Christine Rimmer - The Midnight Rider Takes A Bride

“And I sent you a little something special. Did you get it yet?”

That required actual words for an answer. Adora mustered them. “No, Mom. Not yet.”

“Do you have a summer cold or something, Adora? Your nose sounds stuffed up.”

Adora went ahead and honked good and loud into her soggy tissue. “Yes, Mom. Now you mention it, I have been fighting a cold.”

“Oh, honey. Take care of yourself.”

“I will.”

Right then, someone knocked at the door on the other side of the room. The door led out to a tiny landing and down a narrow set of stairs to the parking lot and also to the back entrance of the Shear Elegance.

“Get some of that nighttime cold medicine,” Lottie was suggesting. “The lemony kind you add to hot water. I think it works just great. Bob had a cold last week and I—”

“Listen, Mom. There’s someone at the door. I have to go.”

“But, Adora—”

“Really. Gotta go.”

“Now you call me, when you get that package....”

“I will. Love you.” Adora twisted in her chair to hook the phone back in its cradle. Then she faced front with a sigh and picked up her glass of champagne.

There was a second knock at the door.

Adora sipped slowly, looking at the door, thinking that maybe she wouldn’t bother to answer it, after all. She knew who it would be: Lizzie Spooner, her best pal. Lizzie had said she’d be over as soon as she finished her shift at the Superserve Mart. Adora thought the world of Lizzie, but right now she didn’t feel like dealing with anyone. She set down her glass. And then, to take her mind off answering the door, she picked up the champagne bottle and began reading the back label.

But then the knock came for a third time, louder and more insistent than before. With another mournful little sigh, Adora rose and went to the door.

She started talking before she even had it all the way open. “Listen, Lizzie, I don’t really feel like—” The sentence died in her throat, because it wasn’t Lizzie after all.

It was Jed Ryder, whose mother, Lola Pierce, was Adora’s single employee at the Shear Elegance downstairs. Adora remembered the loud, pounding sound of that engine she’d heard moments ago and realized it must have been Jed’s Harley.

“Oh. Hi.” Adora swiped a tear from her cheek and tried a friendly smile.

Jed didn’t smile back. And she couldn’t see his eyes, because he was wearing a pair of wraparound, black-lensed sunglasses. As always, he looked like the basic definition of the word dangerous, dressed in denim and leather, with all that black hair streaming around his massive shoulders and that single diamond stud he always wore glittering in his right ear.

He spoke at last, in that low, eerily gentle voice of his. “Sorry to bother you. But I called the shop downstairs and got no answer.”

“I closed up early.”

Though she couldn’t be sure with those dark shades hiding his eyes, he seemed to be looking at her strangely. Maybe he was wondering about the tear streaks on her cheeks, her runny nose—and the champagne bottle she still clutched in her hand.

He asked in that careful, quiet way of his, “Listen, are you all right?”

“Sure. I’m great. Just terrific.” She stuck the bottle under her arm and dug a rumpled tissue from the front pocket of her shorts. Then she wiped her eyes and blew her nose, bending to the side a little, to keep from dropping the champagne.

When she stopped blowing and looked at him again, Jed Ryder had shoved his hands into the pockets of his tight, worn-out jeans. He’d turned his head away, toward the parking lot. And he was actually shuffling his feet in their heavy, black biker boots.

Why, I’ve made him nervous, she thought.

Adora swiped once more at her nose with a dry corner of the tissue—and hid a smile. To the bikers who sometimes hung out over at the local tavern, Jed was nothing short of a legend. They called him the Midnight Rider. He was a loner and a maverick, even among their kind. A man to be shown respect, a force to be reckoned with.

But he obviously didn’t have a clue about how to handle a crying woman.

Adora found the thought that she made him uncomfortable reassuring. It occurred to her that there was no reason in the world why they had to stand here with the door open to talk. She should let him in.

In response to that idea, she heard her mother’s voice, clear as a bell, chiming inside her head: Adora Sharleen, don’t you dare let that Hell’s Angel inside your home.

Adora tucked the tissue away and got a firm grip on the neck of the champagne bottle. Then she stepped back. “Come on in, why don’t you?”

At first he didn’t move, except to cant his head sideways as if smelling a trap. She felt certain he would refuse her invitation. But then he shrugged and crossed the threshold. Once inside, he stood looking around cautiously, like a wild animal that had been brought indoors—a careful wild animal, one who suspected he’d made an error to let himself be confined in so small a space.

Adora shut the door, then gestured at her Country French oak table and the four matching chairs around it. “Have a seat.”

He shook his head. “I’m just looking for Ma, that’s all. I thought maybe you’d know where she is.”

“No, I haven’t seen her since around one.” Adora slid around him and went to a cupboard near the sink. “We had nothing booked for the rest of the day, so I just sent her on home.” She spoke over her shoulder as she brought down that other champagne flute, which she filled from the bottle in her hand. Then, feeling naughty, daring and defiant, she turned and held the flute out to him. “Champagne?”

He stood very still. Since the shades masked his eyes and the rest of his face bore no discernable expression, she hadn’t a clue as to what he might be thinking. He just looked at her. Or at least, she assumed he was looking at her. For a very long time.

In the end she couldn’t stand the silence. Her lip started quivering. She bit it to make it be still and thrust the glass in his direction once more. “Please. Take it.”

“Why?”

“We’ll have a toast.”

One black eyebrow arched up a fraction from behind the mask of the sunglasses. “To what?”

“To...the single life.”

He grunted. “What’s so great about bein’ single?”

The feeling of naughty defiance had evaporated as swiftly as it had come. Now she felt lousy again, about her life and herself—about everything. She also felt just reckless enough to tell him the truth.

“There is nothing great about being single. But maybe if I make a toast to it, I can convince myself not to hate it so much.”

His full-lipped mouth, which was surrounded by a well-trimmed and rather soft-looking beard, quirked up just a little at both corners. He peeled off his shades and hooked them on one of the pockets of the black leather vest he wore.

For what seemed like the first time, she met his eyes. They were a beautiful silvery-gray, and startling in contrast to his raven black hair.

He was definitely smiling now. “Bad day, huh?”

The laugh that escaped her came perilously close to being a sob. “Bad isn’t a strong enough word.”

His smile faded. He just waited—for her to go on, she supposed.

So she did. “It’s my birthday.”

“How old?”

This time her laugh was more of a snort. “Is that any kind of question to ask a woman?”

He started to smile again. “Probably not. As I remember it, you were a few years ahead of me in school.”

“Oh. right. Rub it in.”

“How old?”

She gave in and confessed, “Thirty-five.”

He continued to study her.

She glanced down at the flute she still held. “Look. If you’re not going to drink this—”

“Hell.” In two steps he stood just inches away. He lifted the glass from her hand.

She blinked and stared up at him. He really was an imposing man, especially this close up. His shoulders went on for days. And from the torn-off sleeves of his denim shirt, his massive arms emerged thick and hard as slabs of granite. Over the shirt, he wore that black leather vest with a thousand zippers and pockets on it. His belt and his boots were of black leather, too. And he also wore fingerless black leather riding gloves. Adora thought she could smell all that leather—which was odd. A moment ago she couldn’t have smelled anything; her nose had been plugged solid due to her birthday crying jag.

But Jed Ryder seemed to be the kind of guy who could clear out a woman’s sinuses just by stepping up good and close.

A silver cross gleamed on the wedge of sculpted chest between the top two buttons of his shirt. Adora stared at that cross, thinking that she should probably be frightened, here alone with him in her apartment. But he didn’t scare her. Maybe because she knew his mother so well, and knew how Lola loved him and counted on him. Or maybe because of Tiffany, his much-younger half-sister. Tiff adored Jed.

Really, who could say why he didn’t scare her? He just didn’t. Not at all.

He watched her look at him. Then he held out the champagne he’d just taken from her. “Where’s yours?” She gestured toward the table behind him. He turned around and scooped up her flute. After handing it to her, he raised his high. “Here’s to you. Happy damn birthday, Adora Beaudine.”

“Thank you, Jed Ryder.” They drank at the same time, not stopping until both of their glasses were empty.

He held out his glass to her, and Adora obligingly refilled it all the way to the rim. Then she poured more for herself as well.

He proposed a second toast. “And here’s to you find-in’ whatever you’re looking for.” He waited for her to drink with him.

She decided to provide a few specifics first. “A good-looking, upscale kind of guy with a friendly attitude, a steady job and marriage on his mind would be nice.”

He actually chuckled at that. They drank again, to the bottom of their glasses, as they had before. She raised the bottle, offering another refill.

But when she tipped it over his glass, only a few drops came out. She made a small sound of regret, then suggested, “I think I have some brandy under the sink.”

He shook his head and backed up enough to set his glass on the table. “I gotta go.”

She made a tsking sound and shook her head. “Why did I know you’d say that?”

He looked at her in that studied, patient way of his.

She mentally counted to five, giving him a chance to say something. He didn’t, so she answered her own question. “I knew you would say that because it’s what men are always saying to me. ‘I gotta go.’ Or, ‘I really do have to go.’ Or, ‘Adora. Back off. I said I’m going now.’”

He was squinting at her a little, as if trying to figure her out. “Aw, come on. It can’t be that bad.”

“Sure, it can.” She turned and plunked the champagne bottle on the counter, then whirled back to face him. “I drive men away. I try too hard. Everybody in town knows it. No one’s ever going to marry me. I’m going to be single for the rest of my life.” She hadn’t set her glass down, so she gestured wildly with it. “All my sisters are married. My mother’s remarried. They’ve all moved away to other parts of California—or to Arizona, in my mother’s case. They’ve left me alone here in Red Dog City, with my beauty shop and my cute two-bedroom apartment and my simple little dreams of love and a family that are never going to come true. It’s pitiful. I’m pitiful.” She held out both arms then, and looked down at her body. “Just look at me.”