The Best Is Yet to Come & Maternity Bride

by Diana Palmer

  She couldn't help wondering what her neighbors were thinking at that moment. She could almost feel their interested gazes peering at her from behind the draperies. Well, what did she expect, going to dinner with a man who looked like he'd be back later that night to burgle houses?

  He revved the engine again to get her attention.

  Then something else occurred to her.

  "Hey," Denise shouted over the rumbling engine, "wait a minute."

  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'Doul'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's 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.

  But when she started walking toward the restaurant, Mike's laughter died. He had thought it was torturous, with Denise sitting behind him on the bike. Every turn he had made, her thighs pressed harder against his. He'd felt the swell of her breasts pushing into his back and the surprisingly strong grip of her slender arms around his waist. Never had the ten-mile drive to O'Doul's seemed so long.

  But all of that was nothing compared to what he felt now. As if a fist had slammed into his belly, his breath left him in a powerful rush the moment his gaze locked on the smooth, tanned surface of her back.

  His gaze followed the column of her spine and rested on the curve of her bottom. His palms itched to stroke that expanse of flesh and then to explore further, beyond the boundaries of that incredible dress.

  Mike's groin tightened uncomfortably, and he had to muffle a groan as he gripped the chin straps of their helmets in one hand. He took three long strides and caught up to her easily. Taking Denise's arm with his free hand, he said, "You should have warned me about that dress."

  She stopped and looked up at him. A knowing smile curved her lips, but she asked anyway, "What do you mean?"

  What could he say? He wasn't about to admit to her what that dress did to him. Nor, he thought with a glance at O'Doul's front door, did he want to think about the impact that dress would have on the men inside. His gaze shifted to her again and Mike found himself staring into those deep blue eyes. After a long moment, she looked away and he took the opportunity to bring himself back under control.

&n
bsp; "Let's just say, I like a good tan. Especially when there aren't any suit lines."

  She only smiled and Mike's racing brain took care of the rest. Immediately, he imagined her nude, lying under the hot sun. And in his mind, he was right beside her, smoothing lotion onto her warmed skin. He could almost feel her soft, pliant flesh beneath his fingertips.

  Great. Now he had that mental image to drive him nuts all night.

  Steering her toward the door, he grumbled through gritted teeth, "C'mon. I'm hungry."

  The fact that he was hungrier for tanned, smooth skin than he was for pizza, had nothing to do with anything.

  She should have gone to O'Doul's years ago. If she had guessed just how much fun the game of pool could be, she might have risked her father's ire. Of course, she wasn't sure if it was the game, or her teacher that she was enjoying so much.

  She bent at the waist, set her left hand on the worn, green felt and laid the tip of her cue stick between her curled fingers. Behind her, Mike stood close and leaned over her, his right hand on hers, his chest pressed to her naked back.

  Warmth seeped through him down to her bones and she felt the unmistakable, hard bulge of his groin against her behind. She swallowed and tried desperately to listen to what he was saying.

  "Take your time, honey," Mike whispered near her ear. "We've got all night to line this shot up."

  All night. She inhaled the scent of Old Spice and wondered why more men didn't wear the old-fashioned cologne. Spicy and cool and sexy, it seemed to be everywhere, drawing her deeper into fantasies she had no business indulging and even less of a chance of experiencing.

  He worked the pool cue back and forth between her fingers and instead of pool, her mind was caught on another mental image created with that smooth, in-and-out motion.

  Glancing to one side, she noticed a biker Mike had called Bear, watching her with knowing eyes. Like the other men in the place, he wore jeans and leather and a leering expression that would have worried her if not for Mike's presence. She turned her gaze back to the pool table in time to see her stick make contact with the cue ball.

  Laughter rose up around the table as the white ball missed its mark by inches. Mike straightened up and Denise, suddenly so warm she could hardly breathe, took a step away from him.

  "Hey Mike," one of the men called over the pounding, pulsing beat of the music, "losin' your touch?"

  "Doesn't look like it to me," a woman in the crowd answered for him. More laughter and Denise was grateful for the smokiness of the room. Hopefully, it was enough to hide the flush she felt staining her cheeks.

  The other man in the game, someone called Stoner, took his shot and missed.

  "Our turn," Mike said over the music and waved her back to the table.

  "I think I'll just watch for a while," she said with a shake of her head. "You finish the game."

  "Sure?"

  She nodded, knowing damn well the only reason she was quitting was because she didn't know if she could take being that close to him again.

  Denise held her pool cue and watched Mike pick up another stick and work his way around the green felt table. He paused every other step or so to exchange some comment with one of his friends and each time he smiled, the knot in her stomach tightened.

  She swayed a bit unsteadily and tightened her grip on the stick in her hands, using it more for balance than anything else. Apparently, the beer she'd had with her pizza—the best pizza she'd ever tasted—had gone right to her head. Fog nestled in her brain and Denise struggled to clear it. Of course, the loud rock music blasting over the speakers, the crowded press of bodies in the place and the heavy cloud of blue-gray cigarette smoke wasn't helping things any.

  A huge man with tattooed forearms the size of ham shanks slapped Mike on the back in a friendly gesture that would have sent any other man sprawling to the sawdust-covered floor.

  Not Mike.

  The black T-shirt he wore hugged his shoulders and upper arms, defining muscles that seemed to have a life of their own. They rippled and shifted whenever he took a shot and Denise caught herself holding her breath to watch the show in admiration.

  Foggy brain or not, she knew enough to realize that she was in deep trouble.

  A moment later, the pool game ended when Mike sank the eight ball in a corner pocket. Cheers erupted and a dark-haired woman in jeans tight enough to cut off her circulation wrapped herself around Mike like a child's grubby fist around a Popsicle stick.

  Except that there was nothing childlike about the voluptuous brunette.

  When the woman grabbed Mike's face between her palms and planted her lips on his in a long, lusty kiss, Denise gritted her teeth and fought down the roiling in her stomach. She told herself that she had no claim on him. That it didn't matter who he kissed. Or when. Logically, she knew that this wasn't even a real date.

  But logic had nothing to do with what she was feeling.

  Mike pulled his head back, patted Celeste's shoulder and peeled her off him. He shot a quick look at Denise's tight features and felt…guilty, for God's sake. Stupid. He didn't owe her anything. He wasn't her boyfriend—or God forbid, her husband. And the knowledge that he had no intention of getting involved didn't do anything to quiet the storm inside him.

  While he gave Celeste a gentle push toward her date for the night and walked toward his own, he told himself that Denise had no claim on him. He was as free as old Herman, up on the roof.

  The fact that Herman was not real and permanently attached to the wooden building was beside the point.

  When he reached Denise's side, he took the pool cue from her and passed it off to another player.

  "I don't want to interrupt your fun," she said loudly, to be heard over the music.

  Sure you do, he thought. The look in her eye would have sliced Celeste to ribbons if the other woman had been aware of it. But he didn't say that. Instead, as he heard the music change, he grabbed her hand and headed for the postcard-size dance floor.

  She dragged behind him as he wended his way through the Friday night crowd. Once, she even tried to slip away, but he tightened his hold on her and kept walking. When he reached the small area where two other couples were already swaying in time to the music, he stopped and turned around to face her. Her expression was mutinous, but he didn't give a damn. He'd put up with the other men in the place ogling her all night and now, he wanted the chance to put his arms around her and hold her close. He wanted to show the rest of them that Denise was his. At least for tonight.

  He tugged her closer and she moved slowly, reluctantly. "Dance with me," he said into her ear and inhaled the delicate, flowery scent of her perfume.

  She pulled her head back and looked up at him. Their gazes met and locked together. A heartbeat of time passed and in that instant, something flashed in her eyes. Mike couldn't identify it and at the moment, didn't want to. All he wanted was this one dance. For now.

  The old song smoothed over the crowd and here and there, a voice picked up the words and sang along. The melody was sad, the lyrics lonely and most of the regulars at O'Doul's could identify with it all too easily. Every desperado in the room felt as though the song were meant especially for him.

  Then Denise stepped into his arms and followed as he led her around the floor. Mike bent his head close to hers, relishing the softness of her hair on his cheek. The summery scent of her. The smooth, warm flesh of her back beneath his hand.

  The music surrounded them, caressing them as they moved in tandem, as if they had danced together hundreds of times.

  She laid her head on his chest. His palm slid across her back, caressing, with strokes as gentle as the song they danced to. She sighed against him and he cradled her closer.

  As the Eagles song swelled to its finish, Denise tipped her head back to look at him. He stared into the depths of her eyes as the last line of the song swirled around them.

  Caught in the midst of fantasies he decided long ago had no place in his life, Mike only half
heard the musical warning of letting someone love him before it was too late.

  Chapter 4

  His fingers moved lightly up and down her spine like a classical musician teasing notes from a grand piano. Denise stared up into his eyes. Green clashed with blue in a silent challenge. One dark eyebrow lifted as his right hand skimmed over her flesh. She shivered. He noticed. In her own best interests, she knew she should move away. End this so-called dance now. While she still had the strength to stand. But she didn't. Even when the last of the song had faded away, they stood locked together on the dance floor, each of them somehow reluctant to step back. Away.

  But the spell was broken in the next instant when a swell of pounding, driving rock music poured over the crowd. Someone bumped into her from behind, sending her crashing into Mike's chest. He stiffened, grabbed her shoulders to steady her, then immediately released her again.

  A shutter dropped over those brilliant green eyes, hiding whatever he was thinking. Feeling. Denise staggered backward a step or two. She winced at the assault of sound blasting into the room. Her head began to pound in time with the pulsing drumbeat.

  Looking up at Mike again, she found him glaring at her. What did he have to be mad about?

  "Come on," he said abruptly, over the music. "I'll take you home."

  Home. Yes, she needed to be home. In the quiet safety of her condo, where she could forget all about this night and the almost overpowering sensations she had experienced in Mike's arms.

  She turned blindly toward the table where she had left her bag. She felt, rather than heard Mike following close behind. Without a word, she grabbed her purse. Mike snatched up their helmets and with his free hand, steered her to the front door.

  The short ride back to her condo was torture.

  Denise did everything she could to avoid leaning into Mike's back. She held herself stiffly, her thighs ached with the effort to keep from aligning themselves along his legs. The powerful engine beneath her vibrated with each grumbling roar it sent into the night and every nerve in her body throbbed in response.