A Wedding on Bluebird Way Read online

  As soon as Felicity closed the door with her foot, Tom was out of bed, naked as the day he was born. He took the tray from her, set it on the dresser, and pulled her into his arms. “Did you hear that? No cancer.”

  She bobbed her head, flooded with bliss. “And you’re going back to school!”

  “I decided this county needed another extension agent.”

  “It does!” she said, her heart overflowing.

  “And,” he said, “I’ve decided a cold breakfast isn’t so bad.”

  “What do you have in mind?” she asked, leaning in and kissing him lightly on the lips.

  “Showing you all over again just how much I love you.” He led her back to bed.

  Tears misted the corners of her eyes. Felicity could hardly believe her good fortune. She had found a man who loved her; she had a clean bill of health and a new booking for a wedding.

  And outside her window, bluebirds sang in the trees, a beautiful symbol of all the happiness that lay in store.

  There Goes the Bride

  Allyson Charles

  Chapter One

  The wind whipped her hair into a frenzy around her head. The late morning sun kissed her bare arms. And her eyes watered as she rocketed down the back highway at seventy miles per hour.

  Savannah Loving was finally free. And crazy screwed, but she was going to ignore that last bit for as long as she could. The Ducati hummed between her legs, and she opened the throttle further, let the vibrations speed her from the disaster she’d escaped back at the Bluebird Inn. Or was it a disaster she’d created?

  A mess of hair blew across her mouth, and she shook her head, knocking the hair free. The rushing wind tore the air from her throat, and she was only able to suck down short, fast breaths. A wave of panic threatened to crash over her, and Savannah pushed all thoughts of the look on her dad’s face from her mind. Of Chance shouting after her as she’d sped off. She was finally making her own choices, damn it, and she was going to enjoy every second of her motorcycle ride as she fled from Serendipity, Texas.

  Her newfound freedom didn’t last long. A siren echoed in her ears, the wails growing louder, and blue and red lights flashed in her side mirror. For one crazy moment, she thought about testing the Ducati, seeing just how fast her uncle’s bike could go, before sanity set in. Well, her version of it anyway.

  Pulling to the side of the road, she stopped beneath the shadow of an old billboard. It advertised a gas station three miles down the road that had shut its pumps over twenty years ago. Strips of paint had peeled from the billboard, and other patches of the advertisement had blanched almost white from the sun. Frayed, worn, and colorless. Savannah knew just how the billboard felt.

  The Ducati hummed softly as she watched the cop step from his truck, adjust the wide brim on his black cowboy hat, and make his way toward her. His short-sleeved black shirt stretched across a wide chest and showcased a pair of strong, bronze arms. Large, mirrored sunglasses hid half of his face, but a niggle of recognition slid beneath her breastbone, and she squeezed the grips.

  “Ma’am, turn off the motorcycle, please.”

  Savannah looked down the empty road ahead of her, an enticing serpentine path through grassy fields dotted with wildflowers. She’d only made it ten miles out of town, and the thought of turning back closed her throat.

  “Hank Evans, is that you?” She scraped her teeth against her top lip. “I heard you’d moved back from Dallas.”

  He took off his sunglasses and slid them in his breast pocket, right below the silver badge pinned to his shirt. Deep, whiskey eyes examined her, looking her up and down, and pausing on her bare feet.

  She curled her toes into the dirt on the shoulder of the road. When she’d first started planning her great escape, she’d thought to wear the tank top and leggings under her wedding dress, but she’d forgotten to set aside a pair of sneakers. She should have kept her heels on.

  “Savannah Loving?” He shook his head. “I hardly would have recognized you all grown up. Now, please turn off your motorcycle and show me your license and registration.”

  “You know who I am. My ID won’t tell you anything different.” Glancing over her shoulder, she saw a dust trail from someone cutting across a dirt road rising into the sky. Her heart pounded. But no one would be coming for her from that direction. It was just someone going about his daily business. She let out a shaky breath. But someone could be coming, and soon. She didn’t have time for a ticket. “I’m sorry I was speeding.”

  She looked up at Hank. He’d been eighteen the last time she’d seen him. On that birthday, he’d hightailed it out of Serendipity, and she hadn’t thought he’d ever come back to the small town. He looked taller than she remembered, but maybe that was only because he’d filled out, added muscle to his rangy frame. Ten years in the military would do that to a man.

  A sinister thought crossed her mind, and she narrowed her eyes. “Did my parents send you after me? I’m not going back. You’ll have to drag me, kicking and screaming.” The crazy idea to bolt, to open the bike’s throttle to the max and dare anyone to catch her, shot through her head again.

  Hank’s lips flattened, and he leaned over and flipped the engine cut-off switch. The Ducati grumbled before cutting out. The sudden silence rang in her ears.

  “I stopped you because you were going seventy in a fifty zone. I haven’t spoken to your parents in years. Now, license and registration. Please.” He rested his hands on his duty belt and shifted his weight. The leather of his boots creaked.

  “Oh, all right.” Pulling the neck of her tank top from her body, she dug into her bra and pulled out the driver’s license she’d stashed away along with her credit card and a small bundle of cash. Hank raised an eyebrow, but took the license silently. “I don’t know why you need it. You know who I am,” she repeated.

  “But I don’t know if you’re licensed to operate this vehicle.”

  “You taught me how to ride!”

  He sighed, as if the memory of that day was one best forgotten. “Registration?”

  She looked at the bike, but there weren’t any saddlebags, no storage that she saw. “I don’t know where the registration is. It’s my uncle’s bike.”

  “Fine. Stay here.” He strode back to his truck and leaned in the front door.

  Her phone rang, for probably the tenth time in as many miles, vibrating against her belly. She ignored it. Swinging her leg over the bike, Savannah paced around it, kicking up dirt. Her new pedicure, her toenails painted a delicate Pink Lace that her mom had said was perfect for a bride and that Savannah had hated on sight, would be ruined. She kicked up more dirt.

  Disgust twisted her stomach. When had she started letting her mom pick her nail polish color? She was twenty-five years old, and she still let her parents make her decisions. It hadn’t always been that way. She glanced at Hank. He was talking into a radio, but his gaze was focused on her. Like he thought she was a flight risk.

  He was right. She eyed the Ducati and sighed. She wanted to take her life back, but becoming a fugitive probably wasn’t the way to go.

  She used to be independent. Strong-willed. Heck, when she’d been twelve and determined to learn how to ride a motorcycle, she hadn’t let her dad’s refusal to teach her get in her way. Nope, she’d hunted down the biggest, baddest, roughest twelve-year-old in her class who she knew had a motorcycle at home, and demanded that he teach her.

  Much to her disappointment, Seth Evans hadn’t known how to handle a motorcycle. But he, Savannah, and his friends hadn’t given up. They’d revved the engine to his dad’s Honda and fallen off the back end until they were covered in scrapes and bruises. Until the biggest, baddest, roughest twelve-year-old’s older brother, Hank, had stepped in and taught them all how to ride so they wouldn’t kill themselves. Or permanently damage the Honda.

  Her mother had been appalled when she’d gotten her motorcycle license right along with her driver’s license on her sixteenth birthday. Her father had bo
ught her a moped.

  It was that moped, she realized, that had been the beginning of the end for strong-willed, independent Savannah. It had been generous of her dad to buy it, even though she would have preferred the oldest, most rusted-out bike to that pristine, powder-blue scooter. But her parents had been so much happier seeing her on the girly-mobile that she’d swallowed down her disappointment. The moped had been next to useless on her parents’ ranch, so she’d ridden it a couple of times through town and then let it sit in the garage.

  The Cadillac Coupe her parents had bought her for her eighteenth birthday had been much more practical than a bike. And they’d been so pleased that they could provide for her, and so bighearted, that she’d ignored the fact that it made her feel like an old lady to drive it.

  When she’d come back from college with her bachelor’s degree and teacher’s certification, she’d known she wouldn’t be able to afford much. But she’d eagerly hunted for apartments in her price range, because the place would be hers, a home of her own that she had earned.

  Her parents bought her a condo.

  How can you be anything other than grateful and humbled when your parents buy you a frickin’ condo?

  All those gifts, all those times Savannah had done the polite thing, thanked her parents and accepted instead of forging her own way, and it had all come down to this. Pink Lace on her toenails and a jilted fiancé back at the Bluebird Inn.

  Hank came back and handed her the license. “Here you are, Miss Loving. Since you have no prior tickets or warrants—”

  She threw her hands out wide. “Of course I don’t have any tickets. I’m Savannah Loving. Prom queen and class valedictorian. President of Alpha Phi.” All those wasted years being what everyone else wanted her to be. She circled the motorcycle, kicking at loose stones and ignoring the sting. “I’m the obedient daughter. The soon-to-be-mother to the great Loving-Worthington dynasty. Women like me don’t have records.” She laughed, the sound bordering on the hysterical. “I was supposed to be married by now. Did you know that? At this very moment I should have been saying ‘I do’ and becoming Mrs. Chance Worthington. Everyone told me I was the luckiest girl in the world.”

  Her phone rang, the lyrics to “Oops! . . . I Did It Again” filling the air. Tears burned the backs of her eyes. Whatever “It” was, she’d never even done it the first time.

  A pucker appeared between Hank’s eyebrows, and he glanced down to where the sound was coming from at her stomach. “Uh, do you want to get that?”

  “No.” The music stopped, then started again as a new call came in. Growling, Savannah hiked up her tank top and pulled the phone from the waistband of her leggings. Hank’s eyes flared wide when he caught an expanse of skin, before going hooded again. Without checking the caller ID, Savannah turned off the phone and stuck it back in her pants.

  She tugged her top down and glared at Hank. “I’m not going back.”

  “I didn’t say you had to.” He rocked back on his boots. “Uh, are you telling me you ran away from your wedding?”

  “Yes!” she shrieked. The enormity of what she’d done hit her anew, and her legs wobbled. “Oh my God. My parents are going to kill me. All the money they spent on that wedding . . .” That, and the fact that she wasn’t going to become a Worthington. Was no longer the golden child. She swallowed and tasted bile.

  Hank raised his hands, palms out. “Calm down. It can’t be that bad.”

  “Have you ever stood someone up at the altar? Kicked off your heels as your father tried to lead you down the aisle and hopped on the back of a motorcycle, leaving all your friends and family behind in the dust?”

  His lips twitched. “Can’t say that I have.”

  “Don’t you dare laugh at me, Hank Evans.” She poked him in the stomach and then shook out the hurt in her finger. Damn, his abs were rock-hard. “I am a woman on the edge.”

  “Of that I have no doubt. You always were a bit crazy.”

  She’d been thirteen the last time he’d seen her, a child, but his statement still sent relief pounding through her. She flung her arms around his neck and squeezed him tight. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “Uh . . . okay.” He patted her back.

  She held on for several moments. Held on to the memory of herself that a virtual stranger had brought back to life. The woodsy scent of his soap filled her nose, and she inhaled deeply. His hand was large, comforting, and he pressed it into the small of her back, pulling her snug. Her chest pressed against his, and she started to tingle in places that hadn’t tingled in years. Dropping her arms, she stepped back.

  He shifted. “I’m going to let you off with a warning this time. Let’s get the bike in the back of my truck, and I can take you back to Serendipity.”

  She fell back a step. “I told you I’m not going back.”

  “Well, I can’t let you ride barefoot.” He pressed his lips into a pale slash. “And why aren’t you wearing that helmet?” He jerked his chin at the yellow brain bucket that was strapped down behind the seat.

  “It’s locked.” She shrugged. “I didn’t have time to ask my uncle for the key.”

  Hank huffed out a breath and pulled the Ducati keys from the ignition. He held up a small key on the ring. “I think this one will do the trick.”

  “Oh.” Savannah tested it, and the cable lock that wound through the straps at the ear of the helmet popped open. “Well, there you go.”

  “You still aren’t wearing shoes.”

  “I can’t go back.” She shook her head, her pulse kicking up again. “Not yet.”

  Hank stared at her. Assessing. Unspeaking.

  She curled her toes. He had handcuffs and the authority to arrest her, but if he tried to put her in his truck, she was going to fight.

  Clapping a palm on the back of his neck, he sighed. “Hold on a sec.”

  Striding to the truck, he pulled open the door to the back seat and pulled out a duffel. He dug through it, coming up with a worn pair of white sneakers and a thick pair of socks. He walked back to her. “You can take my workout shoes.”

  “They’re huge. It will be like wearing clown shoes.”

  “They’re better than nothing.” He handed them to her and walked back to the truck.

  Sitting in the dirt, she pulled on the socks and sneakers, and tried to knot the shoelaces as tightly as possible. She raised one foot. The heel of the sneaker swung several inches from her own heel. Were they better than nothing?

  Hank dropped into a squat in front of her and grabbed her ankle. Holding a roll of duct tape to his mouth, he bit down on the end and ripped the roll down, exposing a long stretch of tape. He wound it around his shoe and up to the hem of her leggings.

  “Hey!” She tried pulling her leg back.

  Hank flicked his gaze to her. “Are you worried about your fashion statement? Now?”

  Savannah grumbled, but let him finish taping the shoes to her pants. When he was done, he tossed the roll aside, gripped her under her arms, and lifted her to her feet. “Let’s see if you can walk without falling on your face.”

  It was awkward. She had to take large, unwieldy steps, but it worked.

  “Now get on the bike,” he told her.

  She did and played with the gearshift lever and rear brake pedal while those absurdly long shoes lay on the footrests. If she kept her toes pressed up in the front of the shoe, it all worked fine.

  “I’m good to go,” she said brightly, and gave him a wide smile. She might have been temporarily delayed, but her escape was still a go.

  “Where are you heading?” He handed her the helmet and stuck the key back in the ignition.

  With her feet planted on the ground, she rocked the bike back and forth, making sure it was in neutral. She shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ll figure it out on the way.”

  “Any friends you can go stay with?”

  She shook her head. They were all back in Serendipity. And would all think she was a fool for leaving Chance Worthing
ton. Or call her parents. Or both.

  “Family?”

  She shook her head again. Ducking her chin, she slipped the helmet on, avoiding eye contact.

  He blew out a big breath and stared at the sky. “I’m going to regret this,” he muttered.

  “Regret what?”

  Instead of answering, he walked back to his truck. He leaned in, grabbed something, and came back to stand beside her. He unwound a key from his key ring. “Here. I haven’t sold my place in Dallas yet. You can stay there for a bit. It’s pretty empty,” he warned. “Just furniture that the stagers set up. But it’s safe. In a decent part of town.”

  She closed her fingers around the key, squeezed it tight. “Thank you. That’s . . .” She cleared her throat. “That’s very kind of you.” And before he could change his mind, she slipped the key into her bra, next to her license and cash.

  A flicker of interest danced across his face, before his expression returned to its stern set. “Do not speed. Stop at the first store you see to buy yourself some shoes that fit. Is that understood?”

  She saluted him. “Aye, aye, sir.”

  Tipping his cowboy hat up, Hank pinched his forehead between his thumb and middle finger. “Already regretting it.”

  “What’s the address?” She pulled her phone out and typed it in.

  “Don’t look at the directions while you’re driving,” he ordered.

  She nodded and bit back her retort. She might have a little bit of crazy left in her, but she wasn’t an idiot. But she didn’t want to argue with the man; she needed to get back on the road and put miles between her and Serendipity. She started the Ducati, the thrum between her legs making her stomach quiver. She was going to get away. She looked up into his eyes, a startling golden brown, and the quiver turned into a shiver.

  “And call your parents, would you? They must be worried.”

  She nodded. Guilt took a tiny bite at her conscience, but she kicked it aside. Guilt would only make her apologize, and promise to do as they wanted. And then she’d be right back where she’d started this morning. In a wedding dress she hadn’t chosen, about to marry a man she didn’t love. She’d send them a text when she got to Dallas. Let them know she was safe.