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“Marnie,” Tessa cried. “Marnie, what is it? What’s wrong?”
In seconds they were both at her side. By then, she had stopped screaming. Tessa grabbed her and pulled her close.
She huddled against her sister, already beginning to realize that the man by the fireplace wasn’t an intruder after all. If he had been, he would have done something other than stand there and glare at her.
Then Ash spoke to him. “Jericho, what’s going on?”
Jericho.
The brother. The brother who was coming to dinner. She should have known that, shouldn’t she?
“What’s going on?” The big man echoed Ash’s question in a voice every bit as deep and rough as she would have expected. “How the hell would I know what’s going on? She saw me and she started screaming.”
Marnie let out a small whimper of abject embarrassment. “Oh, God …”
He held up the banana peel. “She threw this at me. Luckily, I ducked.” He kind of squinted at her. She saw humor in his green eyes—and anger, too. He was trying not to let the anger show. But she recognized it. He didn’t like that she’d mistaken him for some kind of thug.
She pulled away from Tessa and made herself stand up straight. “I, um, I’m really sorry. The house was so quiet. And … you surprised me, that’s all.”
“Yeah?” He came closer. The look in his eyes said she better not shrink away.
She didn’t, even though instinct had the skin at the back of her neck pulling tight. He was proud, she knew that, could read it in his eyes, in the way he carried himself. The kind of guy you shouldn’t cross. Or embarrass. She forced a wobbly smile and confessed, “It wasn’t you. It was me. I’ve had a … rough couple of days …”
He reached out. She was very careful not to flinch when he took her hand in his big, rough paw. He slapped the banana peel into it.
“Uh. Thanks,” she said, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say.
And then Tessa started talking, urging them fully into the living room. She took Marnie’s hand, but only to whisk the banana peel away. Ash gave her a hug and said he was happy to see her, then he went to the wet bar on the inside wall of the big room to pour margaritas from the icy pitcher waiting there. He gave them each a glass of the frozen concoction. Except for Tessa. She had sparkling water.
They all took seats. Marnie got a wing chair to herself. She leaned back in it and sipped her drink and tried to think of something interesting to say.
Nothing came to her, so she was quiet. The other three talked, about how good the house looked. About the family company, BravoCorp, of which Ash was CEO. About Jericho’s business, San Antonio Choppers, which he ran in partnership with somebody named Gus. He built custom motorcycles, she learned.
When she thought he wasn’t looking, she studied him and tried to remember meeting him at Tessa and Ash’s wedding. She couldn’t recall ever seeing him before. Maybe he hadn’t been there. Because really, he wasn’t the kind of guy a person forgets.
Once, as she sneaked a glance at him, he caught her at it. He looked straight at her then, green eyes dark and deep as a mountain lake where no one ever goes. Cold. Wild. Untouched.
Marnie blinked first. She turned away and found her sister looking at her. Tessa smiled. A tender smile—and a worried one. Then Ash said something. And Jericho said something. The conversation continued without her.
After the margaritas, Tessa led them to the dining room, where the table was set for four. She brought in the food from the kitchen and Ash opened wine. Only the men drank it. Tessa was sticking with sparkling water. And the last thing Marnie needed was to get blasted on top of everything else.
Most of the conversation centered on some big charity event that was set for the first of May. Jericho was offering one of his custom bikes to be auctioned off for the cause. Ash seemed very pleased over this—even excited. Jericho only shrugged a giant shoulder and said he was glad to help.
Marnie hardly said a word. Encased in her own private cloud of misery, she tuned out the others and picked at the excellent dinner.
Dessert came. Some sort of slippery, cinnamon-flavored flan thing, really good, like the rest of the meal had been. She ate a few bites of it, to be polite.
Finally, after what seemed like a long and excessively grim lifetime, the meal was over. The men went to Ash’s study and Marnie helped Tessa clean up—or tried to.
“Leave it for now,” Tessa said, when they had carried the plates to the kitchen. “The housekeeper will take care of it all in the morning, anyway. You go ahead to bed, get some rest.”
Marnie slowly shook her head. “I feel really bad about Ash’s brother….”
Tessa reached out and touched the side of her face with a tender hand. “Don’t. You’re tired and on edge. You need a good night’s sleep.”
“I think he hates me now.”
“Of course he doesn’t.”
“And I embarrassed Ash. And you.”
“Marnie.”
“What?”
“Go to bed. It’ll all look better in the morning.”
She blew out a hard sigh. “Yeah. I’m sure you’re right.” She got a last hug from her sister and left as she had entered, through the French doors, going around by the pond again, not as comforted by the chuckling fountain as she had been earlier.
In the larger of the guesthouse bedrooms, she put on her sleep shirt and trudged into the bathroom to brush her teeth. She really looked awful, bags under her bloodshot eyes, her skin kind of splotchy. Way too pale. Even her hair seemed depressed. It hung limp as a dirty brown curtain to her shoulders.
She made herself not look at the mirror again as she squirted toothpaste on her toothbrush and cleaned her teeth. Then it was back to the bedroom and the nice, fresh white sheets on the comfy bed. She climbed in and pulled the covers over her and shut her eyes.
And remembered that she’d left her purse in the house.
Why had she taken it over there, anyway? She had no idea. She hadn’t needed it then—and she didn’t really need it now.
But then, it did have her phone in it. What if someone called her? Other than Mark. What if she needed to make a call?
True, there was a landline on the nightstand—and no, she couldn’t think of a single person she wanted to call. And yet …
Fine. She would get the damn purse.
She shoved back the covers, pulled her jeans back on under the sleep shirt and stuck her feet in a pair of flip-flops. That time she went around in front of the garage to get to the back door, so she saw Jericho’s chopper parked in the turnaround area between the house and the garage. It was beautiful, big and black with metal-flake cobalt-blue trim and shiny chrome. Even in the shadows of twilight the gorgeous thing gleamed, its stretched front forks looking so dangerous—and fast.
The sight of it made her throat clutch, brought a sharp pang of longing for home, where her dad ran the local garage, had since she was a kid. Sometimes bikers would bring their choppers in when something went wrong during a mountain ride.
Once, before she and Mark started dating, when he was only her blood brother and very best friend, one of those bikers had taken her for a ride. It was thrilling and scary, rounding sharp mountain turns, the wind tearing at her, blowing her hair out from under her borrowed helmet, as the bike picked up speed.
She remembered the biker’s laughter, blown back to her on the wind, the smell of road dust and pine forest all around, the engine roaring in her ears, vibrating through her body, making her feel a little afraid, stunningly alive. And utterly free.
What happened to you? Mark’s voice. Filling her head, saying all the cruel things he’d said yesterday morning. Marnie, I hardly know you anymore. You used to take chances. You used to be willing to rise to any challenge, the bravest girl I ever knew. Where did that girl go? I think you need to find out. Marnie, I think that you and me, we’re not meant to be. Not in this way. I think you need to ask yourself. Where is your spark?
Shut up, Mark.
She shook herself and turned away from the beautiful bike, toward the main house again.
Tessa wasn’t in the kitchen. The dishes they’d brought in from the dining room waited on the counter, just as they’d left them. Marnie went through the family room where the white cat still slept and down the hall to the foyer to get her purse from the entry table.
The doors to the study were open. She could hear voices in there, male voices: Ash and his brother. She would have to cross the open doorway to get her purse. The thought of doing that, of having the two men see her and wonder what she was doing wandering around the main house without Tessa, made her nervous—which only proved Mark was right about her. She was scared of her own damn shadow.
Where had her brave self gone?
As she hovered there at the foot of the stairs, admitting how pitiful and silly she was being, she heard Jericho’s rough voice, painfully clear, from inside the study.
“No, man. I mean really. You probably ought to get her to a shrink or something.”
Ash said, “She’ll be fine. She’s had a rough couple of days, that’s all.”
“She didn’t say a word through dinner. Just sat there, staring. Didn’t you notice?”
“Rico. Come on.”
“She got a drug problem, maybe?”
“Her boyfriend dumped her and she drove all the way here from Santa Barbara. She’s beat and her life’s in chaos. And you scared her.”
“I didn’t do crap. I was just standing there. That woman is not okay, I’m telling you. She needs—”
Marnie didn’t stick around to hear what she needed—let alone, to get her purse. Her cheeks burning and her heart pounding hard and fast with shame and fury, she whirled to go back the way she had come, pausing only to yank off her flip-flops so neitherAsh nor his bigmouth butthead of a brother would hear her retreat.
Barefoot, clutching her flip-flops in her fist, she took off down the hall, racing through the family room and the kitchen and, at last, out the French doors to the backyard. Once outside in the gathering dark, she stopped and sucked in a few deep breaths of the cool night air.
The deep breaths didn’t help much. Her heart still knocked against her ribs like it wanted to break right through the wall of her chest. Her cheeks still flamed with humiliation. She started running again, not quite so fast now, jogging back the way she had come.
The chopper was still waiting there, chrome shining, metal flake blue giving off a kind of sparkle even in the growing darkness. She slowed as she approached it and then veered toward it instead of running on by. A helmet waited on the seat.
In her head, Jericho’s voice now warred with Mark’s.
She got a drug problem, maybe?
What happened to you?
You probably ought to get her to a shrink or something.
You used to take chances.
That woman is not okay, I am telling you.
… willing to rise to any challenge. The bravest girl I ever knew.
… didn’t say a word through dinner.
I think you have to ask yourself …
Just sat there, staring …
Where is your spark?
Marnie put on her flip-flops.
Her spark? Mark wanted to know what had happened to her spark?
Well, maybe she’d just show him. Maybe she would show them all, on Jericho’s fancy bike. Maybe she would take that chopper for a nice, long ride.
Yeah, okay. She knew it was a bad idea. A very bad idea.
It was not only dangerous, it was also grand theft.
Where is your spark?
She’d learned a thing or two back in North Magdalene, in her dad’s garage. Like how to start an engine without a key.
The job required something to pry with. So she hustled into the garage, flip-flops slapping concrete as she went, and got a screwdriver from the tool kit she kept in her trunk. Once she had that, she ran back outside. She stuck the screwdriver in a pocket, grabbed the helmet and put it on. It was too big, but she tightened the strap as much as she could.
Squeezing the right brake lever to avoid any surprise wheelies, she straddled the bike and eased it upright between her legs. From atop the beautiful machine, it was a long way down those front forks to the front wheel.
In fact, the bike seemed bigger, now she was straddling it. Really big. And really dangerous. Even if she could get it started, the thing weighed more than she did and it would be a stretch for her feet to reach the pegs. It was way too much bike for her to handle….
She shut her eyes tight and called up Mark’s words in her mind.
Where is your spark?
When she opened her eyes again, she was ready. She was going to do it. She would not wimp out.
Using her heel, she guided the side stand up. She put the bike in neutral, released her grip on the brake and walked it around so it faced the driveway on the side of the house.
Then she turned the fuel valve to the on position and used her screwdriver to pry off the metal ignition cap, revealing the battery and ignition wires.
After that, it was so simple. She stuck the screwdriver in one back pocket and the ignition cap in the other and she twisted those wires together.
The big engine roared to life. She turned on the lights, pressed the clutch, shifted into gear and eased the clutch out as she gave it gas.
Chapter Two
“Did you hear that?” Jericho frowned at his brother.
The sudden roar began to travel. It rumbled along the side of the house, back to front.
“Sounds like your bike,” Ash said, looking puzzled.
Jericho glanced over his brother’s shoulder, out the window that faced the front of the house, just in time to see Tessa’s crazy sister rolling off down the street under the golden light of the streetlamps. She was riding his bike.
He said, “Your sister-in-law just stole my bike.”
Ash looked at him like he was the one with a screw loose.
Jericho decided not to argue. “I need to borrow a car.”
