Page 11 of Fast & Reckless
Violet shrugged like her suit was full of bugs. “I look like somebody’s mum.”
Mira took a moment to consider her next question. She didn’t want to pry, but she and Violet were becoming friends. Friends asked personal questions, right?
“So,” she ventured, “you don’t exactly seem like the public relations type—”
Violet let out a loud bark of laughter. “You want to know how a girl like me ended up in a place like this?”
“Kind of.”
Violet hesitated for just a beat. “I used to date this guy, the lead singer in a band.”
“That makes much more sense.”
“Yeah, but I wasn’t cut out for the groupie thing, you know? Hanging around the studio so I could tell the guys how brilliant they are.” She rolled her eyes. “So I started doing PR for the band kind of by accident, because I was bored. I’d go find club managers or reps from music websites and chat them up while the band set up. Turns out, I had some talent for it.”
“So what happened to the guy?”
Violet chuckled wryly, and for the first time, Mira saw a flash of something approaching a soft side in Violet’s expression. “He dumped me for one of those idiot groupies who hung around the studio and told him how brilliant he was.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It was all very cliché.” As quickly as that flash of vulnerability appeared, it was gone, and Mira got the distinct feeling that she shouldn’t poke at it. “I definitely got the best part of the deal with the on-the-job training. I figured I’d learned some marketable skills so … I marketed them. I answered an advert for Simone’s assistant and talked her intohiring me. I was already a racing fan, so it was a good fit. Turns out the job is pretty much the same as rock, just a different group of contacts. And fewer dodgy clubs with sticky floors. The drivers are definitely easier to manage than egomaniac wannabe rock stars.”
Again, that door seemed locked tight, so she changed the subject. “How long is the drive to London?”
“With traffic, about an hour.”
“I thought we didn’t start until ten? Why are we leaving so early?”
“Because we have another stop to make. I didn’t trust Will to get his arse up and to London on his own, so I told him we’d pop round and give him a lift.”
“Lovely,” Mira muttered.
Every time she’d crossed paths with him over the last few weeks—and that happened too often for comfort—it still gave her butterflies in her stomach, as much as she tried to squash them. And now she’d be forced into his presence for an entire day. She already felt nervous.
The car pulled to a stop in front of a quaint stone house, saved from being described as a “cottage” only because of its large size. It even had weathered stone walls and an honest-to-God thatched roof. It looked like something straight out ofThe Holiday.
Her eyes went wide as she took it all in. “Is this where he lives?”
If she had to guess, she’d have thought a sleek new penthouse condo, something with glass walls and brushed-chrome fixtures, very minimalist and male.
“He has a place in London,” Violet replied through a yawn. “I think he’s just renting this. Well, off you go. Fetch him.”
“Me? Why me?”
“You’re the wrangler. I’m PR.”
“Wrangling talent is in your literal job description.”
“You’re new, which means I get to pull seniority and make you deal with it.”
Mira frowned but didn’t argue as she got out of the car and made her way up the stone walk to the front door to ring the bell. Silence. She rang it again. And waited. More silence.
This time, she raised a fist and pounded on the door, not stopping until she heard a muffled crash and a curse from inside. The door swung open, revealing a very rumpled and nearly naked Will.
Oh, no.
The body was just as flawless as she’d guessed—not that she’d spentmuchtime imagining his body under his clothes. At least, she’d triedvery hardnot to imagine it. The reality was better than anything her imagination had cooked up, however—a nicely muscled chest tapering into a slim waist and hips,thankfullycovered by boxer briefs. A delicious V of muscle ran down, down, down to a pretty significant bulge. He had one hand on his hip and the other braced on the doorframe. The muscles and tendons in his arms were flexed, a landscape of male upper-body beauty. His eyes were narrowed as he took her in from under a riot of wrecked dark hair.
