Authors: Lee Ann Sontheimer Murphy
She
mistook the sound for more thunder until she felt the vibration.
Devlin was riding his Honda Magna in the street,
keeping pace with her.
As Gracie turned
her head, he called out.
“Want
a ride?”
She
did, but the idea of climbing astride behind Devlin and taking off on a
motorcycle ignited an inner terror.
As a
kid, Gracie couldn’t even always manage to balance her bicycle.
If she said yes, she might do something
awkward, and they’d both take a spill.
As she hesitated, Devlin cut the engine and stared at her, eyes
intent.
“You’re scared, aren’t you?” he
asked after a long few moments.
His
perception surprised her.
Gracie
nodded. “I am, a little.”
“You’ve
never ridden a motorcycle.” It wasn’t a question, but she responded.
“No.”
“What
about a bike? Surely to Christ you had a bike.”
Her
shy tongue responded, almost against her will and with more candor than she offered
anyone else. “I did and I skinned my knees every time I tried to ride it.”
Devlin
didn’t laugh. “It’s going to rain.
If
you want a ride, all you’ve got to do is hang on.
I won’t dump you out on the street, I
promise.
How far away do you live?”
“It’s
not far, on East McDaniel off National,” Gracie told him and gave him the full
address.
“Hop
on and I’ll get you there before you get soaked.”
She
parted her lips to tell him thanks but no thanks, but instead her feet took
control.
Gracie walked over to the bike
and climbed onto the seat behind him.
Her purse ended up between his back and her chest.
Always safety conscious, she asked,
“Shouldn’t I wear a helmet?”
“Yeah,
you’re supposed to, but I don’t have a spare with me.” Devlin turned his head
around so she could hear his reply. “Hold on.”
Gracie
put her hands on his sides, barely touching, and he reached back.
His large hands grasped hers and placed them
snug around his waist. “When I say hang on tight, I mean it.”
Before
she could protest or make a sound, Devlin took off, the bike gliding over the
pavement with increasing speed.
The same
wild, irrational fear she experienced on every carnival ride she’d attempted
took wing and panic threatened to erupt.
Gracie yelped, but she didn’t think Devlin heard her.
As he rolled the bike faster, she clung to
him, eyes closed.
At the first traffic
light, he paused and shouted in her direction. “Okay so far?”
Unwilling
to admit she’d been frantic, she yelled, “Yeah.”
“Good.”
This
time he launched with more speed and she grasped him tight.
As they sped over the streets, light rain
began falling on them, little more than mist.
For a stray second or two, her angst yielded to exhilaration, intoxicating
and sweet.
Gracie resisted an urge to
raise both hands in the air and yell
whee
.
The brief moment faded as Devlin slowed and
eased over to the curb.
“Is this it?”
“Yes,”
Gracie said.
She swung her leg over the
seat and dismounted, managing to bump him with her leg.
Her klutziness embarrassed her. “Oh, I’m
sorry.”
“Don’t
sweat it.”
By
then she stood on the sidewalk, the old frame house looming behind her.
“Well, thanks for the ride.
I appreciate it.”
His
deep brown eyes fixed on her face, and his lips curved upward into a smile,
larger than the previous one. “No problem, Gracie.
I’ll see you next week for class?”
“Sure,”
she said.
“Thanks again, Mr. Devlin.”
The
smile vanished and he frowned, transforming his face into a foreboding
mask.
“Don’t call me that,” he said, and
she realized he wasn’t joking. “It’s just Devlin.”
Her
mother taught her proper manners, old-fashioned ones long out of style.
Calling someone she just met by his last name
only didn’t seem correct.
Gracie would
rather use his first name, but he hadn’t shared it.
“Okay,” she said, chastised. “I’m sorry.
It’s just I don’t know your first name and…”
Devlin
reached out from his perch on the Honda and touched a finger to her lips,
silencing her immediately. “You don’t need to apologize for everything.
It’s cool.
If you want, call me Dev.
It’s
that or Devlin or Devil.
I don’t use my
first name.”
In
three sentences, he created a dozen questions, but Gracie wasn’t sure what to
ask first.
Devil
must
be a nickname
and if so, it explained his horned helmet and mirror, but she wondered why.
The question popped out before she considered
he might not want to share the reason. “Why do they call you Devil?”
He
never blinked, not once. “I did a lot of evil things once, in Iraq.”
“Oh.”
Gracie couldn’t find anything else to say and stood, silent and self-conscious.
The light rain intensified, but she failed to
notice until the dampness of her thin blouse filtered into her
consciousness.
This man intrigued her in
a way no one else had.
She wanted to ask
him up for coffee, talk to him for hours long into the night, and at the same
time she longed to run away.
She sorted
through the options for something to call him and chose the simplest.
“Dev?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s
raining harder.
Do you want to come up
to my apartment to dry off?”
Dev
shrugged as if he didn’t care either way. “I don’t live very far.”
His
nonchalance increased her desire to have him come out of the rain. “I can make
coffee,” she offered. “You’re getting soaked.”
Five
seconds, then ten passed before Devlin nodded.
Although she didn’t hear any more thunder, the rain increased with
speed.
“All right, you talked me into a
cup of coffee.”
“Come
on,” she said and hurried through the downpour up to the porch.
She
used her first key to open the middle door of three then led Devlin up the narrow
stairs.
At the top, she turned to the
left and unlocked another door.
Gracie
walked into the front room of the three room apartment and turned on a
lamp.
The soft electric light
illuminated the space.
Although she rented it furnished, she liked to
think her efforts at decoration enhanced it and made it cozy.
The red couch with big yellow sun designs
seemed more hideous than usual.
It
claimed almost a third of the small room, flanked by the maple rocker she
brought from home and a wire plant stand holding three pots.
Her battered television, an analog model
hooked to a converter box, rested on a 1960’s vintage coffee table shoved
against the wall space between the doorway to the miniature kitchen and the tiny
bedroom.
A few cheap rag rugs, the kind
favored by kindergarten teachers for nap time, covered the hard wood floors in
select spots.
Dev
dripped just inside the doorway, staring around as if he’d entered an oasis or
magical palace.
“Go ahead and sit down,”
Gracie said. “A little rain won’t hurt the couch and I’ll grab you a towel.”
She
ducked through the bedroom into the single bathroom dominated by a big clawfoot
tub and returned with two fresh towels.
Devlin reached for them and began toweling off his hair with the
smallest.
Gracie sat in the rocking
chair and wiped away the rain from her own hair then her arms.
When she glanced up, she saw he’d removed
his denim jacket and she reached for it.
He frowned, as if he thought she might steal the thing.
“I’m
going to hang it up on the back of a kitchen chair to dry,” she explained.
He
relaxed. “Oh, okay, sure.
Nice place
you’ve got.”
Gracie
thought he must be making fun of it until she caught sight of his
expression.
Something poignant crept
into his eyes along with a little awe.
“Thanks,” she said, humbled. “I’ll go make the coffee.”
She
draped his jacket over one of the Arrow back chairs.
In the light, she noticed the patch across
the back of the denim and traced it with her fingers.
An eagle perched atop a globe.
An anchor ran through the globe and rope
twined around the world. ‘
Semper fi
read the words coming from the eagle’s beak in a banner.
Around the edges of the patch, Gracie read
Department of the Navy – United States
Marine Corps
.
Beneath it, another
sewn-on addition, this one handmade, proclaimed,
Marine Expeditionary Forces – Operation Iraqi Freedom
.
A few pieces of the Devlin puzzle
connected.
So he’s a Marine,
Gracie mused,
or
was.
It
explained a lot and she pondered it all as she made coffee in her percolator by
rote, the familiar motions done without thought.
When the coffee was ready, she poured two
cups and carried both back into the living room, to Devlin.
Chapter Two
Sprawled
on her ugly couch, Devlin appeared to be quite comfortable.
He also appeared much larger when confined to
a small indoor space.
Beneath his jacket
he wore a plain light brown T-shirt, and Gracie noted his lean body, hidden
before.
His muscles were taut against
the damp material and something within purred with approval of his masculine
appeal.
“Did
you need sugar or milk or anything?” she asked as she handed him a mug of
coffee.
Dev
shook his head. “No, thanks, I drink it black.”
Gracie
didn’t even try to contain her smile. “So do
I
.”
Her
parents, older than everyone else’s, drank their coffee black.
In their austere household where the biggest
issue had been money or the lack of enough of it, sugar was a wasteful
splurge.
Gracie started drinking coffee when
she was eight, and by the time she realized many people added a little sweetening
to temper the sometimes bitter brew, her taste was set.
Sugar ruined the taste and milk polluting
good coffee had to be a sin.
She
watched Dev take a sip,
then
he lifted his eyebrows.
“Hey, this is good.
You know how to make
coffee right.”
“If
you mean strong, I guess I do,” Gracie said. “My family likes it that way.
We call it railroad coffee.
My dad retired from BSNF a few years ago.”
“It’s
just how I want coffee,” Dev said. “Thanks for making it.”
“Oh,
you’re welcome,” Gracie said. “I just hope it won’t keep you awake all night.”
As
soon as the trite words left her mouth, she wished she could take them
back.
She sounded like her mother,
prattling away with platitudes and old sayings.
“It
won’t,” Dev said. “I don’t sleep much, anyway.”
His
hesitant manner hinted maybe he didn’t usually volunteer such personal
information any more than she invited men up to drink coffee or rode
motorcycles.
Her hand
trembled
the
tiniest bit as she put her cup up to her lips.
Dev made her nervous, but he evoked a growing sense of tenderness,
too.
And his presence leached out a lot
of her usual bashful reserve.
Deep
weariness shadowed his eyes and haunted his face, she noted, so she asked, “Why
don’t you?”
This
time, his mug shook between his hands.
After a heavy moment of silence, he sighed. “You can’t expect the devil
to have sweet dreams, darlin’.
Thanks
for the coffee.
I’ve got to go – morning
comes early and I have to work.”
When
he held out the cup, Gracie noticed the scarring on the underside of his left
arm.
Dead white skin mottled with angry
red patches and rough ridges indicated he’d suffered serious burns.
She noticed similar scars on the side of his
neck and wondered how much of his body had been affected.
Everything she’d learned screamed at her to
say nothing, to ignore what she saw, but Gracie followed instinct.