Pit Stop: Baby! (Crescent Cove 4)

“Actually, yes, just a few doors down.”

I paid for my coffee and tucked an extra five bucks in her tip jar. “Thanks.”

Her eyes brightened. “No, thank you.”

“Good luck with the wine bar. Though you don’t look old enough to sell.”

She played with the strings of her apron. “I’ll be twenty-one next month.”

Christ, my bones just ached at the thought of being twenty-one again. Then again, being crammed in a car without a fucking door would do that. “Happy early birthday, darlin’.”

“Thanks.” She lowered her lashes and did that peering through them thing that chicks learned at age four.

I lifted my coffee in a salute. “Have a good one.” I knew that look and before she asked for my number or passed me hers, I needed to get the hell out.

Luckily, she was probably too young to recognize me. NASCAR wasn’t exactly huge in the area, but I never knew when a fan would come out of the woodwork.

I took a right out of the little shop, and sure enough, just around the bend a sidewalk chalkboard sign had bouquet specials listed. I sipped my coffee as I checked out the spreads in the window, then choked at the familiar woman arranging daisies and some other fluffy red flower in a basket.

My heart flipped around in my chest as if I was coming up on the damn checkered flag in the final lap. What the hell was she doing here?

Before I could think twice, I pushed through the door. A bell that could be in one of those damn Hallmark movies tinkled above my head. She didn’t even look up. But a pretty older woman came around a half wall.

“Hello.” Her face crinkled up into a friendly smile.

I smiled at her, but nodded at my intended target. “I see someone I know.”

“Oh.” Her smile faltered a little. “We don’t really do social calls during work hours.”

My eyebrow zinged up. Social call? I widened my smile, adding a little charm. “She’s my sister-in-law.”

“Oh. You’re related to Dare, aren’t you?”

“Guilty.”

Her eyes went big and she nibbled on her lower lip. “That race car driver.”

My oh, shit antennae went a little twitchy, but I nodded. “That’s me.”

“You were all the town could talk about after the wedding.”

“I bet.”

The woman had the good grace to blush. “Yes, well it was quite…exciting.”

That was one word for my first official interaction with Rylee Ford. Her screaming at me under a gazebo full of lights with half the town in attendance for my brother’s wedding wasn’t likely to be forgotten anytime soon.

Not by me either.

She was the one who’d wanted no names, no do-overs, nothing but one night. Too bad she couldn’t always have what she wanted.

But maybe I was about to get a second chance when it came to my wants.

We’d just see.

I lifted my finger to my lips and strolled over to where Rylee was bopping her head to some internal beat. Or to the wireless earbuds she was wearing. She moved her hips in a soft sway that I remembered all too well. Okay, so maybe it had been more of an undulating rhythm as she rode me blind.

Thankfully, I was wearing a button-down shirt with the tails over my jeans to hide just how well I remembered that night in December.