“So why were you hanging out with him?”
“Why do you care? I thought I was just someone you were dating casually.”
He thought about that. He’d tried to keep it casual. Their lunch had been anything but casual in the end. “It’s not?listen, I don’t know what I feel for you, but I do know I don’t want you dating another guy.”
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and looked up at him. “I’m glad to hear that. I feel the same way.”
She smiled up at him. And he knew he was lost. He leaned down and kissed her because he didn’t want her to see the emotions in his eyes. He kissed her because it had been too long since he’d had her in his arms and he was only just coming to realize that he wanted her? in his arms and in his life?and he had no idea how he was going to get her to stay there.
Annie pulled back as her cell phone started playing a song. She glanced at the screen and let the call go to voice mail.
“A bunch of us are going to the Beverly Wilshire Hotel for drinks. Want to join me?”
“That sounds great.”
AFTER THE BLOCK PARTY Tucker and Jared climbed into the Ford Cobra that Tucker drove when he was off the track.
“I’ve got a date.”
Tucker glanced across the seats and stared at him with that knowing gaze. “I thought Annie shut you down.”
Jared didn’t respond to that. “Well, you thought wrong.”
“Oh. So now you’re running to her side.”
“Tucker…”
“This isn’t like you. I’m going to ask you again? what’s this woman got going on that has you so tied in knots?”
“I don’t know.”
Tucker laughed then, not cruelly, more sympathetically. “Tell her I’m sorry I accused her of tampering with my car.”
It turned out that one of the new guys on Tucker’s own team had removed the tape after it had been placed. So there was no tampering at all. But Jared wasn’t going to bring that subject up unless Annie did. He wanted to get back in her good graces, not remind her that he’d asked her to prove she hadn’t done something immoral and illegal.
“Want to come with me? Meet up with her?”
“Ah, no.”
Jared glanced at his friend, arching one eyebrow at him.
“Sister of my enemy and all that stuff.” Tucker said the words casually, but Jared understood how the other man felt. When they’d first come to NASCAR they hadn’t understood all the rules and they’d been branded from the beginning as mavericks?because they’d been so creative with the rules. And Dave Jenner had been one of those labeling them.
“Dave’s not really your enemy, is he?”
Tucker shrugged as he raced down the dark highway. “No, we’re just rivals. But something about that guy? actually that whole family?makes my skin itch.”
Jared knew exactly what Tucker meant. They were so close and supportive and two loners like Tucker and him…well, all that Jenner family love made him a little itchy, too. The last time he’d let himself really enjoy being a part of a family was way back before his parents had died.
“I know what you mean,” Jared said, thinking of Alan’s hounding him about Annie earlier.
“I think that’s part of the problem. Ya know, I want them to be too good to be true but they aren’t. Even Dave?hell, he really is gentlemanly both on and off the track. He has his aggressive stuff like any other driver, but he comes off looking good no matter what he does.”
Jared leaned back in the seat, not sure he agreed with Tucker. He didn’t want Annie to be too good to be true, but a part of him feared that she was.
He wanted her to be exactly as she seemed. Not a woman who was looking for a red-hot affair. Not a woman like any other he’d ever met.
“What’s with all the quiet?”
No way was he going to talk about Annie with Tucker. He just wasn’t going there. And in the past he would have. They always talked about the women they dated, but then they both had an endless stream of women who breezed through their lives.
“She’s different, Tucker.”
Tucker glanced over at him, taking his eyes from the road for a minute.
“Are you serious about her?”
Jared didn’t know. But his gut tightened when he thought about those moments in the corporate suite when she’d walked away and he hadn’t been too sure he could get her back.
“Yeah.”
Tucker didn’t say anything else for a while. Finally he said, “I’ll come out with you guys.”
“What changed?”
“If she’s going to be important in your life, then I want to know her better.”