CHAPTER ONE
Lance didn’t know what was going on with him lately. Fire itched under his skin, and the desert called as never before. He wanted to just go out into it and… What? Self-immolate? Fly like sparks up into the blazing sun? Lay down and die, only to be reborn in the burning heat?
And where the hell were these thoughts coming from?
He’d always been a little…odd. He’d had a hard time growing up and in school. He’d been one of the bad kids. The kind who grew up to ride a motorcycle and live on the outskirts of town in what was basically an industrial area. It wasn’t that he was stupid. Far from it. He’d hidden his intelligence from the other kids and tried to fit in at first, when he was little, but he’d soon tired of it all and just started acting out. He’d become the loner. The recluse. The kid everyone thought was a mental case.
Everyone except maybe Tina. The girl with the sad eyes who watched him almost constantly. Her gaze had made his shoulders itch all through senior year, though they’d never said more than a few words to each other.
She wasn’t one of the popular girls, but she had a group of quiet friends with whom she hung out. They didn’t mix with him, and he stayed well clear of them, but he noticed her watching hm. A lot. And he couldn’t help but be intrigued by the fact that the pretty, shy girl seemed to be attracted to the bad boy biker.
He hadn’t acted on it. No, he wouldn’t do that to her. The idea of contaminating her with his inner turmoil didn’t sit well with him. Maybe he wasn’t such a bad guy, after all.
But thinking about high school and the girl he hadn’t seen in years was getting him nowhere. Lance got on his bike and set out across the desert, riding the lonely highway to god-only-knew-where. He had an itch under his skin that only the sun and wind might cure.
*
Tina couldn’t believe her luck—all of it bad, lately. She’d been enduring one minor calamity after another for a while now. The latest was being broken down on the side of a lonely stretch of highway in the middle of the desert. Great. Just great.
She got out and opened the hood of the car, wondering if there was some sort of magic that might help her get the mechanical beast going again. She was staring at the metallic innards of the engine when it roared.
Okay, it wasn’t her engine that roared, but she definitely heard an engine roaring. She looked up to find a motorcycle headed her way. She wondered if the driver would stop. Then, she wondered if she wanted him to stop. She was way out here all alone, after all. Taking help from a stranger—one who drove a motorcycle that roared like the devil—might not be the wisest move.
Regardless of her feelings, the bike started slowing, coming to an eventual stop behind her recalcitrant vehicle. Something about the rider’s aura seemed familiar, but that was ridiculous. He was still a good ten yards away when she thought she recognized his walk. She remembered that walk…
Holy crap. It was him. Lance Fiori. Her high school crush. And, damn, he’d filled out really well over the intervening years. Tall, with golden blond hair and a smile that could set girls’ hearts aflutter, he was even more handsome now, if that were possible. Now, if he smiled, she figured she might just melt into a little puddle at his feet.
The chiseled jaw was the same. The determined set of his shoulders as she remembered. The magic she had always sensed in him was a little closer to the surface now. She wondered how that had played out for him. She hoped he’d come to terms with the wild energy inside him and was stronger for it. He’d always seemed a little lost to her in high school, though they’d never really interacted. The large size of their graduating class had made it easy enough to avoid him, and he’d never sought her out—much to her secret disappointment.
But, now, here he was, her knight in shining armor, as it were. He even had the trusty steed, albeit a mechanical one. She wondered if he’d recognize her.
Tina took off her sunglasses and tried not to squint as he drew closer. She got her answer when his step faltered a bit. He had recognized her! His next words proved it.
“Tina Bradbury?” He made it sound like a question, but she knew he was just as certain as she was.
He came right up to the side of the car, looking at her as she faced the engine, and met her gaze. He lowered his sunglasses, as well, giving her a peek at those startling blue eyes that had always reminded her of the sky at its brightest. Energy crackled in his irises. Magic and power. Little lightning bolts that only she could see.
“Lance,” she acknowledged him, her voice was a little breathless, but she was powerless to do anything about it. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“Stranger things have happened,” he agreed easily. “I’m just not sure where or when.” He sent her the rare dimpled smile she’d only seen a couple of times before.
She was glad her hands were still gripping the edge of the car because that sinful smile made her knees go weak. Wow. The boy had been the stuff of teenage fantasies, but the man he’d grown into was another beast altogether. His aura was potent. Secure. More intense than it had been at eighteen. Way more intense.
“So, I guess you’re stuck. Mind if I take a look?” Lance asked politely.
Tina moved aside as he walked around the car so that he faced the engine head on. He touched a few things and checked a dipstick or two, keeping his own counsel, except for asking her a few pointed questions about what had happened just prior to her breakdown. He scowled a few times, and his overall expression was a frown when he stood back from the engine.
“What’s the verdict?” she asked nervously.
“Well, this car isn’t going anywhere until it gets a few new parts and some fluids.” He launched into a technical explanation that she just about followed.
Apparently, she’d let one of the necessary fluids for the engine get too low—or maybe it boiled off somehow—which caused some small, but essential, parts to break. In short, the engine needed major repairs to get going again, which left her effectively stranded in the middle of the desert.
“Where were you headed?” he asked, looking from her to his parked motorcycle and back, speculatively. “I could maybe give you a lift.”
She had to swallow hard before she could answer. The thought of riding on the back of his motorcycle brought that weakness back to her knees.
“I am running late for something. I just need to get back into town and drop off a package, but it’s pretty important that it gets there on time,” she told him. “I’d be grateful for lift, if you’re sure you don’t mind.”
“How big is the package?”
“Small. It’s in my purse,” she told him.
“Okay, then,” he said, closing the hood decisively. “Let’s leave a quick note on the dash in case anyone comes along, so they know this situation is being dealt with, and we can be on our way.”
She liked the way he seemed to know exactly how to handle things. That hadn’t changed about him. He’d always been fairly resolute, even as a teenager. She’d liked the way he’d stood up for himself, even back then.
She scrambled in her purse for a piece of notepaper from the back of her date book and scribbled off a note, which she placed under the windshield wiper. She then checked the back of the car for anything she couldn’t leave behind. Luckily, she kept her car neat out of habit. All she needed was her purse.
Tina closed the doors and headed toward the motorcycle where Lance was waiting for her. He had an extra helmet in one hand that he must’ve taken out of one of the big saddlebags. He looked at her dubiously.
“Have you ever been on a bike before?” He looked her up and down, his gaze piercing. Was it wrong that she felt his gaze like it was some kind of invisible caress?
“Um…no. But I’m eager to try,” she told him, trying to show some enthusiasm. She wasn’t about to turn up her nose at his mode of transportation. He was saving her a lot of trouble, after all.
He chuckled and moved closer to her, plunking the big helmet down over her head. “This will help. Keep the face shield down unless you like bugs in your teeth,” he told her, giving her another one of those rare smiles.
He then took her shoulder bag out of her hands and lengthened the strap to its full capacity before lowering it over her helmeted head and sliding it around so that the bag rested against the small of her back.
“It’ll ride easier this way,” he told her.
Lance led her over to his bike and got on, then gestured for her to do the same. It wasn’t as easy as he’d made it look. Of course, he was a lot taller, with longer legs than she had. Tina managed to hop on, resting her butt on the little pad behind him. She arranged her bag at her back, marveling at the fact that he’d been right about it resting easy back there. She adjusted the strap a bit, but then, she wasn’t sure where to put her hands.
Lance solved that mystery by the simple expedient of reaching back and grabbing both her hands. She jumped a little but realized he was just being efficient. He’d put on his own helmet while she’d been fiddling with her bag, so it wasn’t as easy to talk to each other. He placed her hands around his middle and patted them once, as if in reassurance. He then seemed to look down and nodded at the placement of her feet on the little doo-dads she’d found that seemed the logical place. She must’ve guessed right.
Lance half-stood, and she loosened her grip on him as he restarted the beast beneath them. Once he had the engine going, he sat back down and waited for her to put her arms back around him before he put the bike in gear and started off.
He went slowly at first, letting her get used to the movement of the bike under them. He was a considerate guy for all his bad boy looks. She would never have gone off with anyone else like this, but she had always had a soft spot for Lance. Her instincts had pegged him as one of the good guys long ago, and her instincts were never wrong. There was nothing in the mature Lance’s aura that made her think anything had changed as far as his basic nature. If anything, he’d become even more of a good soul in the time since they’d last crossed paths, but she sensed a great deal of confusion just under the skin. Maybe…just maybe…she could help him sort that out.
Or maybe, she was daydreaming again. The very fact that she had, at this very moment, her arms around her high school crush seemed to indicate that daydreams could come true—it just wasn’t all that probable. He’d take her back to town, and they would part ways. It might be years before she saw him again—if ever.
On that depressing thought, she decided to just enjoy herself in this moment. It wasn’t every day a girl got to fondle a bad boy on a motorbike. In fact, such things never happened to plain old Tina Bradbury, the girl voted most likely to have her nose in a book.