Читать книгу Finders Keepers - Ingrid Weaver - Страница 7

Chapter Four

The hand that enclosed Brittany’s was warm and gentle. She thrilled at the contact. For an instant, the restaurant smells and sounds disappeared and she was once more an eight-year-old girl with skinned elbows and knees, sitting on the side of the road, staring through her tears at the mangled bicycle in the ditch.

Her parents had repeatedly cautioned her not to ride her bike on the hill to the north of the farm, because the road curved sharply, the gravel was loose and they worried she might fall. But they cautioned her about everything, so she did it anyway. With the sun warm on her face and the breeze ripe with the smell of freshly cut hay, she pedalled faster and faster, leaning low over the handlebars as the world blurred around her. The sensation of speed was intoxicating, her recklessness empowering.

Naturally, she crashed. The new bicycle she’d begged her parents to buy her was ruined. Her sweater was torn. Her scrapes stung like crazy. She had never felt more miserable, because she knew she would get in trouble, and that simply wasn’t like her. When she heard the rumble in the distance, she thought it was thunder, but it turned out to be Jesse’s Harley.

That was how they met. He was only fourteen, far too young to have a driver’s license, yet he was big for his age and capable of handling the large machine. It was an old, rebuilt bike of questionable ownership that he cruised around the back roads where the cops seldom patrolled.

Brittany didn’t care how many laws he was breaking. In her mind, he was the proverbial knight in shining armor, arriving on his flashy steed to rescue her.

His touch was gentle then, too. He didn’t make fun of her for falling off her bicycle or for crying like a baby. He didn’t comment on how she was too fat to ride it in the first place. Instead, he helped her onto the seat behind him and took her home on his Harley.

How could she help falling in love with him? He was the epitome of cool. Gorgeous, too. The six-year gap in their ages only made him more fascinating. Each time she saw him, she found more to love about him. He was kind. Funny. Smart. Sensitive. He wasn’t bad, like everyone in town said.

Or so she’d fantasized.

She’d been a fool. Her naive longing for an imaginary love was the reason she’d nearly ruined her life.

Cutlery clinked against a stoneware plate, snapping Brittany out of her trance. She dropped her hand to her side, finally breaking the contact with Jesse. “Yes, of course I remember you,” she said. “What brings you back to Port Hope?”

His smile faded. His features firmed into an expression every bit as tough as his reputation. “I’m looking for something.”