Honeytrap

by Crystal Green

  “Evie,” I said. “What kind of party is this?”

  “It’s supposed to be a kegger.” She followed my gaze to the Impala crowd, her voice so casual that I knew she was trying to get my mind off Micah’s little show. “But now I’m not so sure. All I know is that’s Brian Taggert who’s driving the Impala. He went to school over in Arbuckle.”

  A county rival, and his friends were quietly talking to him, jerking their chins toward Micah. Then Brian pushed away from his car.

  “You ready to get this done, Wyatt?” he asked.

  In spite of my reluctance to look at Micah again, I did. NASCAR was still cuddled up to him, but he only had a nonchalant arm around her. Then again, all of him looked cool and lackadaisical in that plain white T-shirt, faded jeans, and a pair of work boots. That slant of dark blond hair had come loose from his low ponytail, emphasizing every I-don’t-give-a-shit inch of him.

  “I just got here, Taggert,” he drawled. “Give a guy a second to get acclimated?”

  Taggert laughed. “From the looks of it, you should be right at home.” He nodded toward the dirt lane. “This stretch isn’t big enough, so we’ll need to use the main road.”

  Evie leaned over to whisper to me. “They’re gonna drag race. Holy shit.”

  Micah patted NASCAR on the butt, gave her a fond smile, and ignored Taggert while he walked away from her, heading toward me.

  I couldn’t even gulp. That’s how cluttered my throat was. I was fairly certain my heart was somewhere in there, too, because my pulse was choking me. To make things worse, all I could hear was my throttled body, plus the country music coming from the truck near the bonfire, as Micah sauntered toward me.

  Someone in the Impala camp snickered and said something about Micah taking care of business before he took care of business, but I barely heard it. I was trying too hard to remain just as cool as he was.

  “This is the last place I expected to find you,” he said, coming to stand a couple feet away.

  His intense gaze made the adrenaline shoot through me. I was sure my heart had scampered to the center of my chest, pattering so loudly that he had to hear it.

  “I didn’t know you’d be here, either,” I said. “Believe me.”

  “Well, here I am.”

  Oh, God’s gift or something? I rolled my eyes just to show him how in control of everything I was. Maybe he could seduce Jadyn Dandritch and all the others with a lopsided smile and a low, revving voice, but I knew better.

  “Wyatt!” Taggert said. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the other guy get into his car.

  “Don’t you have a race?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Some fool always wants to put his ride up against mine. Some fool always gets his ass kicked, too, and, damn, it gets old. You’re far more interesting to me than a race.”

  He stepped even closer, looming. So near that I could smell the laundry detergent on his shirt and soap on his skin and something else I couldn’t name—smoky, spicy, a mystery.

  I should’ve distanced myself like any smart person would, but I kept looking at his lips. They were fascinating, full, tipping down slightly at the corners like he had to fight to smile, even if it seemed like the gesture came so naturally to him.

  “Wyatt!”

  This time it was a girl’s voice—NASCAR—and she didn’t sound all that happy.

  “Duty calls,” I said, breaking the moment like a stick I’d just snapped under my shoe.

  The mechanical pulse of the Impala’s revving engine sounded, and Taggert wheeled around, driving south toward the entrance of Jimmy’s ranch, toward the main road. While he motored off, he shouted out the window.

  “Chickenshit!”

  Micah was still looking down at me and, at the insult, he laughed softly, taking a single step away, lifting one of those long, naughty eyebrows.

  “Duty calls,” he repeated. “You gonna watch?”

  “Only if there’s nothing else to do.”

  Evie came swooping over, linking my arm through hers. Had she been here the whole time?

  “Sure, we’re gonna watch,” she said, hauling me in the direction of my pickup.

  Everyone else was swarming toward their own vehicles, and in the exodus, Micah seemed like the center of a slow storm, still watching me with those hungry eyes. Still sending my stomach butterflying.

  Evie kept pulling me along. “Want to go home or stay?”

  The right answer was obvious, but I’d tried to do so many things right in life, and where had it gotten me? To a party that’d just started, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to leave now that things were hopping.

  What would it matter if I watched a drag race? It wasn’t like I was the one doing yet another thing that’d make the town talk. More to the point, I wasn’t about to let Micah chase me away from anything.

  Besides, blobs didn’t watch drag races, they only heard about them the next day.

  “We’re staying,” I said as Evie and I got into my truck.

  We trailed everyone to the main road, where white fences guarded cattle, and fields stretched into nowhere all around us. A couple of cars drove farther down the blacktop, but I parked on the shoulder, where everyone else had settled.

  Jefferson was waiting for us there, his cowboy hat angled back, exposing his whole face. “You nice girls ever seen one of these?”

  Both of us shook our heads.

  “Figured that much.” He pointed down the way, where the other trucks’ taillights still burned bright. They were parked well off the road. “There’s your finish line. Reese is down there for Micah, and Taggert has one of his friends there to mark the finish, too. They’re both recording the race on their phones.”

  Evie put her hands on her hips. “They’re not dumb enough to post this online, are they?”

  “Hell, no.” Jefferson laughed. “If there’s a photo finish, we can slow down the footage to see who won. That’s why Taggert came out here—because these boys can get some business done without any upstanding citizens—or Jimmy’s parents—being around. When he heard there was some good racing stretch available tonight, he called Micah out.”

  “Is there a big prize for winning?” I asked. Surely Micah had more than one bet going.

  “Yeah,” Jefferson said. “Pride. Micah’s got the best rig around, and Taggert’s been jawing to the county that he’s going to make a boy out of my man. Taggert was an ass on the field when I played ball in school with the twins, and I can’t wait to see him checked.”

  Boyhood never ended for some of these guys, I thought. But I’d always known that nothing much changed in this county. There were grudges that were so old that they’d cycled around to being new again. Huge surprise that Micah had become a part of one.

  Taggert had positioned his Impala on the left side of the road, his friends hanging by his window, giving him encouragement. Micah was on the right, Deacon and Darwin waving everyone back from the starting line.

  Deacon pointed at Micah. “Get this done.” I could tell it was Deacon because he didn’t have a Phoenix tattoo creeping over his neck. He was the one with all the ear piercings.

  Darwin merely patted the Camaro’s roof, then backed off from the car. Deacon followed him, and they retreated toward us. Taggert’s friends did the same. Meanwhile, NASCAR girl stood in the center of the road, legs braced, wild hair sprayed around her, that green bandana in hand.

  I looked at Micah, my pulse thundering, and I could’ve sworn I saw him gazing at me in his side mirror. But it could’ve only been a trick of the moonlight. Or my moronic hormones.

  Deacon was standing next to Evie, towering over her. “I can’t wait to see Taggert get smoked by Micah. It’s one way to shut him up.”

  Darwin chuckled. “Punching him in the neck sure didn’t work in high school when he was on the field with us.”

 
Micah’s friends started to chant as the racers revved their engines, their cars creeping up to the starting line, where NASCAR was still holding that green bandana by her side.

  “Hugger, hugger, hugger . . .”

  Darwin caught the confusion on my face and Evie’s. “That’s the kind of paint Micah used on his Camaro. Hugger orange.”

  I had enough time to see that, yeah, the Camaro wasn’t red, it was something different than what I’d first thought. Then NASCAR raised her green bandana in the air, poising it there as shouts erupted from both sides of the road.

  My blood was burbling, keeping time with the growl of the engines. It never occurred to me that Micah might crash or lose control. Neither option seemed possible with a guy who had such arrogance.

  Damn, was it bad that this was such a turn on?

  As NASCAR looked from one driver to the other, I realized that she was giving Taggert and Micah the same expression—lust. Excitement.

  Groupie?

  After a final, thrilling pause, she shouted and chopped down the bandana, and both cars burned rubber, taking off down the road into the night. With a surge of energy, we all ran after them like we were going to catch up. Even if all we could see were taillights ahead, my heartbeat kept going, like it didn’t have sense enough to stop itself from chasing that car . . . and the guy inside it.

  When a squealing sound hit the air, everyone froze—especially when Taggert’s car swerved off the road just before the finish line taillights. Micah’s car veered, too, but he got it back on track as Taggert’s car angled downward past the shoulder, like it was in a shallow ditch or hole.

  There was a collective yell, and everyone started running again . . . until we heard the car horn in back of us.

  I took Evie by the arm and pulled her off the road as an unfamiliar pickup made its way toward the finish line.

  “Jimmy’s mom!” someone yelled.

  Crap. Jimmy’s mom was a former Marine—bad-ass and law-abiding.

  Deacon and Darwin were suddenly by our sides, leading us back toward our cars.

  “Act like this is nothing,” one of them said. “Just walk.”

  I looked over my shoulder to see what’d happened with Micah’s car. It seemed like he’d turned around and parked next to Taggert. Mrs. Holland’s pickup was right there, too, and she’d hopped out of it, going to the Impala like something might be wrong.

  I didn’t like walking away from this. Not that I was a superhero or anything, but I’d taken CPR courses for a lot of babysitting I’d done after school and on weekends. What if Taggert was hurt and I was walking away from the scene of an accident?

  Turning around, I started running toward the finish line.

  “Shelby!” Evie yelled.

  But I heard her footsteps right behind me, even as everyone else was scooting to their cars and taking off.

  Marathons were shorter than the distance I had to go to reach the finish line, and when I got there, I was panting, my lungs on fire. I bent over and braced my hands on my thighs as I took in the scene: a Queensland heeler trotting around and sniffing the fence, while Taggert’s car tilted in a ditch as shallow as I’d suspected. He leaned against the Impala, which didn’t seem damaged. Still, he was pissed as hell while getting an earful from Mrs. Holland, who was tall, wiry, short-haired, and not just bad-ass, but pretty damned bad-ass.

  “Did you stop to think,” she was saying, “that there might be other people on the road besides you? You almost hit my dog, son.”

  Micah wasn’t exactly escaping a tongue-lashing, either, because Mrs. Holland shook a finger at him, too, while he stood with his hands tucked beneath his armpits, his face stoic.

  “I should turn y’all in,” she said.

  By now, the twins and Evie had caught up with me, along with Jimmy himself, and they hung back.

  Taggert shrugged. “So what? I missed hitting the dog.”

  “Excuse me?” Mrs. Holland said.

  Micah stepped in. “Ma’am, I’m sure he means to apologize. You’re right—racing out here was foolish, and it won’t happen again.”

  Taggert wiped a hand over his face, hiding a laugh at the ass-kissing his rival was doing, and Mrs. Holland noticed.

  “Well, stud.” She drilled a glare into Taggert but gestured toward Micah. “Looks like this boy beat you twice in one night—once during your race, and then again in being man enough to own up to this idiocy. He was smart enough to take responsibility, although I’m not sure if he’s gonna carry through with his promises.”

  “I will,” Micah said, but he seemed to be dwelling on a double meaning as his gaze flicked toward me, glinting in the moonlight.

  He was thinking about carrying through with the bet while he was getting reamed out? What a braindead. Mom would kill me if she knew I was even in his vicinity. The cheerdevils would chide me to death. I should even kill me.

  The dog trotted over to Micah, rubbing against his leg, and he smiled down at her. Taggert seemed like he wanted to have it out with Mrs. Holland, but Jimmy stepped up to him.

  “Time for you to get,” he said, his fists bunched.

  Taggert grunted at him while Mrs. Holland rolled her eyes and then gave her son a look that said she’d be talking to him later.

  Darwin sidled up to her. “Ma’am, when Deacon and I heard about this nonsense, we hightailed it on over, trying to put a stop to it. Micah’s still new around here and is learning the lay of the land. He truly won’t be doing this again.”

  “He’s extremely reformable,” Deacon added.

  Micah gave Mrs. Holland a forgive-me smile that was guaranteed to warm any woman’s heart. Even an ex-Marine’s. For a second, though, I thought she was going to ignore it.

  But . . . nope. A reluctant smile crept over her mouth before she shook her head and sighed.

  It was that Micah Wyatt Woman Voodoo.

  She waved the boys off and went toward her pickup. “If I hear about any of this racing again, I’m going to the law.”

  Jimmy slumped toward the truck, too. Faintly, I heard Mama’s Boy explaining that he hadn’t expected her back home tonight, and they got into her pickup, driving away.

  Taggert started to slip into his Impala, but Micah stopped him.

  “Nice race,” he said, “except for the part where you almost hit the dog. Good thing you swerved in time.”

  “I should’ve just run over the bitch.”

  The dog barked as Taggert pulled out, disappearing down the road in a blur of taillights.

  No one—not Micah, Evie, the twins, or I—said anything for a moment. Not until the dog loped down the road, toward the Holland ranch, leaving us alone.

  “Well,” Micah said. “That was some party.”

  Deacon and Darwin began to walk toward the Camaro while Evie gestured at the starting line where my truck was before Micah could say anything to me.

  Too late, because he murmured something to the twins about walking me and Evie to our ride. The twins both gave me the same hmm look that I’d seen from Darwin earlier in their shop, when I’d dropped off the mower. But this time I knew there was more behind that expression.

  The bet.

  I didn’t make a big deal of it when the twins left and Micah followed me and Evie down the road. My pickup was the only vehicle left, and I thanked God that it hadn’t been a deputy who’d come upon the drag race. Even at my age, I didn’t want to get into hot water with Mom—it’d make for an even longer summer than the one that was already in front of me.

  Micah ambled along behind us, and from the shivers that were shimmering up and down my back, I had the feeling his gaze was all over me, caressing, imagining . . .

  I halted, waiting for him to catch up so I could put a stop to this. “I hear you have a bet with your cousins about me.”

  Evie sucked in a breath and scampe
red ahead of us, but Micah only grinned and looked down at me again.

  “Is that what this town is saying?” he asked. “As I told you before, Shelby, you listen to them too much.”

  I ignored his misdirection, even though he was right. “Do I have it wrong?”

  “No.”

  His bluntness nearly made me blink, but I kept eye contact, right along with the space I was maintaining between us—him a few feet away, me another. Even then, I could still smell that laundry soap, his skin, that mysterious something.

  “Jeez,” I said. “Seriously? You’re actually admitting you made a bet about ‘nailing’ me?”

  “Why wouldn’t I admit it?”

  “Because if I know you’re out to get me, you kind of lose the element of surprise.”

  “I don’t need surprise.”

  Whoosh—that was the air escaping me again. He had a bad habit of leaving me that way. And when he took me into his sights with those dazzling gray—or were they light blue or green?—eyes, I was really trapped.

  He lowered his voice, although Evie could probably still hear us from ten feet away as she got closer to the pickup.

  “You’re gonna change your mind about me, Shelby, even if it takes all summer.”

  “How about I save you some time and tell you it’s not happening? There’re a lot of other catches out there, like the bandana girl who started the race. Stalk her.”

  “Amber? She likes any guy with a souped-up ride.”

  “And you’ve slept with her, I imagine.” Did that really just come out of my mouth?

  His silence shouted a clear “Yes, I did bang her.” For some dumb reason, that made my jaw clench.

  Remember, Shelby, I told myself, you don’t need to be needy. Not like you were with Rex.

  So why was I all about need right now? Needing him to touch me so I could feel what it’d be like. Needing him to look at me again so I could revel in adrenaline and hormones and everything I’d been missing since I’d been banished to a she’s-such-a-psycho hole.

  “Don’t mind my saying so,” he whispered so Evie couldn’t hear, “but why would you care about Amber if I didn’t have a chance with you?”