by Tracy Sumner
Lydia squealed and bounced in her seat. "Oh, to introduce two people and hope for more to come of it! I would be truly honored, Savannah. This is simply so exciting."
"Yes, exciting," Caroline said in accord with the amenable nods and murmurs. But the look she gave Savannah was anything but agreeable.
And later that evening, Caroline caught up to Savannah as they walked through the door, taking her elbow in a brusque grip. "You know what they say about playing with fire, darling. Be careful."
Savannah nodded but said nothing, holding her chin high. She wasn't playing with fire.
Was she?
* * *
That evening, Zach locked his office door and started down the boardwalk. The sun was close to setting and most folks were having supper, surrounded by family and friends. An occasional wagon bearing fish or lumber swayed past. Fireflies flickered and crickets chirped. It was a peaceful evening in his town.
Rubbing the back of his neck, he suppressed an anxious twitch. He felt anything but peaceful. He'd received a letter of thanks from the wife of a sailor whose body washed up on Devil Island last month, and he had spent two hours writing a compulsory, saddening reply. How did you say "you're welcome" for delivering a man's body to his family?
He thumbed his aching eyes. The headaches were getting worse. Every afternoon, the pain started on one side of his head, creeping behind his eyes and sitting there, pulsing with each breath he took. By the time he went to bed, they were hot and watery, too tired to focus. Savannah had been massaging his temples and had told him he should see a doctor. She had mentioned the possibility of the need for spectacles once, too, he remembered.
And she had said he would look cute in them.
Cute.
He hadn’t told her he already had a pair and that vanity was keeping him from wearing them.
Sighing, he pulled the pair Dr. Leland had ordered direct from Raleigh from his shirt pocket and angled a wire arm behind each ear. He wrinkled his nose, testing the still-foreign weight. They didn't feel too bad. He wondered how they looked? Before he picked up Rory from Caroline's, maybe he should stop by Miss Vin's and see if Savannah had a moment to take a peek at them.
Plus, he had a little present for her.
Nothing much, just a fountain pen she had been admiring in the general store window the other day. She'd oohhed and aahhed over it like women do but hadn't dreamed of buying it. For some incredibly insane reason he didn't want to ponder, he had returned the next day and bought the darn thing for her.
Taking a quick side-hop into the street, he skirted a wheel rut, tossing his yarn-wrapped bundle from one hand to the other. At least thinking about Savannah made him forget that awful letter he'd had to write.
Speaking of the devil, he saw a flash from the corner of his eye. His belly tightened in the way it did whenever Savannah was near. He watched her skip off the boardwalk in front of the post office, dodge a shallow puddle, and cross the street at a brisk pace. She didn't look in his direction. He squinted, tipping his spectacles. Obviously, she wasn't interested in his whereabouts even if he'd been guessing about hers all day.
Her smile glowing like an electric bulb, she halted before a red safety bicycle angled against the side of Captain Willie's Net Repair and looped her basket through the front handlebars, her movements efficient and vigorous.
Well-defined hips. A glimpse of one trim ankle. Standing astride, the pedals resting against the back of her calves, she smoothed a pair of leather gloves over her hands. A twist and snap at each wrist. A rounded bottom adjusted to the seat. Lifting it indecently to gain speed, she pedaled down the street.
His chest hitched; he released an edgy breath. Crushing his package in his fist, he continued in her direction. No faster, no slower. It wasn't as if he was following her. He couldn't be faulted for taking this particular street, the quickest route home.
With a shell-scattering lurch, Savannah turned suddenly and headed straight for him. Zach halted, a dead stop, a sandy cloud billowing around his feet.
A smile curled his lips as a slow burn of sexual awareness lit him from the inside out.
She'd known he was behind her all along.
Now, she would play some infantile game, like trying to make the arrogant town constable scramble from her path. He blinked and gave his spectacles a shove, daring himself to twitch.
She was a hellion at heart, and she always would be. Cheeks pink, dark strands flapping about her face. Bloomers, or whatever you called those female britches, swelling in the wind. He grunted, inconspicuously bracing his knees.
He would be damned if he'd move a muscle.
She laughed, as able to restrain the sound as she was the giddiness flowing like blood through her veins. Of course, she had known he was behind her. If she was an eighty-year-old woman and Zachariah Garrett entered a room, the air would thicken like molasses, the polish on the heart-pine floors brighten to a high sheen.
It might infuriate her, but it was true.
Getting closer, she searched for the difference. Ah, spectacles. How attractive and wise he looked in them.
And stubborn.
Zach defied her as no man ever had. Most men were terrified after one encounter... or irate enough to stay out of her way forever after. Yet this man seemed to like her, very much in certain circumstances. Why, he often told her she was beautiful. Beautiful. Savannah Morgan Connor, beautiful. The thought nearly made her heart stop.
Standing tall, legs spread, hands fisted, he faced her with an expression somewhat like a boy standing down the town bully. She laughed softly. Didn't he know she would rather slam into a tree than harm a hair on his maddening head? Obviously not. The man did take things very seriously.
Honorable people were like that.
Digging in her heels, spraying shells and dirt, the tail of the bike fished to the left. Sliding to a stop inches from him, she smiled broadly. She had perfected this trick only in the past month.
Zach relaxed his stance, rolling his shoulders. Shaking shell particles from his canvas shoes, he stepped around her without a word.
She stared after him, her chest heaving. Closing her lips with a snap, she pedaled forward until she rode alongside him. "I wasn't close to hitting you, you must know that. I had absolute control."
His steps lagged; he cast her a lingering sidelong look. Though she could only see half his mouth and one dark brow, she did not misread the cynicism in his expression. Blowing out a strained breath, she cycled ahead and circled. Two rings around him as he walked along the street.
Was he going to travel the entire way home in silence?
Wrenching to a halt, she blocked his path. "Want to try it?"
He paused, flipping his package between his hands. Taking a step back, he let his gaze travel over the bicycle, skepticism evident in his lock-knee stance.
Shaking his head, not once looking at her, he moved on.
"Scared, Constable?" She drew alongside him.
He laughed, full of masculine bravado. "No, Miss Connor, I'm not scared."
"Come on. You're a little tall for this model, of course, but it will do in a pinch."
"Thank you, but no."
What game was he playing today? Wasn't he the least bit pleased to see her? She glanced around. No one was on the street, no one to see them talking and spread it around town. "You've ridden a bicycle before, right? No one is on the street to see your attempt."
"I've ridden one. Absolutely." He glanced at her, a dying ray of sunlight glinting off his spectacles. "Once or twice."
She snapped her fingers, one hand navigating the bicycle from the middle of the handlebars. "Then you must remember that it's like sailing on wheels."
His stride slowed to a hesitant shuffle, then stopped altogether. His gaze jumped to her, to the ground. Before he could crush it, she saw a glimmer in his eyes, a definite spark of interest. Taking advantage of the opportunity, she braked and hopped to the ground. "Here," she grabbed his package and shoved
the bicycle at him, not giving him a chance to refuse.
His mouth opened and closed as if he wanted to protest, but his hands latched on to the handlebars.
"Wait." She rose on her toes, as high as she could, and skimmed her fingers through the soft hair curling over his ears. He had parted his hair on the side, slicked just enough to notice. Enough to keep it under control as he liked. The scent of pomade and smoke drifted to her on the swift sea breeze.
She swayed toward him just the slightest bit, her eyes locking with his.
His pupils widened behind the wire frames. "Your spectacles. If you fall." She slid them down his nose as the clamor of daily life faded to a strong heartbeat pulsing in her ears. The sun burst apart in the sky; the wind died a sudden death at her feet.
Without their glass guardian, his eyes looked irritated and red, the skin around them stretched taut, a web of tiny lines spreading from the edges. Heavens, even when he looked about ready to drop from exhaustion he was a handsome man. Beautiful. She knew Zach, any man, perhaps, would raise a resistive hand at the use of that particular word. Although why not use it if it fit? His features were shaped by a sculptor's hand: the patrician nose flaring at the nostrils, the square jaw.
As she stared, her breath left her.
If she struggled past the controlled blankness he wore so often like a mask, past the secreted intelligence—in itself an incredibly strong barrier—emotions dwelled, colorful and varied. She knew this, though he didn't always let her witness it. Zach never allowed her unlimited time to search. That's why she forced herself to lie awake in his arms until his breathing slowed, his chest rising and falling in a gentle rhythm.
Because then she could look her fill.
As she had this morning in the jail. She had watched him for half an hour before forcing herself to leave his side.
As if on cue, he blinked and dropped his gaze.
To her lips.
Heat swept her cheeks. Her mouth and her nipples seemed to fascinate him. Dazed, she licked her bottom lip, wondering if she had a spot of dirt on it, perhaps.
The bicycle tottered in his hands. Zach angled his head, leaving her arm suspended in air, his spectacles dangling. He scooted the bicycle to the side. "Don't drop those. They're new," he said in a strained voice.
She swallowed, forcing a laugh. It sounded thin and frantic. Nudging the flap aside, she placed his spectacles with extreme care in her pocket. Her hand trembled. She yanked it out and into a tight fist.
Glancing up, she found him balanced on one foot, his other resting on the left pedal. He looked shockingly tall standing over the diminutive bicycle, the smallest ladies' model in the Sears and Roebuck catalog. His hands closed around the handles, shifted, searching for the right position. He glanced at her when he pushed off, a boyish gleam in his eyes, a self-assured smile twisting his lips.
For a moment, it seemed as if he hoped to impress her.
He wobbled a bit—quite a bit, at first. Crushed shells were much harder to navigate than the packed sand where he had ridden before. She winced as his knees cracked the handlebars with each rotation. Rising off the seat, he circled faster, wobbling less. At the end of the street, he turned. Only a faint shimmy rocked the bicycle. He rode well, better than she would have guessed. Another talent to add to the extensive list.
"You're doing wonderfully," she shouted and waved.
He grinned in reply but keep a straight course. Didn't he see the half-hollow five feet in front of him? Like a clock striking the hour, the piddling weight in her pocket chimed.
"Zach!" She rushed forward, but the course was set. The rubber tire met air, then the round bottom of the hole. The bicycle made an awkward little leap and landed at a crooked angle. The back end, traveling faster, jolted like a drunkard from deep sleep. The bicycle pitched one way, careened off the road and over the sidewalk, directly into an azalea bush in Reverend Tiernan's yard.
The soft hiss of spinning wheels and the crunch of twigs beneath her boots sounded as she reached him. "Zach? Are you okay?"
He lay on his back, limbs and pine straw scattered across his chest and neck, an angry red scratch on his right cheek, his hair sprouting from his head in spiked tufts.
"Zach?" She dropped to her knees, slinging his package to the ground. "Zach?" His chest rose in a series of rapid jerks but other than that, he did not move a muscle.
Why had she encouraged him? Perhaps he wasn't an especially athletic man. She had never seen him do anything physical except sail and... make love.
He was excellent at both of those.
Searching for injury, she ran her fingers down his arm, over his elbow, tracing the bones in his wrist. Dropping a trembling hand to his chest, trying to remember where the doctor's office was, she felt the first rumble. Then another. It might have been a sigh, yet it sounded remarkably like laughter. She frowned and rocked back on her heels.
A low chuckle broke the silence. Zach brought his hands to his face, his eyes still shut tight, and laughed behind them.
"Are you demented?" she snapped and threw his package at him. Was he trying to scare her to death, playing dead like a dog struck by a cart's wheel? Although, she had gotten to touch him. That was always nice. But, she hadn't enjoyed it like she would have if she had known he was uninjured.
He rolled his head back and forth, branches and pinestraw sticking in his hair.
He would buy the farm if he held a mirror right now, she thought, forgetting her earlier pleas for his well-being. The man didn't like to look foolish. "Stop laughing. Do you want someone to walk by and think you've lost your senses?"
Her comments only seemed to make him laugh harder. She glanced at his head, searched the little she could see through his spread fingers. Black hair, mussed to death, but no blood. Perhaps he had a concussion. She'd had one after tumbling off a wagon during a rally and couldn't recall the reason she had fallen for hours.
Maybe Zach didn't remember anything. That might explain his strange behavior.
"Constable, do you remember what happened?"
"I remember thinking, that woman is the biggest nut in the cake. A right shoddy doctor, too. You nearly broke the bones in my wrist."
She gasped, jumping to her feet. "Biggest nut? Why, I never!"
He swiped a thumb beneath each eye and elbowed to a sit. Touching his cheek, he winced, his gaze finding hers. "Maybe I'm the biggest nut for going along with your tomfoolery. Rory would have paid all the pennies in his bank to see this."
"Tomfoolery," she sputtered, grabbing the bicycle handles and attempting to retrieve it from the bush. "Many people in New York ride them. It's not like tippling whiskey on the back porch, to cite your vernacular."
"Which you've done, I'm sure," he murmured.
She glanced back, noting the rip in his shirt, near the shoulder. She swallowed, remembering how she had run her fingers across his chest two days ago in the shimmering darkness of the coach house.
Viscous, scorching need roared through her body like a Pullman car on tracks.
"What if I have?" She yanked the bicycle with all her might. It didn't budge. Of course, she hadn't counted on having to struggle to keep air in her lungs while she did it. All because of a scant view of skin through a rip in his shirt.
Zach groaned and got to his feet. Brushing her aside, he hoisted the bicycle from the bush as if it were merely a nuisance. His suspender snapped when his shoulder flexed, a button flying into the grass, the strap flipping to his waist. Their gazes met, and he smiled. A slow, sheepish smile. "I wasn't that bad, was I?"
Savannah paused, her rage thawing. She often felt these pangs of warmth when she was with him. A teasing smile or a slow wink seemed to carry more than enough weight to throw her into a significant state of confusion.
And Zach used each weapon mercilessly.
Restless and bewildered, and determined to ignore the feeling, Savannah feigned annoyance and assessed the damage to her bicycle. The basket was smashed flat as a pancake
—luckily only a few pieces of mail were inside—and the handlebars were bent on one side. "You were appalling, Constable," she finally said.
"Not so bad for my first time, I don't think."
She stumbled, her skirt flapping against her ankle. "First time?"
He nodded, eyes wide, a whisper of amusement in them.
"Of all the fool... the first time... without your spectacles?" Oh. Perching the bicycle against her hip, she yanked them from her pocket and slapped them in his hand.
Slipping the wire arms behind each ear, he made a small adjustment to the narrow bridge resting on his nose. They really were an attractive accessory. He must have followed her advice about the headaches.
"Walking in your shoes, or sitting on your seat, as it were, I think I better understand you." He tilted his head, seemed to consider his words. "You disregard common sense."
"Common sense? Is that what keeps you from riding a bicycle until you're nearly a doddering old man?"
"Thirty-four is hardly an old man, Irish. You should know I still have plenty of get-up-and-go if I need it." He tipped her beneath the chin, his fingers lingering longer than necessary. "Want to test my fortitude, teacher?"
"Humph," she whispered and looked both ways to see if anyone loitered on the street. They were alone, yet she felt conspicuous.
And warm.
A fat raindrop hit her cheek; another, her nose. She tilted her head to the sky, tasting salt and sea. A rumble of thunder sounded in the distance.
Expecting the clouds to burst open at any moment, she jogged away from him, the bicycle bumping her side. She caught a glimpse of Miss Vin's faded blue shutters ahead, peeping between dense oak and elm branches. Heaven, she wanted to lock herself in her small, tidy room until she regained control. When she had started this affair, she made a rule that she must never go to the coach house in an emotional state. Sound decisions were made only when one was in control of one's emotions.
"Good night, Constable," she called, struggling to open Miss Vin's front gate while keeping the bicycle upright.
