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
