Surprise, Doc! You're A Daddy!

He’d come west from Franklin, Tennessee, to take a job he’d arranged on the Internet at the Back Door Cafe, where Meg worked. En route, he’d stopped at the beach town of Oceanside, twenty miles away.

While fishing from the pier, he’d fallen off and bashed his head. Lifeguards had searched for half an hour until, some distance away, they found him thrashing in the surf.

It was a good thing he’d left his wallet on the pier, because he didn’t remember who he was. In his motel room, police had found the phone number of Meg’s boss, Sam Hartman, who’d collected Joe and brought him to Mercy Canyon.

Meg had fallen for Joe on sight and nursed him to health. He’d never regained his memory, although she’d learned plenty about him when she contacted a cousin of his in Tennessee.

She learned that, in the past, Joe had drifted from one job to another, impulsively leaving Tennessee for a post that didn’t pay any more than he was already earning. The police suggested he might have been drinking before he tumbled off the pier.

Meg didn’t care. She knew from personal observation that her Joe Avery was rock-solid. Maybe, she joked to her friends, a blow to the head wasn’t always a bad thing.

Tender and funny and amazingly sexy, Joe had claimed her heart and given her his. After surviving a rough childhood during which she and her younger brother Timmy were shuffled in and out of foster homes, Meg couldn’t believe her luck. Regardless of what anyone else might believe, she trusted her husband completely.

He pulled off the freeway and down a ramp to a service station. In the back seat, Dana began fussing.

“She needs a diaper change,” Joe said, halting at a gas pump.

“I’ll do it.” Meg knew her husband was as good at changing diapers as she was, but he needed to fill the tank. “I’ll take her inside. This chain of gas stations has great baby facilities.”

“Don’t spend too much time. I hate having you out of my sight in a strange place.” Joe wasn’t a controlling person but he’d told her that, since his accident, he felt life was precarious.

“We’ll be quick.” Meg swung out of the car, grabbed the diaper bag and removed Dana from her infant seat.

She took one last, appreciative glance at her husband as he stood at the pump. His muscular build reminded her that he was, indeed, her protector as well as her best friend.

Across the pavement, a red sports car pulled away from a pump. When it went by, the woman driver studied Joe with interest.

Look but don’t touch, Meg thought. That man belongs to me.

JOE’S HEART squeezed as his wife crossed toward the station’s mini-mart with their daughter on her shoulder. Those two people meant everything in the world to him.

He had no one else. Heck, he didn’t even remember the people he’d worked with back in Franklin. Maybe if he’d had some close family, they might have jogged his memory, but his parents had died a few years earlier and there were no siblings.

He wished someone could fill in the inexplicable gaps, the parts of himself that made no sense. When he delivered his daughter, he’d known exactly what to do, yet, when asked, his cousin back in Tennessee couldn’t remember him helping with a birth before.

Well, what difference did it make? He was happy being assistant manager of the Back Door Cafe and happy being married to a woman who laughed a lot, had the warmest heart in the world and drove him crazy in bed.

The automatic shutoff on the pump clicked, prompting Joe to remove the nozzle. He’d been so lost in thought that he hadn’t noticed two young men in baggy clothing walking toward him, he realized with a start.

Where had everyone else gone? Despite the freeway traffic roaring along nearby, the station was deserted. From out here, Joe couldn’t even see the attendant inside the mini-mart.

The men separated, one heading directly toward him and the other coming around the far side of the car. Please don’t let Meg come out of the station now, he thought with a spurt of alarm.

He would willingly give up his wallet and the car, too. Just so no harm came to his family.

“Can I help you?” Joe asked.

“Yeah.” The man closest to him pulled a gun from his gray jacket. “Get in the car.”

“Here’s the keys.” Joe held them out, along with his wallet.

“And leave you to yell your head off?” Gray Jacket swiped the wallet and waggled the gun. “Get in or I’ll shoot.”

Joe shifted uneasily, trying to figure out what to do.

“Now!”

His buddy, a stocky guy in a blue baseball cap, cut off escape in the other direction. Joe weighed dodging between the gas pumps, but if Meg emerged at the wrong moment, things could turn deadly. “Okay, okay.” He got into the driver’s seat. Blue Cap swung in beside him while Gray Jacket hopped in back, keeping the gun aimed at Joe’s head.

“Move it. Fast! South, toward L.A.”

The muzzle pressed into his neck. Joe rolled the car forward.

If only there were a way to leave a message for Meg. He hoped that at least someone had witnessed his abduction, so she would know he hadn’t run off.

His cousin in Tennessee had told her how unreliable he was. For all he knew, that might once have been true. But he would never leave Meg.

Blue Cap rifled through the glove compartment, cursing at finding nothing but maps, candy and baby wipes. The men grew angrier when they extracted only a small amount of cash from Joe’s wallet.

They were looking for drugs and drug money, he gathered. He hoped they would leave when they couldn’t find any.

It made him uneasy to realize how many miles were disappearing between him and Meg. Why didn’t the men let him pull over and get out?

As he drove, the Los Angeles freeway system began to seem familiar, which was strange considering that Joe hadn’t driven much around here before. Not as far as he knew, anyway.

Finally his captors ordered him to exit the freeway in a central city area full of boarded-up buildings covered with graffiti. Blue Cap and Gray Jacket muttered to each other. “Not here.” Although Gray Jacket spoke in a low voice, Joe’s hearing was keen. “Some place less public.”

“Naw. Around here they won’t notice the shots,” hissed Blue Cap.

They were going to kill him.

Joe’s gut tightened. Why would they want to shoot him? Because he could identify them for a crime that so far had done no serious harm? It seemed a ridiculous reason to take someone’s life, but these men obviously didn’t care.

He had to get away. Had to get back to Meg, to let her know how much he loved her.

At a yellow light, Joe halted sharply. While the two men were regaining their balance, he thrust open the door and leaped out.

“Hey!” Gray Jacket started to roll down his window. About to run across the street, Joe had to scramble back as a truck sped toward him.

Expecting to hear the crack of a bullet at any moment, he zigzagged around the front of the car. Blue Cap grabbed the wheel and hit the gas, coming after him.

Joe flung himself over the curb a split second before the car reached it, but he wasn’t safe yet. As he ducked into an alley, he heard a gunshot.

Desperately, he flung himself to one side. His foot connected with a slippery patch of sidewalk, some kind of spilled food, and he couldn’t check his fall.

Flailing in a desperate attempt to regain control, Joe twisted and toppled off balance. For a suspended moment, he registered the fact that his skull was about to hit the corner of a building.

Blinding pain shot through his head. Vaguely, Joe heard a distant siren and the screech of tires as the carjackers fled. Then darkness closed in.