He disconnected the call before she had time to respond. She returned her cell phone to the center console. “Bite me,” she muttered as she turned the volume on he CD player back up.
She would not let him get to her today the way he had Friday night. She cringed inside every time she remembered telling him to kiss her ass. She’d suffered a severe case of temporary insanity due to extenuating circumstances but she’d make sure it wasn’t repeated.
Friday night had been weird all the way around. She’d seen men in bathing suits, underwear—she’d even seen a couple of them naked. So what was the big deal about Mr. Stillwell draped in a towel?
Maybe because he was ripped and gorgeous…if a woman found that combination of muscle, black hair, intense blue eyes, a slightly wicked grin and a faint scar across the perfection of his left cheek appealing. Her assistant, Cynthia, would do backflips over him. Because he was Cynthia’s type. He was not, however, Natalie’s type. Natalie preferred her men more polished and urbane. Therefore she put it down to the total weirdness of the night and that from the instant she’d laid eyes on Beau Stillwell’s near nakedness a minivolcano had sprung to life inside her. She’d felt hot, flushed, unsettled.
She turned left at a sign with an arrow indicating Dahlia Speedway. Even a shower and a small glass of chardonnay hadn’t settled her down on Friday night. Despite the fact that she’d gone to bed mentally reviewing her checklist for the Morris-Pitchford wedding the following day, the same as she always did the night before an event, he had plagued her in her dreams. Crazy dreams.
She was directing a rehearsal and then the dinner and somehow it became the wedding itself, and just when things were going smoothly, Beau Stillwell would appear with his mocking grin and Natalie would look down and discover she was only wearing a towel. She’d hurry and find her clothes and put herself back together, only to have Beelzebub Stillwell reappear, and once again she was appalled to find her clothes gone and a towel about her sarongwise.
She’d woken up tired and out of sorts, and she’d nearly left the last-minute sewing kit behind on her way out the door to the pre-wedding photo shoot. All his fault.
And this morning? She’d tried on at least five different outfits until she’d finally settled on a fitted cotton-spandex apricot T-shirt layered beneath a short green jacket with wide-legged jeans and wedge heels. Casual but still professional. This was, after all, work and not a social engagement. And then she’d dithered—might as well call it the way it was—over whether to pull her hair up in a ponytail, or her work chignon, or leave it down. The chignon seemed too fussy, the ponytail too girlish. In the end she’d left it hanging loose over her shoulders and down her back.
Natalie had no delusions about what she looked like. She wasn’t traffic-stopping beautiful and she needed to lose ten…okay, fifteen, maybe twenty…pounds. She was average. Average height. Average overweight. Run-of-the-mill brown eyes. But her one point of vanity was her hair. She’d been blessed with good hair. It was long and thick with just enough curl to give it body.
All told, it had taken her far too long to get ready but it was absolutely not because she was concerned about what Beau Stillwell thought of her appearance. No. She couldn’t give a fig whether he found her attractive or not. She was not trying to compensate for having given a general first impression of a walking, talking disaster.
She stopped at the gate and flashed the ticket she’d bought Friday evening. Before she’d put the minivan in Park in the far corner of the crowded lot—there were lots of people here today—Scooter pulled up in front of her van.
“Nice to see you again, Ms. Bridges. Climb on the back.” He grinned. “You’re just in time to see Beau open a can of whup-ass.”
“I can hardly wait.” Despite her sarcasm, she returned his grin.
He handed her a blue wrist band. “Put this on.”
Natalie complied but asked all the same, “What is it?”
“It shows you’re a pit crew member. C’mon, let’s go race.”
Whatever. She’d only shown up to make sure Mr. Stillwell didn’t conveniently “forget” their appointment. However, if being a pit crew member was what it took to drag his butt out to Belle Terre, then she was pit-crewing.
She shrugged and climbed up on the four-wheeler behind Scooter. Today she wasn’t riding sidesaddle, and instead of wrapping her arms around his waist, she merely held on to the rack that fanned out over the rear fenders. Hmm. In retrospect she could’ve held on to that rack on Friday night, too. Oh, well.
“You settled?” Scooter asked over his shoulder.
“Yes, sir.” Even though he’d sent her in the toter home the other night knowing good and well she’d probably find Beau in some state of undress, she liked Scooter Lewis. With his freckled face and dancing eyes, he reminded her of a mischievous elf.
They took off with a roar, but instead of going to the left in the direction of the pits, Scooter drove into an eight-lane asphalted area where cars, some still attached to tow ropes, were lined up one behind the other and drivers milled about. At the front, the cars converged into two openings and then rolled forward for their turn down the track.
“Staging lanes,” he yelled over his shoulder.
She nodded in return. Staging lanes. Okay. Whatever that exactly was, she wasn’t sure, but it was loud and noisy…and kind of exciting. Above the din of car engines and male voices, the announcer sounded like a circus barker. “Get ready for some driving, folks. It’s the event you’ve been waiting for—the bad boys of outlaw racing, 10.5’s Beau Stillwell and Jason Mitchell taking it head-to-head down the track. Nitrous versus turbo in the final round.”
Scooter pulled up next to the black and purple Camaro and she climbed off the four-wheeler. Every inch of her was aware of Beau Stillwell, but she deliberately looked at and spoke to his crew members, Darnell and Tim, first. A whoosh of red ran up Tim’s face at her hello. He was obviously one of those guys more at ease around a fan belt than a female.
Finally, she turned to face Beau Stillwell. He wore a half-cocked smile but it was the lazy sweep of those bright blue eyes framed in dark lashes down and back up her that sucked the breath from her and sent her mind skittering to naughty places. “You clean up nice, Ms. Bridges.” He leaned down and for one heart-stopping, pulse-pounding moment she was certain he was going to kiss her. There was a lambent sensuality in his eyes, in the way he bent his head. Her whole body tingled in anticipation. The air between them seemed to crackle.
He canted his head to the left, his dark hair teasing against her cheek, and sniffed delicately. She could almost feel the faint scrape of his five-o’clock shadow against her neck. She was on the verge of spontaneous combustion. He straightened. “You smell a whole lot better, too.”
He smirked and she wanted to do something awful to him. Instead she smiled sweetly. “You smell terrible.”
Okay. Not the wittiest comeback in the world, but good lord, he’d paralyzed over half her brain cells when he’d leaned in close that way. Her heart was still tap-dancing against her ribs. It was the best she could do on short notice and short-circuit.
“You’re not into eau de oil and sweat?”
“Afraid not.”
Tim, she could’ve kissed him, chose that moment to interrupt. “I brought the tires down to ten and quarter and heated the bottles to nine-hundred.” He handed Beau a jacket, which he shrugged into.
Beau zipped up the jacket. “Good deal.” He reached into the open door of the car and took out a black neck brace and snapped it into place. He pulled on a helmet, buckling the chinstrap, leaving the visor up. Unfairly, he was even more gorgeous in a helmet. Last was a pair of black, heavy gloves.
Natalie had never been much of a uniform woman. Cynthia, her assistant, got all hot and