Shit. Sean looked back over his shoulder. “To tell your daughter that I love her,” he said without stopping. He moved through the twists and turns of the tunnel, picking up the pace until he was jogging when he hit the door and stepped out into the fresh Seattle air.
Lexie was many things to different people. Daughter. Boss. Pet rescuer. Gettin’ Hitched bride. To him, she was sunshine and chaos. Laughter and lover. She was madness and peace. She was his and he loved her. It hadn’t happened in six months or a year. He didn’t know when he’d fallen for her. The exact time didn’t matter. The minute she’d shoved herself onto the Sea Hopper, he’d been a goner.
A cold breeze blew across his cheeks and through his damp hair, and he pulled up the hood of his sweatshirt to cover his head. He’d walked to the arena that morning, and he glanced at his watch. “Shit.” She was his, but she was about to leave for her grand opening and announce to the world that the Gettin’ Hitched bride was back on the market.
He jogged to the parking lot, didn’t see any other players leaving, then he took off toward the front of the Key Arena. He figured his best chance of stopping her was to head her off at her apartment. If he ran to his own place to get his car, he wouldn’t make it in time to stop her. He glanced around, his gaze searching for a friend or a cab. A steady stream of traffic filled the road, but he didn’t recognize any vehicles exiting the arena and didn’t see one cab.
His glance moved past tourists studying maps as he ran to the curb, looking up and down First. He stopped next to a cement security bollard, and his gaze landed on a bright red scooter parked on the sidewalk. A big metal cooler was bolted on the back with a local phone number and a big sandwich painted on the side. Sunlight caught on the silver key dangling from the ignition, shooting sparkles into the air like a sign from God. Before he could think it through, Sean hopped on the red seat and fired it up. He’d had a Ducati once upon a time; he could surely manage a Vespa. The thing didn’t have a clutch and he looked around for gears.
“Hey! Get off my scooter.”
Sean looked up at a guy in a red jumpsuit moving toward him.
“I’m borrowing it,” he said, and turned the gas handle. The Vespa shot across the sidewalk and off the curb with more spunk than he expected.
The deliveryman called after him, “Come back or I’m calling the police.”
Sean couldn’t worry about a little thing like grand theft, and merged into traffic. He gunned the piece-of-shit scooter and shot down Pike. He wove in and out of traffic, but by the time he made it to her apartment building, her parking space was empty.
He’d been to her store once, but he’d relied on his GPS. He wasn’t all that certain he even knew how to get to the right shopping center in Bellevue, but he didn’t let a little thing like directions keep him from heading toward the 520.
Wind whipped off the hoodie, and a bug hit the same eye Ed Sorenson had hit a few days earlier. The Vespa topped out at fifty. Cars whizzed past and people honked at him for either driving in the fast lane or because they wanted a sandwich. A Good To Go! toll pass had been taped to the inside of the short windshield. On the east side of the bridge, he took a wrong exit and ended up in an old neighborhood. A dog chased him, biting at the Vespa tires before Sean made his way out again. At a stoplight, he asked directions from a guy on a Harley next to him. The man revved his engine and pointed, as if talking to a guy on a Vespa was beneath him. By the time Sean pulled into the right parking lot, he was bug splattered. His good eyeball was dry, his bad eye was watery, both were dusty. He didn’t see anyone out front or the “Grand Opening” banner he knew Lexie had ordered. He didn’t see her car, either, just the bright red storefront. He figured she’d parked out back, and was so relieved to make it in one piece, he felt like crying like a girl. Whether from exhaustion or delirium, he accidentally hopped the curb in front of the store. The front tire stopped, the bike flipped over, and he landed on his back in the middle of the sidewalk, gasping for air and surrounded by sandwiches.
“What are you doing here?” Lexie’s friend Marie appeared over him, her eyes kind of squinty behind her glasses. “And what are you doing with Jimmy’s Scooter Sub?”
“Where’s Lexie?” He swallowed past the dry patch in his throat and hoped it wasn’t a fly.
“Gone.”
Chapter 16
•love is a beautiful madness
A pair of kayakers slid through the smooth waters of Lake Union, gliding past the Sea Hopper and paddling toward the neighborhood of houseboats moored farther up the eastern shore.
“I just have one more suitcase,” Lexie said as she handed a medium-sized wheelie to the pilot inside the small amphibious plane.
“Geez, how long are you planning to be gone? A month?”
“Just a week.” She hadn’t planned to get away at all, but Geraldine had called with a Buddy emergency. Lexie’s grand opening had been a flop due to a misprint in the Seattle Times. Only a few people had shown up, and she’d left early, leaving the recently unemployed Marie in charge. She needed time away to heal and relax. Although it would take more than a week to heal her broken heart, and she doubted Geraldine would be very relaxing.
A week was a start, though. One week would turn into another, then another. Then a month would pass, until one day she would wake up without thinking of Sean Knox.
They’d never even been a real couple, but the love she felt for him was very real. So was the pain.
At her feet, Yum Yum barked at the kayakers and wagged her tail. The little dog wore a down parka with a faux-fur trim to shield her bare skin. Lexie picked her up and put her in the plane.
From within the cockpit,
Jimmy’s cell phone rang and he said loud enough for Lexie to hear, “What? You’re kidding. Did you call the police?”
He jumped out of the plane with a frown creasing his brow just beneath his aviator hat. “That was one of my drivers. Someone stole one of my Scooter Subs,” he told her, and shoved his phone back inside the pocket of the old leather jacket he’d loaned her a few months ago. “The police are on the lookout for it.”
“The police are looking for your sandwich motorcycle?” Had it really been just a few months since he’d mentioned his latest business scheme? So much had happened it seemed like a year.
“It’s a scooter. It was parked outside the Key Arena and some guy in blue sweats jumped on it and drove away.”
“That’s crazy.” She pulled out her sunglasses to shield her eyes from the afternoon sun.