Wild Thing (The Magic Jukebox Book 3)

by Judith Arnold

  He stopped at their table. “I’ve got a bike,” he said.

  She felt her eyebrows soar toward her hairline. “What?”

  “A motorbike. Want to run away with me?” His lips weren’t smiling, but his beautiful blue eyes glinted with mischief.

  Emma cleared her throat. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Emma Glendon. Monica’s best friend.”

  Emma merited a genuine smile from Ty. “Hi,” he said, extending his hand. “Ty Cronin.”

  Monica forced her mind back to his initial words. “You got a motorbike?”

  “I rented it. Two helmets, if you want to take a ride.”

  Was she supposed to give him points for safety because he had two helmets? He could have a hundred helmets and still not seem safe to her. “Why did you rent a motorcycle?” she asked. The real question she wanted to ask was, How big is that trust fund of yours? You’ve got huge legal bills looming in your future.

  “I need to be able to get around town while I’m here. I ride a bike in Florida.”

  “This isn’t Florida.”

  “What I meant was, I’ve got a motorcycle operator’s license. A bike is cheaper than a rental car. It uses less gas.”

  Oh, lord. He was a possible drug dealer-slash-biker. “Did the lawyer say renting a bike was a good idea?” she asked, then cringed. She sounded like someone auditioning for the role of his mother.

  “The lawyer said I’m staying in town for a while. I need transportation.” His gaze drifted to her wine glass. “Are we starting early today?”

  “I’ve had a rough day.”

  “How’s the plumbing problem at—what was it called? Flower House?”

  “Rose Cottage,” Monica said, surprised that he remembered her problems when he had far worse problems of his own. “They’re working on it.”

  “I meant that, about helping with the walls if you need an extra pair of hands. It’s the least I can do.”

  Because she’d found him an attorney? Because he was stuck in town and bored? Because he wanted to earn some brownie points before being carted off to prison? Because he was madly in love with her?

  Scratch that last possibility from the list.

  “Can I join you?” he asked.

  “Sure,” Emma said before Monica could decide whether she wanted him at the table.

  Ty’s gaze lingered on Monica for a moment. “Let me get something to drink. I’ll be right back.” He sauntered over to the bar. Even from behind—especially from behind—he was hot. Broad shoulders, long legs, taut buns, and those glorious windswept waves of hair.

  Monica swallowed a sigh before glaring at Emma. “Here I am, telling you that letting him into my life was crazy. And now you’re encouraging him to remain in my life.”

  “You don’t need my encouragement,” Emma argued gently. “With or without me, he’s in your life.”

  He returned to their table, carrying a tall, frosty tumbler filled with a pale yellow liquid. “Lemonade,” he answered Monica’s unasked question as he placed the glass on the table with a quiet thump and then settled onto the upholstered bench next to her.

  “I guess you haven’t had a rough day,” she muttered.

  His response was a laugh. She was too edgy to share his laughter. Although he’d left a few decorous inches of space between them on the banquette, she sensed his proximity. His thigh seemed to exude heat. Her own thigh responded, her muscles tensing, silently begging her to edge closer to him, close enough for their hips to touch.

  She didn’t need the damned jukebox to cast its spell on her. Ty’s nearness was enough.

  Thinking about his legal problems ought to break the spell. “So,” she said, “what does the lawyer think? Are you going to prison?”

  “No.”

  Well, that didn’t break the spell at all. It only elevated his appeal. She wasn’t one of those women who fell in love with convicts and wrote them romantic letters while they were behind bars. She liked her men free, without criminal records.

  Men? There had only been two men in her life: Jimmy and Ty. And Ty wasn’t really in her life. He was just in her town, passing through. If not for this drug thing, he might have been halfway back to Florida by now, or heading off to some new address.

  Ty didn’t elaborate on his terse answer. Evidently, he didn’t wish to divulge his lawyer’s thoughts, at least not in front of Emma. And really, Monica wasn’t sure she had a right to know his legal situation. It wasn’t as if they were lovers. One night did not a relationship make.

  Although he did phone her when he was in trouble. She was the one he’d reached out to.

  She sipped her wine. It was a few degrees warmer than when Emma had first brought the glass to her, and she could taste its wheaty undertone. God, she was drinking wine at two in the afternoon, and sitting next to a man in serious trouble, a biker who might also be a drug smuggler—and even knowing all that, she wanted to jump his bones.

  Monica Reinhart, the good girl, the organized, well-behaved, straight-and-narrow woman, had gone wild.

  ***

  Ed didn’t expect to see Tyler Cronin when he entered the Faulk Street Tavern at around two-thirty. He’d been on the go all day; he hadn’t bothered with lunch. He deserved a cup of Gus’s coffee. The station had a coffee maker, but the stuff that came out of it tasted like burnt oil. Gus knew how to make a lot of drinks, and her coffee deserved a spot somewhere near the top of the list.

  He’d thought he would just stop by, tank up on her brew, flirt for a minute or two, and get back to work. Not that he was an expert at flirting, but he and Gus had been together long enough that she accepted his efforts with a smile.

  However, there was the kid from Florida, Ed’s prime suspect in the drug case, seated in a booth with a tall tumbler of something in front of him—and Monica Reinhart next to him. That red-head who’d talked her way into a job teaching art at the community center sat across from them, her hand wrapped around a brown beer bottle.

  Ed continued straight to the bar, where Gus was counting change into the cash register and Manny was unloading dishwasher trays of glasses. Gus shot Ed a smile. “Coffee?”

  She knew him well. “Yes, ma’am.”

  She shut the register door with her hip, strolled down the bar to her coffee machine, and returned carrying a mug with steam floating up from it. He allowed himself a moment to admire her long, long legs, then tipped his head in the direction of the one occupied table. “What’s Monica Reinhart doing with that guy?” he asked.

  Gus glanced over at the table and shrugged. “Having a glass of wine.”

  “What’s he drinking?”

  “Does it matter?” Gus asked, eyeing Ed curiously.

  “Humor me.”

  “Lemonade.”

  All right. At least the bastard wasn’t getting wasted. Even so, Ed didn’t like the thought of Monica hanging out with him. She was a Reinhart. To call the Reinharts pillars of the community would be an understatement. They were the buttresses, the bedrock of Brogan’s Point. Reinharts had been running the Ocean Bluff Inn for at least four generations. Ed knew Monica’s parents. Everyone in town did—and everyone in town knew Monica, the sweet, pretty daughter who’d gone off to college to get a degree in hospitality management and then come back home to join her parents in operating their landmark hotel.

  She shouldn’t be keeping company with a guy who might be a drug runner.

  Ed leaned toward Gus and murmured, “He’s trouble. I don’t think Monica ought to be having a drink with him.”

  Gus chuckled. “If anyone’s leading anyone astray, it’s her. She’s the one with the alcoholic drink.”

  “I’m not kidding.”

  “Monica’s a big girl. And Jimmy Creighton wasn’t exactly a winner.”

  “You’re saying she’s a bad judge of character when it comes to men?”

  Gus raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know who he is,” she conceded, jutting her chin in the direction of Monica’s table. “He’s not a local. Bu
t he seemed pleasant enough when he was here at the bar a couple of nights ago. Had a bourbon and a beer chaser, and made polite small talk with Margie Carerra, who was all over him like peel on an orange. And then a song came on the jukebox.”

  “Don’t start with that nutty jukebox crap,” Ed said, wincing at how judgmental he sounded. That people believed the myth of the jukebox’s magical powers brought customers to Gus’s establishment, so he would never debunk the legend. But it was bullshit. He knew it, and Gus knew it.

  She shrugged again. “He heard the song, and Monica was sitting right at that table, staring at him. What happened after that is anybody’s guess, but there they are, side by side.”

  “Monica’s too sensible to fall for the jukebox thing,” Ed said, then gave Gus a measuring look. “While the guy was sitting here at the bar with Margie, did he say anything interesting? Anything that made an impression on you?”

  Gus opened the register drawer and resumed counting her bills. “Nothing much. He tolerated Margie’s come-ons, turned her down without hurting her feelings, said he was just passing through and running an errand.”

  Running an errand. An illegal errand? Ed wished the search warrant had turned up the drugs. He was sure they were somewhere on that boat. Danny Watson, the low-level dealer he’d arrested, who was scared shitless about going to prison and was knocking himself out to be helpful to the cops, had insisted that a shipment was coming north from Key Biscayne on a sailboat. He’d said his last shipment had been brought up from Miami on a boat, too, and that he’d been informed the next shipment would be entering the area through the port of Brogan’s Point. He’d said he’d been told some guy named Smith would connect with him once the shipment had arrived, but Smith could be an alias. Probably was. As common as Smith was reputed to be, Ed had never met anyone with that name.

  Was Tyler Cronin Smith? Or did the Smith pseudonym belong to Wayne MacArthur, the guy Cronin claimed had hired him to sail the boat to Brogan’s Point?

  Unlike Watson, Cronin had lawyered up. Caleb Solomon was sharp. Ed wasn’t going to get more out of Cronin than he already had, not without a deal on the table.

  He sighed and drank some coffee. Its rich flavor boosted his mood. “I’ve gotta go back to work,” he said, draining the mug, leaning across the bar, and dropping a light kiss onto Gus’s cheek. “I’ll see you later tonight.”

  “I’ll be here,” she promised.

  He slid off the stool. “Tell Monica to watch her step,” he said before turning to leave.

  He shot Cronin a hard look as he passed their table. Cronin stared back. Cool customer, Ed thought. The guy looked as innocent as a newborn baby.

  Ed still hoped Monica would be careful. He’d been a cop long enough to know that guys who looked innocent usually weren’t.

  Chapter Ten

  “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 th
e 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.