“Are you sober?” It was a serious question after his rambling discourse although she should have just said yes. Any other woman, including numerous starlets around the world, wouldn’t have hesitated.
He smiled for the first time. “I am…unfortunately. I’d prefer less sobriety when I’m botching this so badly. Say something.”
“I’m surprised.”
He did a quick double take, rejection a novel experience. On the other hand, he knew what he wanted; no mystery, no doubt. “I’ll make you happy. Promise.” His smile could have dazzled from space. “Swear to God, I’ve missed you like crazy. Don’t worry, good crazy. I love you, okay?”
“Are you sure?”
“I wouldn’t be down on one knee, totally embarrassing myself if I wasn’t sure. In the week you’ve been gone, I’ve had plenty of time to realize how much happiness you brought to my life. How miserable I am without you. Even when you’re arguing with me, you’re fun to have around, oh Christ…that sounded corny as hell. Please.” He exhaled gustily. “Say yes, so I can get up.”
Her heart was beating in double time; she had to swallow twice before she found the breath to speak. “Yes.” She smiled. “You’re the love of my life. Corny but true and I don’t care.”
He looked amused. “We’ll be the loves of each other’s lives then,” he said, rising to his feet in a graceful flow of toned muscle. “Just don’t ask me to write poetry unless it’s a limerick.” Opening the box, he slipped the ring free, put it on her finger and shoved the box back in his pocket. “Seriously though, I was lost without you. Couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, didn’t feel like drinking.” He grinned. “That’s when I knew for sure.”
“I cried buckets. I rarely cry.” She grinned back. “That’s when I knew you’d screwed up my life big time. Speaking of big, this ring is huge. Are you sure you should spend—”
“I’m sure. You’re worth a dozen rings like that, a thousand, don’t sweat it.” He took her hands in his, and his expression turned grave. “I don’t want you to think this is some bizarre impulse I’ll get over next week when the buzz wears off,” he said, quietly. “I know what I’m doing. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I love everything about you. I’m also old enough to know you don’t always get second chances. So I don’t want to wait—no long engagement, no getting to know one another better. Life can change in a second. We both know that.”
She nodded, her eyes wet with tears.
“What do you think about tomorrow? Or we could fly to Vegas tonight.”
Even awash in happiness and love, and on the brink of tears, she was infinitely more practical. “My parents,” she said. “And Lucy. They’ll want to know.”
“Tomorrow then? Call them.”
There was an elephant in the room as well, at least for her, there was. “I’ll sign a prenup, it’s only fair. So why don’t we get married in a week,” she said, trying to sound unruffled and together. “That will give my parents and sister a few days to let the news settle in. And time for you to talk to your attorney.”
“Fine,” he said, rather than argue about a prenup that had a zero chance of seeing the light of day. “I’ll have someone arrange the wedding. Your house or mine?”
She rolled her eyes. “My house is six hundred square feet.”
“Okay, mine. Give me a list of what you want, dress, food, flowers, booze, that shit. What? Too much?”
“I don’t know about you, but sometimes getting dressed in the morning is a big deal for me.”
“In that case, the wedding planner can show us pictures and you point.” He brought her hands to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. “When you’re struggling, tell me and I’ll help. When you have nightmares, I’ll be there.” He smiled. “And when I wake up screaming—”
“I’ll hold you.”
He grinned. “Or we could do something else to take our minds off our troubles.”
“That’s even better fun-wise, perhaps even therapeutic,” she said, a teasing light in her eyes.
He smiled broadly, dropped her hands, cupped her face in his large palms and leaned in close. “Maybe we should have some engagement fun right now.”
“My bed isn’t made.”
He took a step back, a look of mock alarm on his face. “Horrors, forget about it then.”
“Cute.” Clear blue eyes, a smile that took your breath away.
“Not as cute as you,” he said, reaching out and drawing her close. “And in the interests of full disclosure, I could make love to you on a mountain top in a raging blizzard, in the middle of Piccadilly Square at rush hour, on the hot sands of Death Valley and never even notice the surroundings if you were in my arms. So don’t talk to me about unmade beds. By the way, your cleaning days are over.” He grinned. “That’s an order.”
“Only one order?” she said, her voice a low, seductive purr.
Her little purr tore up his spine and exploded in his brain with such a profusion of joy, he wanted to laugh out of sheer, giddy happiness. “Hell, no,” he said, deep in love and chivalrous to a fault with the woman he loved. Sweeping her up into his arms, he strode toward the front door. “I can be a real tyrant when it comes to orders.”
THE END
About the Author
New York Times bestselling author, Susan Johnson, lives in the Midwest, at times in Northern California, is married with three children, and considers the life of a writer the best of all possible worlds. Bringing characters to life allows her imagination full reign, while the creative process offers fascinating glimpses into the machinery of the mind. She also writes under the pen name C.C. Gibbs.
www.susanjohnsonauthor.com
Mercury Falling
By Tracey Cramer-Kelly
Kerry “Mercury” Dawson’s life has never been easy, but things start to look up when he gets a job at Dream Machines—until he crashes a motorcycle he wasn’t supposed to be riding and wakes up in Lucy’s emergency room.
Welcome to LazLo’s Dream Machines Custom Motorcycles, where the machines are hot and so are the bikers who work there! Some are just looking for a little romance, some are hiding deep, dark secrets. But as things heat up, you never know what will happen next…
1
Kerry “Mercury” Dawson blinked.
Twilight. Dark Nevada sky. No stars.
Wait… Why am I looking at the sky?
From the corner of his eye, Kerry took in the chopped-off motorcycle he’d been riding. It lay at an unnatural angle, six feet away.
Oh yeah. Little old blue-hair making a left turn in front of me.
Even from here Kerry could see the caved-in front fender, forks grotesquely squeezing the wheel. The mini-windshield a spider-web of fiberglass. All that glorious chrome twisted and scraped raw.
And what was left of the rear fender another six feet away.
Laz is gonna be pissed I trashed his bike.
“Yo, man, you okay?” Buck’s pock-marked face appeared above him.
Kerry held his hands up in the air. Yep, all fingers were still there. And they moved. He wiggled his toes inside his boots. “Well,” he deadpanned. “I’m not dead.”
Buck smirked and offered Kerry a hand.
“Don’t!” The voice was high and shrill, and made Kerry wince. “He could have a head injury. Don’t move him!”
The body belonging to the voice moved into the circle of bikers that stood over him. The woman had delicate features, elegantly shaped eyes and mouth, and her hair was a mess of dark curls.
“We take care of our own,” one of the bikers—was it Chaff?—growled.
The woman looked at Chaff, then at the other bikers. She was just one woman, and only half their size at that. His fellow bikers had to look damned intimidating in their tattoos, leather and Strikers patches.
She jammed her hands on her hips. “You’re kidding me, right?” She pinned each biker with a stare, one at a time. “One of you is a trained doctor, then? Paramedic? Nurse?”<
br />
Kerry started to chuckle, but a brick wall slammed into his body. His hip, his ribs, his shoulder were suddenly—excruciatingly—on fire. And his head…
Fuck, my head hurts!
He heard a groan—was that him?—and the woman’s attention promptly focused on him. She knelt beside him. “I’m Lucy. I’m an ER nurse. I’ve already called for an ambulance.”
Her hands moved over his body.
“Lady, what the—?”
“Don’t try to move,” she said. “I think you hit your head.”
No shit.
She got her hand into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet.
“Kerry.” She read off his license. “Do you hurt anywhere else?”
“I prefer Merc,” he grumbled.
“Did you say Merc?”
“Mercury,” he said. “You know… as in Mercury Rising?”
Her hand fluttered above his face, blurring. Was she really moving it that fast?
“Well, Merc,” she said. “We need to keep you awake until the ambulance gets here. Tell me something about your life.”
2
“Kerry, wake up.”
He knew the voice. It was the same one that kept saying Stay Awake, Stay Awake, in the ambulance. The woman just would not shut up. He groaned; was he still trapped in the ambulance with her?
He slit his eyes open just enough to ascertain that no, he was no longer in the ambulance. But that blurry figure… Yep, it was her. What was her name again? Oh yeah. Lucy.
“Lucy?” Jeez, it was an effort to speak. “You’re giving me a headache.”
“Kerry.” Relief laced her voice. “You’re awake.”
“Merc,” he grunted.
“That’s right.” He thought he heard amusement in her voice. “Kerry isn’t tough-biker-ish enough for you?”
What did this pixie of a woman know about biker life? He cracked one eye open, enough to see the glimmer of mischief in her eyes, but also enough for the light to lance through his eye sockets.
Sonofabitch!
He closed his eyes as he tried to raise his left hand to his temple.
What the—?
He tried his right. It was as if both hands were glued in place. Were they broken? Couldn’t be; he’d wiggled them, hadn’t he?
Something akin to panic clawed at his insides. His eyes flew open and he raised his head, pain be damned, to search out his hands.
“Easy, Kerry,” Lucy said. “I mean, Merc.”
His hands were not encased in a cast, or even bandaged. But around his wrists…
He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “Restraints?” he croaked.
Nobody restrains me!
He jerked his arms and the bed shook.
So did his head.
Maybe not the best idea…
“Kerry, you hit one of the nurses.” Lucy laid a hand on his arm. “We couldn’t risk that again.”
He stopped wrestling the restraints as her words sunk in. “I did what? That’s not possible… I don’t…”
Wait…
“Which nurse?” He squinted at her.
Oh shit… was that a bruise on her…?
“Me.”
He groaned. Could this get any worse? Yeah, he was in a biker gang, and sometimes he was required to enforce a certain… honor… but he was not some hoodlum or ruffian that went around hitting girls…
“Kerry,” she said. “You have a very nasty bump on your head. You’ve had two seizures and it’s quite possible you’ve damaged something inside that skull of yours.”
He willed his brain to absorb what she was saying. Seizures?
“Lashing out at me wasn’t a conscious action on your part,” she continued. “I understand that, and I don’t blame you. It happens.”
It happens? Ah, Christ…
“The doctor ordered some scans of your head,” she said. “As soon as those are back the restraints will likely be removed and they’ll take you to your room.”
He didn’t know what to say.
“Kerry, will you look at me, please?”
He didn’t want to. Didn’t want to see the bruise he’d left on her cheek.
But he did; he owed her that much. Her eyes were startlingly blue. Deep blue, like the twilit sky he’d been staring up at…
“Frankly, you’re lucky to be alive,” she said. “You’ve got one seriously hard head.”
She didn’t know the half of it.
3
Kerry opened his eyes carefully. His brain no longer felt like it had outgrown his skull. That was a good sign. Gingerly he moved his arms. Relief flooded through him. No restraints.
“How you feeling, man?”
Kerry jumped at the voice; Laz had been so still and quiet, Kerry hadn’t noticed him sitting in the corner chair.
“Bruised everywhere, but I’ll live,” he said.
Laz nodded, and a strange mix of emotions stirred within Kerry: surprise, relief, worry. He tried to put his finger on what he was feeling and could only come up with… touched. Yes, he was touched that Laz had come. He looked up to Laz the way he thought other men might look up to their fathers.
Men who have fathers.
“I hear it’s a good thing you’ve got such a hard head,” Laz said.
The crash.
Lazarus Lowen, owner of LazLo’s Dream Machines, was no pushover; he probably knew everything already.
Time to face the music.
“I guess we need to talk about the motorcycle I trashed,” Kerry said.
Laz didn’t answer, and that made Kerry nervous. “I’ll pay you back for it.”
Laz stroked his chin absently. “Yes, you will have to do that. The question is, how?”
Apprehension laced through Kerry’s chest. “Are you saying…” He swallowed. “I’m gonna need to find a new job?”
“I was very clear that none of the Dream Machine projects were to be used in any type of gang activity.”
Kerry shouldn’t have been surprised that Laz knew his riding companions were more than just a club. “That wasn’t an activity,” he objected. “It was just…”
Laz fixed him with a stare. “Was I or was I not clear?”
Kerry knew the older man was right, and he had too much respect for Laz to try to blow smoke up his ass.
As if it would work anyway.
“You were clear. And…” Kerry swallowed again. “I’m sorry.”
Laz stared hard at him. “I ought to fire you,” he said. “But sometimes you remind me of my younger self.”
“Yeah?” What would the forty-something Lazarus have been like in his twenties?
Laz paced the few feet the hospital room allowed, and Kerry found himself holding his breath. He liked his job at Dream Machines. He liked the work, and the people, and… shoot, for the first time in his life, he actually cared if he got fired.
“One day, you’re going to want more in your life,” Laz said. “You’re going to realize the gang lifestyle is rather limiting.”
More? What more was there, than riding and working on motorcycles? With a little sex and a little art thrown in…
Laz stroked his chin again, studying Kerry in a way that unnerved him. “You broke a cardinal rule when you took the motorcycle out with your friends,” he said. “If you want to stay on at Dream Machines, the job is yours under one condition.”
Well, this was better. Kerry started breathing again. “Name it.”
“You leave the club,” Laz said.
Kerry froze. Leave the Strikers? Those guys were the only friends he had. He couldn’t just bow out…
Laz picked his leather jacket up off the chair. “You think about it,” he said.
Kerry nodded.
At the door, Laz stopped. “I almost forgot.” He dug in his jacket pocket. “The guys at the shop got you this.” He handed Kerry an envelope. “They’ll be by later to see you.”
When Laz had gone, Kerry opened the envelope. It was a get-well card—Tori’
s doing no doubt—showing a cartoon man laid up in a hospital bed with his motorcycle peeking in the window. Inside, each person had written a personal note, many offering help with groceries or anything else he may need.
At the bottom, someone had written “Come back soon, we miss you!”
Maybe the Strikers weren’t his only friends…
4
Two days in the hospital and Kerry thought he’d go berserk. Too much time to think. About Laz, about his job, about the Strikers… would he have to do something crazy to get out of the gang?
Did he want out?
Then there was Lucy. As annoying as she’d been in the ambulance, she may have saved him from greater injury. It got so that he felt he should find her and thank her properly.
He had dizzy spells so bad he thought there had to be something wrong with his head. But the doctors ran every scan possible and didn’t expect any long-lasting ill effects.
They did, however, make no bones about the fact that he was to stay off the motorcycle for three weeks, period—and then to ride with a helmet at all times.
As if.
Kerry sat through the doctor’s lecture, trying not to roll his eyes and silently urging him to just sign the release papers. Laz chuckled silently beside him.
To Kerry’s further irritation, the nurses insisted he ride in a wheelchair.
“Humor them,” Laz said. “It’s only to the car anyway.”
As Laz rolled him out of the ward, Kerry was struck with an idea. “Take me out through the ER, will you?”
Kiss or Kill Under the Northern Lights Page 5