One-Click Buy: March 2009 Harlequin Blaze Page 4

  She nuzzled his ear, whispered, “Trey?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Will you marry me?”

  TREY JUMPED BACK AS IF Cardin had jabbed him with a cattle prod. Not exactly the response she’d hoped for, but then he hadn’t given her time to explain.

  “That didn’t come out exactly right,” she heard herself saying, though she supposed even had she used the words she’d carefully thought through and planned for her proposal, it would still have been an unexpected shock.

  “I goddamn hope not,” Trey said, his hands at his hips, the furrow of his frown deep enough to get lost in. “Marriage is the last thing I’m looking for.”

  “Oh, me either,” she hurried to assure him, thinking the frown and the “goddamn” were a little over the top.

  He blinked, blinked again. Shook his head. “You just proposed.”

  “You’re right. I did.” She held up one hand, then rolled her fingers into a fist of frustration, wondering if punching herself would help. She didn’t want to screw this up any more than she already had. “But it’s not what you’re thinking.”

  “So you didn’t mean it?” Trey rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “It just…slipped out?”

  Oh, yeah. This was going just great. She blew air up into her bangs. “Let me try this again. Trey, how would you feel about posing as my fiancé while you’re here? No permanent strings. No hard feelings when you leave.”

  He was looking at her as if she’d grown a second head. “I’m going to need a whole lot more than that before I can figure out what you’re asking here, much less give you an answer. Is there a beginning where you can start? I mean, with our families’ history, who would believe for a minute that you and I were engaged?”

  Their families’ recent history was at the root of as many of his problems as her own. She was Juliet to his Romeo. A Hatfield to his McCoy. But right now, her family was at risk of imploding. “If I start at the beginning, I’ll have to go back to the days when our great-grandfathers ran moonshine, so why don’t I start with the fight between your father and mine?”

  Trey’s scowl darkened. “The one where Eddie got all busted up?”

  “Exactly,” Cardin said. “A broken hip, a broken leg. Pins holding him together.”

  Trey went on the defensive. “Even Eddie said that was an accident.”

  “Guess what? I don’t care. All I know is my family went nuts after the fight. No one talks about anything except work, and they only do that while at work.” She pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes for a moment, hoping to stave off the stress headache bearing down.

  It didn’t work. Surprise, surprise. Her temples pounding, she went on. “It’s like Headlights is one big eggshell now, and I can’t deal with it anymore. I just can’t. If things don’t get back to some semblance of normal, I’ll have to leave town before I lose what’s left of my mind. Seriously.”

  “And since my father was involved, you want me to help you settle your family’s feud?”

  “Give the man a cigar,” she said, and punched him in the shoulder.

  Frowning, he rubbed at the injury that really wasn’t one. “How long is this engagement thing going to take you to explain? I’ve got to get back to the Speedway and pack up the hauler. The team’s hitting the road at first light.”

  Wow. He hadn’t said no. Initial hurdle cleared. “It’ll take longer than either one of us has now, that’s for sure.”

  “My place tonight, then?” he asked after studying her for several long seconds, the light returning to his eyes, the dimples to his cheeks. “Or was the offer to help me mock foreplay? You know, to get me on board with the mock engagement?”

  “What time do you want me there?” was her only response. She didn’t think it would be a very good idea to talk about foreplay when they were only minutes separated from that kiss.

  He grabbed his BlackBerry from his waist and glanced at the screen. “It’s already six. I might not get out there till ten.”

  “Then I’ll be there at ten. With Jeb’s truck, if I can get it.” She waited for him to come back with something about sleeping arrangements, the lack of mattresses, his camping gear, her suggestion that they zip two bags into one.

  But he didn’t. He just nodded, contemplating something she was certain had to do with her, but keeping his thoughts to himself.

  She stared into his eyes, and realized she didn’t need to hear him say anything at all. She could see the way he wanted her in his expression. Could read the story of his desire in the language of his body.

  He hovered close, his chest rising and falling more rapidly than just moments ago. She expected him to lean in and continue the kiss, to lift her short skirt and explore.

  He did neither, smiling as he took a step back, as he raised one hand, a temporary farewell to hold them until later. It made her stomach flip, that smile, so lazy, so sure.

  She leaned against the wall of the ice house and watched him go, wondering if she’d bitten off more than she could chew—and if she’d come out the other side of this adventure the same person she was now.

  TREY DIDN’T THINK HE WOULD ever finish closing up shop and making his escape from the Speedway. Sales by the track vendors were winding down, and most were engaged in the same sort of packing up as the Corley team. That didn’t mean there wasn’t plenty of action happening all around.

  Smoke from charcoal fires lifted the aromas of bratwurst and burgers into the air, and the same wind carried the music of slide guitars, fiddles and accordions to appreciative ears. Monday morning was going to come a whole lot earlier than a lot of the beer-drinking, barbecue-eating, hard-partying folks in the pits would be ready for.

  Trey couldn’t have cared less about Monday morning. He was waiting for ten o’clock tonight, the hour he’d finally get Cardin Worth alone. No pit crew to interrupt. No family hovering. No one but the two of them. Just him. Just her. Just like it had been seven years ago the night she’d left an imprint he’d never been able to shake.

  But as ready as he was to have Cardin to himself, this trip was about more than getting laid. A big part of Trey’s temporary homecoming was to dig into the fight between his father and Jeb. The one that had sent Eddie Worth to the hospital after being slammed to the floor of the slicker hole—the oil changing pit in Morgan and Son’s garage.

  The same fight Cardin had said made everything in her life go wrong.

  He couldn’t say his life had been left unchanged, either.

  A year ago this month, the fight had brought him back to Dahlia. When he’d left a week later, he’d owned his family’s home, buying the place from his father for the price of a beer, and paying off the huge gambling debt Aubrey had racked up in the years since Trey had hired on as a mechanic for Butch Corley and split.

  Trey hadn’t even known about the gambling debt when the sheriff’s office had called to let him know about Aubrey’s arrest for assault. It had been after he’d settled things and was on his way out of town that he’d learned the full truth of the trouble his father was in. He’d stopped by the track to see Tater, who worked on site there with Trey’s father at Morgan and Son’s garage, and heard the story straight from his best friend’s mouth.

  Trey hadn’t even hesitated, but turned and driven straight back to the house, striking a deal with his dad: Aubrey turned over the house, the barn, the five acres to Trey, and Trey paid off the damage Aubrey had done—as long as Aubrey left Dahlia and found a job in a town without the temptation of a track.

  Sure, Trey’s father could’ve gone to Vegas, gambled online, found bookies anywhere to take a bet. But looking like a broken man, Aubrey had sworn he would do what Trey asked, thanking his son for having faith and staying true, for helping him in his time of need.

  All of that had happened almost a year ago. Even so, Trey couldn’t help wonder if Aubrey losing everything he had left and being forced to move on hadn’t contributed to his decline, and six months later, his death. Or if the damag
e to his heart had been years in the making, and it simply his time to go.

  Shaking off thoughts of his loss, Trey unlocked his pickup’s retracting bed cover and started sorting through his supplies. Knowing he could pick up what he needed in the way of tools, building materials, fuel and food in town, he’d packed only his laptop, his camping gear, his clothes and essentials.

  No one had been living in the house for a year, and though he’d hired Beau Stillwell to keep the place from falling down, he had no idea what condition it was in. It didn’t matter. He wanted to stay on site. And if he had to camp out to do it, he was ready.

  “Looks like you’re set for some kind of vacation.”

  Trey looked up, and saw Jeb Worth standing a couple of feet away in the shadows cast by the truck that pulled the Corley hauler. “A change of scenery. A temporary change of vocation. But not much in the way of relaxation or time off.”

  “You don’t have to stay out at your place.” Even at this late hour, Jeb’s crisp white shirt tucked into khaki pants worn with a cowboy hat and boots painted a picture of the lawman he should have been. “You’re welcome to stay at the house. We’ve got plenty of room.”

  Trey wanted to sleep with this man’s granddaughter. There was no way he was going to stay at his house. He turned around, leaned against the open tailgate, the heels of his hands curled over the cool metal at his hips. “It’ll be easier if I stay out there. I’ll save gas and time not having to drive back and forth.”

  Jeb nodded. “Any idea how long you’ll be in Dahlia?”

  “As long as it takes to get the place ready to sell. Since I’m doing most of it on my own…” Trey stopped, wondering what Cardin’s grandfather would think were he to learn of her offer to help. Wondered, too, if the older man secretly harbored any hard feelings toward him because of the fight his father had started, a fight that had seriously injured Jeb’s son. “It’ll take as long as it takes, I guess. Depends on how fast I do the work.”

  “So you’ll still be here in a couple of weeks.”

  “Yeah, I’m not that fast,” Trey said, hoping he hadn’t read Cardin wrong and that he’d be spending a lot of what he’d planned as work hours otherwise engaged.

  Jeb glanced toward the racing rig where Sunshine was dismantling the pop-up under which the crew worked on the car between heats. “I’ve got a ’69 Chevy Nova SS with Crane lifters, an Eagle 4340 Nitrated Pro Crank, and more goodies than you can shake a stick at sitting in the garage behind my house.”

  Interesting. Trey crossed his feet at the ankles. “That so.”

  Jeb nodded, still looking away. “Eddie’s always driven it for me in the Moonshine Run. Doesn’t look like he’s going to be doing that anymore.”

  Was Jeb here to blame Trey for what Aubrey had done? Putting Eddie out of commission and leaving Jeb without a driver for the annual event? He kept silent rather than broach a subject he wasn’t sure was on the other man’s mind.

  “The car’s won the last six out of seven years. It would be a shame not to run it this one.”

  Trey knew the legend of the Moonshine Run. Hell, his great-grandfather, Emmett Davis, had been one of the moonshiners to draw the attention of the gangster Diamond Dutch Boyle. Jeb’s father, Orin Worth, had been Emmett’s partner in crime, and Boyle had hunted the two of them like dogs in his effort to put an end to their enterprise that had encroached on his.

  The whole town knew that Jeb, at fourteen, had found the gangster’s ’32 Plymouth at the bottom of the LaBrecque ravine. The car had been there since before he was born, having crashed down the mountain during a wild and wooly midnight chase. Rumors that a fortune in diamonds were lost along with the car and Dutch Boyle had been circulating just as long.

  Jeb had sworn since being told the story of the gangster’s disappearance that he’d find it. He had. And brought up the car’s two headlights from the bottom of the ravine as proof. Those same two headlights now hung on the plaque in the entryway of their namesake ice house, the inscription between them reading, “A wrong turn can be the downfall of anyone.”

  Trey had always wondered if the epitaph meant something special to Jeb.

  “I was going to ask you about it the other morning in the pits. But never got the chance.”

  Trey frowned. What had he missed? “You were going to ask me what?”

  “About driving White Lightning in the Moonshine Run.” Jeb turned toward him, pushing his hat a couple of inches up his forehead.

  Ah, finally. The point. “I don’t know. I’m not a driver.”

  “You know how to drive. You know cars.”

  He knew both, had driven more cars than Butch Corley’s in his time. He just didn’t know why Jeb would ask him of all people. “Why not get Tater to drive?”

  “Because I want you.”

  A loud crash came from the other side of the hauler, followed by Sunshine yelling at someone to watch the hell where he was going. “I don’t know your car. I’d have to look it over. Take it down the track first.”

  “You’ll do it then.”

  Trey laughed. “Now, I didn’t say that. But I will think about it.”

  Jeb nodded as if that was good enough. “Don’t be a stranger while you’re in town. As many meals as you can eat are on the house at Headlights.”

  “Thank you, sir. I’ll definitely take you up on that.”

  “Good showin’ today, by the way. I never thought Bad Dog would hit three-twenty on that track.”

  “The amount of time I’ve spent on that engine? I was hoping for better,” Trey said, thinking he should grab his fireproof driving gear before the hauler pulled out, just in case.

  “I knew you were the right man for the job,” Jeb said, patting Trey’s shoulder before walking away, leaving Trey to wonder if Cardin’s grandfather wanted more from him than his skills as a mechanic—and what the hell it could be?

  5

  DELTA WORTH DIDN’T THINK there WAS any job in the world more boring than keeping a business’s books, and she’d been doing Headlights’ accounting long enough to hold stock in her own opinion.

  Oh, she took the occasional break to schedule employee work hours and meet with restaurant vendors hawking their wares. But since she did it all from her small windowless office tucked between the kitchen and the restrooms, the breaks in her routine didn’t feel like breaks at all.

  And it didn’t help that she was still working up to seven days a week with her estranged husband a closed door away.

  Pushing out of her chair, she circled the desk to the corner file cabinet where she jammed the folder of reconciled bank statements into its top drawer slot, breaking one of the nails she’d just had done at Lila’s in the process. She and Eddie were going to have to resolve this thing between them—and soon.

  Not only could she not afford the abuse to her manicure, she didn’t want to spend more time than she had to living in her daughter’s apartment—and she was quite sure Cardin was ready to get away from the house she’d already moved out of once.

  Living with Eddie and Jeb for eighteen years would be enough for any young girl. Delta had made it twenty-six years before she couldn’t take it anymore—though if Aubrey Davis hadn’t turned her whole family end over end, she would likely have stayed until the Mississippi ran dry. And probably to her own detriment, she mused with no small amount of self-deprecation.

  Grabbing their produce supplier’s vendor file and returning to her chair, she forced herself to admit she was as set in her ways as the men in her family; more than once she’d wondered how much of the trait was inherent personality, and how much she could blame on having married into the Worths.

  A knock on her door stopped her from doing more with the folder than setting it on her desk. “Come in.”

  Ah, Eddie. The last person she wanted to see. He tossed his hand towel over his shoulder, and leaned against her door jamb, arms and ankles crossed. The noise from the dining room flooded her small office, but asking Eddie to close the doo
r meant he would have to move.

  And she’d been lying to herself when she said he was the last person she wanted to see.

  Looking at him now—his blue eyes bright, his black hair too long, his beard stubble way too sexy—had her stomach tumbling just as powerfully as it had the day he’d walked up to her at the Speedway, and licked her cone’s melted ice cream from her thumb.

  She dropped into her chair, hating that he was her weakness.

  “Why are you here, D? It’s Sunday. Your day off.”

  Thanks. Way to rub salt in the wound of her having no life since she’d left him. “I had a few things I wanted to catch up on before tomorrow.”

  Eddie frowned, the lines at the corners of his eyes deepening. “What’s going on tomorrow?”

  “It’s Monday,” she reminded him, resisting the urge to get up and smooth her thumb from the fringe of his lashes to his temple. “Monday’s always insane. You know that.”

  “I do,” he said, pushing away from the door and closing it behind him. The chatter from outside was silenced, and the room became a cocoon. “I also know you’ve been here too many weekends lately. What gives?”

  He grabbed for the only other chair in the office—a molded plastic waiting room number—stepped around it, straddled the seat, and took it over. That’s what had gotten to her all those years ago. The way he took over. A chair, a conversation, an ice cream cone.

  There was no way she was going to tell him she was here because he was. He’d take over then and demand she come home.

  “Am I hearing you right? Eddie Worth questioning an employee for putting in extra hours?” She crossed her arms, crossed her legs, sat stiffly in her seat.

  Eddie spread his legs and slouched farther in his. “You’re not an employee, D. You’re family, and you know it.”

  She was a Worth in name only, one who had moved out and left her husband because she couldn’t take his silences—or his rage—anymore.