Hard and Fast (2 page)

It was utterly futile to think she could ever attract the attention of a man like that, and she needed to remember that. Why she even wanted to severely mystified her, but there was something about his joie de vivre, the way he didn’t take himself too seriously, that appealed to her. Or at least to the parts of her that resided below the waist.

“Well, let’s go sit down,” Tamara said. “We’re going to miss half of the race and I have a certain rookie driver I need to cheer on.”

Tamara was clearly antsy to see her husband Elec driving, already flashing her pass and making her way into the seating area of the boxes. Imogen followed her, wondering if her sunscreen was going to hold up for the duration of the race. She was dark haired and fair skinned, and the North Carolina sun was brutal. Looking around at the crowds, she realized that the straw hat she had brought to shield her face wasn’t exactly de rigueur. Everyone else who had on a hat was wearing a ball cap, most advertising their favorite driver. Imogen was aware she wasn’t dressed appropriately either. She was wearing a black sundress with a three-quarter-sleeve cardigan and sandals while the majority of the crowd was in shorts and T-shirts.

But considering it was her very first time to the track in Charlotte to watch a live stock car race, she hadn’t known the protocol. She had been looking forward to it as a life experience and because she was still fishing around for a thesis project for her graduate degree in sociology. The culture of stock car racing in the South seemed like a great jumping-off point, but she needed to home in on a more specific topic.

Only she hadn’t anticipated being stuck sitting next to Nikki. Suzanne had virtually vaulted over the row of seats to get the one farthest from Nikki, and Tamara had already taken the seat next to Suzanne. That left Imogen, then Nikki on the end, who was wiping the seat off with a tissue.

“I don’t want to get my white pants dirty,” she said in explanation when Imogen stared at her.

“Then why did you wear white pants?” Imogen couldn’t help but ask.

“Because they make my butt look good,” Nikki said, like this was completely obvious.

“Don’t you have other pants that make your butt look good that won’t attract dirt?”

Nikki smiled. “Yes. But with white pants you can’t wear anything but a thong, and men love that.”

Ah. Imogen didn’t see the logic in that at all, because wouldn’t men generally assume that a woman like Nikki was always wearing a thong? And if they were allowed to actually gain the knowledge of the thong for themselves, she suspected they wouldn’t care one way or the other what Nikki had on over them. But there was no point in launching a further discussion with Nikki. Imogen suspected Nikki had made up her mind and that was that.

“Of course.” Imogen settled into her own seat and looked out at the track. A pack of cars went whizzing by before she could blink, none of which were identifiable to her by either decal or number. She should have bought a program so she could attempt to educate herself.

Nikki was rustling around in her handbag and Imogen glanced over to see the blonde tearing into a bag of mixed greens. She pulled out a piece of spinach and popped it in her mouth like it was a potato chip.

“Want some?” Nikki held the bag out to Imogen.

Imogen shook her head. “No, thanks.” She had zero interest in chewing on greens sans salad dressing. Watching her waistline was as important to her as the next person, but she wasn’t about to sacrifice at least some kind of flavor for skinny jeans.

Not that Imogen was really the skinny jeans type. She had probably exited the womb wearing Ann Taylor coordinates. The clean lines and understated harmony of classic clothes made her happy, and she was fortunate to have inherited her mother’s naturally thin figure. Of course, the flip side of that was a serious lack of breasts, but it was what it was and she had no interest in buying herself a larger cup size.

“Does that actually satisfy your hunger?” she asked Nikki curiously.

“No. But it keeps me from buying nachos.” Nikki had balanced her salad bag in her lap and she was digging a notebook-sized book out of her bag.

“Is that a race program?” Imogen asked. She wanted to look up Tamara’s husband Elec, and okay, she could admit it, Ty McCordle, so she could monitor their progress around the track.

“No, it’s a book I’m reading.”

Imogen gained a whole new respect for Nikki. She was reading at the racetrack. Clearly she was there to show support for her boyfriend, but had brought a book to occupy herself in the long hours alone as the cars did something like five hundred laps.

“Oh, what book is it? Fiction or nonfiction?”

Nikki frowned and pushed her sunglasses up. “I don’t know. I can never remember which one means it’s real and which one means it’s fake.”

Huh. “Fiction is a story; nonfiction is based on facts.”

“Then I guess this is nonfiction. I think.” Nikki held up the book for Imogen to see the cover.

The title was
How to Marry a Race Car Driver in Six Easy Steps
. On the cover was a photograph of a woman kissing a man in a racing uniform with a pair of wedding rings surrounding them.

“Wow, uh, I don’t know if that is fiction or nonfiction either.” Imogen wasn’t sure if the book was intended to be tongue-in-cheek or if someone really thought there was a formula to garner a proposal from a driver. Or if the publisher and author didn’t necessarily think so, but knew women like Nikki would buy the book to learn the secret. “What does it say?”

“There are all kinds of tips and rules, plus profiles of the single drivers.”

“Are you serious?” That completely piqued the interest of the sociologist in Imogen.

“Yeah. And I broke Rule Seventeen of Step Two by accident. I wasn’t supposed to wear high heels to the track, only I didn’t read that part until after I was here.” Nikki rolled the top of her lettuce bag closed and stuffed it back in her purse. “I hope Ty doesn’t notice.”

Considering the man was in a car on the track driving at approximately one hundred and eighty-five miles an hour and attempting to pass other cars going an equal speed with only inches of clearance, Imogen highly doubted Ty was concerning himself with Nikki’s trackside footwear. “I’m sure it’s fine. I don’t really see why a driver would care what his girlfriend or wife wears at a race anyway.”

Nikki looked horrified. “That kind of attitude will never land you a driver. It’s all about image.”

“Really?” Imogen glanced over at Tamara and Suzanne. They were both normal, attractive women in their early thirties. Tamara was married to a driver; Suzanne was divorced from a driver. Somehow Imogen doubted either one of them had followed a manual to land her husband. In fact, she would bet her trust fund on it. “Can I look at the book?” she asked.

Nikki clutched the book to her chest for a second, clearly suspicious.

“Don’t worry,” Imogen said. “I have no interest in following the steps. A stock car driver isn’t really my type.” Which she would do well to remember. Just because she had a strange and mysterious physical attraction to Ty didn’t mean it was anything other than foolish to pursue that. A driver wasn’t her type, and she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt she wasn’t a driver’s type. She was the total antithesis of Nikki.

“Okay.” Nikki handed the book over begrudgingly.

Imogen almost laughed. It wasn’t like what was in those pages wasn’t available to anyone who had twenty bucks and a bookstore at their disposal. She opened the book, and it flipped automatically to the section on your first date with a driver. The “Don’ts for First Date Night” included drinking any alcohol, even a single glass of wine, an explanation of why beer-drinking women weren’t at all the thing, and how while a chaste kiss at the door
might
be deemed acceptable, anything beyond that was wrong, wrong, wrong. Girls men wanted to marry did not, repeat did not, have sex with men on the first date.

Feeling like she just might have slid back into 1957 when she wasn’t looking, Imogen flipped to a new chapter. It was a list of places to meet drivers, including the stores they might shop at in Charlotte, the bars and restaurants they were known to frequent, and the gym several worked out at.

The wheels in her head started to turn faster and faster as she scanned through half a dozen more pages.

“What are you looking at?” Tamara asked her, leaning toward Imogen to read over her shoulder.

Imogen looked at her friend and sociology professor in satisfaction. “My thesis. I’m looking at my thesis.”

The book declared itself an instructional manual on how to marry a race car driver. Which led Imogen to the question that would be the basis of her thesis—did dating rules result in success when altered for a specific occupation?

Imogen was going to follow them and find out.

 

 

 

TY McCordle ducked out of Tammy and Elec’s front door and quickly moved to the left on the porch, away from the view of the picture window. He desperately needed a bit of fresh air and a breather from Nikki’s constant chattering. It was obvious to him that he had been dating Nikki way past the point of novelty. She got on his nerves just about every minute that he was with her, and had actually brought up the M word—
marriage
. Good God, the thought made him want to chew off his own foot to escape that trap. So he had reached the moment he hated in dating. He had to break things off with Nikki, and that was bound to result in a couple of things from her he had a hard time dealing with—tears and anger.

Truth was, he shouldn’t have let things go on nearly as long as they had. He’d known from jump that she wasn’t even remotely close to his type for a long-term relationship, but he had been lonely and bored and she had been more than willing to hop into bed with him. But after a time, not even her enthusiasm could make up for the fact that the sound of her voice made every muscle in his body tense with irritation, and now he was dodging her at a damn dinner party.

It was ridiculous, and it made him feel like a pansy-ass wimp. Yet he wasn’t going back in there, was he? It was pouring down rain outside, a nice little fall thunderstorm, and the air was clear and crisp, the temperature still balmy. Ty loved the sound of the rain hitting the roof and the ground, and he leaned forward to feel the mist settle over his forearms and hands. Even if she figured out where he was, the rain would keep Nikki in the house. She wasn’t big on nature or anything that might ruin her hair, her makeup, or her shoes.

So Ty was going to stand there on the porch and take a breather, then go back into the party, say his good-byes to his friends, collect Nikki, take her home, and break things off with her. In a minute. Or two.

A light appeared in the driveway and Ty glanced over to see what it was. A car door slammed shut and the light went back out. Through the rain Ty saw someone running toward the porch, hands over her head. A thin woman with dark hair and glasses pounded up the steps, then stopped when she achieved shelter, her arms falling to her sides, her breathing heavy.

It was the woman who was some kind of assistant to Tammy at the university, the one who had the name Ty couldn’t remember or pronounce. He had seen her inside the house since there were only twenty or so people at the party, but he had avoided her. Something about her intrigued him, made him want to see if the shy and serious woman could open up and laugh, or better still, moan in pleasure, but at the same time, she made him feel stupid with her fancy education, expensive clothes, and complicated name.

At the moment he just felt sorry for her. She was taking deep breaths and almost wheezing, like the shock of having a boat-load full of rain dump on her had just caught up with her. Her hair was plastered to her cheeks and forehead, her jeans were wet clear to the knees, and her black sweater was molded to her chest. For some reason she reminded him of a puppy, startled and forlorn, and he no longer felt so intimidated by her.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“It’s raining harder than I thought,” she said, pulling her clinging sweater forward off her stomach. “I think I should have waited a few more minutes. But I had to go put up my car windows, and I got trapped inside the car. I waited, and debated just leaving and going home, but not saying good-bye to anyone would be phenomenally rude, and the rain wasn’t letting up, so I went for it. I think, it’s safe to say, that was a miscalculation.”

It was a hell of an explanation that Ty heard only half of because he was so distracted by the fact that her glasses were covered in rain spots. He liked to see a woman’s eyes when he talked to her, and he was curious what color whatshername’s were. He was also curious as to how he was going to ask her yet again what her name was without sounding like the total jackass that he was. Reaching out, he lifted her frames off her face.

She jerked back with a squeak. “What are you doing?” She wiped the bridge of her nose dry then followed his hand to retrieve her glasses. “I need those.”

“I’m drying them off. You can’t possibly see anything with them waterlogged.” Ty used the bottom of his T-shirt to polish them to his satisfaction.

“Oh, thank you.”

He lifted them and guided them onto her nose.

“I can—”

Before she could finish her sentence, he had the glasses back on, frames tucked over each ear.

“Do it myself,” she said.

“Too late.” He smiled and, using the tip of his pointer finger, pushed them a little higher on her nose. “And now I know they’re blue.”

“What?” Her head tilted slightly to the side. “What’s blue?”

“Your eyes. I was wondering.” Emma Jean or Imagine or whatever the hell her name was had eyes that were unaltered by makeup, and they were big and a deep, rich blue, like denim. She smelled like rain and shampoo, her soft skin covered in a dewy sheen. He was standing damn close to her, and he was aware that he was very much attracted to her and his body knew it. That was an erection popping out to greet her.