Wes said something to Jax over the console and Jax laughed so hard he doubled over. The sight and sound eased Rubi’s nerves and made her smile again. “God, they’re so cute together. ” She cut a sidelong glance at Lexi. “Don’t think so hard. I can hear the gears grinding. ”
“What’s going on?” she asked. “You’re out of sorts today. And this…” She gestured toward the car. “Is something going on with Wes?”
“Denial and redirect,” Rachel said, crossing her arms with a huff and a teasing glare for Rubi. “That’s all you’ll get from her. ”
Wes glanced through the windshield, and his gaze linked with Rubi’s. Electric current traveled between them and zapped her chest like a defibrillator—the same way it had just before the stunt.
A sudden, swamping, completely irrational sense of loneliness opened in the pit of her stomach. She couldn’t have him. No matter how much she might want him. But her brain was at war with her body. And those were both at war with some intangible part of her—maybe her soul, if she had one. All the conflict created a niggling sense of panic deep in her chest.
“Nothing’s going on,” she said and forced a deep, easy breath into her lungs. “And I’m doing my damnedest to keep it that way. ”
Wes’s head popped from the car. “Can I drive it? Please, please, please?”
“Damn,” Rachel murmured under her breath. “How can you resist that?”
Rubi shook her head. “I have no idea. ”
He rounded the door and held onto it as if he didn’t want to let go. “Please? I’ll be really nice to her. ”
“Screw nice. ” Hearing Wes assign the Aston a gender as if it were a person broke any resistance Rubi had left. “Drive the hell out of her. That’s what she’s made for. ”
Wes’s gorgeous face lit up like the sun. She tossed him the keys, and he whooped, fisting both hands in the air over his head.
“Damn,” she said on an exhale. “The man steals my breath. Come on, Rachel. He’s hot. And you’re totally his sweet type. Can’t you take him off the market?”
“I’m not as sweet as I look, but I still wouldn’t know what to do with all that testosterone. You may think I’m his type, but he’s not mine. And, in case you hadn’t noticed, you are all he can look at or talk about. ”
She didn’t want to hear that. Rubi cut Lexi a sidelong glance. “Tell Jax to find him a damn girlfriend, would you?”
“You traded your Ferrari?” Wes jogged toward her, grabbed Rubi’s hand, and tugged her toward the car. “I put a note on your windshield this morning. ”
“I got it. ”
His boyish glee eased a sliver of Rubi’s discomfort. Or at least shoved it back into the dark for now. And a rush of adrenaline always soothed her nerves. Maybe this was just what the two of them needed to get back on even—friendship—ground.
“Grab a table,” he called over his shoulder to the others. “We’re taking the long way. ”
Three
This wild drive might be an awesome distraction from Wes’s angst over Wyatt’s surgery, but the adrenaline rush did nothing to douse his infatuation with the woman next to him.
They’d lowered the convertible roof, and the wind grazed their skin and tangled Rubi’s hair into a dark, whipping halo. The midday sun burned down while the lightning-fast sports car gripped every curve in the road, the speed pumping thrill after thrill through Wes’s veins.
But the best part was having Rubi beside him, her laughter filling his head with every new surge. Her squeals piercing his ears with each fresh skid.
He’d known she was trouble from the moment he’d seen her at the airport, all scarlet mini skirt, crimson Ferrari, and fiery flirtation. Nothing he’d believed he’d wanted until recently. While she was everything he’d first thought—feisty, funny, and flirty—she’d also turned out to be far more than he’d ever expected—wickedly intelligent, loyal to the core, and selflessly generous.
And he couldn’t even begin to calculate her heat quotient. She was off the fucking charts.
But Wes wanted more than friendship with Rubi, and he was ready to take a hammer to those walls she kept erecting between them.
Another tight curve appeared in the road. Wes slowed into the turn, then accelerated out, jetting the small car onto the straightaway at the crest of the Hollywood Hills and leaving the thick scent of burnt rubber in their wake to the sound of Rubi’s thrilled scream.
He’d driven this desolate road hundreds of times in as many different vehicles, but this was—hands down—the best ride ever. At the steepest grade, he pulled into a turnout where they overlooked all of Los Angeles and cut the engine.
A flush softened her light cocoa skin and her hair wound around her gorgeous face in a chaotic burst of darkness. Any other woman he knew would be cowering against the door. Or ranting over his insanity. But Rubi reveled in the speed, the adrenaline, the risk. The same way Wes did.
“You crazy bastard. ” She laughed the words and pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head. “Now I know how Lexi feels when I drive. ”