Whisper Falls (5 page)

Tessa hissed in her breath in worry. She knew how much Lucky’s departure had wounded a family that had already suffered one major tragedy by the time he’d left. Lucky and Mike’s little sister had disappeared on a family camping trip when they were kids and no trace of her had ever been found. So when Lucky had left home without warning, it had only heaped misery upon misery. “How’d he take it?”

“Hard,” Rachel said, looking sad. “In one sense, he was relieved, but in another, I think it upset him in a whole new way—it reminded him how long Lucky’s stayed away without ever contacting them.”

Amy sighed. “Did he call their mom and dad? Are they coming up from Florida? I mean, wow—this has to be
huge
for them.”

“They’re on a month-long cruise of the Grecian isles right now,” Rachel said. “They left on Sunday, the same day we came home from seeing them. Mike isn’t sure they can be reached, and even if they can, he’d rather wait until they’re back.”

Tessa and Amy nodded in understanding. When Anna had vanished—over twenty years ago—it had rocked the whole town, and it had shaken Mike and Lucky’s family right off its very foundation. And probably, it occurred to Tessa now, it had a lot to do with how Lucky had turned out.

“So . . .” Then Rachel put on a smile, clearly trying to focus on something besides Mike’s pain. She looked to Tessa. “What else were you getting ready to tell us when LeeAnn came in?”

Oh yeah
,
that’s right.
She’d been ready to share just when the door had opened. “Well, I have some good news,” she said.
She
thought it was good anyway. Now that she’d moved past the shock of it. Mostly. “I might have a client. And my first decorating job since leaving Posh.” Posh Designs was her old firm in Cincinnati.

Rachel’s eyes lit with happiness for her, and Amy—Destiny’s poster child for cheerfulness—clapped her hands together excitedly. “Oh Tessa, that’s so great!”

“And it’s about time someone around here started appreciating your talents,” Rachel added. “So who’s the lucky Destiny-ite who finally got wise?”

“Welllll . . .” she began, “it’s Lucky Romo.”

As her friends’ faces both froze in horror, she could have heard a pin drop. She’d had a feeling they might not be crazy about the idea, but . . . she’d probably made Lucky sound pretty scary. Because he
was
pretty scary. Yet . . . in other ways, maybe he wasn’t—he’d helped her locate a missing cat, after all.

“Are you crazy?” Amy finally asked.

“Mike said to tell you to stay away from him,” Rachel announced. “Mike said he’s dangerous.”

Tessa sat up a little straighter, ready to defend herself. “Wait a minute. Mike doesn’t know anything about him now. So Mike only
thinks
he’s dangerous. And—” She stopped, a sudden off-topic thought striking her. “What’s with you calling him Mike lately anyway? What happened to Romo? And Romeo?” Rachel had been in the habit of calling Mike by his last name more often than his first, along with a few other choice nicknames that had come to seem like a weird mating call between them.

Rachel sighed. “It was making him mad.”

And Amy made a face. “It’s
always
made him mad and that never stopped you before.”

“Yeah, but I’m marrying him now, you know?” She tilted her head, shrugged. “If I’m gonna spend the next fifty years with him, I really have to start being nicer.” Then she narrowed her gaze on Tessa. “Now quit trying to change the subject. Back to you working for Lucky. Seriously, what are you
thinking
?”

Tessa felt it was fairly obvious. “Um, that I need the money? And that he’s the first person to offer me work in my field of expertise since I came home?”

“What have I missed here?” Rachel asked. “A couple of days ago you were smart enough to be nervous about him. Why aren’t you
still
nervous?”

Tessa let out a breath and was honest. “Look, even if I’m a little nervous, I’ve been struggling to get this business off the ground, and now someone has offered me a job. I don’t see how I can pass it up.” The part she left out was:
And I like the way he makes me feel. When he looks at me. When he says those flirtatious little things. Scary or not
,
I’m weirdly drawn to him.

“I don’t like it,” Rachel said staunchly.

In response, Tessa just crossed her arms and flashed a pointed look. “You’re becoming the female version of Mike.” As Rachel gasped, her blue eyes blazing, Tessa went on. “And I’m sure this will be fine—and maybe it’ll even give me a chance to . . . learn more about him. For Mike,” she added. Even though she was completely curious on her own behalf, too. “Speaking of which, is Mike going to . . . go see him or anything?”

“He’s not sure.” Rachel sounded a little down again. “I mean, Lucky just disappearing the way he did, after them losing their sister, left Mike an only child and devastated his family all the more. He doesn’t seem inclined to forgive him.”

Tessa nodded. It was a complex situation.

“And he’s wondering what Lucky’s doing here,” Rachel continued, “if he didn’t come home to reconnect with his family. And . . .” Suddenly looking perplexed, she went silent and squinted at Tessa over her mug. “Stop. Wait. Lucky Romo needs an
interior decorator
?”

Tessa could only hold out her hands, palms up, and shrug. “Yeah—I didn’t see that coming, either.”

But no matter what Mike thought about Lucky, she wasn’t changing her decision. Because, as she’d told Amy yesterday, she
needed
to do something.
Anything
. And sure, getting a peek into Lucky Romo’s life probably wouldn’t sound that exciting to most people, but for her, right now, it
was
a little exciting. And who knew? Maybe feeling a little fearful of him even made it more appealing. Yet she’d never been the kind of girl to go after the bad boy—this wasn’t about that. This was about having lost so much time on illness and defeat that now she simply wanted to feel something else. Even a little danger, if that’s what it took.

T
essa stepped out the back door of her cabin, sketch tablet and pencil in hand, and looked up at Lucky’s house. Simple white clapboard, black shutters, evergreen shrubbery around the front—no flowers. Clean, simple lines. Neat and tidy without being homey. Taking a deep breath, she started up the hill.

At a glance, no one would ever know a big, bad biker lived here. Of course, they would know it if they’d heard an amazingly loud motorcycle come rumbling up the hill to Lucky’s place after dark last night. But she tried not to think about that—about the type of people he might hang out with . . . or the type of person he himself might be. Rachel’s words echoed in Tessa’s mind.
Mike said he’s dangerous.

Maybe it was stupid to be coming up here, acting like he was any other guy, ready to take him on as a client, ready to spend time working in his home. And maybe it was even stupider that she hadn’t changed clothes after leaving the bookstore. She glanced down at herself—she wore one of her favorite long, colorful, bohemian-inspired skirts with a couple of coordinated, layered tanks, belted just below the waist. There wasn’t anything
wrong
with what she’d worn, but she realized now that maybe she’d left it on because she’d wanted to look pretty when he saw her. Even if, realistically, the braless Hot Stuff top was probably more his style.

Yikes. What did this mean? Was she hoping something would happen? Between them? That his sexy little flirtations would go further?

She’d decided it was doubtful a woman lived here with him or he would have mentioned it by now. And he probably wouldn’t have so openly spied on her in her bikini and wouldn’t keep calling her “hot stuff.” Unless he was a jerk, of course. Which, now that she thought about it, was entirely possible. But whether he had a woman or not, was she seriously hoping to fool around with Lucky Romo?

She sucked in her breath when the very question made her feel tingly all over. Lord, was that really what she wanted? Sex—or something similar—with a big, scary guy she really knew nothing about?

Then she bit her lip. Oh God. Maybe it was.

But stop it already. You’re thinking too far ahead. You’re here to evaluate his decorating needs
,
not get naked with him. Just do your job. And act normal. As normal as you can
,
anyway.
So far, acting normal hadn’t exactly been her strong suit with Lucky. But maybe this was her chance to redeem herself.

She was about to knock on his front door when she caught the faint sound of music coming from the large garage to one side of the house. Walking in that direction, she could hear it better—something in the Southern rock vein.

Rounding the corner to peek into the open garage, she found Lucky bent over part of a motorcycle, spraying something onto it from some kind of nozzle. Peering closer, she realized it was a small airbrushing gun, with which he was creating an intricate design. Ah,
that
was what his shirt had said that first day they’d met—he painted motorcycles. And it looked like wherever his business
had
been, now it was here.

Twisting the gun this way and that, he used his free hand to hold various flat, shaped objects—oh, wait, they were templates—at different angles as he worked to create curves and angles as he sprayed. He did it all so quickly and fluidly that she couldn’t help thinking it was like a flowing . . . ballet of the hands. Not that Lucky Romo would probably appreciate anything he did being compared with ballet, but within seconds, she was captivated by watching him. It took a minute before she understood he was crafting flames—yellow and orange on a dark red background. Apparently flames were big in the biker world, be it on skin or motorcycles.

As he worked, the muscles in his arms flexed—the chain tattooed around his biceps appeared to tighten, then loosen, then tighten again. Like the other day, he wore a black bandana around his head, and he appeared completely absorbed in his task, his art. She hadn’t thought about what “custom bike painting” would be like when she’d seen it on the back of his shirt—heck, she hadn’t even remembered exactly what it was he did—but she never would have expected it to be this:
art
.

Around him stood six other motorcycles, all in various states of being painted—some were dismantled, with various parts appearing to be sanded down, no paint at all; other pieces had coats of solid color on them. A couple were fully assembled and looked more complete—one displaying an artistically perfect pair of dice and the words S
nake
E
yes
up above.

That’s when she finally understood. The motorcycles she’d heard roaring up here at all hours—they weren’t necessarily Lucky’s friends; they were his customers. At least some of them.

And then his arm—the one closest to her—flexed again and she had the opportunity to make out another of his tattoos. Below the chain, on his forearm: playing cards. Aces over eights. The legendary dead man’s hand.

And for some reason, it gave her the shivers. Of course, they were only cards, but added to the grim reaper on his other arm, she had to wonder . . . was Lucky Romo obsessed with death? Had he been . . . near it or something? Or was it about losing his sister so tragically all those years ago?

She swallowed uncomfortably at the dark thoughts, and—once more—at the recollection that he had a mysterious and potentially frightening past. And that . . . well, if she was honest with herself, his present was really
just
as mysterious and potentially frightening. Wasn’t it?

It was suddenly easy to forget about that as she watched him making art on bikes, running a respectable-looking business. And it was easy to tell herself he was misunderstood just because he’d deigned to flirt with her a couple of times and had helped her find Mr. Knightley. But the harsh reality, for some reason hitting her hard right now, was that she
didn’t
know any more about him than Mike did, and that almost everything about him was a question mark.

Maybe Mike was right—maybe she should stay away from him.

Knowing what he’d been through in his youth, wondering what he’d been through as an adult—she felt suddenly, undeniably, torn. Between being safe and taking a risk. Between choosing to believe he was . . . good, somehow reformed—or accepting what she’d been avoiding: the fact that Mike was probably a better judge of his own brother than she was, even all these years later.

“What’s up, hot stuff?”

The greeting shook her from her reverie with a flinch. Swell. Every single time she saw him, she acted like a basket case. So she made a fresh effort to appear very together and at ease. But when she met his alluring gaze, it became more difficult. “I’m here for our appointment.”

“Thought maybe you just came to watch me paint.”

Great—he’d known she was there the whole time. “This time
I
was trying not to scare
you
. Didn’t want to mess you up.”

He’d stooped down now, on eye level with what he’d just painted, inspecting his work. He didn’t bother looking her way as he said, “Takes more than a pretty girl to mess me up, babe.”

Oh. My. She was a pretty girl. And he was calling her babe. And most times in her life she would have found that way too familiar from a guy she barely knew, but just like so much with Lucky, it somehow made her tingle in all the right—or would that be the wrong?—places.

She stepped closer to him, still nervous as usual but trying very hard to, at last, be bold. Or at least normal. “I liked watching you work,” she told him. “I had no idea motorcycle paint could be so elaborate.”

He still didn’t smile, but he did glance up at her now, looking quietly pleased by the compliment. “Thanks.”

And, as always, finding it hard to meet his eyes for long, she drew hers away, and they landed on another tattoo—this one an emblem of sorts, above the chain. Inside the emblem were inked words: Ride To Live, Live To Ride. She bit her lip, pleased this tattoo wasn’t about death, and also intrigued. “It’s that great, huh?” she asked, pointing at the shape near his shoulder.