LITMIR.BIZ

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her thighs, outward over the surface of her arms.

      He turned toward her. She saw his face, which was surprisingly handsome for someone so large and scary. He opened his mouth to speak.

      She still had the banana peel clutched in her hand. She threw it at him and started screaming.

      Feet on the upper floor, running.

      She whirled to see her sister and Ash coming at her down the iron-railed staircase.

      “Marnie,” Tessa cried. “Marnie, what is it? What’s wrong?”

      In seconds they were both at her side. By then, she had stopped screaming. Tessa grabbed her and pulled her close.

      She huddled against her sister, already beginning to realize that the man by the fireplace wasn’t an intruder after all. If he had been, he would have done something other than stand there and glare at her.

      Then Ash spoke to him. “Jericho, what’s going on?”

      Jericho.

      The brother. The brother who was coming to dinner. She should have known that, shouldn’t she?

      “What’s going on?” The big man echoed Ash’s question in a voice every bit as deep and rough as she would have expected. “How the hell would I know what’s going on? She saw me and she started screaming.”

      Marnie let out a small whimper of abject embarrassment. “Oh, God …”

      He held up the banana peel. “She threw this at me. Luckily, I ducked.” He kind of squinted at her. She saw humor in his green eyes—and anger, too. He was trying not to let the anger show. But she recognized it. He didn’t like that she’d mistaken him for some kind of thug.

      She pulled away from Tessa and made herself stand up straight. “I, um, I’m really sorry. The house was so quiet. And … you surprised me, that’s all.”

      “Yeah?” He came closer. The look in his eyes said she better not shrink away.

      She didn’t, even though instinct had the skin at the back of her neck pulling tight. He was proud, she knew that, could read it in his eyes, in the way he carried himself. The kind of guy you shouldn’t cross. Or embarrass. She forced a wobbly smile and confessed, “It wasn’t you. It was me. I’ve had a … rough couple of days …”

      He reached out. She was very careful not to flinch when he took her hand in his big, rough paw. He slapped the banana peel into it.

      “Uh. Thanks,” she said, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say.

      And then Tessa started talking, urging them fully into the living room. She took Marnie’s hand, but only to whisk the banana peel away. Ash gave her a hug and said he was happy to see her, then he went to the wet bar on the inside wall of the big room to pour margaritas from the icy pitcher waiting there. He gave them each a glass of the frozen concoction. Except for Tessa. She had sparkling water.

      They all took seats. Marnie got a wing chair to herself. She leaned back in it and sipped her drink and tried to think of something interesting to say.

      Nothing came to her, so she was quiet. The other three talked, about how good the house looked. About the family company, BravoCorp, of which Ash was CEO. About Jericho’s business, San Antonio Choppers, which he ran in partnership with somebody named Gus. He built custom motorcycles, she learned.

      When she thought he wasn’t looking, she studied him and tried to remember meeting him at Tessa and Ash’s wedding. She couldn’t recall ever seeing him before. Maybe he hadn’t been there. Because really, he wasn’t the kind of guy a person forgets.

      Once, as she sneaked a glance at him, he caught her at it. He looked straight at her then, green eyes dark and deep as a mountain lake where no one ever goes. Cold. Wild. Untouched.

      Marnie blinked first. She turned away and found her sister looking at her. Tessa smiled. A tender smile—and a worried one. Then Ash said something. And Jericho said something. The conversation continued without her.

      After the margaritas, Tessa led them to the dining room, where the table was set for four. She brought in the food from the kitchen and Ash opened wine. Only the men drank it. Tessa was sticking with sparkling water. And the last thing Marnie needed was to get blasted on top of everything else.

      Most of the conversation centered on some big charity event that was set for the first of May. Jericho was offering one of his custom bikes to be auctioned off for the cause. Ash seemed very pleased over this—even excited. Jericho only shrugged a giant shoulder and said he was glad to help.

      Marnie hardly said a word. Encased in her own private cloud of misery, she tuned out the others and picked at the excellent dinner.

      Dessert came. Some sort of slippery, cinnamon-flavored flan thing, really good, like the rest of the meal had been. She ate a few bites of it, to be polite.

      Finally, after what seemed like a long and excessively grim lifetime, the meal was over. The men went to Ash’s study and Marnie helped Tessa clean up—or tried to.

      “Leave it for now,” Tessa said, when they had carried the plates to the kitchen. “The housekeeper will take care of it all in the morning, anyway. You go ahead to bed, get some rest.”

      Marnie slowly shook her head. “I feel really bad about Ash’s brother….”

      Tessa reached out and touched the side of her face with a tender hand. “Don’t. You’re tired and on edge. You need a good night’s sleep.”

      “I think he hates me now.”

      “Of course he doesn’t.”

      “And I embarrassed Ash. And you.”

      “Marnie.”

      “What?”

      “Go to bed. It’ll all look better in the morning.”

      She blew out a hard sigh. “Yeah. I’m sure you’re right.” She got a last hug from her sister and left as she had entered, through the French doors, going around by the pond again, not as comforted by the chuckling fountain as she had been earlier.

      In the larger of the guesthouse bedrooms, she put on her sleep shirt and trudged into the bathroom to brush her teeth. She really looked awful, bags under her bloodshot eyes, her skin kind of splotchy. Way too pale. Even her hair seemed depressed. It hung limp as a dirty brown curtain to her shoulders.

      She made herself not look at the mirror again as she squirted toothpaste on her toothbrush and cleaned her teeth. Then it was back to the bedroom and the nice, fresh white sheets on the comfy bed. She climbed in and pulled the covers over her and shut her eyes.

      And remembered that she’d left her purse in the house.

      Why had she taken it over there, anyway? She had no idea. She hadn’t needed it then—and she didn’t really need it now.

      But then, it did have her phone in it. What if someone called her? Other than Mark. What if she needed to make a call?

      True, there was a landline on the nightstand—and no, she couldn’t think of a single person she wanted to call. And yet …

      Fine. She would get the damn purse.

      She shoved back the covers, pulled her jeans back on under the sleep shirt and stuck her feet in a pair of flip-flops. That time she went around in front of the garage to get to the back door, so she saw Jericho’s chopper parked in the turnaround area between the house and the garage. It was beautiful, big and black with metal-flake cobalt-blue trim and shiny chrome. Even in the shadows of twilight the gorgeous thing gleamed, its stretched front forks looking so dangerous—and fast.

      The sight of it made her throat clutch, brought a sharp pang of longing for home, where her dad ran the local garage, had since she was a kid. Sometimes bikers would bring their choppers in when something went wrong during a mountain ride.

      Once,

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