The Greatest Risk. Cara Colter

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СКАЧАТЬ both knew it. Still, why did her heart feel as if it was going to fly right out of her chest while she waited for his answer?

      You could go out with me.

      Luke eyed the woman in front of him with surprise. She did not look like the type of woman who surprised a man.

      She was presentable enough, in that kind of understated way that he associated with schoolteachers, librarians and dental hygienists, though her eyes prevented her from being ordinary. They were a shade of hazel that danced between blue and green. She had beautiful blond hair, untainted by the color streaks that were so fashionable. Her features, her nose and cheekbones and chin were passably cute, but not spectacularly attractive.

      And she had a nice body under that prim gray straight-line suit with the uncooperative skirt, and he knew quite a bit more about her body than he should, since it had been flattened under him for fifteen or twenty most delectable seconds.

      But Luke had already guessed quite a lot about her from their short acquaintance. She would be the predictable sort. If she said she’d meet you at two, she was the type who would be there five minutes before. The problem with the predictable sort was they always had an expectation that you were going to share their predictability.

      He also guessed she would prefer reading a novel to experiencing real adventure. Her idea of a perfect Friday night was probably to be curled up on her couch with a book, a cup of tea and a cat. The problem with that type was that they generally held old-fashioned values of home and family in high esteem, a view that, given his own childhood home life, he was not inclined to share.

      He was willing to bet she was the type who could be counted on to bake cookies and bring them into the office, and even though Luke liked homemade cookies as much as the next man, he was wary of what they represented—a longing for domesticity.

      If the woman in front of him was all that she appeared, she was sweet, wholesome and predictable.

      In fact, not his type at all. Least likely ever to wreck a wheelchair while racing down a hospital corridor.

      Also least likely to ask a strange man out. Were there more surprises lurking behind that mask of respectability? Damn. He did like the unexpected.

      Still, when he’d asked if there was anything he could do for her, what he’d meant was that he’d pick up her dry-cleaning bill. He should have been more clear about that.

      He was going home to his ideal woman in a few more days. Her name was Amber. She had long, wild, red-tinted hair, red lips and eyes that were so black they smoked. A lacy white bra, filled to overflowing, peeped out from under her black leather jacket.

      Amber had appeared in his life—unexpectedly—in April of 2002. In fact, she had appeared at the flick of his wrist. He’d been changing the calendar from March, and there she was, April 2002 on his Motorcycle Maidens calendar.

      At least he was faithful to her. He had never turned the page to May. New calendars were a dime a dozen, after all, but a woman like Amber? He’d been searching for her since then. When he found her, then and only then, would he consider giving up the bachelor lifestyle. Meanwhile, he could tell his mother who, after seeking counseling several years back, had started showing unexpected and not entirely welcome interest in him, that he was “seeing” someone.

      Amber was not the type who baked cookies, or was content with a cup of tea on a Friday night. She probably didn’t like cats or small children. But the way she unbuttoned her jacket and leaned over the handlebars of that Harley—the exact same make, year and model that he himself rode—who cared?

      Meanwhile, it was true, he’d gone through a number of Amber look-alikes. Big-busted redheads, with steamy smiles and promising eyes, some of whom even shared his addiction to all things fast and furious. But somehow it always dead-ended, always disappointed, never even got close to filling that place.

      Luke did not like thinking about that place. The restless place. The empty space. He was thirty-four years old and facing up to the fact that the older he got, the harder it was to fill. Speed didn’t do it anymore, not the way it used to. And the broken bones took longer to mend than they used to.

      “What do you mean, go out?” he asked, leaning toward her, playing the game he knew how to play. Even though she was not his type, the man-woman thing was an effective form of outrunning that place, at least temporarily.

      She actually was blushing a charming shade of crimson, something Amber did not do, and would not do when he finally found her.

      “Never mind,” she said, and tossed her hair. “That was a silly thing to say. I don’t know what got into me.”

      It was the wrong kind of hair for him. Since Amber, he liked redheads, and not necessarily real redheads, either. But that self-conscious toss had drawn his eye. Miss Priss’s hair was an intriguing shade somewhere between corn silk and ripening wheat.

      Considering it wasn’t the type of hair he went for, at all, he found it odd that he suddenly wanted to touch it. “We could,” he said, “go out.”

      Her green-blue eyes got very big. Amber would have licked her lips and let her eyes travel suggestively down his hospital gown, but hers didn’t.

      “Maggie, wasn’t it? Isn’t that what Nurse Nightmare called you?” He was helping her along, giving her an opportunity to flirt, but she was obviously terrible at this. She was looking everywhere but at him.

      “Maggie Sullivan,” she confirmed reluctantly. “But really, never mind.”

      “Go out?” he prodded her. “Like for a drink or something?”

      “Oh. No. I mean I don’t drink.”

      Hell’s bells, this was getting worse by the moment. Amber would drink. Get on the tables and sway her hips and lick her lips when she’d had a few too many.

      And he’d be the one who got to bring her home.

      “So, what did you mean, then, go out?”

      “I thought maybe a movie…or something,” she said lamely.

      Worse than he thought. A movie, which meant the big debate. Do you hold her hand? Put your arm over her shoulder? When was the last time going out had meant that to him?

      He thought he’d been twelve.

      “Did you have a particular movie in mind?” Mind. Had he lost his? Maggie Sullivan was not his kind.

      On the other hand, his search for Amber was proving futile. Why not entertain himself until she came along? Maggie was the kind of girl who had always snubbed him in high school, the kind of girl lost behind too many books in her arms, not amused by being tripped by his big foot sticking out in the hall.

      Miss Goody Two Shoes and the Wild Boy.

      Life had been getting a little dull. Why not play a bit? She’d asked, not him. She’d started it. If she wanted to play with fire, why not accommodate her?

      “I had heard Lilacs in Spring was good, but—”

      Lilacs in Spring. He was willing to bet it was all about sappy stuff, no motorcycles or pool tables in the script. Kissing. Romance. Eye-gazing. Hand-holding. Fields full of flowers. Mushy music. In other СКАЧАТЬ