Hot-Wired / Coming on Strong: Hot-Wired

Damn right that was fast, stupid ass.

BEAU TOSSED the wet towel onto the bathroom floor. Tim would clean the toter home up when Scooter got it back to his place. Such was the lot of the gofer on a crew. Such had been Beau’s lot when he’d first started out in racing many moons ago, when he was the gofer and his dad was the one climbing behind the wheel of a race car.

He retreated to the bedroom and took his own sweet time dressing. He pushed aside a twinge of remorse. He’d been wasting Natalie’s time for a full hour and a half now. After the tow back to the pits, the Horsepower TV reporter had conducted a quick interview and then fellow racers and fans alike had swarmed them. The racers offered congratulations. Most of the fans wanted autographs and a picture with Beau and the car.

Natalie had stood by quietly, out of the way, but those big brown eyes of hers hadn’t missed a thing. The tube-top duo from Friday night, Sherree and Tara, had shown up again with a celebration offer. Ms. Bridges had merely quirked an amused eyebrow in his direction and a faint look of disdain, as if they were all somewhat distasteful.

And the whole time he’d been thinking about the way she’d smelled when he’d leaned into her neck before the race. The tickle of her hair against his cheek. The curve of her sexy, sexy mouth. And the crazy, out-of-control feeling she stirred in him.

He squashed any guilt at wasting her time. Given a choice between wasting her time or sitting by while his sister made a mistake marrying Cash Vickers…Well, there was really no question which was more important.

All told, he thought his plan was working okay. He just needed to watch himself, because in the staging lanes, for a second, when he was teasing her, deliberately letting her think he was about to kiss her, he damn near had. She had the most luscious, inviting mouth, with a full lower lip and a cute bow for the top one.

He sauntered back outside and found the enemy consorting with his troops in the small lounge in the front of the race trailer. She was laughing at something Scooter had said, some crazy bullshit no doubt, and his body tightened as the musical notes seemed to dance through the air. Her smile stiffened when she noticed him in the doorway. Good. That was what he wanted, wasn’t it?

“Ready?”

She nodded, her chestnut-brown hair moving over her shoulders in a gut-clenching sensual slide. “I just need a ride back to my car.”

“Leave your car and we’ll pick it up on the way back. We’ve got to come this way anyway.”

Tim spoke up. “You can ride up front with Scooter, if’n you want to,” he offered, a flush of red whooshing from his neck to the top of his crew cut before he even finished the sentence. Scooter always drove the rig and the passenger seat was a place of honor, sort of a gimme, for Tim, who mostly handled the grunt work. And now the grunt was willingly giving up that honor. Tim seemed to have developed a crush.

A small frown furrowed her brow as she glanced from Tim to Beau, obviously confused, and equally reluctant to hurt Tim’s feelings by turning down his offer. “Ride with Scooter? We’re all going to Belle Terre?”

“No, ma’am,” Darnell said. “We’re all going to Headlights.”

“Headlights? What is Headlights and what happened to Belle Terre?”

“Headlights is the ice house and local watering hole between here and Dahlia.” Darnell shot Beau a chastising look. “We usually stop off for dinner at the end of a race weekend.”

Another chastising look—this one from her. “You didn’t mention dinner.”

All part of his plan. Beau shrugged. “I forgot. We’ll head on out to Belle Terre after we eat.”

Scooter snorted. “C’mon and ride with me. And dinner’s on us.”

She deliberately turned her back to Beau, presenting him with a view of her well-rounded bottom, and beamed a smile at the other three. “Charming companions and a free meal. How can I turn down that offer?”

A quarter hour later, they were seated at the number nine picnic table, the number painted on each end in fluorescent orange, after much backslapping and high fives as they made their way across the peanut-hull-littered concrete floor in the noisy din that was Headlights after a race. No matter how crowded it was, however, Jeb Worth always held the number nine for the Stillwell crew. It was a long-standing tradition. Beau wound up sitting next to the Nightmare.

“What do you think of Headlights?” he asked. She didn’t strike him as an ice house kind of gal.

“So far, so good. The music’s loud.” She said it as if it were a bonus. “If the beer’s cold and the fries are greasy, we’re in business.”

Sandy Larabie, her tongue as acid as her heart was big, showed up to take their order, a doe-eyed girl in tow. “This is Gina. She’s in training, so you behave.” Sandy shot Scooter a steely-eyed glare. Scooter lived to aggravate Sandy. Actually, Scooter lived for mischief in general. “A root beer for Junior,” Sandy told Gina, jerking her head in Tim’s direction. Sandy referred to anyone under legal drinking age as Junior. “And a pitcher of what for the rest of you?”

“Bud Light. We won.” Scooter smirked.

“Three or four mugs?” She eyed Natalie in question.

“Four.” Natalie didn’t hesitate.

“I would’ve pegged you for a white wine drinker,” Beau said.

“I would’ve pegged you for a mullet.” Ha. He’d never gone in for the longer-in-the-back hairstyle. “I guess we were both wrong.”

“What exactly happened to you the other night?” Scooter asked.

She laughed, shaking her head, and it struck Beau as ball-tightening sexy. He had no problem imagining her on top of him, shaking her head just that way. “I got distracted by the T-shirt display about the same time my heel wedged in a crack in the asphalt, which led to an accident with a guy and his beer and hot dog.”

Scooter made a sympathetic clicking sound. “Did it ruin everything?”

“Pretty much. The skirt made it through.”

“You know Caitlyn and Beau’s ma, Beverly, has a right nice shop there in the square in Dahlia. Drop in sometime and let her fix you up. We’ll cover the bill.”

Had Scooter lost his mind? “The hell you say,” Beau said.

Scooter fixed him with an unyielding eye. “She wouldn’t have been at the track if she hadn’t been looking for you.”

The Nightmare couldn’t contain a little smirk in Beau’s direction.

“It’s not my fault she’s clumsy,” he said, deliberately goading her. There was a tantalizing sway to her hips when she walked, but it damn sure couldn’t be classified as clumsy.

She narrowed her brown eyes. “I am not clumsy.”

The trainee delivered the beer and Tim’s root beer. Darnell poured and they all hoisted their mugs in a toast. “To another win…and many more to come,” Scooter said.

The wash of beer was bust-your-kneecaps cold going down. Beau settled his mug on the table. He’d nurse the rest of it through dinner. He knew he wasn’t the man his father had been, but Beau always held himself to a one-drink limit.

Tim unfolded his lanky length from the picnic table, muttered an excuse-me and headed to the jukebox. Scooter groaned and Darnell rolled his eyes. The Nightmare looked at Beau, a question in her brown eyes. “Prepare yourself for a Kenny Chesney miniconcert.”

She laughed, her mouth curving in an easy smile and for a second he felt damn near light-headed. He shook his head slightly. Maybe he’d just skip the rest of his beer.

“I like Kenny Chesney.”

“So did we…the first hundred times we heard him,” Darnell said in a mournful drawl.

“Could be worse,” Scooter said. “Could be Cash Vickers we was listening to. Ain’t that right, Beau?”

Beau shrugged and he felt the woman next to him eyeing him in inquiry. He deliberately didn’t look her way. Not that it was a state secret, but damn it’d be nice if Scooter could just hold his tongue and not stir shit up.

“You’re not a Cash Vickers fan?”

Caitlyn hadn’t known Cash nearly long enough. And Beau wasn’t certain that Cash was good enough for his baby sister.

“Not particularly, no,” Beau said. Let her make what she wanted to of that.