned doing odd jobs since she was sixteen years old. She treated the car as if it were a beloved pet. “I can do my own oil change.”
“Yeah, I know.” It was an old story. She always balked whenever he tried to do something for her, acting as if he was impinging on her independence. She was that way with everyone. “But I enjoy doing little things for you.” He glanced at Luc. “She likes to act feisty.”
“No, just my age,” she countered. And then she sighed, looking at Luc. She’d been over this ground before, more times than she could count. “Being the youngest, they all think they have to take care of me.”
“We do,” Kevin confided to Luc, winking broadly for Alison’s benefit. “You know how it is.”
“No,” Luc replied, a wave of regret washing over him. “I don’t.”
“Yeah, right. Sorry.” Embarrassed at his blunder, Kevin looked away. He dug into his pocket, extracting his wallet and handed two twenties to Luc. “You gotta be hungry. Get yourself something to eat—on me.”
Alison gave up. There was no point in saying that she was perfectly capable of paying for both of them. Who was Kevin going to baby once she was gone? She’d put in her application to several medically depressed areas in the country and gotten back favorable responses. At this point she was just trying to decide which to accept. Kevin was going to have a lot of adjusting to do.
But for now she humored him. “We’ll pick up something on the way.”
Maybe you can pick up a wife on the way.
Almost in a trance, Luc stopped walking. “A wife.”
Alison and Kevin turned in unison to look at Luc, both stunned.
Maybe she’d heard wrong. “What?”
Luc looked at them, just as surprised as they were by what had just come out of his mouth. Very carefully he examined the words that had flashed through his head. But even now they were fading away.
“Someone said that to me…I think. Something about…looking for a wife, picking up a wife on the way. Something like that.” It made less and less sense the more he said it.
Alison laughed shortly. “I didn’t know they were holding a wife special at the mall.” At best, it was an odd clue to the man’s identity. Did he mean picking up his wife, she wondered. Could that be it? He was married and meeting his wife?
Luc tried to hear a voice, attach a face to the speaker, but it was like dropping cotton candy into the water. The words, the memory was dissolving before he could reach it.
“It had something to do with my coming here. Or maybe not,” he added with a helpless shrug of his shoulders. None of it was getting any clearer. If anything, it was becoming murkier.
For all he knew, the line that had echoed in his mind might have been something he’d heard in a movie or a television program.
He looked as if he was getting exasperated. She couldn’t blame him. Wanting to distract Luc, she said, “Let’s go get you settled in.”
To Kevin, it seemed like an odd way to put it. “What’s there to settle? The man has nothing but the clothes on his back.”
Kevin was right. Luc was going to need something else to wear. She scrutinized Luc closely. “Jimmy’s about the same size,” she judged.
“Better check with Jimmy first,” Kevin cautioned. In all likelihood, Jimmy would be generous, but you never knew. “You know how he is about his clothes.”
She laughed, remembering the one time she’d needed a tailored shirt and had to pilfer it out of Jimmy’s closet. The tirade when he discovered the loss had been unbelievable. Especially after he’d seen the wine stains. “Beau Brummell was probably more willing to give his clothes away.”
“Beau Brummell. Nineteenth-century figure, known for his penchant for finery. Friend of the prince of Wales.”
She and Kevin exchanged looks, then turned to look at Luc, who appeared a little amazed himself. He had no idea where that had come from.
“Maybe you’re an encyclopedia salesman,” Kevin suggested, only half kidding.
Luc shrugged. “Right now, that sounds as right as anything.”
Like a child on his first trip away from home, he watched the scenery go by outside the car window. Trying to absorb everything. Feeling a little lost, a little uncertain.
Except in his case, Luc hadn’t a clue where home actually was. All he knew, and not even with any amount of certainty, was that it wasn’t here.
“You’re trying too hard.”
Her voice, soft, understanding, drew his attention back to the car he was in. And to her. “What?”
She’d noted his reflection in the window when they’d stopped at the last traffic light. Alison could have sworn she could see his eyes getting tread worn. Though she’d never experienced anything remotely like amnesia, she could well imagine how frustrating it had to be for him. To think and not remember. To exist and have absolutely no memory of it.
