Pride After Her Fall

There was nothing for it but to turn off the engine for five minutes before taking it easy going down into town. The Sunbeam Alpine had been playing up for weeks. This wasn’t the first time it had happened, and it wouldn’t be the last.

Laying her elbow on the door and pressing her head against her hand, she closed her eyes, allowing the sun on her face to soothe the surging anxiety that threatened to sweep everything before it.

Nash watched the Sunbeam drop speed, weave a little. The brake lights stayed on as it ground to a standstill in a cloud of dust at the roadside.

He sped past.

He didn’t have time for this. For any of it. The banged-up car, the performance in the courtyard … the unreasonable desire to pull over, pluck those shades off her eyes and rattle around for that conscience of hers she’d assured him she had.

He only got a few hundred metres down the road before he was doing a screeching circle and slowly heading back.

She hadn’t got out of the car She seemed to be just sitting there.

Nash already wanted to shake her.

He pulled the Veyron in behind and killed the engine. Shoving his aviators back through his thick brown hair, he advanced on her car. Still she hadn’t shifted.

What did she expect? A valet service?

She was sitting with her head thrown back, as if the sun on her face was a sensual experience, her expression virtually obscured by those ridiculously large sunglasses. He noticed for the first time that she had a dappling of freckles over her bare shoulders. They seemed oddly girlish on such a sophisticated woman. He liked them.

His tread crunched on the gravel but she didn’t shift an inch.

‘Car trouble?’

She slowly lowered the glasses and angled up her face.

‘What do you think?’

Those amber-brown eyes of hers locked on his.

‘What I think is you need a few lessons in driving and personal responsibility.’

A smile, soft and subtle, drifted around the corners of her mouth. ‘Really? And are you the man to give them to me?’

Nash almost returned the smile. She really was playing this out to the last gasp.

‘How about getting out of the car?’

She gave him a speculative look and then slowly began unhooking her seatbelt. Her movements were slow, deliberate. She unlatched the door, hesitated only for a moment and then swung her long legs out. She shut the door with a click behind her and leaned back against it.

‘How can I help you, Officer?’

The scent of her hit him, swarmed through his senses like a hive of pretty bees, all honey and flowers and female.

Expensive, a steadying voice intervened. She smells and looks expensive.

Like any other rich girl on this coast. A dime a dozen if you’d got a spare billion in the bank.

He folded his arms. ‘Going to tell me what’s going on?’

He actually saw the moment the flirtatious persona fell away.

She gave a little shrug. ‘There seems to be a problem with the engine. I accelerate but I lose speed.’

He nodded and headed for the front of her car.

Lorelei found herself following him, hands on her hips. He got the bonnet up with no trouble—something she never could. He leaned in.

‘It’s the original,’ he told her in that deep, male voice.

‘Are you a mechanic?’

‘Near enough.’

Lorelei looked down the road as a couple of cars swished past, then back at the man leaning into the business end of her car.

Her eyes dwelt on the tail of an intricate dragon tattoo running down his flexed left arm, on his muscled shoulders, shifting under the fit of his close-weave black T-shirt, broad and imposing as he bent low, drawing attention to the strong, lean length of his torso and tapering to a hall-of-fame behind—all muscle. Prime male.

She snagged her bottom lip contemplatively, stroking him up and down with her eyes. She couldn’t get over how thick and silky his dark brown hair looked, the wavy ends caressing his broad neck. She wondered how they would feel tangled between her fingers. She wondered what he would say if she apologised, if she told him she wasn’t always this out of control …

‘Whoever looks after it deserves a medal.’

Lorelei wondered a little hopelessly if he was ever going to look up—look at her. She gave a little inner sigh. Probably not. She’d burnt her bridges with this man.

‘What was it?’ he prompted. ‘A gift?’ When she didn’t reply he straightened up and gave her a speculative look. ‘I’d say from a guy who knows his engines.’

Lorelei cleared her throat, aware she’d been staring at him and that he was probably aware of it. ‘I bought it myself. At auction.’

He looked so sceptical her hands twitched all over again on her hips.

‘You need a specialist to run some tests on the engine.’ He was looking at her steadily, as if he expected her to be writing this down. ‘It’s in good nick, so I assume you’ve got a specialist mechanic.’

She found herself recalled to her usual good sense. ‘Oui. I’ll call him.’

‘Everything else looks to be in order.’

As he spoke he set the bonnet down carefully, checked it was locked in place. His movements were assured and methodical and, oddly, Lorelei felt soothed by them. He treated her car with respect. Which was more than she had done with his employer’s Bugatti, a little voice of conscience niggled.

‘What will happen with the Bugatti?’ she found herself asking.

‘I expect the man who owns her will have some questions for you.’

Lorelei shoulders subsided.

‘Do you want me to follow you back?’

No, most definitely not. Because she wasn’t going back. She’d been running the Sunbeam like this for weeks, but she got the impression her handsome stranger would not be best pleased. He might not think much of her, but he was clearly in love with her car.