Pit Stop: Baby! (Crescent Cove 4)

“Got Scream in there?”

She paged ahead. “Of course I do.”

“Now the real question. Popcorn?”

“Caramel and cheddar.”

My smile spread. “Oh, we’re going to be very good friends.”

“I’ll get the popcorn and hot chocolate.”

I dropped onto the couch. Tonight could have gone very badly, but somehow I’d backed into finding a new friend. It almost made up for the very terrifying realization that I had to deal with sleepwalking again.

Just freaking awesome.

Three

Being a family man was for the birds. Whatever the fuck that actually meant.

I wasn’t quite sure what had possessed my brother Dare to go from one small town to an even more bucolic one, but then again, here I was visiting for the second time in a handful of months. The last time I’d been home before that had been…well, years ago.

The racing circuit was a very exacting mistress. She demanded all my time and I’d been more than happy to follow her from town to town. The lure of the track and the power of the cars had always fired my blood. Even before my brother had left the NASCAR pro-circuit, I’d been angling for a way to get my name up on the leaderboard.

It had been slightly easier with Dare out of the picture. He’d been a rising star with more natural aptitude than anyone else driving at the time. How many drivers could race their way up the ranks into the top ten within a year?

Not many. But he had. And I’d longed to do the same.

When he left to start a family, I’d been happy to step up and show everyone that I wasn’t just Dare Kramer’s little brother. I’d been shocked that he would give everything up for a kid and that shrew of a woman he’d gotten together with, but that was Dare. Ever the responsible one. Even when he’d been working in the pit crews, he’d been sought after as the singular mechanic to have on your team. But his blinding loyalty had kept him from climbing out of the rookie ranks.

And now he was here in Crescent Cove at a mechanic shop doing fucking oil changes instead of working on the crankiest engines on the planet.

I couldn’t be that guy. Not ever.

Oh, because you’re so happy?

I ignored the voice. I’d been actively avoiding it since I’d left Nashville. I had three different sponsor contracts sitting in my email inbox right now. My agent was blowing up my phone every other hour asking what the hell I was waiting for.

My last sponsor had decided against doing another year on the pro-circuit. Instead of freaking out like my entire pit crew, I’d felt nothing but relief. My usual crew had scattered to the four winds to other teams within a week. Not a single one of them had even bothered to ask me if I was moving on to another team. They’d just hit the road.

And that was the life. Ever changing when it came to pit crews and sponsors, even the cars.

Me? I’d just been driving for pleasure for the first time in nearly ten years.

I’d driven out to California and took the time to actually enjoy the coastal highway instead of flying over it between races. The motor on my Camaro had shit the bed halfway across Colorado. That was pretty much when I decided my cross country escapade was over.

Driving solo wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

In more ways than one.

So, here I was back in Crescent Cove. No crew, no stock car, and no real idea what the hell I wanted to do with myself. I could take a year off and try to get back into the game. I’d have to practically start over to gain traction again, and part of that was appealing.

Everything seemed too easy, too boring right now. My life was literally built around a stopwatch and driving in circles. Once, it had meant everything to me and I wasn’t sure when that started to change.

The day a huntress made you beg.

I tightened my fingers around the steering wheel of my rental. Dark hair, dark eyes, and a laugh that stayed with me months later.

Of course that laugh came out of a mouth I couldn’t forget for a number of other reasons.