Tristan on a Harley (Louisiana Knights Book 3) by Jennifer Blake Read Free Book Online Page A

toward you.”
    A frown pleated her brows. “I thought I did that.”
    “Sometimes. Other times you back off as if you want to disappear.”
    He was entirely too perceptive. Yes, and when she least expected it.
    “No such thing!”
    “No?”
    The sympathy in his eyes was almost her undoing. For one thing, he looked far too dewy-eyed-handsome with understanding in his face. Then she also didn’t want him feeling sorry for her. She was fine, had been fine since coming to Chamelot, escaping the pigeonhole she’d been rattling around in since she started to school, that of being too smart for her own good. She’d abandoned her nerdy image along with the triple degrees in mathematics, English literature and environmental chemistry, all earned before she was eighteen. Dumbing down from her stratospheric IQ so she could fit in, avoiding big words and complicated ideas had been a small price to pay for acceptance. She’d been happy enough, hiding out behind her borderline outré image so no one could get close enough to question that camouflage for her brainpower. Being singled out now felt like something she should have avoided.
    The only trouble was that another part of her was gladdened by the special attention. And wasn’t that a sad thing to realize?
    “Oh, well,” she said with as much nonchalance as she could manage. “We are all weird, each in our own way. So what do you suggest I do to look more queenly?”
    “If I remember the bet right, we have a whole day to work on it,” Trey paused for an instant. “Want to take a bike ride?”
    Zeni didn’t care for bikes, especially the big Harley Davidson motorcycles Trey favored. Their high speed and lack of protection for the rider; their weaving progress through traffic and exposure to sun, wind, rain and bug assaults all seemed like willful testing of disaster. Riding one was bad enough, but clinging to the back of someone, with no control of the situation, struck her as the height of foolishness, if not proof of a joint suicide pact.
    Yet she envied Trey when he took off from the coffee shop on his Harley, swaying in and out of the slow traffic on Main Street with masculine grace, sublimely free and unfettered, completely without care.
    “Sure,” she said. “Why not?”
    She wore jeans as covering for the bare skin of her legs, just in case they had an accident. Her T-shirt had much the same purpose, though she wished it had long sleeves. And the pair of old-fashioned goggles she slapped on over her eyes was something more than a fashion accessory.
    She clung to Trey with both arms clamped around his waist, her cheek pressed to his broad back for the protection against flies, gnats and moths. But it was also a fine excuse to be close to his hard strength, to feel the subtle vibration of the machine underneath them as it coursed through his muscles and sinews and then into her own. And if their swift, windswept passage, racing their shadow over the pavement, had an element of almost orgasmic excitement, that was her secret.
    They swerved from the main road after a bit, taking a dirt track. The trees overhead created a cool green tunnel, one which they rode through like a surfer threading a turquoise ocean pipe. Dust billowed out behind them, cream and rust from the mix of sands, though they outrode it all the way to what appeared to be a driveway. It billowed past them as they turned again, coating the road’s edging of dried grass and the nodding weeds with a fine powder.
    The house appeared at the end of the drive. It was large and imposing, yet oddly human in scale, another of the many old plantation houses that dotted the area. Trees, vines and head-high shrubs had taken possession of what had once been farmland behind it. They encroached on the house as well, with honeysuckle and saw briers climbing the shutters, and massive azaleas doing their best to cover the front steps.
    It was a Southern Planter’s Cottage in style, with one main floor and a second