Born to Be Wild by Patti Berg Read Free Book Online Page A

him,” she said, swinging her leg over the motorcycle, wishing they would continue on their way. And then his words hit her. She tapped him on the shoulder and he tilted his head toward her.
    “This is the second time you’ve brought up my marriage to Chip. Do you have some personal vendetta against him?”
    “I just keep wondering why you married him when you wanted to run away the night before your wedding.”
    She laughed. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. I was in love with Chip. Yes, marrying him was a mistake, a foolish mistake,” she admitted uncomfortably. “But I never wanted to... to...
    “To what?” he asked, his all-too-familiar intense brown eyes boring into her.
    “Oh, dear.”
    The dimple next to his mouth deepened as his grin grew wider. “Something troubling you?”
    She glared at him through the visor of the helmet, thankful that he couldn’t see her embarrassment. “You’re the man who poured champagne on my gown, aren’t you?”
    “Afraid so. I’m also the one who distinctly heard you say you wanted to run away—with me.”
    “I don’t recall those being my exact words. I think I wished I could run away.”
    “Wished. Wanted,” he quipped. “It’s all the same thing.”
    She wondered why something so insignificant, something that had happened ten years ago, could make her feel so uncomfortable now. Then she realized it was because Max wanted her to feel uncomfortable. He wanted to make her feel miserable about that moment, and he was doing a darn good job of it.
    “I was nineteen. I was nervous, scared half out of my wits,” she explained. “Whether I wished it or wanted it doesn’t matter. It was a crazy thing to say and I regretted it later. But you. You were older—”
    “I’d just turned twenty.”
    “Old enough that you should have laughed it off.”
    “I did.”
    “You expect me to believe that? You’ve spent the past couple of hours stomping around my home as if you were annoyed with me. You’ve been terse, rude, and you’ve used your motorcycle as an instrument of torture. If you weren’t acting out your aggressions for some silly little mistake I made ten years ago, if you weren’t trying to get back at me for hurting your feelings, then what, pray tell, were you doing?”
    His jaw tightened. So did his eyes. Suddenly he turned around and kick-started the engine.
    She tapped him on the shoulder again, but he didn’t look at her. Could he possibly be sulking? Had he really thought she would run away with him, when her comment had been nothing more than the verbal musing of a young, foolish, and very nervous girl?
    Suddenly she remembered him showing up the next morning, his bravado when he’d said he’d come to take her away. Men could be so confident, so sure of themselves in every situation, while she was sure of so little.
    The only thing she’d been sure of that morning was that she wouldn’t end her marriage to Chip before it had begun. She’d been raised by a mother who considered divorce the rule rather than the exception and had a father who bounced from one blond bimbo to the next. She wanted a different kind of life—and she’d hoped to have it with Chip.
    But Max hadn’t known that. He’d only heard her say she wished she could run away with him, he’d believed her, and she’d hurt him. That bothered her terribly.
    This time when she tapped his shoulder he jerked around.
    Lifting the visor so he could see the concern in her eyes and not mistake her words for something being said just so she could get what she wanted from him, she said softly, “I did want to run away that night. I doubt you can understand this, but I was afraid I couldn’t live up to Chip’s expectations, afraid he didn’t love me as much as I loved him. But... but running away frightened me, too.”
    “You don’t owe me any explanations.”
    “Maybe not, but I do owe you an apology. I’m sorry if I hurt you.”
    He laughed. “Apology