A Bride for Jericho Bravo Page 8

  “Sure. Why?”

  “Is something going on with you and Jericho?”

  “Why?”

  “One of those custom cars from his shop was parked in the driveway half the night.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  Tessa gave her a long look. “Well, I don’t know. Is it?” She was wearing her Saint Teresa expression, all pinched up and tight. Clearly, Tessa did not approve of Marnie having wild sex with their brother-in-law.

  Marnie stepped back. “Come on in. I’ve got maybe fifteen minutes and then I really have to get to work.”

  Tessa sat on the couch. “So, you and Jericho?” She wrapped her arms around herself. “You’re having…a thing?”

  Marnie sat beside her. “What we’re having is a totally torrid love affair. Why? Is that not okay with you?”

  Tessa gulped. “It’s only, well, do you think that’s wise?”

  “Truthfully, Tessa, I don’t know about wise. Maybe not. I do think it’s…really good. And I could use something really good in my life about now.”

  “Really good, how?”

  Marnie raked her fingers back through her hair. “Come on. Stop with the endless questions. If you have something to say, just say it.”

  Tessa made a low, pained sound. “I don’t think he’s looking for a permanent relationship, that’s all.”

  “I know he’s not. But it’s fine. Neither of us is.”

  Tessa looked like she was getting a headache. “I don’t understand this. You just got your heart broken. Why ask for trouble all over again?”

  Marnie turned, took both her sister’s hands. “Tessa. Seriously. I don’t believe I’m asking for trouble at all.”

  “I think you’re misguided.”

  “What can I say? Sometimes, you know, it’s about the journey.”

  Tessa made a scoffing sound. “The journey.”

  Marnie felt defensive. Definitely defensive. And shallow, somehow. And like something of a mental case, which she knew both Tessa and Ash worried that she was.

  Still, she tried to keep her tone even and reasonable. “Yeah. That’s right. The journey. I really like him, a lot. And I’m really attracted to him.”

  “But you hardly know him. And you’ve only just broken up with Mark, after all these years.”

  “So? I’ve got to live like a nun, just me and my poor broken heart?”

  “I didn’t say that. I don’t like it, that’s all. I think that Jericho’s taking advantage of you.”

  That was a good one. “You think he’s taking advantage of me? Wrong. He really tried to turn me down. But I kept begging.”

  “You’re exaggerating.”

  “Well, okay. Maybe a little. I didn’t beg. I was just relentlessly reasonable. Until he finally gave in.” She remembered the way she’d dropped the robe from her shoulders and stood there in front of him, wearing nothing but a hopeful smile. She softened her tone. “Tessa, I know you’re only sticking your nose where it shouldn’t be because you love me.”

  “And I’m worried about you.”

  “I know. But, well, think of your own life, all the chances you took with the wrong guys. And things have worked out pretty well for you.”

  “It’s not the same.”

  Marnie couldn’t let that stand. “Remember Bill?” Okay, it was something of a low blow. Bill Toomey had been Tessa’s last boyfriend before Ash. Tessa had been planning to marry Bill. The day she got the letter from him saying it was over, she met Ash—during a blizzard. They were snowed in together for a couple of days. And they’d wasted no time getting to know each other.

  Intimately.

  Tessa pulled her hands free and repeated, “It’s not the same.”

  Marnie had sense enough to be silent. She watched her sister’s face as Tessa remembered. And slowly came to understand.

  Tessa shook her head. “Now you’re telling me that Jericho is the guy for you?”

  “I’m telling you that not every love affair ends in happily ever after. But if you don’t take a few chances, well, you can end up staying with the wrong guy—or missing the moment with the right one.”

  “I guess I just want to protect you. I don’t want you to be hurt ever again.”

  “Too bad. Hurting’s part of being alive. Even my favorite big sister can’t protect me from that.”

  Tessa stared at her. “You are becoming fearless, I think. Just like when you were a kid. And yeah, that does scare me, at least a little.”

  “It scares me some, too. But I’m not letting that hold me back. Not ever again.”

  Softly, Tessa asked, “And Mark? You’re really over him, then?”

  If a girl can’t tell the truth to her sister, well, who can she say it to? “Uh-uh. No. I’m not over Mark, not really.”

  “So, if he came to you, here in Texas, if he wanted you to go back to him…?”

  “I don’t know. I like to tell myself I wouldn’t go, not if he crawled through broken glass, pleading for another chance, bleeding all over himself…” She let the words trail off.

  Tessa prompted, “But?”

  Marnie confessed, “I might be tempted, if he came after me. I loved him so much—still do. We have serious history together, Mark and me. Remember that year he and I were ten, when he ran away from his dad?”

  “I remember,” said her sister disapprovingly. “The whole town was in an uproar, looking for him. And you wouldn’t tell Uncle Jack where he was.” Their uncle had been a sheriff’s deputy back then.

  “I knew it was wrong, what Mark did, running away, scaring everyone. He stayed away for days, remember?”

  “I’ll never forget.”

  “And I knew I was wrong, to help him. It wasn’t like all the times I ran away. I always either got found in the first few hours, or came home on my own the same day I left. But not Mark. He was in it for the long haul. He was going to get his dad to deal with him and the issues they had, or he wasn’t coming back. So I told him where to hide, sneaked food out of the house to take to him. Because he was my friend, you know? My true friend. We were…I don’t know, bonded, I guess you could say. From that first winter he came to town onward. We were blood brothers. Seriously. We actually sliced our palms with a pocket knife and pressed them together, swearing undying loyalty to each other.”

  Tessa was not impressed. “Euu. When was that?”

  “The year Mark and I were both nine, the winter of that first year you and I came back from Arkansas to live with Dad and Gina.” Marnie let out a sad little chuckle. “Mark fainted at the sight of all that blood. I held his bloody hand in mine until he came to.”

  “God. That’s just scary, you know?”

  “Yeah. Maybe. I still feel it, though, the bond with him. And I’m past the burning fury stage now when I think of him. I can kind of see why he ended it.” She tapped the side of her head. “I know in here now that it wasn’t right with us, that we weren’t a good match. He’s grown up to be a nice, solid, stable guy. And I’m…well, I’m just not. To be happy and complete, I need a little edge in my life. I couldn’t care less about sound investments or money in the bank, or living in the ‘right’ neighborhood and knowing the right people.”

  Tessa whispered sadly, “But those things really do matter to Mark.”

  “Yes, they do. It just wasn’t working with us. My brain has gotten that message.” She laid her hand above her heart. “But in here, I’m kind of slow to learn my lesson. In here, I wonder how he’s doing, if he’s happy, if maybe he still thinks of me and wishes that it had gone differently.”

  “Marnie, listen to yourself. You’re saying you still love him.”

  “Uh-uh. I’m saying that I’m not totally over him. But I am working on it. And every day I feel a little more sure of who I am and what I need to make a life that works for me.”

  “But you would go back to him if he—”

  Marnie held up a hand. “It’s not going to happen. And I am moving on.”

  Tessa strai
ghtened the collar of the white shirt she was wearing.

  The fussy movement tipped Marnie off. “What else? You’re fidgeting.”

  “Well, I asked Ash to have a word with Jericho, to try to get him to leave you alone.”

  Marnie groaned. “You’re getting to be as bad as Grandpa, you know that? So sure of how other people ought to run their lives.”

  Tessa busted to it. “You’re right. I went too far. In my own defense, though, it was only out of love.”

  “Yeah, well, call off the dogs.”

  Marnie made it to work on time, barely.

  Gus was behind the counter when she walked in. But he usually came in before seven, like Jericho. Both of them were pretty much married to SA Choppers.

  He asked with a gleam in those dark eyes, “Seen Rico?”

  Her ears felt suddenly warm. She really hoped she wasn’t blushing. “He’s not here?”

  “Big Jake said he was, but then he got a call and left.”

  A call. From Ash? Her heart kind of stuttered to a stop for a second before it started beating again. “A call from…?”

  “If I knew, would I be asking you?”

  “Guess not. And sorry, I don’t know where he’s gone.” And really, that call could have been from anyone. Plus, Tessa had promised she’d tell Ash to back off. If Ash had called his brother before Tessa reached him, well, for sure she must have gotten a hold of him by now.

  Gus said, “You’re on the counter.”

  “Got it.”

  He turned and went through the door at the back, into the main shop, the dogs trailing in his wake. Marnie dug her cell out of her purse and autodialed her sister.

  “Did you talk to Ash?”

  “His cell went straight to voicemail. I left him a message there and also at the office,” Tessa said. “But he hasn’t called me back yet.”

  “I’m at work. Gus says Jericho got a call and left suddenly.”

  “That doesn’t mean he’s meeting Ash. And it’s not the end of the world, anyway, I’m sure.”

  “Yeah. Well, as soon as you talk to him and tell him to leave his poor brother alone, call me.”

  “I will, I promise.”

  Jericho slid into the coffee-shop booth opposite Ash. He flipped his cup over and the waitress filled it. When she left, he turned to his brother, who was watching him, wearing a grim expression that did nothing to put Jericho at ease.

  “Okay. I’m here. What?”

  Ash stirred his coffee, though he always took it black. “Tessa asked me to talk to you.” Just the tone of his voice told Jericho way more than he wanted to know. Ash leveled an accusing look at him. “One of your cars was in the driveway all night.”

  Jericho said nothing. What was there to say?

  Ash spoke again. “You spent the night in the guesthouse.”

  Jericho sipped his coffee. “Most of it. Yeah.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “You’re being purposely dense. You know what. Take advantage of Marnie like that?”

  Jericho almost laughed at that one. His brother didn’t know Marnie very well. “She’s a great woman.” He said the words flatly. “I like her. A lot.”

  “She’s in a…weakened state right now. You said it yourself that first night you met her.”

  “I said I thought she was on drugs, or in need of a shrink. I was wrong. Dead wrong.”

  “I’ll ask you again. Why would do that?”

  He thought about Marnie. She was not only a great woman, she was a determined one. He had a lot of respect for her, more than ever after last night. And a yen. A big one. Just thinking about her, remembering her dropping that skimpy little robe off her shoulders, had him getting hard. And not only the way she looked naked. So much more. The sweet, clean scent of her skin, the sound of her eager moans when he was inside her…

  Gus had been right. She did it for him. In a big way.

  Ash said, “You know she doesn’t need to get into it with you right now, Rico. What in God’s name were you thinking?”

  “You know, Ash. I don’t see that it’s any of your business.”

  “She’s my wife’s sister. My wife’s sister who needs us to help her, not mess her over even worse than she already is.”

  Jericho felt his temper flare. In his family, he’d always been the loser, the screwup, the one who never failed to wreck a good thing. Ash, on the other hand, was everything Jericho wasn’t. Smooth and smart. A born CEO. The one who did everything right.

  Mostly, Jericho thought of himself as over that old crap—the seething resentment, the jealousy. But right now, sitting across from his perfect oldest brother, getting lectured on how he’d screwed up again, well, it brought a bitter taste to his mouth, resurrected the old pain of not being good enough, not Bravo enough. And that made the skin on the back of his neck feel tight and his blood race hot and angry through his veins.

  He spoke more softly. “A couple of points.”

  “What?”

  “One, I think you’re seriously underestimating Marnie. And two, she’s herself, first of all. Before she’s anybody’s sister. What happened with us last night is between her and me. Period.”

  Ash leaned across the table and opened his mouth to continue the lecture. Jericho tried not to think about how satisfying it would be to punch his perfect brother in the face.

  But then Ash’s cell rang. He sat back, pulled an iPhone out of his inside pocket, looked at the display, then put it to his ear. “I’m with Jericho right now,” he said. And then, kind of startled, “What?” And next, “But I thought you said…” Jericho could hear the feminine voice on the other end of the line. He knew it was Tessa. When she stopped talking, Ash said gently, “You know, you kind of put me in a position here…” Tessa started in again. Ash started nodding. “All right. Yeah. Okay…I will…Okay.” He disconnected the call and tucked the phone away.

  Jericho said, “So I’m guessing that Tessa talked with Marnie.”

  Ash turned the handle of his coffee cup from left to right. “I still don’t think what you did was right.”

  “But it’s none of your business, big brother, now, is it?”

  Ash met his eyes. “You’re right. It’s none of my business.”

  The thing was, Jericho agreed with the harsh stuff Ash had laid on him.

  To a degree, anyway. Even with all the yadda-yadda he and Marnie had gone through last night before she finally convinced him to quit telling her what was good for her and just take what he wanted, he still felt kind of bad. Kind of like he had done what Ash had accused him of, used her, moved in on her when she was vulnerable and easily manipulated.

  Bottom line, Marnie didn’t need another man in her life now. And even though Ash had admitted he had no right to stick his face in it, the things he’d said were still there, still ugly, scrolling through Jericho’s brain.

  He was starting to see that maybe last night had been a big, beautiful, super-hot mistake. That maybe going on with it would only make things worse.

  At the shop, he saw her dusty little black car in front. He took the coward’s way out and went in through the back, racing straight up the steel stairway to his private workshop and getting right to work.

  An hour later, he was dealing with some issues he had with the gas tank on the chopper for Ash’s charity ball. It was a special design, sort of an extended peanut, long and narrow, curving down sharply toward the seat, and he’d yet to figure out how to attach it without gaps. The whole point, after all, was the sleek, mean appearance. It had to look all of one bad, killer piece.

  He’d already modified one of the three basic chassis he used, all his own designs. But it was looking like further modification was in order. That was going to slow down the work by a day or two and that had him going back to the tank design itself, seeing if he could make the changes on it before fabrication.

  He’d tuned out everything but the job by then. So he didn’t hear Marnie come
up the stairs. By the time he happened to glance in her direction, she could have been standing there for half an hour, for all he knew.

  His heart gave a jump and then one single, hard beat, like a fist bump, against the wall of his chest, as he straightened from the drafting table. “Hey.”

  “Hey.” She was standing at the top of the stairs. But when she spoke, she started toward him. She wore her usual work clothes—tight jeans, sneakers, an SA Choppers T-shirt and a hat with the shop logo on it. Except for the tightness of the jeans, there was nothing all that exciting about the way she dressed.

  But he was excited. Just from watching her come toward him. His own jeans kept getting tighter, the closer she got.

  This was bad, he knew it. Bad and getting worse.

  He never should have started with her. It wasn’t good for her—and it was too damn distracting for him. He was plain ridiculous over her, already, unable to watch her walk toward him without getting turned on.

  She stopped a few feet from him and looked down at the drawing table. “Gus said you were an artist. You are.”

  He rubbed the back of his neck. It still felt strange and naked, without his long hair. “You come up here to talk about choppers?”

  She swiped off the hat and her shoulder-length hair came loose. It was straight. Brown with pale streaks. The feel of it, he had learned last night, was so smooth and fine. His hands itched to touch it.

  And then she moved closer.

  Chapter Seven

  When she stopped, there was maybe a foot’s distance between them.

  He could smell her. Rain. She kind of smelled like rain.

  Who knew that the smell of rain would make him think of sex?

  “No,” she said. “Not about choppers.”

  It took him a second or two to remember that he’d asked her if she came up here to talk about bikes. “I didn’t think so.” He let his hand drop to his side and fisted it, to keep from reaching out and reeling her in.

  Not reaching didn’t do him any good. She reached out—or rather, up. She slid her hand over his T-shirt, fingers curving, feeling his flesh beneath. He had to steel himself to keep from yowling like a tomcat on the scent of a female in heat, just at her touch.