Racer

“I want her to be ready now,” I growl, and she just laughs and we hang up.

I pace my room, glancing at the time and realizing it’s way past her bedtime. I picture her sleeping in bed all sweet and warm, and I want her to get used to sleeping with me by her side.

Exhaling restlessly, I grab my tennis shoes, my phone, and my earbuds and head out for a run, wanting to give her space even when every atom and cell in my body screams for me to make her mine once and for all.

Patience, I hear my father say. Rome wasn’t built in a day … and nobody said it was easy to fall in love with a Tate.

Lana

We travel for the next two days, organizing the transport of the team and the cars before we fly to Spain. I sit between Dad and Racer. They’re talking cars.

I’m trying not to notice the way he smells and how many times his elbow and mine bump on the armrest. He seems to know I’m on edge because I jump every time they connect.

He smiles at me, and the smile melts me. I see him pull out his earbuds and connect them to his phone, then unlock it and hand it over.

I don’t know why, but I feel as if I’m peering into his soul as I scroll through his playlist, seeing songs like Walk by Kwabs and True Hardstyler by DJ Zealot.

It feels intimate, especially when I see him keep chatting with my dad but turning his phone around to peer in and see what I’m listening to: Battle Scars by Lupe Fiasco and Guy Sebastian.

At the hotel we check into our rooms. I tell myself I can act grown up about what happened. He’s the hottest guy I’ve ever beheld and girls are panting over him left and right, so he must do this all the time. No need to worry.

Either way, as soon as my brothers dump their pile of clothes to get cleaned in my room, I bathe and change and decide to go and knock on Racer’s door, and I ask him if he has any clothes or requisites.

“No,” he says, frowning at me thoughtfully.

He also bathed and changed, and is wearing comfortable torn jeans and a soft-looking grey T-shirt that licks his body just right.

“Someone should take care of you for a change,” he gruffs out all of a sudden.

I start. “No, it’s … it’s my job.”

“Someone should take care of you for a change.”

No one’s ever said that to me. I exhale, and try to focus on my job and wait there to see if he needs anything.

Racer just frowns.

“Where are you going in that?”

I run my hands down my dress.

“Nowhere. Here.” Shit. Was it too much to change into a dress before coming over here?

“No. Not here,” he says, lips curving as his gaze scans over me. He pushes himself off the doorframe and into his room. “Let’s take you somewhere.”

“Why.”

He stops in the middle of the room to shoot me a get-serious look. “Because you look gorgeous and I want to look at you.”

I melt a little but then jerk at that. “No, I told you, I’m supposed to be sure you behave.”

He gets his keys and wallet and returns in the sexiest walk I’ve ever seen, confident, sleek and lithe. “I can behave at a club.”

“I don’t think so.”

He takes my hand and shuts his door and drags me down the hall.

“Racer,” I groan. “You said you’d behave.”

“I said I could, not that I would. Can you?” He chucks my chin, a devilish sparkle in his eye.

“I don’t know,” I say.

He laughs, then says, pressing the elevator down arrow, “Come on. I’ll drive.”

I tug my hand free but remain standing by his side, crossing my arms over my chest to hide my suddenly very erect and tingling nipples. “Bummer. I really wanted the wheel.”

“Be a good girl, and I might give you a lesson,” he says with a wink that lifts my toes up from the ground.

My nipples are overreacting even more. “I don’t need a lesson, I can drive just fine.”

He shoots me a look, and I shoot him one back as we board and head down to his rental.

I should’ve known it would be a very cool sports car.

The guy rented a blue Porsche, with cream seats, and convertible, to boot. I know the salary we’ve offered him isn’t much and it leaves me wondering just how much money this guy made speed racing.

My brothers rarely will take me out to explore, but it turns out Racer doesn’t have such qualms. We end up in one of the city’s hottest clubs, a two-floor nightclub with pop music on one floor, and rap music on the next—and a gorgeous terrace upstairs that we have yet to discover.

We snag a booth at the far end, where we can listen to music, drink, and talk, and though the booth accommodates about five, Racer is sitting pretty close to me—his arm stretched out along the back of my seat as he sips on a prepared tomato juice (a glass of whiskey the waiter brought by mistake sitting untouched beside it), and I’m too engrossed talking to him to remember I’ve got a shot of tequila waiting on the table too.

“So your dad’s a fighter?”

He nods, smiling a little as he looks at me. The flashing strobe lights above dance across his features, and is it really fair for any man in the world to be this hot and perfect?

No.

I don’t think so.

Plus his dimple is out in full bloom. It’s difficult not to be rendered helplessly enchanted by it.

“Why do you smile like that?” I scowl as if he’s having no effect on me.

He runs his thumb along the bridge of my nose. “Because you’re cute.”

“Don’t patronize me.” I laugh, squirming as he lowers his hand back to the armrest. “Why didn’t you become a fighter?”