Claimed by the Rebel. Jackie Braun

for very long. He needed a fast pace, plenty of excitement, and if he didn’t find them, he moved on. It was his modus operandi for life. From sending his flowers for the past year, Katie knew it was doubly true for the romantic part of his life.

      He sent four bouquets during the course of a relationship. The first was his nice-to-meet-you, I’m-interested. The second, usually followed fairly closely on the heels of the first, and she was pretty sure it was the great-sex bouquet. Third, came the sorry-I-forgot, which he didn’t really mean, and then the fourth was the goodbye bouquet. The cycle of a relationship that would probably take a normal person a year to play out—or at the very least a few months—he could complete in weeks.

      Katie tried to sew warnings into the bouquets, bachelor buttons to signify celibacy for instance, but nobody paid the least bit of attention to the secret meanings of flowers these days, more’s the pity.

      There were two notable exceptions to Dylan’s flower sending and his short attention span, one was the one bouquet he came in for once a week and chose himself.

      He had never told her who it was for, but at some time she had let him start choosing his own flowers for it, even though her refrigerator room was sacred to her. Naturally, he had no idea of the meanings of what he was selecting, and yet he unerringly chose flowers like white chrysanthemums, which stood for truth, or daisies, which stood for purity and a loyal love. She never pressed about who the bouquet was for. His choice always seemed so somber, it did not seem possible it was a romantic bouquet.

      The other exception to his short attention span was his business. In fact his drive, his restless nature, probably did him nothing but good when it came to running his wildly successful company, Daredevils.

      He was constantly testing, developing and innovating. He loved the challenge of new products and new projects, which meant he was always on the cutting edge of business. He’d found the perfect line of work for his boundless energy. But those same qualities put him on the cutting edge of relationships, too, and not in a good way. He did the cutting!

      The motorcycle roared by again, and against her better judgment she went and slid open one vertical pleat of her shades a half centimeter or so. He was wearing a distressed black leather jacket, jeans, no helmet. He looked more like a throwback to those renegades women always lost their hearts to—pirates and highwaymen—than Hillsboro’s most celebrated success story.

      Dylan gunned the bike to a dangerous speed, his silken dark hair flattened against his head, his eyes narrowed to a squint of pure focus. In a motion that looked effortless, he lifted the front wheel of that menacing two-wheeled machine off the ground. He made it rear so that he looked more like a knight on a rearing stallion than a perpetual boy with a penchant for black leather. For a moment he was suspended in time—reckless, strong, sure of himself—and then the front wheel crashed back to earth, he braced himself to absorb the impact and was gone down the street.

      Dammit! She knew what he was doing was immature! Silly, even. Her head knew that! But her heart was beating hard, recognizing the preening of the male animal, reacting to it with a sheer animal longing of its own.

      “I should call the police,” she declared primly, even as she recognized her own lack of conviction. “I’m sure he’s being dangerous. It’s illegal not to wear a helmet.”

      That, she thought firmly, was just one more reason she had to say no to him. It was a classical and insurmountable difference between them. If she ever got on a motorcycle without a helmet, the anxiety of getting a head injury or getting a ticket would spoil it for her. Obviously it was taking chances that made the experience fun for him, that put him on the edge of pure excitement.

      Here he came again, but instead of popping it up this time, he slowed down and pulled into a vacant parking spot outside her shop.

      She ordered herself to drop the curtain, but was caught in the poetry of watching him dismount, throwing that long, beautiful leg up and over the engine.

      She prayed he was going back to work, and not—

      Her shop door squeaked open. She pretended a sudden intense interest in rearranging the flowers in the pot in the window, letting her hand rest on the white heather, which promised protection. But also could mean dreams come true. She hastily turned her attention to a different pot of flowers.

      “Dark in here, Katie-my-lady.”

      She glanced at him, and then quickly away. She had to keep remembering his restless nature when he turned the full intensity of those blue eyes on her. Blue like sapphires, like deep ocean water, like every pirate and highwayman who had ridden before him.

      “These flowers in the window were wilting. That’s why I closed the drapes.”

      “Uh-huh.”

      “What do you want?”

      “Play hooky with me,” he said. “Come for a motorcycle ride.”

      One of the flowers snapped off in her hand. She stared at it. A pink carnation, rife with its multitude of meanings: fascination, a woman’s love, I can’t forget you, you are always on my mind.

      She dropped the flower on the floor and stammered, “Are you crazy? You’ve just demonstrated to the whole neighborhood how you ride that thing!”

      “Oh, were you watching? I could have sworn your drapes were closed.”

      It was like being caught red-handed at the cookie jar!

      He bent and picked up the flower, smelled it, drawing its fragrance deep inside himself, his eyes never leaving hers. There was no way he could discern the secrets of that flower. He held it out to her, but she shook her head as if it was inconsequential, as if it meant nothing to her.

      Absently, he threaded the carnation through the button hole of his leather jacket. How many men could do that with such casual panache? Wear a flower on their leather?

      “We could cruise out of town,” he said, just as if she had not refused him. “The fields are all turning green, the trees are budding. I bet we’d see pussy willows. Babies, too, calves and ducks, little colts and fillies trying out their long legs.”

      She could feel herself weakening, his voice a brush that painted pictures of a world she wanted to see. She knew spring was here: so many wonderful flowers becoming available locally, but somehow she had missed the essence of spring’s arrival, its promise: gray and brown turning to green, plants long dormant bravely blooming again, sudden furious storms giving way to sunshine. It was the season of hope.

      In fact, Dylan McKinnon was making her feel as if she had missed the essence of everything for a long, long time. He looked so good, standing there so full of confidence, the scent of leather in the air, his hair windswept, his eyes on her so intently.

      She could almost imagine how it would feel to go with him, to feel the powerful purr of that bike vibrating through her, to wrap her arms tightly around his waist, to mold herself to his power and confidence, feel them, feel him in such an intoxicatingly intimate way.

      “Say yes,” he whispered. “You know you want to do something wild and crazy.”

      Yes. Yes. Yes.

      “No!” The vow. Do the opposite of what she wanted. “I did something wild and crazy once. It involved saying yes, too. And it was a mistake.”

      They both knew she was referring to her marriage.

      “You can’t go through life without making mistakes, Katie.”

      “You can sure as hell try.” It was because of his bad influence on her that she was using bad language. If she let this go any further, there was no telling what his influence would do. She would become a different woman than the one she was today.

      She could picture herself with her head thrown back, laughing into the wind, while she clung to the motorcycle and him. Sensuous. Exhilarated. On fire with life. Willing to take chances.

      Heartbroken! she snapped back at all those dreamy voices.