Hot-Wired / Coming on Strong

Maybe because he was ripped and gorgeous…if a woman found that combination of muscle, black hair, intense blue eyes, a slightly wicked grin and a faint scar across the perfection of his left cheek appealing. Her assistant, Cynthia, would do backflips over him. Because he was Cynthia’s type. He was not, however, Natalie’s type. Natalie preferred her men more polished and urbane. Therefore she put it down to the total weirdness of the night and that from the instant she’d laid eyes on Beau Stillwell’s near nakedness a minivolcano had sprung to life inside her. She’d felt hot, flushed, unsettled.

She turned left at a sign with an arrow indicating Dahlia Speedway. Even a shower and a small glass of chardonnay hadn’t settled her down on Friday night. Despite the fact that she’d gone to bed mentally reviewing her checklist for the Morris-Pitchford wedding the following day, the same as she always did the night before an event, he had plagued her in her dreams. Crazy dreams.

She was directing a rehearsal and then the dinner and somehow it became the wedding itself, and just when things were going smoothly, Beau Stillwell would appear with his mocking grin and Natalie would look down and discover she was only wearing a towel. She’d hurry and find her clothes and put herself back together, only to have Beelzebub Stillwell reappear, and once again she was appalled to find her clothes gone and a towel about her sarongwise.

She’d woken up tired and out of sorts, and she’d nearly left the last-minute sewing kit behind on her way out the door to the pre-wedding photo shoot. All his fault.

And this morning? She’d tried on at least five different outfits until she’d finally settled on a fitted cotton-spandex apricot T-shirt layered beneath a short green jacket with wide-legged jeans and wedge heels. Casual but still professional. This was, after all, work and not a social engagement. And then she’d dithered—might as well call it the way it was—over whether to pull her hair up in a ponytail, or her work chignon, or leave it down. The chignon seemed too fussy, the ponytail too girlish. In the end she’d left it hanging loose over her shoulders and down her back.

Natalie had no delusions about what she looked like. She wasn’t traffic-stopping beautiful and she needed to lose ten…okay, fifteen, maybe twenty…pounds. She was average. Average height. Average overweight. Run-of-the-mill brown eyes. But her one point of vanity was her hair. She’d been blessed with good hair. It was long and thick with just enough curl to give it body.

All told, it had taken her far too long to get ready but it was absolutely not because she was concerned about what Beau Stillwell thought of her appearance. No. She couldn’t give a fig whether he found her attractive or not. She was not trying to compensate for having given a general first impression of a walking, talking disaster.

She stopped at the gate and flashed the ticket she’d bought Friday evening. Before she’d put the minivan in Park in the far corner of the crowded lot—there were lots of people here today—Scooter pulled up in front of her van.

“Nice to see you again, Ms. Bridges. Climb on the back.” He grinned. “You’re just in time to see Beau open a can of whup-ass.”

“I can hardly wait.” Despite her sarcasm, she returned his grin.

He handed her a blue wrist band. “Put this on.”

Natalie complied but asked all the same, “What is it?”

“It shows you’re a pit crew member. C’mon, let’s go race.”

Whatever. She’d only shown up to make sure Mr. Stillwell didn’t conveniently “forget” their appointment. However, if being a pit crew member was what it took to drag his butt out to Belle Terre, then she was pit-crewing.

She shrugged and climbed up on the four-wheeler behind Scooter. Today she wasn’t riding sidesaddle, and instead of wrapping her arms around his waist, she merely held on to the rack that fanned out over the rear fenders. Hmm. In retrospect she could’ve held on to that rack on Friday night, too. Oh, well.

“You settled?” Scooter asked over his shoulder.

“Yes, sir.” Even though he’d sent her in the toter home the other night knowing good and well she’d probably find Beau in some state of undress, she liked Scooter Lewis. With his freckled face and dancing eyes, he reminded her of a mischievous elf.

They took off with a roar, but instead of going to the left in the direction of the pits, Scooter drove into an eight-lane asphalted area where cars, some still attached to tow ropes, were lined up one behind the other and drivers milled about. At the front, the cars converged into two openings and then rolled forward for their turn down the track.

“Staging lanes,” he yelled over his shoulder.

She nodded in return. Staging lanes. Okay. Whatever that exactly was, she wasn’t sure, but it was loud and noisy…and kind of exciting. Above the din of car engines and male voices, the announcer sounded like a circus barker. “Get ready for some driving, folks. It’s the event you’ve been waiting for—the bad boys of outlaw racing, 10.5’s Beau Stillwell and Jason Mitchell taking it head-to-head down the track. Nitrous versus turbo in the final round.”

Scooter pulled up next to the black and purple Camaro and she climbed off the four-wheeler. Every inch of her was aware of Beau Stillwell, but she deliberately looked at and spoke to his crew members, Darnell and Tim, first. A whoosh of red ran up Tim’s face at her hello. He was obviously one of those guys more at ease around a fan belt than a female.

Finally, she turned to face Beau Stillwell. He wore a half-cocked smile but it was the lazy sweep of those bright blue eyes framed in dark lashes down and back up her that sucked the breath from her and sent her mind skittering to naughty places. “You clean up nice, Ms. Bridges.” He leaned down and for one heart-stopping, pulse-pounding moment she was certain he was going to kiss her. There was a lambent sensuality in his eyes, in the way he bent his head. Her whole body tingled in anticipation. The air between them seemed to crackle.

He canted his head to the left, his dark hair teasing against her cheek, and sniffed delicately. She could almost feel the faint scrape of his five-o’clock shadow against her neck. She was on the verge of spontaneous combustion. He straightened. “You smell a whole lot better, too.”

He smirked and she wanted to do something awful to him. Instead she smiled sweetly. “You smell terrible.”

Okay. Not the wittiest comeback in the world, but good lord, he’d paralyzed over half her brain cells when he’d leaned in close that way. Her heart was still tap-dancing against her ribs. It was the best she could do on short notice and short-circuit.

“You’re not into eau de oil and sweat?”

“Afraid not.”

Tim, she could’ve kissed him, chose that moment to interrupt. “I brought the tires down to ten and quarter and heated the bottles to nine-hundred.” He handed Beau a jacket, which he shrugged into.

Beau zipped up the jacket. “Good deal.” He reached into the open door of the car and took out a black neck brace and snapped it into place. He pulled on a helmet, buckling the chinstrap, leaving the visor up. Unfairly, he was even more gorgeous in a helmet. Last was a pair of black, heavy gloves.

Natalie had never been much of a uniform woman. Cynthia, her assistant, got all hot and bothered by firefighters, cops and soldiers. She said the uniform did it for her. Icing on top of a male cupcake. Natalie had always favored a man in a suit and tie, but Beau was all suited up in racing gear and looked sexy and hot, and it was even more galling that he was the one who was flipping her switch.

He folded himself into the car, sliding between foam-covered bars that formed a cage inside. “Wish me luck,” he said with a flash of a smile.

While she’d wanted to do him bodily harm two minutes ago when he’d left her feeling like a fool, she quite suddenly realized that all that safety gear was in place for a reason. Even though he was annoying and infuriating and generally rubbed her the wrong way, she wanted the arrogant bastard to win safely. She was wearing his pit crew band, after all.

“Good luck.”

“When it’s a pretty woman doing the send-off, it’s customary to offer the driver a good-luck kiss.”

His gaze lingered on her mouth. That look in his eyes and the very thought of kissing him weakened her knees and sent a bolt of heat through her. “I’ll pass.”

“Too bad.” He winked at her and clicked his visor down into place.

Tim leaned in, fastened a heavy-gauged “net” over the window opening and slammed the driver door shut.

Darnell handed her what looked like an old-fashioned headset. “Put these on. They’re ear protection. It’s about to get loud.”

She put the headset on and she could still hear, but everything was muffled. The car roared to life and she was glad to have the protection, because even with it, the sound was loud enough to vibrate through her body.

Inside the car, Beau sat with his hands gripping the wheel, staring straight ahead.

“He’s going through the run in his head, visualizing it,” Darnell said, next to her.

She nodded to let him know she’d heard.

The rest happened fast. She and Darnell rode the four-wheeler up to an area closer to the starting line, on the other side of the low wall that separated the track from the stands. Spectators packed the stands. The crowd’s excitement was a nearly palpable thing. She knew how they felt. From the moment Tim had slammed the door and Beau had started the car, she’d been revved up inside.

Tim was out between the two cars with a video camera but Darnell stayed with her on the four-wheeler and explained what was happening as Beau “smoked” the tires in the burnout box, which was essentially standing on the brake and the gas at the same time. This created a cloud of choking tire dust but heated up the slick tires so they’d stick to the asphalt track. Scooter then stood in front of the car, giving hand signals, directing Beau left or right, lining the car up “in the groove,” where the tires would have the best chance of gripping.

A final tap on the hood by Scooter, a sharp nod of acknowledgment from Beau and he rolled the car forward until the yellow bulb on “the tree”—the staging sequence of red, yellow, green bulbs in the middle of the starting line between the two cars—lit up. Then the roar really became deafening as both drivers revved their engines. The lights changed and they were off. Fast. Furious. For a second it looked as if the driver racing in the other lane was going to swerve into Beau’s lane and Natalie thought her heart might very well stop.

And then it was over. Darnell pumped his hand in the air and yelled, pointing at the signs flanking the end of the track. The sign on Beau’s side had a lit bulb over the top, designating him the winner, and below it a display of 4.192, 184.92.

Even she could figure it out. 185 miles per hour in 4.40 seconds.

Damn right that was fast, stupid ass.

BEAU TOSSED the wet towel onto the bathroom floor. Tim would clean the toter home up when Scooter got it back to his place. Such was the lot of the gofer on a crew. Such had been Beau’s lot when he’d first started out in racing many moons ago, when he was the gofer and his dad was the one climbing behind the wheel of a race car.

He retreated to the bedroom and took his own sweet time dressing. He pushed aside a twinge of remorse. He’d been wasting Natalie’s time for a full hour and a half now. After the tow back to the pits, the Horsepower TV reporter had conducted a quick interview and then fellow racers and fans alike had swarmed them. The racers offered congratulations. Most of the fans wanted autographs and a picture with Beau and the car.

Natalie had stood by quietly, out of the way, but those big brown eyes of hers hadn’t missed a thing. The tube-top duo from Friday night, Sherree and Tara, had shown up again with a celebration offer. Ms. Bridges had merely quirked an amused eyebrow in his direction and a faint look of disdain, as if they were all somewhat distasteful.

And the whole time he’d been thinking about the way she’d smelled when he’d leaned into her neck before the race. The tickle of her hair against his cheek. The curve of her sexy, sexy mouth. And the crazy, out-of-control feeling she stirred in him.

He squashed any guilt at wasting her time. Given a choice between wasting her time or sitting by while his sister made a mistake marrying Cash Vickers…Well, there was really no question which was more important.

All told, he thought his plan was working okay. He just needed to watch himself, because in the staging lanes, for a second, when he was teasing her, deliberately letting her think he was about to kiss her, he damn near had. She had the most luscious, inviting mouth, with a full lower lip and a cute bow for the top one.

He sauntered back outside and found the enemy consorting with his troops in the small lounge in the front of the race trailer. She was laughing at something Scooter had said, some crazy bullshit no doubt, and his body tightened as the musical notes seemed to dance through the air. Her smile stiffened when she noticed him in the doorway. Good. That was what he wanted, wasn’t it?

“Ready?”

She nodded, her chestnut-brown hair moving over her shoulders in a gut-clenching sensual slide. “I just need a ride back to my car.”

“Leave your car and we’ll pick it up on the way back. We’ve got to come this way anyway.”

Tim spoke up. “You can ride up front with Scooter, if’n you want to,” he offered, a flush of red whooshing from his neck to the top of his crew cut before he even finished the sentence. Scooter always drove the rig and the passenger seat was a place of honor, sort of a gimme, for Tim, who mostly handled the grunt work. And now the grunt was willingly giving up that honor. Tim seemed to have developed a crush.

A small frown furrowed her brow as she glanced from Tim to Beau, obviously confused, and equally reluctant to hurt Tim’s feelings by turning down his offer. “Ride with Scooter? We’re all going to Belle Terre?”

“No, ma’am,” Darnell said. “We’re all going to Headlights.”

“Headlights? What is Headlights and what happened to Belle Terre?”

“Headlights is the ice house and local watering hole between here and Dahlia.” Darnell shot Beau a chastising look. “We usually stop off for dinner at the end of a race weekend.”

Another chastising look—this one from her. “You didn’t mention dinner.”

All part of his plan. Beau shrugged. “I forgot. We’ll head on out to Belle Terre after we eat.”

Scooter snorted. “C’mon and ride with me. And dinner’s on us.”

She deliberately turned her back to Beau, presenting him with a view of her well-rounded bottom, and beamed a smile at the other three. “Charming companions and a free meal. How can I turn down that offer?”

A quarter hour later, they were seated at the number nine picnic table, the number painted on each end in fluorescent orange, after much backslapping and high fives as they made their way across the peanut-hull-littered concrete floor in the noisy din that was Headlights after a race. No matter how crowded it was, however, Jeb Worth always held the number nine for the Stillwell crew. It was a long-standing tradition. Beau wound up sitting next to the Nightmare.

“What do you think of Headlights?” he asked. She didn’t strike him as an ice house kind of gal.

“So far, so good. The music’s loud.” She said it as if it were a bonus. “If the beer’s cold and the fries are greasy, we’re in business.”

Sandy Larabie, her tongue as acid as her heart was big, showed up to take their order, a doe-eyed girl in tow. “This is Gina. She’s in training, so you behave.” Sandy shot Scooter a steely-eyed glare. Scooter lived to aggravate Sandy. Actually, Scooter lived for mischief in general. “A root beer for Junior,” Sandy told Gina, jerking her head in Tim’s direction. Sandy referred to anyone under legal drinking age as Junior. “And a pitcher of what for the rest of you?”

“Bud Light. We won.” Scooter smirked.

“Three or four mugs?” She eyed Natalie in question.

“Four.” Natalie didn’t hesitate.

“I would’ve pegged you for a white wine drinker,” Beau said.

“I would’ve pegged you for a mullet.” Ha. He’d never gone in for the longer-in-the-back hairstyle. “I guess we were both wrong.”

“What exactly happened to you the other night?” Scooter asked.

She laughed, shaking her head, and it struck Beau as ball-tightening sexy. He had no problem imagining her on top of him, shaking her head just that way. “I got distracted by the T-shirt display about the same time my heel wedged in a crack in the asphalt, which led to an accident with a guy and his beer and hot dog.”

Scooter made a sympathetic clicking sound. “Did it ruin everything?”

“Pretty much. The skirt made it through.”

“You know Caitlyn and Beau’s ma, Beverly, has a right nice shop there in the square in Dahlia. Drop in sometime and let her fix you up. We’ll cover the bill.”

Had Scooter lost his mind? “The hell you say,” Beau said.

Scooter fixed him with an unyielding eye. “She wouldn’t have been at the track if she hadn’t been looking for you.”

The Nightmare couldn’t contain a little smirk in Beau’s direction.

“It’s not my fault she’s clumsy,” he said, deliberately goading her. There was a tantalizing sway to her hips when she walked, but it damn sure couldn’t be classified as clumsy.

She narrowed her brown eyes. “I am not clumsy.”

The trainee delivered the beer and Tim’s root beer. Darnell poured and they all hoisted their mugs in a toast. “To another win…and many more to come,” Scooter said.

The wash of beer was bust-your-kneecaps cold going down. Beau settled his mug on the table. He’d nurse the rest of it through dinner. He knew he wasn’t the man his father had been, but Beau always held himself to a one-drink limit.

Tim unfolded his lanky length from the picnic table, muttered an excuse-me and headed to the jukebox. Scooter groaned and Darnell rolled his eyes. The Nightmare looked at Beau, a question in her brown eyes. “Prepare yourself for a Kenny Chesney miniconcert.”

She laughed, her mouth curving in an easy smile and for a second he felt damn near light-headed. He shook his head slightly. Maybe he’d just skip the rest of his beer.

“I like Kenny Chesney.”

“So did we…the first hundred times we heard him,” Darnell said in a mournful drawl.

“Could be worse,” Scooter said. “Could be Cash Vickers we was listening to. Ain’t that right, Beau?”

Beau shrugged and he felt the woman next to him eyeing him in inquiry. He deliberately didn’t look her way. Not that it was a state secret, but damn it’d be nice if Scooter could just hold his tongue and not stir shit up.

“You’re not a Cash Vickers fan?”

Caitlyn hadn’t known Cash nearly long enough. And Beau wasn’t certain that Cash was good enough for his baby sister.

“Not particularly, no,” Beau said. Let her make what she wanted to of that.

Sandy and Gina showed up bearing five red, paper-lined baskets loaded with burgers and fries. “Y’all need anything else?”

“We’re good.”

Beau tucked into his burger. Lunch had been a long time ago.

“Would you pass the catsup, Mr. Stillwell?”

“Sure thing, Ms. Bridges.”

Scooter shook his head. “You can’t sit down and have burgers and beers and still be Mr. Stillwell and Ms. Bridges. Nat’lie, meet Beau. Beau, this here’s Nat’lie.”

Beau passed the tomato-emblazoned bottle. “There you are, Natalie.”

“Thank you, Beau.”

Damn, that sent a little shiver through him.

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Scooter said.

“Almost painless,” the little smart-ass shot back, upending half the bottle in a corner of her basket.

Alex Morgan and “Black Jack” Riley stopped at the edge of their table, Jack’s arm slung around Alex’s shoulder, staking his claim.

“Nice finish today,” Alex said, with a quick nod of her blond head, “You must’ve changed your setup.”

“Yeah, we changed the heads this week,” Darnell said. “It’s the best sixty-foot we’ve had.”

Darnell was talking but there was no disguising Alex’s frank curiosity about Natalie. And Beau had been deliberately obnoxious but he couldn’t totally abandon the manners his mother had drilled into him.

“Natalie, meet Alex Morgan and Jack Riley. Alex is one of the best mechanics in Dahlia. She owns the garage out at the track and another one in town with her dad. They’re partners. Jack’s from your neck of the woods. He’s a DEA agent out of Nashville.” He looked at the couple. “Natalie’s a wedding planner. She’s working with Caitlyn on the big event.”

The pleased-to-meet-you’s went around, and from Alex’s look she clearly speculated why his baby sister’s wedding planner was kicking back post-race with him and his crew. In fact, she rather pointedly glanced from Natalie to Beau and back again, silently asking if they were an item.

Sharp-eyed Natalie didn’t miss the unspoken question. She wrinkled her elegant little nose, almost as if she’d caught a whiff of a bad smell. “Uh, no. Certainly not that.” Hmph. That she’d be so damn lucky. He could name half a dozen women, round that up to an even dozen, who’d like to be sitting right where she was parked now. She didn’t need to look as if he were something scraped from the bottom of the barrel. “Mr. Stillwell…I mean, Beau, is a hard man to get in touch with. My job title is wedding planner but sometimes that involves being a tracker—”

“Stalker,” he interjected under his breath, garnering a laugh from everyone except the accused, who slanted him the evil eye.

“—and a babysitter.”

“Warden,” he corrected. “We’re heading out to Belle Terre after this to figure out the remodel schedule for the wedding.”

Jack squeezed Alex’s shoulders. “You might want to hook up with her,” he said to the petite blonde, and then looked at Natalie. “I’m trying to talk her into getting married before the end of the year, but she says she doesn’t have time to get it together. I’m thinking you could help make this happen.”

“Absolutely.” Quicker than the staging lights rundown she had two business cards in her hand and was passing them across the table, one to Jack and one to Alex. “I can handle as much or as little as you want me to. Give me a call or send me an e-mail and we’ll talk about what you want.”

“We’ll let y’all get back to your supper, and I don’t want to hold you up from getting out to Belle Terre. Just wanted to say congrats on the win.” Alex tucked the card into the top pocket of her denim overalls. “I’ll give you a call next week.”

Natalie beamed a megawatt smile at her potential client. “I’ll be looking forward to it.”

Alex and Black Jack were barely out of earshot when Scooter started filling Natalie in on Jack posing as a driver to uncover a drug ring and the whole mess that followed. Even Darnell chimed in with the skinny on Alex growing up a motherless tomboy. Beau knew it was all over when Tim screwed up his courage to relate how Jack and Alex had fallen in love.

What was wrong with this damn picture? He’d dragged her out to the track and along to dinner to tie up her time and frustrate her. He’d figured she’d hate the raucousness of Headlights. The whole plan was to push her buttons until she tossed in the wedding planner towel and quit on Caitlyn. Instead, she was swilling beer and chowing down on burgers, holding court with his guys and charming her way into picking up new clients.

This was just damn wrong on so many levels. It was definitely time to step things up a notch.

Chapter 4

NATALIE WALKED OUT of Headlights into the relative quiet of the crowded parking lot, surrounded by her new friends, Scooter, Darnell and Tim. They were all sweetie pies. The thorn in her side had stopped to talk to the restaurant owner—she thought he’d introduced him as Jeb—on the way out.