Maternity Bride

He looked up at her. “What?”

“Where’s my stuff?” She wasn’t about to go through with this little deal of theirs if he hadn’t brought her things with him.

Mike scowled, reached back and patted a dark red compartment hanging off the left rear fender. “It’s all there,” he assured her. “Now, get on.”

Gamely, Denise balanced on her right foot and swung her left leg across the motorcycle. Scooting around until she was comfortable, she braced the toes of her Ferragamo pumps on the foot pedals provided and bunched her skirt into the V between her legs. Muttering under her breath, she pulled the helmet on, winced at just how heavy it felt, then secured the chin strap. She didn’t even want to think about what her hair was going to look like later.

Then Mike sat down in front of her, easing her thighs farther apart with his black-denim-covered behind. She stuffed her skirt between them, hoping the pooled fabric would dull the heat arcing between their bodies.

The engine beneath her shuddered and throbbed, and something deep in her core began to shake in response.

“Hang on to my waist,” he said over his shoulder.

She nodded before realizing he wasn’t looking at her. Rather than try to talk over the noise of the engine though, Denise wound her arms around his waist, pressing herself close to his back.

He tossed a glance at her, then reached around and snapped her visor down. “You ready?” he shouted.

She nodded again, but as they pulled away from the curb, she told herself she wasn’t ready.

Not for him.

When he shut down the engine, the silence was soul shattering.

Denise climbed off the motorcycle and staggered unsteadily for a moment Her legs felt as if they were still shuddering in time with the engine of the beast that had brought her here. Undoing the strap, she pulled her helmet off and handed it to Mike. Her head felt twenty pounds lighter as she fluffed her hair, hoping to revive it.

She shivered as a sharp, cold ocean wind swept across Pacific Coast Highway and swirled around her like icy fingers tugging at her. The hum of traffic on the busy highway faded away as she studied the restaurant Mike had chosen.

She’d seen it before, of course. No one living in Sunrise Beach could have overlooked it. Denise had even heard that the city fathers were talking about making it an official landmark.

It looked as though it had been standing in the same spot for a hundred years. The wooden walls looked shaky, the hot pink neon sign across the door, a couple of spots either dimmed with age or broken, spelled out, O’D ul s. Five or six pickup trucks were parked in the gravel lot, but there were more than twenty motorcycles huddled in a tight group near the front of the building.

As she watched, Mike pushed his own bike into their midst.

She had managed to avoid entering O’Doul’s Tavern and Restaurant all of her life. Even though she had been tempted to go inside once or twice since turning twenty-one eight years ago, the thought of her father finding out she’d been there had been enough to dissuade her of the notion.

“Ridiculous,” she muttered, “a grown woman afraid to stand up to her father.”

Unfortunate, but true. All Richard Torrance had to do was look at her with disappointment and she felt eleven years old again. An eleven-year-old girl whose mother had just died, leaving Denise alone with a father who expected perfection from a child too frightened to deliver anything less.

Denise supposed there was some kind of logic in the fact that it would be Mike Ryan to first take her to O’Doul’s. Because Richard Torrance would never approve of him, either.

While she waited for Mike, she studied the old tavern-restaurant claim to fame. Their mascot. Good luck charm.

On the rooftop was a fifteen-foot tall, one-eyed seagull, holding an artificial dead fish in its beak.

“Oh yeah, your dress will fit right in, here,” she muttered under her breath.

“You know,” Mike said as he walked up beside her, “I’ve noticed you do that a lot.”

“Do what?”

“Talk to yourself.”

An old habit, born of loneliness. But he didn’t need to know that. “It’s when you argue with yourself that you’re in trouble, Ryan.”

“If you say so.”

She nodded at the huge bird. “Now I understand why you were in such a hurry to get here,” she said. “Reservations must be hard to come by.”

“Obviously, you’ve never eaten here before.”

“No, I generally make it a practice only to eat at restaurants where the giant bird has both eyes intact.”

His lips quirked. “Vandals. Some kids with rocks and no values mutilate poor old Herman and you blame the bird?”

“Herman?” She smiled, in spite of her best efforts.

With a perfectly straight face, he said, “Herman Stanley Seagull. Jonathon Livingston’s big brother.”

“Very big.”

He grinned.

A moment later, she nodded. “I get it. Stanley... Livingston.”

“And I thought you had no sense of humor.”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

His eyebrows arched. “A bit touchy, are we?”

“Not touchy,” she countered. “Just...cautious.”

He laughed shortly. “An accountant? Cautious? There’s a shock.”

She had heard any accountant joke he could possibly come up with. Personally, she thought that the members of her profession were as unfairly maligned as lawyers. More so, since lawyers usually deserved the ribbing they took.

“Well,” she said, with another look at Herman, “I hope the food’s better than the ambience.”

He chuckled. “Don’t be a snob, honey. O’Doul’s serves the best pizza in town. And if you don’t get here early, it’s all gone.”

“Gone?” Denise stared up at him. “What kind of way is that to run a business? Won’t he make more food if his customers demand it?”

Mike shrugged. “He could, but then he wouldn’t have time to play pool with his friends.”

“Of course,” she said, nodding slowly. “A man has to have his priorities, after all.”

This time, he laughed outright.