Читать книгу: «The Midnight Rider Takes A Bride»

One

“Honey, all I’m saying is I hope you’re not just sitting alone feeling sorry for yourself.”

Adora Beaudine tucked the phone beneath her chin and then carefully, quietly, blotted her streaming eyes and swiped at her running nose. Yes, she was feeling sorry for herself. But that didn’t mean her mother had to know.

“Honey, are you there?”

Adora brought the receiver near her mouth again. “Yes, Mom. I’m here.”

“Are you all right? You sound so strange, dear.”

Adora felt a sob bubbling up. Quickly, she turned to the base of the phone that hung on the wall right behind her and punched the mute button. Then she blew her nose. Then, ignoring the champagne flute in front of her, she reached for the bottle that waited at her elbow and took a long swig.

It tasted lovely, all popping and sparkly, going down. And it should. It was good champagne: Möet & Chandon. Adora had bought it last fall, along with a pair of crystal champagne flutes, right after she’d met Farley Underwood—the rotten, dirty creep. She’d bought it because she’d been utterly certain that one day soon Farley would pop the question. She had pictured them celebrating their engagement with champagne.

But Farley had never popped the question. And now the rat was long gone. And as a birthday present to herself, Adora intended to drink up the evidence of her own folly. Moreover, once she’d emptied the bottle, she meant to smash it—along with both of the crystal flutes.

“Adora? Adora...” The voice on the other end of the line had acquired a frantic edge.

Adora turned and gave the mute button a second poke. “I think the connection was bad there for a minute, don’t you, Mom?”

“Oh, was that it?”

“Seemed like it to me.”

“Well, all I’m telling you is I just don’t want you to get bitter. Thirty-five isn’t that old. I just know this will be the year that you find the right man for you.”

Adora had to gulp down another self-pitying sob. Every August eighth for about a decade now, her mother had been telling her that this year she would find “the right man for her.”

Her mother went on. “And you know that your family loves you and that we’d all be there for your special day if we could. But your sisters do have their own families to think of now. And Bob and I, well, we’ve been so terribly busy lately.” Bob Shanahan was Lottie Beaudine Shanahan’s second husband. Bob had met the widow Beaudine at a Bingo game three and a half years ago. They’d married a few months after that. “We’re redoing the house, did I tell you?”

At her mother’s mention of redecorating, Adora cast a melancholy glance around the small, bright kitchen where she sat. Farley had taken a hike seven months ago. Since then, to keep depression at bay, Adora had done some redecorating of her own. The old-fashioned cabinets were now a soft white and there were cheery fruits and vegetables stenciled along the ceiling line. It was charming. But it didn’t help much. Charming kitchens were supposed to have kids in them. And husbands asking “What’s for dinner, hon?”

“Adora. Are you there?”

“Yes, Mom. Of course I’m here. And you did tell me you’d been redoing the house.”

“The living area is finished. I wish you could see it. All blues and mauves. So soft and inviting. Stylish, yet livable. Bob just loves it....”

Lottie prattled on, about Bob and their four-bedroom, passive-solar house in Tucson and the wonderful, creative things they’d done with the interior. Shamelessly Adora tuned her out. She poured herself a little more champagne, drank it between the “Ums?” and “Ummhmms” that her mother’s monologue required of her, and carefully continued blotting away the stubborn tears that kept leaking from the corners of her eyes.

“And I wish you could see the master bath. Shell pink and pale green. Gold tone fixtures. It’s a treat to take a shower....”

From outside on Bridge Street, Adora heard the hard, heavy drone of a big engine—a motorcycle or a souped-up sports car, probably. She listened as it turned into the driveway beside her building, rolled under her kitchen window and stopped in the parking lot out back. Adora shrugged. Her hairdressing salon downstairs, the Shear Elegance, was closed for the rest of the day. If someone wanted to use one of her parking spaces for a few hours, she supposed it wouldn’t hurt anything.

“And I sent you a little something special. Did you get it yet?”

That required actual words for an answer. Adora mustered them. “No, Mom. Not yet.”

“Do you have a summer cold or something, Adora? Your nose sounds stuffed up.”

Adora went ahead and honked good and loud into her soggy tissue. “Yes, Mom. Now you mention it, I have been fighting a cold.”

“Oh, honey. Take care of yourself.”

“I will.”

Right then, someone knocked at the door on the other side of the room. The door led out to a tiny landing and down a narrow set of stairs to the parking lot and also to the back entrance of the Shear Elegance.

“Get some of that nighttime cold medicine,” Lottie was suggesting. “The lemony kind you add to hot water. I think it works just great. Bob had a cold last week and I—”

“Listen, Mom. There’s someone at the door. I have to go.”

“But, Adora—”

“Really. Gotta go.”

“Now you call me, when you get that package....”

“I will. Love you.” Adora twisted in her chair to hook the phone back in its cradle. Then she faced front with a sigh and picked up her glass of champagne.

There was a second knock at the door.

Adora sipped slowly, looking at the door, thinking that maybe she wouldn’t bother to answer it, after all. She knew who it would be: Lizzie Spooner, her best pal. Lizzie had said she’d be over as soon as she finished her shift at the Superserve Mart. Adora thought the world of Lizzie, but right now she didn’t feel like dealing with anyone. She set down her glass. And then, to take her mind off answering the door, she picked up the champagne bottle and began reading the back label.

But then the knock came for a third time, louder and more insistent than before. With another mournful little sigh, Adora rose and went to the door.

She started talking before she even had it all the way open. “Listen, Lizzie, I don’t really feel like—” The sentence died in her throat, because it wasn’t Lizzie after all.

It was Jed Ryder, whose mother, Lola Pierce, was Adora’s single employee at the Shear Elegance downstairs. Adora remembered the loud, pounding sound of that engine she’d heard moments ago and realized it must have been Jed’s Harley.

“Oh. Hi.” Adora swiped a tear from her cheek and tried a friendly smile.

Jed didn’t smile back. And she couldn’t see his eyes, because he was wearing a pair of wraparound, black-lensed sunglasses. As always, he looked like the basic definition of the word dangerous, dressed in denim and leather, with all that black hair streaming around his massive shoulders and that single diamond stud he always wore glittering in his right ear.

He spoke at last, in that low, eerily gentle voice of his. “Sorry to bother you. But I called the shop downstairs and got no answer.”

“I closed up early.”

Though she couldn’t be sure with those dark shades hiding his eyes, he seemed to be looking at her strangely. Maybe he was wondering about the tear streaks on her cheeks, her runny nose—and the champagne bottle she still clutched in her hand.

He asked in that careful, quiet way of his, “Listen, are you all right?”

“Sure. I’m great. Just terrific.” She stuck the bottle under her arm and dug a rumpled tissue from the front pocket of her shorts. Then she wiped her eyes and blew her nose, bending to the side a little, to keep from dropping the champagne.

When she stopped blowing and looked at him again, Jed Ryder had shoved his hands into the pockets of his tight, worn-out jeans. He’d turned his head away, toward the parking lot. And he was actually shuffling his feet in their heavy, black biker boots.

Why, I’ve made him nervous, she thought.

Adora swiped once more at her nose with a dry corner of the tissue—and hid a smile. To the bikers who sometimes hung out over at the local tavern, Jed was nothing short of a legend. They called him the Midnight Rider. He was a loner and a maverick, even among their kind. A man to be shown respect, a force to be reckoned with.

But he obviously didn’t have a clue about how to handle a crying woman.

Adora found the thought that she made him uncomfortable reassuring. It occurred to her that there was no reason in the world why they had to stand here with the door open to talk. She should let him in.

In response to that idea, she heard her mother’s voice, clear as a bell, chiming inside her head: Adora Sharleen, don’t you dare let that Hell’s Angel inside your home.

Adora tucked the tissue away and got a firm grip on the neck of the champagne bottle. Then she stepped back. “Come on in, why don’t you?”

At first he didn’t move, except to cant his head sideways as if smelling a trap. She felt certain he would refuse her invitation. But then he shrugged and crossed the threshold. Once inside, he stood looking around cautiously, like a wild animal that had been brought indoors—a careful wild animal, one who suspected he’d made an error to let himself be confined in so small a space.

Adora shut the door, then gestured at her Country French oak table and the four matching chairs around it. “Have a seat.”

He shook his head. “I’m just looking for Ma, that’s all. I thought maybe you’d know where she is.”

“No, I haven’t seen her since around one.” Adora slid around him and went to a cupboard near the sink. “We had nothing booked for the rest of the day, so I just sent her on home.” She spoke over her shoulder as she brought down that other champagne flute, which she filled from the bottle in her hand. Then, feeling naughty, daring and defiant, she turned and held the flute out to him. “Champagne?”

He stood very still. Since the shades masked his eyes and the rest of his face bore no discernable expression, she hadn’t a clue as to what he might be thinking. He just looked at her. Or at least, she assumed he was looking at her. For a very long time.

In the end she couldn’t stand the silence. Her lip started quivering. She bit it to make it be still and thrust the glass in his direction once more. “Please. Take it.”

“Why?”

“We’ll have a toast.”

One black eyebrow arched up a fraction from behind the mask of the sunglasses. “To what?”

“To...the single life.”

He grunted. “What’s so great about bein’ single?”

The feeling of naughty defiance had evaporated as swiftly as it had come. Now she felt lousy again, about her life and herself—about everything. She also felt just reckless enough to tell him the truth.

“There is nothing great about being single. But maybe if I make a toast to it, I can convince myself not to hate it so much.”

His full-lipped mouth, which was surrounded by a well-trimmed and rather soft-looking beard, quirked up just a little at both corners. He peeled off his shades and hooked them on one of the pockets of the black leather vest he wore.

For what seemed like the first time, she met his eyes. They were a beautiful silvery-gray, and startling in contrast to his raven black hair.

He was definitely smiling now. “Bad day, huh?”

The laugh that escaped her came perilously close to being a sob. “Bad isn’t a strong enough word.”

His smile faded. He just waited—for her to go on, she supposed.

So she did. “It’s my birthday.”

“How old?”

This time her laugh was more of a snort. “Is that any kind of question to ask a woman?”

He started to smile again. “Probably not. As I remember it, you were a few years ahead of me in school.”

“Oh. right. Rub it in.”

“How old?”

She gave in and confessed, “Thirty-five.”

He continued to study her.

She glanced down at the flute she still held. “Look. If you’re not going to drink this—”

“Hell.” In two steps he stood just inches away. He lifted the glass from her hand.

She blinked and stared up at him. He really was an imposing man, especially this close up. His shoulders went on for days. And from the torn-off sleeves of his denim shirt, his massive arms emerged thick and hard as slabs of granite. Over the shirt, he wore that black leather vest with a thousand zippers and pockets on it. His belt and his boots were of black leather, too. And he also wore fingerless black leather riding gloves. Adora thought she could smell all that leather—which was odd. A moment ago she couldn’t have smelled anything; her nose had been plugged solid due to her birthday crying jag.

But Jed Ryder seemed to be the kind of guy who could clear out a woman’s sinuses just by stepping up good and close.

A silver cross gleamed on the wedge of sculpted chest between the top two buttons of his shirt. Adora stared at that cross, thinking that she should probably be frightened, here alone with him in her apartment. But he didn’t scare her. Maybe because she knew his mother so well, and knew how Lola loved him and counted on him. Or maybe because of Tiffany, his much-younger half-sister. Tiff adored Jed.

Really, who could say why he didn’t scare her? He just didn’t. Not at all.

He watched her look at him. Then he held out the champagne he’d just taken from her. “Where’s yours?” She gestured toward the table behind him. He turned around and scooped up her flute. After handing it to her, he raised his high. “Here’s to you. Happy damn birthday, Adora Beaudine.”

“Thank you, Jed Ryder.” They drank at the same time, not stopping until both of their glasses were empty.

He held out his glass to her, and Adora obligingly refilled it all the way to the rim. Then she poured more for herself as well.

He proposed a second toast. “And here’s to you find-in’ whatever you’re looking for.” He waited for her to drink with him.

She decided to provide a few specifics first. “A good-looking, upscale kind of guy with a friendly attitude, a steady job and marriage on his mind would be nice.”

He actually chuckled at that. They drank again, to the bottom of their glasses, as they had before. She raised the bottle, offering another refill.

But when she tipped it over his glass, only a few drops came out. She made a small sound of regret, then suggested, “I think I have some brandy under the sink.”

He shook his head and backed up enough to set his glass on the table. “I gotta go.”

She made a tsking sound and shook her head. “Why did I know you’d say that?”

He looked at her in that studied, patient way of his.

She mentally counted to five, giving him a chance to say something. He didn’t, so she answered her own question. “I knew you would say that because it’s what men are always saying to me. ‘I gotta go.’ Or, ‘I really do have to go.’ Or, ‘Adora. Back off. I said I’m going now.’”

He was squinting at her a little, as if trying to figure her out. “Aw, come on. It can’t be that bad.”

“Sure, it can.” She turned and plunked the champagne bottle on the counter, then whirled back to face him. “I drive men away. I try too hard. Everybody in town knows it. No one’s ever going to marry me. I’m going to be single for the rest of my life.” She hadn’t set her glass down, so she gestured wildly with it. “All my sisters are married. My mother’s remarried. They’ve all moved away to other parts of California—or to Arizona, in my mother’s case. They’ve left me alone here in Red Dog City, with my beauty shop and my cute two-bedroom apartment and my simple little dreams of love and a family that are never going to come true. It’s pitiful. I’m pitiful.” She held out both arms then, and looked down at her body. “Just look at me.”

He said nothing, as usual. After a moment spent staring at her own pink blouse and flowered shorts, she raised her head and met those startling eyes that gleamed the same burnished silver as the cross around his neck. Something warm and sweet seemed to move inside her for a moment. But then, as swiftly as it had come, the sensation faded.

Adora gulped and told herself that it was nothing. Except possibly the effect of too much champagne.

The silence had gone on for way too long. She broke it. “Well, you had a nice, long look. Now tell me. What’s wrong with me?”

“There’s nothin’ wrong with you. You look fine.”

She glared at him, a glare that gradually turned to a glum frown as she realized that she was making a complete fool of herself. Again. She let her head fall back and stared at the ceiling with its darling little rim of marching fruits and vegetables. “Oh, what am I doing?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know.” She made herself lower her chin and look at him. “Dragging you in here. Making you drink champagne with me. Telling you things you don’t even want to know. I really do have ‘desperate woman’ written all over me.”

He looked uncomfortable. In a moment he’d be shuf fling those big, black boots. “Hey. It’s all right.”

“No, it’s not.” She leaned back against the counter and ran her finger around the rim of her glass. Then she looked up at him. “But you’re a gentleman to say so.”

He relaxed and chuckled for the second time, a low, purring growl of a sound.

She smiled in response. “Did I say something funny?”

“Not really. I just don’t get called a gentleman too often, that’s all.”

“Well, you should. ‘Cause you are.” She pushed away from the counter and stood up straight. “You said you can’t find Lola?”

“Yeah.”

“Tiff’s been with you?”

He nodded. “We went camping over the weekend.”

“That’s right, Lola said you two had taken off together. And we missed Tiff at the shop today.”

Tiff, who was eleven, liked to make herself at home in the shop downstairs, visiting with the customers, helping out with anything the adults would let her do. And some afternoons, when the workday was through, Tiff would come on upstairs. Adora always enjoyed those times. She had grown up with a houseful of sisters, after all. She liked having other females around. Tiff would help Adora with her various decorating projects. They’d drink lemonade. Sometimes Adora would do Tiff’s hair. And other days they’d just lie around watching “Oprah” in companionable silence.

Adora asked, “So is Tiff around the corner now?”

“Yeah.” Lola and Tiff lived in the small house Jed had bought for them, around the corner from Adora’s, on Church Street. “I left her snoozin’ on the couch. Poor kid’s beat. We hiked all the way to Crystal Falls yesterday and didn’t get back to my place until late. Then I had work to do this morning, so Tiff hung around the cabin until I could run her into town.” Jed owned a machine shop out on Jackson Pike Road and lived in a cabin right next to it. “Now I gotta get back to check on things at the shop. But I don’t want to leave Tiff alone without knowing where Ma’s off to.”

“You know, before she left today, Lola mentioned that the blackberries are ripe down by Trout Creek. She said that Tiff just loves blackberry pie.”

He lifted his shades from where they hung on his vest. “Thanks. I’ll check down by the creek next.”

Adora watched him as he hid those beautiful eyes once more, remembering all the old rumors about him. He had been a wild boy, in trouble all the time.

And, of course, there had been the rape scandal all those years ago, when he’d been caught by Charity Laidlaw in her daughter’s bed. That had been an ugly mess, complicated even more by the fact that it had been a family matter; Charity Laidlaw’s brother had been Lola’s second husband—and Jed’s stepfather.

Dangerous, most folks in town called Jed. Dangerous and bad.

But no matter what they all said, Jed Ryder was kind at heart to listen so patiently to her self-pitying babble the way he had. And he was so conscientious about his family....

Adora heard herself asking, “You know where the best berries are along Trout Creek?” He shook his head. She set down her empty champagne glass. “Come on, then. I’ll show you.”

That huge, gleaming chopper of his was waiting, right where she thought it would be, down in the small parking lot behind her shop.

Jed reached for his helmet when they stood beside the thing. “Get on.”

Adora took in a long breath. Yes, she knew for sure now that dangerous Jed Ryder was really a very nice man. But that didn’t mean she’d let herself be seen on the back of his Harley. In a small town, word got around. And she could do without rumors about the two of them.

“No. I, um, don’t have a helmet.” She could feel his eyes on her behind the shades and sensed that he knew the real reason she wouldn’t ride with him. But he didn’t say a word.

“We can walk,” she added hastily, not quite daring to look straight at him. “The creek isn’t far. And you couldn’t take the bike on the trail, anyway. Come on.” She started off, and felt a vague sense relief when he fell in step beside her.

They strolled between her building and the next one over, which housed Denita’s Donuts. When they reached the sidewalk, they headed north on Bridge Street, past Church Street and on up to River Street, where they turned right. Once around the corner, they left the shops and stores behind. Wood frame houses, most of them two stories high, lined either side of the street.

In the middle of the block they came to the one-lane bridge that crossed Trout Creek. Adora led the way down the bank to creekside.

The day was cool for August, and in the shade of all the close-growing trees, with the creek bubbling along nearby, it should have been cooler still. But to Adora, the water and all the greenery seemed to make the air uncomfortably moist. Her hair clung to her temples and felt clammy on the back of her neck. They hadn’t gone far along the trail when she stopped and began searching her pockets.

“Gotta do something about my hair,” she muttered apologetically. “Ah-ha.” She came up with a pink ribbon. Swiftly, she tied up her shoulder-length brown curls into a high ponytail. “There. That’s better.”

Jed Ryder said nothing, only waited patiently until she was ready to move on.

A few minutes later the trail cut up the hillside for quite a long stretch. Though it was rugged going, Adora remembered her manners and never let the branches of dogwood or mountain laurel snap back at the man behind her. Periodically they would stop and call Lola’s name. They got no answer.

At last the trail peaked and headed down once more. At the top, panting from the climb, Adora turned back to Jed with a smile. “It’s not far now.”

Unfortunately she started walking before she bothered to look ahead. On the first step she tripped on an exposed tree root. With a little squeal of alarm, she went flying. Seconds later she landed on her backside in the dirt.

Jed was there immediately, kneeling, taking off his shades and hooking them on his vest. “You okay?”

She groaned. “I’m going to be black-and-blue where the sun don’t shine. But I’ll survive.” She rolled to one side and rubbed the sore place gently. “Ouch. One of these days I’ll learn to pay more attention to where I...”

He was watching her, silent as ever, sort of half smiling. She breathed the end of her sentence, barely giving it sound. “...put my feet.”

And then words deserted her. And she could have cared less. There was too much going on for her to think about talking.

All at once the air had grown hotter, sweeter, closer. And Jed seemed to... fill up the world. She could smell leather and dust. And she couldn’t help noticing the sheen of sweat on his skin. She wanted to reach out her hand and feel his beard, to find out if it was as soft as it looked. To put out her tongue and taste his sweat...

Adora hitched in a tiny gasp. She couldn’t believe her own thoughts. Such thoughts weren’t like her at all. She’d never had any interest in that sort of thing. Oh, sure, she’d had a lot of boyfriends in all her years of trying to snare herself a husband. But she’d never gone to bed with any of them. Until Farley Underwood—the weasel. And Farley had made a special point of telling her before he left her what a big, fat zero she had been in that department.

And she supposed if she wanted to go ahead and be depressingly honest, that Farley had been right. She’d wanted to be good at sex. Because it seemed to be something that a well-rounded woman ought to be good at. And she’d tried her best to convince both Farley and herself that she’d enjoyed making love.

But she hadn’t. Not at all. There had just been too much sweating involved—not to mention those unpleasant noises that Farley would make. Yuck. Sometimes the only way to get through it had been to imagine the clever things she could do with window treatments once they were married and had their first house. Or to try to decide whether or not it would be pretentious to monogram their towels.

But right then she could have cared less about window treatments. And monograms were the last thing on her mind. Right then her own sweat felt erotic. And Jed Ryder’s sweat looked delicious. And even the air seemed, somehow, to be humming in a way that set every nerve she had singing. Her body felt heavy. And yet quick and ready at the same time.

It was not yucky. Not yucky at all.

It must be the champagne.

But she knew that it wasn’t. The trek along the trail had banished the glow she’d felt back at her apartment. She was now plain sober. As well as sexually aroused.

Jed said, “Come on.” He continued to smile, and he looked right into her eyes. “Let’s see if you can stand up.” He held out his hand.

Adora took it. He had never removed the fingerless black gloves, so all at once her hand was engulfed in leather and heat. Her whole body seemed to tingle, from the moist skin at her hairline to the pink-enameled toes inside her pink tennis shoes. With a small groan at the effort, she stood.