Jacked Up (20 page)

But that was stupid. Romance didn’t exist outside of books and movies.

Then again . . . Nolan’s note had been pretty damn romantic.

She sighed as she flashed her credentials to the security guard and headed into the garage behind pit road. Never in her whole life had she been so confused. It was like she was turning into Sybil, the chick with multiple personalities. The Eve she knew wanted to just retreat from all of this, slamming the door on her emotions and telling Nolan it wasn’t going to work. Cupcake, on the other hand, wanted to plan a honeymoon with him and find him room in her closet.

Which officially made her insane. Aging had caused her to crack. First the demolition derby, now a marriage in Vegas. What was next? A drive-thru nose job? A shanty in the Australian outback where she raised alpaca?

Even through her sunglasses she could see her brother was walking toward her. Damn. She’d been hoping he was on the track. He was suited up but he didn’t have his helmet.

“Hey, you feeling better?” he asked her.

“No,” she told him accurately.

“I didn’t think so. You look like shit. And you’re dressed like Grandma Monroe.”

Eve was wearing a turtleneck with a cardigan. Not something she would usually layer together but she was cold, the aftereffects of the alcohol. “I skipped the brooch and the white Keds, so I don’t think this qualifies me for granny status.”

“I have to say Nolan looks a hell of a lot better than you do today. He’s been whistling and bouncing around happy as a clam. A well-fucked clam.” Evan clapped her on the arm, almost knocking her over. “I’m impressed, big sis. I guess you don’t suck in bed.”

She could not handle his teasing. Normally she would give it right back, but she wasn’t capable of doing anything other than standing upright and breathing. “Can you please stop talking? Permanently?”

“Oh, come on, it’s your birthday. Perk up. You just need a little hair of the dog, that’s all. Though maybe stop at one drink instead of eight.”

“I didn’t really drink that much. I’m not sure why I’m so hungover.”

“Did you and Nolan go out after the party?”

Eve felt her cheeks start to burn. “Yes.”

“Did you drink?”

“Yes.”

“Then you drank enough to be hungover. Where did you guys go?”

“A bar. A nightclub.” Then because she was going to have to admit it sooner or later, she murmured, “A wedding chapel.”

“Come again?”

Blushing furiously, she darted her gaze around to make sure no one was within hearing distance. “We might have gotten married last night.”

Evan stared at her blankly for a second, then he burst out laughing. “Are you shitting me?”

“I wish I was.”

His laughter revved up until he was snorting. “Oh my God, that’s the best thing I’ve heard in a long time. You of all people . . . damn, that’s funny.”

She glared at her brother. “I’m glad you find it so amusing. But notice I’m not laughing?”

It obviously took some effort, but Evan reined in his glee. “So, um, congratulations?” he said.

Eve took her sunglasses off and crammed them onto her head, tired of trying to see her brother through the dark lenses. “No. No congratulations. We obviously can’t stay married.”

“What? You’re not even going to give it a shot?” Evan asked. “You might as well since you’ve already done the deed.”

“Are you nuts? No. You know this won’t work.”

“I don’t know anything about what would work for you and Nolan, and I don’t think you do either. You rushed into it, why rush out? Kendall and I eloped and look how well that turned out. We’re awesome.”

Was her brother serious? He had always been just like her—cut and run when things got uncomfortable. Though it had always been different with Kendall. He had never doubted his feelings for Kendall, which was why her own situation wasn’t comparable. She did doubt her feelings for Nolan.

Didn’t she?

“You and Kendall knew each other.”

He shrugged. “How well do you ever know anybody? I say go for it and enjoy the ride for as long as it lasts.”

“We’re getting this annulled as soon as possible. So don’t tell anybody. We can’t have anyone getting wind of this, or it will look bad for you and the team.”

“How will your quickie wedding look bad for me?”

“It ruins the squeaky-clean image of the Monroe family and Hinder Motors if I get hitched with the naked jackman.” The more she thought about it, the more that aspect of the situation freaked her out. That hadn’t even crossed her mind the night before.

“We have a squeaky-clean image?” Evan asked dubiously.

“We should!” she snapped, her stomach starting to churn again. This had the potential to be a PR nightmare. “Just don’t breathe a word of this. No one can know.”

“Hey, Eve!”

Eve raised her head, hoping whoever was calling her would go away and die.

It was Jim, Evan’s car chief, a good twenty feet away from her with a crowd of crew members. “Congratulations, girl! Heard you got hitched last night to my jackman! Always knew there was a spark between you two.”

Oh, shit. Eve hunched deeper into her sweater. “Thanks,” she called weakly because what the hell else was she supposed to say?

She was going to kill Nolan. He must have told. Without asking her if it was okay. Without her telling her family first. She was going to rip his nuts off and stuff them in his pocket.

“Well, I guess the cat is out of the bag,” her brother said, stating the very obvious.

“Where’s Nolan?” she asked Evan under her breath. “And Elec?”

“Elec’s test lap was this morning. I imagine he’s in his RV by now. You better send a fast text to Mom and Dad. You don’t want them to hear this from someone else.”

“I don’t want them to hear it, period. I’ll talk to you later.” Striding over to the crew, she demanded, “Where’s Nolan?”

A couple of them grinned at her. “Damn. Already territorial,” Jim said.

She really wanted to tell him to go screw himself hard and repeatedly, but she restrained herself. “How did you find out about our marriage?” she asked.

“My wife told me.”

Jim’s wife knew? What the hell?

“She gets that gossip blog about racing, and you know, Ford is kind of a hot ticket since his ass was on YouTube, and with you being a Monroe and all, it was the featured story this morning, right next to Junior’s blowing an engine on his test lap.”

They were blogworthy? That was seriously bizarre. But how had the blogger found out? And oh, my God, was that blogger Tuesday? Would her friend really do that to her?

Her phone was blowing up in her pocket. Eve was afraid to look at it.

“Oh,” she said brilliantly to Jim. “I see.”

They were looking at her expectantly.

“What?” she snapped.

“Whew.” Jim made a big deal out of pretending to wipe his forehead. “For a second there I was afraid marriage had stripped you of your sass. Which would be a damn shame.”

That astonished her. “You like me bitching all the time? I thought you said I was a battle-ax.”

“That’s just to rib you. Yeah, I like your mouthiness. It keeps it from getting boring around here.”

All the guys were nodding. “My day just wouldn’t be the same without you telling me to get the fucking lead out,” Ace, the tire man, said.

She was almost touched. Not. “Today I’m just going to tell you that if you don’t inform me where Nolan is in the next thirty seconds, I will prevent you from ever being a father.”

Ace instinctively moved his hand over his man parts. “He’s heading this way right now.”

Eve turned. Nolan was striding toward them, with an awful lot of swagger in his step. He looked pleased as freaking punch with himself and his life. The guys around her broke out into whoops and catcalls. She winced. Both because of the sound coming at her still not quite recovered head hurt and from the fact that they were hooting because they knew she had married Nolan.

Braving a glance at her phone, she saw she had two missed calls from her mother and six texts, one of which was from Tuesday. She couldn’t call her mother back right now, but she was curious to see what Tuesday had written.

Is it true? How does some upstart gossip blogger know and I don’t?

So now she knew it wasn’t Tuesday, which was a relief. She would have thought Tuesday would run something like that past her first for her permission, but it wasn’t Tuesday. So who was it?

Nolan was grinning and shaking hands with everyone. Then in the midst of all the melee he leaned over and gave her a big wet kiss. “How are you feeling?” he asked.

The roar of approval around her was deafening. Really? If Nolan knew her at all—which he clearly didn’t, making their marriage even more insane—he would know she did not like to be in the spotlight like that. Especially not involving physical contact.

But she managed to say, “I’m fine,” which was a big fat lie.

“You look beautiful.”

“You’re still drunk,” she told him.

He laughed. “Nope. Just happy.” He turned to the other crew members. “You all need to buy me a drink when we get back home since we didn’t have a wedding reception.” He turned back to her. “Or should we have a wedding reception? That might be fun.”

Having four hundred people staring at her all night questioning what drugs she had slipped to Nolan to get him to marry her? No thanks. The very thought of a reception and what it represented made her want to have a heart attack. She pulled her sweater so tight it was practically a straitjacket. “We can talk about that later,” she told him. Like never.

She looked at the other guys. They needed to go away. “Can you all go away? I want to talk to Nolan alone.”

That was met with chortles and laughs. But hey, she wasn’t going to waste time being polite. Today was not the day for polite. Today was the day for a two-by-four she could knock herself unconscious with.

The guys wandered off with a few last words of congratulations.

Once they were alone, Eve asked Nolan, “How did a blogger find out we got married?”

He looked bewildered. “A blogger knows?”

“Yeah, that’s how the crew knows.”

“Really? I have no idea. The only person I told was my brother.”

“The only person I told was my brother and that was five minutes ago.”

“Huh. I just told Rhett like an hour ago. Neither of our brothers would call the gossip rags anyway. Maybe someone saw us? But who would recognize us?”

“I don’t know. It’s weird.”

But Nolan just shrugged. “I guess it doesn’t matter, though I guess we both need to call our mothers before they are mortally wounded and even more pissed off than they would be anyway.”

The thought made shivers of dread trounce up her spine. “Ugh.” She needed more aspirin. “My mom already called me twice. I’m guessing she knows.”

It was safe to say the low-key birthday Eve had envisioned wasn’t going according to plan. Which was evidence that spontaneity wasn’t wise. Now she couldn’t even just get a quickie annulment with no one knowing. Everyone knew. She did not want to be the subject of even more gossip by turning around and filing to annul the marriage.

Though she wasn’t even sure she wanted to annul the marriage. She did have very strong feelings for Nolan, which might be love if it wasn’t completely nutty to be in love after two weeks.

She didn’t know what she wanted other than about six more hours of sleep. In her granny clothes.

“I like this look, babe,” Nolan said, pulling the edges of her sweater closed. “It makes me want to unwrap you.”

“You’re nuts. I look like hell.”

“No, you don’t. You look delicious.” He nuzzled in her neck.

Eve didn’t do nuzzling. Not in the garage. Hell, not anywhere. But she let him do it.

And she
liked
it.

God, she didn’t even know herself anymore.

With more effort than should be necessary, Eve dragged herself away from him. “Call your mother. What time will you be done working?”

“Six or so. What are you going to do until then?”

“Sleep in an empty car.” She was only half-kidding. “No, I have to call some people.”

“Hey.” Nolan took his thumbs and drew them along her eyebrows and down to her temples, where he massaged her gently. “Don’t worry. Our families will be fine once they get over the shock.”

Maybe. But the real question was would she be fine? And was she ever going to get over the shock?

She was married. Lord have mercy.

CHAPTER

FIFTEEN

THE
garage and pit road weren’t exactly the quietest places to have a phone conversation, but Nolan knew he had to call his mother sooner than later. So he found the remotest corner and hit dial for his mother. She answered on the second ring.

“You didn’t really get married in Vegas, did you?”

Apparently she knew.

The key to dealing with his mother was not to get riled up and not to buckle under her pressure. “As a matter of fact, I did. I’m very happy.”

“Why would she do that? Why would that girl just up and marry you? Is she on drugs?”

“Gee, thanks, Mom.” Nolan felt his bubble burst with a loud pop as his mother managed to hone in on his most elemental fears and doubts. Why had Eve married him? What did he have to offer?

“I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

There weren’t a whole lot of ways that could be interpreted. “So how did you mean it?”

“I just mean that she comes from a wealthy family and I’m sure she’s been around drivers and team owners and corporate sponsors her whole life. It seems like she’d be more comfortable dating someone like that.”

“Someone who isn’t beneath her, you mean?” It was a deep worry that he had, and he didn’t need to be reminded of it. Not eighteen hours after their wedding.

“Don’t go getting all sensitive, Nolan Junior. You know exactly what I’m saying and you know it’s true. I just think that a woman who can truly appreciate you is not going to be some rich career woman.”

Nolan loved his mother. He had been taught from birth to respect her. Never even in his hormonal teen years had he yelled at her or said anything cruel. For the first time ever, he was sorely tempted to hang up the phone before he said something he would regret.

“Well, Eve certainly seemed to appreciate me last night.” Let her think what she wanted of that one.

There was a shocked silence. “Junior, I’m going to trust you weren’t referencing bedroom activities to your mother.”

Part of him was feeling petulant enough that he wanted to say what of it? Most people had sex on their wedding night. But he stopped himself in the nick of time. He did not want to fight with his mother. He didn’t want to fight with anyone. He wanted to just revel in his marriage, but it seemed all reveling was on hold. “Mom, I married Eve. I’m asking you to be happy for me. To accept her and be nice.”

The pause was so long that he actually said, “Hello?”

“I’m here,” she said begrudgingly. “I don’t know what to say. How can I be happy for you when I think you’ve made a huge mistake?”

“One, you can trust me. Two, you can shrug your shoulders and be happy I’m happy. If it doesn’t work out, what is the big deal? Is it the end of the world?” He wanted it to work out, more than anything. But if it didn’t, at least he would have had whatever time he did with Eve. “Better to have loved and lost and all that, right, Momma?”

His mother gave a massive sigh. “Just don’t knock her up for a while, you hear me?”

Nolan almost laughed. Almost. “Trust me, that’s the last thing on my mind. What did Dad say?”

“That you’re a damn fool but she’s a looker.”

Figured. “Well at least I have his support.”

“Your sister wants to talk to you.”

“Which one?” Actually, he didn’t want to talk to any of them at the moment. “I’m at work, I should go. I’ll call her later. I’ll call you on Monday when I’m back home. Love you. Bye.”

Nolan bum-rushed his mother off the phone and frowned.

This was going to be harder than he thought.

He didn’t really like things to be hard, unless it was his penis.

Suddenly he wanted his wife.

* * *

“DAD,
calm down, you’re going to have a heart attack.” Eve was standing outside talking on the phone, sunglasses firmly back on her eyes to protect her from the fading, but still painful, Vegas sun. “It’s not that big of a deal.” Truthfully, it was, but she wasn’t about to admit that to her father.

“We had this conversation about driving in the demolition derby. You told me that was no big deal, and in retrospect it probably wasn’t. This, Eve Alexandra, is a very big deal!”

She sighed, rubbing her temple. She needed Nolan to massage her again. “You had to assume that I was going to get married at some point in my life. I know I sort of scream old maid, but you can’t have thought it was totally out of the realm of possibilities.”

“Of course I figured you would get married, but I thought you would have the sense to do it the right way.”

“What is the right way? In a church?”

“The right way is with someone you’ve been dating for at least a year, and you think about it and plan it. What do you really know about this guy?”

That her father thought there was a time minimum to knowing someone before you could marry him amused her because truthfully, a few weeks ago, she would have said the exact same thing. She definitely had quite a bit of her father in her. “Dad, he’s a nice guy.” What else could she really say? She wasn’t going to stomp her feet and cry and declare herself wildly in love. She may have gotten a little more impulsive, but she hadn’t regressed to a teenage girl in a vampire film.

“Well, you’re going to have to write up a postnup and have him sign it. I’ll put a call into the lawyer.”

“A postnup for what?” That had never even occurred to her.

“You have a lot more money than he does, and you’re going to inherit half of my estate someday.”

Her head really was pounding again. This sounded like way more than she wanted to deal with. Her father’s eventual death and Nolan trying to take her money. That was cheerful. “Half? Don’t you mean a third?”

“No. I’m giving you half, and a quarter for each of the boys. Their incomes are ten times higher than yours—they don’t need it.”

Eve was sincerely touched. “Thanks, Daddy.”

Her father cleared his throat. “You would have been an excellent driver, you know. One of the best. You have the fire.”

Tears suddenly were in her eyes. She didn’t realize until that very second how much she had needed to hear that her father had believed in her. The truth was, maybe she hadn’t believed in herself. Maybe it had been easier to blame the system than try and fail.

“Which is why you shouldn’t settle, Eve. You’re a wonderful woman capable of great things. You’re the best PR rep for your brothers we could have ever hired, and I don’t want to see you lose everything.”

Somehow buried in the compliments and the concern was still the implication that she’d been dumb enough to fall for a gold digger. She had no doubt that Nolan was anything but. “Dad, I appreciate your concern, but Nolan is not after my money. Any in my bank account now or what I might have in the future.”

“Maybe not now, but things get ugly when people get divorced.”

So now he had them already getting divorced. Granted, Eve had been contemplating an annulment, but she still found it annoying. So no one thought she and Nolan were anything more than a Vegas flash in the pan.

“Dad, I will sign a postnup if it makes you feel better, and I’m sure Nolan will, too. Now I’m going to go and eat large amounts of chocolate.”

It took a couple more minutes and guarantees from her father that the postnuptial agreement would be on her desk first thing Monday morning before she could get off the phone.

She wasn’t kidding about the chocolate. If she didn’t get some creamy goodness in her mouth in the next five minutes, she wasn’t responsible for her actions. It had been a stressful head-pounding day and she hadn’t even been awake for most of it.

Eve checked her e-mails and answered a bunch of stupid people asking stupid questions. Questions if they had just read her last e-mail with anything other than half a brain they wouldn’t have needed to ask. She crammed her phone back in her pocket. She was not in the mood for work, obviously. In fact, she wanted to go home and back to bed. Only now, she had a husband and she had to wait for him. It was weird. Kind of annoying.

Flagging down Evan, she told him, “Nolan and I are leaving.”

“I think he’s in the middle of a run-through.”

“Screw that. It’s my birthday and I got married last night. He wasn’t even supposed to be here today originally. He’s leaving with me
now
.” She didn’t do waiting very well, especially not when she felt like ass.

Evan raised an eyebrow. “Somebody wants to get laid.”

Horrifically, that wasn’t even her motivation. Mostly she wanted chocolate and her fleece pajama pants. “Think of it as a birthday present for me,” she told her brother.

“Fine. I’ll go get him since apparently I’m your errand boy now.” But Evan did lean over and ruffle her hair. “Congrats again. I hope you guys will be as happy as me and Kendall.”

Hopefully he meant after he and his wife had reunited, not when she had been locking herself in the RV bedroom and telling him to F off through the door.

Speaking of his wife, Kendall came over, a grin on her face. “Eve, Eve, Eve . . . I didn’t know you had it in you.”

“What, stupidity?”

“No. Spontaneity. The ability to listen to your emotions.”

At the time, that was what she thought she had been doing. Now she wasn’t so sure what exactly had been going on in her head. “Well, thanks for not calling me an idiot like everyone else basically has. I just had to listen to my dad tell me that Nolan married me for my money.”

Kendall paused in tightening the ponytail her auburn hair was in. She started laughing. “I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t laugh, but that’s just ridiculous. Parents mean well, but where do they come up with this stuff? It’s not like you’re independently wealthy.”

“I know. Hanging around for twenty years waiting for my dad to kick so he can get his hands on some of my inheritance seems like a lot of work.”

“Well, just try to ignore everyone’s opinions because you’re going to get a lot of them. You should call Tuesday and have her blog with the details so it’s accurate, unlike that other one that came out this morning that said after you spent the night at a strip club together you got married.”

“What?”
Charming. “That didn’t happen! We were at a nightclub.”

Kendall shrugged. “You know how that goes. Nightclub wasn’t exciting enough. So it became a strip club. But seriously, it’s all just white noise. Just enjoy your relationship with Nolan. Don’t let gossip ruin your honeymoon phase. I speak from experience.”

Was this the honeymoon phase? Holy crap, that wasn’t promising.

Thank God Kendall wasn’t a touchy-feely kind of chick, because Eve was fairly certain if she had tried to hug her, Eve would have burst into tears. Which would have pissed her off.

“See you later. Call me if you need to talk.”

“Thanks.”

Nolan came up behind her and hugged her. Hadn’t she just thought she didn’t want a hug? But his was more like a bear hug from behind, and while it was mildly embarrassing to be hugged in the garage in front of a half-dozen people, a small part of her kind of liked it, too.

“Evan says I’m sprung. You want to go to dinner?”

“What I really want is a giant chocolate bar, room service, and bed,” she told him truthfully. “How did your call with your mom go?”

She could feel him shrug. Finding it weird to be talking to him when he was behind her, Eve pulled away and turned around. “My dad was pissed. My mom seems okay with it.”

“Yeah, my mom was not thrilled either,” he said. “But she’ll come around.”

His eyes were dark, and there was a reserve to him when he spoke that she wasn’t used to. Obviously there was more to the conversation than he was willing to share. Fabulous. But she wasn’t going to pry when she didn’t really want to share the details either.
Hey, my dad thinks you’re a gold digger
. What everyone wanted to hear.

“I wish we could teleport to the hotel.”

He snapped his fingers. “Shit, it didn’t work. I guess we have to take a cab.”

But he had the taxi stop after a block at a convenience store. “I need a soda, I’ll be two minutes.”

Eve sat in the cab and used the time to call Tuesday. “I can’t believe someone scooped you on this,” she told her. “I didn’t tell anyone. Hell, I wasn’t planning to tell anyone ever.”

“It’s that little upstart, Mary Jane, Cooper Brickman’s little sister. She’s like twelve! This is infuriating. But she’s in Vegas because her brother has custody of her and she travels the circuit with him. Apparently she and her so-called nanny were out hitting the clubs last night.”

A driver’s teenage sister was responsible for everyone in the universe finding out about her midnight wedding? “That’s weird and completely wrong. Someone should have a chat with Cooper. It’s ridiculous that his sister is posting lies on the Internet. But whatever, what’s done is done. Please correct the bullshit about the strip club. You can post that Nolan threw a surprise birthday party for me at the W Hotel and that we were married at a Vegas chapel afterwards.”

“Will do. So, uh, are you happy?”

“I’m more freaked out than happy. I’m debating options.” Actually, she was debating getting out of the cab and going into the store and screaming like a fish wife for Nolan to hurry up. But lucky for him, he emerged from the store, a giant brown bag in his hand. “Okay, here’s Nolan, I’ll talk to you later.”

As he got in the car, she asked him, “What the hell did you buy? Is there a small child in that bag?”

He gestured for the driver to start moving again, then he opened the bag. “You said you wanted chocolate, so I grabbed a couple of different options for you. I don’t know what kind you like so . . . hopefully one of these will work.”

A half-dozen different candy bars spilled into her lap. Eve looked down at them, shocked. He had actually listened to what she had said. Not only had he listened, but he’d attempted to correct the situation. Her lip started to tremble and her eyes got moist. “Thanks.”

“What’s wrong?” he asked, alarmed, pausing in opening his bottle of Coke.

“Nothing.” Then she did something so weird it almost beat marrying Nolan without warning. She clutched the candy to her chest and lay down on the seat so that her head was in his lap. Staring up at him, she fought tears.