Driving Force (2 page)

“It’s not going to blow.” Her hands were all thumbs as she tried to release the seatbelt she was lucky to have been wearing. If it hadn’t been for that, she would have gone headfirst through the windshield. “I just rammed it into a tree, that’s all.”

“The airbags should have deployed,” he said angrily as she staggered out. “What kind of crappy—?”

“The car’s so old it probably doesn’t have any.” She leaned against the hood and drew a long, shuddering breath. “Or they’re jammed or something.”

“Goddamn deathtrap!”

“Well, it’s academic now.” Sierra eyed the crumpled front end and sighed. It looked pretty well totaled. “It’s going to cost more to fix than it’s worth.”

“Thank God for small mercies! That car was an accident waiting to happen. Get a new one now.”

Well, a “new” secondhand one. She sure couldn’t afford a real new car.

“What the hell happened? Did a tire blow?”

“There was an animal…”

“You ran off the road to avoid some raccoon?” Ian exclaimed incredulously.

“It wasn’t a raccoon. I don’t know what it was. It was large and it had this shaggy mane and it looked like… It looked like…a lion.”

All of a sudden, she was shaking. Ian was staring at her as if she’d lost her mind.

“Uh, Sierra, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this happens to be Colorado, not the Serengeti.”

“You don’t have to be sarcastic! I didn’t get a good look at it, okay? It was big and it was right in front of me. I just swerved…”

“Probably a deer.”

It hadn’t been a deer. It had been too low to the ground for that.

She felt icy cold and giddy, the whole thing catching up to her. Ian caught her as she swayed. Heat flashed through her from where his hands gripped her arms. She pulled away sharply, staggering back against the car.

“Don’t touch me!” Then she caught herself. “Sorry, sorry. I’m not myself. It must be shock. I didn’t mean…”

His lips tightened into a hard, straight line. “Oh, I think you did. Shock brings out the real person, doesn’t it? We’ve never been friends, but I didn’t think you’d be this pissy about a little help.”

“I don’t like being beholden,” she retorted defiantly.

“Especially to me. Well, you’ll have to be unless you want to walk home.”

“The car…”

“That piece of junk isn’t going anywhere. You can call the garage to tow it away in the morning. Tonight, I’m driving you home.” Then he frowned. “Or maybe to the hospital.”

“Home!” she exclaimed. “I’m not hurt! I didn’t even bang my head. The seat belt kept me safe. I don’t need to go to the hospital.”

“You sure?”

“Absolutely.” Her chest hurt a little from where the seat belt had jerked her back when she had been catapulted forward, but other than that she was fine.

“All right. Can you make it to my car on your own?”

“Of course I can!”

His eyes were suddenly vivid with mockery. “Might get contaminated if I carried you or even put a hand under your elbow to steady you?”

That wasn’t the reason she didn’t want him touching her, but she couldn’t tell him that. She bit her tongue to keep from snapping at him. She knew she should be grateful for his assistance, but she couldn’t help hating having to depend on him. That must have showed, because he raised an eyebrow and grinned provokingly at her. She glowered at him. He was enjoying being able to put her under an obligation, heaping coals of fire on her head.

“My groceries!” she exclaimed, suddenly remembering. The perishables would go bad by morning.

“They in the trunk? I’ll get them.” He reached across the steering wheel, switched off the engine and took the key out of the ignition. “You get in my car. Passenger side door’s open.”

Her knees were still wobbly from reaction. She stiffened them by will power alone and stalked to where his car was idling on the road. A little while later, he had transferred all her shopping from her trunk to his and was sliding into the driver’s seat.

“Here.” He handed over her key.

“Thanks.”

She stared forward through the windshield as he started the car. She hoped he wouldn’t say anything. She had managed to steer clear of him for the whole five weeks she’d been back in Castleton. Now here she was, trapped in his car, and there would be no way to avoid the nasty cracks that passed as conversation between them.

“Sorry about your mom,” he said, breaking the uncomfortable silence. “Heart, was it?”

Sierra glanced warily at him.

Heavens! For once he’s being polite. Let’s hope he keeps it up.

“Yes.”

“She was a nice lady. Used to keep me up-to-date on how you were doing after you left Castleton.”

She turned to stare at him. “Why would she do that?”

“Uh…just talking. You know how it is.” He shrugged, not looking at her. In the dim light from the dashboard, she thought she saw a slight flush over his cheekbones. “She would have coffee with me sometimes when we met in town. It seemed only polite to ask about you.”

Sierra tried to picture Ian Raeder having coffee with her mom. She just couldn’t see it, nor credit that he’d spared a thought to ask about her, even to be polite. There had to have been some other motivation. She eyed him suspiciously, but he was looking straight ahead and his profile told her nothing.

“Didn’t expect you to come back to Castleton, though,” he was saying. “Weren’t you off in Arizona somewhere, apprenticed to some big-name potter?”

“Naomi Wakanda.” Just the thought of her made Sierra relax a little and smile. “She was wonderful, taught me so much. We couldn’t afford college and art courses. Naomi was a gift from heaven.”

“I heard she was the real deal. Famous. You must have really shown talent if she took you on. But then I’ve seen your work at the art gallery. It’s impressive.”

“Thanks,” she said in surprise.

“I hear it’s flying out of there. Hear it’s being snapped up by places in Denver and L.A.”

Compliments from Ian Raeder? She might die of shock.

“It’s starting to be.”

She moved uneasily in her seat, wishing that her Ford hadn’t been so totaled that she couldn’t drive home by herself. Ian’s sports car wasn’t flashy, which surprised her, but it was still a two-seater and its interior was so small that they were almost shoulder to shoulder. She had never been so near to him before and she was way too aware of that lean, powerful body in its black tee and jeans beside her. Aware of the deep muscles of his thigh so close to hers and those strong, clever hands on the steering wheel and the clean, faintly musky, male-animal scent of him. Which all made her think irresistibly of sex.

The side of his hand brushed her thigh as he changed gears. Even so slight a contact with him sent electricity flashing horrifyingly through her. Sierra jumped and edged closer to the door. Ian shot her a sardonic look.

“What’s that perfume you’re wearing?” he asked suddenly.

She glanced at him, startled. “I’m not wearing any perfume.”

“It’s just you, then.” His voice had gone deeper and huskier.

“Uh, yeah, I guess so.”

His gaze slid over her, lingering on the curve of her breasts revealed by the V-neck of her vest and the length of her bare legs exposed by her cutoffs. She felt his glance like a touch, like a hand sliding down her from her throat to her ankle.

She wished now that she hadn’t decided to wear that defiant vest and cutoffs. Annie had recognized them for what they were—a statement to the town saying that she wasn’t that prim, shy Sierra they had known before. But to Ian Raeder, a player all his life, they must seem like a come-on.

His eyes had gone dark and intense. A violent shudder of heat shot through her, crisping her nerves. She drew back even more, pressing against the door. He looked away abruptly.

“Why did you come back to Castleton?” he asked, a rough, almost angry note in his voice. “You could have gone anywhere.”

“I don’t know. I didn’t think of anywhere else. There’s no mortgage on the house. It’s mine, and Mom’s insurance let me set up my own pottery with enough left over to buy me the time to try to make a living out of it.”

“You were four years in Arizona, weren’t you? You could have sold the house and set up there. Why pick a small town like Castleton?”

“It’s home. I know everyone and they know me. The whole town’s like family. I don’t have anyone of my own.”

He sent her a mocking sideways glance. “No one? Not even a boyfriend? Don’t give me that, Mouse. Beautiful woman like you could have anyone she wanted.”

Sierra glared at him. “Oh, put a sock in it, Raeder. We’ve known each other too long for you to try a line like that on me.”

“What, you don’t think you’re beautiful?”

Fulsome compliments didn’t fly with her, not even when they came from people like Annie. Coming from Ian Raeder, they were certain to have a sting to them, even if it wasn’t immediately visible.

“I know I’m not and I know you don’t think so.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Su-ure.”

“All these years and you still have no confidence in yourself, have you, Mouse?”

“Don’t call me Mouse!”

He grinned. “You hate that name, don’t you? But it suits you. You always did hide in the woodwork. Did you do that in Arizona? I’ll bet you did. You did that even when you were with that pissant who dumped you four years ago. But then he liked you meek and mild and no competition to him.”

Here it came. Why had she thought he would avoid sniping at her for once? But the worst thing was that he was right about Peter.

“Shut up! What do you know about it anyway?”

“Hell, I’ve known about it ever since your graduation prom. Probably before anybody else did. That’s when it started, right? He was your date that night. Took you up to Lookout Point for privacy and a little petting. I happened to pass by during the grope-fest.”

“How dare you…?”

“Now there’s a girly comeback.” He gave her that derisive, provoking grin. “Oh, I know it didn’t go very far then, just a small post-grad make-out session. Nothing serious, just fooling around. But it got serious later, didn’t it?”

It had and the whole county had known it. Everyone knew what everyone else was up to in a small town like Castleton, and Sierra had never tried to keep it a secret anyway.

“Later you let him put it to you, didn’t you, Mouse?”

Sierra’s whole face went hot with fury and embarrassment. “You—”

His lips pulled back from his teeth in a smile that was really a snarl. “God knows what you saw in him. He was just a nothing. A user.”

Peter had been, but she had been too young then to know it. The real truth was that if it hadn’t been for Ian Raeder, she would never have fallen for Peter. She had been so busy trying to keep herself from falling for Ian that she had never even seen Peter coming.

Peter hadn’t been hotness personified like Ian. But he’d been attractive, ambitious and bright. And he had wanted her. She’d been so hyped that someone wanted her, she’d convinced herself she was in love. She’d never noticed the way Peter had always wanted to be the center of her attention, or that he had resented her wanting to express herself and be an artist.

She had always tried to be what Peter wanted her to be, even though bits of herself—those fangs that Ian teased her about—kept slipping out despite all her efforts and making Peter angry. She hadn’t seen that suppressing herself like that was wrong and Peter wanting her to be suppressed was even worse. That Peter was small-minded and selfish and self-absorbed. Even her mom had tried to warn her about that, but she hadn’t listened. It was Peter who had made the break, cutting and running.

So then the letter to Naomi Wakanda, learning pottery and finding that she was good at creating those small works of art. Finding herself, really. So maybe Peter had done her a good turn in the end, because she was never going to be that stupid, that vulnerable, again.

But she wasn’t going to sit and listen to Ian Raeder insult her about it. That “put it to you” had been a nasty, nasty choice of words. So she had made a mistake about Peter. Everyone made mistakes. She might have been a fool, but she wasn’t the cheap tramp that his crass phrasing implied. She was so enraged and humiliated that she could have killed him.

“Just because you’re doing me a favor right now doesn’t mean you can talk to me like that, Ian Raeder!”

He hunched his shoulders suddenly and she saw him flush. Was that at least a touch of decent shame?
He should be ashamed
, she thought furiously.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Damn right you shouldn’t have!” she snapped. “What I choose to do with my private life is none of your business!”

“I’m—”

“Let me spell it out. I don’t want anything to do with you. I don’t even want to breathe the same air as you! You’ve been hassling me for years and I’ve finally figured out that I don’t have to put up with it. So from now on, you keep your distance, I’ll keep mine, and maybe we can manage to be civil. Otherwise, I swear to God I’ll hit you with a two-by-four and I won’t care if the cops charge me for it!”