Page 10 of Fast-Track Fiancé

‘That doesn’t make sense. Humans don’t melt,’ she argued.

‘Dios.’ Tristan leaned his head forward, pressing his cheek against hers to avoid bursting into laughter at the utter ridiculousness of the situation. ‘It just means to bend, to relax into me.’

Nina frowned, turning her face away from him. ‘I can’t see how anyone will believe we’re in the midst of a whirlwind romance when we can’t even stand close to one another without arguing.’

‘They say intense, combative relationships are often the most passionate.’

‘Or the most toxic,’ she countered.

‘Perhaps.’ He pulled her into his arms once more, not missing the slight hitch in her breath as her chest met his. ‘Good thing our intensity is all just for show, then, hmm?’

He thought he heard a faint growl under her breath before she gave in, allowing him to rest her head against his chest while he wrapped his arms around her. With one hand, he moved her hair aside while the other ran a slow path up beneath her leather jacket to stroke along her spine. The thin cotton of her T-shirt was soft beneath his hands, his fingertips tingling as he slowly slid them up and down with measured slowness. She might not have melted, but she certainly relaxed into his touch, her breathing becoming more shallow. She practically vibrated at the caress, her body moulding to his own.

She was like a little cat, he smiled to himself, all claws and teeth until she was stroked into submission. But he barely had a minute to savour his win before she disentangled herself from his grip and they turned to find a mother and her young daughter standing nearby. As Tristan watched in fascination, Nina Roux transformed from the awkward, prickly woman determined to hold him at arm’s length to something else entirely. Her voice softened and her eyes sparkled as she spoke to the young girl and signed a number of items with her scrawling autograph.

After a quick chat with the girl’s mother about signing up for an upcoming academy open day, they were alone again once more but the haze of their embrace had long gone and been replaced by that same tension he’d felt during their lunch.

Tristan insisted upon driving her back to headquarters, refusing her thinly veiled lie that she needed to walk back on Sophie’s orders to make up for missing her afternoon session in the driving simulator.

‘Your busy schedule didn’t seem to mind a little detour for fan adoration,’ he said silkily as the sun-soaked Monte Carlo coast whipped past them.

‘I like making time for the kids.’ She shrugged. ‘They’re easier than the adults most of the time.’

‘The open day they asked about, it was for a youth academy?’

‘The Lola Roux Racing Academy, yes. I founded it a few years back to get more girls into the sport. We have a few training facilities set up around Europe and they do global mobile recruitment drives and scholarships too.’ She’d almost forgotten about the upcoming virtual open-day event and quickly opened up her phone to tap a few notes into her schedule.

‘A colour-coded schedule. Interesting...’

She looked up to find Tristan’s eyes still firmly on the road, but a small smirk on his lips. Feeling self-conscious, she tapped her screen closed. ‘Colour-coding makes it easier for me to follow. I like to be organised.’

Truthfully, she had to be organised or she didn’t function, but she didn’t need to tell him all of that. He didn’t need to know how she had only two speeds as a professional athlete, workaholic or burnt-out mess. She put a lot of effort into remaining firmly on the working side, so that no one had to see how hard she fell when things came to a stop.

‘Do you fund the academy yourself?’ he asked a few moments later, spurring her out of her thoughts.

‘We originally had support from Roux Racing, but that was cut a couple of years back. It’s a big reason why I need to win more races but, for now, yes, I fund it myself.’

He nodded, hands gripping the wheel even tighter. ‘You do most things by yourself, from what I can tell.’

‘Perhaps I just know that I’m reliable,’ she countered.

‘And everyone else isn’t?’

She remained silent, refusing to rise to the bait of another argument with him. Not when she was still recovering from that embrace on the pier. The way he’d enveloped her in his arms first, then begun stroking her back, and she’d just melted like putty in his hands.

‘What about you?’ she asked as he brought the car to a stop in front of the gleaming glass façade of the Falco Roux headquarters. ‘You seem quite content to run things from afar while you maintain your role of wild playboy. Do you honestly think the media will believe that I’ve somehow tamed you?’

He turned in his seat until he faced her, midnight-blue eyes sparkling in the late afternoon sun. ‘Everything about me is curated; they see what I want them to see. I am in control of the narrative at all times and that is how I prefer it.’

‘Does anyone know the real Tristan Falco?’

‘Why...do you wish to disassemble me like one of your engines? Find out what makes me tick?’

‘I don’t care what makes you tick,’ she said, inhaling a sharp breath when he leaned forward, placing a kiss upon one cheek then moving slowly to the other side of her face to do the same. A traditional goodbye gesture she’d made herself a thousand times in her life—so why did it feel so intimate with him? The scent of his cologne filled her lungs before she had a chance to defend herself, making her stomach swirl again in that unsettling way it had on the terrace in the Paris museum the night before. He was deliberately disarming her, that was the only explanation for it. He was clearly trying to make this temporary fake fiancée ruse as uncomfortable as possible for her.

‘You’re getting better at that,’ he murmured, pulling away.

‘Better at what?’

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