Not that she was the type to fall into bed with a guy, but it had been a long time and Ross just seemed to trip all the right switches for her. She needed to explore that. Maybe it was risky—hell, downright dangerous—but she had to know.
Mel snorted. “Not in my book. Just so long as you’re careful. Do not fall for him, Holly.”
“I said I wouldn’t. Geez, I’m not some sort of desperate virgin who’s never been kissed. I haven’t had sex in months now. I’m ready. Maybe he’s the wrong guy for the big picture, but he’s right for right now.”
“I just remember how tore up you were over Joshua.”
Ah yes, good old Joshua Norton. He’d been good-looking, but he’d known it and he’d acted like he was God’s gift. They’d dated for a year before he’d broken up with her because he felt like she gave the distillery more attention than she gave him.
It had taken her a while to realize that what he really wanted was a woman who would take care of him.
“Joshua was a dick. Everybody knew it, including you. I was the one who didn’t see it. Are you telling me that a guy who allows little kids to sit in his zillion dollar car is a dick? Because I don’t think so. Even if he ends up being bad for me, he’s not a jerk.”
“Okay, fine. Have fun. And I want all the details. Like how big his—”
“Mel!” Holly laughed. “You’re awful.”
“But you love me.”
“I do. How about you? Did you go home with Doug last night? Or did he go home with you? Inquiring minds and all.”
Mel sighed. “No, I didn’t. He got called into work.”
Doug was a firefighter, which meant he worked long hours and had a crazy schedule. Mel had been interested in him forever, but something always happened to prevent them from getting past first base.
“Mel, I don’t mean to be, uh, negative or anything—but have you ever considered that maybe there’s more going on with Doug than meets the eye? He strings you along and then he always gets called in or has to leave just before things get good.”
“Like what? You think he’s gay? Or married? Wouldn’t somebody know he had a wife and tell me?”
“It might not be either of those things—maybe he’s just scared. Or he has erectile dysfunction. Premature ejaculation? I don’t know, but you’d think he’d find the time by now.”
Mel sighed. “I hate to say you’re right, but I think you’re right. He said he’d call this weekend. I suppose it’s time I asked him what the deal is. If this isn’t going anywhere, I need to move on. I’ve spent enough time waiting for him to make a move.”
“Agreed.” She heard the rumble of an engine outside and knew it had to be Ross. Nobody in her little neighborhood drove anything that sounded like that. Still, she walked over to the window to look. Something that resembled the Batmobile—or what she thought the Batmobile looked like since she wasn’t one hundred percent certain—had pulled into her driveway. A moment later, a tall dark-haired guy in mirrored Oakleys stepped out of the car.
Holly’s belly twisted with longing. Oh, my…
“Mel, I have to go. Ross is here.”
“Oooh, have fun! And remember, I want details. As many as you’ll give me anyway.”
“We’ll see,” Holly said. Then she dropped the phone next to her purse and rubbed her hands down the cute little flippy skirt she’d put on earlier. Panic flared inside. Maybe she should have put on jeans. What was she thinking wearing a skirt? Was she trying too hard?
The doorbell rang. Too late.
Holly gulped down nerves and went to the door, her hand closing over the knob. Deep breath in, breathe out. What was wrong with her?
It took her a second, but she tugged the door open slowly, pasting a smile on her face as she did so. Butterflies swirled. Ross was tall, imposing, packed with lean muscle. He wore a gray shirt and faded jeans that hugged him in places few women—straight women—could resist. Add a cowboy hat and boots and he’d look like every woman’s cowboy fantasy. As it was, he wore flip flops—manly ones, not cheap ones or plastic ones—and he grinned before his gaze traveled down her body, from the flowery top to the blue swirly skirt and then all the way down her legs to her feet. Thank God she’d had a recent pedicure—rose pink polish, thank you very much.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi. You look terrific.”
A blush threatened. “Thank you. So do you.” She stepped back. “Would you like to come in?”
He pulled in a breath. Shook his head. “Nope. Because if I do, I won’t want to leave anytime soon. I’m going to want to kiss you, then I’ll have to slide my hands under that skirt—and, well, if you don’t tell me no, then I’m going to undress you and spend the afternoon making you say my name.”
Holly’s belly tightened. It sounded delicious. And yet… “Okay, I guess I’ll get my purse.”
“That’s a good idea.”
She went to grab her purse on shaky legs, then returned and locked up while he waited behind her.
“Where are we going?” he asked when she turned.
“What are you in the mood for?”
His eyes gleamed. “I already told you.”
“Food, Ross.”
“Ah, food. Surprise me.”
“I can do that.”
“Believe me, Holly. You already have.”
HE WASN’T TALKING about food, either. Holly Brooks was surprising him in more ways than he could currently count. He’d thought her beautiful when he’d seen her striding across the parking lot toward him his first day at the distillery. He’d thought her intriguing when she treated him like a bad rash. His thoughts about her kept expanding and growing and morphing into something that currently amounted to him being consumed by her.
Not a state of affairs he was accustomed to for sure.
Holly Brooks wasn’t a model. She wasn’t rail thin—she wasn’t chubby either—and she wasn’t fake in any way that he could tell. She made him wonder how he kept attracting the fake women who put so much stock into their hair and makeup and clothing that he didn’t know what mattered to them beyond their appearances.
It wasn’t that they weren’t pretty. They were. Gorgeously so. He didn’t have a thing against makeup and beautiful clothes, or women who looked like they’d stepped out of the pages of a magazine. Hell, he’d dated enough of them and he’d enjoyed it for the most part.
But there was something about Holly and her inability to be nice to him for the sake of being nice to a rich, famous man who could do things for her that pulled at him. If Holly didn’t like him, she wouldn’t be here. That much he knew. She wasn’t capable of faking it, not when her dislike had been so palpable earlier in the week.
Not to mention she hadn’t exactly been easy to persuade that he was a nice guy. Up until last night when he’d confronted that ape who’d manhandled her, he hadn’t been entirely convinced that she liked him at all, no matter that she’d said she did when he’d fixed her Jeep.
He helped her into the car before going around to his side. She hadn’t even tried to stop him opening the door, which was progress. Holly had buckled herself in and she was looking down at her skirt, smoothing it, when he got in. Were her fingers trembling?
“Hey,” he said as he pressed the button to start the car.
She jerked her gaze to his. “Hmm?”
Definitely some nerves at work there.
“I’m glad you said yes to this. Today, I mean. I want to show you why I like cars so much.”
She smiled. “Well, this one is certainly pretty. I guess I kind of understand. I like making whisky. You like doing things with cars.”
“Yeah. I love racing—but I’d like to open my own garage for performance engines. I want to enhance cars for people who can pay—and then I’d like to have another garage where I fix up older cars and match them with people who need something to get back and forth to work or school. When you don’t live in a city with good transportation, or you live in the country, the differen
ce between making a decent income and being on the streets can come down to having a reliable way to work.”
He’d never told anyone that before. He didn’t quite know why, but it had seemed like if he said it, people would think he was just saying it to give them a good impression of him. The rich guy with everything giving lip service to doing good works because it looked great on his resume.
But he knew that Holly would understand. She smiled, and his heart skipped.
“Wow. There you go being even more decent. I think that’s wonderful, Ross.”
“Do you?”
“Of course I do. Who wouldn’t?”
“You don’t wonder why I don’t just buy new cars and give them away?”
She blinked. “Well, I didn’t think of that. But I guess it’s because you can fix up a whole lot more older cars for the price of one new one.”
He nodded. “That’s part of it. The other part is things like insurance and taxes. You give someone a new car, they have to insure it and pay taxes on it. An older car is cheaper.”
“Which means you help more people.”
“Yeah. Plus if I hire people who need jobs to work in the garage, then I help even more people.”
“That’s really admirable of you.” He thought she sniffled. Then she lifted her head and gave him an exaggerated look. “Geez, Ross, I’m beginning to think maybe you’re too nice for me.”
He snorted. “No way, honey. When it comes to you, I have very specific thoughts that are not nice. Promise, if you stick around, I’ll demonstrate them all for you.”
“Did you just call me honey?” she asked, eyebrow arched.
“You know I did.”
She laughed. “I’ll allow it. This time. So when are you opening this garage where you help people?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“What’s stopping you from doing it now? You have the money. You know people.”
He glanced at her. She was waiting for the answer, but he didn’t really have one. It was something he wanted to do, but he kept putting off the garage—both sides of it—because he was so busy racing. But maybe it was time. Maybe he needed to use this break from the racing team to do what he’d been telling himself he would do for years now.
“I guess I thought I was too busy to give it the attention it needed. I keep saying every year that I’ll get it done in the off-season. But I never do. It’s time I made it a priority.”
Holly’s smile was huge. “That’s how you do things, Ross. A step at a time. Just like making whisky.”
“YOUR RACING GARAGE IS HERE?” Holly asked, puzzled.
They’d gone out for Italian food and now they were headed toward his garage. Except the area of Louisville he was driving through was very exclusive. It featured large homes with wrought iron fences and gates that were designed to shut people out. She couldn’t imagine a garage around here, and yet Ross was driving down the street like they’d pull up to one at any moment.
“Well, not quite,” he said as he pressed a button on the visor. A pair of iron gates rolled open as he turned into a driveway that went up a gentle hill. At the top sat a huge mansion that looked a bit like a French chateau. It was surrounded by mature trees and gorgeous landscaping.
“Here? You’re working on a stock car here?”
He laughed. “No, not here.”
They passed beneath an archway and into a motor court with a huge garage that featured eight doors. Eight doors. She turned to gape at him.
“Home sweet home,” he said.
“Ross. Holy hell, this is…”
“Ostentatious?”
“Well, maybe? But no, I was going to say it’s huge… Maybe even overwhelming.”
One of the garage doors cranked up and Ross drove inside. The garage itself was light because there were transom windows set high along one wall. It was also gleaming. The floors were white, the walls were white, and it was filled with cars, some stacked on lifts above others. She saw the Ferrari. The truck. And others that she didn’t even know what they were. A BMW over there. A Porsche?
Ross Blackthorne wasn’t just rich. He was ridiculously, fabulously wealthy.
Holly swallowed. She didn’t know how to process this. Of course she knew he was rich. But seeing it like this—well, it was even more shocking than a two million dollar car.
Except how it was more shocking she wasn’t sure—it just was. A car was a small thing. But a house like this one. All these cars in one place.
Yeah, wow. Just wow.
And he’d brought her here. Like they were on a date. Little Holly Brooks who put on overalls and a bandanna and got down into the mash when she had to. Distilling whisky could be a messy business sometimes, and she did it all. She wasn’t the kind of woman who fit in a place like this.
“The racing team is in Illinois this weekend. There’s nothing to see at the garage there, so I brought you here. It’s not the same thing, but it’s mine and these are my cars.”
“I didn’t know it was possible for one person to have so many cars.”
He shut off the Corvette and opened his door. “I told you they’ve been my obsession since I was a kid. Come on, let me show you around.”
Holly stepped onto the spotless floor. You could eat off it if you wanted. Ross came over and took her hand. They walked through the gleaming garage while he opened car doors for her and told her about each one. A Bugatti Veyron, a Porsche 911 GT3, an Audi R-8, a Mercedes AMG something or other, a McLaren convertible in the prettiest deep maroon she’d ever seen, and several others that ran together in her head. He knew everything there was to know—the zero to sixty times, the production numbers, the horsepower, the special thing about each car that made him want to own it.
He had older cars, too. An Italian import called a De Tomaso Pantera was shiny red and gleaming. The interior was black, and all the original knobs were there. The engine was in the back of the car—which he called mid-engine—and it was made by Ford.
“By Ford? I thought you said this is an Italian car.”
“It is. But Ford made the engines. Ford imported the car and sold it here. There were about seven-thousand of them made.”
“Do you drive all these cars?”
He nodded. “Yep. They’re each fun in their own way. It’s a different experience depending on which car you drive. I like the variety.”
Like he liked a variety of women?
Holly dropped her gaze and nibbled the inside of her lip. She was out of her depth with this man. Hopelessly out of her depth. Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe she needed to ask him to take her home and forget all about spending more time with him.
He tipped her chin up. That single touch, the way her body responded, told her she wasn’t going to leave. She didn’t want to.
“I’m sorry. It’s too much for one visit, right?” he asked.
“No, it’s really not, honest. But it’s so much information. I don’t know how you keep it all sorted in your head.”
He gave her a grin, one eyebrow arching. “Kinda like you and the distillery. I don’t know how you keep all that sorted, or how you know just what to do or order or who to talk to. It’s a much bigger job than remembering facts about cars.”
“It’s important to you just like the whisky is important to me. I think I understand why you wanted me to see your cars now.”
“Why?”
“To prove that when we love a thing, it comes easy to us. Running the distillery comes easy to me. It’s what I was born to do.”
“In a way, I was born to do it too. But it’s not natural for me. I don’t love it.”
“Okay, so we have to have passion for it. You’re passionate about cars. I’m passionate about whisky.”
He tugged her into his arms. Her hands went up to press against his chest. Her stomach clenched and her pulse careened. “I’m passionate about you, Holly Brooks. I want—desperately—to take you to bed. You’re not like any woman I’ve ever met.”
; Her heart sped in her chest like one of his cars careening around a track. It raced so fast she thought she was going to be dizzy with it.
But this was it. The moment of truth. Did she say yes? Or did she push back and ask for more time? Because if she said no, he would respect that.
She thought of Mel. She could hear her friend’s voice in her head telling her to go for it. And to be careful, of course. Don’t fall for him.
No, she wasn’t going to fall for him. And though another part of her kept insisting it was a bad idea to get involved with a Blackthorne, she wasn’t listening.
This wasn’t involved. It was sex. She could have sex.
She pulled in a breath. “Yes,” she said. “I want that too.”
He lowered his head and kissed her. It wasn’t a desperate kiss, though she wanted it to be. It was soft, sweet. Restrained. She tried to get closer, kiss harder. If she was going to do this, she wanted to do it at full tilt—before her nerves got the best of her.
But he eased her away from him and brushed her hair back from her shoulders. “I’m going to do this right,” he said. “Not rip your clothes off and take you in a garage.”
Holly curled her fingers into his shirt. “I’m not a virgin, Ross. You don’t have to make this into some sort of long drawn-out seduction like we’re in Downton Abbey.”
His eyes widened. Then he laughed. “I wasn’t trying to. I just want you to be comfortable. You seemed nervous earlier.”
“Of course I’m nervous. I’ve never had sex with you before. And I want to, which still scares me. But not enough to make me tell you to take me home. I want this. I want you.”
He searched her gaze. “You really do, don’t you? You want me.”
“I said that didn’t I?”
She didn’t know what he was thinking, or what he would say—but then he moved, sweeping her legs from beneath her, lifting her. Holly squeaked as she wrapped her arms around his neck. He started moving, striding through the garage with purpose. His expression was fierce as he stopped and punched in a code—and a door swung open, leading into the darkened interior of a hallway.
Ross: 7 Brides for 7 Blackthornes (Book 3) Page 12
