Fast & Hard (The Fast 1)

I expect her to race out of the room and finally go home to whatever vanilla office job she belongs in but she stays, in quiet rage, for the rest of this dull press session. As soon as it’s over she tears out of the room though.

Good, she’s on her way home. She’s a sexy babysitter in her little black team shorts and a tight polo shirt, but it’s time for her to go, just like all the others.

Celeritas doesn’t get to win this fight.

Alessi and I are shooting the shit on our walk out of the press conference down a long hallway headed back toward the garages when he taps me and points. The goddamn nanny is waiting for me at the end of the hallway and it doesn’t look like she wants an autograph or a selfie.

“Don’t leave, mate. We’ll need a witness when she murders me and throws my body into the bay,” I grumble to him.

“Dude, you’re on your own with that shit,” he replies before abandoning me in the hallway.

She’s so mad it’s actually cute. Her long hair is tied onto the top of her head and even the tips of her ears are red with anger. I’m six foot something and she’s five foot nothing, yet she’s looking at me like she’s going to take me outside and beat the shit out of me.

“Nanny!” I smile and exclaim as if I’m overjoyed to see her. “Do you need a lift to the airport? I could have one of the guys pull a car around.”

Mallory takes in a long, deep breath and squares off with me. “We aren’t going to the airport, Lennox. We have a photo session with Choman Palé so let’s go.” She grabs me by the elbow and is trying to drag me along, which is so comically adorable I let her.

“Choman what? The watch company?” I ask her as she pulls me along, not releasing my elbow because she must think I’ll run off and she must believe herself capable of stopping me.

“Yes, the watch company, Lennox. You know, one of your sponsors?”

“I wouldn’t wear one of those gaudy watches if you paid me,” I grumble.

And I wouldn’t. I don’t. I’m not above buying expensive things if they make me happy. I have supercars and for a while, I had a yacht. I can be a rich bastard when it suits me. I just see no value in a £50,000 hunk of ostentatious gold on my wrist that does nothing more than advertise to the world ‘I’m a douche.’

“They do pay you, Lennox. That’s the point. They pay you several hundred thousand dollars,” she rolls her eyes.

“No, they don’t. They pay Celeritas. Not me.”

“What is the difference? Same thing!” She turns and yells at me.

“No,” I bark and crowd into her space. She takes a step backward and bumps into the wall behind. “You listen up, my naive little American nanny. It is not the same thing. This isn’t some kumbaya feel-good festival. Every single person you see here is out for one thing and one thing only — himself.”

Her hands are flat on the wall, her chest heaving, and she’s searching my eyes back and forth. “Including you,” she snarls.

I inch closer to her and she sucks in a breath. “Especially me.”

We hold this position for several beats until her shoulders drop and she softens ever so slightly, which is the last thing I expect someone in her position to do when I’m in her face and yelling. She looks small and vulnerable and for just a split second, I feel guilty for raising my voice. But she needs to know.

She’s nothing but another pawn, no different than I am.

“Why are you like this?” She whispers.

“What am I like, love?” I revert to my smoldering facade that never fails to drop panties and this time I do reach up to touch her cheek with the back of my fingers. Not in a sexual way, I just want to feel the heat causing the red fire alighting her face, remind myself of what it felt like to be that passionate about anything.

She turns her face into my fingers just a millimeter, a fraction of a second, but I think I felt it. It’s over before I can be sure and instead, she says, “You’re such an asshole!”

I can’t help but step back and chuckle, “Aye, I am. Don’t forget that.”

She pushes off the wall and starts back down the hallway and because I need to go take pictures with ugly watches now, I follow. Or that’s what I tell myself.

“And go home,” I say to her back as she continues marching ahead.

“Not going home, Lennox, deal with it!”

Five

Mallory