SemiTough Luck: A Motocrossed Romance

by Jackie Barbosa

  When I finally have both my lungs and the car in my control, I observe, “Kendrick Lamar wasn’t on your list of faves.”

  She keeps her eyes closed and continues bobbing her head in time to music. “Well, I like a lot of his stuff, but he’s not really on the top of my list. This song, though.” A sigh of pleasure escapes her. “First of all, I love the movie. But mostly, what gets me in the song is SZA. Her voice gives me goosebumps. Every. Time.”

  We’re at that part in the song now where SZA takes over, and I have to admit that her voice does make my skin prickle. “Yeah,” I agree. “She’s pretty great. I have a few other songs of hers on here.”

  Sylvia opens her eyes and gives me a skeptical look. “For your girlfriend, right?”

  I press my lips together and shake my head. “No girlfriend.”

  “Past girlfriend, then?”

  “Nope. Can’t a guy like SZA?”

  She worries her lower lip with her teeth. “I guess,” she drawls at last, “but I don’t think it’s…usual.”

  “I’m not a usual guy.”

  “No,” she says on an amused huff. “It’s definitely not the word I’d use to describe you. But you’re turning out to be not usual in some very unusual ways. First you offer to take a woman on a shopping trip, and now this revelation about SZA. Next you’ll be telling me you don’t have any tattoos.”

  “You think I should?”

  “In my experience, almost everyone over twenty-five and under thirty-five has at least one tattoo or non-standard piercing. I’m pretty sure it’s a law or something.”

  “So which one do you have?” I ask, avoiding the question.

  She points to her right ankle. “A very small tattoo of a white rose. And I’m never getting another one, because that hurt like hell and I don’t like pain.”

  Don’t like pain? Fuck, I can relate. “Which is why I don’t have any,” I tell her. “My older brother—not Lucas, another brother—got one right after he turned eighteen. Or tried to. He only got half of it done before he gave up. When he told me how much it hurt, I decided tattoos weren’t for me.”

  Her eyebrows rise. “You play hockey. Seems like an odd choice for someone who doesn’t like pain.”

  My stomach tightens. This is too close to the bone, too personal, too fresh. “Playing hockey is different,” I say, keeping my tone casual. Like I don’t feel pried open and peered into. “Sure, you can get hurt, but it doesn’t happen every time you go out on the ice. And when it does, you hardly notice because you’re so in the moment, so high on the game, that you can’t pay attention to it.”

  It’s after the game is over that the pain gets you. And then before the game starts, when the accrual of all the injuries you’ve gotten in all the games up to that one makes you wonder if you can even stand, let alone fly around the ice and chase a tiny disk with a stick for an hour. Which is why you start taking pills—just a small dose at first, until that’s not enough, so you take a little more…

  “If you say so,” she scoffs, but there’s laughter in her tone. “Maybe that explains why I was never any good at sports. The second anything starts hurting, I notice and I am done.”

  She falls quiet as I change lanes to pass a big rig and turns her head to watch the truck as we go by. I know she has to be thinking about everything she’s lost. About what she expected to be doing today instead of what she is doing.

  And the worst part is I’m glad she’s not doing what she expected. Glad her life has been derailed and complicated. Because she’s why I get to pretend, if only for a few days, that I’m a good guy, a decent guy, the kind of guy a woman can trust.

  Instead of the kind who can’t even trust himself.

  Five

  Sylvia

  Ivan is a saint. Or at least, he does a good impression of one.

  He waited patiently while I tried on clothes, including the half-dozen pairs of jeans I had to put on to find just one that fit right. (Why do women’s clothing manufacturers consistently fail to understand that women’s hips are often significantly bigger than their waists? It’s like they think they’re only making clothes for prepubescent girls, not actual grown women.)

  Originally, I’d planned to buy two pairs of jeans and several T-shirts along with enough underwear, another bra, and socks to get me home. After all, the clothes I’d lost were mostly my “work wardrobe,” which consists entirely of those items. I don’t wear my cute feminine outfits when I’m on the road for pretty obvious reasons. It’s complicated enough being a lone female truck driver—most women I’ve met who drive big rigs are half of a husband-and-wife or boyfriend-and-girlfriend team—without drawing extra attention to the fact that I’m female and alone. Anything that emphasizes that is not in my best interest. And I’m curvy enough that I can’t escape my sex even in relatively genderless clothing.

  But something in me couldn’t resist the cutoff shorts and flowy print maxi-skirt I found on the clearance racks where I’d started my shopping in the hope of finding bargains to stretch my meager credit limit. And of course, that meant I had to have matching tops, so I wound up buying a lacy pink shirt with a peek-a-boo cutout between my breasts to accompany the shorts, and a midriff-baring tank top to go with the skirt. And then I needed sandals to round out the look, because my sneakers were not happening.

  I told myself there was nothing wrong with indulging. Just because the clothes in my truck were mostly jeans and crewneck tees didn’t mean I had to replace them right away. Between getting a settlement from the insurance company and finding a new truck to buy with the proceeds, it’s going to be at least a month before I’m back in the trucking business, and that means I’ll be hanging out in L.A. in the hottest month of the year, so it makes sense to buy lightweight summer styles, anyway.

  All of that was a cover, though, and I knew it when, after getting through the checkout counters, I excused myself to the bathroom and changed into the skirt and tank top for the drive back to Keel.

  The truth is I wanted to look pretty. No, not just pretty. Sexy.

  And it’s all because of Ivan. Because I want him to look at me and want me. Because I want to feel that zing of heat when our eyes meet and I read his desire to strip off my pretty, sexy clothes and do wild, shameless things with me. To me.

  Which is fucked up on so many fronts, because I have no intention of following through on any of that. But none of that stops me from being delighted when the electric arc of awareness crackles between us. And it sure as hell isn’t enough to keep me from trying to tempt him.

  When I come out of the bathroom with my shoulders and midriff bare, the skirt swirling around my ankles, Ivan expels an audible breath…and seems to forget for a few seconds to breathe back in again. Unable to resist, I twirl before stopping a few feet in front of him—not in his personal space, but close enough that he could be inside mine if he took one step in my direction.

  “You like?” I ask.

  Closing his eyes, he chokes out, “Very nice. Get everything you need?”

  “I’m set.” I heft my two very full plastic shopping bags in illustration. The movement emphasizes the depth of my cleavage, and a pained expression crosses Ivan’s face. He manages to keep his gaze above my neck, though, which marks him as a truly decent man.

  “We should get back to Keel then.” Turning away, he heads out the sliding doors toward the parking lot.

  Smiling, I follow.

  Damn, but I am one evil bitch.

  Six

  Ivan

  Thanks to my brother’s plan for me to spend the whole day with him in “brotherly bonding” pursuits—in other words, sitting in a rowboat, fishing and drinking beer—I haven’t seen Sylvia since yesterday. Probably a good thing too, since the moment I laid eyes on her in that sexy skirt and skin-baring top, all I wanted to do was strip them off her and…do things I shouldn’t. I can keep the beast under control, but it isn’t easy. And I’m going to have to do it for three more days. Three days, during which w
e’ll be alone together.

  I’m not an animal. But I’m not a saint, either.

  And she needs to know that. Know what she’s getting into. It’s time I warned her.

  Light leaks out from under the guest bedroom door, so she’s probably still awake. I knock gently with the back of my knuckles. If she did fall asleep with the lights on or something, I’d rather not wake her up. This isn’t the sort of conversation I want to have with someone who’s not fully alert.

  I hear the floor creak just before the door opens about halfway. Sylvia looks up at me with those gold-flecked brown eyes of hers and tilts her head to one side. Her hair, damp from a recent shower, almost matches the shade of her eyes. She’s wearing the same sweatpants and baggy T-shirt she had on the night we met, and even though they conceal most of her curves, I still feel a visceral tug of attraction. Hell, I’d probably feel it even if she were wearing a burqa.

  “Hey.” Her tone is relaxed but slightly wary. “What’s up?”

  Other than my blood pressure? “I…uh, just wanted to talk about the trip before we leave in the morning.”

  “Ah, okay.” Opening the door the rest of the way, she steps back let me come in. That’s when I notice the black rectangular device in her hand.

  “When did you get the Kindle?” I ask. Because, hey, I can’t just go right into talking about how much I want to fuck her.

  She glances down at her hand as if she’s forgotten she was holding anything. “Oh, Megan loaned it to me when I mentioned all my books were on my phone, which of course I don’t have anymore. She was horrified by the idea of me spending three days in a car without anything to read.” Her lips twitch with amusement. “I’m going to send it back when I get home. Wasn’t that thoughtful of her?”

  “Yeah, Megan’s great, even if she is the reason my brother ended up as a small-town sheriff instead of a hotshot FBI agent.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, yeah. He graduated from Quantico and everything. But he met Megan, who was going to the University of Baltimore at the time, and she wanted to move back here where her family lives. But I know he doesn’t mind at all. In fact, I think he’s a lot happier here than he would’ve been as a fed.”

  “Yeah,” she says with a warm smile, “he seems pretty content. And definitely not like the type to ride around in a black SUV wearing a suit and tie and dark sunglasses or, worse yet, ride a desk. He’s the outdoor type. Speaking of which, you look like you spent a little too much time outdoors today.” With the fingers of her free hand, she brushes my cheek. “That’s quite a sunburn.”

  She’s right. Her fingers must be cool compared to my skin, but all I can feel is the blazing heat of instant arousal at her touch. I want to grab her and pull her into my arms. Kiss her, caress her, undress her. Press her to the bed and bury myself inside her.

  Damn, this is going to be even harder than I thought.

  I’m already harder than I thought I could get from a simple brush of a woman’s fingers.

  “Yeah.” I have to clear my throat before I can go on. “I didn’t think to put on any sunscreen until after lunch, and by then, it was too late.”

  “Well, I hope that means you had a good time, anyway.”

  “I enjoyed spending the time with my brother. We haven’t seen each other since Noah was about Lily’s age. But, to be honest, I could’ve done without the fishing. It’s not my favorite pursuit.”

  Her nose wrinkles, and it’s both adorable and ridiculously sexy. “I’m with you on that. If I never go fishing again, it’ll be too soon.”

  “You’ve done much fishing?” I ask, intrigued by the obvious intensity of her distaste.

  A small shudder runs through her. “Ugh, yes.” At my quizzical expression, she continues, “Most of my father’s family are—or used to be—fishermen. I spent a lot of my childhood on or around fishing boats, and I’ve done everything from baiting hooks to casting lines to cleaning fish. And I hated every minute of it. Well, except for the part when we were out to sea. That was all right.”

  “I’ve never been out on a boat in the ocean, just lakes. I guess it’s something I should try once I get to San Diego.”

  “I have a good friend who does charter sailboat excursions out of Point Loma. I can give you his number if you’re interested.”

  “I thought you were from L.A.”

  “Nah. I live in L.A. now because a lot of shipping containers come through Long Beach, so I don’t have as far to drive to pick up a load. But I grew up in San Diego, and most of my family still lives there.”

  “Really? I’m going to have to pick your brain about where to go and what to do. Well, other than going to the zoo and hanging out at the beach, which are the only two things I really know about San Diego.”

  “Sure. I can give you some ideas. But you said you wanted to talk about the trip.”

  Crap. Time to man up. “Yeah. I wanted to run a couple of things past you and make sure you’re okay with them.”

  “Shoot.”

  Start with the easy stuff. “Well, first, I’d like to leave by seven-thirty tomorrow morning. Can you be ready by then?”

  “No problem.” A wry smile tugs at one corner of her mouth. “It’s not like I have a lot of packing to do. And when I’m doing a job, I’m usually on the road by four in the morning. Seven-thirty is sleeping in. Next?”

  That was too quick, damn it. What else can I ask her before I bring up the elephant in my pants? (Metaphorically speaking, of course. It’s not that big.) Fortunately, inspiration strikes. “Do you have any preferences about the route? You probably have a better idea of the best way to go than I do, since you do so much driving.”

  She lets out a huff of breath. “Depends what you mean by ‘best.’ It’s always fastest to take the interstates, but if I were driving from here to San Diego in a car, I’d stay off them as much as possible. Maybe even go through Yellowstone. It’ll take about six hours longer, but it’s worth it for the scenery. And the traffic shouldn’t be too bad, since school’s started and family vacation season’s over.”

  Spending six hours more with her than I have to is a bad idea. I should immediately squash this idea, but what comes out of my mouth is, “Actually, I had been thinking about going through Yellowstone, but that was before I picked up a passenger. Are you sure you wouldn’t mind the delay?” Say yes. I mean, no. Fuck, I don’t know what I mean.

  “I never go through national parks when I’m on the job, and the last time I went to Yellowstone, I was six or seven. So if you want to do it, I’m totally game.”

  There are a lot of other things I want to do. And this is my opening. “Well, before you make up your mind about that, I think there’s something else you need to know.”

  She nods and looks up at me attentively, her lips slightly parted in anticipation. The desire to kiss her to demonstrate exactly what I mean by “something else” is so strong, I catch myself leaning in to do just that and have to conceal the error by covering my mouth and pretending to cough.

  “So the thing is,” I begin, avoiding her eyes and aiming for matter-of-fact instead of flirty, “I’ve been aching to take you to bed since the moment I laid eyes on you. Don’t get me wrong—I can keep my hands to myself. What I can’t do is keep myself from mentally undressing and fantasizing about you, and I thought you should know before deciding to spend three or four days alone with me. In case that idea bothers you.”

  Sylvia makes a strangled sound, and it takes me a full two seconds to realize she’s not disgusted with me, but amused. “Hey, I can do it if you can.” She grins, raking me up and down with an openly appreciative gaze. “I’ve been imagining your naked thighs—and other parts of your anatomy—for days. But I can also keep my hands to myself.”

  My pulse jumps, and a bolt of pure lust shoots to my groin. I mean, I never got the impression that she’s indifferent to me, but I didn’t want to assume she’s as attracted to me as I am to her.

  Whoa, slow your roll. Just bec
ause she wants to see you naked doesn’t mean she’s ready to hop in the sack with you.

  “So we’re going to?” At her blank expression, I clarify, “Keep our hands to ourselves.”

  She lets out a long, regretful sigh. “I think we’d better. If you already think this is going to be awkward, imagine how awkward it’ll be if we bone and then one of us decides it’s an experience we don’t want to repeat.”

  It’s on the tip of my tongue to assure her that won’t happen, but I manage to restrain myself because, duh, that’s exactly what she’s worried about. The last thing she wants to hear is me bragging about my sexual prowess and how I’ll make it good for her. I mean, I would, but every dude thinks he’s a virtuoso in bed, and every dude isn’t. And while it’s one thing to have a disappointing one-night stand with a near stranger you never have to hear from again, it’s another to be trapped for three days in a car with a man who thinks he’s God’s gift to pussy…and your pussy in particular.

  So I swallow my idiotic male posturing response and nod in agreement. “You’re right. We’ll keep things firmly in the friend zone until we get to L.A.”

  After that, I’m not making any promises.

  Seven

  Sylvia

  Even a few days of living like a person with a regular day job has made me soft. Getting up at 6:30 was harder than it should’ve been.

  Of course, it probably didn’t help that I barely slept, because every time I did manage to fall asleep, I dreamed about Ivan. Very explicitly. Each time, I woke up hot and bothered and more than a little tempted to creep downstairs to the basement, wake him up, and bang him like a car door. But I didn’t. How I’m going to get through the next few days with my sanity intact and without caving in to temptation is beyond me.

  So, bottom line, I wasn’t inclined to be talkative when we got on the road. But Ivan wasn’t, either, so once we agreed on our route to Yellowstone—and why I don’t just put the kibosh on that little detour is an inconsistency I’m not eager to examine—we both just sipped our coffee from the travel mugs Megan pressed into our hands on our way out her front door, turned on Spotify, and watched the unremittingly boring scenery go by. (Look, I’m sorry, Nebraska, but you’re mostly flat farmland. It’s not your fault you’re boring.)