Jacked Up (4 page)

For the first time in she wasn’t sure when, she answered completely truthfully, in a way she couldn’t with her family. “Yes, I think I deserve to be happy. But I don’t know how to get out. And I don’t know where to go. Racing is all I know.”

She wasn’t sure why she spoke the simple truth, but she was tired of being flippant and defensive. “Though I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I don’t even know you.”

“Maybe that’s why you can tell me. Or maybe it’s because I asked.”

There was a disturbing thought. Had no one ever asked her before? And what was wrong with her? Her whole life was focused on a career she didn’t like, and yet here she was wasting a beautiful fall night with a hot guy complaining. She waved her hand. “Enough of my lameness. We’re here to have fun, right?”

“That was my plan.”

“Then let’s do it.” Determined to be something other than a wet blanket, Eve took another sip of her beer and swung her head back to the band. She could relax, damn it.

The skinny man who had waved to her earlier was gesturing to get her attention. He was calling her over to him. Eve looked around to make sure it was really her he was gesturing to.

“I think your boyfriend is trying to get your attention,” Nolan told her, tipping his head in tuba man’s direction.

“I’m not sure why or what he wants.” There were five guys in the band and they were bouncing around as best they could at their age, with the accordion player sweeping back and forth across the gazebo floor in front of the others. Several small children were dancing in front of the band, looking totally adorable doing wild spins and silly kicks that would drag a smile out of Satan himself.

“He wants you to dance.”

Yeah, she was starting to get that impression, given the way he was pointing to the kids then to her. “I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Um, because I would be the only adult out there and this isn’t club music. You can’t dance to it solo unless you’re three.”

“I’ll dance with you.”

Was he serious? He looked serious. Eve eyed the crowd around them. There were only a few people in the area, probably the parents of the hip-wiggling preschoolers. Once upon a time she had liked to dance. When she had been about the same age as the little brunette out there who kept lifting her dress up over her head. Now that was living. Just lift your dress if you wanted to get down and don’t worry what anyone thought.

“You want to polka?”

“Polka? I hardly know her.”

Eve stared at Nolan blankly for a second. “What?” She repeated his words back in her head in the fake random Italian accent he had used. Understanding dawned and she could not believe he had just been so absolutely corny. “Oh my God. Poke her. I hardly know her. Are you kidding me?”

He grinned. “Come on, it was funny.”

“Dork.” The joke one hundred percent was not funny. Well, maybe it was a little funny. But mostly what was cracking her up was him. He was laughing and that made her laugh.

“Wait until you see me dance. You’ll take that back.”

“Are you an aficionado?”

“A what-o?”

Eve laughed again. She wasn’t sure why she found him so entertaining, but she did.

He stood up. “I’m anything you want me to be, babe.”

“Can you be peanut butter fudge ripple ice cream?” Eve reluctantly left the bench. He was going to dare her to dance if she didn’t so she might as well save them both the hassle and just go ahead and do it in the first place.

“How do you know I’m not?” He took her hand and drew her to the dance floor, walking backward.

There was no explanation for why she was letting him touch her in any way. It wasn’t like holding hands given he was just leading her, but still, this wasn’t a date. Or hell, maybe it was. Neither one of them had mentioned the reason he had offered to buy her a beer in the first place, which was his missing underwear. Underwear he probably wasn’t wearing now either. Eve looked down at his crotch before she even realized what she was doing.

“You’re peanut butter fudge ripple?”

He burst out laughing. “Well, not down
there
.” His eyes were twinkling. “Though some of the same principles of eating ice cream do apply to it.”

Oh, Lord, how had she fallen into that well? Now all she could think about was undoing his jeans and drawing his thick long penis into her mouth, licking it like an ice cream cone. That sounded delicious.

Damn, this was all her fault. She had looked at his crotch. But she wasn’t going to take that path into Dirtyville with him. Not yet. “Keep your mind out of the gutter.”

“You’re the one who looked at my crotch.”

“I thought I saw movement.”

“Maybe you did.”

Ho, boy. Now he’d done it. She was not going to look again. She wasn’t. Even though now she was seriously curious as to whether he had an erection or not. Holding her hand couldn’t possibly be erection-worthy.

He was still pulling her, only he had stopped walking. It took her a step or two to realize, and when she finally stopped moving, she was very close to him. His eyes were dark and dancing.

“We’re going to polka and that is all,” she told him firmly, though she wouldn’t swear to it that she couldn’t be persuaded to consider other things.

“Really?” The hand that was holding hers enclosed her skin more firmly. The other went to her waist. “Because I was kind of hoping to steal a kiss.”

“Why would you do that?” she asked him truthfully. As much as she wanted him, and as obvious as the desire in his eyes was, she found it confusing. He didn’t know her, and the only time they’d really interacted was when she had berated him for his wardrobe malfunction. It didn’t exactly make her the kind of woman men wanted to steal kisses at the fair from.

She’d never been that girl. She’d been a tomboy who had used threats to get her first kiss at the age of twelve.

Which was a pretty sour thought.

“Because you’re beautiful.”

So Nolan was one of those—a guy who liked to pour on the flattery, slept with a woman, then lost interest. The urge to roll her eyes was intense. “I’m average. But thank you.”

“You’re not average. You are beautiful, whether you see it or not. I’ve been watching you for three years and I can tell you straight out, you are gorgeous. Hot.”

That was almost impossible for Eve to believe. She had never mastered eye makeup or the art of accessorizing. Most days she figured she looked like her brothers in a pencil skirt. But there was no denying the way Nolan was staring at her now, as he fit his body in alongside hers. He wanted her.

So maybe part of her new philosophy of letting go was that she needed to learn to trust people. If they said it and it appeared to be so, stop doubting it.

Just roll with it.

“Maybe we can try that kiss later, fudge ripple. Just to see how you taste,” she said, her voice low.

His hand tightened on her waist and he opened his mouth to respond.

“But first, show me these moves you’re talking about.”

She pulled him into the tightest form she could, listened for the music, and took off to the right.

CHAPTER

THREE

NOLAN’S
mother was fond of saying that dance was the vertical expression of a horizontal desire, usually in reference to grinding couples at family wedding receptions, but clearly she hadn’t meant a polka.

There was no way to be sexy doing the polka. With all the jumping and running and bouncing, Nolan felt more like a kid on a pogo stick than a man on a date with a woman who was like lighter fluid to his charcoal. When she had looked him in the eye and said she wanted to see how he tasted, he had almost looked down at his crotch to see the flames he was sure had to be shooting out from his jeans. She was sexy with a capital S.

Yet she didn’t seem to think she was, which amazed him.

She also didn’t seem particularly happy in her life, so he was glad that this insanity they were engaging in seemed to be amusing her. Without their discussing it, she had taken the lead in the dance and was spinning him around in circles on the makeshift dance floor in front of the gazebo. Since he had no clue how to polka, he was fine with following.

The thing was, she didn’t seem to know how to polka either. She was definitely making it up as she went, which could explain why they kept running into each other.

“Go left!” she screamed, breathless and laughing.

“My left or your left?” he asked, confused as hell.

As they went in opposite directions, they lost their grip on each other. Nolan ending up almost plowing down a kid and Eve wound up spinning off into a bush.

“I guess your left,” he said with a grin as he pulled her out of the foliage.

She was laughing, her hair falling in her eyes. For the first time, he noticed she had dimples that appeared when she laughed, making her even more adorable.

“Whoops. Sorry. My bad.”

The band was winding up their number. “Thank you! Thank you!” the accordion player yelled as Eve and Nolan and the rest of the audience clapped. “And thank you to our dancers.”

A little girl who had been traipsing around stopped, looked out at the crowd, and curtsied. No self-esteem issues there, which was nice to see.

Then Eve blew him away by giving her own little curtsy, though hers was directed at the band.

“Sassy,” he told her. “I think you should go on tour with them.”

“Should that be my new career? Polka band groupie. I don’t think the cash flow would be as high as you’d think it would be though.”

“You’re probably right.” They reached the picnic table where their funnel cake was coagulating. He took a sip of his beer. “Warm. Time for a new one.”

“I’ll drink mine warm.” She took her own sip then shrugged. “It’s not warm. It’s just not ice cold. Though I’m warm from all that dancing.”

And lo and behold, she set her beer back down on the table and peeled off her sweatshirt. Underneath she was wearing a black tank top. That was it. Nothing but a stretchy shirt that clung to her breasts. Lord have mercy on his horny soul.

“Whew, that’s better.”

Oh, it was better and it was worse all at the same time.

She didn’t seem to notice that his tongue was hanging to his knees because she just continued their conversation.

“I learned to drink warm beer in college. I was too broke to let a little thing like room temperature beer stop me. No wasting the suds.”

“So you went to college? Where at?”

“Clemson. First one in my family to graduate from college.”

She sounded proud of that fact, as she should be. “How about Evan and Elec? They go to Clemson, too?”

“Nah. There was no reason to go to college when they were already both driving in the truck series by eighteen. But I was supposed to learn a skill. How about you?”

“I didn’t go to college. With nine kids, there was no money for that and I wasn’t ambitious enough to pay for it myself.” College had sounded like fun actually, but he wasn’t that big on learning in a classroom. It hadn’t been the right choice for him. He liked to get his hands dirty in the real world.

“You have
eight
siblings?” She sounded amazed and horrified.

Nolan pitched his beer in the nearest trash can and gestured to start walking. As they strolled to the beer tent, he told her, “Yep. Seven sisters, one brother. Some of the girls paid their way through school and went off in different directions with their careers. I went to vocational school to be a mechanic and eventually got lucky enough to get on a pit crew. My little brother, Rhett, is the gas can man for the team.”

“Does that bother you, working with him?”

“No, it’s the greatest thing ever. I was thrilled for him when he got on the team. He’s a good guy, if a bit of a horn dog.”

“With a name like Rhett, he’s justified.” Eve drained her beer. “Is it a family name?”

Hardly. Nolan laughed. “Hell no. He got saddled with the name just like you’re imagining, because my mom was all hot for Rhett Butler in
Gone with the Wind
. She couldn’t name me Rhett because I was her first son and I’m named after my dad. But after a run of five girls in nine years, my dad told her she could name the last baby whatever the hell she wanted as long as she’d go get her tubes tied.”

She laughed. “Charming. I’m sure that hasn’t affected Rhett’s self-esteem at all.”

Nolan could have been offended on his parents’ behalf, but the truth was, the story didn’t sound all that great if you weren’t one of the people involved. He knew his parents were just tweaking each other. Every one of their kids had been a conscious choice, he was sure of it. “Don’t go feeling sorry for Rhett. My parents think the sun rises and sets with him. He’s charming. Good looking. Lazy as shit but manages to get away with it. And he’s a good guy, and I do enjoy working with him.”

“You’re one of those families that just digs each other’s company, aren’t you?”

“Absolutely.” Nolan studied the choices at the beer booth. He wanted something bigger this time. “My sisters are all amazing women. Well, my sister Jackie is a whiner, but we’ve learned to deal with it. My parents would die for each and every one of us. Just like your folks, I’m sure.”

“My parents don’t really get me.”

“No one’s parents get them. But they love you just the same.” It was kind of a rule, it seemed. “Can I have the harvest ale in a stein?” Nolan asked the woman manning the beer booth.

“Sure thing, honey.” She reached before her for a stein and eyed him. “You know they’re doing a strongman contest every night of the festival. You should enter.”

Huh. Not only was it flattering to have a woman old enough to be his grandmother suggesting the contest, but he found himself intrigued by the possibility of showing off in front of Eve. He was a guy. He wasn’t above flashing his biceps if he thought it might help get the girl naked. “Yeah? What do you have to do?”

“Hold your full beer stein straight out at arm’s length. Can’t lower your arm at all. The last man left wins a hundred-dollar gift card to the BBQ joint down the road and a commemorative beer stein.”

That sounded easy enough. “I do like my BBQ.”

“Just head to the orange booth over there and they’ll check out your beer, make sure it’s regulation.” She had the raspy voice of a lifelong smoker and jet-black hair that looked better on Cher than it did on her unfortunately.

Nolan paid her. “Thanks, hon. Appreciate it.”

She winked at him. “No problem.”

“Are you actually entering the contest?” Eve asked him, her sweatshirt over her arm, blocking his view of her breasts.

He shrugged. “I like barbeque. It sounds easy enough. I haul a thirty-five pound jack over the wall then crank up a three-ton car. I can hold a damn beer mug out for ten minutes.”

“Don’t get defensive. I wasn’t suggesting you were anything other than big, strong, and manly. I just wasn’t sure if you were being polite or you really wanted to do it.”

“I’m not being defensive.” He didn’t think. Though he had to admit, he couldn’t help wanting to impress her. That was just part of being a dude. They were born with a bragging gene. “But yes, I’d like to do it. Want to be my cheerleader?” He gave her what he hoped was a charming smile. He’d never quite had Rhett’s skill with the ladies, but he did alright.

“I’d kind of rather swallow glass than be the chick standing on the sidelines cheering on a man, but I’ll make an exception this one time.”

Be still his heart. There was something every guy wanted to hear. “Oh, yeah? Thanks. How did I happen to earn this exception?”

“Because if you were a total douche bag like half the men I know, you’d have let me stroll around with my bra showing yesterday and you didn’t. Plus you can’t dance for shit, but you were willing to make an ass out of yourself with me, which I appreciate. So the least I can do is stand there while you go macho man.”

She really needed to hold back on the flattery there. “Your generosity knows no bounds.”

“That’s sarcasm.”

“Yep.”

“Why?” She frowned, like she really didn’t get it.

“Because you just insulted me about three different ways,” he told her mildly. It didn’t bother him so much as it puzzled him. There was more to Eve than met the eye. Something had happened to her to make her so quick to lash out, and he was more determined than ever to figure out what it was.

“I did? I didn’t mean to.” There was a pause when she seemed to be rewinding her words and replaying them. “Okay, so maybe telling you that you can’t dance could be taken as an insult, but you have to know it’s true.”

Nolan raised an eyebrow at her. “Babe, you’re not doing any better.”

“The truth is the truth.” Now she was just being stubborn, a quality she didn’t seem to lack.

“Sure. Nothing wrong with the truth. Honesty is definitely a good policy, but it’s your delivery. Gotta sprinkle a little sugar on that sour.”

This was why she had the reputation of a battle-ax. But Nolan would swear she didn’t really realize that she was potentially hurting people’s feelings. She was just cocooned in her own discontent.

If she tore his face off right now, well, then maybe he’d be forced to admit he might be wrong. But she didn’t, which satisfied him tremendously.

She looked troubled, a little sad. “A lot of days it seems my sugar canister is empty by about ten
A.M
. If I knew how to fix that I would.” Her hand came up as if to stop him. “And don’t go suggesting I need Xanax like Evan always does. I think antidepressants can be very helpful to some people, but I don’t think I can call myself depressed. I’m just . . . bitchy. I was born this way.”

That was a cop-out and they both knew it. It was in her eyes. “You’re not bitchy. You’re just stubborn. You’ve decided you’re miserable and you’ll be damned if anyone is going to talk you out of it.”

He’d hit a nerve, that was clear.

Her eyes narrowed. “You’re a jerk.”

“Who speaks the truth.”

“Your sugar seems to be missing, too.”

“I said you’re not bitchy. Sounds like a compliment to me.”

“Go enter your damn strongman contest.”

Nolan wanted to laugh, but he figured that wouldn’t go over well with her. “I’ll do that. You could enter too, you know. It’s open to women.”

“I’m a runner. My arms aren’t my strongest asset.”

Nolan pondered her assets, clearing his throat at the thought of her naked, long muscular legs wrapped around his waist. “No? What is?” Without thought, his gaze dropped to her breasts, filling out her clingy tank top.

She seemed to realize that he wasn’t asking from an athletic standpoint because she made a sound and rolled her eyes. “Not my arms!”

Now he did laugh. “I can think of a thing . . . or two.”

Eve turned on her heel and marched over to the entry tent. Nolan had no choice but to follow her. Five minutes later, the contest was under way and he was standing with three other guys holding his beer stein straight out. It wasn’t hard. It didn’t strain his biceps. But he had to admit it was awkward and a little boring.

Cheerleading didn’t suit Eve. She tried. He had to give her credit. She fist pumped and yelled, “Go Nolan!” a few times in a voice that she tried to inject enthusiasm into but sounded as fake as it was.

Finally she strolled over to him and said, “Is your arm getting tired like that? That guy on the end is starting to shake.”

“I’m fine.” He was. This was nothing compared to the daily workouts he put himself through to keep in shape for the job.

“Hmm. You are a stud, I have to admit.”

If she only knew how much of a stud he could be. The corner of his mouth turned up. “Thanks.”

Eve had sauntered up very close to him. Nolan eyed her warily. This was the closest she had voluntarily gotten to him yet. “What are you doing?”

“If I kiss you, will you put the beer down so we can go do something else?” she asked, sounding more hopeful than seductive.

“No.”

Her face went mulish. “Why not?”

“One. There’s a lot of barbeque at stake. Two. I want you to kiss me because you want to, not because you’re bargaining with your lips.” End of story.

“Oh, Lord. Why do you always have to make sense?”

Why did she have to be so adorable? “It’s a terrible flaw. I’m sorry.”

Eve took a step back. “Do you mind if I go play the shooting gallery? The booth is right over there and I’ve been eyeing it. I’m a good shot.”

“Now why does that not surprise me? Go for it.”

“Because I’m not your average woman and we both know it. Don’t be afraid though. I’ve never shot a person.”

“I’m not afraid. I think it’s hot.” He did. He thought a whole lot of things about Eve were hot.

She looked equal parts astonished and intrigued. “You’re nuts.”

With that, she walked over to the carnival game and paid the attendant. Since he was just standing there, Nolan watched her. Eve fired off ten rounds, pinging the center of half a dozen of the standing targets, knocking them backward. She took them all down except for one. Impressive.

The attendant was wearing a grin Nolan could see from fifty feet away. He handed Eve a stuffed animal. She turned and gave it to a little girl who had been watching her. The child turned to her mother for permission, and when she got an okay nod, she took the fluffy white animal and squeezed it hard against her chest. Eve and the mother exchanged a few words and a laugh. Nolan wished he could hear their conversation.