The Midnight Rider Takes A Bride

You all have answered my endless questions so patiently

and I sincerely appreciate your helpfulness.

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: M?et & 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.