Jacked Up (10 page)

“I wish a lot of things,” he told her. “I usually get them.”

She studied him for a second, knowing full well he was flirting. But that wasn’t the kind of flirting that sat well with her. Teasing or not, she didn’t want to be something he got because she was a challenge. Another accomplishment to boost his ego that he wouldn’t be denied his choice.

It didn’t seem to her that Nolan would be that kind of guy, but what did she really know about him? Why did she think she knew if he would smile or frown or brag or be modest?

She didn’t know him.

At all.

And for a woman who liked to be in control, that annoyed her. A lot.

“I’m not that easy,” she told him and walked away.

Eve resisted the urge to turn around but she felt his eyes on her. On her butt. Or maybe that was wishful thinking.

That worrying thing? It was back.

She busted out an expletive that would make a sailor’s hair curl.

Did sailors have hair?

So many damn things to worry about.

She was going to have a heart attack without ever having seen Nolan naked.

And that was a crying shame.

* * *

NOLAN
sat behind the wheel waiting for the flag, trying to channel his irritation into the derby. He didn’t like feeling annoyed. He rarely was. But something about Eve Monroe had him feeling like his skin was too tight. He hadn’t decided if that was good or bad.

Maybe it was the lack of a good night’s sleep. Which had also been because of Eve, but he was feeling off. Irritable. Not good.

Edgy. That’s how he felt. Like he was on the verge of something.

When the flag waved to start the competition, he was ready. With more determination than the thrill he usually had. Usually he enjoyed the derby—that’s why he did it. But today, he felt like he was on a mission to destroy every car around him.

He couldn’t see Eve yet. Her car had been painted with a big number 1 on the doors. No one ever got the number 1, but when the crew had been assigning numbers, some smart-ass had seen Eve was the only woman in the competition and given her the number 69. She’d had a little chat with the man in charge, and after he looked like he wanted to caress his balls to make sure they were still there, the number 1 had gone on her car.

It had made Nolan grin. No one was going to mess with Eve.

What didn’t make him grin was that he had no idea what was really going on in that head of hers. Sometimes she flirted. She kissed him passionately. She implied they were heading to a mutual naked state. But other times, she seemed more friendly than flirty. Today she’d been downright annoyed with him, and he had no clue what he’d done.

The question was did he want to go around feeling like that? It seemed like a whole lot of complicated and he wasn’t big on that.

He slammed into the car on his right, sending it hurtling back into the wall. Yeah, that felt good.

A car nailed him from behind. Glancing back, he saw the driver and recognized that slender neck and caramel hair sliding out of that helmet. Eve was gunning for him.

She could hit him from behind all she wanted. It wouldn’t take him out. It would just propel him into the cars in front of him, several of which were turned sideways. When he went straight into them, they scattered like bowling pins. One hit the wall, one went into the infield, another just stalled on the track. He raised his hand and did a fist pump to show Eve she’d helped him out. He had a sneaking suspicion that had not been her intention.

Nolan liked the sound of the track. He could vaguely hear the crowd, but mostly it was the roar of the engine, the clash of metal, and the spinning of tires in the mud. It smelled like gasoline, exhaust fumes, and hay, a combination that reminded him of childhood. He’d been playing at the derby for years, and he’d gotten Rhett into it when he’d turned eighteen. He considered it a good way to let off steam, and to have the challenge of strategizing where to go and who to hit and how hard.

It was like a real live-action video game and he enjoyed it.

They were running in a qualifying heat. Top two drivers of the four heats went on to the final derby the weekend after next. It was dumb luck that he and Eve were even competing against each other. If he didn’t know better, he’d think she had paid off the judges to arrange it that way. The only reason he didn’t think she had was because she hadn’t had time. Otherwise, he had an inkling she would pay to nail him and his car as hard as she could.

Which made him think of sex again. Bad timing. He forced his thoughts back to the task at hand.

When he turned his car slightly to maneuver around the stalled number 43, there was plenty of time to see Eve drive past him into the hole in traffic he’d been planning to use, flipping him off.

Flipping him off. How unsportsmanlike was that? She wouldn’t do that to anyone else out there. Punk.

That girl needed to learn some manners and he figured he was just the man to teach her.

* * *

EVE
almost let out a squawk when she saw the look on Nolan’s face. She’d been messing with him, pulling past him and giving him the bird. It had been an impulse and not a particularly smart one. Why on the rare occasions she chose to be spontaneous was it always a mistake? She hadn’t factored in that game face on Nolan probably meant he wouldn’t be in the mood for her teasing. Even with his helmet, she could see the intensity on his face.

“Oh, shit,” she said to no one in particular. At this point, she felt like the field of eight was half cleared. The traffic of moving cars was thinning, but there were stalled-out cars in various positions on the track, creating an obstacle course of junkers. Her own car had a blown front end tire, making driving through the mud tricky.

Hitting her gas, she skirted a Camaro, or what was left of a Camaro, and skidded sideways, wanting to hit another car with her bumper. She was definitely enjoying herself. The quick decisions, the adrenaline, the teeth-rattling impact of hits were all exciting. Fun.

It was like racing at Nolan’s parents’ house. She felt alive. Giddy. Not stressed or tired, just exhilarated. When she got high like that, she tended to use hand gestures, hence the flipping Nolan off. It had seemed like good clean fun. Now he was after her, nudging her backside like she had been doing to him. It just made her want to laugh.

The truth was, she didn’t one hundred percent know what she was doing behind the wheel, and her strategy was sketchy at best, yet she was still having fun. That was liberating.

When she tried to wiggle into a spot between two cars for protection, her plan backfired and she ended up taking a full-impact hit on her front end, while Nolan took her back end. She needed to tell him to stay away from her rear for future reference.

She knew that was it. She stalled, her engine sputtering, half of her bumper dragging in the dirt. Her hood had crumpled and her visibility was poor, but she managed to limp a few feet before it was over. Just for grins, she tried to get the engine to turn, but it had officially quit the race. Glancing around, she saw that there were only two cars still moving on the track, one of them Nolan’s. She hadn’t done a bad job for her first time out.

She couldn’t really blame Nolan for taking her out. She’d tried to do it first. It was the way the game worked. But she was definitely going to grumble about it.

No one could beat her when it came to grumbling.

CHAPTER

SEVEN

NOLAN
finished a very respectable second, but as he climbed out of his car, he still didn’t feel right. He felt caged. Wound tight. Unsure of how to proceed with Eve.

He was never unsure when it came to women. He trusted his gut. He listened to the words and the physical cues they were giving him. It wasn’t complicated.

Why the hell was Eve so complicated?

Or maybe it was his mother’s words rolling around in his head, telling him he rushed into things.

So while he wanted desperately to follow up on their earlier flirt and invite Eve over to his place for a night of wine and sex, hold the wine, he was kind of thinking maybe he shouldn’t.

He climbed through his windshield and stood on the hood of his car, giving a gesture of victory to the crowd when they called his name. His finish meant he would be going on to the next round in two weeks, but Eve wouldn’t. He wondered if she was pissed about that fact, or pissed about the fact that the announcer kept referring to her as “the girl” while they were competing.

But she didn’t look pissed about anything as she climbed out of her car, onto the hood, then leaped to the dirt. Her helmet was already off and she was grinning.

When the announcer said, “Let’s hear it for our girl out there, Eve Monroe, of the legendary racing family,” she just waved to the cheering crowd.

Nolan’s car was still drivable, so he took it off the track, then bit his fingernails, wondering if he should find Eve or not.

Instead his brother found him. “Good run, bro.” Rhett slapped him on the back.

“Thanks. I still don’t understand why you weren’t out there.” The derby had been a long-standing favorite pastime of Rhett’s until six months earlier, then suddenly he had decided he didn’t want to do it anymore. Just like that. But that was Rhett. He was into something, then he wasn’t.

“My talents are better used elsewhere.”

Nolan snorted. “As what, a male stripper?”

“Maybe.”

That was a tone of voice he didn’t like. Nolan eyeballed his brother. “You’d better fucking be kidding.”

“What if I was a stripper, so what? It’s my life.” Rhett was pouting, decimating a pinecone lying on the ground with his boot heel.

Oh, Lord. Nolan rubbed his temples. The lack of sleep was catching up with him. He was tired. “You sound like a sixteen-year-old brat. And if you’re a stripper, I hope it pays well because Mom is going to throw your ass out into the street.”

“Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing,” he muttered.

Before Nolan could respond to that out of left field comment, Rhett was looking around him.

“Hey, Eve,” Rhett said with a nod.

Nolan whirled around to see her approaching them. She always walked with purpose and she was doing that now.

“Hey, Rhett, how’s it going?”

“Good, good. I’ll catch up with y’all later. I’m going to buy some fries before they close the grandstand down.”

Nolan stared after his brother for a second. “Something’s bugging him, but I guess if he wanted to share, he would.”

Speaking out loud wasn’t necessarily a conscious decision, so he was startled when Eve responded.

“Maybe you should ask him what’s bothering him.”

Prying with Rhett was never a good strategy. He knew that from experience. “I’m sure it’s nothing more than the fact that he got stuck with that name.”

“I think you’re jealous of that name.”

Hardly. “I’m happy with the one I got, thanks.” Nolan smiled at Eve. “So not bad out there for a first-timer.”

“Thanks. Congrats to you, too.” She smiled at him.

There was a pause where they just stared at each other, smiling, and Nolan decided Rhett wasn’t the only one acting sixteen. So he moved in closer to Eve, raising his eyebrows up so she would clearly get his intent.

She shook her head, backing up a step. “Don’t you dare kiss me in this infield with a whole grandstand of people watching.”

“No one’s looking.” He ran his finger down her arm. “Come on. Give me some sugar.”

He thought she would. That she’d realize that no one was the least bit concerned with what they were doing.

But she put her hand out. “Stop. No. By the way, you know your hit is the one that took me out. I think you should apologize for that.”

Feeling the sting of rejection, Nolan scoffed. “No way. It’s the way the game works. I can’t play favorites out there. Especially when you won’t even kiss me.”

“So if I give you sexual favors, you’ll skirt me on the track? That’s misogynistic.”

That made him mad. That went beyond teasing. It was just insulting. “Eve. I’m going to pretend you didn’t just say that.”

Her face took on a mulish quality.

Yeah, this was not going to be the night of passion he had envisioned a day or two earlier. “Look, I’m going to go get some fried cheese. And maybe some fried Kool-Aid. Washed down with a beer. You want to join me or do you want to stay here and argue with yourself?”

Her eyes narrowed. Her jaw was set. She said, “You know, my first instinct is to tell you to go fuck yourself.”

That sounded about right for her.

“My second instinct is to turn around and walk away without giving you the time of day.”

Well, she’d already blown that one.

“Then my third and final thought is that maybe a beer wouldn’t be so bad.”

Her begrudging attitude was so flattering. “At least it would give you a companion to needle.”

“Do I do that? Needle you?”

She looked sincere. Troubled.

Nolan didn’t want to hurt her feelings. Or piss her off. But there was some truth to it and he wasn’t into lying or sugarcoating. If he had a flaw, he’d want it pointed out to him. “Sometimes,” he told her. “And sometimes it’s probably not necessary, but guess what? I can take it.”

And he kissed her. Just a light quick barely there blink and you miss it kiss. But it was the period on his sentence. “Now let’s get some fried cheese.”

Ten minutes later they were sitting on the wreck that was Eve’s car, feet dangling into the hole where a windshield normally went. Sitting on the roof, it was a little chilly, and he’d seen Eve shiver a time or two, but he liked it. The heat in summer could be brutal, and he was ready for sweatshirts and blankets and air that filled his lungs cleanly and sweetly.

He was eating a pulled pork sandwich and the fried cheese he’d been craving all day. Eve was licking an ice- cream cone. Some of his earlier tension had eased. “So you bummed out you didn’t win?”

“Nah. I didn’t expect to win. I just didn’t want to be last.” She grinned. “Okay, so I wanted to finish in the top four, I’m not gonna lie.”

“And you did, so there you go. Didn’t it feel good to nail other cars and have it be legal?” In stock racing, contact happened, but there were disqualifications if you took someone out intentionally, and the risk of injury was greater if you hit someone at those speeds. In the derby that was the point.

“Hell, yeah. It did.”

Nolan slung his arm around her. “Did you catch the derby bug?”

“I don’t know.” She kicked her legs back and forth. “We’ll see, I guess. Can’t wait to see Elec’s face when his car shows back up. It has more than a ding.” She patted the roof. “But the engine wasn’t bad for a six-cylinder.”

“Do you think you’ll make it to watch the finals in two weeks? I know how much you love to act as cheerleader.” He wasn’t going to think too hard on the fact that he really wanted her there, rooting for him.

She snorted. “Yeah, right. I’m not sure. I try to go on the road for the race at least once every third week and I’m obviously missing tomorrow. But then next weekend I’m going to Vegas for the race, so after that is debatable still.”

It was hard for him to indulge his hobby given his own work schedule. As it stood, he was flying out in a few hours on a red-eye for the race in Dover the next day. Fortunately, it wasn’t a long distance. The following weekend the race was in Atlanta, so again he was close enough he could get there quickly. The weekend the race was in Vegas, Nolan was going to go early, when Evan did, and make up for some of his missed time. He had to cram in a lot of workouts, too, on his own to make sure he didn’t slow down the rest of the crew.

He loved his job but right now he was seriously wishing he didn’t have to leave so soon. “My flight for Dover is in four hours.”

“You’re flying out tonight? I thought you said we were having sex tonight. I think you even said there was a guarantee.”

Leave it to Eve to just state it boldly. He felt sheepish and horny. “Yeah, well, I think that was wishful thinking. I forgot I had this flight.” Nolan watched the tip of Eve’s tongue slide into that creamy ice cream yet again. He swallowed hard. “All I could think about was you.”

She paused. “You’re a charming bastard, I’ll give you that.” Then she sighed. “I understand. Work is work. I need a shower anyway.”

He frowned. “You need a shower? Washing your hair is more important than sex with me?”

“Yes, I need a shower. I don’t want to get naked and have your mouth between my legs when I’ve been sweating in polyester all day.”

Oh, my God. He was sure his jaw was down about somewhere by her steering wheel.

“And how do I know if sex with you is any good, by the way? Washing my hair might be a better way to spend the night.”

Now she just being sassy to be sassy.

“I’m going to wash your hair,” he told her. “And your mouth. And your whole dang body.”

“Promises, promises. I think your guarantee’s about as worthless as this car right now.” She kicked the frame with her boot.

Nolan wanted to laugh. She was so asking for it.

Without giving her a chance to block, he went in for a kiss. Screw the imaginary audience. He wanted his mouth on hers.

God, she felt good. Her lips were sweet from the ice cream and a little sticky, and they tasted perfect. She had this moment, when he kissed her, when she sighed and gave in to her passion, to him. He loved it when she did that. It was a sound, a sigh, he could get addicted to. It was also the sound equal to a match striking. When her fire lit, his did the same, and he nudged her down onto the roof of the car.

Hovering over Eve, he let his hand drift over her thigh, skirting her end zone and rising to the waist of her jeans. For the first time, he allowed himself to slip under the cotton of her shirt and touch her bare skin. She was smooth and warm and he wanted more, more, more. His erection grew thicker, his tongue went deeper, and his breath went ragged.

He was on the verge of lifting her shirt up so he could see her breasts, taste her nipples, but he stopped himself. They were still in public. But he wanted to take Eve to bed and lick her from head to foot and he didn’t want to wait. Looking down at her, he took in her glassy eyes, her disheveled hair, the creamy patch of skin glowing in the lamplight. And the ice-cream cone she was still clutching, half the scoop plopped on the roof, the other half running down her arm.

Leaning over, he licked from her elbow to her wrist, catching the sweet trail. “Mmm.”

She sucked in her breath. Her chest was rising and falling rapidly. “I could have used a napkin,” she told him.

“Shh.” He kissed her again, knowing that he didn’t want to leave. He didn’t want to go to Dover. But he couldn’t not go. But there was another option. “Come to Dover with me.”

“What?” She sat up so fast and unexpectedly that they bumped foreheads. “What do you mean?” Rubbing her head, she looked at him, aghast, like he had suggested something horrible.

“Come to Dover.” The minute the words were out of his mouth, he liked the idea a whole lot. It was perfect. “We can fly in together, get a few hours of sleep, head to the track. Then afterwards we can burn up the sheets.”

There was almost a panic on her face. “How can I get on a flight this late? And how can I explain why I’m there when I said I wasn’t going to be there?”

The high he’d been on, the feeling that they were connecting, started to deflate. “Why would anyone think twice about you being there?”

“I don’t have time to pack.”

Annoyed suddenly, Nolan put his mouth around her remaining ice cream and sucked it all into his mouth. The cold stung his teeth and hurt his head. It was the distraction he needed.

“Hey, that was mine.”

“You weren’t eating it.” He stared down at her, trying to read her thoughts. Was it that she didn’t want to be with him? Or was it just too spontaneous?

“Okay,” he told her. He wasn’t going to beg. Or pressure her. Or let her think that he was being a jerk about it. “Like you said, I understand. Work is work. Maybe this isn’t the time to mix it with pleasure.”

She frowned. “Yeah. Okay.” Taking a bite of her soggy-looking cone, she lay on her back again and chewed. “My phone is vibrating in my pocket. I really want to ignore it.”

But she wouldn’t. He knew she wouldn’t. “I left my phone in my truck.” He could ignore his for fairly large amounts of time and not feel the slightest bit guilty.

Making a sound of disgust, she shoved her hand into her pocket, the maneuver dragging her jeans low enough to almost give him a heart attack. She lifted the phone up over her head, squinting at the screen. “It’s my dad. He wants to know if the rumor is true that I was stupid enough to run in a derby.”

“There was nothing stupid about it.”

“My dad will be mortified that I did this without practicing.” Her arm went up over her eyes, like the track lights were blinding her. Or she was weary.

“You had fun. Stand your ground.”

“Yeah. I did.” She turned her head toward him. “Thanks.”

The sincerity on her face made him feel good. Proud. “For what?”

“For suggesting I do this. It pushed me out of my comfort zone. Out of my rut. That’s a good thing.”

Yet going to Dover, where no one would be shocked to see her, was pushing just a little too hard apparently. Well, she’d taken a few steps to loosening up, and he was pleased that she had enjoyed herself. “I’m glad to hear that. I do think it’s a good stress reliever.”

Sex was, too. He was just saying.

Sex in a hotel with room service and a big fluffy bed.