The Return of Luke McGuire. Justine Davis

until eight, she managed to serve everyone fairly well and had enough down time during the ten hours the store was open to get some other things done, although she still came in an hour or more before opening to deal with things that took uninterrupted concentration.

      But dealing with those heavy cartons of books was a different matter than mental exercise, and tonight she was tired.

      She went through her closing up ritual quickly and almost thoughtlessly; she’d done it so often she thought she could do it in her sleep. The register was totaled out and locked, the back door closed and secured, and she decided to put off cleaning the restroom until tomorrow morning. She picked up her small purse, flipped out the lights and made her way to the front door.

      She was turning to lock it from the outside when she heard the sound. A low, throaty growl that sounded almost more animal than mechanical. She chalked that bit of anthropomorphism up to her weary state as she turned to look; it was a motorcycle, that was all.

      All?

      The word echoed in her mind as she stared. A motorcycle, yes. But she’d never seen anything like the picture that greeted her eyes now, riding out of the twilight. The bike was big and sleek and shiny black, but she barely noticed it as it cruised past, growling as if in protest at the slow pace. All she could do was stare at the man astride the low-slung, snarling beast.

      He was dressed like a walking advertisement for some rebel motorcycle gang, except that the declarations of affiliation were missing. Plain, unmarked black leather jacket and boots, black jeans, and a pair of wraparound, black framed sunglasses with mirrored lenses. She thought she caught a glint of gold at his left earlobe. His hair was nearly as dark as the bike, and more than long enough to whip back like a mane in the wind of his passage. His face was unshaven, but not bearded, and beneath that his skin was tan, as if he spent a lot of his time outdoors. Probably on that monster, she thought a little numbly.

      Instinctively she drew back in some alarm; she didn’t want to draw the attention of this intruder. He looked like the personification of everything she’d been fascinated by as a girl but had been too terrified to go near. That hadn’t changed much, she thought, as she became aware that her heart was racing in her chest.

      She noticed a duffel bag fastened to the rack behind the seat of the bike. Was he traveling, then? Did he just travel about the country as the spirit moved him, like some fictional character in a weekly action show or something? She nearly sighed aloud.

      She caught herself and smothered the familiar yearning to be something other than what she was. The words to an old song came to her, something about a man who was the wrong kind of paradise. This man would be just that for a woman. For this mouse of a woman, at least, she admitted, knowing herself too well to think she could ever even begin to handle a man like that.

      As he went past the store she saw a helmet—also, of course, gleaming black—hooked to the back of the bike, and wondered if he ever bothered to wear it, or if he just carried it in the hopes of talking himself out of a ticket in this mandatory helmet state.

      She thought she saw his head move slightly, but if he glanced her way at all, she couldn’t tell behind the mirrored glasses. She doubted it; there was nothing to draw his attention. She couldn’t imagine what it would take to interest such a man. The bike had California plates, but he didn’t seem to fit here in Santiago Beach. This was a sun and surf town, and he was a splash of the wild side.

      The wild side.

      Suddenly she knew. With an instinctive certainty she couldn’t question, she knew.

      Luke McGuire was back in town.

      Chapter 2

      Santiago Beach hadn’t changed a bit, Luke thought. Oh, there was some new development around the edges, some new houses and the occasional strip mall, but the downtown district hadn’t changed at all. It was still the quaint, villagelike, tourist-attracting place, the main drag with the incredibly hokey name of Main Street, that had bored him to distraction. Everybody seemed to think living near the beach was the dream life for any kid, but it hadn’t been for him.

      No, it hadn’t changed much at all. He had, though. He had to admit that. Not, he amended with an inward grin, that he resisted gunning the Harley’s engine on occasion, just to break the smothering quiet. That it also turned heads, made people either gape at him or eye him suspiciously—or even with shock, like the woman outside the bookstore—was just a side benefit.

      But down deep, he was no longer the kid who had done that kind of thing just for thrills, just to build on the reputation that had already begun to snowball. Now he did it for…what? Nostalgia?

      Lord, nostalgic at twenty-six, he thought with a rueful twist of his lips. Back then, at eighteen, you thought anybody on the far side of thirty was decrepit, and now you’re thinking people can still be young at forty.

      He wondered if at thirty he would push that back to fifty, then at forty to sixty, continually pushing the boundaries back so that they were a safe distance away.

      And he wondered if just coming back here was making him lose his mind. He never thought about this kind of thing at home. Of course, at home his thoughts were focused mainly on how to keep himself and everyone else alive through the next adventure. He rarely thought about Santiago Beach at all; in his mind, his past consisted of the last eight years.

      But it was amazing to him how quickly he relapsed, just from seeing the old, familiar things, all in their old, familiar places. The faces might be different—although some had looked familiar—but the effect they had on him was the same. He immediately felt cramped, trapped, and he found himself wondering if his favorite secret hideout, the place no one had ever found, was still there.

      The urge to turn the bike around and head for the high country was tremendous.

      But he couldn’t. He had to find Davie first, make sure he was all right. He’d wrestled with it for days, but now that he’d decided, now that he’d arrived, he wasn’t going to turn tail and run until he’d done what he’d come here for. He really wasn’t that kid anymore, desperate and weary of fighting a battle he could never, ever win.

      He’d learned well in the past eight years. He’d learned how to depend only on himself, learned how to take care of himself, and most of all, he’d learned how it felt to win. And he liked it.

      He wasn’t going to let this place beat him again.

      She wouldn’t have sought her out, Amelia thought, but now that Jackie Hiller was right here, she should say something. She would never betray David’s confidence, but she was worried. Especially if she was right about that dark, wild apparition she’d seen riding down Main Street.

      The image, still so vivid in her mind, gave her a slight shiver. She knew she’d grown up within the boundaries of a strict childhood and been further limited by her own natural shyness; men like the one on that motorcycle had had no part in her life. But if that were indeed Luke McGuire, Amelia could easily see how David had built his half brother up into an almost mythological being in his mind.

      She shook off the odd feeling. Jackie was coming out of the community center, and Amelia wondered if she had been giving one of her speeches. That was where Amelia had first met her a couple of years ago, at a meeting of the local Chamber of Commerce, where the woman had earnestly, passionately, almost too vehemently, pitched her views on the problem of teenage pregnancy. For a decade now she had been giving lectures at local schools and communities on the subject, and from what Amelia had heard, she was quite zealous in her crusade.

      The woman was dressed impeccably, as usual; Amelia didn’t think she’d ever seen her without perfect makeup, tasteful gold jewelry and medium heels. Her dress was tailored yet feminine, and looked very expensive. Her hair was perfectly blond, exquisitely cut and looked equally expensive. In all, a package Amelia doubted she could ever put together; she had the money, but not the time. Not time she wanted to spend on that kind of production, anyway.

      But that wasn’t what she was here for. Steeling herself, she waited until Jackie finished