Hot-Wired / Coming on Strong: Hot-Wired

Between racing and his construction business, he’d made enough money to build his mother a house and set her up with a dress shop in downtown Dahlia. He was damn proud that his mother had turned Beverly’s Closet into a thriving enterprise. He’d put Caitlyn through college and helped her find a job. Now it was his turn.

His cell phone buzzed at his side and he glanced at the caller ID—speaking of the devil. He let it go to voice mail. Scooter raised an eyebrow in inquiry.

“Caitlyn,” Beau said. “Between her and that wedding planner, they’re driving me bat-shit crazy.”

“Why don’t you just talk to the woman and get it over with?”

“She wants to know when I can start the remodel on Belle Terre. I haven’t had time to get out there.” Which suited him just fine. Everyone looked at Caitlyn’s fiancé, Cash Vickers, and saw Nashville’s newest rising star. Beau looked at Vickers and saw heartbreak for his sister.

He didn’t like Vickers. He didn’t think for a second the guy was good enough for his baby sister. To begin with, women were all over the guy, and he seemed to like them in return. Second, Beau had been most unimpressed when Cash had bought Belle Terre. It seemed like a extravagant, fiscally irresponsible move to him. Caitlyn had already been the victim of one financially irresponsible man—their father. She sure as hell didn’t need a husband who spent money like water. And forbidding Caitlyn to marry Vickers would simply push her in his direction all the harder. Not to mention that his sister was old enough to do whatever she wanted to do. But Beau figured if he dragged his feet long enough, time would prove his rope and Vickers would hang himself.

“And that wedding planner needs to get a life. She’s called me twice a day every day for two weeks.”

He’d been legitimately busy the first week, but her nagging calls had irritated him to the point that this past week it had become a game to try and drive her as bat-shit crazy by avoiding her calls as she was driving him.

Scooter shook his head. “You might as well surrender now. Women and weddings. You ain’t gonna know a minute’s peace until they trade I-do’s.” He should know. His daughter, Carlotta, had gotten married the year before Emma Jean died.

“You never surrender until you’ve put up the good fight.”

“I’m telling you, Beau, you might win a skirmish or two, but they’ll win the war.”

Beau grinned when he remembered the voice mail Ms. Natalie Bridges had left him earlier today. She’d been polite but he didn’t miss the terse impatience underlying her message. She was frustrated. That was good. Maybe she’d quit and Caitlyn would have to start all over with another wedding planner. All of which meant more time for Vickers to screw up and show Caitlyn his true colors.

“I’ve got a couple of good battles left in me. Let Nightmare Natalie bring it on.”

THERE IT WAS. Black toter home and trailer with Stillwell Motors Racing emblazoned on the side in purple and silver. Finally. Now that she’d rubbed a blister on her heel from hobbling along in a broken shoe.

Three men in uniforms that matched the black, silver and purple color scheme were under what should’ve been the hood of the car. Except the hood was sitting on a rack to the side. Whatever. She cleared her throat, interrupting.

“Excuse me. I’m looking for Beau Stillwell.” She glanced expectantly from one man to the other. A short guy with thinning red hair had the name Scooter embroidered on his shirt. Next to him stood a lanky fellow with a crew cut, whose shirt designated him as Tim. On the left side of the car was an African-American named Darnell.

The short man exchanged a quick, almost imperceptible glance with the other two and stepped forward. “Scooter Lewis,” he introduced himself. He grimaced and shook his head with a grin. “You’d probably rather not shake my hand right now.”

“No problem. I’m Natalie Bridges and I’m—”

Scooter—she was so sure his mother hadn’t given him that name at birth—interrupted with a nod and a quick grin. “You’re that wedding planner out of Nashville.”

Lanky Tim couldn’t contain a snicker, which earned him an elbow in the side from Darnell. “Hey, man, watch it.” Tim groused.

“Yes. I’m the wedding planner. It’s so nice to meet you, Mr. Lewis.” She tilted her chin up a notch while keeping her smile firmly in place. She didn’t have to be the sharpest tool in the shed to figure out that if these three had heard of her it wasn’t because their boss had been singing her praises.

“Just call me Scooter. Everybody does. And this here’s Tim and Darnell.”

“Gentlemen.” She nodded and smiled a greeting while Tim shuffled his feet and blushed and Darnell bobbed his head in a quick acknowledgment. “I can see you’re busy and I apologize for interrupting. If someone could just tell me where I might find Mr. Stillwell…” If they told her he’d just left the track, she wasn’t so sure she wouldn’t just pitch a hissy fit right here, right now.

Scooter jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Beau’s in the toter. I’d go get him for you, but…” He held up greasy hands. “Just let yourself in.” Meltdown averted.

She skirted the car and gave a wide berth to a jack. She didn’t know squat about cars, but even she recognized that was one big motor, which probably accounted for why Beau was the points leader. The overloud announcer had mentioned it exhaustively during her trek.

She stood on the lower step of the door Scooter had indicated and raised her hand to knock. “Just go on in,” Scooter yelled, waving her on. “Don’t worry about knocking. Folks come and go at the track all the time.”

Okay. Far be it for her to screw up the way things were done at the track. She grabbed the silver latch on the door that reminded her of her grandparents’ camper and stepped into the motor home, clicking the door in place behind her. The similarities ended there. This certainly wasn’t her grandparents’ camper.

Instead of orange shag carpeting and yellowed Formica countertops, she was standing on hardwood flooring, looking at granite counter tops and a tiled backsplash. A baseball game, the sound muted, flickered on a flat-screen TV mounted over the opening to the cab’s cockpit to her right. Dark, blackout curtains were drawn over the windows in the front, affording privacy inside.

And still no Beau Stillwell. “Hello?” she called out.

The panel door to her left slid open. Oh. My. All the spit in her mouth evaporated. A whoosh of heat roared through her as she stood rooted to the spot.

Tall. Big. Heavily muscled arms, chest, and legs. Dark hair on his head…and his chest…and his legs. Wet and naked, save for the white towel held precariously low on his hips. But it was the mocking blue eyes fringed with sooty lashes in a rugged, square-jawed face that did her in.

“Can I help you?”

“Are you Beau Stillwell?”

He bowed at the waist, overwhelmingly masculine, overwhelmingly arrogant, overwhelmingly almost naked. “At your service.”

What she meant to say, what she fully planned to say fell in the category of offering her name by way of introduction. But, honest to Bob, she couldn’t even remember her name because just breathing the same air seemed to have annihilated all of her brain cells. Obviously. Because what came out of her mouth instead of a calm professional introduction was, “You can kiss my ass.”

Chapter 2

“THAT’S THE MOST interesting proposition I’ve heard all night,” Beau said in a deliberate drawl despite the adrenaline rush that slammed him. He felt as if he’d been turned upside down just looking into her light brown eyes, which had widened with surprise and then narrowed with temper. He hung on to his cool…by a thread…because this woman shook him up…and he was never shaken up. “But maybe you could hop in the shower first to lose the beer smell.” He moved the hand holding his towel in place, as if he were about to pass it to her. “You can borrow my towel.”

She whipped around, presenting him with her back, before he got the last word out of his mouth. “Keep the towel,” she snapped, staring straight ahead. Her rear view did nothing to settle him down. Beau liked his track straight and his women curvy, and she had nice curves from head to toe.

She drew a deep breath. “Look, I’m sorry. We got off on the wrong foot and I apologize for barging in. Mr. Lewis told me to just come on in without knocking.”

“His idea of funny.”

And she was his idea of hot.

Was that a snort?

“I’ll step back out until you’re decent,” she said.

He itched to reach out and pull the pins from her hair and watch it tumble down around her shoulders. “No need to step outside. It’ll take me no time to dress, but there’s no guarantee I’ll be decent. Clothes don’t make the man.”

She wanted to tell him to kiss her ass again. It was there in the rigid set of her shoulders. Instead she said, “Fine. I’ll wait.”

“I’ll just be a minute,” he paused for effect, “sweet thing.” Beau slid the bathroom door closed and took two steps into the bedroom to “get decent.” He was pretty sure the sweet thing business had been over the top. He’d sounded like a bona fide asshole. But that was the point—to goad her into quitting to delay the whole wedding thing. He’d told her to wait in the toter home because she was obviously uncomfortable with him being undressed, and the more uncomfortable she was the better. It didn’t have a thing to do with some crazy-ass notion that now that he’d seen her he didn’t want her to leave.

He pulled on fresh underwear and a pair of worn jeans. Natalie Bridges, he recognized her voice, was a wreck. He’d seen guys barrel-roll cars and climb out afterwards in better shape. But insanely he found her hot and sexy in a way he hadn’t found the tube-top twins earlier.

Maybe it was the flash of anger in her brown eyes or the lush fullness of her pink lips or the semitumble of her hair. It was her mouth. There was something so damn sexy about the fact that with the rest of her obviously a mess—he was almost certain that was mustard on her left breast—her lipstick had been perfect. In fact, he was pretty damn sure she had the most perfect mouth he’d ever seen.

He tugged a black T-shirt over his head and tucked it into his jeans. She wasn’t at all what he’d expected. He realized he’d sketched her in his head as thin, angular, rigid—a paragon of cool efficiency. But this woman was all curves, and she’d just blown a gasket with him.

If he pushed just a little harder, he’d have her right where he wanted her, so frustrated she’d toss in the towel and Caitlyn would be forced to start all over.