by Kim Law
And not ridiculous jealousy.
“I told her that we needed to cool it,” he said.
She exhaled. She wouldn’t name the gush of emotion that rushed through her. “Thank you.” She hid her threatening smile with words. “Potential diseases make me nervous,” she explained. “You just never know these days. And Thomas is the only other man I’ve ever been with, so . . .”
She pressed her lips together and stared down at the sheet. Why had she told him that?
Why this entire conversation was so mortifying, she couldn’t say. She wasn’t a prude. But she did currently wish the floor would open up and swallow her whole.
Nick touched a finger to the underside of her chin and lifted her face. He stared at her for way too long, and she knew he was replaying her words in his head. Thomas was the only other man she’d been with.
Don’t ask.
She silently begged him not to make a big deal of it. Because it wasn’t a big deal. She’d had more important things to do in high school than let herself get caught up in love, and then when Thomas had come along . . . she’d been unable to keep from falling in love.
This thing between her and Nick, of course, was a totally different situation. This was just sex.
“I’m clean,” he finally said, giving her the only words she wanted to hear. “And this definitely is exclusive. I know rodeo guys have reputations, but I don’t play that way. When I hook up with a woman, I have a good time until I don’t anymore. And then I move on. No Betsy or anyone else.” He kissed her tenderly. “Only you.”
Good. She nodded. “That works for me.”
She then rolled over and climbed from the bed with no grace whatsoever. Because she’d been embarrassed enough for one evening. She grabbed her pants off the bedpost and scanned the room for her bra.
“Where are you going?”
“I thought I’d go home.” She dropped to all fours to look for her bra. She’d been up against the wall when he’d taken it off her. Could it have ended up under the bed?
Nick rolled to the edge of the mattress and peered down. “You could stay, you know? You don’t have to go.”
She looked up and gulped. She didn’t want to stay.
“I know,” she said. “But I have a job in the morning.” She found her bra and stood to put it on, praying that Nick wouldn’t push about her reasoning. Sex was one thing, but overnight felt too personal. Too real. “I’m doing some stunt work for a movie, so I need to be there early.”
Nick’s eyes narrowed, but he climbed from the bed without another word. He scooped up her panties and tossed them to her on his way to the connected bathroom, and when he returned—sans condom—he stepped into his jeans.
“So, I’m curious,” he began, and Harper paused in the act of dressing to watch the man’s denim slide over his well-muscled legs. Geez, he was nice to look at.
When she brought her gaze back up to his, he had one eyebrow up and a question on his face.
“Sorry,” she muttered. She pulled her shirt over her head. “Your question was?”
“My question was, do you purposefully look for the biggest risks out there, or do they just have a way of finding you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Stunt work?” he asked. “Who does that?”
“It’s for a producer out of Hollywood I know. I’ve worked with him before.”
“Okay. But is it safe?”
She shrugged. “As safe as stunt work can be. I’ll be doing some tricky maneuvers, but nothing I can’t handle.”
“And how about that wedding proposal this morning? How did that go?”
Oh. She slowed her movements. This was about him looking out for her. Trying to protect her. “It went fine.”
“Fine?” He stared at her from the other side of the bed, but instead of immediately voicing whatever else was on his mind, he retrieved her boots and brought them over to her. “I was worried about you, so I read up on it.”
Irritation fired. “You read up on it?”
“Yes. You shouldn’t be going up there. That peak is too—”
“Nick.” She held up a hand and took a step back. “Stop right there. We’re having a good time here, right? And I’d like to keep having it. I was under the impression that you would, too.”
He stood immobile, his arms now hanging at his side. “I would.”
“Then you need to keep one thing in mind. And that’s that I’m very good at my job. I not only am an excellent pilot and scored top of the class in my unit, but I also do things as pedestrian as check the weather before I take my helicopter up. Every single time. I’m aware of what I can and can’t do.”
“I was just—”
“I know what you were doing. But the fact is, my job isn’t your business. I am not your business.”
He looked sufficiently mollified—and marginally pissed. Which pleased her, because she was beyond ticked, herself. She thought she’d made it clear that she didn’t need him or anyone else trying to keep her safe.
“Duly noted,” Nick monotoned.
Since she was now fully dressed, she moved in front of him when he motioned for her to proceed him out of the room. She led the way down the hallway, to the bottom of the steps, and to the front door. But she stopped before Nick could open the door and turned back to him, uncertain what to say to break the tension.
He took care of that for her. He closed the distance and kissed the breath out of her.
When they parted, he swung the door open to the dark night. “We still on for racing tomorrow?”
She blinked. “You still want to go?”
“I want to hang out with you, yes.” His gaze locked onto hers, and his features finally softened. “I want to do whatever you have in mind. Racing or otherwise.”
“Racing,” She nodded. She was glad she hadn’t pushed him away. And that thought, alone, should be a warning to her. They weren’t dating. They were just hanging out. And having sex. But the mood suddenly had the distinct feel of something different, and she’d been holding her breath all the way to the door, hoping this wasn’t the end of it. “I’ll have a surprise for you there,” she told him.
“What kind of surprise?”
“You’ll have to wait and see.” She went up on her toes to kiss him then. One last time before she turned and left his house.
Chapter Thirteen
The Ferrari that rolled onto the racetrack was a solid red, low-slung exotic machine, and it was the hottest thing Nick had ever seen. He didn’t take his eyes off the vehicle as its nose inched forward and came to a slow stop twenty feet in front of them. The engine growled like an untamed animal.
The owner climbed out through the window, wearing the glow of a man who knew he had something that everyone else in the world wanted, and Nick looked down at Harper. She wore the same expression on her face.
“You going first?” he asked. They’d been here for a couple of hours, but the Ferrari had only now arrived.
Her eyes turned up to his. “You don’t mind?”
“This baby was your idea. It’s only right that you get first crack at it.”
She rubbed her hands together and licked her lips, then she strode straight to the car.
Nick chuckled under his breath and cast a glance at the manager of the racetrack, who stood on the other side of him. “How in the hell did you get that thing here, anyway?” Nick asked.
“Owner’s a buddy of mine.” Dean didn’t take his eyes off the other two. “He uses the track several times a year. Used to race with Harper’s husband. When she called to tell me she was coming up and asked if I had anything extra special for a friend of hers, I knew just who to call.” The man looked Nick up and down. “You must be a good friend.”
“And you might note that I’m not the one about to climb into the belly of that beast.”
“There is that,” Dean agreed.
They both went quiet as they watched Harper talk to the owner. Like Nick, she’d changed
into a racing suit for the day, and she fully looked the part. She nodded at the owner occasionally as he spoke, looked into the interior a couple of times, and practically bounced on her toes as she waited for the man to get through his spiel.
Finally, instructions were over, and the owner helped Harper on with her helmet and into the seat. Nerves flared inside Nick. They’d both spent time in several different cars since they’d arrived that day, and though there’d been no true mishaps, he had held his breath on more than one occasion. Always because of Harper. The woman didn’t do anything halfway, and if he were made to swear in a court of law, he’d have to say that she was borderline unsafe. She’d taken curves too fast, had gotten too close to the danger zones, and there had been a couple of times he hadn’t known if her brakes had gone out or if she was simply waiting until the very last second to tap them.
Sure, professional drivers maintained speeds higher than they had today, but there was a reason for that. They did this for a living. Yet Harper had attacked the sport as if she, too, made a habit of climbing behind the wheel. It had reminded Nick too many times throughout the morning of how he used to push the envelope to get his mother’s attention.
As Harper now sat in a car far more powerful than any they’d sat in during the last two hours, Nick had second thoughts.
“You think this is wise?” he asked Dean.
“I did before I called my buddy to bring his car over.”
The way he phrased the sentence worried Nick. “You don’t now?”
Dean gave a one-shoulder shrug and chewed on a piece of straw he’d had in his shirt pocket. “Can’t say as she’s been the most careful person I’ve ever seen.”
Damn. It wasn’t only him.
Nick gritted his teeth and strode to the door of the vehicle. Harper looked up at him when he reached her side, and the pure glee on her face stopped him in his tracks. Crap. He couldn’t keep her from doing this. She was having a great time.
She revved the engine and the thing gave a deep, throaty rumble, the noise so saturated with power that it vibrated in his belly. “Isn’t that the hottest sound you’ve ever heard?” Harper shouted.
The hottest sound he’d ever heard was a particular high-pitched noise she made when she came apart in his hands. But instead of telling her that, he squatted and stared through her tinted visor. “Please be careful. I’d like to see you back in one piece.”
He didn’t miss the quick narrowing of her eyes.
“I’m perfectly fine.”
“I know. But this car”—he looked down its length—“it’s not like the other ones. Just be careful.”
She revved the engine again and stared straight ahead. And with that, Nick understood that he’d been dismissed. Kind of like the night before when she’d shut him down due to his questioning her safety of this morning’s stunt work. The woman had made herself clear. His concern was unwarranted and unwanted.
And that irritated the piss out of him.
He stepped away and then walked with the owner to stand with Dean. The few other people who’d been at the track that day were also standing off to the side. They’d been removed from the track, but they wouldn’t get the pleasure of driving the Ferrari. Nick had no idea what Harper had paid for the pleasure, but it wasn’t a price most people would be willing to part with.
The high-school kid that waited several hundred yards down the track moved into position, and after Dean gave him the word through a handheld radio, a green flag flew, and Harper was off.
The sound was unlike any Nick had heard, and he’d swear his balls tightened as the motor went from growl to snarl to wail. That was one fine machine. And Harper did seem to have it under control. She’d started out slower than he’d expected. As if respecting the power between her hands. She made several laps, throttling higher with each rotation, but maintaining a reasonable speed at each pass. Nick had just begun to relax when she zoomed past a fourth time, and suddenly the vehicle shot forward. The engine emitted a sexy, high-pitched scream, and there was no longer anything respectable about what was going on out on the track.
“She’s got it wide open,” Dean muttered at Nick’s side, and Nick glanced over to see that Dean’s body language matched his tight words. The owner of the Ferrari seemed equally tense.
But Harper still seemed to be handling the car just fine. She made several more laps, and Nick had to admit a bit of jealousy. He was ready to be the one behind that wheel. But then she went into the last curve, and all three of them sucked in a breath as the car swung out too far, barely sliding back to the center of the track before it hit the wall.
“Tell her to stop,” Nick ordered when the car swerved once again. He looked at Dean, who wore a headset connected to Harper. “Now,” he growled.
But the grimace that filled Dean’s face told Nick that it was already too late. He turned back to the track and the world in front of him seemed to come to a crawl. Everything moved in slow motion as the car left the track and shot airborne, sailing over the sandpit meant to slow down out-of-control vehicles. The tires thudded to the grass on the other side of the pit, but forward motion didn’t stop until it crashed into the protective barrier about forty feet away. Water sprayed from the large grouping of filled barrels as the car finally came to a stop.
In the next instant, all three of them took off. Nick sprinted out ahead, and almost dropped to his feet in relief when Harper crawled from the driver’s seat. She backed away from the vehicle, her movements jerky. She was okay.
And now Nick was going to kill her.
He reached her side and whipped her around. “Are you hurt?”
Through the visor Nick could see that her eyes were wide with terror, but she quickly recovered. She pulled her arm from his grasp and tugged off the helmet. “I’m fine,” she said with a forced laugh. Her face was pale. She ran a hand through her flattened hair and gave him a wide smile. “Did you see that? I went airborne.”
Nick stared at her in shock. She was laughing about this? “You could have been killed.”
“But I wasn’t.”
The two other men reached them, Dean gasping as if he’d sprinted up ten flights of stairs instead of across a nearly flat surface, and Nick forced himself to move away and attempt to calm down.
She was right. She was fine; she hadn’t died.
But he nearly had.
Good Lord, what was wrong with the woman that she had the constant need to risk her life? Even yesterday when they’d been riding horses, she’d taken it to the extreme. She’d pushed her animal hard, but the real issue had arisen when they’d gone up into the mountains and she’d insisted on riding along the edge of the ledge. One slip of a hoof, and both she and the animal would have been gone.
She was nuts. That’s all he could figure out. Certifiable.
An adrenaline rush could be had without the constant need to put her life on the line.
And at the same time that he told himself to walk away from her, to leave her madness for someone else, he was reminded of the anger he still saw simmer behind her eyes so easily. Of the sadness he caught etched in the tightness of her mouth when she thought no one was looking.
She needed to face her pain.
Nick waited silently, just out of reach, as she assured everyone that she was not only perfectly okay, but that she’d cover any damage she might have caused. The car didn’t seem to have suffered much more than a few scratches and one rather impression dent, though, and the owner claimed all was fine. He was covered for this sort of thing.
No one chewed her out for taking unnecessary risks, and no one seemed overly concerned that she could have perished right in front of them. Which made Nick mad all over again.
Once the excitement died down, and it was determined that a mechanic would look the car over before it was driven again, Nick led the way off the track. He’d had enough, and if Harper tried to convince him otherwise, they would have a knockdown, drag-out fight right there for everyone to watch.<
br />
Not that he’d ever hit a woman, but he’d sure as sin yell at her.
But she didn’t utter a word. In fact, she acted as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened as she grabbed her handbag from the storage locker and chatted up Dean. So Nick put on the same face. After changing out of their racing suits, they finally headed to the parking lot where Nick opened and held the truck door for her before rounding the front to the driver’s side. The fact that he’d insisted on being the one to drive today had riled her, but he’d won that battle. Just as he was about to win the one ahead.
He climbed behind the wheel, but sat unmoving. “Where to?”
He’d planned on taking her to a local pizza joint that served a one-of-a-kind cherry pizza made from fruit from their farm, but at the moment, he didn’t feel a public place would be appropriate. Because they were going to discuss this whether she wanted to pretend all was well or not.
She glanced at him before answering, and after eyeing him quietly, she said, “You know what?” She put a hand over the top of her purse as if to pick it up. “Maybe we should call it a day. I live not too far from here. I’ll just take a cab.”
She reached for the door handle but stopped at the sound of the locks being thrown.
“Are you kidding me?” She jerked her gaze back to his. “Like I can’t simply open the door and get out.”
“You could, but I’d follow you.”
“I just want to go home, Nick. There’s no need for us to argue.”
She reached for the door again, and this time he put his hand over hers, his fingers trapping hers against the cool metal of the handle. He was directly in her face now and caught her heated breaths on his chin.
“Let me out of your truck,” she gritted out.
“Not going to happen.” He stared at her. “Your place or mine?”
They had a stare-off, but apparently she saw the error of her ways. He would not be backing down from this one. He might give in when it wasn’t a battle that needed to be fought at the moment, but this particular war wouldn’t wait.
