The Greatest Risk Read Online Free Page A

children. But the way she unbuttoned her jacket and leaned over the handlebars of that Harley—the exact same make, year and model that he himself rode—who cared?
    Meanwhile, it was true, he’d gone through a number of Amber look-alikes. Big-busted redheads, with steamy smiles and promising eyes, some of whom even shared his addiction to all things fast and furious. But somehow it always dead-ended, always disappointed, never even got close to filling that place .
    Luke did not like thinking about that place . The restless place. The empty space. He was thirty-four years old and facing up to the fact that the older he got, the harder it was to fill. Speed didn’t do it anymore, not the way it used to. And the broken bones took longer to mend than they used to.
    â€œWhat do you mean, go out?” he asked, leaning towardher, playing the game he knew how to play. Even though she was not his type, the man-woman thing was an effective form of outrunning that place, at least temporarily.
    She actually was blushing a charming shade of crimson, something Amber did not do, and would not do when he finally found her.
    â€œNever mind,” she said, and tossed her hair. “That was a silly thing to say. I don’t know what got into me.”
    It was the wrong kind of hair for him. Since Amber, he liked redheads, and not necessarily real redheads, either. But that self-conscious toss had drawn his eye. Miss Priss’s hair was an intriguing shade somewhere between corn silk and ripening wheat.
    Considering it wasn’t the type of hair he went for, at all, he found it odd that he suddenly wanted to touch it. “We could,” he said, “go out.”
    Her green-blue eyes got very big. Amber would have licked her lips and let her eyes travel suggestively down his hospital gown, but hers didn’t.
    â€œMaggie, wasn’t it? Isn’t that what Nurse Nightmare called you?” He was helping her along, giving her an opportunity to flirt, but she was obviously terrible at this. She was looking everywhere but at him.
    â€œMaggie Sullivan,” she confirmed reluctantly. “But really, never mind.”
    â€œGo out?” he prodded her. “Like for a drink or something?”
    â€œOh. No. I mean I don’t drink.”
    Hell’s bells, this was getting worse by the moment. Amber would drink. Get on the tables and sway her hips and lick her lips when she’d had a few too many.
    And he’d be the one who got to bring her home.
    â€œSo, what did you mean, then, go out?”
    â€œI thought maybe a movie…or something,” she said lamely.
    Worse than he thought. A movie, which meant the big debate. Do you hold her hand? Put your arm over her shoulder? When was the last time going out had meant that to him?
    He thought he’d been twelve.
    â€œDid you have a particular movie in mind?” Mind. Had he lost his? Maggie Sullivan was not his kind.
    On the other hand, his search for Amber was proving futile. Why not entertain himself until she came along? Maggie was the kind of girl who had always snubbed him in high school, the kind of girl lost behind too many books in her arms, not amused by being tripped by his big foot sticking out in the hall.
    Miss Goody Two Shoes and the Wild Boy.
    Life had been getting a little dull. Why not play a bit? She’d asked, not him. She’d started it. If she wanted to play with fire, why not accommodate her?
    â€œI had heard Lilacs in Spring was good, but—”
    Lilacs in Spring. He was willing to bet it was all about sappy stuff, no motorcycles or pool tables in the script. Kissing. Romance. Eye-gazing. Hand-holding. Fields full of flowers. Mushy music. In other words, the big yuck.
    The type of movie he and Amber would not go to, ever.
    â€œMeet me right here, at say, eight?” he said. “We could catch the late show.”
    â€œAren’t you in the hospital?”
    â€œDid you ever see the