The weight on my chest eases a little. At least I’m not losing my job with MotoRacer in addition to everything else. “Thanks, Martin. I appreciate that.”
“One more thing.”
“Yeah?”
“Cut off communication with Lenart until the weekend’s over. If he calls or texts, don’t respond. Don’t explain. They’re going to tear down his and Chen’s bikes after the race this Sunday, and if there’s anything to find, they’ll find it. But the results of the teardown will only be considered reliable if there’s no way he or Chen could have known the protest was coming, and if you have any contact with him, that might come into question. The NMA might disqualify him and Chen for the rest of the season, regardless of the results.”
I press my lips together and swallow hard. Martin’s right. Any communication between us is going to look bad right now and jeopardize Owen’s career. I won’t do that to him, just like he wouldn’t do it to me. “Got it.”
We exchange good-byes and hang up.
I’m halfway done unpacking my bag when everything snaps into place. Owen’s stalker isn’t a fan or a woman scorned. It’s someone who doesn’t want him to win the championship. Someone who’s jealous of his success and wants to hurt him. Someone who saw me go into my room that night in Pennsylvania.
Nick Womack.
He’s set it all up masterfully, too. Because no matter what he does, Owen’s going to get hurt. And there’s not a blessed thing I can do to warn him.
Twenty-One
Owen
It’s mid-morning on Friday and she’s not here.
She’s also not answering her phone—either voice or texts.
And I am losing my shit.
If she’d just answer, I could leave it alone. But her silence scares me. Lucy is the polar opposite of taciturn. She’d let me know why she isn’t here if she could, even if she blames me for it. That means she can’t. And I have to know why, because not knowing means my brain keeps treating me to bizarre and even gruesome explanations.
I mean, I haven’t heard of any plane crashes in the past twenty-four hours, but I can’t keep the idea from crossing my mind, and now that it has, several more likely and equally grisly alternatives have occurred to me. The one that’s making me sick is that she’s been the victim of a crime. She lives in East L.A., and even though she said the neighborhood around her is decent and her neighbors are nice, hardworking people, it’s East L.A. I’d have to live under a rock not to know that’s a high-crime area.
Also, since it’s L.A., she might have been in a car accident. She could be lying unconscious in a hospital, and no one would know to contact me. Because I’m still essentially no one to her, even though she’s everything to me.
Well, shit. There’s one thought I’ve had in the past three hours that I’m sure is true. Lucy is everything to me. And just like that, I know what I have to do.
“Hey, your practice starts in five minutes,” Paul hollers as I set my helmet on the seat of my bike and head for the trailer to change out of my racing suit. “Where are you going?”
“L.A.”
“You can’t just leave in the middle of a race weekend.”
“The hell I can’t.”
Paul sputters, “I’ll fire you.”
“Be my guest,” I tell him and walk away.
“But you don’t have her address,” Darnell points out on the way to the airport.
He’s right. Me and Lucy never exchanged street addresses. Why would we when there’s cell phones and text messages and email? I have a general idea of the area she lives in, but in a city the size of L.A., that’s not going to help me find her.
“No,” I admit, “but I know where her best friend works because Lucy told me.” And I should be able to get there right about the time Ella Nguyen gets off work. I just hope there aren’t more than a few dozen women working at Jet Propulsion Labs who match Ella’s basic description—early twenties, Asian, glasses—or it’s going to be a little embarrassing.
“Then why didn’t you just call?”
“I did.” Once I’d gotten into the motorhome to put on my street clothes, it had occurred to me that I should at least try another angle before hopping on a plane. “But apparently when someone works as an actual rocket scientist on top secret government projects, they don’t just put your call through. I left a message, but they couldn’t tell me when or if she’d call back. I can’t wait around and hope she does. If anyone should understand that, it’s you.”
“I can, but are you sure Lucy’s going to want to see you?”
I raise my eyebrows. “Hypocrite much, Mr.-Hold-Onto-What-You-Can-As-Long-As-You-Can?”
“I don’t want to be brutal, man, but you don’t think the fact that she’s not returning your calls or texts is a sign that you can’t?”
“Maybe,” I admit, a knife twisting in my gut. “But that isn’t Lucy’s style. If she decided to cut things off with me, she’d tell me. She wouldn’t leave me hanging like this.”
“Yeah, that’s how I read her, too. So what the hell do you think is going on?”
“No idea. But I’m going to find out.”
At 4:52 p.m., I’m standing at the bottom of the wide stairs that lead up to the front doors of the office of JPL in Pasadena. A couple of white guys in collared shirts and khakis exit the building a few seconds after I arrive. A group of about ten people comes out next, but none of them look like they could be Ella Nguyen. They all walk past me without seeming to think there’s anything odd about me being there and head toward the parking.
I can’t be sure that Ella even works a regular eight-to-five day. For all I know, she has one of those flexible schedules that’s so popular nowadays and leaves early or late or has some days off. This might be a waste of time, but I don’t have a better idea for finding out why Lucy can’t or won’t answer me.
The minutes tick by, and the trickle of departing workers becomes more like a flood. I see a half a dozen women who could have Vietnamese ancestry, but the two who are wearing glasses don’t look the right age, and the four who could be the right age don’t have glasses.
I use my phone to check the time. 5:05. How long should I wait before I decide it’s a bust? Until 5:30? 6:00? And if it is a bust, then what?
No. Worry about that later. Stay on target now.
The building’s doors open and spit out more people. I inspect faces and…there she is. Or at least, there’s a woman who’s Asian, probably in her twenties, and wearing glasses. She’s an inch or two shorter than Lucy, with straight black hair that reaches her chin and a distracted look on her face, as though maybe she’s still doing complicated calculations in her head.
As she glides down the steps, I shift over to intercept her. When she’s about five feet from me, I call out her name. Her eyes meet mine and widen, first because I’ve taken her by surprise and then, I’m sure, because she knows who I am.
“What are you doing here?” she asks as she comes to a stop in front of me.
People stream around us like we’re a pair of rocks, paying no apparent attention to our conversation.
“You didn’t call me back. And I need to talk to Lucy.”
Ella lets out an exasperated sigh. “She told me not to call you back. And before you ask, no, she give me any details, only that not having any contact with you is for your own good.”
“But she’s okay?” I ask. “Safe? Healthy?”
“She’s fine.”
The surge of relief is so intense, it makes me dizzy. I was even more worried than I thought.
Ella’s irritated expression melts into something softer and more sympathetic. “God, you flew all the way out here because you were afraid something happened to her?”
I shrug. “I love her. I couldn’t just sit on my hands and wait.”
“Oh.” Lucy’s best friend presses her hand over her heart. “Damn, that’s romantic as hell.”
“So, will you give me her address?”
Ella f
rowns and shakes her head. “I don’t think I should.”
My chest tightens. “Because she doesn’t want to see me? I guess she probably lost her job because of me, so I couldn’t blame her if she didn’t.”
“No, that’s not it. All I know is that she thinks talking to you would be bad for you.”
Bad for me? That doesn’t make any sense. “How?”
“I can’t tell you that. She asked me not to. But I do know that it’s not that she doesn’t want to see you or talk to you. She just can’t.”
I rub my hand over my eyes, trying to think. For some reason, Lucy thinks she’s protecting me by not talking to me. I can’t imagine why, but she’s smart. If that’s what she thinks, she’s probably right.
“Did she say for how long?”
Ella shakes her head again. “Sorry, she didn’t.”
So, either I accept that there’s a good reason Lucy won’t talk to me and wait it out—possibly forever—or try to wheedle her address out of her best friend so I can demonstrate how much I love her by showing that I don’t trust her judgment.
Man, it should be easier than this to be in love.
But in the end, it is easy, isn’t it? I do love her. Whatever bad thing she thinks will happen to me if we talk, it can’t be worse than not being with her.
“I need to see her, Ella. Tell her how I feel about her. If something bad happens to me because of that…well, that’s a risk I’m willing to take.”
Ella looks at me for a long moment, her eyes getting a little unfocused and misty. “Shit. She is going to kill me for this.” She holds out her hand. “Give me your phone.”
The address Ella typed into Google maps belongs to a two-story apartment building with four units, two downstairs and two upstairs. It’s laid out like a tiny motel, with exterior doors, staircases at either end leading to the second-floor apartments, and a small, concrete parking lot in the front. Not the height of security, that’s for sure.
I scan the street, which is lined mostly with small single-family houses that are a little run-down but have tidy yards, a few fenced with chain link. There are a lot of late model cars parked in driveways and on curbs. Heat curls up from the asphalt—it’s after six o’clock but it’s still over ninety degrees without much breeze—and I notice air-conditioning units in a lot of windows. People are getting home from work and getting inside, out of the heat.
What I don’t see is graffiti, though there are a few walls and fences that have obviously been painted in patches. Still, the whole scene gives off a cheerful working-class vibe rather than a dangerous one, and I relax a bit because I can recognize the difference. Lucy was definitely right about her neighbors. This is a good place.
I get out of my rental car—a brand spanking new Toyota Camry that looks pretty out of place among the ten-year-old Corollas, Civics, and Focuses that line the street and even more jarring in comparison to the handful of fancy low-riders parked in a few driveways—lock it with the remote, and cross the street. Lucy’s apartment is #3, which makes it the one at the back of the building on the second floor. I climb the stairs two at a time and look for the doorbell button when I reach the top. Not finding one, I raise my fist to knock.
Before my knuckles touch wood, the door opens.
Lucy stands on the other side, frowning. Oh boy, she’s pissed at me. But I don’t care. Not when joy rushes through me at the sight of her.
She’s dressed for the heat in a pale blue tank top with lacy trim that draws my gaze to her cleavage and a pair of barely-there denim short-shorts. No shoes. And no bra. My dick approves. She folds her arms under her tits. My dick approves more.
“You shouldn’t have come.”
I raise my hands in surrender. “I know, but…”
“But as long as you’re here,” she interrupts and grabs my hand to pull me inside the cool, somewhat darkened apartment.
And then her soft, lush body is pressed against mine, her arms are wrapped around my neck, and our mouths are fused together. Her scent surrounds me like a blanket, all honey and cinnamon and the unmistakable musk of warm, wet pussy. Any blood that was still in my brain heads south of the border, and all I can think about is how good, how right it feels to be holding her, touching her, kissing her.
She tugs at my T-shirt, and I help her wrestle it off over my head, then we do the same with her tank top. God, her tits are even more amazing than I remembered, somehow, and I remembered them as fucking glorious. Their round, heavy weight fills my hands, and she hisses into my mouth when I drag my thumbs across her already stiff nipples.
When her fingers go to the buttons of my jeans, a little alarm bell goes off in my head. There’s a reason we haven’t done this in weeks, and I step back an inch or two.
“Are you sure?” I ask.
Her eyes meet mine, and her pupils are so wide and dark that I feel like I might fall into them. “Cat’s out of the bag. No reason not to.”
No reason, except… “I don’t have any condoms with me.”
She goes back to work on my fly, and my cock pulses at the light, grazing touch of her fingers. “I’m on the pill,” she says. “And I trust you.”
Lust expands in my veins like helium expands a balloon, making me light-headed and so turned on, I’m afraid I might explode. She’s going to let me fuck her bare. Something I have never, ever done—not even the first time I had sex when I was a dumb, horny teenager—because I take my responsibility to protect myself and my partners seriously and always have. Maybe I should object, because there’s no woman in the world I want, hell, need to protect more than Lucy, but the idea of being inside her with nothing between us, just skin to skin, is both so hot and so perfect that I can’t bring myself to do it.
Besides, it’s not like she’s giving me much opportunity to say anything because as soon as she gets my fly open, she tugs them along with my boxers down my thighs and drops to her knees in front of me. It doesn’t take more than a few seconds for her to pull my jeans down to my ankles, and for me to kick off my Vans and step out of them. Once they’re gone, she wraps her palm around my throbbing erection and takes me into her mouth.
It’s a good thing I’m standing in a good, solid position with my legs slightly apart, or I’d topple over at the sensation of her wet mouth sucking my dick. I’m still a doggy-style fan, but looking down at her dark head moving back and forth as my cock slides between her soft pink lips is hot as hell. And almost as torturous, because I don’t want to come in her mouth but I can feel an orgasm gathering in my balls.
I place my hands on either side of her head to stop her. “Gotta fuck you now, baby, or it’s gonna be a while.” My voice is hoarse, and my breathing labored.
Her eyes seem even bigger and darker than ever, but she nods and gets to her feet. I help her shuck her teeny shorts and panties, and then we stumble the five or so feet from the doorway to the living room couch. It’s brown and overstuffed and maybe leather or maybe not, and I sit down first so Lucy can straddle my lap.
“This might not last very long,” I warn her.
In answer, she lines my cock up with her entrance and slowly sinks onto me. It feels better than I ever imagined, the way her tight, juicy cunt sheaths my dick with nothing between us, but there’s more to it than that. Being inside her is being home, the one place in the world I truly belong.
I'm lucky she's as ramped up as I am, because I'm ready to blow within the first few strokes. When she stiffens and throws back her head, I grab her hips and pound up into her. Once, twice, and then her pussy clenches around me, and I come in long, jerking spurts. It's beautiful agony.
“Fuck, I love you.” I groan against her lips, emptying myself into her until I’m boneless and weightless.
Sighing, she breaks the kiss and rests her head on my shoulder. “I hope so.”
Twenty-Two
Lucy
“Uh,” Owen says after we’re both breathing close to normally again, “no one’s going to walk in here in the next few mi
nutes, right?”
I chuckle, and he winces. “Sorry,” I murmur, then answer his question. “No. Romy’s a flight attendant and Sylvia’s a long-haul truck driver, and neither of them’s coming home tonight.”
Owen raises an eyebrow. “Long-haul truck driver? Seriously?”
“Yep,” I answer, gently sliding our bodies apart so I can grab a handful of tissues from the box on the end table. “You don’t need to be a big, burly man to drive a truck, you know.” It’s even more fun to tell people what Sylvia does for a living when she’s around since she’s blonde, five-foot-nothing, and looks barely old enough to be legal when she’s actually twenty-seven.
He concedes the point with a shrug and takes the tissues I hand him to clean himself off. “So, as much as I liked the welcome, are you going to explain what the hell is going on?”
I clamber off his lap and use the remaining tissues on myself. “Yeah, but I think we should put some clothes on first. I’m not sure we can be responsible when we’re both naked.”
Ten minutes later, we’re sitting at the round table in the alcove that passes for a dining room. Owen’s wearing his boxers and a T-shirt—I insisted on the shirt; his chest and abs are distracting as hell—and I put my tank top and panties on again. I notice he didn’t insist on my shorts going back on, but then, they don’t leave that much less to the imagination than underwear would.
After we got dressed, I gave him the whole story, starting with Martin’s phone call and ending with my deduction that Nick Womack is probably behind the entire thing.
“So you’re not in danger of losing your job now?”
“I don’t think so. Martin wasn’t exactly happy that I didn’t inform him we’d gotten up close and personal, but he didn’t seem to think it would be a problem once this thing with Womack is over.” Except I’m not sure it ever will be over. Not for Owen, anyway.
Holeshot: A Motocrossed Romance Page 12