The Midnight Rider Takes A Bride

Dangerous, most folks in town called Jed. Dangerous and bad.

But no matter what they all said, Jed Ryder was kind at heart to listen so patiently to her self-pitying babble the way he had. And he was so conscientious about his family....

Adora heard herself asking, “You know where the best berries are along Trout Creek?” He shook his head. She set down her empty champagne glass. “Come on, then. I’ll show you.”

That huge, gleaming chopper of his was waiting, right where she thought it would be, down in the small parking lot behind her shop.

Jed reached for his helmet when they stood beside the thing. “Get on.”

Adora took in a long breath. Yes, she knew for sure now that dangerous Jed Ryder was really a very nice man. But that didn’t mean she’d let herself be seen on the back of his Harley. In a small town, word got around. And she could do without rumors about the two of them.

“No. I, um, don’t have a helmet.” She could feel his eyes on her behind the shades and sensed that he knew the real reason she wouldn’t ride with him. But he didn’t say a word.

“We can walk,” she added hastily, not quite daring to look straight at him. “The creek isn’t far. And you couldn’t take the bike on the trail, anyway. Come on.” She started off, and felt a vague sense relief when he fell in step beside her.

They strolled between her building and the next one over, which housed Denita’s Donuts. When they reached the sidewalk, they headed north on Bridge Street, past Church Street and on up to River Street, where they turned right. Once around the corner, they left the shops and stores behind. Wood frame houses, most of them two stories high, lined either side of the street.

In the middle of the block they came to the one-lane bridge that crossed Trout Creek. Adora led the way down the bank to creekside.

The day was cool for August, and in the shade of all the close-growing trees, with the creek bubbling along nearby, it should have been cooler still. But to Adora, the water and all the greenery seemed to make the air uncomfortably moist. Her hair clung to her temples and felt clammy on the back of her neck. They hadn’t gone far along the trail when she stopped and began searching her pockets.

“Gotta do something about my hair,” she muttered apologetically. “Ah-ha.” She came up with a pink ribbon. Swiftly, she tied up her shoulder-length brown curls into a high ponytail. “There. That’s better.”

Jed Ryder said nothing, only waited patiently until she was ready to move on.

A few minutes later the trail cut up the hillside for quite a long stretch. Though it was rugged going, Adora remembered her manners and never let the branches of dogwood or mountain laurel snap back at the man behind her. Periodically they would stop and call Lola’s name. They got no answer.

At last the trail peaked and headed down once more. At the top, panting from the climb, Adora turned back to Jed with a smile. “It’s not far now.”

Unfortunately she started walking before she bothered to look ahead. On the first step she tripped on an exposed tree root. With a little squeal of alarm, she went flying. Seconds later she landed on her backside in the dirt.

Jed was there immediately, kneeling, taking off his shades and hooking them on his vest. “You okay?”

She groaned. “I’m going to be black-and-blue where the sun don’t shine. But I’ll survive.” She rolled to one side and rubbed the sore place gently. “Ouch. One of these days I’ll learn to pay more attention to where I...”

He was watching her, silent as ever, sort of half smiling. She breathed the end of her sentence, barely giving it sound. “...put my feet.”

And then words deserted her. And she could have cared less. There was too much going on for her to think about talking.

All at once the air had grown hotter, sweeter, closer. And Jed seemed to... fill up the world. She could smell leather and dust. And she couldn’t help noticing the sheen of sweat on his skin. She wanted to reach out her hand and feel his beard, to find out if it was as soft as it looked. To put out her tongue and taste his sweat...

Adora hitched in a tiny gasp. She couldn’t believe her own thoughts. Such thoughts weren’t like her at all. She’d never had any interest in that sort of thing. Oh, sure, she’d had a lot of boyfriends in all her years of trying to snare herself a husband. But she’d never gone to bed with any of them. Until Farley Underwood—the weasel. And Farley had made a special point of telling her before he left her what a big, fat zero she had been in that department.

And she supposed if she wanted to go ahead and be depressingly honest, that Farley had been right. She’d wanted to be good at sex. Because it seemed to be something that a well-rounded woman ought to be good at. And she’d tried her best to convince both Farley and herself that she’d enjoyed making love.

But she hadn’t. Not at all. There had just been too much sweating involved—not to mention those unpleasant noises that Farley would make. Yuck. Sometimes the only way to get through it had been to imagine the clever things she could do with window treatments once they were married and had their first house. Or to try to decide whether or not it would be pretentious to monogram their towels.

But right then she could have cared less about window treatments. And monograms were the last thing on her mind. Right then her own sweat felt erotic. And Jed Ryder’s sweat looked delicious. And even the air seemed, somehow, to be humming in a way that set every nerve she had singing. Her body felt heavy. And yet quick and ready at the same time.

It was not yucky. Not yucky at all.

It must be the champagne.

But she knew that it wasn’t. The trek along the trail had banished the glow she’d felt back at her apartment. She was now plain sober. As well as sexually aroused.

Jed said, “Come on.” He continued to smile, and he looked right into her eyes. “Let’s see if you can stand up.” He held out his hand.

Adora took it. He had never removed the fingerless black gloves, so all at once her hand was engulfed in leather and heat. Her whole body seemed to tingle, from the moist skin at her hairline to the pink-enameled toes inside her pink tennis shoes. With a small groan at the effort, she stood.

“Okay?” he asked softly.

She coughed—and ordered herself to pull it together. “Sure. Fine, just fine.” ,

He released her hand. Smiling like an idiot, she brushed off the back of her shorts. He gestured for her to take the lead, so she did.

They started down the trail. Right away she wished she’d let him go first. Her bottom felt numb, and her insides quivered like jelly. It took all the concentration she could muster to walk with some degree of dignity.

They went on as before, not saying anything. And with the silence between them, the wild sounds all around seemed suddenly magnified. From the rude call of a mockingbird to the croaking of the creek frogs, every sound had a sensual intent. Even the buzzing of the honeybees that swarmed the blackberry bushes on either side of the trail struck her as louder, more intense somehow.

Which was ridiculous. The bees were not buzzing any louder than before. It was just her imagination. And nothing had happened between her and Jed Ryder. She’d fallen on the trail and he’d helped her to her feet. End of story.

Now they would find Lola and go their separate ways. And the next time she saw him, she’d smile politely, say hello and walk on by.

The path had leveled out, and they were very near the creek. Then they rounded a sharp bend in the trail. It took Adora a minute to realize what she saw on the ground ahead of her. A woman lay there, on her back, in the arching shadow of a birch tree.

It was Lola.

Two

She lay faceup, with her eyes closed. Adora thought that she looked peaceful, except for the bloodless pallor of her skin. A dented tin pail had rolled a few feet away from her, spilling a shiny trail of blackberries out across the ground.

“God. Ma...” The gentle voice wasn’t much above a whisper, but Adora’s heart stopped at the anguish in it.

He shoved around her, ran to Lola, dropped to his knees at her side. “Ma...” Frantically he felt for a pulse. “Ma. Come on, Ma...” He tipped her head back, checked beyond her pale lips for any obstruction and then began to breath into her mouth.

Adora stood rooted to the spot, feeling outside her own body somehow. As if she weren’t really there. As if the desperate man kneeling on the ground wasn’t Jed Ryder. And the still form of the woman wasn’t anyone she knew.

Because that pale, lifeless figure just couldn’t be Lola. Not Lola, who worked for her. Lola, with her scratchy voice and dry sense of humor. Lola, who took care of all the older ladies on Senior Citizen Discount Day, who was so funny and patient with them, giving them the same boring cuts every time and never getting fed up because they wouldn’t even spring for a set or a blow-dry.

Jed looked up at her. Now he was calm. A terrible calm.

“Jed?” she asked, hoping for reassurance, hoping he would tell her that Lola wasn’t really dead.

“Get help,” he said in a whisper that rang in her ears like a shout. “Run like hell.”

And she did. She turned and ran back the way they’d come. She tore along that trail, shoving branches aside, scrambling upward when the trail climbed, half sliding. half running when the trail cut downhill. Each breath burned in her lungs, and her blood pounded so loud through her body that she could hear nothing else. She stumbled often but somehow managed to keep herself from actually falling.

The going got easier once she staggered up the bank that led to the bridge. From there, she ran on pavement, which wasn’t nearly as tough as running on the rocky, uneven trail. She tore down the street as fast as her shaking legs would carry her, her heart working so hard it felt as if it might explode in her chest.

Tilly Simpson, who worked as Doc Mott’s assistant, nurse and EMT combined, was standing behind the little counter on one side of the waiting room when Adora burst in the door of the clinic.

Tilly’s mouth dropped open.

Adora pressed a hand to her side, gulping for breath, noticing distantly that there were no patients waiting. The big clock on the fake-wood-paneled wall between the two Norman Rockwell prints said it was 2:39.

Tilly started sputtering. “Adora, what—?”

“It’s Lola,” Adora got out between starving gulps for air, “Lola Pierce. Down the Trout Creek Trail. Oh Tilly, I think she’s dead.”

They allowed Adora to ride in the ambulance, a very short ride, down the street and around the corner with the siren blaring. And then they let her carry the lightweight, roll-up stretcher, since both the doctor and Tilly had plenty to carry themselves. They tore down the bank to creekside as fast as they could go. But they weren’t more than a few hundred yards along the trail when Jed came loping toward them with Lola’s lifeless body cradled in his arms—and desolation in his eyes.

A few minutes later, right there on the trail, Doc Mott pronounced Lola dead. He looked at Jed with weary regret. “It was a stroke, I think. Or possibly a heart attack. There’ll be an autopsy. And then we can be sure.”

Jed said nothing, only nodded. They’d already laid Lola on the stretcher. Doc Mott took one end, and Jed took the other.

A small crowd had gathered near the ambulance when Jed and Doc Mott reached the top of the bank. Carefully, the two men hoisted their unmoving burden over the low railing onto the bridge. Adora and Tilly followed close behind, laden with the equipment that, in the end, had been of no use.

“Stand back, folks,” Doc Mott said, as they put Lola on the cot in the back of the ambulance. “Please, folks. Stand back.”

Adora could hear them whispering.

“It’s Lola. Lola Pierce.”

“Gone?”

“Yeah, it sure looks like it.”

Deputy Don Peebles, whom Adora had known since grade school, had just emerged from his big, sheriff’s office four-by-four. “What’s the story here. Doc?”

“Lola Pierce has died.”

“Of what?”

“I can’t say for sure at this point. Looks like a stroke or a heart attack. The autopsy will tell us more.” Doc Mott closed the double doors on Lola’s still form.

“Who found the body?”

“Jed here.” Doc Mott nodded in Jed’s direction. “And Adora Beaudine.”

Don turned to Jed. “I’ll have a few questions for you, Ryder.” He looked for and found Adora. “And you too, Dory.”

“You can ask your questions later,” Jed said. “I gotta get to my sister.”

“I’ll ask my questions now.” Don spoke in a tone of unyielding authority.

Adora stepped up. “Can you make it quick, Don? Please? Tiff’s only eleven. Jed should be with her.”

Don shook his head. “I’ve got a job to do. Dory. Now both of you just move over there, beside my vehicle.”

Adora glanced at Jed, whose jaw seemed set in concrete; he looked as if he had no intention of following Deputy Don’s orders. Just what he needs right now, she thought grimly. To get in trouble with the law.

“Come on, Jed,” she coaxed.

He didn’t budge. So she grabbed his huge, hard arm and pulled on it until he went with her to where Don had pointed.

The deputy was already turning, assuming responsibility for crowd control. “All right now, folks. You’ll have to step away from the ambulance. Tilly’s ready to move out.” He gave a quick salute to Tilly as she climbed into the cab on the driver’s side.

Doc Mott came over to Jed and Adora. He spoke quietly to Jed. “We’ll be taking your mom back to the clinic. From there, she’ll go to Reno, where the Washoe County Coroner will handle the autopsy. The whole procedure could take anywhere from twenty-four hours to a few days. You’ll want to have chosen a funeral home by the time they release the body.”

“Okay.”

The doc glanced toward the ambulance where Tilly was waiting for him, and then turned back to Jed. “Folks in town know you treated your mom right, Jed. And it is important that you be with your sister now. I’ll tell Don to make it snappy.”

“Thanks,” Jed muttered.

“No problem.” After sharing a few quiet words with the deputy; Doc Mott got in the ambulance, and Tilly carefully steered it out onto the small bridge. Moments later, the big white van disappeared, turning left onto Buckland Avenue, headed back to the clinic.

Don instructed Adora to wait several yards away while he talked to Jed. And then he wouldn’t let Jed go until he’d heard Adora’s side of the story. He did make it reasonably quick, though. Within ten minutes of asking the first question, he was nodding at Jed, who leaned against the bridge railing, muscular arms crossed over his powerful chest, looking impatient and more dangerous than usual.

“Okay, you can go,” Don said. “You’ll be hearing from me again, as soon as we get the autopsy results.”

Jed dropped his crossed arms and straightened from the railing. Without a word he headed for home.

The crowd was breaking up, but the folks who still hung around watched Jed as he strode past them. Adora could see the sympathy in their eyes. But none of them said anything; none of them reached out. He was wild Jed Ryder, after all. And who could say what he might do?

Lizzie Spooner, who’d shown up a few minutes before and had been waiting patiently for Don to finish with Adora, now moved to her side. “You okay?”

Adora blinked and looked at her friend.

Lizzie frowned. “You look bad. Come on. I’ll take you back to your place. I was just over there, looking for you. I signed for a package. From your mother. A present, I’ll bet. Let’s go and—”

Jed was almost at the turn to Bridge Street by then. Adora realized she couldn’t just let him go. “Jed!”

Jed stopped. He turned. He hadn’t put those shades back on after she’d fallen on the trail, so she was able to meet his eyes. She saw willingness in them. If she wanted to go with him, to be there when he broke the awful news to Tiff, it was okay with him.

“Wait up!” she called. She felt Lizzie’s hand clutching her arm. She brushed it off. “Gotta go.”

“But, Dory....”

“I’ll call you.”

“I left the package on the back step.”

“Thanks. Later, really.” And she took off at a run.

Jed waited, but only until she caught up with him. And then he was moving again, walking fast.

“I want to get my bike.” They had reached the corner of Church and Bridge. “You go on over to the house.”

“Should I go in without you?”

He cast her a grim smile. “Walk slow. And I’ll beat you there.”

“Okay.”

He took off at a dead run. Adora turned the corner onto Church Street, walking slowly, as Jed had told her to, thinking about Tiffany, who was waiting for her mother to come home.

Jed parked his bike in the attached garage and he and Adora entered the trim wood frame cottage through the kitchen.

They went straight to the living room. There, the first thing Adora noticed was the scent of spiced apple potpourri. She spotted the source: a green glass bowl on a side table, filled with the stuff. Adora had made that potpourri herself.

And Lola had loved it. “It’s autumn and apple pie and my grandma huggin’ me, all just from a smell,” she had declared.

So of course Adora had given her some.

But she would never give her any again.

Blinking back tears, Adora looked around the tidy room, at silk freesias in a dimestore vase on a cheap veneer coffee table. At People magazines and Ladies’ Home Journals arranged in a fan. At the two slightly threadbare flowered easy chairs and the tan velour couch.

Tiff was asleep on that couch, curled up on her side, with one hand under her head and the other pressed against her heart. Her silky auburn hair, which Adora had cut into a cute little wedge for her, lay smooth and straight against her soft cheek. She was smiling a little, as if her dreams were sweet ones.

Looking at her, Adora just wanted to let her go right on sleeping. She glanced at Jed and thought he felt the same.

But then, as if she’d sensed them watching her, Tiff opened her eyes. For a moment she seemed dazed. Then her eyes cleared and her sleepy smile grew wider. She sat up and yawned.

“What’s up, guys?” She looked from Adora to her brother and back again. And her smile faded. Worry clouded her dark eyes. “What?”

Jed dropped to the couch beside her and wrapped one of those huge arms around her. “Tiff...” And that was all he seemed to be able to say.

Tiff nudged her shoulder against him, fond and impatient at the same time. “What?” She looked at Adora for an answer. “Dory, come on...”

Adora prayed for the right words to come to her.

Before they did, Jed said, “It’s Ma.”

Tiff turned to him. “Mom?”

Jed nodded.

Tiff worried her lower lip. “I don’t...um. What do you mean?”

Jed started to speak.

But before he could get a word out, Tiff went on, “It’s weird. I was just dreaming about Mom. She hugged me. She said never to forget how much she loves me. That’s kind of funny, huh? Like I could forget something like that. You know how she is, always grabbing me and kissin’ on me and saying I’m her precious baby girl. She looked...really peaceful in my dream. But her skin was too white, you know?”

Adora remembered Lola lying on the trail. Peaceful. And pale...

“Jed?” Tiff nudged him again. “Jed. What’s the matter?”

And somehow, he said it. “Tiff, something happened. Ma was picking berries. Down by Trout Creek. She had...a heart attack, or something. We’re not sure.”

Tiffany shook her head, her hair fanning out, then falling so prettily against her cheek. “A heart attack? Mom? No. There’s nothing wrong with Mom. Mom is fine. Mom is—” She ran out of words. She turned to Adora, her big brown eyes filling, her face going red. “Dory. Dory, what is he saying?”

Adora gulped, feeling answering tears rising, willing them down. “She’s gone, honey.”

Tiffany gulped in a breath. And then she let it out on a tight little moan. “No...”

Jed rubbed his eyes. “Aw, Tiff...”

Tiffany turned to him again, her soft lips quivering, but her chin held high. “Gone. You mean...dead?”

Jed only nodded.

“Mom?” she whispered. “Mom’s dead....”

And then, with a cry, she flung herself against her brother. She grabbed a handful of his black vest in each of her small fists, and she pressed her face against him, at that shining silver cross. “No,” she said softly.

“Yeah,” Jed whispered tack.

“No!”

This time, Jed said nothing.

But Tiffany couldn’t stop. “No,” she said. “No, no, no, no...” over and over, as if by saying it so many times, she might bring Lola back.

Soon enough, the nos became sobs. And the tears spilled over.

Adora stood there, feeling useless, aching for both of them, as Tiffany cried and Jed held her, rocking her like a baby, stroking the smooth red-brown cap of her hair.

Finally, Tiff calmed a little. She pulled away from Jed. Adora spotted a box of tissues on a side table. She went and got it. Tiff took a handful. She dried her eyes and blew her nose, hiccupping a little, trying to bear up.

Watching her, Adora couldn’t help recalling her own foolish, self-indulgent tears earlier that afternoon and feeling that her own problems weren’t much at all compared to this. She also wondered about the precious minutes she’d kept Jed in her apartment, listening to her woes and drinking champagne. Could those minutes have made a difference? If she’d told Jed right away about where Lola had gone, might they have found her in time to save her life?

Tiff blew her nose for the third time, then scooted over closer to Jed and patted the space where she’d been. “Sit by us, Dory. Please.”

Adora pushed her guilty thoughts away. Now wasn’t the time to ponder them. She sat next to Tiff. With a torn little sigh, Tiff leaned against her for a moment. Then she leaned the other way, against Jed, who wrapped an arm around her and rested his bearded chin on the crown of her head.

“What happened?” Tiff asked. And a sob escaped her. She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, composing herself. Then she took a deep breath. “Please tell me. I want to know.”

Without going into too much detail, they told the sad story. Jed was explaining that it would be a day or two before they knew for sure why Lola had died, when they heard footsteps on the front walk. The curtains of the front window were open. From where he sat, Jed could see the porch and the steps leading up to it. He glanced out—and swore low, with feeling.

Tiff stared up at him. “Who is it?” She turned to look out the window, then moaned. “Oh, no.”

Adora turned to see, but the angle was wrong. Whoever it was had moved out of her line of vision and stood right at the door. The visitor knocked.

Jed pulled his sister just a little closer to his side and caught Adora’s eye. “Answer it, will you?”

“No!” Tiff sounded childish, even petulant suddenly, not at all like the incredibly gallant girl who had asked so bravely to be told how her mother had died.

But Jed was nodding grimly. “We’ll have to deal with her eventually. There’s no sense in trying to pretend we won’t.”

Tiff sniffed in outrage and whirled on Jed. “But—”

“Shh.” He smoothed her hair, then looked at Adora. “Go ahead. Please.”

Adora got up and pulled open the door.

On the porch stood Charity Laidlaw, who was Tiffany’s aunt—as well as the woman who had once accused Jed of rape.

Three

Behind Charity and off to the side a little stood her husband Morton, looking miserable.

Charity spoke first, which was no surprise to anyone.

“Hello, Adora.” Even in greeting, her tone left no room for compromise.

“Hello, Mrs. Laidlaw.”

It was odd, Adora thought. Charity had nice, even features, cornflower blue eyes and ash blond hair that curled softly around her face. She’d kept her figure slim. She should have been attractive. But she wasn’t. She was too self-righteous to be good-looking.