Wild Thing (The Magic Jukebox Book 3) (10 page)

“I
have to go back to work,” Monica said, polishing off the last of her drink. She
skimmed a couple of almonds from the top of the bowl of mixed nuts and popped
them into her mouth, as if they would absorb the wine she’d consumed. But she
wasn’t feeling light-headed. If she’d hoped the wine would dull her senses, it
hadn’t.

Just
as well. She
did
have to go back to work. God knew what shape Rose Cottage
was in.

Ty
chugged down his lemonade and stood to let her out of the booth. “I’ll take
you,” he said. He gave Emma a regretful smile. “I wish I could give you a lift,
too, but—”

“That’s
okay,” she assured him. “I’ve got my own bike. The kind with pedals.”

The
afternoon was balmy, the sky a rich blue with just a few wispy clouds trimming
it like ribbons of lace. Ty escorted both women out of the bar. He and Monica
waved Emma off on her bicycle, and then he led Monica to a small black
motorcycle with enough chrome trim to make her retinas ache. What appeared to
be a bike lock fastened two battered helmets to one of the chrome bars
supporting the padded seat back.

It
wasn’t much of a seat back, she thought with a twinge of apprehension. If she
sat there, and the bike lurched forward abruptly, would she tumble over
backward and hit the road? And while she was worrying, what about the odds of
her falling off the side of the bike if Ty took a sharp turn? Not that there
were many sharp turns between the tavern and the inn.

Forget
about sharp turns. What if a car hit them? On the motorcycle they’d be utterly
exposed. No roll bars. No chassis. No shatter-proof glass. No air bags. No
seatbelts.

While
she fretted, Ty unlocked the chain that held the helmets and handed her one.
Surely this bubble-shaped blob of padded plastic wouldn’t keep her from dying
in an accident. It wasn’t as if the magic jukebox had played a motorcycle song,
like “Born to Run,” when her eyes had met Ty’s inside the tavern a couple of
days ago. It wasn’t as if the jukebox’s magic extended to making people
indestructible.

Ty
shot her a grin as he strapped the other helmet onto his own head. His helmet
was a glossy black, hers blood-red. Like the color her pulpy, smashed-in skull
would be once they crashed.

He
slung one long leg over the padded seat, then peered over his shoulder. “Climb
on,” he invited her.

Don’t
be a wuss,
she
scolded herself as she strapped her helmet on with faintly trembling hands. If
they crashed and she died, she wouldn’t have to deal with the wrath of the
Kolenko bridal party when they arrived at Rose Cottage next week and discovered
gaping holes in the walls and a mysterious leak drip-drip-dripping down the
pipes from a second-floor bathroom.

Mustering
her courage with a deep breath, she straddled the thinly padded seat behind Ty.
She leaned back, testing the seat back and deciding it was, indeed,
insufficient and she was sure to fly over the rear fender of the motorcycle and
go splat on the pavement. Instead, she leaned forward. Not so far forward that
her chest pressed into Ty’s spine. Just forward enough that she didn’t have to
feel that skimpy seat back.

He
started the engine, which emitted a dull rumble. The seat vibrated under her,
and she lurched slightly as he shifted into gear and eased away from the curb.
She gripped his waist—only to keep from falling off, she told herself. And it
was only because her arms weren’t that long that she tilted forward and rested
her cheek against the broad, strong surface of his back.

She
didn’t know him. She didn’t trust him. She’d slept with him for no other reason
than that, as Emma had pointed out, he was hot. That and the fact that she’d
been celebrating the conclusion of her relationship with Jimmy. And the
jukebox.

And
the truth that no other man—not even Jimmy, definitely not Jimmy—had ever made
her entire being, body and soul, feel so alive, so hungry, so consumed by lust,
merely by gazing at her. No other man had ever turned her on the way Ty did.

And
one other truth: that for once in her life, Monica didn’t want to be a wuss.
She didn’t want to play it safe. She wanted to be wild.

All
right. So there were a whole lot of reasons why she’d invited Ty back to her bed
the night after the jukebox had serenaded them with “Wild Thing.” For all those
reasons, she pressed closer to him, felt his hips nestle in the hollow between
her thighs, and breathed in his now familiar sea-breeze scent. And let the
motorcycle hum against her bottom.

He
steered down Atlantic Avenue, cruising at a modest speed. Although he wasn’t
racing, the wind blasted against her body and tugged at the fringe of her hair
sticking out below the edge of the helmet. He drove past the entrance to the
Ocean Bluff Inn, and Monica shouted a half-hearted, “Hey!” Perhaps he couldn’t
hear her over the growling engine. Or perhaps he just chose to ignore her.

She
wasn’t about to hop off a moving motorcycle. So she slid her hands a little further
forward, until her palms rested against his sleek abs, and closed her eyes, and
enjoyed the wind and Ty’s warmth and the throb of the engine against her
bottom. Her fear dissipated as she settled into the pleasure of the ride. She
realized that she could fall in love with motorcycles if she let herself—more
accurately, she could fall in love with being sharing a motorcycle with Ty.

Less
than a mile north of the inn, he pulled into the parking lot of the North Cove
Marina and shifted the bike into neutral. It sputtered once or twice, as if
protesting having to stop, then settled into a muted grumble. Ty stared across
the asphalt to the building at its end, and then beyond it to the docks that
extended out into the water in a neat, whitewashed grid.

Monica
gazed out at the boats, too: tall sailboats, their masts empty and their ropes
clanging. Deep sea fishing boats, their canopied cockpits high above the decks
and their stern brackets waiting for someone to wedge sturdy saltwater rods
into them. Pleasure cruisers boasting more living space than her tiny apartment
at the inn.

Ty
twisted to view her. “The inn is too close to the bar,” he explained. “I wanted
to give you a little ride before taking you back to work.”

He’d
given her a ride, all right. Hugging him, feeling the heat of him between her
legs, and being whipped by the wind and vibrated by the bike’s motor, she’d
experienced quite a ride, indeed. Ty’s smile implied that he knew exactly what
she was thinking, what she’d been feeling.

His
smile faded as he turned to look out at the water again. Tracing the angle of
his gaze, she realized what he was looking at: one sailboat bobbing in its
slip, with yellow police tape draped around it.

That
must be the boat he’d sailed up from Florida. The boat he’d used to smuggle
drugs to Brogan’s Point.

Assuming
he was guilty.

She
told herself she didn’t care if he was, but she
did
care. She wasn’t as
wild as she wished, certainly not wild enough to shrug off the possibility that
she’d made love with a felon two nights ago. That she’d made love with him,
that she’d willingly, if hesitantly, climbed onto the back of a motorcycle with
him, that she currently had her arms wrapped snugly around him. He could have
taken her anywhere. He could have ridden out of town and out of the state with
her, and held her as a hostage.

The
thought sent a ripple of emotion spinning through her, part fear and part
excitement. Oddly, the fear was not of Ty, but rather of her own excitement at
the thought of being abducted by him. What would she have done if he’d simply
kept riding while she clung to him, and crossed the state line into New
Hampshire and on into Maine, maybe all the way to Canada? She would have been
free of all her responsibilities, all the expectations everyone had of her.
Free of her reputation as a good girl, a nice girl, a hometown girl. Free to
love Ty.

Not
that he’d given her any indication that he loved her, or that he would welcome
her love. He could sweep her off to Canada and then dump her, pursuing his
adventures as a fugitive without her, while she purchased a bus ticket back to
Brogan’s Point and resumed her role as the good, nice, hometown girl.

Stupid
fantasy. She wrenched her mind back into the present. “Is that the boat you
sailed here?” she asked, pointing to the boat tied up in police tape.

He
pulled off his helmet and ran a hand through his hair, his gaze fixed on the
ribbon-wrapped sailboat bobbing gently in its slip. “That’s it. I wanted to see
if the cops have completely dismantled the thing. For all I knew, it could be
sitting in pieces in the parking lot.”

“Why
would they do that?”

“Because
they’re so damned sure there are drugs on the boat, but they haven’t found
any.”

She
frowned. “Then why are they so sure there
are
drugs?”

He
shrugged. “They believe their informant more than they believe me.”

She
stared at the boat. Except for the police tape, it looked innocent. More
innocent than Ty himself looked.

He
looked…dangerous. Straddling a motorbike, the ocean breezes tossing his hair,
one hand fisted around the motorcycle’s handle while the other cradled his
helmet. Dangerous, yes, but he didn’t look
guilty
.

What
did she know? She was a lousy judge of men. How long had she stayed with Jimmy,
believing he would grow up?

“Well,”
Ty said, his voice emerging on a resigned sigh. He lifted his helmet back onto
his head. “The boat’s still in one piece.” Another sigh, and he turned the
handle, causing the engine to whine. “I’ll take you to the inn now.”

So
much for being abducted and whisked out of the country. Monica wouldn’t get to
find out whether the world would stop spinning if she was forced to abandon her
life in Brogan’s Point. She would go back to managing the inn’s maintenance and
learning everything she needed to know about running the place. She would revert
to being her staid, well-behaved self. No biker-chick life on the lam for her.
She told herself this was a good thing, but she wasn’t quite convinced.

He
took the drive back to the Ocean Bluff Inn at a slower pace. She treasured the
minutes with him, her arms circling his waist, her legs sandwiching his hips.
It didn’t matter how sensible she tried to be, how good a girl she was, how
dangerous Ty was. She wanted him. She wanted to be wild with him. And she
shouldn’t.

At
the entrance to the inn, he cut the motorcycle’s speed to a crawl and rolled up
the driveway to the visitors’ lot. She immediately spotted one of the guys from
Parnelli’s Plumbing standing on the veranda, talking to another man. The
plumber had on a Parnelli’s polo shirt, dark green with the company name and
logo stitched into the fabric on the left side of his chest. The other man wore
a long-sleeved plaid shirt and khakis. He was tall and thin, with a narrow nose
and a border of neatly trimmed dark hair surrounding his bald spot.

Her
father. Damn.

She
loved her father. She’d been blessed to be born to two devoted, hard-working
parents. But she didn’t want her father to see her climb off the back of a
motorcycle being driven by a guy suspected of a crime.

Too
late. Her father spotted her, turned from the plumber and scowled. “Monica?”

Reluctantly,
she dismounted and tugged the helmet off her head. “Hi, Dad. I just took a
quick break. I’ve been at work since seven-thirty. It’s crazy over at Rose
Cottage. I needed a few minutes, that’s all.” She doubted her father cared
about her taking a brief break during a long, difficult day. What he cared
about—what caused his brow to sink more deeply into a frown—was that his
precious daughter had been the passenger on a motorcycle driven by Ty Cronin.

Her
father said nothing. He just watched her, disapproval oozing from him.

Ty
removed his helmet and climbed off the bike, as well. He seemed to sense that
some diplomacy was called for. “Mr. Reinhart?”

Her
father glowered at him.

“Tyler
Cronin.” He perched their helmets on the motorcycle seat and approached the
steps to the veranda, his right hand extended. Monica remembered the first time
he’d scaled those steps. She’d been sitting on one of the Adirondack chairs,
mourning the death of her relationship with Jimmy, and suddenly there Ty had
been, her wild thing. And she’d brought him back to her bed.

She
told herself the heat in her cheeks was due not to a blush but to the wind’s
having chafed them during the ride. “Ty is a friend,” she said, realizing how
feeble that sounded. Her father had spent his entire life in this town, as had
Monica. He knew who her friends were.

“Monica
mentioned the situation in that cottage,” Ty said. “I’m a carpenter. I thought
I’d check it out, see if I could help get things back in shape once the plumber
is done.” He shot a quick smile at the guy from Parnelli’s, who seemed just a
bit too interested in monitoring the tension between Monica and her father. Not
only did everyone in a small town know who was friends with whom, but they also
knew who was pissed at whom—and they generously shared that knowledge whenever
the opportunity presented itself. She could just imagine him telling all the
guys at Parnelli’s that the boss’s daughter, Boss Junior, was spinning around
town on the back of a motorbike driven by a stranger, and the boss was not a
happy man.