Out of Alignment (Hearts & Horsepower #5)

by A. K. Evans

  “Hey,” he returned as he came in and closed the door behind him. “You look fabulous.”

  For a long time, I’d only ever received compliments like that from my sister, who I had started to think was being paid to say nice things like that to me. So, hearing it from Nash made my heart melt.

  “Thank you. You look great, too.”

  “Thanks. I don’t mean to rush you, but I actually ended up skipping lunch today so that I’d be able to get here on time to pick you up,” Nash shared. “I’m starved. Are you ready to go?”

  My eyes widened. He hadn’t eaten any lunch? I wanted to ask him exactly what his job was and why it required him to skip lunch just so he could go out on a date, but I didn’t think it was wise to delay him any longer, so I answered, “Yes, just let me grab my purse.”

  Without delay, I grabbed my purse, locked up, and we left.

  Once we were in the car and had been driving for a couple of minutes, I asked, “Is this typical?”

  “What?” he countered.

  “Not eating lunch just so you can leave work at a reasonable time,” I clarified as I glanced over at him.

  Shaking his head while keeping his eyes focused on the road, he replied, “No. But there is a race this weekend, and that typically means late nights during the week leading up to it. To top it off, my back injury resulted in me falling behind on a few projects. I’m trying to make up that time now, so this week is feeling particularly busy for me.”

  “What exactly do you do?” I asked.

  “I am the chassis tuner at LT Motorsports,” he returned.

  For all I knew, Nash might as well have just spoken another language because I didn’t understand anything he just told me.

  “Um, I don’t know what any of that means,” I remarked, looking back out the window.

  Nash let out a little laugh as he glanced at me before returning his attention to the road. Though it was a brief look, I still couldn’t miss seeing the shining look in his eyes.

  “LT Motorsports is considered by many to be one of the premiere performance automotive shops in the country,” he started. “We’re known around the globe and have customers sending their engines or cars to us from other countries. We’ve even had the shop owner flown to other countries to perform work on their cars. As a chassis tuner, I have various jobs that I perform, but the end goal is generally always the same. My ultimate goal is to make certain that a race car is set up for its application. For example, this weekend’s race is a drag racing event. That means the cars will be driving side by side down a quarter-mile piece of track surface in a straight line. My job is to make sure the car goes straight.”

  I found this explanation slightly confusing because I couldn’t understand why there needed to be a position for someone like him. I bought my car from the dealership a few years ago, and it always drove straight.

  “I don’t understand,” I replied. Feeling his confused eyes on me momentarily, I wondered, “Why would a car not go straight? I’ve never experienced anything so bizarre in my life.”

  Silence filled the cabin, and I instantly began to regret calling the importance and validity of his job into question. I hadn’t been trying to insult him. I was genuinely baffled that such a thing existed.

  “Haven’t you ever gotten an alignment done on your car?” Nash asked.

  “Of course, I have,” I assured him. I didn’t tell him that I had absolutely no idea what was being done to my car when that happened.

  Following a brief pause, Nash declared, “Why is it that I’m willing to bet you pay to have work done on your car, and you don’t even know if it’s needed?”

  “Probably because you’d win that bet,” I confessed. He found me out. There was no point in denying the truth. But in admitting the truth, I also felt it was necessary to defend myself. So, I added, “But I trust Larry. He’s never done me wrong.”

  “Larry Wall?” Nash replied.

  “Yes. Do you know him?” I asked.

  Nash dipped his chin. “He’s a good dude,” he started. “At least we know you’re not being taken advantage of when it comes to your car.”

  While I already trusted Larry to do good by me, it was nice to hear Nash praise him.

  Before I could respond to him, Nash said, “Alright, so you know how it’s your job to make sure people’s spines aren’t out of alignment?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I do the same thing with cars,” he explained. “But I do it on race cars, which is not the same as it is for regular cars that are being driven on the road. There are many different kinds of racing, and each of them requires different types of suspension adjustments based on how the car is expected to perform.”

  “That makes sense,” I said.

  For the remainder of our drive, Nash talked to me a bit more about the specifics of the work he did. I was so fascinated by listening to him talk that before I knew it, we had arrived at Sierra Grillhouse.

  After he parked, Nash came around to meet me on my side. Then he held my hand as he led me toward the front door of the restaurant. Those two simple gestures were so unexpected and heartwarming.

  Was this guy a real-life knight in shining armor?

  He certainly knew how to treat a lady.

  A few minutes later, we were seated opposite from one another and were perusing the menus. After we gave our entrée selections to the waiter, I looked across the table and found Nash staring at me with a questioning look on his face.

  “What?” I asked.

  He grinned at me and sat back. “I don’t know, I’m just thinking about how this whole thing has played out between us,” he started. “I mean, we went from the whole laundromat scene to this.”

  Nodding, I agreed, “Yeah, we’ve definitely come a long way in a short time.”

  “What happened?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That day,” he clarified. “Or, I guess it was that week. You told me the following Monday when I was in your office that you’d had a bad week. What happened?”

  Cocking an eyebrow, I returned, “Are you sure you want to know? It’s really nothing exciting.”

  Shrugging, he explained, “I just think, since I’m not planning for this thing between us to be just some passing fling, that I should get to know what things might make you angry with me.”

  He had no idea what was in store for him.

  The poor guy.

  I sighed. “My reaction that night was the result of a week of one bad thing after another,” I began. “My washing machine broke the Sunday before, and then when I tried to look up how to fix it, my internet started acting up. I spent so much time that week on the phone with my internet service provider; it’s a wonder I got any work done at all. My car needed to get inspected, but I got a call that my tires needed to be replaced. So, I was stuck with the loaner car for a few extra days. It took me days to return my sister’s phone call, and just before I arrived at the laundromat, I learned that my landscaping company hadn’t come out to mow my grass.”

  When I finished telling him about my horrible week, he gave me a confused look. As time passed and he continued to stay silent, I wondered if I’d said something wrong.

  “Nash?” I called.

  “Yeah?”

  “What’s wrong?” I wondered.

  “I was waiting for you to finish,” he told me.

  “I am finished.”

  His brows furrowed at my statement, and I realized he was even more confused. Seeing that, I was just as baffled. Why did he think there was more to my story?

  “So, you’re telling me that was all that happened?” he questioned me.

  Slowly, I dipped my chin. Then, I remembered something and reminded him, “Well, don’t forget that there was the whole broken dryer at the laundromat, too. I’d gotten a call from Larry that I could go pick up my car, and there were only a few minutes left before he was going to close. It was highly inconvenient and stress-inducing.”

 
Nash’s lips twitched. “I bet.”

  “Go ahead and laugh,” I declared. “When you’re in my shoes one day, we’ll see who suddenly has some sympathy.”

  “I hate to tell you, but none of the things you experienced would send me over the edge to insanity,” he shared.

  “I wasn’t insane,” I argued.

  There was a bit of delight in his eyes as he jerked his head slightly to the side and asked, “Do you remember what you said to me when you found out that I had done the horrible thing of folding your clothes for you?”

  I bit my lip. Nash’s eyes dropped to it.

  Before I could respond, he leaned forward, and his voice dipped low when he said, “I promise I wasn’t a creep, but I’d be lying if I said I’m not seriously interested in seeing you wearing nothing but those panties.”

  I swallowed hard at his admission and silently praised myself for making sure that I wore a cute outfit and put on a sexy matching bra and panty set.

  I cleared my throat, hoping to buy myself some time to come up with a response when the waiter returned with our dinner salads and saved me from making a fool of myself.

  When he left, I was worried I was going to need to figure out what to say, but Nash either didn’t want one or realized I was squirming because he said, “So, what is it that made you decide to become a chiropractor?”

  The tension I was feeling instantly dissipated, and I was able to pick up my fork finally. After I took my first bite and swallowed, I declared, “I liked the idea of helping people who were in pain, and the idea that I could do that without just pumping them full of medications was intriguing to me. It’s a gratifying career, especially when I see the improvements in my patients after a handful of visits.”

  “I’ve got to tell you; I think it’s your patients who are feeling far more grateful for you,” he said. “I know I am.”

  Smiling at him, I said, “I’m glad you’re feeling better.”

  Nodding, he replied, “Me too.”

  “And I’m glad you didn’t walk out at that first visit,” I added.

  There was a pause before Nash responded, “Yeah, I am, too. Because not only did you help me heal from the injury, you also showed me at that visit and particularly the subsequent ones that you weren’t the woman I came into that office believing you were.”

  That was completely unexpected, but I was relieved to hear it. I hated knowing that the first impression he had of me was a horrible one, so knowing that he’d given me that chance to show him otherwise and had actually seen who I really was meant a lot.

  For the first time since we left my house, I felt completely relaxed. Nash heard my reasons for being the way I was the day we first left, and he wasn’t completely disgusted with me. Beyond that, he’d just admitted that he knew that wasn’t who I was. So, while it seemed that it had all been about him getting to know me, I realized that the way he’d handled all of it showed me a lot about the kind of man he was.

  And that man was someone I was beginning to feel really lucky about getting the chance to know.

  “I’m a little worried now. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea, Parker.”

  That came from Nash, and the words he’d just said surprisingly didn’t make me feel the least bit concerned. In fact, I felt extraordinarily delighted at them.

  It was a matter of a few days ago when I’d been speaking to my sister on the phone about my first encounter with Nash following how horribly I’d humiliated myself and how it ended with him kissing me and asking me out on a date. She’d been surprised to hear how much I was looking forward to it, thinking that I was some imposter.

  Well, if Kaia could see me now, she’d surely send out a search party to find the real Parker Banks because I had gone so far outside of the norm for me. My sister would have lost her mind.

  Nash and I had had a wonderful dinner and dessert at Sierra Grillhouse, and I was now aware of the reason why he hadn’t wanted me to dress like I had last Saturday. Because he’d brought me out ax throwing.

  And apparently, he was slightly terrified at just how good my aim is. Quite frankly, I had been surprised by my talent, too. After the first throw, I thought it was simply beginner’s luck. But when every subsequent throw had been just as precise, I realized I was terrific.

  Nash did, too.

  “Oh, come on,” I goaded him. “I’m sure you can do just as well as I am.”

  “I haven’t yet,” he pointed out.

  Narrowing my eyes at him, I asked, “Are you trying to let me win?”

  Confusion washed over him. “Why would I do that?” he countered.

  I shrugged. “To earn bonus points,” I suggested. In the back of my mind, I had thought that perhaps he wanted to keep me in a good mood because I was more likely to want to take things where I’d indicated I wanted them to go last weekend at Lou’s. The truth was, Nash didn’t need to do anything to make that happen because I’d already decided I wanted to go there with him.

  I was beyond excited about it.

  “That’s not what I’m doing,” Nash insisted. “Besides, even if I were trying to earn bonus points, that would still have nothing to do with the fact that you’re incredibly accurate. Are you sure you’ve never done this before tonight?”

  I brought my hand up to my heart and drew an ‘X’ over it. “Cross my heart,” I said. “Though, now I think I want to come back and do it again, considering I’m so good at it.”

  “It’s rude to be a braggart,” he noted.

  Moving toward him, I put a hand on his bicep and squeezed. Then I promised, “I’m not trying to show off. This is actually an excellent thing, and I think I should hone my undeniable skills for ax throwing. This way, should we ever be under attack, I could protect us with my ax-throwing skills.”

  Nash’s hand came up to cover mine. He returned the squeeze before he said softly, “First of all, Parker, do you even own an ax?”

  I shook my head.

  “That’s your first problem,” he started. Leaning closer, he added, “The bigger problem is that you’re assuming if we were ever under attack that I’d sit back and let you be the one to protect us. That, darling girl, is never going to happen. I’d be the one protecting you.”

  At the determined tone of his voice, a shudder ran through my body. My lips parted, and I was suddenly very, very thirsty. Something about the way he said it made me believe every word he said.

  He might have initially thought I was silly with my whole scenario of us being under attack, but there was no denying that if push came to shove and it became a genuine thing, he’d put himself between that attacker and me.

  I couldn’t begin to comprehend or process how that made me feel, especially considering we’d just met each other.

  I remained silent for so long, and Nash ordered, “Go get your ax, Parker. It’s my turn.”

  After giving him a nod, I moved to get my ax.

  Then Nash took his turn, and though it was his most accurate throw, it didn’t even come close to mine.

  Turning his head toward me, he cocked an eyebrow.

  I lifted my shoulders to my ears and feigned innocence.

  Once he got his ax, he came back to me and said, “This is damaging my ego.”

  I rolled my eyes and laughed. “I’m sure you’ll find another way to inflate it,” I told him. “I mean, it’s not like you don’t know that the way you kiss is enough to bring a woman to her knees.”

  Nash smirked as I dropped my head and brought my hand up to cover my eyes. “Please tell me I didn’t just say that,” I begged.

  I felt Nash’s arm curl around my back as he tugged me into his chest. He gave me a gentle squeeze before he brought his mouth to my ear and whispered, “You did. And it’s good to know you enjoy it. I’ll be sure to do more of that for you.”

  I kept my head down, feeling mortified. What was going on with me? It was like I’d suddenly gotten around Nash and lost all my inhibitions. On Saturday, I’d blamed it on the alcohol. Now, I w
asn’t so sure.

  “Parker?” he called gently.

  “Hmm?” I replied.

  “Look at me, sunshine,” he urged.

  Slowly, I lifted my gaze to meet his. Once he had my attention, he shared, “I feel very much the same about the way you kiss.”

  “Really?” I asked.

  Smiling, he insisted, “Yes.”

  Then he pressed a kiss to my forehead and advised, “It’s your turn.”

  From that point forward, Nash and I had an incredible night of ax-throwing fun. There was no longer any tension, and we had a ton of laughs. It was easily the best time I’d had in a long time. And what I found to be the most interesting about all of it was that I wasn’t living inside my head, thinking about things out of my control. That was the best thing about all of it, and I knew that Nash had given that to me.

  “I had an incredible time with you tonight, Parker.”

  “I had a fantastic time with you, too, Nash,” I replied.

  Nash and I had arrived back at my place. He was holding my hand as we walked toward the front door.

  “Do you have plans for this weekend?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “This weekend,” he repeated. “Did you have any plans because I wanted to see if you’d consider coming to the race track with me?”

  We made it to the front door, where I put the key in, unlocked it, and pushed inside. Nash followed me in and closed the door behind him.

  Then I asked, “What time is it?”

  “All day Saturday and most of the day Sunday,” he answered.

  I didn’t necessarily have plans for the weekend outside of my normal routine of cleaning my house, doing laundry, and grocery shopping. And I really liked the fact that Nash was attempting to make more plans with me.

  So, I said, “I do have to take one day to get my house cleaned and grocery shop, but I could probably squeeze that all in on Sunday. I could go on Saturday.”

  A look of surprise came over him. “Really?” he asked.

  “Yeah. I think it’d be fun to see you at work,” I told him.

  The surprise turned to contentment as Nash took two steps toward me, slid his hand around my waist, and tugged me toward him. My hands flew to his chest as his mouth descended on mine. The next thing I knew, Nash was kissing me. And just like I’d told him was possible earlier in the evening, his kiss nearly brought me to my knees. Luckily, his arm around my waist tightened, keeping me firmly planted against his hard body.