Читать книгу: «The Greatest Risk», страница 3

She nodded, sadly.

“I mean that is just way too much effort put into thinking about popcorn.”

“I know. I’m twenty-seven years old, and I have more self-doubt than I had as a teenager. It’s pathetic.”

Uh-oh. If he was not mistaken, he heard a past heartbreak in there. What else took a beautiful woman’s confidence from her so thoroughly? Geez. Somebody should teach this girl how to have a little fun. Not him, of course, but someone.

His voice of reason told him to wish her a polite good night and a nice life and get the hell back to his room. It told him heartbreak made women fragile. It told him he was the man least likely to be entrusted with anything fragile even for a few hours.

His voice of reason pointed out to him that she was worried about whether they were going to hold hands, for heaven’s sake, and his mind was already conquering her lips and beyond.

Of course, if he was any damned good at listening to his voice of reason, he wouldn’t be in the hospital for the seventh time in five years.

“What do you say we downgrade?” he suggested after a moment’s thought.

“Downgrade?”

“You know, from a date. We’ll just grab a cup of coffee somewhere.”

She wanted to say yes. He could tell. But she didn’t.

“I don’t think it’s a very good idea,” she said uncertainly.

It was really beginning to bug him that she found him so infinitely irresistible that she was resisting with all her might.

“Why not?”

“Well, it’s just the popcorn question with a different backdrop. Maybe worse. We’d have to talk. I mean just stare across the table and look at each other and think of clever things to say.”

Clever? Was she kidding? You told a few blond jokes, you talked about your job and your motorcycle, you found out she’d been a cheerleader in high school and owned a poodle. Maggie expected clever? It was his turn to worry.

His voice of reason told him to bid her adieu, go back to his room and start a gratitude journal.

Entry number one could be how grateful he was to have avoided any kind of involvement with a woman who didn’t know anything about flirting, dating or making small talk with the opposite sex. And also one who was so obviously a fresh survivor of a heartbreak.

“So, how do you usually get to know people?” his other voice asked. “Meaning men people?”

“Oh, you know. Shared interests. Work. Church.”

Shared interests? Would that be the poodle or the motorbike? Work? He couldn’t even picture Amber on a construction site! And the worst one of all—church?

Whoo boy, church girls were not on his list of potential dates. In his limited experience they lived by rules that all began with Thou Shalt Not. Church girls loved commitment. Made vows. Mooned over babies. Babies!

Run! His voice of reason screamed. But he wasn’t running. So, he’d show little Miss Maggie Mouse, church girl, an evening of fun. Maybe he’d get himself a few points in the heaven department if he didn’t encourage her to curse any more. Everybody could use a few points in the heaven department, right?

Wrong, his voice of reason said stubbornly.

It was dumb to ignore that reason-voice. Luke knew from experience you almost always ended up going off a ramp on a dirt bike at eighty miles an hour, filled with the sudden knowledge that you would have had to be going ninety to make the ramp on the far side of the ravine.

He ignored the voice of reason. This was a challenge after all. He had a weakness. He had never been able to say no to a challenge.

And he had all the scars to prove it.

“Okay, the movie is out. Coffee is out. How about if we just go down to Morgan’s Pub, play a game of pool and call it a night?”

There. He’d risen to the challenge and gotten himself off the hook in one smooth move. No girl who got to know people from the church was going to say yes to going to a pub and playing pool with a virtual stranger, a renegade dressed in a custodian’s outfit.

She hesitated for only a moment, filled herself up with air as if she was building up the nerve to step off a cliff into a pool of ice-cold water, and then said, “Okay. I guess that would be all right.”

Maggie could not believe she had just said that. It would most definitely not be all right to go play a game of pool with Luke August. She didn’t even know how to play pool, though that would be the least of her problems.

It was his eyes, she decided. They were green and smoky and they danced with amusement and mischief and seduction.

Seduction, she repeated to herself with a gulp.

She had come here to Portland General to tell him politely she had come to her senses and that she was not going to a movie with a stranger, with a man she knew nothing about except that he raced wheelchairs. Badly. She could just have not come at all, but it had seemed as if it would be too rude to leave him standing there in the foyer, waiting for her.

Of course, if she was going to be honest with herself, the truth was she could have used the phone and left a message for him at the nursing station.

But then she wouldn’t have known if he had come. Somehow she had thought maybe he wouldn’t. What had she felt when she had first walked in and the hospital foyer had appeared empty?

Much too much.

Her resolve to break the date had intensified when Luke had touched her hair. What had she felt then? Again, much too much. As if she wanted to lean toward him, place her fingertips on his chest, feel the hard wall of muscle and man beneath her hands, as she had felt it this afternoon.

Everything in her mind was screaming at her to run. Every sinew of her body was keeping her rooted to the spot.

In the end his eyes had proved irresistible, the laughter in them beckoning to her, promising her something outside the predictability and the monotony of her own narrow world.

Look at it as homework, she persuaded herself when she heard her voice saying with deceptive calm that she would go play pool with him.

Homework assignment: Be bold. Do something totally out of character this week. So, she’d asked a man out. It hardly counted if she then refused to go out with him!

“My lady,” Luke said, picking up the bucket and resting the dripping mop over his shoulder, “follow me.”

By then she was helpless to do anything but obey. Following him allowed her to study the broadness of his back, the narrowness of his hips, the firm line of his rear end, the length of his leg.

She realized, even in those custodian’s overalls, too short for his six-foot-something frame, that he walked like a man who owned the earth, his stride long and loose, powerful and confident.

“Evenin’,” he said cheerfully to a nurse coming toward them.

The woman gave him a quick glance, squinted at his chest. “Evening, Fred,” she replied distractedly.

Maggie stifled a giggle.

“Fred” turned and winked at her. He led her through a maze of hallways and up and down elevators until they came to an exit she suspected no one knew existed.

While she watched, he reached for the zipper on the coveralls.

“Want to take bets what I have on underneath?” His eyes were very dark in the murky light of the hall, dark and watchful.

She wished she was one of those girls who knew what to say in moments like this, but Maggie only gulped and shook her head. But she didn’t look away, and he had known she would not look away.

Aware her eyes were riveted on that zipper, he lowered it very slowly, winked at her when she spotted the shirt underneath, and then he shimmied out of the coveralls, as if he undressed in front of women everyday.

Which he probably did, she reminded herself. The man was as close to irresistible as men came, and he knew it.

Underneath the coveralls, Luke had on a white denim shirt, sleeves rolled up to just below the elbow, revealing the power of his lower forearms. Faded jeans clung to the large muscles of his thighs.

“How did you know this was here?” she asked a trifle breathlessly, trying to think about anything but the way he was made.

“This exit? I explore.”

“For what reason?”

“You never know when you might have to get ten old people in wheelchairs out because of a fire.”

He could have said anything. That he got bored. That he was restless. And those things probably would have been true. But what he said also had sounded true. It would almost be too much to handle if he looked the way he did—so handsome, powerful, self-assured—and also had heroic qualities.

He opened the door for her and bowed. “The only one in the building that’s not alarmed,” he told her.

“How many alarms did you set off finding that out?” she asked, stepping by him, trying desperately to keep it light, to banter, not to give in to the shivering awareness she felt when she glimpsed the squareness of his wrist, caught the scent of him, noticed how the darkness made his faintly whisker-roughened face look like that of a pirate.

“Lots. Ask Nurse Nightmare.”

“I intend to.” She looked around. There was no light over the door, and it was pitch-black out here. She didn’t have the foggiest notion where they were. Behind one of the hospital wings, she assumed.

He leaned over and stuck a rock in the door, holding it ajar ever so slightly. “So I can get back in.”

“Why do you go to all the trouble?” she asked. “I think we could have just walked out the front door. You’re a patient, not a prisoner.”

“Ha. You don’t know the first thing about Nurse Nightmare, do you?”

“I know her name is not Nurse Nightmare! It’s Hillary Wagner.”

He leaned close to her. She could feel his breath on the soft hollow of her neck. It occurred to her she was in a very dark and deserted place with a man she knew absolutely nothing about.

“I like to live dangerously,” he said softly.

So, now she knew that. And yet she did not feel the least afraid, or at least not for her physical safety. When she looked into Luke August’s eyes she saw a man who planned escape routes for ten people in wheelchairs and who loved to play.

And she saw something else.

Her own need. She leaned toward him, her eyes closing, her lips parting. He was leaning toward her, too, so close she could smell the tangy scent of him, feel the faint heat rising off his body. She gave in to the temptation to touch. Her fingertips grazed his shirt, and she shut her eyes against the pulsating power contained behind the thin and flimsy wall of fabric.

He pulled back, away from her touch, and she straightened and stared at him.

“Ah, Miss Maggie Mouse,” he said softly, “you aren’t that kind of girl.”

She was grateful for the darkness because she could feel the blush leap onto her cheeks. It was true. She was not that kind of girl.

But she sure wanted to be.

“Miss Maggie Mouse?” she asked, faintly chagrined, but slightly charmed, despite herself. Boys in high school had always given the girls they liked teasing nicknames. She had never been one of those girls chosen.

“That’s right,” he said, his eyes warm in the darkness. “Miss Maggie Mouse.”

She held her breath. She could tell he wanted to kiss Miss Maggie Mouse very badly, or at the very least, touch her hair again.

But he did neither.

He held out his hand to her, and there was no mistaking the brotherliness of the offer. She took it. His grip was strong and warm and protective. Unfortunately, he had just protected her from himself, a gesture that was completely unwanted.

“Let’s go play that game of pool,” he said, his voice thick.

She had a sudden, wild yearning to show him she was no mouse, to show him the mouse was only a disguise.

But for what? She wanted to be a tigress, but that was a bit of a stretch. She was a twenty-seven-year-old social worker whose one serious romance had ended like a bad Hollywood comedy.

She decided that trying to tempt Luke August might be a mistake, and yet even the notion of taking his lips captive until he was helpless with yearning filled her with a lovely, drugging warmth that was not typical of her. Even entertaining such an idea made her feel vaguely guilty.

Unaware of the war within her, Luke led them through the darkness with catlike confidence, bringing them out on a side street just to the west of the hospital.

“Morgan’s is just around the corner. Have you ever been there?” he asked.

“On occasion. They have a great lunch special. Have you been there?”

He snorted. “It’s where everybody knows my name.”

Great, Maggie thought. He was restless and reckless. He loved to live dangerously. He was comfortable shedding his clothes in front of a woman. He was totally at home in a bar. What was she doing here?

Having the time of your life, a little voice, one she did not recognize at all, answered back to her, not without glee.

Three

M organ’s Pub was crowded. And loud. The cheerful Irish bar was a popular place in downtown Portland, and Maggie usually enjoyed the atmosphere, noise and decor, but tonight, after walking hand in hand with Luke, and after a near miss in the kissing department, it felt way too public.

Not that anyone noticed! A couple in one of the oak booths by the windows didn’t seem to be even remotely aware of either the noise or the crowd. They were tangled around each other like tree roots.

Were these performances becoming more common? Or was Maggie just noticing them more?

“Sheesh,” Luke muttered. “Get a room.”

So, he had noticed, too. Maggie glanced once more at the couple and frowned. Wasn’t that a man she had seen on several occasions at the Healthy Living Clinic?

“Hey, Luke, haven’t seen you for a while.”

Maggie’s attention was diverted from the couple. The waitress was cute, one of those perky outgoing types that Maggie always somehow envied, even though they always seemed to end up working in places like this.

Blond and decidedly voluptuous, the girl had on a white tank top that showed off a pierced belly button. It was exactly the type of clothing that Maggie would never be able to wear. The young waitress was looking at Luke with something that seemed frighteningly close to adoration.

Maggie realized it should come as no surprise to her that Luke was the kind of man accustomed to being adored by the kind of girls who could get away with wearing skimpy white tank tops and piercing their belly buttons!

She sneaked a look at him and felt a renewed ripple of pleasure at the sheer masculine presence of the man, the dark crispness of his hair, the roguishness of his features, the rippling strength evident in every inch of his powerful frame.

A quick glance around proved his entrance had not gone unnoticed by many of the women in the establishment. A table of four attractive mid-twenties women were all looking at him with unveiled appreciation. When they caught Maggie’s eye, they turned quickly away, chattering animatedly to each other over the table. Maggie suspected they were asking the very same question she herself was asking.

What was she, plain, ordinary Maggie Sullivan, doing here with this man? The movie would have been a better choice after all. She could have sat in the dark, chewed popcorn and worried about butter, never having a clue of what she was up against in terms of his massive appeal to all members of the opposite sex.

Up against? Good grief, that made it sound as if she had designs on Luke August! Maggie reminded herself she was doing her homework, being bold, not making lifetime plans. Still, she watched the interchange between Luke and the waitress with pained interest.

Luke gave the girl a light tap on the shoulder with a loose fist. “Hey, little sister,” he said, and with that single phrase, seemingly tossed out casually, he defused Maggie’s anxiety. The phrase recognized the girl’s youth without snubbing her. He acknowledged her, but didn’t encourage her interest.

Was there more to Luke than met the eye?

“Where have you been?” the waitress asked, coquettishly blinking mascara-dripping lashes at him. She slipped her tray onto her hip, apparently planning a long chat that ignored Maggie. “It’s been a couple of weeks, hasn’t it?”

“I’ve been laid up,” he said. “Is there a table back in the pool room? Great. Hey, Rhonda, can you bring us a couple of burgers? Heavy on the fries. Don’t stint on the gravy, either.”

Maggie suspected anyone else would have been told that that wasn’t her section, but Rhonda didn’t seem to realize she had been gently brushed off and was still eager to please. “To drink? Your regular?”

“Yeah.”

“And your lady friend?”

“Just a cola, thanks,” Maggie said.

“Two regulars,” Rhonda said, rolling her eyes.

Maggie and Luke pushed their way through the crowd in the front of the bar, to the pool room at the back. There was one table to sit at, and lots of greetings to Luke. He helped her take off her jacket, the old-world courtesy completely wiped out by the wicked way he raised his eyebrows at what was underneath.

The black T-shirt was way too tight. She had known it when she put it on, but of course at that time her crystal ball had failed her. She hadn’t known the evening was going to hold more than a polite refusal to see him. She had thought the jacket was staying on!

“You look great in that,” he said gruffly.

The comment flustered her. Did she really? Or did he just know how to make women feel sexy?

Thankfully, they had no sooner settled at the table than he was swarmed. He fielded questions about his long absence from this favorite watering hole.

He was obviously popular and well-liked by both men and women. Though she desperately would have liked to find fault with him, Maggie found herself reluctantly liking how he interacted with people. He was a man who had been given many gifts, the kind of man who could easily have become stuck on himself.

But Luke seemed genuinely interested in other people. He knew and remembered small details. He asked one woman about her cat, and even remembered the pet’s name. When he inquired about details of their lives, he appeared to care about the answers. He introduced Maggie to everyone who visited the table and made sure she was included in the conversations. He exchanged banter with some beautiful women, but never once to the point where Maggie felt he would rather be with them, or that he was asking the question she was certain everyone else was asking.

What is he doing with her?

Still, for all his comfort with the patrons of Morgan’s, after a while Maggie noticed something she found a tiny bit sad, though the word sad seemed like the last word you would have thought of, looking at the dynamic Mr. August holding court.

“Doesn’t anybody know you’re in the hospital?” she finally asked when they once again had the table to themselves.

He shrugged it off. “I didn’t exactly send out announcement cards.”

But Maggie was a social worker. She was trained to look deeper, and her intuition was finely honed. She suspected Luke August deliberately chose relationships that were superficial, that required very little of him.

What did that say about him? Not much. It added to his already less-than-stellar résumé: that he was restless and reckless, loved to live dangerously and was quite comfortable shedding his clothes in front of women. And that was before she even began to factor in his ease at assuming roles from doctor to janitor, and his apparent love of flaunting rules.

But a more sympathetic thought was already crowding out all the unsympathetic facts. How lonely could he be that he chose relationships that asked so very little of him? That gave him nothing?

Ha! A man who looked less lonely she had rarely seen.

Besides, could it be any lonelier than her life, where she managed to bury her own heartaches in an almost crippling workload? Was escaping a life of real commitment and intimacy through overwork any different than escaping through riding motorcycles too fast or cultivating friendships in a bar?

“Hey,” he said, reaching over and pressing his thumb against her forehead. “You’re getting too serious, again. Tell me you are not thinking about butter.”

She laughed. “No.”

“Well, whatever you’re thinking about, stop. You’re going to get a wrinkle right here.”

The small gesture, his finger briefly touching her forehead, coupled with the mischief in those green eyes, was strangely intoxicating.

Besides, he was right. The whole point of this exercise was to have fun, to let go, to be different than she normally was. Bold. She gave herself permission to do that, ordered herself to quit the analyzing that came as second nature to her, a skill that made her a great social worker but probably not such a great date.

“Is your regular drink really soda?” she asked him when their drinks arrived. “I’m surprised.” Again.

“I am in the hospital. It’s probably not a great idea to return inebriated.” She realized he didn’t want to discuss his less-than-macho choice of drink because he quickly changed the subject. “I can’t wait for that burger. Maybe I’ll have two. Hospital food is, well, horrible.”

“She said it was your regular,” Maggie said of his drink choice, not prepared to let him wiggle out of it.

“Did she?”

“So, unless you’ve been slipping out on these little field trips every night…” She already knew he hadn’t, at least not to Morgan’s.

“Great idea, but no. This is the first time I’ve had a night out. This hospitalization, anyway.”

“This hospitalization?” she asked. “So you play hooky every time you’re hospitalized?”

He shrugged.

“Is that a yes or a no?”

“Are you a reporter?” he teased, but did she hear a faint warning? Don’t ask too much. Don’t get too personal.

“No, I’m curious.”

“You know what that did to the cat.” He hesitated, then answered. “In the last five years, I’ve been in the hospital seven times. I get bored.”

She was startled, but something in his look made her back off. She reminded herself she was supposed to be having fun. She wasn’t conducting a parenting suitability interview.

“Well, here’s to brown and bubbly,” she said, lifting her glass to him.

“Did you have me pegged for a beer-swilling swine, little Maggie Mouse?” he teased. He liked it light. Well, that was fine. She was planning one night of being out of character. It really had nothing to do with him, except that he was a different kind of choice than she had ever made before. And how.

She ordered herself to lighten up and managed to laugh at herself. “I could picture you with a beer, yes.”

“I spend too much time on motorcycles to drink much. I can’t be off, even by a little bit. I don’t ride with any alcohol in my system. Besides, I seem to have no problem having wrecks, even without being impaired.”

So, despite the image he was trying to uphold of being a barfly, he didn’t drink?

“So,” she said, determined to keep it light, not to follow the tantalizing thread of all the things he didn’t want her to know, like why he hung out in a bar when he didn’t drink, “to you motorcycles are—”

“My life,” he finished the sentence easily. “I have three. A 1994 Harley Fatboy, which is my road trip bike. Then I have an off-road bike, a Honda CRF 450, which I race. And then I have a street bike, that’s kind of in pieces after, er, my last ride on it.”

“What happened?”

“It’s a speed bike. Sometimes irreverently called a crotch rocket. I was going a little too fast into a turn. The road was wet.” He held up his glass. “Here’s to leather and helmets.”

He was dismissing the accident as nothing, and she reminded herself it was her night not to care, not to probe, not to try and understand, just to go with the flow, to enjoy him, to have fun.

So, a large part of his life was about motorcycles.

“I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen a motorcycle called a crotch rocket,” she admitted. Or a Fatboy, or a CRF 450, but why admit total ignorance?

“I’ll point one out to you next time we’re together.”

Next time they were together? She warned herself he had thrown it out casually. What were the chances there was going to be a next time?

And so, despite her vow to keep it light, Maggie wanted to know everything she could this time.

“Do you do something for a living?” she asked.

“Oh, sure. I’m in construction. All brawn, no brains.” He said that with a certain challenge, as if he expected her to disapprove.

But she could already tell there was plenty of brain there. And she had already figured out Luke did something physical. There would be no other explanation for the fine form of the man, unless he went to a gym, and somehow she couldn’t envision him admiring himself in mirrors and pumping iron.

“Do you like your work?” she asked, probing the challenge she had heard in his voice.

“Love it. I was the kid who could never sit still in the classroom. Now I get paid for the fact I’m high-energy.”

Should she ask him why he sounded a tiny bit defensive? No! That would be the social worker in her speaking. And tonight she was trying to be bold, different.

Instead, she said, “Not to mention the added perk that girls love muscles?”

Clearly it wasn’t what he’d expected, and he tried to hide the fact she’d surprised him by saying, “Do you like muscles, Miss Maggie?”

Though she ordered them not to, her eyes immediately moved to that big, broad muscle of his exposed forearm. He flexed it.

She gulped.

He laughed and then moved easily away from her discomfort. “And how about you? What do you do for a living?”

She told him about her work at Children’s Connection. Somehow she expected the same kind of disapproval that he had expected of her, or at least boredom. He did not look like the kind of guy who would list a social worker as a person of interest to him.

She could see him with a model. Spy. Airline hostess. Actress. And yet for all that, he listened to her intently, asked questions, drew her out.

It occurred to her Luke August was great at this. At making a woman feel special and as if she was the only one in the world. It also occurred to her it would be a mistake to take it personally, to read too much into it.

The food arrived. The hamburgers were thick and juicy, the fries homemade, the gravy sumptuous. Maggie wondered if food had ever tasted so good.

Maybe that was what being with such an intriguing man did, heightened all your senses. Wasn’t that probably the point of Dr. Richie’s homework assignment? Leave the comfort zone, so you could feel things more fully, more completely?

Before she really even knew it, she had eaten every bite of food off her plate, including a monstrous mound of French fries and every last dollop of gravy.

Luke looked at her empty plate approvingly. “You eat like a man,” he said. “None of this dainty whining about getting fat.”

Maggie was not at all sure that was a compliment! Didn’t he remember the popcorn? She did worry about getting fat! She looked at her empty plate in horror. Oh no! Her hips had been giving her a message earlier today, and she had ignored it. Her shirt had been too tight, and she had ignored that, too!

Plus, in her frenzy over having asked Luke to go out with her, and the ensuing chaos where she had tried on everything she owned to go and tell him she wasn’t going out with him, Maggie had completely forgotten to apply her daily dose of NoWait oil.

She shuffled through her handbag, and her hand closed over the precious little vial.

Emergency!

She excused herself and went to the washroom. She couldn’t help but notice how many women were sneaking looks at Luke. Some weren’t even sneaking, eyeing him up as boldly as if he were a side of prime beef and they were the supermarket meat buyer.

Despite what had seemed like very genuine interest as they had exchanged information about their jobs, he wasn’t going to see anything in her. Maggie just knew it. The washroom, unfortunately, had a series of wall-to-floor mirrors and she studied herself.

Plain, she decided. And despite what Dr. Richie had said, she was not perfect. Her hips were way too wide. Her curves were just too curvy.

Reaching into her bag, she took out the NoWait. Half the recommended dose?

“Forget that, Dr. Richie,” she muttered to herself.

Maggie rubbed the full dose behind her ears, and then just for good measure added another little dab.

“Goodbye, burger,” she said.

She reentered the pool room, stood in the archway, and watched Luke for a moment. He was so sure of himself. The fact that he was still alone surprised her—and didn’t seem to bother him one little bit. Looking at him, she felt as if he was taking her breath away.

Maggie was not sure she had ever had such a physical awareness of a man as she had of Luke. Was it because of their first encounter? Because she had felt the solidness of him against her, felt his warmth and his fire on much too intimate terms?

Was it because he had, however unintentionally, introduced her to her own yearning? For a moment, she thought of bolting for the door. Dealing with this unfamiliar territory felt the same as navigating a minefield.

But then Luke noticed her and, grinning as though he was thrilled to see her, waved her back over to him.

“So, are you ready for some pool? I got us one of the tables.”

“Sure,” she said doubtfully.

But half an hour later Maggie was giggling helplessly as she leaned over the table trying to hit the white ball into one of the solid ones.

“No, no, no,” he said sternly. “You have to get down farther. You have to be looking right down the shaft of the cue.”

He came up behind her and fitted his body around hers, adjusting her over the cue. He took her arm.