Jacked Up (9 page)

“Have you noticed I stopped moving?” Eve held her arms out.

Yeah, she was no tease. She wasn’t necessarily a flirt either. But she was sexy as hell.

“I noticed. My muscles are coming for you. Just a warning.”

“About time.”

Nolan closed the space between them, wanting a kiss like the desert wants a rainstorm. The car rocked as he stalked.

As he reached out for her, Eve ducked to the right and jumped back onto her hood, her breathless laughter ringing in the air.

He should have seen that coming. “Dude, I can’t believe I fell for that.”

“Like taking candy from a baby.”

Oh, she was so going to get it. Nolan jumped with a big leap so that he landed within inches of her. The car shook and she lost her balance.

“Ah!” she said, grabbing on to him to keep from falling.

“Now you’re just all grabbing on me. Make up your mind, cupcake.”

“You’re an idiot,” she said with a giggle, her eyes shining.

Man, he thought she was beautiful.

He wanted his lips on her in the worst way possible.

A horn blasted in the driveway behind them and Eve jumped again, almost going down a second time.

Shit. He turned, already knowing what he was going to see.

Minivan, six o’clock.

The car was barely brought to a stop when the side doors were sliding open and a pack of kids spilled out.

Nolan sighed. That was unfortunate. He couldn’t exactly make out with Eve now.

“Uncle Nolan, why are you standing on that car?”

“Who is that lady?”

“Is she your girlfriend?”

“Do you kiss her?”

“Can I drive your car since I’m ten now?”

The questions came fast and furious from so many little mouths that Nolan couldn’t tell which question belonged to which kid.

He jumped down off the car and offered a hand to Eve. He leaned in close to her and whispered, “We need to run. They can suck the life out of you in three minutes or less.”

She smacked his arm.

“Ooohh, she hit you.”

Eve’s eyes widened.

“Told you.” He grinned at her and turned to face the masses.

“All questions will be answered at the end of the program. Gran has cookies in the kitchen but you’d better hurry before Pops eats them all.”

They scattered like roaches when the lights came on, trying to get to the kitchen door first. Nolan counted six of them and noted they were his two oldest sisters’ kids. When the dust settled, he saw both women were eyeing him curiously.

“Hi,” Jeannie said, sticking her hand out to Eve. “I’m Jeannie, Nolan’s sister.”

“Eve. Nice to meet you.”

“I’m Sammy. Nolan’s oldest sister.”

“So what were you two doing?” Jeannie asked.

Eve was smiling, but it was a little strained. He figured she hadn’t bargained on encountering ten-plus Fords in one afternoon outing. There were always a lot of them around. It came with the territory, but he did not want to scare her off.

“We’re getting our cars ready to race in the derby tomorrow. But we’re leaving now before your rugrats crawl all over Eve and ask her more inappropriate questions.”

“Oh, it’s fine,” Eve protested. “We don’t have to leave. I like kids.”

“Jeannie’s and Sammy’s offspring aren’t kids—they’re piranhas. They devour everything in their path, including your sanity.” Nolan was kidding. Sort of. He loved to play with his nieces and nephews, and act as their climbing tree. But they asked a lot of questions and he was nervous about how Eve might react to that.

“Are you a kid hater?” she asked him, her forehead wrinkling. “Because I don’t do kid haters.”

He wasn’t sure if she meant that to have a double meaning or not, but he was certainly taking it that way.

“Oh, geez,” Jeannie said, looking like she suddenly felt very sorry for him. “We can vouch for Nolan. He adores kids.” Then she looked like she wasn’t sure that was the right thing to say. She made a face and his sisters both trucked off toward the house.

Nolan barely noticed. He was focused on Eve. He wanted to nip this in the bud before he was denied the right to nip her bud. “I’m not a kid hater. I was joking. It’s called kidding around.” He put his hands on her shoulders. “Sometimes I do that.”

Eve let Nolan rock her gently forward and back as she focused on his green eyes. She was feeling off-kilter. There were children and sisters and parents and she wasn’t even sure how she had ended up here. A week ago she’d barely known Nolan Ford’s name. Now his nephews wanted to know if he kissed her, and his sisters were studying her like she was a circus curiosity.

She didn’t like meeting new people without wearing heels. In her career, that was how she gained her sense of power, feeling like she had the upper hand. She strolled around in power heels, her phone in her hand. But in jeans and a sweatshirt, caught nearly making out on the hood of a car with Nolan, she felt awkward.

It didn’t seem in character that Nolan wouldn’t like kids, but she was feeling like she didn’t quite have a handle on the situation. It was jamming her ability to read him. But now, locking gazes with him, she both saw the truth and lost her nervousness. Nolan was such an easygoing guy. Of course he would like kids. And he liked her, and was concerned about her comfort level and was offering her a way out.

Which was thoughtful.

Which seemed to be the adjective that always popped up when she thought about him.

Plus hot. That was another good word for him.

“Sometimes I say that I’m going to rip your face off and I haven’t really done that either,” she told him. “So yeah, I get the concept.”

He snorted. “You’re a piece of work.”

“Better than a piece of shit.”

Then she remembered that he wasn’t one of her brothers and it had been pointed out to her in the past that men didn’t always appreciate her sense of humor. Like every man she’d dated in the last decade.

But Nolan laughed. He laughed with his mouth. He laughed with his eyes. He laughed with her, his hands slipping down from her shoulders to clasp hers.

Oh, God, they were holding hands. She was past thirty years old and she was pretty sure she hadn’t felt this much like a giddy schoolgirl since she was a schoolgirl. Even then she’d never been giddy.

“Do you really want to leave or were you just trying to give me a choice?” she asked him, because she didn’t like not really knowing what a person’s true intention was. She dug clarity all the time.

Tuesday had pointed out she was a control freak.

She could admit that. But it didn’t mean she was going to change it.

“I was trying to give you a choice. I’m fine either way. I wasn’t sure if you had the time blocked today to hang out or if you needed to get to work. Or if a whole houseful of strangers was not in your plans. I’m flexible.” He lifted his arm and flexed his muscle.

Eve rolled her eyes. “What is this, charades?” But she appreciated that he was being . . . thoughtful. Damn, there it was again.

She decided it was time to go home. She’d shaken things up enough for the day.

She had driven a car for the first time in years. Really driven it. Opened that sucker up and pushed the engine. When she and Nolan had been neck and neck toward the finish line, she had felt an exhilaration she hadn’t experienced in she couldn’t remember when.

Taking it right to the edge of when she could brake, trusting her instincts, proving herself right, had been a fantastic high.

Then joking around with Nolan, meeting his family.

It was a lot of stimulation.

She didn’t want to bolt, but she definitely thought it was time to go home. “I think I should go and get some work time before the weekend. Should I take my car back tonight or can I leave it here until the morning?”

“I’ll have Rhett drive your hauler to the track. Just meet us there about four, okay?”

“Sure. Thanks.” Eve felt like she should kiss him. She wanted to kiss him. Yet she hesitated and wound up giving him a hasty awkward hug before getting the hell out of there.

When she got home, she threw on her sweats and went for a run, pounding the pavement with hard, angry movements, unsure what was going on in her life. Unsure why she was reacting the way she was to Nolan.

Unsure why it was so easy to laugh with him.

As the sweat started to accumulate on the back of her neck and under her bra, Eve pushed harder, her mind slowing, clearing.

Running was her savior. Before, when she’d been competing as a teen, driving had been a way to focus. It had settled her scattered and frantic mind. Once that was gone, she’d found running. When her feet pounded and her arms pumped, the only thing she could hear was her own breathing.

She tried to reach that state of nothing, but it eluded her tonight.

Even though she was going fast enough to feel the burn in her calves, Eve still saw Nolan in front of her.

How annoying was that.

Maybe she should have ripped his face off when she’d had the chance, then he wouldn’t be disturbing her run like a sexy jack-in-the-box.

Left foot.

There was him flexing his biceps.

Right foot.

There he was jumping on the hood of her car.

After two miles, she gave up, went home, and took a shower.

Then opened her nightstand drawer, pulled out her special friend, and let Nolan dance in front of her all he wanted.

And when she reached climax, she murmured his name, feeling like an absolute and utter dork as she did it.

But she did it anyway.

CHAPTER

SIX

NOLAN
was playing Rock Band with his niece draped across his back and shoulders when his mother came up and stood next to him, a kitchen towel in her hand. “Did you need something, Momma?”

He was playing guitar and it took a bit of concentration. His nephew Ford was on drums and his niece Asher was singing her six-year-old heart out to Def Leppard. Or an approximation of singing anyway. Her reading skills were sketchy and she seemed to be interpreting the lyrics at will, but that only made it all the more entertaining.

“I just wanted to ask you what exactly you’re doing with the Monroe girl.”

Oh, Lord. Nolan passed the guitar back over his shoulder to Jessa. “Take my spot, baby doll. I’m going to help Gran in the kitchen.”

Jessa conked him on the head accidentally with the guitar when she took it, but otherwise the exchange was seamless and Nolan stood up.

“That Monroe girl has a name, Momma. It’s Eve.”

“Don’t sass me.”

“How is that sassing you?” Suddenly Asher’s screeching was getting on his nerves. He started toward the kitchen.

“Where are you going?”

“I want a cookie.”

“Nolan Junior, I’m talking to you.”

“Let’s chat in the kitchen. It’s noisy in here.”

His mother looked bewildered. She was used to constant noise. She’d spent the last forty years with children hollering all around her. But Nolan was used to living alone now and his head was hurting. Eve had left in a hurry. Without kissing him. She had hugged him like they were platonic friends.

Was that how she saw him?

It was a puzzle that had him a tad worried.

He didn’t like to worry.

Now his mother wanted to talk to him. Never a good sign.

There were still cookies on the cooling rack and he snagged one. Snickerdoodle. “What I’m doing with Eve is dating her. It’s brand-new though, so it’s of a delicate nature.” He actually thought she was of a delicate nature, despite her obvious tough side. That hard exterior was hiding a vulnerable inside.

“She’s your bosses’ sister.”

“Technically Carl is my boss. Evan is sort of like my manager.”

The look she gave him said she wasn’t buying it. But it was the truth. “Momma, don’t worry. I’m not doing anything stupid. I would never jeopardize my job.”

“Have you really thought this through? You know you have a tendency to rush into relationships.”

“What? I do not.” He did not. Maybe in high school, but all teenagers did that.

“Carrie Wheeling.”

“Momma, that was tenth grade.”

“Lauren what’s her name, the redhead. You knew her for two days and you were out at Walmart shopping for a diamond.”

Way to embarrass the hell out of him. “I was twenty-one. I was very passionate at that age.”

“Langely. And Nicole.”

He shrugged, popping the rest of the cookie in his mouth. “Those were both really good relationships, you know.”

“They lasted about a minute.”

It was a year, easily for both, but he wasn’t going to argue with her. She needed to say her piece.

“Do you know why they burned out?”

Talk about a rhetorical question. “Why?”

“Because you rushed into a serious relationship with a woman who you wanted to help. To fix.”

He needed another cookie for this. Nolan filled his mouth so he wouldn’t tell his mother exactly what a load of bullshit he thought that was.

“I think you’re a good man for wanting to help, but you can’t fix someone else. You can’t take in a stray dog without realizing it will bite you at one point.”

Now she was comparing his former girlfriends to dogs. Time to extract himself from this conversation.

“I’m thirty-three years old. My love life is my own and for the most part I’ve been happy with it. So don’t stress. It’s all good.” He peeled himself off the counter he’d been leaning on and kissed his mother on the top of her head. “Thanks for caring.”

She gave him a suspicious look. “I just want to know what’s wrong with her. There’s always something wrong with the girls you bring home.”

Nolan laughed. “There’s nothing wrong with her. She doesn’t have an eating disorder, or drink too much. She doesn’t have daddy issues and she’s not OCD.” Though as the words came out of his mouth, he realized he didn’t one hundred percent know any of those things. It wasn’t like he spent that much time with Eve.

“She doesn’t seem happy, that’s for sure.”

That gave him pause. “You didn’t see her laughing when we were dragging. I make her laugh.”

His mother’s finger came up. “See? There it is. You’re trying to make her happy. Fix her. Bad idea, Junior.”

“I respectfully disagree. We’re just getting to know each other. I’m not repeating any patterns.” He didn’t really believe he had any patterns. “I repeat, it’s all good.”

But her words nagged at him.

He ended up eating half a dozen cookies and bombing out at Rock Band before saying good-bye and heading home.

When he lay in bed later that night, he tossed and turned, his mind unable to escape the image of Eve laughing, her amber-colored eyes sparkling in the crisp autumn air.

Maybe introducing her to his family so soon had been a mistake.

But racing her? Kissing her?

He didn’t regret either for one minute.

Something that felt so damn good was never a mistake.

He punched his pillow, hot and restless.

When the images of Carrie, Lauren, Langely, and Nicole filled his head, like an assembly line of all his failed relationships, he groaned.

It wasn’t bad to be thirty-three and never married. It meant he was waiting for the right woman.

So how was that rushing into things?

Giving up on sleep, Nolan got out of bed and trotted into his kitchen barefoot for a glass of orange juice. His apartment was poky and dark with a motley assortment of cast-off furniture from relatives. But now as he squinted against the bright light of the refrigerator, pulling out the carton of OJ, he wondered about Eve, growing up with money.

Living in a big old house as a kid and probably in a ritzy condo as an adult.

Did things like that matter to her? His apartment was small but clean. For the most part.

He drank straight out of the carton, because he lived alone, and hey, he could do that.

Everyone kept insisting it was stupid to date his bosses’ sister.

Were they right?

He slapped the carton of juice back on the shelf. Now he was worrying about stupid shit the way she did.

If it worked out, it worked out. If it didn’t, it didn’t.

In the meantime, he was just looking to enjoy Eve’s company.

End of story.

* * *

EVE
was in a foul mood by the time she got to the track on Saturday. She hadn’t slept more than an hour. She’d been up and down all night, her muscles sore from pushing too hard during her run, her head pounding from lack of sleep and stress, and her nerves jangling over the upcoming derby.

She did not want to make an ass out of herself.

Dragging with Nolan in the driveway had been one thing, but this was in front of thousands of people. People who were looking to judge her and find her lacking. Hell, media might even be there and find it an entertaining story. This had never been her style of competition. It was a different skill set to race at high speed around the turns than to purposefully crash into other vehicles.

As she entered the pit area, helmet under her arm, she felt irrationally angry with Nolan. This was his fault. All this stress she was feeling wouldn’t exist if he hadn’t suggested she do something as stupid as enter the derby on about a minute’s notice. She wanted to stomp. She wanted to quit. But she wasn’t a quitter.

Or was she?

She had walked away from competitive racing after all.

The thought just made her angrier.

It took a lot of effort to greet Nolan with any sort of civility. “Hey,” she said when she walked up to him and Rhett, both cars off the haulers and ready for inspection.

For the first time since she’d met him, Nolan didn’t have a smile for her. He barely glanced at her as he filled out paperwork. “Hey. You need to sign these release forms and hand them in.”

He shoved some paper at her. Still not looking at her.

What the hell did she do to deserve that?

Then she berated herself. What did she expect? Him to greet her with a big old smooch and words of encouragement?

Actually, yes.

She was already used to that with Nolan. Five days and she’d never known him to be anything but eager to see her.

This must be his game face before competition.

His game face sucked and she hated it.

Of course her game face was on, too, and it was a bitchy one, so she had no room to talk.

Which also annoyed her.

“I can do that. Do you have a pen?”

“I’m using this one. Don’t you have one in your purse? All women have one in their purse.”

Eve had come to the track alone. Her phone was in her back pocket and her change purse with her ID was in the pouch of her sweatshirt. She didn’t have a purse. In fact, she rarely carried a purse. She either streamlined like today or she had a gigantic bag that held promo items and other miscellaneous items along with her wallet, but she would call that a satchel, not a purse. None of which mattered in the slightest other than she didn’t like being lumped in the “chick” category, and excuse me, was his tone surly? She was not in the mood for surly.

“If I had one in my freakin’ purse, I wouldn’t be asking you for one, would I?”

He raised his hand in an imitation of a cat swipe. “Pull the claws back. It’s just a pen.”

Eve blinked. He so did not just say that.

She reached out and yanked the pen from his hand. “What is your problem?” Without waiting for an answer, she started filling out the form.

Name. Eve Pissed-Off Monroe.

Expecting Nolan to make a comment, she held the pen tightly. But he didn’t. She did hear Rhett ask him, “Are you okay, man? You look rough.”

“I didn’t sleep much last night.”

She paused, wanting to look up, but restraining herself. So Nolan hadn’t slept well either? Did that mean anything?

Probably all it meant was that explained why he wasn’t as chipper as he usually was. It couldn’t possibly mean that he had been thinking about her the way she’d been thinking about him. Eve’s cheeks burned as she stared down at the paper, remembering how she had touched herself, imagining it was him, sliding his fingers deep down inside her while he kissed her jaw, her neck, her nipple.

“You sure you want to do this?”

Eve wasn’t sure about anything. Well, actually, she was sure about wanting to have sex with him. But she realized Rhett was asking Nolan, not her.

“Of course I’m going to do it.”

Which was exactly what she would say if anyone asked her. There was no way she was backing out now, despite the potential for humiliation. She had something to prove. To herself. To Nolan. To every man out there who had looked at her as a kid and a teenager and told her girls don’t drive. To her family, who thought she didn’t know how to have fun.

She was going to make fun her bitch.

“Ready for inspection?” Nolan said.

She realized he was talking to her so she looked up. It shocked her how tired he actually looked. There were dark circles under his eyes and his shoulders drooped. A wave of sympathy washed over her. “I guess I’m ready. Are you okay? I heard you say you didn’t sleep much.”

He shrugged. “I’ll live. And I’m guessing you had the same problem.” His finger brushed under her eye, sending a shiver up her spine. “We have matching luggage.”

Not what she wanted to hear. It was true, but she didn’t need him to tell her she looked like crap.

“My dreams of besting you kept me from a deep sleep.”

His eyebrows rose. “Oh, yeah? Good luck with that, rookie.”

“Don’t underestimate me.” A part of her realized she was baiting him, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself. Evan always told her she was itching for a fight, and she had a feeling that was what she was doing here.

But Nolan wouldn’t rise to her challenge. Or irrational poking, however you wanted to label it.

“I wasn’t planning on it.”

“Good.” Deflated, she went back to her paperwork.

She was in the middle of writing an “r” when the pen was whisked out of her grasp.

“You done with that?” he asked her with a grin.

So much for not rising to her bait. Eve wanted to laugh. She wanted to beat him with her clipboard.

And mostly she wanted to kiss him, to feel him rocking his body against hers, thick hot erection pressing against her.

It made no sense, but there it was. She could be in the worst mood possible and he could manage to make her smile. And horny.

“You better watch it, Ford. Your ass is grass and I’m the lawn mower.”

That made him grin. “You sound like my grandfather.”

“Were you scared of him as a kid?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Be scared of me, too.”

Nolan turned up the twang in his country voice. “I ain’t afraid of you. I ain’t afraid of nothin’.”

The urge to kiss him returned. She was going to combat that. God only knew who was watching them. She wasn’t ready to deal with anyone asking her about her relationship with Nolan. Not that it was a relationship. But she didn’t want anyone asking her about whatever it was.

“I’m walking away from you,” she told him. “Because you’re a dork.”

He let out a crack of laughter before he reined it in. “See you on the track when I take you out.”

“You wish.” Eve suddenly realized that some people might consider their exchange witty banter. Or people might say they sounded like a couple of middle schoolers at the roller rink arguing over whether to join the couples skate or not.

She was hoping the truth was somewhere actually in the middle.

Her experience with dating wasn’t excessive. Or even average. So she truthfully didn’t know what she was doing when it came to men. All she knew was she was who she was and she wasn’t going to change for a man. She wasn’t going to start simpering and tempering her opinions for a penis. She was pretty sure that would actually kill her if she even tried.