Crossing the Line (Hard Driving) (5 page)

“Okay.” Her voice was raspy, but then she made a sound and shook her head. “Actually, why don’t I . . . I’ll give you my cell number.” She pulled her hand away and rummaged in her bag. Grabbed out a notebook and pen and scribbled her number on one of the pages.

He suppressed a bemused chuckle. Was
Gold Cup
really such a small operation that they couldn’t even afford business cards? At least she was giving him a better, less public way to contact her. Calling her office might result in more attention than either of them wanted.

She ripped out the page and handed it to him. “I’m sorry. I, uh, I have to admit that this is the first event I’m covering. I don’t have any cards yet.” The blush that accompanied that statement was fierce.

So she
was
new.

He noticed that the hand she held out was shaking, causing the piece of paper to flutter slightly. It was possible that small sign of her nervousness filled him with masculine pride.
Not
that he was that kind of guy.

He grinned. Not his usual smile, but one full of smug satisfaction.

Fine. He
was
that kind of guy. At least when it came to this woman. He took the paper.

“Thanks. It was good to meet you, Cori. I really enjoyed talking to you and look forward to more conversations.”

She made a strange face at that, but nodded. “You too, Ty.”

He
did
like hearing her say his name.

He took her hand again, but instead of shaking it, this time he brought it to his lips. Kept his eyes on hers the entire time. Now he knew what color they were. Gray-green with just a hint of blue around the iris. Complex eyes that were darkening with arousal, reflecting her heat that he could feel coming off of her body.

What would she do if he kissed her? All the signs hinted that she would welcome it. Her lips were already parted, and he gave a gentle tug on her hand, pulling her just a little bit closer. Her tongue came out and wet her bottom lip, a soft sigh escaping her as her mouth moved ever so slightly closer to his—

“Ty! Time is more than up, man!”

Frank shouted at him from the doorway, and Cori started, jumping away like she’d been burned.

Ty slowly lowered his now-empty hand.

“Have a safe trip back.”

She nodded. “You too.”

She sounded worked up. Practically panting.

Hot damn.
There was no way he was going to be able to concentrate during the rest of the interviews. He’d probably end up looking like an idiot because of it.

And yet, as he watched her walk out the door, for once he couldn’t quite bring himself to care.

Cori was making progress.

She’d gotten Ty to confide a couple of things in her, even if it was only for a minute or two and about something she still didn’t understand. But she was developing a relationship with him that could help her get more information, and maybe she’d end up with something truly interesting out of that.

But then again, maybe not.

Despite her resolve not to think too hard about it, she couldn’t stop wondering about the setup Alex had given her. If the wire service needed money that badly, why agree to feature an exposé that may or may not have anything interesting to say? What if this whole thing turned up nothing but Ty’s single loss of temper with Gilroy?

How was Alex going to justify that to this mysterious investor?

In her seat on the plane out of Phoenix, Cori fretted.

She needed to know more about the terms of the deal. Alex probably knew who the person or organization was who was giving them the money, but he simply wasn’t telling her. He was such a shady, selfish prick.

Is that what you want to become, too? Because you’re well on your way.

Ty hadn’t offered her anything except a private discussion, but the sexual tension between them had been too intense to pretend otherwise. Maybe she shouldn’t have given him her number.

But she bristled at her own thoughts. She could keep this under control. She wasn’t going to sleep with him, and she wasn’t going to publish lies. Besides, Ty
wanted
to see her. She hadn’t tricked him into it or anything else.

She’d already finished typing up her piece about the weekend’s race and would send it over to Alex as soon as she landed. Until she got the information she wanted for the full exposé, she’d report on the races and everything she’d learned during Media Day as par for the course . . . except for the stuff Ty had said in confidence, of course.

Despite not being able to report on that part, the story she’d written had still been mostly about him, in the end. Even though she’d gone over the key moments of the race and pulled in quotes from some of the other drivers, including Kerri, Ty had become the highlight of the article.

She wanted to know what else he had to say. Assuming he even called, of course. Maybe he’d just been caught up in the moment, in whatever electrical connection had been sparking between them, but now that Media Day was over, it was possible he’d forgotten about her entirely.

Well. Either way, she certainly couldn’t tell Alex that Ty had hinted at something important that he was thinking of doing next in his career. Alex would be ruthless and probably ask her to do something
completely
unethical, like print it despite Ty telling her off the record, and she was already at her limit of the questionable things she was willing to do for a story.

That sounds suspiciously like splitting hairs.

She thought about what Ty had said to her earlier that day.

Sometimes pretending that you’re doing the wrong thing for the right reasons only hurts you and the ones you love.

But she didn’t love Ty.

If he called—and it was a big
if
, because he was a top race car driver and busy as all hell during the season, a fact that she’d conveniently forgotten while she’d been indulging in fantasies about his
knee
, of all things—then she’d tell him she didn’t want anyone to get the wrong idea. That if he wanted to talk to her off the record, seeing as she was the only female reporter on the circuit, they’d need to meet where there was no chance of being seen.

Surely he’d understand. And if he didn’t, she’d simply say no to seeing him outside of the races and go back to her normal life, which involved exactly zero hot men with liquid brown eyes. She’d have to figure out what to tell Alex if it came down to that, but she’d cross that bridge when she got there.

The plane landed and she quickly shot the story over to Alex, who immediately replied that he’d look it over and,
if it was any good
, he’d post it right away. Not
Thanks for getting this in so quickly.

But what had she expected? Alex wasn’t exactly a model of decency.

He’d actually told her to sleep with Ty if it helped their cause. She’d been offended and he’d just laughed, all nasty and insinuating.

It didn’t help that now she really did want
to sleep with Ty.

But she wouldn’t. She couldn’t.

Keep this under control.

What a difference between a man like Alex and one like Ty. The way he’d cheered her accomplishments in journalism, barely even knowing who she was, had been a breath of fresh air. It had made her feel proud and inspired about her job for the first time in months.

Of course, she’d probably be inspired if he so much as looked at her the way he’d been doing earlier today, with their knees touching and the big bed behind them and . . .

Jeez
. She really needed to stop thinking about him like that.

By the time she’d driven the forty-five minutes back to her tiny suburban home—the only place where she could afford rent on her sad salary—she was exhausted.

She dragged herself into the bathroom and brushed her teeth, then fell into bed and dreamt of Ty’s hand in hers . . . his hand on her body . . . everywhere.
Everywhere.
And by the time she woke up the next morning, she was shaking with need. She hoped he wasn’t an early caller, because if he rang her up just then, she’d probably have an orgasm as soon as he said hello.

As it was, she lingered a few more minutes in bed, bringing herself to climax with her hand, shrieking Ty’s name when she came and feeling hotly embarrassed about it afterward, even though it wasn’t as though anyone had heard her.

Nothing like having intense sex fantasies about a guy you can never actually have sex with.

She headed in to the office, parking in the employee lot where the
Gold Cup
offices were located. Now that she was back at work, she was starting to get excited, wondering whether her article would get any traction.

Putting aside the exposé, what she had written about the
race
—about Ty—was good. She was even willing to say it was
really
good, even though she wouldn’t admit that to anyone else. It sounded too conceited.

But . . . huh. Wait a second.

What if she pulled in a decent number of hits on the story? That was another way to get revenue. The more hits, the better. It was how
most
places—reputable places—got advertisers and stayed in business.

Maybe, if her work did okay, then they wouldn’t need this shady investor or the exposé, and Alex would let her off the hook. Then she could take things with Ty wherever he wanted them to go . . .

The possibility buoyed her steps and had her walking cheerfully into the building.

But when she stepped out of the elevator and walked through the office doors, Alex immediately spotted her from his desk . . . and he didn’t look happy.

“Bellowes! Get in here!”

Oh no. Oh no.
What had she done wrong? She knew her piece was different; she’d married stats with human interest and thrown in a few predictions of her own. But she’d thought she’d done it in a good way.

She hadn’t considered that it might be different enough to piss off Alex. Maybe even get her fired. Then this whole thing would have been for naught. Not that she knew for sure that she was going to get fired, but she’d never seen Alex look
this
angry . . .

She approached his office cautiously.

She didn’t even get to say a word before he stretched his lips in a grim line and pointed to the door. “Step inside and close the door behind you.”

Jesus. He
was
going to fire her. After all that?

She bit down on her lip to keep herself from whimpering and turned to shut the door, then turned back to him with a pleading look on her face. “Alex, I—”

He cut her off with a wave of his hand. “Do you have an idea what you’ve done?”

He didn’t bother to ask her to sit. She was too nervous to do it, anyway, but she should have known he was going to torture her before he fired her. “Is it about my story?”

“Damn straight it’s about your story!” He grabbed his laptop, which was open in front of him, and spun it around to face her.

All she saw was a graph. A line that started near the bottom, then shot up considerably, then shot up again, and again . . .

“Oh my God.” She stared at it, open-mouthed. She knew what this was. It was the hits on her piece. Good reporting got good hits. But this . . . she’d never seen anything like it. This wasn’t just good. This was . . .

“Is that for my piece?”

Alex nodded, grinning. But it wasn’t a pleasant grin. “It seems you’ve stumbled into success, Bellowes.”

Stumbled?
As though the success of her work had nothing to do with the quality of the writing, and it was simply an accident that it had gotten so much attention? Was the fact that she had succeeded despite his hopes for her failure why he’d looked angry just now?

Probably. Asshole.

He snorted. “They’re calling it shit like ‘humorous’ and ‘real.’ Whatever the fuck that’s about. The
actual stock car racing association
is using it as a promo piece to get more people to come to the races and meet the drivers. You’ve got yourself a following. Even better for when we publish the stuff about Riggs. It’ll go viral for sure.”

She bristled. How was it possible for someone to say things that, when coming from someone else would probably be complimentary, but in this context Alex somehow managed to make them come out as an insult?

Even worse, it didn’t seem like he was going to give way on the exposé despite the wildly successful hit count.

She strove to keep her tone even. To look him in the eye. “Since this has done so well, do we really still need to write the piece about him? If we can pull in more advertisers, then the money won’t be necessary. I don’t understand why—”

He sneered. “Of course you don’t! Christ. You don’t belong in sports journalism. Only reason I hired you was because we needed to meet our quota for chicks. I should never have let you take this assignment.”

She blinked. Out of all the hideous crap that had just come spewing out his mouth, it was the last bit that she found the most confusing. She tried to repeat her question, to get him to explain what he was railing about. “But
I
wrote the piece that’s getting attention. The hits on it—”

“Oh! My one-hit wonder story is sooo great!” He mocked her in falsetto.

Jackass.
But she wasn’t going to back down. He’d gotten nothing but good from her work. She was proud of what she’d written. It was good sports journalism. No, actually. It was good journalism, period. That many hits . . . she’d knocked it out of the park, just like she’d promised herself she would. She’d worked hard for this. She’d proven she had the potential to be a great sports writer. She was
proud
.

Why couldn’t he let her be proud?

“I’ll say it again, slowly this time.” His tone was ugly. Condescending.

God.
Sometimes she really hated him.

“Shit like this
single story
”—he gestured to the screen—“will only take us so far. We need to cover it all. The races, the drivers,
and
the salacious scandalous bits that people love to hate. Here’s your chance to show me that you can keep up your little success, here.”

Asshole, asshole, asshole.

None of the other reporters ever got tasked with ridiculous things like this.

She opened her mouth to protest, but Alex jumped in.

“Besides, why should I let you report on
anything
if you’re too afraid to jump at a huge chance like this?”

Oh, no.
No way
. He wouldn’t take that away from her. He couldn’t. She knew what he was implying . . . that if she didn’t agree to continue doing this, she’d be out of a job. Apparently, in Alex’s mind, all roads except the most dirty, unpleasant one led to getting fired.

The anger and frustration threatened to choke her, it was so intense.

She had to clench her fists
and
her teeth to keep from making a scene. She studied him, but his jaw was set in that belligerent way that meant if she tried to argue with him, he would shut her out and send her to get him some coffee. Next week, she’d probably come in to find a new
male
intern sitting at her desk and a pink slip attached to a box full of her things.

Fucking Crawford. This wasn’t just her job. This was her
future
, and she was good at what she did. The numbers already proved it, and he still couldn’t see the truth.

She took a deep breath, trying to remain calm. “I have an idea.”

He scowled, but didn’t say anything.
Hmm.

It gave her just enough encouragement to continue. “If I keep getting hits like this and go beyond one-hit-wonder status, then you bring in advertisers and get funding from them for the rest of the season . . . and I
don’t
do the exposé. But if there’s a drop of”—she thought for a bare second—“more than five percent in hits, then I’ll go ahead with it.”

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she wished she could take them back.

Oh. Oh, God. I cannot believe I just put that on the table.

She may as well have quit, anyway, even if it meant being set back by a year. Maintaining hit rates like this would be challenging even if she was already a big name. No more than a five-percent drop from this already remarkable hit count? She’d have to hustle even harder to make sure her visibility didn’t falter.

And if there was any chance she might still have to write the exposé, she’d have to keep encouraging a relationship with Ty without letting it get out of control.

It sounded exhausting. Daunting, definitely. Intimidating . . . all the things that scared the hell out of her. But she’d meant what she’d said yesterday to Ty. She’d learned a long time ago that if she wanted something, she had to fight for it. She didn’t let anything stand in her way.