The Return of Luke McGuire. Justine Davis

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      Or laws? Amelia wondered. She tried to remember any specifics she’d ever heard about the wayward Luke, but all she could call up was the general impression of a teenage boy gone wild. What she did know was that David appeared to be heading in the same direction; there was far too much of a gleam in his eyes when he spoke of the older brother he clearly admired. And while she could appreciate—indeed, she’d been pleasantly surprised and touched by—David’s childhood recollections of another side of his brother, she was afraid it was the wild side he was trying to emulate.

      Perhaps his mother had the right idea, after all.

      “—window broken out, and some of that disgusting graffiti sprayed all over!”

      “How awful,” Amelia agreed as she rang up Mrs. Clancy’s gardening magazines.

      “Those boys are getting out of hand,” the older woman said ominously. “It was bad enough when they would harass people on the street, blocking the sidewalks, riding those awful skateboards so fast they could kill a person if they knocked them down, which they nearly did many times. But now this…somebody should do something!”

      Somebody being somebody other than herself, Amelia guessed. Mrs. Clancy was of the speak-loudly-and-let-someone-else-carry-the-stick school. She was a formidable, large woman in her late sixties, with silver hair she was proud of saying hadn’t been cut since she was sixteen, and if she had ever known what it was like to be young and bored in a small town, she’d clearly forgotten.

      Diplomatically, Amelia changed the subject to one she knew the woman could never resist. “Going for that prizewinning rose again next year?”

      The woman’s eyes lit up. “I’ll beat that Louise Doyle yet, you just wait and see.”

      Mrs. Clancy chattered on as Amelia slipped the magazines into a bag. “I wish you luck,” she said as she handed them over with a smile. “I always love walking by your garden.”

      That much, at least, was true. And Mrs. Clancy left the store happy, and would return next month as usual. Amelia had once wondered why she didn’t subscribe and save herself the trip, but soon figured out that this was the only time the poor woman had away from the recently retired Mr. Clancy, and she wasn’t about to give it up.

      Amelia glanced at the clock; she was five minutes past closing. Not unusual for her, but tonight she was a bit tired; she’d had her kickboxing class early this morning, and this afternoon she’d gotten in several shipments of books to be shelved, and handling it all herself was getting wearing. But she wasn’t sure she wanted to hire someone, she liked her quiet times in the shop when she could actually read herself—it was hard to recommend sincerely a book you hadn’t read—and she was getting by on only Sundays off, even with the long hours. By opening at ten and staying open 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?

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