Maternity Bride

Run, her brain screamed. Run now, before it’s too late.

It was the rational thing to do.

It was the only thing that made sense.

So why did a part of her want to stay?

“What do you say?” he repeated. “A drink?”

He reached out one hand toward her.

Denise looked from that hand to his eyes and shook her head, more disgusted with herself than she was him. She mentally shoved her raging hormones aside. “Ryan,” she said slowly and distinctly, “if this was the Sahara and you had the only map to the last Oasis in existence, I still wouldn’t have a drink with you.”

Then she turned and clomped inelegantly from the room and down the hall with as much dignity as she could muster under the circumstances.

As the elevator doors slid soundlessly closed behind her, she heard him laughing.

Two

Mike stood in the doorway looking after her for a long moment, then turned around to stare at the mess strewn across his brother’s office. In her hurry to find her pepper spray, Denise Torrance had thrown the contents of that huge purse of hers all over the room.

He snorted another laugh and shook his head. Next time he volunteered to fix his twin’s air conditioner, he’d make sure to find out if there was going to be a pint-size tornado dropping by.

Of course, if the tornado happened to have short blond hair, wide blue eyes and a dusting of frekles across her nose, he wouldn’t work too hard to avoid her.

From down the hall, he heard the discreet hum of the elevator as it carried her farther away. He’d thought about chasing after her, but then realized that he didn’t have to.

He’d see her again.

As he bent and scooped up some of her belongings to stack them neatly on the desk, he muttered, “She has to come back. Hell, she left half of her life behind.”

Quickly, he went around the room, snatching up the items she’d tossed. As he grabbed the can of pepper spray, he winced and told himself it was a damn good thing he was quicker than she was. He almost set the can with everything else, to be returned to her, then thought better of it and stuffed it into his jacket pocket instead. No sense in arming the woman, he told himself.

He placed the last of her things on the desk and took a long look at them. Everything from a hairbrush to a tube of toothpaste and a neatly capped toothbrush sat atop the mahogany surface. Shaking his head, he noted the foil-wrapped sandwich, a package of Ding Dongs, a screwdriver set and a package of bandages. But then his gaze fell on the jumbo-size bottles of aspirin and antacid tablets, two black eyebrows lifted high on his forehead.

Ms. Denise Torrance apparently led a very stressful life.

Even as he wondered why, he told himself that it was none of his business. He made it a point never to know too much about anyone. With knowledge, came caring. With caring, came pain.

A small, shiny object on the floor caught his eye and he leaned over to pick it up. His long fingers turned the key over and over as he studied it. A smile crept up his features and he glanced at the wall of file cabinets across the room from him.

The only way she was going to get back into this office was with a key. And she’d left hers with him.

Folding the key into his palm, he pocketed it, then walked back to the faulty air-conditioning unit in the corner.

Whistling softly, he told himself that just because he wasn’t going to get involved, that didn’t mean he had to avoid her completely. Besides, anyone so stressed out that they carried enough medication to dose a battalion was desperately in need of some relaxation.

As he pried the metal cover off the unit, he smiled. It would be his distinct pleasure to introduce Denise Torrance to a little fun.

In the soft morning light, Denise stood outside the brick-and-glass building and stared at the foot-high letters painted on the front window.

Ryan’s Custom Cycles.

That unsettled feeling leapt back into life in the pit of her stomach and she sucked in a gulp of air, hoping to quiet it. It didn’t work.

Her fingers clenched and unclenched on the soft, brown leather of her shoulder bag. It hadn’t been hard to locate Mike. Patrick had once mentioned his twin’s motorcycle shop, so a quick glance through the yellow pages had been all the help she had needed.

Denise’s stomach lurched and she laid one palm against her abdomen in response. “Stop it,” she muttered. “He’s just a man.” And, her mind quietly jabbed, the Statue of Liberty is a cute little knick-knack.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” She admonished herself as she started across the parking lot. She didn’t have all day. Her first meeting of the morning started in less than forty minutes. Her father, as president of the firm, would be there and he wasn’t the kind of man to accept excuses for tardiness.

Denise groaned. Just thinking about having to face her irate father this early in the morning was enough to churn up the acid in her stomach. Rummaging in her purse, she yanked out a small roll of colored tablets and popped two of them into her mouth.

As she chewed, she told herself that she didn’t have much choice in this. She had to see Mike again. “Of course,” she said under her breath, “if I hadn’t let him bully me into running for cover last night, this wouldn’t be happening.”

But she had allowed it. Not until she was halfway home had she remembered that she’d left behind Patrick’s spare key and the files she had needed. She had also forgotten about the things she’d thrown out of her purse in her wild search for pepper spray.

“Pepper spray, self-defense classes,” she grumbled in disgust. “A fat lot of good they did me.”

Too late to worry about that, though. She stopped in front of the sparkling clean glass door and took a deep, calming breath. Then she pushed the door open and stepped into another world. A world where she obviously didn’t belong.

The showroom was immense.

Her gaze flew about the room, trying to take it all in at once. Blond pine paneling covered the long wall behind the room-length counter. On the side wall, glass-fronted shelves displayed everything from helmets to gauntlet-style black gloves to black leather pants and boots. The opposite wall appeared to have been designated an art gallery. Against the soft, cream paint were bright splashes of colored signs, proclaiming the name, Harley-Davidson. Beneath those signs, stood racks of clothing. T-shirts, jackets, chaps, even ladies’ nightgowns, all with the same Harley-Davidson logo.

But the most impressive display were the motorcycles themselves. Gleaming wood floors mirrored the chrome surfaces of the almost elegant-looking machines parked atop it. Sunshine filtered through the front and side windows, sparkling off the metal, glinting against the shining paint jobs.

Denise shook her head, dazzled, in spite of herself. Somehow, she had expected a find a dirty, oil-encrusted garage where beer-swilling mechanics scratched their potbellies and traded dirty jokes.

A long, low whistle caught her attention and her head snapped around.

“How did you slip in here, honey? Are you lost?”

The big man in worn jeans and a flannel shirt scratched at his full beard and grinned at her.

She tugged at the front of her sea green blazer and tightened her grip on her purse. All right, so maybe she did look out of place. She glanced around the room again, noting the sprinkling of customers for the first time.

Only a handful of people were in the store and none of them were in a green silk business suit. Except of course, Denise. And, they were all staring at her as though she’d just been beamed down from the planet Stuffy.

Apparently, she thought, as the people went back to what they had been doing when she entered, jeans and black leather were the preferred costume of motorcycle enthusiasts Even for the women, she told herself as she spotted the only other female in the room.

A pang of envy rattled around inside her as she noted the tall blond woman’s long, straight hair and skintight jeans. Without benefit of a shirt, her black leather vest looked provocative. Dismally, Denise acknowledged that even were she to wear the same outfit, the results would be very different. A quick glance down at her own, less than impressive bustline confirmed the thought.

“Looking for a bike, lady?”

She turned toward the first man again. “No.” She cleared her throat and told herself to remember why she was there. It didn’t matter if she would look terrible in a leather vest, since she had no plans to acquire one. “Actually, I’m looking for Mike Ryan.”

He nodded, then said wistfully, “Too bad.” Jerking his head toward the door behind the counter, he added, “Mike’s in the service bay. He’ll be back in a minute.”