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her legs chafed against the rough denim of his jeans, but she didn't notice. She had moved to a point
beyond simple sensation. As she clung to his waist, she prayed the wild ride would never end. The
motorcycle was a magic chariot that held time at bay. As long as the machine kept moving, there was no
yesterday, no today, no tomorrow.
Sam seemed to understand her need to fly. He did not take them due south, but zigzagged across the
peninsula, showing her a familiar world from a different perspective. The San Andreas Reservoir flashed
by, and later the bay. They roared through quiet neighborhoods and ran with the wind along the highway.
Eighteen-wheelers sped by them, tossing grit and belching blast-furnace gusts of air that stole her breath.
Car horns blared at the lace-clad runaway bride perched so incongruously on the back of a
Harley-Davidson. She wanted to ride forever. She wanted to race through time into a different dimension
 a world where she had no name. A world where actions bore no consequences.
South of Moffet Field, Sam pulled off the highway. Before long, they were passing industrial parks and
strip malls. Then he began to slow. She pressed her cheek against the back of his shoulder and closed
her eyes. Don't stop, she prayed. Don't ever stop.
But he did. He kicked off the engine, and the bike became still between her thighs. Turning, he pulled her
close against him. "Time to get a move on, biker lady," he whispered. "Your man is hungry."
She made a breathless, frightened sound. Was he her man? Oh, God, what had she done? What was
going to happen to her?
He let her go as he got off the bike, and then he held out his hand. She grasped it as if his touch could
save her.
"It's a new world," he said. "We're walking into a new world."
More accurately, they were walking into a Burger King.
Susannah's eyes flew open as she became aware of where they were. The asphalt of the parking lot was
warm beneath her stockinged feet. She was barefoot. Oh, God, she was barefoot in front of a Burger
King! A hole had formed in her silk stockings over one knee, and a small circle of skin pushed through
like a bubble on bread dough. Sam pulled her forward, and she saw faces gaping at them from the
window.
Her frightened reflection stared back at her rumpled lace wedding dress, auburn hair hanging in rowdy
tangles, thin nose red from the wind. Panicked, she grabbed at his arm. "Sam, I can't "
"You already have."
With a tug on her hand, he thrust her through the door into the burger-scented heart of middle America.
A gaggle of teenage boys interrupted a burping contest to stare at them from an orange booth. She heard
laughter at the spectacle she was making of herself. The soles of her stockings clung to a sticky spot on
the tiled floor. A group of six-year-olds celebrating a birthday party looked up from beneath crooked
cardboard crowns. One of them pointed. Throughout the restaurant, patrons abandoned their french fries
and Whoppers to stare at Susannah Faulconer. She stood there and tried not to let the enormity of what
was happening sink in.
Good girls didn't get themselves kidnapped. A society bride didn't flee her wedding on the back of a
Harley-Davidson. What was wrong with her? What was she going to do? She had humiliated Cal. He'd
never forgive her. And her father&
But what she had done was too monstrous, and she couldn't think about her father. Not now. Not yet.
Sam had stopped at the counter. He turned to her and studied her for a moment. "You're not going to
cry, are you?"
She shook her head, not able to speak because her throat had closed tight. He didn't know her well
enough to know that she never cried, although at that moment she very much wanted to.
"You look great," he whispered, his eyes sweeping over her. "Loose and sexy."
A thrill shot through her, the sensation so intense that she forgot for a moment where she was. No one
had ever called her such a thing. She drank in the sight of his face and wondered if she would ever get
her fill of looking at him.
He gave her a crooked grin and glanced up at the menu board. "What're you going to have?"
Abruptly, she remembered where she was. She tried to take courage from his complete disinterest in the
opinions of the people watching them. He had called her loose and sexy, and with those words she
wanted to become a new person, the person he was describing. But words weren't enough to make her
into someone else. She was still Susannah Faulconer, and she hated the spectacle she was making.
He ordered and picked up their food. Numbly, she followed him to a table by the window. Her appetite
had deserted her, and after a few bites she abandoned any pretense of eating. Sam reached for her
hamburger.
As she watched his strong white teeth rip through the bun, she tried to tell herself that no matter how
frightened she was, anything was better than dying a slow death of old age at twenty-five.
Susannah had somehow imagined Sam living in a small bachelor apartment, and she wasn't prepared for
the fact that he still lived with his mother. The house was one of the small mass-produced ranches that
had sprung up in the Valley during the late fifties to house the workers who had flooded to Lockheed
following the launching of Sputnik. The front was faced with green aluminum siding, the sides and back
with dingy white stucco. Tarpaper topped with fine gravel covered the roof. It sparkled faintly in the
fading sunlight.
"The light's not on," Sam said, gesturing toward the garage that sat off to the side along with a ragged
palm. "Yank must not be here."
"Does he live here, too?" she asked, growing more nervous by the minute. Why couldn't Sam have lived
by himself? What was she going to say to his mother?
"Yank has an apartment on the other side of town. Mom's in Las Vegas with a girlfriend for the next
couple of weeks. We have the place to ourselves."
That, at least, was a relief. She walked behind him to the front of the house. Next to the door stretched a
long opaque window with vertically ridged glass. The caulking around it had loosened and cracked. Sam
unlocked the door and went inside. She followed, stepping across the threshold and directly into the
living room. She caught her breath.
The decor was a monument to bad taste. Ugly gold shag carpeting covered the floor. An aquarium filled
with iridescent gravel sat next to a Spanish sofa with dark wood trim, brass nail heads, and red velvet
upholstery. Sam flipped a wall switch, turning on a lamp made up of a wire bird cage filled with plastic
philodendrons. Nearby, occupying what was obviously a place of honor, hung a full-length oil painting of
Elvis Presley wearing one of his white-satin Las Vegas outfits and clutching a microphone with
ring-encrusted fingers. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]