Jacked Up (7 page)

But instead of yelling at him, or bottling it up until every muscle in her neck was sore like she normally did, she took a deep breath and said, “That hurts my feelings. I’m trying to tell you that I know I need to relax and you just got a dig in on me.”

There was a long moment of silence where he gaped at her. Then he nodded. “You’re right. I’m sorry, that was rude of me. I don’t want to hurt your feelings.”

“Okay. Thanks.” They both rocked. She wasn’t sure about him but she felt awkward. Talking about her feelings wasn’t easy. Communicating without yelling was novel. Funny enough though, being rational about it definitely left her less stressed.

But nonetheless, she was still grateful that Tamara chose that moment to step out onto the porch.

“Brr,” she said. “It’s nippy out here. Do you want some coffee?”

“No, thanks. I’m fine.” Eve hadn’t noticed the cold. She was wearing a sweatshirt and she tended to be hot-blooded. It was ironic, but true.

“Hon?” Tamara asked Elec.

“I don’t need coffee, I just need you cuddling up with me.”

Tammy gave a flirty laugh and went over to him.

Gag. If they were going to get all lovey-dovey snoogie-wookums with each other, Eve was leaving.

Her sister-in-law dropped onto her brother’s lap.

Yeah. Time to go. “Okay, on that note, I’m going home.” She stood up.

Tammy and Elec finished their hello kiss. Like they hadn’t kissed in the kitchen ten minutes earlier. Or right before dinner.

She was so jealous it was ridiculous.

“No, you don’t need to leave,” Tammy protested. “It’s early still. The kids don’t need to be in bed for another hour.”

Which meant sixty minutes until boom-boom time. It was written all over their faces. Eve would prefer not to be around for any discreet fondling or other forms of foreplay that might occur in the meantime.

“I want to work out still tonight.” Or imagine Nolan moving over top of her while she got cozy with her mechanical friend. “So from your sister who isn’t getting any, I bid you good night.”

“Sounds like that might be changing.” Tammy winked at her.

Eve gave her a stare. “Who are you—Suzanne? Since when do you encourage people to sleep with men they’ve just started dating?”

Elec coughed into his hand, a grin splitting his face.

Tammy’s face turned red, obvious even in the dim porch light. She hugged her arms around her midsection and gave a shrug. “I don’t know . . .”

Oh, God. They had had sex on the first date. Too much information. She’d always known they’d moved fast in their relationship and she seemed to recall a moment of horror when she had realized her brother was shagging a racing widow, but she’d never known details really. She didn’t want them now.

Nor did she want to share her own.

Which was why she was an idiot to have broached the subject in the first place.

“Never mind. Forget I mentioned sex or men or anything that has to do with the interaction between men and women. I’m going to say good night to Pete and Hunter, then I’m heading to the gym.” Where she could sweat her way through thoughts of Nolan, then get home and sweat through some more.

“Let me get you the keys to the car and the code to the storage unit,” Elec said, patting Tammy’s behind so she would stand up.

“What car?”

“Eve’s borrowing one of my cars for the demolition derby. She’s driving on Sunday.”

“Really?” Tammy’s eyebrows shot up.

“Really.”

Her smile lit up the whole damn porch. “That’s awesome! I think that’s such a good idea. Wow! What made you decide to do that?”

“I don’t know. Someone suggested it.”

“That’s great. Elec, isn’t that great?”

“It is. I think it’s a damn good idea.”

They were starting to freak her out. Eve backed up from their smiling faces and pulled open the door to the house.

If everyone thought this was such an amazingly wonderful idea, she was starting to wonder if in fact, it was a truly awful one.

“So, what are the rules of the derby? How does it differ from stock racing?” Tammy asked.

Eve had no clue what the rules were. She’d witnessed the demo derby at the county fair a few times, but there were very likely regulations about the car itself. “You smash each other until you’re the last drivable car on the track.”

She made a mental note to look up the rules online when she got home.

“You purposely
hit
each other?” Tammy sounded horrified.

“Yeah. Doesn’t that sound like a perfect hobby for Eve?” Elec asked cheerfully. “Smashing things. Right up her alley.”

It was his face that was going to get smashed if he didn’t stop making her sound so bloodthirsty.

Of course, that would just prove his point.

Yeah. This was probably a bad idea.

* * *

“SO,
you in?” Nolan asked Eve the next morning, lying in bed contemplating a shower, phone to his ear. He was surprised, but pleasantly so, that she had called him instead of the other way around.

“Well. I thought I was.” She sounded a little breathless and there was a loud clank in the background. “But I asked Elec for a car and there’s a bit of a problem.”

Hauling himself to a sitting problem, he yawned. “I told you that Rhett’s car is available. It’s no problem.”

“I’d rather use Elec’s because the point is to wreck it. I can’t wreck your brother’s car. Then I’ll owe him a car. But the problem is . . .” She paused to grunt like she was shoving something. “I just read the car specs required to race, and I don’t think I have time to get this hunk of metal up to regulation.”

“So let’s haul it to the garage. Three mechanics will have it in shape in an hour.”

Nolan glanced at his watch. It was early still, only 8
A.M
. Of course, Eve was an early riser, but he was still feeling a little lazy and half-awake. Scratching his bare chest, he stretched, the morning sun streaking across his navy blue bedspread.

“I can’t ask those guys to do that!”

“Why not?” She was Evan and Elec’s sister. There wasn’t a mechanic on that team who wouldn’t be happy to spare her a few minutes if it was going to get them in good with the bosses.

“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not exactly Miss Congeniality. No one is going to be dying to do me a favor.”

Nolan was about to protest then he recalled the battle-ax comment. She might have a point.

“Besides, I don’t want anyone to know.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s none of their fucking business, that’s why.”

Now he was awake. Nolan sat up straight, his line of scratching migrating south. He’d woken up with an erection, and funny enough, Eve’s cursing didn’t kill it. It made it harder. “What can I do to help you out? Whatever you need, cupcake.”

The nickname seemed to catch her off guard. The noise in the background quieted down. “Cupcake? Come on, that’s just ludicrous.”

“I like it.” He did. He knew she was sweet even if she didn’t.

“Never mind. The thing is, I have a hauler I can borrow and I can drive the hauler myself, but I can’t load the car on it alone.”

He waited for the question that should follow, but she couldn’t seem to bring herself to ask him so he just rolled with it. “Sure, I can help you. We need to get you entered and the car has to be there by Saturday at five
P.M
.”

“And I need the chrome trim, the glass, the headlights, and taillights all removed.” She sounded breathless again.

“Are your doors painted?” The front doors needed to be whitewashed so that the staff could paint her competitor number on them.

“No.”

Nolan wished she would have just accepted his offer of Rhett’s car. They were going to be hard-pressed to get all that done by inspection time. But he understood why she was saying she didn’t want to do that—she would owe Rhett a car. No one but the winner drove away from a derby, and it wasn’t likely she’d win her first time out.

Frankly, it must be killing her to ask for help, and Nolan was pleased she trusted him enough to come to him. “Well, it’s Friday. We can knock this out in a couple of hours today if you have some time. We can haul it to my parents’ house. They have ten acres, plenty of gravel to park it and work on it.”

There was a pause where he figured she was debating accepting that much help from him. Maybe the idea of meeting his parents unnerved her as well. But Nolan had figured how to deal with Eve for the most part. He just lounged in bed and waited, neither coaxing nor pushing. She’d decide what she wanted to do and that was that.

In the meantime, he relaxed against his pillows, eyes half-closed, his hand lightly stroking over his erection. This was a good way to wake up. The sunlight, a soft bed, the sound of Eve breathing over the phone. It obviously would be way better if she were actually in bed with him, naked, and not talking about the demo derby, but he could only hope someday soon she would be. In the meantime, he had a good imagination.

“I guess that would work. What are you doing right now?”

“Uh.” Somehow he didn’t think she’d want the truth. “I’m still in bed.”

“Really?” An intrigued tone entered her voice. “Are you . . . never mind.”

Nolan fought the urge to groan. His hand tightened on his cock. “Naked? Yes, as a matter of fact I am.”

“That’s not what I was going to ask!”

She was such a fibber. “No? Then what?”

“I was going to ask if you were busy, but then that seemed like a dumb question.”

He didn’t believe her, but he was willing to let it go. He was willing to let his erection go for now, too. Dropping his hand, he said, “Give me directions to where you’re at. I can be there in twenty minutes.”

“How do you know you can be there in twenty minutes? You don’t know where I am.”

Nolan laughed. “You got me there, cupcake.”

“Stop calling me cupcake. It’s sexist.”

“Okay, muffin.”

“Now that’s
really
sexist.”

He’d called her muffin, not muff. There was nothing sexist about baked goods as far as he could figure. But he knew better than to argue with her.

“Peaches?” Nolan threw back his covers and forced himself to stand. “Angel? Dollbaby? Hot stuff?”

“How about no nickname? How about you call me Eve? That works.”

“Anyone can call you Eve.”

“And what makes you so special that you can call me something else?”

Nolan paused in the act of rooting around in a drawer for his jeans. Ouch.

“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I didn’t mean that to sound as rude as it did. I was just giving you a hard time.”

It took a lot to annoy him. He was annoyed. “I seem to recall you calling me strongman and peanut butter fudge ripple. More than once.”

“You have a point. Okay, call me cupcake. It’s only fair.”

That was a major concession for her.

“And I am sorry. And I appreciate you helping me.”

Those were catastrophic concessions. His anger deflated. “It’s all good, Eve. I’ll see you in
twenty
minutes.”

She laughed. Which was what he wanted. Getting Eve to laugh felt like an achievement worthy of recognition.

“You’re a stubborn man.”

“That’s the pot calling the kettle black.”

“Except I’m not a man.”

“I noticed. Oh, trust me, I noticed.”

The erection was back, full force.

“We’re going to end up having sex after the demolition derby, aren’t we?” she asked, her voice husky.

Nolan loved that she just threw it all out there. Eve was definitely honest.

Working together, competing, banging cars, the adrenaline rush, and a post-derby beer . . . yeah, she had the right of it.

“I can pretty much guarantee it.”

CHAPTER

FIVE

EVE
had grown up around cars and haulers and had been allowed to drive on her parents’ property by the time she was ten years old. It was no big deal to be behind the wheel of a hauler, and she wouldn’t have cared less what anyone else thought. So why was she nervous pulling into Nolan’s parents’ gravel driveway?

Because Nolan Ford didn’t criticize or mock her.

And she didn’t seem to irritate him.

So for that very backward, messed-up reason, she was nervous around him. Whereas with everyone else, she knew what she was capable of and didn’t give a rat’s ass what they thought, with Nolan she wanted to show him she could do it.

It was so stupid it needed a whole new word for it.

So as she followed him up the long drive, nothing but grass and corn growing as far as the eye could see, she vowed to get her shit together.

A brick ranch house sprung up out of nowhere. It was tidy and sprawling, but it still didn’t look big enough to house nine kids. Nolan’s arm popped out of the window of his truck and gestured for her to park to the left. There was a big gravel turnaround in front of the garage, a barn a few hundred feet from that.

As she turned the truck off, she saw the front door open and a man who looked an awful lot like her own father come strolling out. He was around six foot tall, still in good shape, hair almost completely gray. Behind him came Rhett, who Eve knew, but had never really made the connection was Nolan’s brother. Rhett was the kind of guy who walked with swagger, who joked and teased and charmed.

The kind of guy Eve took great pleasure in slamming down into the dirt when he hit on her.

Nothing like Nolan.

Well, maybe a little like Nolan in that he was attractive and had green eyes. But Rhett’s arms weren’t as buff, and you always got the impression he wasn’t telling you the full story. Nolan was pretty much the you got what you saw kind of guy. She dug that about him.

Oh, hell, who was she kidding? She just dug him.

They were going to have sex after the demo derby. He said he’d guarantee it. It was going to be hard to drive with that kind of anticipation.

She probably shouldn’t have just thrown it out there like that. It probably made her look easy. But she said what she was thinking and that was exactly the thought that had been running through her head. Too late to take it back now.

Hopping down out of the truck, she swiped her hair out of her eyes.

“Eve, this is my dad, Nolan Ford Senior. Dad, meet Eve Monroe.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” she said, sticking her hand out for a shake. “Thanks for letting me work on the car here. You have a nice property.”

“My pleasure.” He shook her hand firmly, which she appreciated. It was no wimpy you’re a girl so I’ll hold back shake. “We’ve got the room, might as well use it. Now that all the kids except for this loser”—he pointed to Rhett—“are out of the house, we have more land than we know what to do with.”

“Gee, thanks, Dad. Way to make a guy feel good about himself.” Not that Rhett looked the least bit concerned, really. He was grinning. “Eve, good to see you.”

“Yeah, you, too. Nolan says you’ve driven in the demo derby before. Got any tips for a newbie?”

“Yeah. Hit hard.”

Well, duh. “I’ll remember that.”

“No, seriously, hit first. They’ll be gunning for you because you’re a chick. And if anyone catches wind of who you are, they’ll really be after you.”

“Who am I?” she asked, even though she knew what he meant. The thought made her want to sigh.

“The Monroe family is racing royalty. Your father, your brothers . . . there’s some serious record holding going on there. The other guys will want to take a piece of you just to have a story.”

That pretty much summed up her life. Her dad and her brothers were the stars . . . she was the one everyone wanted to take a swipe at. She was the easy mark. The nondriver. The girl. Man, that pissed her off.

“I’ll give them a story alright. When I tear off their bumpers and shove them up their asses. Metaphorically speaking, of course.”

The three of them laughed. Nolan Senior rubbed his chin. “Girl, I’m glad I’m not out there as your competition. I have a feeling you’re going to be a power to contend with.”

“I
am
driving against her,” Nolan said, his hands in his sweatshirt pouch. “But you won’t rip off my bumper, will you, cupcake?”

“Oh, actually yours is first,” she assured him. “I’m taking you out right away because I don’t need you distracting me.”

Nolan Senior and Rhett seemed to find that riotously funny.

She was just being honest.

“You think you can take me out, huh?”

“Oh, I know I can.”

“Then why am I helping you with your car? Not that I really think you can beat me.”

But he did. It was written all over his face, and Eve found that incredibly flattering. “Because you’re a nice guy, that’s why. You’re very thoughtful.”

It was true. She was finding Nolan to be easy to be around for a lot of reasons, and that was definitely top of the list.

“Aw, how sweet,” Rhett said. “Too bad she doesn’t really know you yet.”

Nolan glared at his brother. “Rhett, why don’t you go looking for Scarlett in the house and mind your own business?”

Embarrassment had forced Nolan to take a low blow and mock his brother’s name. Eve knew where this was going. She’d seen it between her brothers from time to time but mostly between herself and Evan.

“Shut up, dick.”

Yeah, that was usually the way it went.

“Are you kidding me?” Nolan Senior asked. “You all are going to stand here and name-call in front of this poor girl? I’m embarrassed for you both.”

“Don’t worry about me. Remember, I have brothers.” Actually, she was usually the one name-calling.

“Yeah, well, that still doesn’t make it right.” Nolan’s dad pointed to the car. “Boys, just get the poor girl’s car down and do what needs to be done.”

Eve wasn’t sure she liked the label “poor girl” any more than “cupcake.”

“Yes, sir!” Rhett saluted his father.

Nolan looked like he wanted to grumble. Eve figured he wanted to say that he was planning on it already, but stopped himself. Or maybe that’s just what Eve would have wanted to say in those circumstances.

Instead of saying anything, Nolan just leaned over and gave her a quick kiss before taking the hauler keys out of her hand and heading over to help his brother.

Uh . . .

Eve stood there for a second, cheeks burning as she caught Nolan Senior’s eye. Were they at that point? Kissing in front of a parent? They’d barely kissed without any parents present. One of Nolan’s dad’s eyebrows went up in question. She just gave him a sheepish look and went to join his sons.

She was in over her head. No question about it.

That became even more evident ten minutes later when she broke a taillight prying the plastic cover off. “Shit.” She wasn’t cut out to be a mechanic. Her skills lay in driving and telling drivers what to do.

“What’s the matter?” Nolan asked her, peeling the chrome trim off the side of the car.

“I broke the taillight.”

“Why did you take the cover off?”

“To remove it. You said to remove all glass.”

“Isn’t the cover plastic?”

Eve paused, her boot crunching a piece of glass in the gravel. Shit. “So you’re saying I didn’t have to remove it?”

“I reckon not.”

“Ugh.” Despite it being a cool day, Eve was sweating. She’d already painted the doors while Rhett and Nolan had removed the windows. Now Rhett was under the car running a gas pipe and she was starting to become very conscious of how much time she was spending. Both hers and theirs. Running the derby was supposed to be fun, spontaneous.

She wasn’t having fun.

Why that was surprising her, she didn’t know. Eve suddenly felt like crying. Why was it so goddamn hard for her to relax and enjoy herself? She had literally forgotten how.

Nolan, who was so damn intuitive it was downright scary, abandoned his chrome removal project and came over to her.

“Hey.” He put his hands on her shoulders. “Don’t sweat this. It’s no big deal. We’re going to be done in ten.” He glanced at his cell phone. “We’ve only been out here for an hour and fifteen. Just a drop in the bucket of time.”

She stared at him, wondering yet again why he was bothering with her. If she were him, she wouldn’t. He wasn’t a hugely tall guy and it didn’t strain her neck to look up at him, searching for answers in his eyes. There weren’t any there. All she could see was a confidence in what he was saying.

“I feel bad that I’m wasting your time.”

“This was my idea, remember?”

“Yeah, but I asked you to help me with my car. Well, Elec’s car.”

“And I said yes, because I wanted to help. Easy as that. Don’t go making it all complicated.”

She was practical, not complicated.

“I swear, cupcake, when you get to heaven you’re going to ask to see the upstairs. You complicate things.”

Eve clamped down on a laugh. Okay, Nolan had moments where he was just funny, no doubt about it. “That’s ridiculous,” she told him with great dignity. “I would do no such thing. Mainly because it will be hard to do that from my place down south.”

Heaven and hell weren’t things she thought about all that often, but she figured it was more than likely she wasn’t going to need a coat where she was going.

“In hell?” Nolan smiled. “What makes you think that’s where you’ll be? Are you a naughty girl, Eve Monroe?”

“Probably mean more so than naughty,” she told him in all honesty.

Nolan had leaned in closer to her and Eve licked her lips. He was going to kiss her again, that was obvious. The air between them had changed as their bodies had shifted toward each other and their words had become flirtatious. It was a strange mystery how easily that happened to her around him. One minute she was normal, the next she was very aware of her breathing and her body, now with tightened nipples and a deep aching between her thighs.

Nolan kissed the side of her mouth, sliding up to her ear. “I don’t think I agree with that. I don’t think there’s a mean bone in your body. I think you are naughty, though, and I want to see it,” he murmured.

Eve shivered. If anyone else had said that to her, she would have rolled her eyes and walked away. She might have racked his testicles first, or threatened to anyway, and then turned her back on him, but she definitely would have left, muttering how he was an idiot.

But for some insane reason, hearing those words from Nolan just turned her on. She wanted to do naughty, dirty things to him, with him, under him, over him . . .

“You have no idea just how naughty I can be.”

Nolan let out an exhalation of air then shifted his head so his mouth was on hers. It was a hot, intense kiss that had Eve digging her fingers into the fabric of his sweatshirt for a grip. The man could kiss. He took her lips perfectly, leaving her tingling and hungry for more.

His leg came between her thighs and his hands gripped the waistband of her jeans. It took only a few seconds to go from a teasing kiss to a passionate springboard to sex. Eve wanted to touch Nolan and she slid her hands downward. She wanted him to touch her just as much and he answered her silent plea by cupping her breast, while his tongue met hers in a hot tangle.

She was past his waist and honing in on his erection, wanting to stroke and grip it, when something hit her leg. Off balance, she shifted to the right, losing her contact with Nolan, the kiss interrupted.

Nolan groaned in disappointment, his hands raking into his hair.

Movement below them forced Eve’s eyes downward and she realized what she had felt bumping her was Rhett sliding out from under the car on his back. He was grinning up at them, right between their legs.

“Oops, sorry.”

“Seriously, man?” Nolan asked him. “I want to kill you right now.”

“How was I supposed to know you were sucking face? I can’t hear jack under the car.” Rhett sat up. “But the good news is, the tank’s in.”

Eve wasn’t sure she could speak yet. She was still panting. What the hell? She had completely lost control. Normally she wouldn’t have dreamed of making out with his brother so close by and his parents probably looking out the kitchen window at them. It was not like her at all to forget about her surroundings. To forget about her responsibilities. To forget about everything but the man kissing her.

“Screw the tank,” Nolan grumbled.

“I don’t think that’s what you really want to screw.” Rhett bounded to his feet and gave Eve a grin and a wink. “Sorry, Eve. But if I were you, I’d make him wait anyway. It’ll be good for him.”

Eve sort of wanted to punch Rhett, but at the same time, she knew she should be grateful to him. It wasn’t so much that she felt like she needed to make Nolan wait or play some kind of game with him. But she shouldn’t be nailing him in his parents’ driveway. That just wasn’t Emily Post.

She couldn’t claim she was a big expert on etiquette, but she did think having sex in front of the parents crossed a certain line, and the way she’d been feeling, it had been a real possibility.

She was not going to touch that comment. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she told Rhett. “Thanks for doing the tank and pipe. If you’re done, I think I’ll take the car for a test drive.”

Rhett was standing between her and Nolan, in what she suspected was an intentional move to piss his brother off. She recognized the signs. So instead of allowing their conflict to escalate, she figured she’d just separate them. It was what her mother always did, and the truth was, she didn’t want to be a source of tension between them. Nolan was always telling her to chill, so she figured she could do the same for him. There would be opportunities to make out that didn’t involve his brother lying at her feet.

“Nolan, want to race me?”

That got the reaction she was hoping for. He grinned at her and said, “Oh, hell, yeah, I will race you.”

Eve hadn’t been behind the wheel in years, and now that the possibility was in front of her, she had to admit she was looking forward to it. “Can we drag in your parents’ driveway?”