Maternity Bride. Maureen Child

climbed off the motorcycle and staggered unsteadily for a moment Her legs felt as if they were still shuddering in time with the engine of the beast that had brought her here. Undoing the strap, she pulled her helmet off and handed it to Mike. Her head felt twenty pounds lighter as she fluffed her hair, hoping to revive it.

      She shivered as a sharp, cold ocean wind swept across Pacific Coast Highway and swirled around her like icy fingers tugging at her. The hum of traffic on the busy highway faded away as she studied the restaurant Mike had chosen.

      She’d seen it before, of course. No one living in Sunrise Beach could have overlooked it. Denise had even heard that the city fathers were talking about making it an official landmark.

      It looked as though it had been standing in the same spot for a hundred years. The wooden walls looked shaky, the hot pink neon sign across the door, a couple of spots either dimmed with age or broken, spelled out, O’D ul s. Five or six pickup trucks were parked in the gravel lot, but there were more than twenty motorcycles huddled in a tight group near the front of the building.

      As she watched, Mike pushed his own bike into their midst.

      She had managed to avoid entering O’Doul’s Tavern and Restaurant all of her life. Even though she had been tempted to go inside once or twice since turning twenty-one eight years ago, the thought of her father finding out she’d been there had been enough to dissuade her of the notion.

      “Ridiculous,” she muttered, “a grown woman afraid to stand up to her father.”

      Unfortunate, but true. All Richard Torrance had to do was look at her with disappointment and she felt eleven years old again. An eleven-year-old girl whose mother had just died, leaving Denise alone with a father who expected perfection from a child too frightened to deliver anything less.

      Denise supposed there was some kind of logic in the fact that it would be Mike Ryan to first take her to O’Doul’s. Because Richard Torrance would never approve of him, either.

      While she waited for Mike, she studied the old tavern-restaurant claim to fame. Their mascot. Good luck charm.

      On the rooftop was a fifteen-foot tall, one-eyed seagull, holding an artificial dead fish in its beak.

      “Oh yeah, your dress will fit right in, here,” she muttered under her breath.

      “You know,” Mike said as he walked up beside her, “I’ve noticed you do that a lot.”

      “Do what?”

      “Talk to yourself.”

      An old habit, born of loneliness. But he didn’t need to know that. “It’s when you argue with yourself that you’re in trouble, Ryan.”

      “If you say so.”

      She nodded at the huge bird. “Now I understand why you were in such a hurry to get here,” she said. “Reservations must be hard to come by.”

      “Obviously, you’ve never eaten here before.”

      “No, I generally make it a practice only to eat at restaurants where the giant bird has both eyes intact.”

      His lips quirked. “Vandals. Some kids with rocks and no values mutilate poor old Herman and you blame the bird?”

      “Herman?” She smiled, in spite of her best efforts.

      With a perfectly straight face, he said, “Herman Stanley Seagull. Jonathon Livingston’s big brother.”

      “Very big.”

      He grinned.

      A moment later, she nodded. “I get it. Stanley... Livingston.”

      “And I thought you had no sense of humor.”

      “I’m here, aren’t I?”

      His eyebrows arched. “A bit touchy, are we?”

      “Not touchy,” she countered. “Just...cautious.”

      He laughed shortly. “An accountant? Cautious? There’s a shock.”

      She had heard any accountant joke he could possibly come up with. Personally, she thought that the members of her profession were as unfairly maligned as lawyers. More so, since lawyers usually deserved the ribbing they took.

      “Well,” she said, with another look at Herman, “I hope the food’s better than the ambience.”

      He chuckled. “Don’t be a snob, honey. O’Doul’s serves the best pizza in town. And if you don’t get here early, it’s all gone.”

      “Gone?” Denise stared up at him. “What kind of way is that to run a business? Won’t he make more food if his customers demand it?”

      Mike shrugged. “He could, but then he wouldn’t have time to play pool with his friends.”

      “Of course,” she said, nodding slowly. “A man has to have his priorities, after all.”

      This time, he laughed outright.

      But when she started walking toward the restaurant, Mike’s laughter died. He had thought it was torturous, with Denise sitting behind him on the bike. Every turn he had made, her thighs pressed harder against his. He’d felt the swell of her breasts pushing into his back and the surprisingly strong grip of her slender arms around his waist. Never had the ten-mile drive to O’Doul’s seemed so long.

      But all of that was nothing compared to what he felt now. As if a fist had slammed into his belly, his breath left him in a powerful rush the moment his gaze locked on the smooth, tanned surface of her back.

      His gaze followed the column of her spine and rested on the curve of her bottom. His palms itched to stroke that expanse of flesh and then to explore further, beyond the boundaries of that incredible dress.

      Mike’s groin tightened uncomfortably, and he had to muffle a groan as he gripped the chin straps of their helmets in one hand. He took three long strides and caught up to her easily. Taking Denise’s arm with his free hand, he said, “You should have warned me about that dress.”

      She stopped and looked up at him. A knowing smile curved her lips, but she asked anyway, “What do you mean?”

      What could he say? He wasn’t about to admit to her what that dress did to him. Nor, he thought with a glance at O’Doul’s front door, did he want to think about the impact that dress would have on the men inside. His gaze shifted to her again and Mike found himself staring into those deep blue eyes. After a long moment, she looked away and he took the opportunity to bring himself back under control.

      “Let’s just say, I like a good tan. Especially when there aren’t any suit lines.”

      She only smiled and Mike’s racing brain took care of the rest. Immediately, he imagined her nude, lying under the hot sun. And in his mind, he was right beside her, smoothing lotion onto her warmed skin. He could almost feel her soft, pliant flesh beneath his fingertips.

      Great. Now he had that mental image to drive him nuts all night.

      Steering her toward the door, he grumbled through gritted teeth, “C’mon. I’m hungry.”

      The fact that he was hungrier for tanned, smooth skin than he was for pizza, had nothing to do with anything.

      She should have gone to O’Doul’s years ago.

      If she had guessed just how much fun the game of pool could be, she might have risked her father’s ire. Of course, she wasn’t sure if it was the game, or her teacher that she was enjoying so much.

      She bent at the waist, set her left hand on the worn, green felt and laid the tip of her cue stick between her curled fingers. Behind her, Mike stood close and leaned over her, his right hand on hers, his chest pressed to her naked back.

      Warmth seeped through him down to her bones and she felt the unmistakable, hard bulge of his groin against her behind. She swallowed and tried desperately to