gas caught briefly, lurching the bike forward, propelling it right toward a little red Austin Healy Sprite that had just pulled into the hotel parking lot.
Then the damn thing stalled again. She tilted sideways, barely managing to avoid bouncing her helmeted head on the sidewalk like a beach ball. But not quite managing to avoid dinging the driver’s door of the Sprite with her handlebar.
“Oh, hell,” she muttered. This was going to be trouble. She knew how guys were about their cars. Darian, her late, unlamented boyfriend, had polished his hubcaps with a toothbrush. Twice a day. And her father—well, once he had darn near killed a valet who had left a fingerprint on the windshield.
Bracing herself for the storm, she straddled the motorcycle defiantly and evaluated the guy who was unfolding himself from the sports car. Late twenties, maybe. Blond hair. Loose Hawaiian print shirt flapping in the summer breeze, lifting to show a pair of khakis that fit well over a neat bottom. Wow. It was kind of hard to see color and detail through her tinted visor, but darn, he was cute.
He was coming her way. To her surprise, he was smiling. “You okay?”
Was she okay? He asked about her before he checked the damage to his car? She tilted her head, wondering if he might be gay.
She pried off her helmet to get a better look. As her curls tumbled free, his eyes widened. She knew that expression. He wasn’t gay.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m fine. Sorry about the ding.”
He didn’t even turn around to look. “Hey, no problem. A car without dents is like a face without laugh lines. It hasn’t really lived, you know?”
She stared at him. Not gay, but maybe nuts? “I guess,” she said doubtfully. “But still. I’ll pay for the damage.” As soon as her next trust-fund check came through, she added mentally.
He shook his head. “I wouldn’t dream of having it fixed. I’ll tell everybody how this gorgeous woman came roaring by one day and left her mark on me forever.” He held out a tanned hand. “Travis Rourke,” he said, grinning. “Nice bike.”
She accepted his hand. “Gwen Morgan,” she said, her mouth forming an answering grin before her brain had given it permission. “Nice car.” She lifted one brow. “Except for the dent.”
He liked that. He laughed, showing even white teeth. The sound was comfortable, as if he laughed often, not worrying whether it might be more sophisticated to be blasé. For a moment Gwen envied him. It was actually kind of exhausting to have to maintain an attitude twenty-four-seven.
“Are you staying here, too?” He indicated the hotel, which was Pringle Island’s pride and joy—a four-star, gray-shingled resort with a thick, green golf course that overlooked the water.
“For the time being.” She really ought to go stay with the Stepwitch—she didn’t have enough room on her Visa for two hours at the hotel, much less two nights. But she didn’t feel up to facing Lacy just yet. Maybe tomorrow.
Travis Rourke looked pleased. “That’s great. I’d love a ride on your bike—when you figure out how it works, that is.”
She tilted her chin. He’d been nice about the ding, but that didn’t give him the right to mock her. “I just bought it, actually. It’s kind of a pain, and I may not be keeping it.”
“Oh, you’ll keep it,” he said. “Fifty bucks says you’re way too proud to let yourself be beaten by a pile of tin.”
“Really.” She froze him with her most supercilious eyebrow arch. “I’m not sure a five-minute acquaintance quite authorizes you to make that call, does it? In fact, I can, and will, dump this bike whenever I choose.”
He grinned. “Yeah, that’s what I used to say about cigarettes, too. But when I finally quit, they had to send in the nut squad to pry me off the ceiling.”
“Well. That’s where we’re different, I suppose.”
“Fifty bucks.” He held out his hand again. “A hundred.”
Someone was approaching from the other end of the parking lot—a tall man with an expensive business suit and a confident walk. He was headed their way—probably a lawyer who had smelled a fee from inside the hotel and was hurrying out to scatter his business card over the scene of the accident.
Gwen narrowed her eyes, then took Travis Rourke’s hand firmly. She couldn’t afford to lose a hundred dollars, but she couldn’t afford to lose face, either. “You’re on. I don’t know how we’ll prove it, but it’s a bet.”
The approaching man was closer now, close enough that Gwen could tell that he wasn’t a lawyer. At least not the ambulance-chaser kind. He might be the marble office, Rolex and cigar-smoking kind. It didn’t matter much to Gwen. She hated both kinds equally.
“God, Travis, in town less than an hour, and already harassing people in the parking lot?” The tall, dark, gorgeous man turned to Gwen with a smile. If he was a lawyer, she thought suddenly, maybe she needed to revise her opinion of the profession. What a smile. “Sorry about Travis,” he went on, resting his hand on the shorter man’s shoulder pleasantly. “He has six sisters who dote on him, so he thinks he’s irresistible to women.”
Gwen tilted her head. Mr. Corporate Heartthrob was actually a buddy of Jimmy Buffet here? She looked both men over, chewing on the edge of her lip speculatively. Travis Rourke was cute—she hadn’t changed her mind about that. But cute wasn’t the word for this new one. In fact, the word for this one wasn’t even a word. It was just a sound. A kind of whimpering mew of animal appreciation.
She gave the newcomer her special smile, the slow one that included an eye massage. She hoped Travis Rourke noticed that it was much hotter than the one she’d given him. He needed to be put in his place a bit. A hundred dollars, indeed.
“Well, hi,” she said, as if she meant it. “I’m Gwen Morgan.”
“Ahh.” His eyebrows went up as one side of his mouth tucked subtly into a dimple. “I thought the silhouette looked familiar.”
So he had been there, last night, when she and Teddy had… Gwen hated the warmth that seeped disagreeably along her cheekbones. She wasn’t ashamed of her behavior—if ever a group of bores had needed to have a stick of dynamite rammed into their stuffed shirts, that party had been it. But she knew that somehow, once again, Lacy had managed to make her bold whimsy appear merely foolish and immature.
She took a deep breath and stretched, putting the heels of her hands against the small of her back. It was a position that did wonders for her silhouette, and definitely put any questions of her maturity to rest. “Oh, so you were at the auction? Funny. You don’t look like a guy who would be a big fan of cheesy, overpriced baby pictures.”
He chuckled. “Actually, I bought three of them.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Did you have too much to drink?”
“Baby pictures?” Travis looked put out, though whether it was because he’d been upstaged by his hunky friend, or because he didn’t approve of the baby pictures, Gwen couldn’t really tell. “You’re investing in art now, Adam? I thought you’d invited me here to buy real estate.”
His friend
