Page 22 of Speed Trap

“I’ll be fine—” I objected, but a third push at my back stilted my protest.

Hawk shot me a quick look and the slightest shake of his head. I caught the motion and held my tongue as he turned back to the cop, a smile I recognized from studying his—as my driver’s competitor—media campaigns. His public face.

After the hours spent understanding who this man was underneath all the pomp and bullshit facade, I kind of hated it.

The easy smile didn’tquitereach his eyes that dulled with too much practice, his smile too-wide, too damn bright. It was a very different face from the one he presented in private, from the one he’d shown me today, when I needed it.

The fact I knew that about him floored me for a moment, long enough for the conversion to flow around me.

“Yes, yes of course. I can have a car drive by her…” —Officer Red-Face checked his notes— “Miss Cooper’s house each night until we get a response. And we can try to hurry the results. Is that okay?” The cop stumbled over his words in his eagerness to answer Hawk, all smiles and nods, and not a single glance my way.

“I don’t think I exist next to you,” I murmured, half-turning to Hawk to keep my comment private.

Oddly enough, I wasn’t upset, or maybe it was a good thing that I wasn’t narcissistic enough tobeupset.

Hawk’s eyebrow rose as he spoke easily with the officer, and I had to remember that the public man and the private could never be one and the same. Like Benson, Hawk was all show for most of the year and, despite the emotion he had shown me over the past few hours, the only time the drivers really cared was when they were on that track beating their personal goals.

I slipped out of Hawk’s hold to back up a few steps. He shot a furrowed glance my way but I shook my head and smiled, donning my own practiced PR mask. I needed space to think. And that was a ridiculously hard thing to do standing next to KC Hawking when he had kissed me stupid a few hours ago and knotted my heart in threads of his own making since then.

We’d gone from being at each other's throats to being in each other’s back pockets so fast I ached from whiplash. The biggest problem was that I had started tolikethe person I suspected Hawk was underneath, and that posed fresh problems I couldn’t deal with right now.

I wanted to walk away, catch a taxi home and never come back but I had my own broken baby to look after. Where my father had kept the windshield spotless, the glass lay crumpled, sagging inward. The paintwork twisted into a form unrecognizable as the sleek lines that made the brand so covetable as I struggled to remember the ruin the way Dad had kept it, howIhad kept it after he had passed.

Spotless, polished regularly and when I was away, wrapped under its cover, not a scratch in the paintwork anywhere instead of the vandalism it had acquired while I was in the kitchen kissing Hawk.

Now that same prized memory looked like someone had taken to it with a novelty sized sledgehammer.

My hands flexed at my sides as I considered getting one of my own for when we found out who had done the damage. I tapped my phone, torn between calling the garage or a tow truck.Getting towed was the obvious option, but Benson—being the control freak he was—would have a fit if I didn't call it inandrely on him to ‘fix’ my problem.

And then he’d mansplain my issues to me, along with all the things I’d done wrong today.

No thanks.

I huffed out a half breath that could have been a laugh or a sob. My lips pressed tight together, I began to search for a tow company that wouldn’t cost me the earth.

“Hey.” Hawk jogged to my side.

His knuckle tilted my head back and despite my intent not to look at him, I did it anyway. It wasn’t like he forced the action—more that I wanted to take comfort from the company he offered.

We really had done a one-eighty in the last few hours. Or maybe we’d turned enough circles to confuse hell out of us both.

Yet he was still here.

“Hey.” I sent him a tight smile. “Your fan club left?”

“Only after a selfie and an autograph.” He grimaced. “I’m sorry. I felt like I was taking over but…it was the fastest way to get you what you needed.”

My brow furrowed. “What do I need?”

And who the hell are you to decide that for me?Maybe he was more like Benson than I’d thought.

“To be safe. Someone targeted you, specifically.” Hawk surveyed me with knowing eyes.

Oh.I gave him a mental apology even if I couldn’t say the words. “That makes sense, I guess.” I found a tow company that didn’t look like it would empty my bank account, and hit call.

Hawk’s hand closed around mine, and his thumb tapped the red button at the bottom of the screen. “Sunny. Wait.” He didn’t let go, didn’t speak until I looked up at him. “First, I can get you a free tow, if you’d like. No, I’m not trying to control you, but Iwant you to consider the budget option. I know the driver, and he’s a good man.”

My eyes narrowed as I held my chin up in faux defiance as his show of goodwill, stifling the smile that wanted to curl the corners of my lips.

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