Page 40 of Fast & Reckless
“So the last time you were in Singapore …” she began, then trailed off.
He glanced over at her. “Yeah?”
“You got so drunk, you don’t remember it? You’d just been signed to a Formula One team,” she said in disbelief. “I don’t get it.”
“Ah, yeah,” he said, shrugging in discomfort. He’d been such an idiot back then, playing fast and loose with the chance of a lifetime. That was a mistake he only intended to make once. “My head was not in a great place.”
When she just kept watching him in silence, he sighed. She wasn’t letting him off that easy.
“So you know my family is … well, they’re …”
“Rich?”
He sputtered a laugh. “Well, yes, they’re that, too. But I just meant they’re … uptight. They don’t approve of me.”
Her brow furrowed in a way he was rapidly finding adorable. “But, why? There are maybe thirty people on earth who can do what you do.”
“Careful, Mira, you’re starting to sound impressed.”
She chuckled, nudging him with her shoulder. He nudged back. Whether she was aware of it or not, she wasn’t shying away from touching him like before. That had to count as progress. He could still feel the shape of her thigh under his hand. Now it was seared into his brain, and he wanted more.
The path emptied out into a plaza, so they kept walking, skirting the marina, and getting farther and farther away from the track, the hotel, and all the other reminders of the real world.
“Come on,” she said. “Tell me what happened.”
“Well, to start, unlike you, I was rubbish at school. It was all so bloody boring. The only thing I was really good at, the only thing Ireallywanted to do, was racing. And that was fine when I was just racing karts as a kid. But I was supposed to leave all that behind when I grew up. Get serious, go to uni, go to work in the family firm.”
“I’m guessing that wasn’t part of your plan?”
He scoffed. “I didn’t even try for uni. I’m the first person in my family since the Norman Conquest without a university degree.”
“I’m pretty sure they hadn’t invented college yet.”
He chuckled. “Maybe not, but let me tell you, as soon as they built unis, the Hawleys sent their spawn. My family owns a bank. Did you know that?”
“I heard something about it. Like Citibank?”
“Not exactly. There’s only one branch of Hawley and Sons, near Temple Bar, and it doesn’t take new clients.”
“So who banks there?”
He scoffed. “The same dusty English families that have been banking there since time immemorial. Hawley and Sons is abouttradition. Everything done just as it would have been in the time of George the fucking Third.”
“And then you came along.”
“And then I came along. I swear, I can’t even breathe in that place. It smells like a tomb.” Just thinking about the mahogany and velvet interior of Hawley and Sons made him feel like his skin was too small for him. If he’d had to spend his whole life in that place it would have driven him mad.
“Yeah, I can’t picture you in a place like that at all.”
“Neither could I, and thankfully I had options. When I landed a spot in Hansbach’s young drivers program, the parents were willing to give me a year or so to get it out of my system. I mean, most drivers don’t make it. They figured I’d wash out with the masses and get on with real life.”
“But you didn’t.”
“Nope. I got signed to Hansbach’s Formula One team instead.” He paused for a moment, remembering when he’d gone home to tell them about the contract, stupidly thinking they’d be happy. It was only the biggest news of his life, thebest thing that hadeverhappened to him. Dumb kid that he’d been, he thought it would prove to them that he was doing the right thing, that he was in the right place. It hadn’t even occurred to him that they wouldn’t see it as good news.
Inhaling deeply, he flashed her a forced smile. “They were, to put it mildly, not happy. Huge bloody row. Lots of horrible things said. You get the idea.”
“And they still haven’t come around?”
