Falling Free ( Falling Fast #3) Read online

  Besides you? “How about I let you help me find a car instead?”

  Having a guy who knew cars along would be smart. Sensible. How much trouble could they get into car shopping?

  “Only if you do it my way.”

  “What way is that?”

  “Uh-uh, you’ll have to wait and find out. My expertise for your trust. I think it’s a fair deal.”

  She arched an eyebrow at him. “It better not be naked.”

  He laughed full out. “You must have met some pretty crazy guys.”

  “You have no idea.”

  “Well, I can think of much more fun things to do naked than car shopping.”

  He let that settle, making her cheeks redden even more, because she could imagine those things so clearly. And because she’d been so close to actually doing them with him.

  She still wanted to.

  “You’re thinking about those things, aren’t you?” he teased.

  “Am not.”

  Was so.

  “Do we have a deal, then?” he asked.

  “A deal. That sounds so official.”

  He gave her a serious look. “Oh, it is. Will tomorrow work?”

  “For car shopping, right? Not fun things to do being naked?” Because the words buzzed through her body.

  He gave her a tummy-tickling smile. “I’m open to possibilities.” He ducked when she threw the red rag at him. “Hey, you said you liked it better when I was flirting. All right, name the time and place. I’m at your service. Are there dealerships here in town?”

  “Only one, and I’m not sure I want to shop there. Pax’s brother owns it, and while I adore Pax, I can’t stand his brother.” Blake Sullivan was in rehab for sexual addiction and his need to control women, which had manifested in date-raping them. The statute of limitations had run out on prosecuting those cases, but Grace took some satisfaction in the destruction of his life. Everyone in town knew about his crimes. He’d put the dealership up for sale, because, like her, the locals didn’t want to contribute to his coffers. His wife had kicked him out. “PCB has a lot more car lots. I figured I’d go there. I can pick you up at ten, if that works.”

  “Come by earlier, if you want. Gemma’s going to take some pictures of me drifting to use in publicizing our first drift event on Friday. We’re trying to make it into something bigger than just open drift.”

  “Maybe I will.” She could have a chat with the little matchmaker. “So, come on, tell me: what is your way of car shopping?”

  He gave her the playful wink that always made her heart thump harder. “You’ll find out tomorrow.”

  Chapter 4

  With the roof down on a beautiful Saturday morning, Grace hated to put a damper on the day by driving into the cemetery. But she had some unfinished business to take care of.

  After parking in the shade of a fuzzy Australian pine tree, she walked up to a small headstone with MARY JEAN PARNELL engraved in the gray marble.

  Grace crouched down, even though she knew that her mom was up there…somewhere. “I suppose you’re saying, ‘Told you so!’ You were right, so I’m saying it for you. Then again, I could have said the same to you when you told me you had lung cancer after I’d been trying to get you to quit smoking for years. So we’re even.”

  She brushed her hair back after a breeze pulled it across her forehead. A caress from her mother, maybe? “You had a lot of opinions about me going into law to save Dad. Any advice now?” She listened, open to hearing a whisper on the wind. Waited. A leaf tumbled across the grass, end over end, landing against the headstone. “Follow the wind? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

  She knew that she wasn’t the only person ever to talk to a cold gravestone, but she still felt a tad crazy. “Well, I’m not sure I can do that. I’m not a flowing-in-the-wind kind of person.”

  She picked at the grass and shredded the blades. Doubt ate away at her. Was she in the right profession? Had she gotten it all wrong? She’d never even considered another career. Saving people sounded noble and right. But now she was questioning whether she was saving people who deserved her dedication. She pushed to her feet. “I’ll see you later, Mom. Love you.”

  She drove slowly, breathing in fresh air and sunshine…okay, stalling a little as she drove toward a man she shouldn’t be wanting to see again. Doubting herself made her crazy. When it came to the big things in her life, she’d forged ahead without a smidgen of doubt. Now she was all topsy-turvy, questioning everything.

  Was she in the right profession?

  Did she need a new direction or hobby?

  Confide in someone or keep it to herself?

  Give in to this flirtation with Tanner?

  She looked up at the sky, but the clouds divined no answers. “Guess I’ll have to figure it out on my own.”

  She could hear an engine racing as she pulled into the entrance to the track.

  Yours? Heh heh, her sexualthalamus said.

  No!

  The roar as the gears shifted did have a strange effect, though. She felt an answering rhythm in her own heartbeat, sort of like entrainment.

  It was probably because she was happy to have Tanner with her, his being knowledgeable and all. Truth be told, she detested dealing with salespeople. The way she felt watched the moment she stepped out of her car, the too-bright smile of a guy out to help himself, not her. Tanner was right; his presence would deter that.

  She was a little concerned about his condition, though.

  A cloud of smoke floated above the track, and the scent of burning rubber stung her nostrils. The sound of squealing tires overpowered the rock music coming from the garage speakers.

  She pulled around to the parking area behind Raleigh’s shop. Two hot rods sat there, awaiting his expertise. They weren’t professional cars like Tanner’s, but they were customized, flashy versions of cars she barely recognized. She knew that working on high-performance cars revved Raleigh up, so she was doubly grateful that he was still servicing her car.

  Well, he’d be servicing her new car. Birdie would be in the wind, along with the man who flew free on the currents. Which sounded terribly romantic and…compelling. Yeah, Tanner’s word. Besides the law firm, Grace had little to keep her in Chambliss. Except for one person. Someone she could love only from a distance. As painful as that was, she didn’t want to lose that tenuous tie. She’d made new friends, too, but opening herself up to people was incredibly hard. Plus, if her two secrets ever got out she’d feel utterly embarrassed and, in the case of her father’s implied passing, slightly deceitful. Well, perhaps Raleigh would understand, having held an even darker secret of his own.

  She rounded the garage just in time to catch Tanner’s blue Supra sliding around the turn on the track. Sunlight glinted off the metallic paint in between all the decals. What had he said about drifting? Controlled chaos. Yeah, she could see that as his back end spun around in what looked exactly like a car losing traction. Especially as it slid within inches of the wall. Then she saw the control part, the car coming out of the slide just in time to make another slide in the opposite direction into the middle zone of the oval track.

  Unlike a lot of folks around Chambliss, Grace had never found racing particularly interesting. Cars go round and round, with an occasional crash or a spinout. She’d always felt vaguely sadistic about hoping for a crash just to make things more interesting. As long as no one got hurt.

  Raleigh’s garage lay just beyond the end of the track. Concrete barriers prevented the cars from careening into the building, with a gap to allow passage between the garage and the track. Grace walked to one of those barriers, where she stood and watched.

  Maybe it was the soundtrack to all that sliding around—Steppenwolf’s “Born to Be Wild”—but the sight of that car ice-dancing, each move graceful and breathtaking as it veered perilously close to walls and cones, revved her up. She could barely see the driver through all the smoke, only a glimpse of a matching blue helmet.

 
“Whoo-ee!”

  Pax’s holler of joy pulled her from her mesmerized state. He was perched on the hood of a Mazda RX-8, watching Tanner with as much awe as she had been. But with a lot more verbal enthusiasm and arm-jabbing. Man crush, indeed, she thought with a chuckle, though she suspected it was more of a drift crush.

  Which reminded Grace that she’d come early to talk to Gemma. Tanner snagged her attention again as he careened past, then she searched for the tiny blonde. Gemma stood atop her own car, presumably for a better angle of the track, her eye glued to the viewfinder. A few seconds later, she lowered the camera and spotted Grace. Harley, their pit bull, ran over to greet Grace.

  “Hey, buddy,” she said, crouching down to scratch the dog’s head. His whole rear end shimmied with excitement. “You are awfully cute, you know that?”

  “Oh, he knows.” Gemma hopped down, her big gold hoops bouncing on her earlobes as she made her way over. “Glad you came early. I’m going up to the radio tower for aerial shots if you want to come.”

  The Supra zoomed toward the barrier they stood behind, spun around, and stopped only inches away.

  “Hey there, baby,” Tanner intoned Elvis style. And he was looking right at Grace.

  She opened her mouth to respond, but nothing came out. Which was probably just as well, because she might have said something like “Hey, baby, back.”

  Pax jumped off the hood of his car. “How did the course feel? You ready for some company out there?”

  Gemma aimed a smirk at Pax. “Is that where you learned the slide-toward-someone-and-freak-them-out thing?” She turned to Grace. “He did that to me before we started dating. I thought he was going to run me down.”

  Pax leaned in for a quick kiss. “I had total control of the car, sweetheart. And I wasn’t trying to run you down; I was trying to impress you.” To Grace, he said, “She ended up impressing me, though. Damn, the woman was as cool as a cuke.”

  Hmm, had Tanner been trying to impress her, then?

  Tanner took off his helmet and got out of the car, pulling his gaze from her to Gemma. “Your guy here’s a master of his vehicle, which’ll make him a great drifter.” He popped the hood to check something. “I just need to move a couple of cones, and we’re set to tango, Pax.” He slid a grin at Grace that did a lot more than watching him drift had done. “Want to do a ride-along?”

  “No,” she said a little too emphatically. “I’m going to the tower with Gemma to watch from up there. You know, get a better feel for it.”

  “You’ll get a really good feel for it sitting in the car.”

  Her heart raced at the thought. “No, thank you.”

  “You know you want to,” he teased, and it didn’t sound as if he was talking about riding in the car.

  “Do not,” she said.

  Pax asked him a question, drawing his riveting blue-eyed attention away. The two of them started walking toward the track, and Grace allowed herself to breathe. Sort of. She was, after all, watching Tanner’s denim-clad ass.

  Gemma leaned close, shoulder-bumping her. “You should go for that ride. It’ll make your heart race and your tummy tickle, and you won’t know which side is up for a few seconds at a time.”

  Grace’s hungry eyes took in Tanner’s body, in tight jeans and a knit shirt that molded his muscles. His collar was low enough that a sprinkling of chest hair showed above the V. His hair was rumpled even more than normal now that he’d scrubbed his fingers through it. She whispered, “Somehow I don’t think you’re talking about just sitting in the car with him.”

  There was the sparkly glint in Gemma’s brown eyes that Raleigh mentioned. “You can take it any way you want. But if your mind went there…” She shrugged. “I’m just saying, Pax took me for a drift run, and oh. my. god.” She fanned herself. “Made me so hot, we did it right there in the front seat.”

  Tanner chose right then to turn back, though he probably hadn’t heard Gemma’s husky whisper. “You sure you don’t want to smoke some tires with me?” he called out to Grace. “I’ll go easy on you.”

  “Yes.” She caught herself rubbing at her collarbone. “No smoking for me.” To Gemma, she whispered in a singsong way, “And that so-hot thing is why I’m not riding with him.”

  When he’d faced forward again, Gemma snorted. “You should have seen your face when I said that.” She gave a thoughtful scratch to her chin. “Now, who was it that was so bluntly suggesting all kinds of naughty things for me and Pax? Hmm. Oh, yeah. That was you.”

  “Well, you and Pax are so clearly perfect for each other.”

  Gemma waved Grace to follow her toward the radio tower, the two-story building where the judges could watch the whole track. “You were right. And guess what? I see that same kind of spark between you and Tanner. So I’ll be as blunt as you were during that particular conversation, given how you were eyeballing his ass just now. That man makes you horny.”

  No point in denying it. “Intensely.”

  “Ha, I knew it! And isn’t it funny how you were just saying you couldn’t find a man to use your woman parts with.”

  “I wouldn’t call it funny.” But yes, she had spilled about that the first time she and Gemma had had a girly conversation. “The wine loosened my tongue a bit too much, I’d say.”

  “Well, I’d say you found one.” She turned when they reached the foot of the stairs. “What I can’t figure out is why you didn’t, um, take a ride the night you met him.” She swept her hand toward the track, where the two men were lining up a pair of cones. “I mean, look at him.”

  Grace’s woman parts were confused, too. “Yeah, I heard you and Mia were conspiring to get us together again. A little heads-up would have been nice.”

  “I wanted to be here, but I had to help my dad at the B&B.” Gemma sprinted up the steps, Harley on her heels, and led Grace into a small room with one long desk facing the track and a lot of equipment. “If I’d given you advance warning, would you have come to get your car, or would you have sent your secretary for it?”

  Grace leaned against the desk and peered out. “Are you accusing me of being chicken?”

  “No way. But he said you two connected, and then you panicked and ran off, which I can’t even imagine you doing. Now, having some recent experience in the art of avoiding a man who totally revs you when you’re fighting it big-time, I suspected it was something like that. Given that you’ve been looking for a professional, little-bit-older-than-you man, I can understand why a guy like Tanner is off the charts. But what I can’t understand is, why not just do him? For fun?”

  “My God, you are friggin’ blunt!” Grace teased, because Gemma had said the same thing when she had, indeed, been quite blunt.

  Gemma doubled over laughing, which made Grace laugh, too. She was enjoying having female friends. As a rule, she didn’t trust women. They judged, gossiped, competed—at least, the ones she’d encountered. Truthfully, she hadn’t given one a chance since high school.

  Harley barked at their glee, his tail wagging. Gemma rubbed his chin. “Silly boy, you don’t even know what we’re laughing about.”

  Grace’s laughter faded as she watched the guys walk to their cars. She could be getting in with Tanner right now. He’d buckle her into that harness system, lean close…

  “Did you really do it in the front seat?” Grace asked, sharing the conspiratorial grin on Gemma’s face as she nodded. “You found your sensuality. That’s great.”

  Gemma climbed up on the desk and slid the window open. “Totally. You were right; when you find the guy, and he knows what he’s doing, and he loves you, well, it’s incredible. Mia and I agree—we want you to have that, too.”

  “That’s sweet, really. But Tanner’s not that guy. He might fit the first two criteria, but he’s made it clear that he’s not the settling-down type. Which makes sense. He’s at a place in life where he’s flying free, playing for a living. It’s time for me to look at my future.”

  “Then go back to my previous sugges
tion: just have fun with him. He looks like he’d be a lot of fun.” There was that sparkly thing in her eyes again. “A lot.”

  And, right on cue, two engines fired to life. The cars pulled around to the starting line.

  Grace sighed. “I had more fun just walking down the beach with him than I’ve had in a long time.”

  “That’s what he said, and then you ran off like Cinderella. I figured if he’d done something offensive you would have kicked him in the balls. But to run off? What’s the deal, Grace?”

  Grace watched the two cars tear away from the starting line, Tanner in the lead. Pax mirrored the Supra’s movements as it slid sideways at certain points on the course. It looked more like a dance, the cars staying close but not touching.

  Even though Gemma was busy snapping pictures, Grace sensed that she was waiting for an answer. She’d held her life and her feelings and thoughts close for so long, the thought of sharing even some of them tightened her chest.

  The cars rolled across the finish line, and now Gemma was looking at her in that expectant way.

  “The first time you kissed Pax, what did it feel like?”

  A smile broke out on Gemma’s face. “Like my heart would pound right out of my chest. Like my body would melt into a puddle. And like I’d just thrown myself off a cliff and…oh. I get it.”

  “I’ve never felt that before with anyone. Not even the one guy I thought I loved back in college. And, honestly, I’m going through some personal stuff right now that’s making me pretty tender. Especially knowing I’d probably never see him again. I don’t think he’d just drop off the face of the earth, but how awkward are those kinds of phone calls and texts?”

  “I guess I can see that.”

  “And he has a lot of money. He bought my T-bird on a whim, and wrote out a check for twenty thousand like it was nothing. Then he called the bank and had enough clout to ask them to push it through.”