Tallulah Speed (Tallulah Cove Book 5)

by Casey Hagen

  She pushed open the door, a loud bell rattled overhead, and all eyes turned to her. “I’m looking for Jeremy Price.”

  He slowly straightened from under the hood of her 1969 ZL1 Camaro and eyed her from across the room. So did his workers, five of them.

  No pressure.

  She couldn’t read the look on his face, and she didn’t care. She sighed because, finally, she had him in the same room. She could see his face and hear his voice. Suddenly, she could take a deep breath again.

  But she was still pissed.

  “I have something I want to say to you,” she called across the room, her hands on her hips.

  All eyes shifted from her back to him. “So, say it,” he said with his arms spread, taking slow, measured steps in her direction. The only sound was of his boots as he walked toward her.

  “You have a hell of a lot of nerve rejecting me, you know that? Do you know how many men would cut off a limb to have a chance with me? Well, do you?” she said, pointing at him the whole time.

  “I imagine thousands,” Jeremy said, getting closer, his eyes roaming over her from head to toe.

  “Then why not you? Why don’t you want me?”

  He shook his head, stopped before her, and grabbed a lock of her hair, rubbing it between his thumb and finger. “Dame, wanting you has never been the problem. Loving you…now that’s what scared the hell out of me.”

  She inhaled sharply. “Loving me?”

  He cupped her face. “Oh yeah.”

  “Then why did I have to come after you?”

  “One more day and you wouldn’t have had to.” He bent and whispered in her ear, “I was being an idiot.”

  “The biggest.”

  “Will you forgive me?”

  “Well, I don’t know if I should forgive you so fast. You left me all alone.”

  He cupped her face and held her there. “I did, and I was wrong. I’d love to tell you I won’t do anything else that stupid, but I can’t guarantee that.”

  “I’ve never thought I was better than you, just because of what you do. If you don’t realize that, say so now.”

  “It had nothing to do with you and everything to do with how I viewed myself. A momentary lapse.”

  She ran her fingers through his hair. “So, you’ll date me?”

  He wrapped his arms around her waist and growled into her neck. “I’ll do a hell of a lot more than date you.”

  She squealed and wrapped her arms around his neck. “I’m going to hold you to that.”

  He set her on her feet and cupped her face in his big hands. Her skin tingled from head to toe. No one had ever had this effect on her, and there was no way in the world she was ever letting him get away again.

  He kissed her, his lips gentle, his hands sliding into her hair.

  Absolute perfection. All the other crap from the past few weeks disappeared, and as much as it sucked, she couldn’t be sorry for one thing because it had led him to her.

  “I love you,” she whispered against his lips.

  EPILOGUE

  Dress Me Up

  “JEREMY?” VALENTINA CALLED FROM the master bathroom.

  “Yeah?” he called back from his closet.

  “Luciano will be here in an hour to pick us up. Will you be ready?”

  He’d just come in from working on the engine of the Helica. “Uh, yeah,” he called. He hadn’t the first clue what to wear. He didn’t even know if he had the right things to wear. His own fault, he’d known this day was coming for weeks.

  He’d been busy moving to her place and getting Kirk situated to run the shop full time in Tallulah Cove. Instead of spending his money on a 1969 ZL1 Camaro, when his girlfriend already owned one, he decided to open up a branch of Price’s Auto Body in Mariana where he could cater to the rich. It was funny how he and his sister had ended up traveling the same business and relationship paths.

  Since moving in with Valentina, and getting to know her without the looming danger, he got reacquainted with Tallulah Cove. And maybe took a bit of pride that he was the one to introduce her into the community and seeing it through her eyes. So, while he was building a branch of the business in Mariana, he hired the professionals straight out of Tallulah Cove. Ben Davenport had built an entire team to get the land secured and the business up and running.

  He’d successfully managed to avoid social scenes. Well, other than George’s funeral, not that he would call that a social event. It had been a small ceremony with just his ashes since his Jeep had been found at the bottom of a ravine, where he ended up after he lost the steering.

  Now, determined to move on, Valentina had planned this celebration for Luciano, to introduce him into the family business. Jeremy had to be there, especially since he had encouraged her. In all fairness, though, they were in bed, and she had been hopping around in her tiny underwear and a tank top in her excitement. He would have said anything to shut her up and get her naked.

  So now he had to go.

  And he had no clue what to wear.

  She found him standing in his closet and laughed.

  “What?” he asked.

  “You. You’re too funny. You look so lost.”

  “I don’t know how to dress for this.”

  She cupped his chin and turned his face to her. “Well, forget about who will be there. If this was a party your sister was throwing, something fancier, what would you wear?”

  “A dress shirt, no tie, maybe a blazer, and jeans.”

  She shrugged. “So, wear that.”

  “Are you su—”

  “Jeremy, don’t make me hurt you.”

  “Like you could,” he muttered.

  Next thing he knew he heard a loud slap, followed by a sharp sting on his naked left cheek. “Ouch, son of a—”

  “Keep it up; there’s more where that came from.”

  He picked her right up off of her feet, flipped her over his shoulder, and marched to their bed. She squealed when he flopped her onto the comforter. “Oh, you are so going to pay for that.”

  She craned her neck and looked at the clock. “We don’t have time.”

  “You should have thought about that before you spanked me. I like it,” he muttered against the inside of her thigh.

  She gasped when he bit down on the sensitive flesh where her thigh met the soft skin of her stomach.

  She locked her fingers in his hair and yanked his head up to look at him. “We can be fashionably late. You’ve got ten minutes.”

  He crawled up her body, never forgetting how lucky he was that this magnificent woman only had eyes for him. “You have any idea how much I love you?” he said as he slid into her.

  “Yes, but I’m greedy so show me again,” she gasped against his lips.

  “Every single day,” he whispered against her skin.

  About Casey Hagen

  Casey Hagen pens her snarky, passionate stories from the salty air of Kennebunk, Maine. She’s a born and raised Vermont native, a New England girl to the core, with Ben & Jerry’s in her heart and real Vermont maple syrup pumping through her veins.

  She’s the proud mother of three girls and a new, first-time grandma with an insatiable addiction to Fall Out Boy, and a new, rather concerning obsession with tattoos and piercings. Can you say “cool grandma?”

  The inked and pierced grandma spends her time tucked away in her office, coated in cat hair, alternating between tearing her hair out trying to find the perfect words and being one step ahead of her three scheming fur babies she is positive are plotting her demise with every swirl around her ankles at the top of her office stairs.

  She loves writing stories about real people, with complicated histories, relatable everyday problems, and giving them the hard-won happily-ever-afters they deserve.

  And she thanks every last one of you who picks up one of her stories.

  Casey is done talking about herself in the third person.

  *Casey out*

  Find the Tallulah Cove Series here: