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“What’s that?”
“I miss seeing you.”
“Pfft.” She fluffed her fingers through her bangs, hiding behind her hair and her hand. “When did you ever see me before?”
He wondered if her refusal to look him in the eye meant her cool was all a ploy. Then he wondered how much of the truth she really wanted.
He went for broke. “You mean besides the time you stood there and watched Kim blow me?”
Color rose to bloom on her cheeks, but it was her only response until she gave a single nod.
That one was easy. “I saw you at school, in the halls, shaking your ass on the football field. I saw you every time I came into your family’s place for a burger or a beer.”
“That was a long time ago, Trey,” she said, her voice broadcasting her bafflement. “At least—”
“Seven years,” he finished for her.
Her frown was baffled, too. “You say that like you’ve kept track.”
“I have.” He knew exactly when he’d moved away from Dahlia. When he’d last seen her except in passing at the annual Farron Fuels.
“I don’t get it. You were two years ahead of me in school. We didn’t exchange more than a couple dozen words.”
Words had nothing to with the heat she’d stirred in him then. That she still stirred now, a stirring he felt as his blood flowed south. “So?”
“So, there’s no reason for you to miss seeing me.”
“None you can think of, you mean.”
“Whip—”
“Hold up.” He lifted a hand. “Forget about me missing you. Let’s talk about the nickname instead.”
That got her to laughing, a throaty, bluesy sound that tightened him up. “Hey, I had no idea it would stick. You can blame that on Tater.”
She returned the wrench to the shelf, her fingers lingering, her lashes as thick and dark as the bristles of an engine brush as she lifted her gaze coyly to his. “At least most people think it’s about you cracking the whip over your team.”
That was because most people hadn’t been there to hear the gossip about him whipping it out for Kim Halton.
He was lucky their secret had stayed close. That no one knew he couldn’t have cared less about Kim. That, instead, he’d wanted the girl watching from the doorway as Kim stroked him. The one too close to his doorway now.
He moved to block it. “I suppose it could’ve been worse.”
“You’re right.” She paused, added, “I could’ve called you…Speedy.”
Ouch. But he grinned. “Maybe I was wrong when I thought I’d missed seeing you.”
“I’d say that’s a distinct possibility.” Coy was gone, a come-on in its place. “Especially since I’m right here, and you’re still missing seeing me.”
He was pretty sure his definition of missing and hers of the same word were two different things. That didn’t mean she wasn’t right. That he wasn’t overlooking something vital.
He crossed his arms and widened his stance, furrowing his brow as he gave her an obvious once-over. “I’m seeing you now.”
Her tongue slicked quickly over her lips. “You’re too far away to see much of anything.”
There were less than three feet between them. He came closer, backing her into a waist-high storage locker. “Is this better?”
“You tell me,” she said.
He leaned in, flattened his palms on the stainless steel surface, one on either side of her hips, and hovered, her body heat rising, his breathing labored and giving him away. “Not as better as it needs to be.”
Her hesitation in replying wasn’t about uncertainty, or impropriety, but about making him sweat, making him wait, making him want and ache. He was doing all of those things, strangling on the tension that was thick in the trailer around them, and robbing him of his air.
Finally, she moved, her hands coming up, her palms pressing to his chest, her fingertips finding his nipples and rubbing circles where they dotted his shirt. He shuddered, and she tipped forward, nuzzling her nose to the hollow of his throat.
He closed his eyes, inhaled, caught the scent of her shampoo, of her sun-heated skin, of her perspiration that was sweet, a damp sheen. Keeping his hands to himself had seemed smart, but she made him too stupid to care about anything but taking up where seven years ago, they’d left off because they were too young to know better.
He held her upper arms, her shoulders, sliding his hands up her neck to cup her face, her cheeks, her jaw, sliding them down to her ribcage and over the sides of her breasts.
There was no sense in any of this, no reason, no rhyme. They hadn’t kept in touch since he’d pressed her into the wall with his body. They’d never talked about how close they’d come that night to tumbling into bed. He had no idea what had driven her here, and the climb of his temperature left him unable to figure it out, to do anything but feel.
She met his gaze, parted her lips, pushed up on her sneakered tiptoes to find his mouth. He bent to make it easy for her, but mostly he bent for himself. Her tongue slipped between his lips to tease and seduce and show him the years he’d missed out on.
He couldn’t let himself wonder about or regret any of that now because she was here, and he didn’t want to miss any of what was happening. Her hunger was that of a long separation, a desperation, neither which he understood or which fit.
What he did understand were her hands at his waist, tugging up his T-shirt, slipping beneath. Her fingers threaded into the hair on his belly, then through that on his chest. She toyed with his nipples, and drove him mad with wanting her.
He broke the kiss because he had to, and rested his mouth at the corner of hers to catch his breath, his control. Her lips parted. He felt the urgent beat of her heart all over. “Cardin, why are you here?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s been so long. I wasn’t sure. I need—”
“Yo! Whip! Where you at? You’ll never guess who I found holding a corndog in each hand.”
Sunshine was back, and Trey had no choice but to set Cardin away, his question unanswered, her reply incomplete. He looked down, trying to find something to clue him into the truth, seeing only the flush of her arousal.
His own strained obviously and would take time to calm. “We’ll finish this later.”
“Yo! Whip!”
“Be right there,” he called toward the still open door, smoothing down his shirt as Cardin checked that nothing was out of order. “You heard me, right?”
“That we’ll finish this later?” She nodded.
Good. But also…“And you’ll tell me then what you need?”
She didn’t answer. She brushed her mouth one last time against his before turning, snagging her sunglasses and hopping from the trailer to the ground.
Trey took another few seconds to gather himself, grabbed for the torque wrench and walked from the rig’s interior into the white-hot light of the sun.
He squinted, then shook his head at the irony of the interruption as he recognized Jeb Worth standing beside the four-wheeler with Sunshine. That settled one thing at least.
Cardin looking for her grandfather was not as far-fetched as Trey had thought. Whether or not finding Jeb was what had brought her to the Corley hauler was yet to be seen.
Trey had a feeling it was something a whole lot bigger—and with a whole lot more baggage—than that.
Chapter 2
Sunday p.m.
CARDIN SERENITY WORTH had lived her entire life in Dahlia, Tennessee. She’d sold Dixie cups of lemonade and Girl Scout cookies and fund-raising candy, tchotchkes and Christmas paper to half the folks in town.
She’d been a member of the Dahlia High School Darlings, high-kicking her way across the football field during three years of half-time shows, and a member of the local FFA, raising rabbits to show at county fairs.
She’d worked at Headlights, her family’s ice house, since she was old enough to pay taxes and social security on her wages, but had earned her allowance busing tables and sweeping peanut hulls from the floor before that.
She was twenty-five years old, a hometown girl known to one and all, and well aware that two decades from now, she would still be thought of as her father Eddie’s shadow, her mother Delta’s princess, and her grandpa Jeb’s pride and joy.
It came with being a Worth, a family that was as much a local fixture as the Dahlia Speedway, the drag-racing track where in less than two weeks, the whole town would switch gears from this weekend’s NHRA race to Dahlia’s annual Moonshine Run.
The midnight race was the only event in which Jeb still entered the car he called “White Lightning”—a nod to the years of Prohibition when her great-grandpa Orin’s moonshine had kept the folks in three counties from feeling any pain, while keeping his own family out of the poor house.
Right now, however, the race still on everyone’s mind—Cardin’s included—had featured top fuel dragsters: long, narrow purpose-built race cars with thin front tires that tore in a straight line down a length of the quarter mile track in under five seconds and at over three hundred miles an hour.
The Farron Fuel Spring Nationals had wrapped up earlier in the day, and the entire Corley Motors crew—”Bad Dog” Butch Corley having taken top honors again this year—was chowing down and raising hell at two of Headlights’ tables not fifteen feet from where she stood scooping crushed ice into red plastic tumblers for cokes and sweet tea.
Except it wasn’t the whole team causing her mouth to go dry, her palms to grow damp, her nape to tingle from the heat. It was one member, one man.
The man sitting at the far corner of the second table, the garage door style wall behind him rolled open to the early evening breeze.
The man polishing off the last ear of corn from the platter the group had ordered to go with their burgers, hot wings and pitchers of beer.
The man she’d thrown herself at three days ago and kissed with unheard of abandon as if she were a woman in love.
Trey Davis was the crew chief for Corley Motors. He was also Cardin’s counterpart: a hometown Dahlia boy. Granted, he hadn’t stayed in Dahlia the way she had; though he still owned property here, he only managed to visit during the spring drag racing series.
She liked to think his growing up here connected them. Trey knew what it was like to have sprouted from small town Tennessee roots, to be saddled with the stereotypes, the prejudices, the accent…the family that could drive a person mad.
And then there was that woman in love thing, and the possibility that what she felt for him wasn’t an “if”. The high school crush. The continuing infatuation. The way March roared in every year, a lion bringing with it the Farron Fuels and a chance to see him.
The way she felt like a lamb once he was gone—a victim of her own weakness because she’d been afraid to seek him out and talk to him about that night seven years ago…what they’d almost done, how the things he’d whispered had made her feel, the way she’d been unable to get him out of her mind since.
Because of all that, and because of their families’ shared history—Trey’s great-grandfather Emmett had been her great-grandfather Orin’s partner in the moonshine biz—she trusted him, and hoped his instincts could help her put an end to the Worth family feud.
It was obvious she couldn’t do it alone; Lord knew she’d tried to patch things up between her parents, to no avail. Eddie and Delta were now estranged. She’d tried, too, to smooth things over between her father and her grandpa Jeb, who’d stopped speaking to Eddie when he wouldn’t shut up about the fight that had nearly cost her father his life.
For a year she’d played the part of peacemaker, insisting her mother be understanding of her father’s moods; they’d come so close to losing him, after all. Insisting her father be patient, that his recovery would be a long process, not one with the overnight results he expected from his doctors and himself.
Insisting her grandpa cut his son a break and answer Eddie’s questions; he’d been the one to break up the fight before either of the other men got hurt…so, yes. He did have a right to know why Aubrey Davis had taken a swing at Jeb. And since that blow-up twelve months ago that sent Eddie to the hospital had involved Trey’s father, well, Cardin figured he owed her.
Of course, he was totally unaware of her plans to use him.
And she still wasn’t sure how to go about her…proposal.
During her Thursday visit to the Dahlia Speedway, she’d had no time to lay out for him her thoughts. All she’d managed to do was test the waters, see if the electricity that had always crackled between them was still there.
It was, burning as hot as the night his unyielding body pressed hers into the bedroom wall, trapping her, molded to her, an imprint she felt always and would never forget.
She shivered, silenced a moan. This was not a good time to be remembering the bristly sensation of his beard against her cheek, or the hardness of his bare chest beneath her hands.
But that was the direction her mind had decided to travel, following a map that took her imagination into territory that had her pulse thumping, her breath quickening, her belly growing taut…
“Cardin?”
“Hmm?”
“You didn’t leave any room for the drinks.”
“What?”
“The drinks. The ice. Cardin!”
Cardin pulled her attention from the hands holding the corn that she wished were holding her, and turned toward the biting voice and the woman with the teeth.
Sandy Larabie had been working at Headlights as long as Cardin. She was six years older, had two divorces under her belt, and was both the most caustic and well-tipped of all the ice house’s serving staff.
She nodded at the tumblers Cardin held, not a hair out of place in her big brassy ’do. “Get your head in the game. It’s hopping like hell bunnies in here.”
Cardin’s head was in the game. Just not the game Sandy was talking about. “Sorry. I got…distracted.”
Sandy scooped ice for her own drink order, following the direction of Cardin’s gaze. “You know he’s staying behind when the team checks out tomorrow, right?”
She did know. She’d even heard it earlier than most; as Dahlia’s unofficial herald, Jeb had his ear to the ground. She’d been surprised by the news, as had everyone, but the lead she’d gained from her grandpa’s announcement had given her time to put together her plan.
Too bad she’d got caught up in kissing Trey before she could explain it to him. Just seeing him again had unraveled her to the point of barely being able to think.
She turned to Sandy. “So I’ve heard. Hard to believe, isn’t it?”
Pop, pop went Sandy’s gum as she nodded. “Tater told me Whip’s taking a few months to get his place cleaned up and sold.” Winston Tate “Tater” Rawls, a mechanic at Morgan and Son Garage, had been Trey’s best friend in high school, and was Sandy’s newest boy toy.
“I don’t think Trey’s set foot on the property in a year, at least. I wonder how long he’ll be here.” Might as well see what else Sandy-by-way-of-Tater knew. The more information Cardin could sock away, the more convincing she’d be when she finally talked to Trey.
“According to Tater,” Sandy said, “Whip’s gonna join back up with the Corley team later this season. But since they’ve put the kibosh on coming back to the Speedway, I’d say this might be the last time we see him around here.”
Sandy spun away at the sound of the order bell, while Cardin just spun. She’d heard the rumors of Corley Motors blacklisting the Dahlia Speedway. The winning team was a Dahlia favorite and a huge draw; having one of their own working as crew chief was a highly prized bragging right.
But now with that moron Artie Buell having put the moves on Butch Corley’s wife, “Bad Dog” Butch was done with Dahlia. A shame, too, because the town needed the income generated by the big boys. Big boys like the team that employed the man she was about to ask to pose as her fiancé.
Both her parents and her grandpa Jeb needed to move beyond the hell of the last year, and get back to acting like a family. Her thinking was that introducing Trey as her fiancé would shake them out of their funk, would give them a new outlet for their focus, a common goal toward which they could pour their combined energies—that of doing all they could to break up the engagement.
