Hard and Fast (3 page)

Fortunately, she was looking at his face, not his crotch, so she didn’t know the direction his thoughts were strolling in.

She had a slight frown on her face. “Why would you be wondering what color my eyes are?”

That was a damn good question. He chose not to answer it. “You need a towel. You’re dripping.” And shivering.

“I don’t want to go in there like this.” She glanced at the front door. “I’ll track water all over the hardwood floors.”

“I can go get you a towel,” he said. Though he would have to dodge Nikki to do it, which might be difficult.

“I’ll be fine,” she said. “I should probably just go home and call Tamara and apologize.”

“You’re going to run back through the rain?” he said in disbelief. “I don’t think so.”

“It’s slowed down,” she insisted.

But when they looked out at the front yard and the driveway, the wind was whipping torrents of rain down at an angle. “Or not. It’s a freaking monsoon out there. You won’t have anything dry on you to even clear off your glasses when you get to your car. Can you see to drive without your glasses?”

“No.” She sighed, staring toward her car with obvious longing.

“What’s under your sweater?”

“Excuse me?” She turned so fast to stare at him that she bumped shoulders with him.

“If you’re wearing a shirt underneath, it’s probably dry. Just take your sweater off.”

“I have a cami on,” she said, biting her lip.

Ty didn’t know what the hell a cami was, but it sounded promising. “Perfect.”

She seemed to debate for a second, then she took off her glasses and handed them to him. “Hold these, please.”

“Sure.”

Then he didn’t even try to look away when she peeled off her sweater to reveal a little white tank top, small breasts clinging to the fabric, her nipples taut. Yeah, he was just full of brilliant ideas. Nothing like telling the woman to strip off clothing when he was standing on his buddy’s front porch in full view of a dinner party.

“That’s better, right, Emma Jean?” he said as she dropped her sopping wet sweater over the top of the porch railing.

She held her hand out for her glasses and smiled at him. “You do know my name’s not Emma Jean, don’t you?”

He did know that. He just didn’t know what her name really was. He suspected that, aside from the fact he had never heard that particular name prior to meeting her, it was his dyslexia making it difficult for him to retain her name. She had spelled it out loud for him on a previous occasion, but the letters had just jumbled in his head. Which pissed him off severely. But he would cover, make it look intentional. “Yep. But I think Emma Jean suits you.”

Laughing, she put her glasses back on. “It does not. As much as I hate to admit it, I am much more of an Imogen than I am an Emma Jean.”

Ty had almost caught it that time. The end sounded more like gin, like the alcohol. “Why do you say that?”

“Dark hair, glasses.” She pointed to each as she listed them. “Flat chest. Shy. Definitely not an Emma Jean.”

Maybe those very things were the reason he found her so fascinating, though after talking to her, he wouldn’t call her shy. Quiet, but not shy. He gave her a smile, one that even as he did it, he knew was flirtatious. He shouldn’t, not there, not with her, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself. “You’ll always be Emma Jean to me.”

Imogen laughed. “I can’t decide if that’s a compliment or not.”

“It is, but it’s a subtle one. But now I’m going to give you an obvious compliment.” Even as the words were coming out of his mouth, Ty was telling himself to shut up, to not go there with this woman who was so clearly out of his league, but he didn’t listen.

Her eyes widened behind her glasses.

They were standing closer than was necessary for conversation, but Ty noticed neither one of them was backing off. He touched her cheek, amazed at how soft her skin was. “You’re very beautiful. Not an original compliment, but it’s still true.” Ty ran his fingers across her lips. “Pretty women can start to look the same, but you stand out. Your beauty is unique.”

Imogen started to think that Ty McCordle had consumed way too much alcohol at the party. He was staring at her like he wanted to eat her, piece by piece, or at the very least kiss her, and he was touching her. He was touching her and she was covered in goose bumps that arguably were from the rain soaking, but more likely were from a sudden surge in her hormone levels, since Ty was the very man that for months she had been fighting a physical attraction to. And now he was staring at her like he was actually attracted to her as well, which was unnerving.

She couldn’t explain this turn in events. It couldn’t really be possible that Ty was interested in her. More likely it was pure convenience. She was on the porch. So was he. He was a flirt, end of story.

Which didn’t explain why he was suddenly stepping back and peeling off his T-shirt to reveal a washboard stomach and a chest that just screamed for her to explore. Oh. My. God. What the hell was he doing?

“What are you doing?” she asked, her voice a full octave higher than normal.

“Your hair is still dripping wet and I never went to get you a towel. Use my shirt.”

That was thoughtful and weird, and a personal fantasy of Imogen’s sprung to life. And funny how he told her to use his shirt, yet he never let her touch the thing. He was drying her hair himself, squeezing the fabric around the wet hanks of her hair and soaking up some of the moisture. She stood stock-still and just let him, afraid to move, afraid to breathe, afraid to ruin the perfectly beautiful moment that she would never repeat ever again in her very vanilla life.

He smelled like man. There was no other way to put it. He just smelled like a guy, like soap and deodorant and skin, with a hint of aftershave. Imogen had never been so close to what she would classify as a manly man in her entire existence. It was an . . . arousing experience. That was the best way she could describe it. She had the increased breathing, sweaty palms, tight nipples, and warm inner thighs to prove it.

Moving down to her shoulders, Ty continued to dry her with his T-shirt and she continued to want to touch his chest.

“I can warm you up even more,” he said.

No way was she actually hearing what she was hearing. It was simply too unbelievable. “How can you do that?” She wanted him to say it out loud, say what she was hoping he was going to say. It was quite possible she had never wanted anything as much as she wanted Ty to kiss her at that moment.

“I can put my arms around you. Heat share.” Ty’s free hand snaked around her waist. “And I can kiss you.”

Wow. Wow. Wow. Imogen’s brain completely froze. He’d said it. Now what the hell did she say in return? Even a simple
yes
or
okay
couldn’t seem to eek its way past her paralyzed lips.

Light suddenly flooded over them, and Ty swore. He shielded his eyes and turned to the front of the house, though he didn’t remove his hand from her waist. Imogen felt an instant blush crawl across her face. Whoever had turned on the light was definitely going to misinterpret what they were seeing.

It was Elec Monroe, Tamara’s husband. He had turned on the porch light and flung open the front door. “Hey, everything okay—”

He stopped talking and a grin spread across his face. “Uh, sorry. Didn’t realize you were, um, hanging out together. Tamara was just wondering where Imogen went.”

“I got caught in the rain,” Imogen said, torn between wanting to stay standing with Ty’s hand on her waist and wanting to put distance between them so Elec didn’t get a negative impression of her. She stayed still, big shocker. “Ty was just—”

Elec held up his hand. “It’s cool. I’ll tell Tamara you’re fine. And Ty, just an FYI, your friend is looking for you.”

Imogen suddenly remembered that Ty had come to the party with Nikki.

That was enough to send her stepping back three feet and grabbing her wet sweater off the railing to use as a shield. How could she have forgotten for one minute that Nikki Borden intended to follow the six steps to marrying a race car driver and that her target was Ty?

Nikki and Ty were dating.

And he was playing with Imogen.

Elec went back into the house and Imogen turned toward the front steps, rain be damned. She needed to go home and take a hot shower.

“Where are you going?” Ty grabbed her elbow.

Feeling mildly insulted and majorly disappointed in both herself and the fact that she was not going to get to experience a kiss, Imogen paused on the top step, still under the porch overhang. “I’m going home. Please give my apologies to Tamara and Elec for leaving early, and to Nikki for monopolizing your time.”

“It’s not what you think, Emma Jean. I had every intention of breaking up with Nikki after we left tonight. I should have done it two months ago.”

Imogen frowned. Now that had the same ring to it as male statements like “I am going to leave my wife, I promise,” and, “You feel so good with a condom, I just want to feel you without one.”

She may not have a lot of experience dating men like Ty McCordle—okay, she had none—but apparently a man was a man and they were all just full of it.

“Okay,” she said.

Now he frowned, still gripping his T-shirt in his hand. “Okay? What the hell does that mean?”

“It means okay. Break up with Nikki or don’t. It’s irrelevant to me.”

With a deep breath and a wince, Imogen rushed down the steps in the pounding rain and left Ty standing on the porch.

 

 

EXCEPT that Ty had followed her. Imogen couldn’t believe it. After running through the rain, beeping her car doors open, and sliding in, wet and miserable, she had barely gotten her own door shut before the passenger side opened and Ty climbed in.

He was sitting in her car.

“What are you doing?” she asked in disbelief.

“I’m dripping, that’s what I’m doing.” He shook his head and ran his fingers through his shaggy wet hair. “Damn, that’s a lot of rain.”

And he was still shirtless.

Ty was sitting in her car wet and bare-chested.

“Why are you in my car?” Hadn’t she made it completely clear that she was leaving the party to go home?

Yet he looked at her like she was the one overlooking the obvious. “So we can talk.”

“About what?” Imogen considered herself a fairly bright woman, but she was having troubling following Ty’s train of thought.

Without answering her, Ty pulled his T-shirt out of the interior crotch of his jeans. He saw her staring at him with what she was sure was an expression of total horror. He winked. “Kept it dry down there.”

As he dragged the wrinkled shirt on over his head, Imogen tried not to succumb to the physical attraction she felt for him. Too late. Her hormones were alive and well and doing a sexy samba. She was undeniably aroused by him, despite the fact that he had a girlfriend, which she found incredibly distressing. It seemed that her intellect should be able to instruct her animal nature that Ty was not a viable candidate for mating.

Well, it was instructing, but most of her wasn’t listening. So she was going to have to be careful. She could not complicate her thesis by flirting with a man she actually did find attractive. She had to use Nikki’s marriage Bible only on race car drivers she had no interest in so that she could stay in control and objective.

“Why did you run through the rain?” she asked, still having a little trouble with that.

“Because I wasn’t done talking to you before you cut out on me.”

“I didn’t cut out on you. It was an appropriate time to exit the conversation.” They’d been interrupted. He had a girlfriend. It had definitely been time to leave.

“Exit the conversation? That’s a polite way to say you ran away.”

Maybe. But she had done what was necessary.

Ty turned slightly in his seat, his T-shirt sporting wet spots in random locations from where he had dried her hair, his own light brown hair dark and disheveled from the soaking he’d taken. He shifted his knee so his legs had more room, then glanced down at the floor. “Damn, I’m sorry. I knocked your bag over and spilled your stuff.”

Imogen knew what was in that bag—half a dozen dating manuals and the incriminating
How to Marry a Race Car Driver in Six Easy Steps
. Feeling a blush steal over her cheeks, she frantically reached over between his legs and tried to feel around for the books to shove them back out of sight. If he spotted the titles and thought she was reading them in an attempt to snag a husband, she would be mortified, and she had no intention of explaining her thesis to him because she had a feeling he would mock it.

“Whoa.” Ty lifted his arms out of the way. “I could have just put them back, but I like this better.”

That made her freeze. She was effectively draped across him, her face by his kneecap, her breasts perilously close to his thigh. “Sorry they were in your way,” she said, then realized she actually had nothing to apologize for. He was the one who had entered her car without an invitation.

“It’s not a big deal. In fact, I’m enjoying this,” he drawled.

God, that Southern accent did outrageous things to her neutrality. Imogen was determined to follow the dating rules only for the purpose of her thesis—she was not supposed to allow herself interest in any of the men of stock car racing she intended to flirt with. Least of all Ty. She had intended to leave him out of the equation altogether when embarking on this bit of unscientific research to jump-start her thesis.

So how exactly she had wound up groping around between his legs while his voice raised goose bumps on her spine was beyond her.

She crammed the last book back in the bag and sat straight up. “Not everything needs to be turned into a sexual innuendo.”

“Well, of course everything doesn’t
need
to be about sex. But it’s much more fun when it is.”