by Lisa Cach
“I took off because I had to get some perspective on what the hell is going on between us.”
“I should think it was quite clear,” she lied. She didn’t know what he felt, and was only half sure of her own feelings.
“Like hell it’s clear. This is the strangest damn relationship I’ve ever been in.”
“It’s not a re—”
“I know, it’s not a relationship,” he said, running a hand through his hair in agitation. “But it’s something. There’s an attraction between us like nothing I’ve ever encountered, and yeah, it’s thrown me off balance. But that’s what you wanted, isn’t it, Grace? To throw me off balance?” he said with an edge in his voice. He leaned closer to her, suddenly seeming twice as large in the small confines of the car.
“Why would I want that?” she asked innocently, feeling a start of both pleasure and alarm in her chest. She had affected him more than she’d thought, which delighted her, but he might sense more about her angry feelings than she’d intended. It would be much harder to crush the bastard if he knew she hated him.
“Because you want to hurt me, the same way I hurt you that first night.”
“Yes, you hurt me,” Grace said carefully. “But you also did me a double favor that night. First you showed me how useful you could be for my own sexual entertainment, and then you showed me that you weren’t the type of man whose feelings I’d have to care about. My only disappointment has been that you’ve fallen below the mark, sexually. I’d hoped for so much more.”
“Those were the terms of the game! You’d have gotten more if your pride hadn’t kept you from saying yes. Believe me, I would have been too happy to oblige.”
“Funny, I didn’t take you for the type to sit around waiting for written permission.”
“The only thing that makes a game worthwhile,” Declan ground out, “is having rules to follow.”
“And only mediocre players never learn that there’s a right time to break them. Risk and reward, Declan. But I guess you like things on the cautious side.” She saw the tightness on his face and thought he looked ready to explode. It would take just one more push toward the edge. “Andrew looks cautious on the outside, but underneath I’m discovering—”
Declan reached for her, sending a thrill of fear and excitement through her, but almost simultaneously Sophia’s sharp voice came from a window on the second floor. “Declan!” she barked, making them spring apart. “Are you going to sit there all day arguing, or are you going to teach Grace to drive the car?”
Grace blushed to her hairline, wondering just how much Sophia had overheard. She looked up at her aunt and waved. Sophia rolled her eyes and disappeared into the shadows of the house. Declan seemed no less disturbed as he fumbled for his seat belt and snapped it shut. Grace adjusted the mirror, then buckled herself in as well.
Taking on an impersonal tone, Declan talked Grace through familiarization with the gears on the stick shift and disengaging the clutch. Using his hands as models for her feet on the pedals, he demonstrated how she was going to start the car and then put it into motion. “Got it?”
Grace’s anxiety, so happily forgotten while they were arguing, came back in full force. This was it. She was going to drive the friggin’ $100,000 car. She nodded, reached for the key, and turned it.
It made a quarter turn and stopped. No engine turned over. No change in the car was apparent. Grace looked at her feet, checking that they were where Declan had said to put them. She checked the gearshift. Nothing seemed out of order. She looked at Declan.
“It’s a re-creation of a 1935 car,” he said.
“And?”
He pointed to a red and chrome button several inches from the key. “Starter.”
“You could have told me that before,” Grace muttered, and pressed the button. The engine growled to life, the power vibrating up the steering wheel to her hands, the whole car gently thumping.
“There’s a V8 under the hood,” Declan cautioned. “Two hundred and ninety-five horsepower.”
“I don’t really know what that means,” Grace said, sitting frozen with feet on the clutch and brake, and the car in first gear; at least she was pretty sure it was first gear. She looked at the stick to check, looked away, then checked again. She touched it with her hand, making sure it was shoved into place.
“It means that when you hit the gas, the car doesn’t just go, it goes.”
“Fantastic.”
“Take your foot off the brake, touch the gas, and engage the clutch.”
“I’m going to. I’m just mentally preparing.” She mentally replayed what Declan had modeled with his hands, and applied it to what he’d told her about the workings of the engine and transmission. She could almost visualize exactly what needed to happen.
“Do it!” Declan ordered.
Grace took her foot off the brake, hit the gas, engaged the clutch, and the Auburn leaped forward a foot before lurching to a halt and dying, jerking them against their seat belts. “Dammit!” Grace cried.
“Feet on the clutch and brake,” Declan said. “Put the car in neutral. Restart the car.”
“I know,” Grace groused as she obeyed.
Again the car lurched and died. Again she restarted it, and then killed it a third time. She sat still, lowered her brows, and thought. If a motionless gear was what killed the engine, then if the engine seemed like it was going to die, the remedy would be—
“Grace, try again.”
“Shh!”
“Feet on the clutch and—”
“Shh! I’m thinking!”
“You’re never going to learn this by thinking; you need to feel what the car is doing. You’ll only learn that by doing. It’s a physical thing, not a mental one.”
“Just be quiet. Please!”
Declan heaved a sigh and crossed his arms over his chest.
Grace gripped the steering wheel and stared out over the hood. The clutch needs to slip a little to get the gear moving—the engine can keep running if the clutch isn’t engaged… . She realized she had been giving it too much gas and engaging the clutch too quickly. All she had to do if the car started to buck was disengage the clutch a little more.
She started the car, put it in gear, released the brake, gently hit the gas, and slowly lifted her foot off the clutch pedal. The car eased forward, she gave it more gas, and it suddenly lurched. She slammed her foot onto the clutch pedal, keeping the engine alive. “Ha, gotcha!” she muttered, and once again started to ease the car forward. With a few gentle jerks and some play with the clutch, she got the Auburn moving and headed out of the courtyard. With her foot now completely off the clutch, she gave it more gas and with a quiet roar the car shot up the sloping, winding driveway.
Beside her, Declan sucked in a breath, and she herself struggled to maneuver the long car around a bend at too high a speed. As they came around it, a Subaru Forester appeared, half blocking their path. Grace screeched and hit the brake, forgetting the clutch in the process and killing the engine with a lurch. The Subaru swerved and stopped, the two cars coming within a half foot of each other.
Declan swore under his breath. Grace’s heart was in her throat, going two hundred beats a minute. She recognized Dr. Andrew’s car; a moment later, he inched the Subaru forward, the outside wheels going off the driveway and into the dirt to get by. He stopped parallel to the Auburn and lowered his window.
“Grace? What are you doing in that thing?” he asked, his face tight with worry as his gaze went from her to Declan, so close beside her, to the car.
“Learning to drive a stick shift,” she said, barely keeping herself from explaining that it had been Sophia’s idea. Sophia’s insistence that Andrew must fight for her was still fresh in her mind.
“You’re not going out on a public road in that, are you?”
“Of course she is,” Declan said before Grace could answer. “Don’t you think she’s capable?”
“There’s capable and there’s reasonable. Grace, leave that car
where it is and come back down to the house. We’ll find an easier car for you to learn on. I’ll take you to an empty parking lot and teach you.”
Grace’s hands tightened on the wheel. She was still scared half to death of the Auburn, and on high alert with Declan sitting next to her, but there was a thrill in the danger that she didn’t want to give up. She didn’t want to be rescued. “It’s okay, Andrew. I’m getting the hang of it already.” She gave him a warm smile. “But thanks for looking out for me.”
“Are you sure?” Andrew’s worried eyes rested on Declan. “I’m a patient instructor.”
Declan stretched out his arm, laying it behind Grace’s shoulders on the back of the bench seat. “Don’t worry, Andrew,” he said, “I’ll teach her everything she needs to know.” He brushed his fingertips over her bare shoulder.
Grace shivered, his touch setting off a cascade of reaction in her body. She rolled her eyes for Andrew’s benefit, and shooed him toward the house. “Aunt Sophia’s waiting for you. Don’t worry, I’ll be back before you know it.”
Andrew’s brow puckered as Declan’s naughty fingers shifted to her neck, stroking between her collarbone and ear. Grace grabbed his hand. “Stop that,” she scolded, only to find her hand now trapped in his. She smiled again at Andrew as she tugged it free.
“Grace?” Andrew said uncertainly.
“He’s just teasing,” she said, feigning exasperation. Part of her wanted to see where Declan’s roving hand might go next, the rest of her was annoyed that he had to have this irresistible physical effect on her.
“If you’re sure,” Andrew said.
“She’s sure,” Declan answered. “How many times does she have to say it?”
Andrew’s lips tightened, and with a final nod to Grace he crept the Subaru past them and around the bend of the drive.
“I thought he’d never leave,” Declan said.
“You enjoyed that,” Grace accused, and shrugged his arm off her shoulders.
Declan brushed his fingertips across her skin as he withdrew, sending a fresh shiver over her flesh. “So did you.”
She couldn’t deny it, much as she’d like to. “Oh, hush,” she said instead, and made a show of getting the car ready to start.
“You’re in a tough spot now,” Declan said.
“Between you and Andrew? Hardly. I think it’s pretty obvious who’s the better choice.”
“Why thank you, Grace. But I was talking about starting the car on a hill.”
“Oh.”
“The car’s going to roll backward when you take your foot off the brake.”
A flutter of uncertainty beat in her chest. “Okay.”
“So you’re going to have to act with a little more speed, because we’re on a bend here and if you roll straight back, you’re going to go off the driveway and into a tree.”
Was he trying to make her more nervous? “Yeah, I get the picture.”
“So start the car.”
She ground her teeth and started the engine. Once again she stared out over the long hood, mentally rehearsing what she was going to do.
“Grace—”
“Ut!” she said, putting up one hand to stop him. “I’m thinking.”
“Gra—”
“Ut! Ut!”
She put her hand back on the wheel, took her foot off the brake, and as the car started to roll backward she tried to get it to go forward. She overdid it on the gas and the car lurched and bucked. She shoved her foot on the clutch, and they picked up backward speed.
Declan made a strangled noise.
Grace slammed her foot on the brake. The car halted and she sat frozen, then dared a peek in the rearview mirror.
A pine tree loomed straight behind them, only a foot or so off the asphalt.
Shaking now, her left leg already feeling the strain of unfamiliar use on the clutch, she started the car again. Canted backward on the slope, she was a little farther from the pedals than was comfortable, and had to point her toes to get the clutch all the way disengaged. Her arch ached. She clung to the steering wheel, trying to hold herself forward as she once again released the brake and hit the gas.
The car lurched and died.
She whimpered.
“Grace,” Declan said softly. “You already understand how it works. Like I said before, just feel and do.”
“That’s not how I work.”
“It’s going to have to be. Put on the parking brake; I’ll take over and get the car somewhere easier for you to practice.”
“No! I can do this.”
“You don’t need to prove anything, Grace. You’re learning. Give yourself a break.”
“No! Just let me sit and think a minute.”
“Grace, for God’s sake! You can’t think your way out of starting a car on a hill.”
He wasn’t hearing her; he didn’t understand her. The realization hurt and frustrated her. “Declan, I’m not put together in a way that lets me feel my way through anything! I have to think, all the time.”
“You could have fooled me. Were you thinking all through the night we spent together?”
“Yes! Always!”
His voice lowered, any teasing or exasperation gone from it. “So it was just a game to you. A test to see how far you could push me.”
“Yes!”
He was silent a moment, and then, disbelief in his voice, “Christ, Grace. Are you even human?”
She met his gaze, his accusation and the stress of the moment making the truth spill out from dark recesses she hadn’t even known were within her. “You think I like being this way? You have no idea how badly I wish I could shut it off sometimes and just be. Yeah, I was testing you that night, but I was also testing myself. Part of me hoped you could push me to where I’d break down and feel so much that thought stopped, pride shattered, and I wouldn’t care about or be aware of anything but sex. I wanted to lose myself in sensation. But you couldn’t get me all the way there. No one can.” She felt tears starting in her eyes, and her voice cracked. “So yeah, I do have to think my way through every goddamn thing, including getting this goddamn car to move forward without bashing a hundred-thousand-dollar bumper into a goddamn pine tree! Okay?”
She expected to see anger or impatience in his eyes, but instead saw thoughtful consideration.
“Yeah, okay,” Declan said evenly. “If we have to roll up against the tree, it won’t hurt the car if you do so slowly.”
“Okay.”
It took several tries, and finally, coasting and steering backward down the driveway back to the courtyard where she could start again on the flat ground, but eventually Grace managed to get the Auburn up to the top of the driveway. After three tries and some tense moments, Grace pulled the car onto 17-Mile Drive and eventually shifted into second gear. The speed limit was low enough that she felt comfortable maneuvering the big car, and the sweat of anxiety and exertion began to dry on her skin, lifted away by the sea breeze along a stretch of road overlooking the rocky shore.
Turnouts along the road were packed with the cars of tourists and families getting out to take in the views. People turned to watch as the red Auburn glided by, with some friendly souls waving as if to a passing ship. Declan waved back as Grace grinned.
Stop signs, and cars coming to a stop ahead of her to make a left turn, were her nemeses. She killed the engine a handful of times, but gradually started to get the hang of making the car go. Declan was unusually quiet beside her, offering neither praise nor criticism, and when she sneaked a peek at his face he looked lost in thought. His mental absence was welcome since it kept her from feeling observed and judged, but it was agitating on a different level.
The one thing she’d always been sure of with Declan was that he was fully aware of her whenever they were together. This was uncomfortably like spending time with Andrew.
She scolded herself for being a self-absorbed ninny. She wasn’t a child, needing every moment of a person’s attention. Especially not Declan’s att
ention, which brought her nothing but grief …
… and the most thrilling sexual moments she’d ever experienced.
“Turn left at the next intersection,” Declan said, jerking her out of her thoughts.
She did as bid, turning onto a smaller road through a residential neighborhood. Declan guided her through several turns and they twisted deeper into the Del Monte forest, past modest houses and past gates that hid other homes from the road. A final narrow, lonely stretch of asphalt wound upward through trees, coming out into a clearing atop a hill. A midcentury ranch house sat alone in the space, with a view over the treetops and a distant line of ocean. The yard was unkempt and the house had weeds protruding from the gutters, the aluminum-pane windows bare of curtains.
“What is this place?” Grace asked as she parked the car and shut off the engine.
“A vacant house,” he said, getting out of the car. “I’m working with some investors on buying the land and subdividing it.”
Grace got out, too, following him to the edge of the driveway to look out over the meadow and woods. She stretched, her muscles tight from driving. “It seems a pity to fill such a private spot with houses.”
“People overrate the virtues of isolation. We’re social creatures and like company, however much we complain about our neighbors or communities.”
“So why’d you bring me up here? To make sure there are no Steinbeck crickets lurking in the grass to spoil your plans?”
A muscle in his jaw twitched. “No. It was the only place I could think of that was private.”
“Private for what?”
He turned, slid his hand behind her neck, and lowered his mouth to hers. She stood frozen in surprise, and then felt a shot of warmth and weakness go through her. Before she could react, he’d wrapped his other arm around her waist and deepened the kiss, her hips pressed up against his, her head tilting back under the force of his tender assault. Her hands gripped his sides either for balance or to push him away, but his lips on hers and the warm, wet thrust of his tongue into her mouth had her loosening her grip and then sliding her hands onto his back to pull him closer.
His slid down to her buttock, squeezing her once and then hoisting her up against his pelvis. She wrapped her legs around his hips and was dimly aware of him carrying her, but it was his mouth that mattered to her as it pressed down against hers, a hungry, devouring substitute for the union of their bodies. She ground her loins against him, seeking contact and sensation.