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“Yes. But what do I hold onto?”

There was a faint tremor in her voice. He wanted to reach back, touch her hand, tell her she’d be fine, but he knew better.

She’d jerk away, put up those I-don’t-need-anybody walls.

Stroking a tigress could be bad for a man’s health.

Besides, she really would be fine.

He was one damn good rider, and he had no intention of breaking any speed limits tonight.

True, he’d never installed a passenger seatback on the Harley. She’d have to lean forward and hold onto him. There were grab bars, but she didn’t know that. And he, bastard that he was, couldn’t come up with a reason to point them out.

“Lieutenant? Did you hear what I said? What do I hold on to?”

He turned the key. The big engine roared to life; the power of it throbbed beneath him.

“Me,” he said, raising his voice over the sound of the bike.

She said something. No. Or maybe something harsher. He shifted into gear and let the bike roll forward.

And felt the first tentative touch of her hands at his waist.

He gave the bike a little gas.

She reacted instantly, leaning into him, pressing herself to him, her breasts against his back, her open thighs around his hips, her arms wound tightly around him. As he started out of the lot, he thought that if she held him any tighter, he might find breathing difficult.

But the unvarnished truth was that he’d been finding it difficult to breathe since the first time he’d set eyes on Bianca Bellini Wilde.

Chay frowned, shifted gears, and sent the big motorcycle into the night.

CHAPTER FOUR

“You?” Alessandra said. “On a Harley?”

The sisters were standing before a mirror that stretched above a line of sinks in the ladies’ room of Chay’s “little Italian place.” Its actual name, Piccola Italia, Little Italy, was so close to what he’d called it that Bianca would have laughed if she hadn’t arrived at the restaurant too breathless to do anything except wonder how she’d survived the ride.

Breathless because the ride had been scary.

Surely not breathless for any other reason…

“Hey.”

She blinked and met Alessandra’s eyes in the mirror.

“I said, I’m still amazed. That you rode Chay’s Harley. Tanner just assumed he had his truck. I mean, if we’d known he had the bike, we’d have insisted you go with us.”

“Yes,” Bianca said, as if the entire episode didn’t amaze her, too, “but he didn’t have a truck, so what is there to be amazed about? The motorcycle was the only vehicle available.”

Alessandra poked her in the side with her elbow.

“You know what I mean. You’re just not, you know, you’re not the motorcycle type.”

“And what type am I, pray tell?”

Alessandra rolled her eyes. She knew that tone of voice. It belonged to the highly intelligent, highly educated, highly irritating Bianca Bellini Wilde, soon-to-be Bianca Bellini Wilde, PhD.

“Give me a break. You’d sooner ride an elephant than a motorcycle.”