I nodded. I did understand. I totally got it, hence the reason why Jared was the first driver I’d ever gone near. But something about him called to me, even though I knew that one day I’d probably cry rivers of tears over this man. I forecast nothing but hurt in my future, yet even with that knowledge, I couldn’t stay away.
“I was going to talk to you about this later, but now seems like the perfect time,” he said.
I frowned. “Talk about what?”
“I think it’s time we told your dad.”
I bit my lip, denial of his request on the tip of my tongue. He’d been insistent on secrecy from the very beginning. I didn’t want him thinking he had no choice simply because we’d become more than a casual fling.
“I’m going home to California in the mid-summer break, and I want you to come with me. I want you to meet my family, Ley, and my friends. Because you do matter. So goddamn much.”
I gasped, widening my eyes. I touched a trembling hand to my face, my heart racing, my pulse an irregular beat. Those were the very last words I expected to hear, but hell if he hadn’t just made me the happiest woman in the world.
“I’d love to meet your family,” I said, my voice soft, halting. “Oh God, Jared, that’s… That’s…” I dashed away a tear that broke free, then chided myself for being so silly.
“The proviso is that we tell your dad. No more secrets. No more hiding. I admit I was the one who set the rules, who demanded we keep our relationship a secret. Too worried how your dad would react and whether, if he reacted badly, that might have a detrimental effect on my position on the team.” He offered me a crooked smile. “Racing always comes first, see?”
I broke into a smile. “This is why I’m perfect for you,” I joked. “Cos I totally get it.”
Jared’s serious expression had my smile fading. “Y’know, I think you may just be.”
My heart started up at a full throttle beat. I curved my hands around his neck, my fingers playing with the ends of his hair. “Dad will be fine, you know.” I bit my lip because I didn’t know that for sure. “And anyway, he can’t sack you for screwing me. You have a contract, and I’m sure that isn’t part of the terms and conditions.”
Jared threw back his head and laughed. “When we tell him, let’s not use words like ‘screw’ and ‘fuck’. I’d suggest ‘in a relationship’ or ‘seeing each other’.”
I grinned, then hooked my pinky around his. “Deal. Let’s tell him in the morning.”
Jared
Staring at the ceiling with Paisley draped over me like a silk scarf, still fast asleep, I mused about the upcoming conversation with Jack. I never thought I’d find myself there. This thing with Paisley was supposed to be fleeting, a moment in time, an enjoyable fling. I hadn’t expected to get serious, yet I found myself here, the very place I swore I’d never be.
In a relationship with the boss’s daughter.
The fear still remained, though. I hadn’t lied to her about the pecking order. My racing career would always come first, and I couldn’t help worrying about Jack’s reaction. We’d become close over the last few months, and I liked and respected him. Whatever I said to kick off the conversation, he had to come out the other end with no doubt about the respect I also had for his daughter.
Sure, I’d been a player and enjoyed more than my fair share of women. Show me a racing driver who hadn’t taken advantage of their position to attract the opposite sex, or the same sex depending on preference. I couldn’t change my past, and I had no clue what the future held, but one thing was certain: I’d sever my own arm before I’d cheat on Paisley. If I found my gaze roving, I’d put an end to our relationship.
And therein lay the problem. Even if Jack accepted the fact me and his daughter were in a relationship, what happened to my place on the team if we broke up? My racing career might come first, but for Jack, Paisley was his number one priority.
Yep, if Paisley and I parted ways, that would be the end of my seat in Nash Racing.
I inwardly groaned. I twisted my head, my gaze falling on Paisley’s adorable elfin features, her dark hair framing her face, her long eyelashes resting on her cheeks, flushed in sleep. My insides churned and clenched. Right now, I couldn’t imagine a time when I wouldn’t want her.
No point in worrying about something that might never happen.
She stirred, wriggled closer, then made this adorable keening sound. Her eyes fluttered, then opened. She stretched, and the sheet slipped down over her bare breasts. I bent my head and sucked her right nipple into my mouth. She groaned, arched, then groaned again.
“Yours are the best tits I’ve ever sucked,” I said.
“Good to know, hotshot,” she said, grinning. Reaching down, she gripped my already-hard cock. “Good morning, wood.”
I laughed at her play on words. “Sleep well?”
“Mm-hmm. Too good. I’m annoyed at myself.”
I frowned. “Why?”
“Because I had an idea to wake you up in the middle of the night with a blow job, but I slept right through.”
My cock jerked, still wrapped in her fist. “There’s always tonight. I’ll set an alarm for you.”
She waggled her eyebrows. “Done deal, hotshot.”
I bent to kiss her, but someone banging the hell out of my door interrupted my intentions.
“Fuck’s sake, can’t the cleaning staff read the Do Not Disturb sign.”
Paisley giggled. “Go give ’em a piece of your mind, then get your fine arse back here. And don’t let Wood go anywhere. I have uses for him.”
I laughed, loudly. Paisley was the only woman I’d ever been with who made me laugh so much, made everything fun and light. She lifted the darkest of spirits in mere seconds.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, pulling a shirt over my head and tugging on a pair of boxers. The shirt didn’t quite hide my erection, but as I only planned to peek around the side of the door anyway, it shouldn’t be a problem. I removed the chain and unlocked the deadbolt. I drew back the door a few inches—and my heart plummeted.
“I need a fucking word with you,” Jack bellowed.
He pushed the door wide open, forcing me to stumble back a couple of feet. He slammed a newspaper right at my chest. I caught it, but before I could check it out, his gaze fell on Paisley. Luckily for me, she’d pulled the covers up to her chin, but the fact she was in my bed, well, it didn’t take a genius to figure out what we’d been doing.
“Dad—”
Jack poked a finger in her direction. “Quiet. I’ll deal with you in a minute, missy.” He turned back to me, his eyes wide, face blotchy, hands curled into fists. “Read it,” he growled.
I unfolded the newspaper. Oh fuck. Plastered all over the front page was a picture of Paisley with her legs wrapped around my waist and her tongue clearly in my mouth. The accompanying headline, ‘Kane corrupts Princess Paisley’ didn’t do me any favors either.
“How long has this been going on?”
“Dad—” Paisley tried again, but Jack cut her off with a raised hand.
“You’ll get your say in a second. First, I want to hear from Jared.”
“A few months,” I said. I refused to apologize or come across as embarrassed that I’d been caught in bed with his daughter.
His eyebrows almost disappeared into his hairline. “A few months? And you were going to share this with me when?”
“Today, actually.”
Jack snorted. “Convenient.”
“It also happens to be the truth.”
Another snort. “Don’t talk to me about truth, Jared. A man who goes behind my back and sleeps with my daughter.” He winced. “And then is so careless with her reputation, and mine, that he allows that to get into the papers…”
Jack snatched back the newspaper and opened it out, his eyes scanning the small black print. “Jared Kane: The bravest man in racing—for all the wrong reasons.” He glanced up. “Indeed.”
Paisley chose that moment to clamber o
ff the bed. She wrapped the sheet around her clearly naked body and joined our fun little gathering. She plucked the paper out of Jack’s hands and read it, her eyes moving back and forth. Jack glowered at her, then me, then back at her as the seconds painfully scraped by.
And then she laughed. I might not know Jack nearly as well as she did, but given the murderous expression on his face, and those still-clenched hands that he must want to test on my jaw, humor probably wasn’t the best idea.
Then again, Paisley was, well, Paisley.
“Oh, Dad, for goodness sake, it’s not the end of the world. So we’re in the paper having a kiss. I’ve seen a lot worse over the years, and so have you. And Jared was telling the truth. We were going to tell you today. The only reason I haven’t mentioned it before is because neither of us knew where it was going until now, and there was no point in getting you all riled up if it didn’t last.”
Jack turned his attention on me. “Do tell me, Jared. Where is it going exactly?”
I really didn’t want to answer that question. I didn’t have an appropriate response. But it was important to show Jack this wasn’t a ‘fuck and forget’ situation. I slipped my arm around Paisley’s shoulder and pulled her into my side. Jack’s eyes flared, but he didn’t punch me, so I took that as a good sign.
“We’re taking it one day at a time, sir. Paisley has come to mean an awful lot to me, and I respect her enormously. And you. I’m sorry if you feel as though we’ve gone behind your back, but—and this is the God’s honest truth—neither of us thought it would turn into a relationship.” I shrugged. “But it has. And we’d like your blessing.”
Jack’s eyes widened, and then they cut to Paisley. “I’d like to talk to my daughter alone, please, Jared.”
“No, Dad,” Paisley said before I had a chance to grant his wish. “Whatever you have to say, you say it in front of Jared, or I don’t want to hear it.”
Gotta give it to the girl. She had balls. Big ones. But then I’d always known that about her. It was one of the things I’d found so attractive in the beginning.
Jack glowered. “Fine. Have it your way. I am not going to pretend I’m happy about this, because I most certainly am not. And not because I think Jared isn’t a stand-up young man. I’m sure he’ll make a perfect husband for the right girl one day. But that girl is not my daughter. I do not want this for you, to get involved with a driver. You’ve been around this sport long enough to know that it isn’t fun being the ‘other half’. As long as he’s racing, you will come a very poor second, and my princess deserves to be first in any man’s life.”
I couldn’t argue with his logic. Maybe I should do the right thing and walk away before there came a point where I had to choose between her and racing, because it wouldn’t be a choice. The decision was already set in stone.
Paisley slipped out of my hold and hugged Jack. “And I love you for that, Dad. Really, I do. But I’m not your little princess any longer. I’m a grown woman who is perfectly capable of making her own choices. And yes, some of them will probably make me cry, but you can’t wrap me in cotton wool for the rest of my life. I’m not stupid. I know exactly where my place will be as long as Jared is racing, but the way I feel about him… I’ll wait. As long as it takes. He’s worth it to me. I want him. I don’t want anyone else.”
She came back to me, while I stood there, stunned at her revelation. She curved her hands around my face, stood on tiptoes and, right in front of her dad, she kissed me softly.
“Now can you leave, please, Dad? I think the first time I tell Jared that I love him should be when we’re alone.”
Well… fuck.
Paisley
I closed the door behind Dad, still wrapped in the sheet from Jared’s bed. I slowly turned around, unsure what I’d find. I hadn’t meant to blurt out that I loved Jared, at least not right then, and definitely not in front of my father. But facts were facts. I did love him. My feelings ran far too deep to be anything else. I’d had relationships before, and I’d had one-night stands, and those that fell in between—yep, I hadn’t exactly lived the life of a nun in my twenty-two years—but what I felt for Jared was on a whole other plane.
I bit my lip and blinked up at him, waiting for him to say something. Anything. He looked completely blindsided, truth be told, his jaw on the slack side, his lips parted, his eyes—confused. I closed the space between us because I hated the distance, but I didn’t touch him. Not quite.
“I don’t expect you to say it back, Jared,” I said quietly. “That’s not why I said it. Hell, I didn’t even expect to say it, especially right in front of Dad.” I smiled weakly. “But look on the bright side. At least he knows I’m serious about you and not just messing around. Dad’s seen enough of my so-called boyfriends come and go. I wanted to provide him with some reassurance that you meant more.”
Still he remained silent, so I carried on babbling, hating the hesitant, almost begging tone to my voice.
“And I know you’re worried about his reaction and your place on the team, but honestly, you don’t need to be. Dad wouldn’t allow his personal feelings to get in the way of business. He knows you’re the best man for the job. He wouldn’t toss you out of the team because he’s found out we’re bumping uglies. Hmm, that doesn’t sound very sexy, does it? Making love? No, that’s lame, too. I sound about ninety. Fucking? Yeah, let’s go with fucking. I like fucking.”
More silence. I toed the carpet and dropped my gaze. “So, yeah.” I shrugged.
I didn’t even see Jared move.
His mouth crashed down on mine, and he pushed me backward, his hands feverishly roaming over my body. The sheet didn’t last long, pooling at my feet in a heap. He stopped kissing me only long enough to drag his shirt over his head. He didn’t even remove his boxers, just tugged them down to his ankles. He kicked my legs apart, bent his knees, and thrust inside me.
Oh yeah. This, this was fucking at its absolute best. Hot, sweaty, full of grunts and groans and cries of “Don’t stop.”
Neither of us lasted long. I came seconds before he did, my muscles contracting, limbs twitching, skin tingling. He dropped his forehead onto my shoulder, his chest heaving as he grappled to suck air into his lungs.
“Jesus, Ley,” he muttered. “What you do to me. You drive me crazy.”
“I do hope Dad wasn’t still on the other side of the door,” I said, giggling, the need to bring some humor to a difficult situation taking over. “That was fast.”
His eyes widened, horrified. “Fuck’s sake, don’t say that.”
“Just kidding. If he had been, I’m pretty sure he’d have knocked and told us to keep it down.”
Jared pulled up his boxers, then crouched and picked up the sheet. He wrapped it around me and squinted through the peephole. Satisfied Dad wasn’t listening in—I mean, really, why would he?—Jared met my gaze once more. He had his serious face on. Taking my hand, he led me to the sofa.
Oh no...
We were going to have ‘The Talk’. The part where he explained how he really liked me, but…
I opened my mouth to further defend my unexpected announcement, but Jared placed his finger over my lips, silencing me.
“My turn,” he said. He threaded his fingers through mine and stared at our joined hands for a few seconds. And then he sighed heavily. I held my breath and swallowed the ensuing panic. Please don’t let my declaration of love send him running for the hills.
“I never expected us to end up here, Ley, and I don’t mean getting caught by your dad, although that’s definitely going down in history as one of my more cringeworthy moments. No, I mean still wanting you, months later. I’ve never had a long-term relationship in my life. I think my previous record is four dates. But you… God, with you, four hundred wouldn’t be enough. Four thousand. Four million. When you came on to me in Australia, I was determined to keep you at arm’s length, but you slowly wore me down.” He grinned. “I’m still not sure I fully understand what being in love means.
But the thought of not being with you, of not being able to touch you and kiss you, and fuck you, and laugh with you—or worse, of watching you with someone else… It kills me.” He let go of my hand, but only so he could cup my face. He brushed his lips so tenderly against mine. “You’re mine. My girl. And I’m keeping you.”
My heart bloomed, and I didn’t mean metaphorically. It actually felt as if it had doubled in size. I crawled onto his lap, but when the sheet restricted me, I peeled it off and threw it to the floor. Naked, I straddled him.
“I love you so much, Jared Kane. Now fuck me, feed me, and flaunt me. In that order.”
He threw back his head and laughed. “Yes, ma’am.”
The barriers were still up from yesterday’s race as we sauntered around Monaco, hand in hand. It’d take them about two weeks to return the streets of the principality to normal. I always wondered if it pissed off the locals, but then again, the race brought so much attention, not to mention tourists and their fat wallets, to the tiny principality, that I wasn’t surprised they put up with the disruption for a few weeks every year.
It felt amazing not to hide. The paparazzi were out in full force, and no doubt Jared and I would make the front pages again tomorrow, but I didn’t care. Now Dad knew, we had no reason to keep our relationship a secret, although I’d have to brace myself for a warning from Lewis, a lecture from Devon, and brotherly concern from Angus. But as long as we had Dad’s blessing, it’d all be okay.
I did need to call Mum later, though. She didn’t read the papers, never had, but that wasn’t a guarantee she hadn’t heard about the story in yesterday’s rags—most likely from Dad. She’d always been far less protective of me, though, willing to let me make my own mistakes. I figured she’d have nothing but happiness in her heart for me.
The Full Velocity Series Box Set Page 16
