A Bride for Jericho Bravo Read online

  “Maybe he’ll snap out of it, realize he made a big mistake.”

  “Too late. I’m done.”

  “But Marnie, come on. You could always have a change of heart.”

  “How much clearer can I be about this? It’s over between me and Mark. Finished. Dead with a stake to the heart. And as far as my just taking off, no. I would never do that. If I give my word that I’ll be here till your regular person comes back, I’ll be here.”

  He looked down at his boots, reminding her of last night, when she had been the one looking down. “Honestly. I’d like to give you a try….”

  “…But you’re not going to.” She made her voice flat, not allowing even a trace of bitterness to creep in.

  He lifted his big head and met her eyes then. “I just don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  She wanted to argue. Maybe even to yell at him, tell him loud and proud that she had really liked him for a while there last night and now she had no idea why.

  But no. If he wasn’t going to hire her, yelling at him wouldn’t improve the situation. Plus, she was trying to act like a reasonably sane person from now on. Pitching a hissy fit wouldn’t do a thing for her already-tarnished image.

  It was off to Burger Paradise for her.

  “All right, then,” she said briskly. “I won’t waste any more of your time.” She stuck out her hand. He frowned at it for a moment and she felt foolish for having offered it. But then, just before she pulled it back, he engulfed it with his giant paw. “No big deal,” she added, proud that she sounded so cool and unruffled. “You never know if you don’t try.”

  “Look. If you—”

  She put up the hand he wasn’t holding. “Uh-uh. Leave it. No hard feelings, okay?”

  Those green eyes of his seemed to look right through her. And not in a bad way. More in a kind of surprised, interested way.

  His fingers were warm and rough around hers. And he’d been holding on for much too long. Gently, she pulled free. “Whoever you hire, get her to dust the gift area. You won’t sell any of that stuff as long as it all looks like it needs hosing off.”

  He blinked. She found that kind of satisfying. “Those T-shirts and crap, you mean?”

  “If you don’t want to spiff up the merchandise a little, you should get rid of it. No point in doing a thing half-assed.”

  She turned and got out of there before he could say more.

  Chapter Four

  “What’s the matter with you?” Gus asked Jericho as soon as Marnie left.

  He’d come right back into his private office after she went out and blocked the door so that Jericho couldn’t escape without telling him to step aside. Gus was looking at him the way his own father used to. Kind of bewildered and deeply annoyed, both at once.

  It was a look that made Jericho want to break something. “What do you mean, what’s wrong with me?” He said it quietly. Jericho always spoke softly when he found himself starting to get pissed off. “Nothing’s wrong with me.” He made a move toward the door. Maybe Gus would fall back.

  Not a chance. “You didn’t hire her.” It was an accusation.

  “So?” he asked rationally. Calmly. “You said yourself her experience was thin. We’ll take one of the other applicants.” There had been several. “And come on. You weren’t going to hire her either.”

  “Yeah, but that was before you told me that she really is family to you.”

  Jericho ran a hand back over his hair. The long strands caught on his calloused fingers. “Consider this. If you wanted me to hire her, you should have said so.”

  “I shouldn’t have had to say so.”

  Jericho reminded himself of how many ways he owed the man in front of him. A lot of ways. Thousands. If not for Gus, he’d probably have come to a bad end long ago.

  Gus clapped him on the side of the arm, hard. “Family needs help, you give it to them. You know that.”

  “She say she needed help?”

  “She’s staying with her sister, got an out-of-state cell phone number. If she didn’t need a hand up, she wouldn’t be hunting for a job.” Gus gave him a long, slow look of careful regard. “Something else going on here? You got a thing for her?”

  “Hell, no.” He said it way too fast.

  Gus smiled his wide, white smile. “She does it for you. And that scares you. Scares the big, bad Jericho.”

  “Remind me why I’m not going to punch your lights out.”

  “Because you love me, man. And that wouldn’t be respectful.”

  “She’s not my type.” Now, why had he said that? There had been no need to say that.

  Gus chuckled. “Your type being whoever’s sitting at the bar on Saturday night.”

  “Is that a crime? I like to keep things casual. And besides, well, come on. Look who’s talkin’.”

  Gus refused to engage on that point. “You should be ashamed of yourself, not giving that sweet little girl the job she needs, not helping out someone who’s family to you.”

  Okay, maybe he was a little bit ashamed. Maybe he should have hired her, the more he thought about it. The job wasn’t exactly rocket science. And Marnie seemed like a quick study. And if she didn’t work out, it was hardly a lifetime commitment. They could put up with her for six weeks. Grudgingly, he conceded, “You want to hire her, do it. It’s your call anyway.”

  “Not anymore. You pushed me clean out of that picture when you made the decision to send her away without bothering to consult me.”

  “So slide on back into the picture.”

  “Uh-uh. It’s on you now, my brother.”

  That night at around eight, Marnie sat in the living room of the guesthouse. She’d already washed her face and brushed her teeth. Now, all ready for bed in her favorite sleep shirt, she was watching a rerun of Two and a Half Men, with one bare foot up on the coffee table and cotton between her toes, carefully stroking on teal-blue glitter nail polish.

  When she happened to glance up, Jericho was standing on the other side of the glass door that opened onto the backyard. She let out a tiny squeak of surprise and almost knocked the bottle of polish to the rug.

  One eyebrow lifted, he rapped his knuckles on the door.

  She took her time about letting him in, carefully screwing the cap back on the polish, making a big project of getting up and smoothing her long shirt down over her bare thighs. Finally, when she couldn’t in good conscience make him wait any longer, she limped over to the door. That took longer than it should have because she was trying to keep her half-polished toes from getting smeared as she went.

  She opened the door just wide enough to stick her head through. “What? You live to make me squeal in terror?”

  His rather sexy mouth quirked just the smallest bit at one corner in his own personal version of a smile. “You gonna let me in?”

  She blew out a breath. “Oh, I suppose.” She turned and hobbled back to the couch, leaving it up to him to push the door the rest of the way open for himself. “I think there’s a Corona in the fridge. You want one?”

  “Sure.”

  “Go for it.” She waved a hand in the direction of the kitchen and dropped to the couch again, lifting her foot back into position, the ball of it braced on the edge of the coffee table. He returned a moment later. “Have a seat,” she offered, not glancing up because she was busy stroking on polish again.

  He settled into a wing chair. “Hot date?”

  She laughed—though it came out as more like a snort. “Yeah. It’s one wild Friday night for me. A bath, a pedicure and at least eight hours’ sleep—I didn’t hear your bike.”

  “I brought one of the whips and parked on the street.”

  “Whips…as in those custom cars I saw parked around the shop?”

  “That’s right. You find a job?”

  “You bet.”

  “Where?”

  She waved the polish brush airily. “It’s a very glamorous position and I don’t feel like going into it right now.”

/>   “Waitressing?”

  “Even better. Carhopping. At Sonic.”

  “You get good tips doing that?”

  “I’m certainly going to find out.” She glanced his way then.

  He’d kind of slouched down in the chair and he watched her through brooding eyes. “Gus liked you.”

  She laughed again. “Right. I knew that by the way he jumped at the chance to hire me.”

  “He did like you. And he’s a good man. The best there is. A good judge of people.”

  In spite of her intention to keep things light and slightly sarcastic, she felt pleased. And she let it show in her voice. “I believe that. I would guess not a lot gets past him.”

  “And he can fix any broken-down piece of junk you might wheel into the shop.”

  She finished one foot, so she put it down and the other one up and began poking fresh cotton balls into place between that set of toes. When she looked over at him, she caught him staring at her bare legs.

  He refused to pretend he hadn’t been, only slowly raised his gaze to meet hers. She saw green fire in those eyes of his and a flare of heat sizzled through her.

  She liked it, the heat. It was soothing to her recently battered ego. To know that a man—especially a big, muscled manly man like Jericho, a man with testosterone to spare—found her attractive. Lately, she’d begun to wonder. With Mark, well, it had never been about sex. And in the past year or so…

  Uh-uh. She wasn’t going back there. All that was behind her now.

  Jericho spoke again. “You know that old movie, Easy Rider?”

  “Of course. I always admired that chopper Peter Fonda rode, with the gas tank painted like the American flag?”

  “That bike?”

  “Yeah?”

  “A black man built that bike.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  He shrugged, a slight lift of one ginormous shoulder. “We’re not all into that Aryan Brotherhood crap, no matter the rap we get.”

  “I know.” She spoke softly. They shared a long look.

  Then he said, “Gus and me talked. He really got on me for not hiring you. He said I should be ashamed of myself. And you know what? I think I agree with him.”

  She felt gratified—and she couldn’t help teasing, “Oh, like you want to hire me out of pity now?”

  “Not pity.” He looked at her levelly. “And you do need a job.”

  “I have a job.”

  “But we’ll pay more. And we’ll offer…more of a challenge, more variety.”

  “At Sonic, I’ll get tips.”

  He laughed at that, a low, rough, pleasing sound. And then he grew serious. “Come to work for SA Choppers, Marnie.”

  “You mean it? You really have rethought this and my working there is what you want, that you’re not just doing it because Gus shamed you into it, or because you feel you should?”

  “I’ve rethought it. And I am good with it. I…want it.”

  She slanted him a glance. “If I made you, would you beg?”

  He answered gruffly. “How ’bout this? You don’t make me beg—but you can tell everyone I did.”

  Marnie started Monday morning. The plan was that she would get a few days with Desiree, to learn the ropes before she had to handle everything on her own.

  But Desiree went into labor Saturday night and had a baby girl Sunday morning. So Gus got the job of walking Marnie through her duties, which included everything from keeping the coffee made through invoicing and manning the cash register to answering the phones. She was also in charge of the gift area, a duty she took on with glee.

  The way she saw it, if the merchandise was displayed attractively and she put a little effort into guiding the customers’ interest that way, the shop could clean up. There was a serious markup on stuff like T-shirts and key chains. Marnie knew this because Tessa had owned a gift shop in North Magdalene before she married Ash. Tessa sold a lot of theme T-shirts—T-shirts with mountain-biking logos, T-shirts with a California theme, Gold Country T-shirts. She’d always said she made a mint on them.

  Monday at lunch, Gus had one of the shop guys handle the front counter for an hour and took Marnie to a coffee shop down the street. She told him about her plans for the gift area.

  He said she should go for it. “Anything that brings in more revenue is a good thing as far as I’m concerned. You’re a real go-getter, aren’t you, angel? Keep it up.”

  She returned his beautiful smile. “I plan to.” She asked him about the pit bulls.

  He told her their names were Chichi and Dave. “Chichi’s the brown one.”

  “They are the calmest, sleepiest pit bulls I’ve ever seen.”

  Gus shrugged. “They are, aren’t they? I like a sleepy, good-natured dog.”

  That first week, she was too busy getting to know the invoicing system and dealing with customers to do much about the condition of the front area. She hardly saw Jericho. He was putting in long hours on the chopper for Ash’s charity event. But Gus took her to lunch every day.

  She wanted to know everything about the shop.

  Gus was only too happy to enlighten her. He explained that he’d built a chopper or two himself and had been building bikes as a sideline, a passion, since he was a kid. But Jericho was the main designer, the force behind making the shop more about building bikes than repairing them. Gus said Jericho had real genius, that when you build choppers, you have to be an artist and an engineer, a welder, an inspired fabricator and a damn good mechanic. Jericho was all those things, a natural talent who, after a rough start in life, worked hard at what he did and kept getting better at it.

  When Gus asked her about herself, about her life before she’d come to SA, she told him. About her hometown, about her family, about Mark and how his dumping her had been the force behind her ending up at SA Choppers for the next six weeks. Gus listened to her the way he did everything: with a kind of complete, yet relaxed, attention.

  She liked Gus a lot. He was a wise man in so many ways. He reminded her a little of her Grandpa Oggie. Except he was younger, a lot nicer to look at and not nearly so aggravating.

  The job included a half day on Saturday. But Sunday was all hers. Ash and Tessa were going out to the family ranch, Bravo Ridge, to spend the afternoon and have Sunday dinner. They invited Marnie.

  She tried to back out of it, partly because it would be nice to have the day to herself after the busy workweek. But also because it didn’t feel right that Tessa and Ash had to drag her along everywhere they went.

  But they insisted that it was a family thing and they really wanted her to come. Plus, she had backed out the Sunday before, Easter Sunday. She supposed it was about time she went.

  Bravo Ridge, on the southwestern edge of the Hill Country, was a working horse ranch.

  Luke, third-born of the family, lived there full-time and ran the place. The ranch house was big and white and imposing. Marnie thought it looked like something Thomas Jefferson might have lived in, with giant white pillars along the front verandah. In the back, there were gardens and acres of green lawn and an Olympic-size swimming pool.

  That day, Marnie met Luke’s wife, Mercy, and their eleven-month-old son, Lucas, who was a big kid, already walking, with his mother’s black hair. The Bravo parents, Davis and Aleta, were there, too. Aleta greeted Marnie with a warm hug and said how glad she was to see her again.

  From Davis, she got a handshake and a “Welcome to Bravo Ridge.”

  Jericho arrived at a little after three, which kind of surprised her. She’d assumed from the things Tessa had said about him that he didn’t show up at family get-togethers very often.

  When he got there, they were in the kitchen, all the women—Aleta, Mercy, Tessa and Marnie. The men had gone out to the stables to check out some horse or something. Even little Lucas went, toddling along, holding on to his father’s thumb.

  “Jericho.” Aleta said his name in a pleased tone when he appeared in the kitchen doorway. She rushed over to
him and went on tiptoe to kiss him.

  Marnie was staring at him with her mouth open. She shut it, fast, when his mother stepped back and those jade eyes of his found hers. “What?” He was glaring.

  She let out a short, embarrassed laugh. “It’s just, well, you cut your hair.”

  “It looks good,” said Tessa. Mercy and Aleta agreed.

  “Yeah. Great,” Marnie said. “Really.” There was maybe an inch or two left now and it had a slight curl, which was definitely attractive.

  “Right.” He spoke in that quiet, ironic tone that told her he didn’t believe her—or any of them.

  Marnie knew she should let it go, but she didn’t. “It’s just a surprise, that’s all. And it was pretty long. I mean, that must have been a big decision…” Her voice trailed off as he rubbed the back of his neck and she thought he was a little embarrassed to have them all looking at him, discussing his haircut. She found his self-consciousness endearing, for some reason.

  “Summer’s coming,” he muttered. “It sticks to my neck.”

  The others agreed it was probably much cooler this way.

  He laughed, shaking his head, and let his big arm drop to his side. “You play pool?”

  She realized he was asking her. “Uh. Sure.”

  “Come on back to the game room.”

  The other women urged her to go, so she followed him to a big room with a wood-beam ceiling, a wet bar in one corner and stuffed animal heads decorating the walls. There were several game tables—for chess, checkers and poker. And a beautiful pool table with intricately carved legs.

  “My grandfather had this table custom made,” he said, “back in the sixties. Cost a mint even then. Grandpa James was a son of a bitch, a real mean character. He liked to make money. And to spend it.”

  “Tessa told me that he had seven sons, too. Like your dad.”

  “That’s right. They all got the hell away as soon as they were old enough to be on their own. Except my dad. He was first-born, as tough and mean as Grandpa James, and determined to stick it out. He got everything—the ranch, the money, the business—when Grandpa died. And he’s made even more on top of what he inherited.”