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  He broke the kiss because he had to, and rested his mouth at the corner of hers to catch his breath, his control. Her lips parted. He felt the urgent beat of her heart all over. “Cardin, why are you here?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s been so long. I wasn’t sure. I need—”

  “Yo! Whip! Where you at? You’ll never guess who I found holding a corndog in each hand.”

  Sunshine was back, and Trey had no choice but to set Cardin away, his question unanswered, her reply incomplete. He looked down, trying to find something to clue him into the truth, seeing only the flush of her arousal.

  His own strained obviously and would take time to calm. “We’ll finish this later.”

  “Yo! Whip!”

  “Be right there,” he called toward the still open door, smoothing down his shirt as Cardin checked that nothing was out of order. “You heard me, right?”

  “That we’ll finish this later?” She nodded.

  Good. But also…“And you’ll tell me then what you need?”

  She didn’t answer. She brushed her mouth one last time against his before turning, snagging her sunglasses and hopping from the trailer to the ground.

  Trey took another few seconds to gather himself, grabbed for the torque wrench and walked from the rig’s interior into the white-hot light of the sun.

  He squinted, then shook his head at the irony of the interruption as he recognized Jeb Worth standing beside the four-wheeler with Sunshine. That settled one thing at least.

  Cardin looking for her grandfather was not as far-fetched as Trey had thought. Whether or not finding Jeb was what had brought her to the Corley hauler was yet to be seen.

  Trey had a feeling it was something a whole lot bigger—and with a whole lot more baggage—than that.

  2

  Sunday p.m.

  CARDIN SERENITY WORTH had lived her entire life in Dahlia, Tennessee. She’d sold Dixie cups of lemonade and Girl Scout cookies and fund-raising candy, tchotchkes and Christmas paper to half the folks in town.

  She’d been a member of the Dahlia High School Darlings, high-kicking her way across the football field during three years of half-time shows, and a member of the local FFA, raising rabbits to show at county fairs.

  She’d worked at Headlights, her family’s ice house, since she was old enough to pay taxes and social security on her wages, but had earned her allowance busing tables and sweeping peanut hulls from the floor before that.

  She was twenty-five years old, a hometown girl known to one and all, and well aware that two decades from now, she would still be thought of as her father Eddie’s shadow, her mother Delta’s princess, and her grandpa Jeb’s pride and joy.

  It came with being a Worth, a family that was as much a local fixture as the Dahlia Speedway, the drag-racing track where in less than two weeks, the whole town would switch gears from this weekend’s NHRA race to Dahlia’s annual Moonshine Run.

  The midnight race was the only event in which Jeb still entered the car he called “White Lightning”—a nod to the years of Prohibition when her great-grandpa Orin’s moonshine had kept the folks in three counties from feeling any pain, while keeping his own family out of the poor house.

  Right now, however, the race still on everyone’s mind—Cardin’s included—had featured top fuel dragsters: long, narrow purpose-built race cars with thin front tires that tore in a straight line down a length of the quarter mile track in under five seconds and at over three hundred miles an hour.

  The Farron Fuel Spring Nationals had wrapped up earlier in the day, and the entire Corley Motors crew—” Bad Dog” Butch Corley having taken top honors again this year—was chowing down and raising hell at two of Headlights’ tables not fifteen feet from where she stood scooping crushed ice into red plastic tumblers for cokes and sweet tea.

  Except it wasn’t the whole team causing her mouth to go dry, her palms to grow damp, her nape to tingle from the heat. It was one member, one man.

  The man sitting at the far corner of the second table, the garage door style wall behind him rolled open to the early evening breeze.

  The man polishing off the last ear of corn from the platter the group had ordered to go with their burgers, hot wings and pitchers of beer.

  The man she’d thrown herself at three days ago and kissed with unheard of abandon as if she were a woman in love.

  Trey Davis was the crew chief for Corley Motors. He was also Cardin’s counterpart: a hometown Dahlia boy. Granted, he hadn’t stayed in Dahlia the way she had; though he still owned property here, he only managed to visit during the spring drag racing series.

  She liked to think his growing up here connected them. Trey knew what it was like to have sprouted from small town Tennessee roots, to be saddled with the stereotypes, the prejudices, the accent…the family that could drive a person mad.

  And then there was that woman in love thing, and the possibility that what she felt for him wasn’t an “if”. The high school crush. The continuing infatuation. The way March roared in every year, a lion bringing with it the Farron Fuels and a chance to see him.

  The way she felt like a lamb once he was gone—a victim of her own weakness because she’d been afraid to seek him out and talk to him about that night seven years ago…what they’d almost done, how the things he’d whispered had made her feel, the way she’d been unable to get him out of her mind since.

  Because of all that, and because of their families’ shared history—Trey’s great-grandfather Emmett had been her great-grandfather Orin’s partner in the moonshine biz—she trusted him, and hoped his instincts could help her put an end to the Worth family feud.

  It was obvious she couldn’t do it alone; Lord knew she’d tried to patch things up between her parents, to no avail. Eddie and Delta were now estranged. She’d tried, too, to smooth things over between her father and her grandpa Jeb, who’d stopped speaking to Eddie when he wouldn’t shut up about the fight that had nearly cost her father his life.

  For a year she’d played the part of peacemaker, insisting her mother be understanding of her father’s moods; they’d come so close to losing him, after all. Insisting her father be patient, that his recovery would be a long process, not one with the overnight results he expected from his doctors and himself.

  Insisting her grandpa cut his son a break and answer Eddie’s questions; he’d been the one to break up the fight before either of the other men got hurt…so, yes. He did have a right to know why Aubrey Davis had taken a swing at Jeb. And since that blow-up twelve months ago that sent Eddie to the hospital had involved Trey’s father, well, Cardin figured he owed her.

  Of course, he was totally unaware of her plans to use him.

  And she still wasn’t sure how to go about her…proposal.

  During her Thursday visit to the Dahlia Speedway, she’d had no time to lay out for him her thoughts. All she’d managed to do was test the waters, see if the electricity that had always crackled between them was still there.

  It was, burning as hot as the night his unyielding body pressed hers into the bedroom wall, trapping her, molded to her, an imprint she felt always and would never forget.

  She shivered, silenced a moan. This was not a good time to be remembering the bristly sensation of his beard against her cheek, or the hardness of his bare chest beneath her hands.

  But that was the direction her mind had decided to travel, following a map that took her imagination into territory that had her pulse thumping, her breath quickening, her belly growing taut…

  “Cardin?”

  “Hmm?”

  “You didn’t leave any room for the drinks.”

  “What?”

  “The drinks. The ice. Cardin!”

  Cardin pulled her attention from the hands holding the corn that she wished were holding her, and turned toward the biting voice and the woman with the teeth.

  Sandy Larabie had been working at Headlights as long as Cardin. She was six years older, had two divor
ces under her belt, and was both the most caustic and well-tipped of all the ice house’s serving staff.

  She nodded at the tumblers Cardin held, not a hair out of place in her big brassy ’do. “Get your head in the game. It’s hopping like hell bunnies in here.”

  Cardin’s head was in the game. Just not the game Sandy was talking about. “Sorry. I got…distracted.”

  Sandy scooped ice for her own drink order, following the direction of Cardin’s gaze. “You know he’s staying behind when the team checks out tomorrow, right?”

  She did know. She’d even heard it earlier than most; as Dahlia’s unofficial herald, Jeb had his ear to the ground. She’d been surprised by the news, as had everyone, but the lead she’d gained from her grandpa’s announcement had given her time to put together her plan.

  Too bad she’d got caught up in kissing Trey before she could explain it to him. Just seeing him again had unraveled her to the point of barely being able to think.

  She turned to Sandy. “So I’ve heard. Hard to believe, isn’t it?”

  Pop, pop went Sandy’s gum as she nodded. “Tater told me Whip’s taking a few months to get his place cleaned up and sold.” Winston Tate “Tater” Rawls, a mechanic at Morgan and Son Garage, had been Trey’s best friend in high school, and was Sandy’s newest boy toy.

  “I don’t think Trey’s set foot on the property in a year, at least. I wonder how long he’ll be here.” Might as well see what else Sandy-by-way-of-Tater knew. The more information Cardin could sock away, the more convincing she’d be when she finally talked to Trey.

  “According to Tater,” Sandy said, “Whip’s gonna join back up with the Corley team later this season. But since they’ve put the kibosh on coming back to the Speedway, I’d say this might be the last time we see him around here.”

  Sandy spun away at the sound of the order bell, while Cardin just spun. She’d heard the rumors of Corley Motors blacklisting the Dahlia Speedway. The winning team was a Dahlia favorite and a huge draw; having one of their own working as crew chief was a highly prized bragging right.

  But now with that moron Artie Buell having put the moves on Butch Corley’s wife, “Bad Dog” Butch was done with Dahlia. A shame, too, because the town needed the income generated by the big boys. Big boys like the team that employed the man she was about to ask to pose as her fiancé.

  Both her parents and her grandpa Jeb needed to move beyond the hell of the last year, and get back to acting like a family. Her thinking was that introducing Trey as her fiancé would shake them out of their funk, would give them a new outlet for their focus, a common goal toward which they could pour their combined energies—that of doing all they could to break up the engagement.

  Trey was Aubrey’s son. Aubrey who had taken a swing at Jeb. Aubrey who had sent Eddie to the hospital. Aubrey who had instigated a fight with an elderly man, and taken the genesis of his beef with Cardin’s grandpa to his grave. If the thought of her marrying Aubrey’s son didn’t shake them out of their blind self-absorption, she knew nothing ever would. This was a last-ditch effort, and an admittedly desperate one.

  But there was more to her choice, to her plan. Trey was also the man Cardin hadn’t been able to get over in seven long years. She had to find out if what she felt for him was as real as her heart insisted it was, as real as her head told her every time she thought of him.

  He’d been two years ahead of her in school, but since the teen crowd in Dahlia was small, they’d crossed paths regularly. At school functions. At sporting events. At parties classmates threw behind their parents’ backs.

  Like Tater’s post-graduation kegger. Where Cardin had opened what she’d drunkenly mistaken for the bathroom door only to find herself looking into the master bedroom, and into Trey’s eyes. His pants had been around his ankles. And Kim Halton had been kneeling open-mouthed in front of him.

  Cardin had been more tipsy than not, but Trey had been one-hundred percent sober. She’d seen it in his face when the light shining from the hallway spilled into the darkened room; it had exposed his raw emotions as fully as the part of his body she’d been certain he’d wanted her—and not Kim—to take care of.

  She was twenty-five now, not eighteen, but she had yet to forget the way their eyes had connected, the intensity in his craving, the look that had beckoned her to wait, to stay, to want him the way he wanted her. She had waited. Wanted. Watched him while he’d come, knowing all the while he was imagining it was her hand stroking him, her lips sucking him, her tongue slicking over the head of his cock.

  Kim had finished her, uh, service, caught sight of Cardin in the shadows, and smirked as she’d stormed out of the room, leaving Trey halfway dressed and Cardin’s cheeks to flame while she watched him tuck himself into his pants, while she listened to him curse in a voice harsh with anger.

  Once he’d caught his breath and his composure, he’d come for her, swiftly, pressed the length of his body to the length of hers and told her to forget what she’d seen.

  He’d toyed with a lock of her hair and asked her how she could smell like sunshine in the middle of the night. He’d stroked her throat from her chin to the hollow and told her she was softer than down. She’d stayed silent, shaken her head at his words, given in to a longing she didn’t understand and laid her hands on his chest.

  His heart had pounded, a match to hers. His breathing had grown ragged and rushed. She had barely been able to think, or to swallow, or do more than chew at her bottom lip. He’d stopped her with his thumb, and the contact had sent her belly falling to her feet.

  She’d moved one hand to hold his wrist, but her fingers didn’t fit around it. She felt his skin, his bones, the crisp hairs there, wondering at how human he felt to her touch. And so she’d touched more. The back of his hand, his nails, the pads of his fingertips, the dip between his forefinger and thumb.

  She’d touched his face, found the bump where he’d broken his nose during football, learned the arch of his brows, his right that was especially wicked, the thickness of his lashes, the way his dimples deepened when he smiled. She’d threaded her fingers into his hair, and he’d turned his face to kiss her palm, holding her gaze while his tongue circled around and around on her skin, while his teeth took hold and marked her.

  Nothing had been the same for her since.

  Ridding herself of the disturbing musings with a very deep breath, on shaky legs Cardin delivered the drinks she’d taken too long to serve, apologizing to the family of four who were long past ready to eat. Once she had their order, she made a beeline for the kitchen and entered the menu items into the system that would queue them up for Eddie and his staff.

  That done, she slipped away to the ladies’ room to check her face and hair. She needed to know if she looked the harried mess she felt before heading over to finish her business with Trey. He was here. She was here. Why wait?

  Surprisingly, the reflection staring back at her wasn’t a harried mess at all. Yes, flyaway wisps of hair had escaped her ponytail to frame her face, and her cheeks were understandably flushed, but it was a sexy rather than flustered look, if she did say so herself.

  The loosely rolled neckline of her Headlights T-shirt revealed her collarbone from shoulder to shoulder. The big, round lights of the truck-grill logo were strategically screen-printed to outline her breasts. It was cheesy, sure, but since this was Trey and her quest so important, Cardin was not above using her arsenal of female ammunition.

  And with her long bare legs beneath her short denim skirt, her big baby blues and her 34Bs looking like Cs with help from Victoria’s Secret, she figured all angles—and curves—were covered.

  Another steadying breath, and she headed back to the kitchen, bypassing the service window where orders sat waiting. Grabbing a clean platter, she ducked around the two high school kids who worked as dishwashers, and dodged Albert, the second shift cook, who was carting a tub of freshly ground beef from the walk-in refrigerator to his station.

  With Albert’s hand
s full, Cardin didn’t have to worry about the retired and grizzled military man slapping her on the ass, and she reached her father unscathed. Holding out the platter for him to fill, she got straight to the point. “I need a half dozen ears of corn.”

  Eddie Worth had been only eighteen when Cardin was born. Now separated from her mother, he was considered a very hot property by single women of all ages. He turned from stirring a big pot of chili, his blue eyes that he’d passed to his daughter twinkling. “This corn’s going out free of charge, I’m guessing? Since you’re back here after it yourself?”

  “It is, yes. Compliments of the house.”

  “Who are we complimenting this time?”

  Cardin stuck out her tongue. “You say that like I give away food on a regular basis.”

  “You do give away food on a regular basis.” He reached for a pair of heavy duty tongs, steam from the boiling vat clouding around his face and his already sweaty forehead. “I just like to know the who so I can puzzle out the why.”

  Hmm. She didn’t really like the idea of her father puzzling out anything about her plans for Trey. “It’s for the Corley Motors table. They finished what they ordered, and I thought it would be nice to toss another platter their way. Butch won today, you know.”

  Eddie dropped the sixth ear on the pile Cardin held and looked up at her from beneath his narrowed black brows. “Something tells me you’re not tossing anything at the whole team. And that Butch winning doesn’t matter to you any more than it does to me.”

  And to Eddie, she knew, it didn’t matter at all. He’d gotten over racing when his accident left him unable to drive Jeb’s car. He’d gotten over Corley Motors at the same time because the team’s crew chief was the son of the man who’d almost killed him. “Okay. It’s for Trey. Happy now?”

  “Happy that you’re singling out Whip? No.” He shook his head. “Not really.”

  Cardin sighed her frustration. Her father could hold a grudge longer than anyone she knew. And a stupid grudge at that, since it had been Aubrey Davis—not Trey—who had put Eddie in the hospital. “Even if I were singling him out for more than a few ears of corn, you don’t have anything to worry about.”