Midnight Fantasy

Slowly Tag lowered his gaze. Instead of flowers, a mountain of beer cans and baseball caps were piled high on the mound of clods. Indeed, every baseball cap that had been nailed to the ceiling of Shorty’s had been enthusiastically ripped off and reverently placed on his grave.

Tag’s eyes stung. Frenchy would’ve been mighty proud.

Grief tore a hole in Tag’s wide chest as he slowly rose and stalked over to his bike. He pulled on his black leather jacket, zipped it. Next came his gloves, his black helmet. Straddling the big black monster, jumping down hard, revving the engine, he made enough noise to wake the dead.

But then maybe that was his intention.

Not that it did any good.

Frenchy wasn’t coming back.

Tag roared to the gate, skidding to a stop in a pool of brilliant gold that spilled over him from the streetlight.

He turned and looked back at the cemetery.

Stay with me, Frenchy.

Suddenly, time as Tag knew it did a tailspin. Or maybe the world just turned topsy-turvy. Whatever. The moon got bigger. Then it flattened itself into the shape of a huge pink egg in that inky sky. Stars popped like fireworks. For a second or two Tag felt there really might be a mastermind up there.

Tag got all warm and tingly inside. The wind sped up and the silvery night pulsed bluish-pink. A couple of beer cans came loose from the grave and started to roll straight toward Tag.

He shut his eyes, but the same pulsating, vivid rosy-blue fog swirled behind his eyelids, too. He blinked. Open or shut, the otherworldly, blue-pink radiance pulsed.

After a while, somebody, maybe Frenchy, switched off the pink light, and the moon settled down. The streetlamp came back on, gold and bright as ever. The night beyond was silvery dark. The can didn’t stop rolling till it hit the toe of Tag’s boot. He picked it up, noticed it was Frenchy’s favorite brand. Tag flattened the can, stuffed it in his back pocket.

What the hell had that been about? Had the streetlight malfunctioned? Or was it just him?

As he stared at the moon he felt different somehow, not so tight and morose. The hole in his chest seemed to have closed. And the night, like his future, beckoned with amazing possibilities.

Had Frenchy done this? Had he actually haunted him? Had he given him this strange sensation of peace? Of new opportunities?

Hell no. The grief and the booze he’d drunk earlier, coupled with not eating, was getting to him. He was hallucinating.

He’d better make it a short night, grab a burger and go to bed. Warily, he looked both ways before pulling out.

Two cars zoomed recklessly toward him from his right. Kids, playing chase. Where the hell was Jeffries when there was real work for a big bully with a gun to do?

Impatiently, Tag waited for the juvenile delinquents to pass.

When he caught that first glimpse of long blond hair, the back of his neck began to tingle. She was a rich tart on the prowl for a cheap thrill.

Happy to oblige, pretty lady.

Then she came into clearer focus the way a terrified deer does in your headlight.

He didn’t notice the make of her late-model, flashy red sports car. He was too busy noticing her. She looked nervous and scared.

He felt her—deep inside. She touched a raw place he hadn’t known was still alive. She made him ache and hurt and crave things he’d thought he’d given up for good. What would it be like to have a woman like her waiting at the door with a smile every night when he came home?

In the space of a microsecond he memorized that pale pampered face; those classy, even features she’d painted with way too much makeup, probably to make herself look older and more sophisticated. Pert, shapely breasts spilled above a low-cut white bodice. The style was overly sophisticated for her, too.

He caught a glimpse of something sparkly around her throat. Diamonds? Rich, too?

He knew her type. She was the kind of woman who wanted her real man to be a money machine but found “nice” men too tame in bed. So, she came looking for a guy like him at Shorty’s. He’d gone with plenty to motels. Some preferred backseats of cars, but once they got their kicks, they rearranged their skirts and drove off. They never asked his name, and he always felt depressed and cheapened, less than nothing when they were done with him.

Other men envied him his popularity. What the hell was the matter with him? What did he want really?

He couldn’t tear his gaze from this one. With her long blond hair streaming behind her, she looked like an angel riding the wind.

He willed her to look at him, to really see him.

Suddenly she tossed her head toward him. Her eyes grew huge the instant she saw him—as if she were equally fascinated and yet scared, too. Again, he thought her different than the others. He had the strangest feeling that if he stared into her eyes long enough, he would rediscover his own soul—which was a crazy feeling, if ever there was one.

Something dangerous and fatal connected them. Unwanted longings and painful needs bubbled too near the surface. His pulse raced out of control.

How could he feel so much in the space of a few heartbeats? She was a baby, younger than her voluptuous body, while he was far older than his years.

“Do you hold yourself as cheap underneath as all the others, baby?” he growled.

The minx flirtily tooted her horn and sped up. As if she wasn’t already driving fast, way too fast.

Her little car careened onto the shoulder, pinging his bike and long, denim-clad legs with gravel, but she regained control. The beat-up sedan behind her raced past Tag in hot pursuit. Gravel sprayed his boots and his bike like bullets. Only he didn’t get any hormonal bang from these punks.

Damn. He knew that junk heap. Rusty and Hank. Not kids. Two mean guys who were mad at the world in general and out for vengeance against him tonight. What if they took it out on her?

He’d lied to Jeffries. Those guys were bad news. As bad as the thugs who’d almost killed him in the swamp. After he’d fired them, they’d sprayed paint all over the cars in the parking lot out back of Frenchy’s restaurant. Painted the outer walls of the kitchen in purple graffiti.

Correction. His restaurant now.

He had a score to settle. A damsel as a trophy only upped the stakes.

Tag whipped his big bike onto the asphalt road, gunned it.

The cars raced north at double the speed limit, flying over the lighted bridge, veering left on screaming tires, onto Fulton Beach Road. The moonlit bay glittered to the east of them. The mansions on pilings that lined the canals loomed tall and dark to the west.

The quaint road along the beach, with its cottages, historic Fulton Mansion and motels, narrowed, roughened, but the girl and her pursuers kept driving like maniacs. Just as she got to the wharves and warehouses that lined the waterfront near his own restaurant, a black shadow raced from the water side into the road.

Her brake lights flashed.

Adrenaline pumped through Tag’s veins.

Had she hit whatever it was…killed it—

Animals touched a soft spot, especially strays. He had a collection of mongrel dogs and cats that lived out back in the woods behind his house.

Her car spun off to the right, bounced over something on the shoulder, and rolled to a crooked stop in front of the alley that ran between two abandoned fish houses. A long shadowy tail disappeared into the tall reedy grasses of the marshy wetlands on the other side of the road.

The junk heap came to a stop right behind her car, ramming her.

The woman in skintight white stumbled out of her sports car.

Rusty and Hank fell on top of her.

Party time.

Tag ripped his bike off road, stopping so fast, he nearly rolled. His right boot hit white shell, and he skidded in a geyser of white dust.

Party time.

Not their party.

His.

He’d been spoiling for a fight…and a woman.

Looks like he had his own personal wish fairy looking out for him up there in heaven.

Frenchy?

Stay with me, Frenchy.

A girl’s terrified scream went through Tag like a knife. He was off his bike—running.

Two

Tonight should have been the happiest night of Claire Woods’s life. Instead, tears of disillusionment stung her eyes. North had let her drive off. So, now here she was, forty miles from home, her blond hair whipping her face like a mop, and two unsavory goons honking on her tail.

She hit the accelerator. Nothing was turning out the way she’d planned. She had so wanted her wedding to be a fairy tale, but as the big day approached Claire Woods, who everybody thought spoiled and pampered, was feeling bereft and hollow.

If only Melody, her quirky, irrepressible, unpredictable sister, hadn’t come home to spoil everything!

It was just like Melody to helicopter off that freighter bound for China and fly home—tonight! Just like her to stage that provocative dance for North’s benefit and steal Claire’s show and maybe her man.

Claire had wanted to shout, “I’m the bride! North loves me now! Not you!” But, of course, she’d only stood there with a frozen smile while Melody hummed and did her cute routine.

And North…

“It’s not North’s fault!”

He hadn’t known Melody would pull one of her stunts. Who but Melody would fly in from China just to crash their party? From the second Melody had waltzed into the yacht club ballroom in those tight pants and shimmery blouse, looking like she owned the place, everybody had been electrified. Nobody could stop talking about that buffoon, Merle somebody, a fly-by-night P.I. their daddy had sent to find her six months ago. Melody had laughingly explained how she’d lured Merle on board her China-bound freighter and then tricked him into walking the plank, so to speak.

“Why did you come home?” North had demanded of Melody. “Why now?”

“I…I couldn’t miss your wedding.”

“You sure missed the last one.” North’s low voice was rapier-sharp.

If North truly loved Claire, he would be chasing Claire right now instead of the two hoods flashing their highbeams and honking behind her.

Instead, her fiancé and her sister were still at the party, probably making eyes at each other this very minute, while she was driving around alone.

No…. No….

A vision of Melody humming softly, Melody, in those skintight black jeans and a white silk shirt, eyes aglow, her honey-gold hair streaming down her slim back took shape in Claire’s too-vivid imagination. Her sister’s dance had been so enthusiastic, so spontaneous, and so original that everybody had stopped dancing and started clapping the moment she kicked off her shoes and threw them to North. Everyone except North who’d gripped those sparkly high heels in a strangle-hold. Not that he hadn’t watched her dance, his expression darkening when the other men had started clapping.

How much of her childhood had Claire spent curled up with a book or in her room alone with her dreams while bubbly Melody was out in the yard putting on a show that had all the neighborhood children, especially the boys, spellbound?

Applause and love and sheer sexiness came so easily to the uninhibited Melody.

All her life Claire had wanted to be first with somebody.

“Don’t think about Melody,” Claire whispered to herself. “Don’t think about the pain in North’s eyes when he’d watched her dance.”

“But I can’t stop.”

Claire had never outgrown the childish habit of talking to herself, especially when she was in her car alone or primping in front of her mirror.

“Chase me then!” she’d laughingly challenged North a little while after Melody’s dance.

The memory made her blush, made her eyes burn. What a brazen fool she was. When would she ever learn North was too cool and mature to play what he called her childish games?

Or was that really it? Did he love her, really love her as once he had loved…

He had told her once, “I can never love you as I loved Melody. But I believe what we’ll have will be better and stronger than what I felt for her.”

Claire was sick of driving around. More than a little scared, too, and not just of losing North. The jerks behind her were persistent. Her parents’ warnings played like tapes in the back of her mind.

A woman alone on the road is prey, Claire. This in a shrill tone from her bossy mother, Dee Dee.

When a man sees a woman alone, he takes it as an invitation. This from Sam, her all-knowing doctor father.

Maybe the old folks were smarter than she’d thought. Her legs had been jelly ever since these two goons had almost sideswiped her, forcing her onto the shoulder a while ago.

The humid wind that battered her face and tangled her butter-colored hair stank with the pungent fragrance of a plankton-laced bay. When their car speeded up, attempting to pass her again, Claire shakily pushed a sticky strand of hair out of her eyes.

Her front wheels skidded. Her heart skittered.

“I’m not scared!”

When the car in her rearview mirror rushed forward and she could no longer see it, she yanked her steering wheel to the left and cut them off. Honking, they eased off the accelerator and veered back into the right lane behind her. So did she. They slowed, and she relaxed enough to rehash the humiliating little scene at the country club with North and Melody, which was the reason she was in this mess.

North never wanted to discuss wedding details, maybe because his first wedding had ended in such disaster.

“We’ll all be happier when you grow up!” North had thundered distractedly a few minutes after Melody’s dance had ended. Claire had been trying to discuss some of the difficulties with wedding costs. “So, scale back. Compromise!”

North could hold onto his cowboy cool a whole lot longer than most guys, so his uncustomary show of temper should have warned her.

“But I can’t. It’s our wedding day. If your family would just—”

“You know what your problem is?” North had waved one of Melody’s shoes at her. “You’re spoiled, Claire.”

“Me? Spoiled? You’re the big multimillionaire rancher.”

Men. At first she hadn’t been able to believe that North, whose wealth was legendary, had joined forces with the wedding consultant, caterers, her parents, and his family to attack her. Why couldn’t he understand how unsure she felt with Melody home and everybody else pulling her to pieces?

“Darling, Mother keeps saying she just wants our wedding day to be fairy-tale perfect,” she’d whispered, “something special we’ll remember forever. We’re doing this for you…to make up for…” Claire stopped, staring at the sparkly shoes he still held because she couldn’t say, my sister jilting you at the altar.

“I wish you two would worry a little more about what comes after that day—our marriage.”

“Oh, that—That’s the happily-ever-after part.”

“Damn it.” North had shrugged wearily. “I’m beginning to wonder about that.”

Finally, she’d said what was really on her mind. “Is this about Melody?”

“Hell, no.” But he’d reddened, and the sparkly shoes had glinted. “Life’s not lived like the glossy pictures of those bridal and home magazines you and your mother pore over all the time. I wish to hell we’d eloped.”

Suddenly she’d realized everyone, especially Melody, had begun watching them when North had raised his voice in annoyance. Claire had felt frightened and guilty when North’s gaze had drifted back to her blushing sister.

“I’m sorry,” Claire had said. “So sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.” When he’d scowled at her and then at the shoes and hadn’t apologized, she hadn’t known what to do. Suddenly she’d realized she shouldn’t have upset him with wedding details right after Melody’s dance. “Dance with me, darling,” she’d pleaded, realizing he hadn’t said one word about how beautiful she was in her white sheath.

Again his black gaze had drifted to Melody. “I’m really not in the mood to put on a show!”

“But we’re supposed to be madly in love.”

“Claire, your sister’s show is a hard act to follow. And now you’ve got me all worked up, too. I can’t just…You’re always pressuring me, chasing me—”

“’Cause you never chase me.”

His black eyes left Melody and flicked over Claire with a strange look of pity that startled them both. When he pressed his handsome lips together and continued to regard her thoughtfully, she was terrified.

“How will it look to everybody if we just stand around, not dancing, not talking?” Claire pleaded. “And holding my sister’s shoes?”

“Frankly, I don’t much give a damn.”

“You’d better be careful,” Melody had quipped, gliding up to them. “That sounds a lot like Rhett Butler’s exit line.”

A look had passed between Melody and North. Then North’s face had hardened and he slammed the shoes into her open palms. “And you’re just the girl to appreciate a good exit line.”

Melody had gone as pale as death.

Claire had felt a burst of sympathy for North.

Would he ever get over her sister?

Of course, he would. He was. She had just been immature to push him.

Would he ever be over her sister?

People were turning to stare. Not knowing what to do, Claire had flown out of the club and gone to her car.

North would follow. He would leave the stuffy party where all anybody ever did was try to impress each other. He would chase her. He had to.

Nobody had been more upset than Dee Dee when Claire’s wacky, unconventional sister had broken North’s heart. Just as nobody had been more elated when he’d found consolation first in Claire’s friendship, and then in her love.

Claire banged her hands on her steering wheel and listened to the band. Even out here the throbbing music was loud, almost loud enough to drown out the loneliness in her young aching heart, almost.

“Go back inside.”

“No, any minute North will march out those polished mahogany doors with the shiny brass handles and prove his love for me—to everyone.”

But the doors didn’t open, and the brass handles began to swim in a sea of hot tears. North stayed at the club.

And even though Claire had known deep down that she was, at least, partly in the wrong—she hadn’t had the guts to go back inside, face Melody and meekly apologize to North.

Her mother, Dee Dee, who’d all but engineered this marriage after Melody had jilted North, was, once again, planning the wedding of the year. Only Dee Dee was determined that Claire’s wedding would be so magnificent everybody would forget and forgive what Melody had done. But the financial burden of marrying great wealth for the second time was a strain on their upper-middle-class budget, a fact her father never let Dee Dee forget, which was why Claire had asked North to help.

“Have a wedding your family can afford,” he’d said. “After what Melody pulled, all that matters is a sacred ceremony.”

Mother said the wedding had to be perfect…perfect. Just the event to reestablish Dee Dee Woods as a Texas hostess to be reckoned with after having been made the laughing-stock of the town last year by Melody. The effort and pressure to impress the right people had her mother in bed with what she called “heat” headaches.

Bridal nerves. Maybe that’s what had Claire so uptight and jittery lately…even before Melody’s return.

The moon lit a path from the horizon to the shoreline. Not that she noticed when the jerks behind her honked loudly.

Their bumper slammed into hers. A sickening chill of fear shivered up her spine.

She had driven forty miles on this fool’s errand to regain her pride. Halfway to Rockport where her parents had a condo on the bay, the punks had forced her onto the shoulder.

They honked flirtily again. Somehow she had to get back to North and apologize, really apologize. But first she had to shake these juvenile delinquents before she left Rockport.

When the hoods flashed their high beams, she stomped down on the accelerator of her sports car.

It was now or never.

As the cars raced, she began to practice her apology.

“Oh, North, I’m sorry. You were right and I was wrong. You’re my best friend.” She would close her long lashes, let them drift open slowly. “Of course, I love you just as I know you love me. Seeing Melody…Those shoes…That dance…I just wanted you to chase me…To excite me…To thrill me…To act like a caveman for once.”

The way Loverboy does.

“You can’t say that to North Black!” an irreverent masculine voice in her head drawled.

“I know that, silly.” She couldn’t ever let North…or anyone else know about her embarrassing, secret, fantasy life with…with Loverboy.

The trouble had started innocently, the way most bad things do. A lonely little girl, Claire hadn’t ever been able to make friends as easily as Melody. And if she had made a friend, Melody had quickly charmed her or him.

Claire had worn lace dresses when Melody and the other girls wore jeans. Claire had read books, while Melody and her friends had made mud pies and climbed trees. Finally, Claire had invented an imaginary friend, Hal, who was just as lonely and shy as she was. Everybody had thought it was so cute the way she included him in every conversation, set a special place for him, even bought presents for him. Somehow over the years, Hal had grown up and gotten way too sexy for her to handle. She was a virgin…but only technically. In her imagination, Hal and she got up to wanton mischief in all sorts of dark and inappropriate locations, on kitchen tables and the hood of her car. Hal was tall with black hair…like North.

And yet not like North at all.

North didn’t have all that much time for her. He kept much of himself hidden from her. He was steady and predictable when it came to his work, too tied to the responsibilities of his ranching empire and his duties to his legendary family.

Hal was wild and dangerous and free, insidiously attentive, and as faceless as an outlaw’s shadow.

North could give her the kind of safe, secure life her upper-middle-class mother could brag about.

Mostly her imaginary lover was a pirate on a ship who carried her off to sea. Sometimes he was a bandit or a highwayman who carried her to his hideout and robbed her of more than her gold.

Strip, my lady. Slowly. And every time she took something off, he would toss a gold coin at her feet.

Mostly she dreamed about him at night, but lately she’d been having the most lurid daydreams. The over-sexed phantom was becoming terribly distracting. One reason she was so anxious to get married was to send Loverboy packing. Once North made love to her, she would have a husband to dream about. What sane woman would chase a dream, when she had a man like North in her bed? Everybody, simply everybody told her North was the sexiest, hottest, richest cowboy prince in all of Texas.

North could have chosen any woman. He had chosen her.

“That’s not the way it was, Sugar-Baby,” purred Loverboy.

She hated to be called that. “Shut up, Hal!”

“I was there! And Melody was first!”

“Go away and leave me alone!”

“Never. I am not abandoning you till I find a more suitable companion for you.”

“Stay out of my love life!”

Suddenly a strange thing happened. The black sky turned pink, and she saw a lone black figure on a motorcycle off to her left silhouetted in a white cone of light. Pinkish-blue light pulsated around him. He was wearing a helmet, but the heat of his gaze was a visceral, physical connection. Even in that blurred, peripheral glimpse, she sensed that such a man in the flesh might prove wilder and more chaotically thrilling than any secret interior existence with Loverboy.

She knew better than to look at the biker, but some dark and dangerous force compelled her.

Curiosity kills more than cats.

The forbidden—especially in the tame, pampered life of a woman like Claire, who lived her life by rules the way some people paint by numbers—was the most powerful temptation. Besides, Melody’s dance and North’s dark mood had opened a crack in her heart and self-esteem.