Page 46 of Fast & Reckless
He blinked. “What? Now you can’t be my friend, either?”
That forced a scoff of humorless laughter free from her throat, thinking of the last few intoxicating minutes … his mouth on hers, his hands on her body, his leg pressed between her thighs. “Come on, Will. This isn’t exactly a friendship.”
“No,” he snapped. “It’s a little more than friendship, if you’d quit lying to yourself about it.”
“Because of course, it’s all about you getting laid.”
He snapped back like she’d slapped him. That was a low blow and she knew it. But she was panicking, and she just needed him to stop—stop pursuing her, stop tempting her—because she’d very nearly given in to him just now, and that was the one thing she couldn’t do.
“Sure,” he finally said, throwing his hands in the air. “Because that’s who I am, right, Mira? You’re no better than all those bloody reporters. You made up your mind about me before you ever knew me.”
The sting of that lodged deep. But he was right—she had judged him before she ever really knew him. She realized she was wrong now, but it didn’t matter. Let him believe that if it put an end to this.
“This is really for the best, Will. You don’t want to get involved with me anyway. Trust me.”
She couldn’t handle looking him in the eye right now, so she didn’t. Turning away before he could see her eyes glass over with tears, she ran the rest of the way across the park, out to the nearby street, where she could call a car, get back to work, and leave fantasies behind her, where they belonged.
22
Barcelona, Spain
As Mira made her way across the blacktop of the paddock, it almost felt like the soles of her shoes were melting into it. Spain was in the middle of an unprecedented heat wave. The sun beat down relentlessly on the asphalt, and the breeze, as hot as a gust from an open oven, had her credentials dancing at the end of the lanyard around her neck. Her hair stuck to the back of her neck like a hot, wet towel.
At least here they had the comfort of their custom mobile facilities that traveled with them to the European races, and she personally thought Lennox’s were the best on the circuit. Lennox’s impressive two-story glossy-blue structure had the garage below, offices above, and a race command center off to the side. Despite its size, the whole thing came apart like LEGO bricks, to be trucked to the next race. Their hospitality center was even larger, with a glass-fronted dining room and a roof deck.
She slipped into the race command center as quietly as possible, exhaling as the cool air hit her. Even though she’d come here to find him, her stomach twisted with anxiety when she spotted her father puzzling over a snarl of data on one ofthe monitors. It had been three weeks since that disaster in Singapore and she still felt like she was trying to make up for her fuckup.
During the garage load-in in Singapore, one of the massive equipment carts had come loose from its rolling dolly, pinning one of the guys from the pit crew against a wall. In the end, Ben hadn’t been too badly injured, but he’d had to go to the hospital for X-rays and stitches. It was chaos and no one knew how to reach his wife back in England. That’s when Miranda’s absence had been noticed. She should have been there, pulling up Ben’s emergency contact info and calling his wife herself. Instead, she’d been off in some park, kissing Will, and forgetting every single other thing, while half a dozen people were trying to track her down, including her dad.
She’d felt sick with mortification. And she’d seen it, that doubt in her father’s eyes again. Seeing it was bad enough. It was worse to know he was right to doubt. She’d fucked up. Again.
She’d spent the rest of Singapore and all of Shanghai leaving the track just long enough to sleep, determined to put herself back on course. What happened with Will was a mistake. The accident with Ben had proved that.
Finally, she forced herself to join her father. “Hey, Dad.”
His eyes flicked briefly to her and then back to the bank of monitors. Things had felt like they were getting better, like maybe their relationship was getting back to where it had been before. But since that night in Singapore, he’d been brusque and all business with her. It killed her a little bit every time.
“What are you looking at?” she asked.
“Trying to solve Will’s issue of the clutch temperature at the start.”
“It spikes when he’s idling for that long, right?”
“Exactly. I need Harry to come look at these temperatures with me and he’s not answering on headset.”
“I can go find him,” she offered.
“I can ask Omar to send him over—”
“No, let me go,” she insisted, and hurried away before he could protest again. If she just kept her head down and kept working, she’d erase Singapore.
