by Alison Kent
IT WASN’T HARD FOR TREY to recognize that he was using Cardin as a punching bag to rid himself of more than sexual frustration. There was that, true. And Cardin being the one he wanted to sleep with pretty much sent his frustration through the roof. But when it came down to the nitty gritty, his frustration was with himself for not having done what he should have by now.
Standing on the porch, his arms wrapped around a stack of three boxes, both shoulders weighted down with duffel bags, and Cardin equally burdened at his side, he stared at the front door to his childhood home and admitted he was an ass for avoiding his responsibilities here.
He’d grown up in this house, he’d enjoyed the good times and suffered the bad. Hell, he owned the place outright and had for a year. Yet he hadn’t once stepped through the door since signing the final papers at close. He didn’t want to step through now. There was too much work waiting for him, too much guilt that he hadn’t done anything to stop his father’s death.
Not being alone made it easier.
Being with Cardin made it easier still.
“Trey? My arms are breaking here.”
“Yeah, hang on.” He braced the boxes against the wall with his hip and dug into his pocket for his keys. He hadn’t tested the door to see if it was locked; he’d just assumed Beau Stillwell made sure it was.
Whatever growth and change Dahlia had experienced in the years since Trey had moved on, the town had retained its innocence. Both privacy and property were respected by all but a bad apple few.
The door squeaked just as he remembered, though the smell that first reached his nose was musty and stale, not that of newspapers and diesel fuel and dirty socks. His father’s smells. Ones imprinted forever in his mind.
He stepped back, holding open the screen door with one shoulder and making room for Cardin to pass. “The electricity should be on, and there’s a lamp—”
“Oomph.”
“—on the table to your right,” he finished too late. “Sorry about that.”
She dropped her boxes, found the switch. He heard the click-click as she turned it twice before it came on. “It’s okay. I have another shin.”
“Yeah. I forgot you’ve never been inside.” He set his boxes beside hers, dropped his duffels as she swung her backpack around and put it beside the lamp on the table.
She looked over at him, using the back of her hand to push her bangs from her forehead. “The only person I ever knew to come here was Tater.”
After his mother was gone, he and his dad never had been much for entertaining. Tater had been the exception. Aubrey had considered Trey’s best friend to be a second son. “I need to give the boy a call. I saw him at the Speedway a couple of times this weekend, but didn’t have time to do more than wave.”
“You need to make time. You have no idea how much he talks about you every year before the Farron Fuels.”
“You hang with Tater now?”
She gave him a look. “We’re not in high school anymore, Trey. Everyone hangs with everyone. He’s in Headlights a lot these days. He’s dating Sandy Larabie.”
No way. “The waitress? You’re screwing with me, right?”
“I’m not, no. Is it so hard to believe?”
“From what I saw of her today? Yeah.”
“Jumping to conclusions?” she asked, cocking her head.
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Only because it’s been a hell of a long four days.”
He was beat, beyond exhausted. The Farron Fuels had eaten up every hour between Thursday and Sunday with the qualifying heats before this afternoon’s finals. It had passed in a blur of engine work and catnaps and studying the competition’s runs.
He didn’t have the energy tonight to care if Tater Rawls was dating the waitress or his own right hand. All he cared about was getting to the bottom of Cardin and her proposal, and checking out the house so they could both get some sleep.
He ran a hand through his hair and turned to take in the living room. Nothing much had changed since the last time he’d been here, except his father’s chair sat empty because he’d forced Aubrey to leave his own home six months before he had died.
Choking back the lump in his throat, Trey walked the length of the narrow room, entered the kitchen and felt for the wall switch just inside the door. The single bulb in the fixture on the ceiling burst to life, giving up the ghost seconds later with a sizzling pop.
“You didn’t happen to bring light bulbs, did you?” Cardin asked from behind him.
“I imagine there are still extras in the cabinet above the sink.”
“Same vintage as the one that just blew?”
Yeah, that could be a problem. He headed back for his gear, leaving Cardin standing in the kitchen doorway as he dug for a flashlight in the box on the top of the stack. He found what he was searching for, and with the beam to guide him, located the bulbs.
Once the light was back on, Cardin came into the small kitchen and looked around. “This is…cozy.”
Cozy? It was cold and lifeless, and the workshop in the Corley hauler would hold it twice over. It was also the room where Trey and his father had done most of their talking. They’d just never talked about a lot of what they should have. Things that would’ve had Trey visiting more than once a year if he’d known they were going on.
Spilled milk, but it still caused a hitch near his heart. “There probably wasn’t a single day that my dad and I didn’t trip over each other in here. He finally gave up and let me do the cooking.”
“You cook?” she asked, wiggling her brows as she pulled a chair from beneath the kitchen table, the yellow plastic tablecloth covering it long since faded to white, and sat.
He leaned against the sink, crossing his arms over his chest. “Don’t be getting any ideas. The stove was dicey when I left home. I wouldn’t trust it to boil an egg.”
“I only eat mine scrambled, so that’s okay.”
“Are we going to have to have meals catered?”
“I’m not that picky, but I can pack carry-out from work for dinner.”
“What time do you work?”
“I’ve got the four-to-eight dinner shift. Think you can survive without my help for that long?”
It wasn’t her help he cared about. He wanted her company, and the chance to find out what she knew. “I’ll do my best.”
“I don’t know about you, but my best is going to require sleep.”
“Then we need to figure out where to do it.”
“And where to go to the bathroom.”
He inclined his head to the left. “Through the laundry room to the left.”
She didn’t move, just gave him a look from beneath her long lashes and fringed bangs—a look that said she wasn’t budging until he’d given the room his okay.
He smiled and pushed away from the sink, grabbing his flashlight from the countertop where he’d left it. “You know I pay Beau Stillwell to keep things working around here.”
“Just not to change light bulbs. Or keep out six-legged inhabitants.”
He laughed, and walked away.
7
LEAVING CARDIN TO DO her thing, Trey returned to the front of the house. Though he’d paid off his father’s gambling debts in exchange for the title to the property, he’d never had any intention of coming here to live. Paying Stillwell Construction to keep the place from falling apart was just Trey being a responsible owner.
Standing in the center of the living room, he gave the space more than the cursory glance he’d afforded it when he’d first walked in. Coming back here now, a year after the showdown with his father, six months after his father’s death, left Trey feeling, well, guilty. None of the arguments he’d had with himself that he couldn’t have changed a thing made a difference.
He was still convinced that while on the road, had he paid attention to what was going on with his father, if he’d been around to keep Aubrey from gambling away most of his money and drinking away the rest, he wouldn’t be the only
member of the Davis family left in town. The only member of the Davis family left at all.
Once the house was emptied of his past, the property cleaned up and on the market, Trey would finally be freed from his ties to Dahlia, Tennessee. It wasn’t that his years here had been bad—there just wasn’t anything from them he wanted to keep. The life he’d built for himself once he’d moved on was where his best memories had been made.
He’d worked his way up in the Corley organization, learning the ropes while plying the trade he’d studied both in high school and at his father’s feet. His work ethic and initiative had caught Butch’s eye. His instincts had earned him the crew chief position. He loved the traveling, he loved the work, and was already looking forward to being done with things here and getting back to that life.
The only reason he’d decided to prep the place for selling himself instead of hiring out the job was the fight. He could walk away from Dahlia, sure, but he would always be looking back and wondering what had driven his normally mellow father to use his fists against a pillar of the Dahlia community who was nearly eighty years old.
“All done,” Cardin said from behind him, bringing him back to the present. He’d been staring at his father’s chair this entire time.
Turning to face her, and without preamble, he asked, “Do you have any idea what the fight was about?”
She shook her head, knowing right away what he meant. “Not a clue. And Jeb is the last person I would ever expect to punch anyone. He’s too…”
“Old?”
“Old, yes,” she said, walking by him on her way to their gear. “But I was thinking more…law and order. Jeb’s not one to duke things out.”
“My father wasn’t, either,” Trey reminded her.
“I know. That’s what makes it so weird.” She reached over the stacked boxes for the sleeping bags. “Eddie stepping in the way he did I can see. He didn’t inherit his father’s straight and narrow nature. But Jeb and your dad trading swings? It had to be something huge.”
“And yet not a word about it from anyone.” He moved the boxes out of her way. “Was Eddie there for the whole thing? Does he know what happened?’
“He hasn’t said a word about it since he got out of the hospital. I think his silence is a big part of why my mom left.”
“What? Your folks split?”
“About four months ago.” She tossed the first of the two bags out in front of her to unroll. “Delta moved into my apartment, and I moved back with Eddie and Jeb. I’ve got the whole second floor to myself, rather than having to fight my mother over bathroom time at my place.”
Trey was confused. “Why switch with you? Why not get her own apartment or whatever?”
“It’s a temporary arrangement until she and my dad settle things permanently.”
“So they’re not divorced.”
“Nope. And nothing legal in the works, thank God.”
“You think they’ll patch things up, then? Get back together?”
She finished unrolling the second sleeping bag alongside the first before she answered. “That marriage thing about two becoming one? They took that to heart. I’ve never in my life known any couple better suited. But then Eddie became all emo one minute, PMSy the next…It was too much for my mother to deal with. Which tells me this fight between Jeb and your father was something big.”
“Then you’ve got as much reason to get to the bottom of it as I do.”
She shook her head. “I don’t want to get to the bottom of it at all. All I want is for my parents to wake up before it’s too late to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.”
Leaning against the front door, Trey grinned. “And you think our fairy-tale engagement will do that.”
“It’s the sort of shock that’s worth a shot. I’ve tried everything else I can think of. And their reaction when I asked for the schedule change to spend time with you said a lot.”
“What was it? Their reaction?”
Cardin fought a smile and considered him closely. “Eddie’s afraid you’ll break my heart. Delta’s afraid you’ll make me live in cheap motels and have babies on the side of the road between races.”
What a bunch of unflattering crap. “Then you’ve already told them we’re together?”
She hesitated, and even in the dimly lit room, he could see her face color. “No. The only thing I told them was that my heart would not get broken.”
“Then I’ll have to be sure I don’t break it.”
“It’s not up to you. I’d have to let it happen.”
“And my heart?” he queried, expecting her to tease him in return and ask if he had one.
But she didn’t. She grew serious, pensive, then sat cross-legged on the sleeping bag she couldn’t know was his. She ran her palms over her thighs, looking down instead of at him. “Does that mean you’ll do it?”
He moved closer, dropped down beside her, leaning on one elbow with one knee raised. “I’m going to guess you’ve thought this through, so you have answers to the questions people will ask?”
“Such as?”
Was she kidding him? “How long have we been engaged, for one? Except to bail out my dad, I haven’t been to Dahlia since last year’s Farron Fuels. You think folks are going to buy a long-distance hookup?”
“We’ve known each other all our lives—”
He waved a hand, cut her off. “We lived in the same town. We went to school together. The day you showed up at the hauler was the first conversation I think we ever had.”
“It wasn’t the first, Trey.” She said it quickly. Almost before he’d finished speaking.
She thought he’d forgotten, did she? She thought that night at Tater’s kegger hadn’t meant anything to him but a blowjob. And why shouldn’t she? She couldn’t know that the feel of her body had lived with him since, had caused him to lose sleep, had kept him from any serious dating.
She couldn’t know that he felt more for her than what she’d seen as desire because he’d never said a word. “That night…what I said to you…those words. That isn’t what I think of as a conversation.”
Her head bobbed, a quick nod of acknowledgment, and her shoulders seemed to relax, as if the tension of wondering had been keeping them tight. He should’ve told her sooner. He should’ve stayed in touch.
He should have never let her get away. “So, then, I guess we could say we’ve been pining after one another all the time I’ve been gone?”
Her mouth quirked. “Or we could’ve started pining this past year.”
“It’s more believable the pining started after Tater’s kegger.”
“Believable to who?” Her gaze whipped sharply to his, her pulse visible at the base of her throat. “Unless you told someone else, then you’re the only one who knows I was there.”
Hmm. He wondered what prompted her hand-in-the-cookie-jar reaction. “Kim didn’t say anything?”
“Not that I’ve heard.”
He supposed that made sense. Kim wouldn’t have wanted anyone to know that his pants weren’t even zipped before his attention had turned to Cardin. Cardin, who was still looking like she’d almost been caught doing…something.
He was curious, and only one thing came to mind. “So you haven’t been pining then?”
“Have you?”
“I told you the other day that I missed seeing you.”
“I’m not sure that’s the same thing as pining.”
She clearly didn’t want to go down that road right now. “Maybe not, but it’s close enough for a fake engagement.”
She exhaled heavily, as if relieved that he hadn’t pressed harder. “Then we say we hooked up last year? And we’ve had a long-distance relationship since?”
He nodded. It should work. And eventually, he would come back and press. “We’ll need to figure out the details, like why we kept it secret, but sure. That’ll do. And now that we’ve got that settled…” He reached for her hand, stroking his thumb along her fingers. “Tell me why you
think defibrillating your family is going to fix things.”
CARDIN STARED AT HER HAND where Trey held it. “I don’t know if I can find a way for it to make sense to you. I mean, it makes sense to me, but they’re my family, and I know what makes them tick.”
Not to mention that expressing her thoughts with any coherence was going to be impossible sitting with him in the dark.
There was no question that Trey was hot. He had every physical attribute going for him a woman could want in a man. The height, the build, the hair and the eyes, and she couldn’t forget his mouth. Or his hands.
What she hadn’t anticipated was the up close and personal impact his hotness would have—especially when it wasn’t just his appearance getting to her.
It was the intensity of his gaze, the way he devoured her with a look, eating her up as if he were starving and she the only meal that would do.
Breathing naturally was out of the question. Her heart filled her chest as it raced. Pulling off this mock engagement was the least of her worries.
She was beginning to wonder if she would make it through the night. “I mean, I can try…”
“Then try,” he said, and smiled until she thought his dimples would kill her. “You said your father’s afraid I’ll break your heart, and your mother’s afraid our babies will be born on the side of the road.”
It sounded so lame when he said it. “Crazy, huh? But you should’ve seen them banding together over something as small as me asking for a schedule change.”
“So, this engagement will have them teaming up and siding against our nuptials, and you’re hoping once they remember how well they work, they’ll patch things up for good.”
“Exactly.”
“What about your grandfather? How would he feel about our getting together?”
Cardin stared at the zipper on her sleeping bag. “Jeb’s his own man. He may be at odds with my father, but as far as you and me? He would think he’d died and gone to heaven if I were to marry into the Corley Motors family. He’s the team’s biggest cheerleader.”
She smiled as she slid her hand from Trey’s, reached for the zipper pull and tugged. “From day one, Headlights was about the cars and the drivers and the crews even more so than the fans. If not for the shrapnel hit he took in Korea, he’d probably be doing what you do. It’s hard for him to be on his feet any length of time, but he tinkers an hour or two every day on his Nova, out in the garage behind the house.”