“Sounds like a win-win. Right now the track’s just sitting here anyway.”
“Let’s walk it—or roll on it,” he added to Wade, “and see what she feels like.”
Waves of heat enveloped them as they circled the track and talked about clips, banks, and potential course setups. Drifting had its own lingo that Pax was just beginning to get a handle on. He liked the newest angle on the sport. It was fresh, fun, and different.
He checked his phone when he heard the text sound. Gemma’s a-dorable face appeared on his screen. We’re done. And covered in paint!
Love you. Come on over and meet Tanner.
Uh…covered in paint! And sweaty.
Good. That’ll camouflage your gorgeousness so Tanner won’t steal you away from me.
Fat chance. You’re stuck with me. :P
Like glue, baby.
“The girls are coming over,” Pax said. “So, Tanner, what d’ya think?”
“I like what I see. I’m in.” He held out his hand, and they shook. “I’ll need a place to park Harvey.”
“Your drifting car?” Pax chuckled. “Did you name it?”
“No, my RV.” He tipped his chin toward the road coming in, and Pax could see a nice RV. “This chick I knew thought I was saying Harvey instead of RV, and it kinda stuck.”
“You can park in the pit area.” Pax pointed to the section of grass beyond the track.
Tanner nodded. “That’ll do. I told my pit crew I was taking some downtime and they should do the same, though I know they’ll be itching to tinker before long. They’ll probably head down in their own beast next week.”
“They’re welcome to stay here, too. Got plenty of room.”
They ended up at the garage, where Raleigh’s high-performance mechanic shop was now in full swing. Tanner was commenting on how nice a garage would be on-site when his gaze locked onto the car sitting in the open bay. His whole expression changed from easy to slack with surprise as he approached the baby-blue T-bird with the birdie license plate.
He turned back to them. “Does this car belong to a lady named Grace?”
“Yep,” Raleigh said. “I’ve been working on getting it ready to sell, if that crazy-interested look means you’re jonesing for a car like this. Which would be a bit of fate, really, because up until last week she wouldn’t have considered selling. Her dad left it to her, so it has sentimental value. But I guess she decided it was time to move on.”
Pax knew a little more about her dad’s story, but he considered it privileged, sensitive information, so he kept it to himself.
“Fate.” Tanner was rubbing his mouth with his fingertips. “I’m not crazy interested in the car. The owner, however…” He let that drop. “Tell me about her.”
Pax felt a protective bristle, part friend, part cop. “Why do you want to know?”
“Met her at a bar in PCB a few days ago.”
“Ah,” Pax said, giving Raleigh a knowing look. “She pretty wild, sitting on the bar and the like?”
“Not at all. She was shooting back tequila shots and looking lost. I couldn’t resist trying to make her smile.” His mouth turned up at one corner. “And I did, but damn, it wasn’t easy. The only thing she’d tell me about herself was her first name. We connected. Then she did a Cinderella on me, but I didn’t even get a shoe. Or a phone number.”
Pax winced. “Ouch. When a chick hits the road after you tangle in the sheets…”
“That hurts,” Raleigh said.
“It would have dinged my ego if I hadn’t been so sure she felt the connection, too. And we didn’t even get to the tangle part.” He glanced off, running his hand back through his blond waves. “I meet women here and there, have a good time and move on, no big deal. Grace was different. We got so caught up talking and laughing that we weren’t in any hurry to, you know, go on to other things. All of a sudden, she got this panicky look on her face and said she had to go.” He stroked the side of her car. “I want to see her again.”
Odd. Pax couldn’t imagine Grace panicked. Which made this very interesting indeed. “Did you do something to scare her?”
“Kissed her, but she was just as into it as I was.” He pounded his solar plexus with the edge of his fist. You know how you meet someone, and they just stick here?”
Pax glanced back to where the women who meant the most to him were walking toward them. Damn, Gemma still looked a-dorable, even with slashes of paint on her face and in her hair. “Don’t I know it.” He reached back as Gemma approached, clasping fingers and pulling her up against his side. “Gemma, this is Tanner. He’s on board.”
“Awesome. Nice to meet you.”
Tanner was obviously more gentle in his handshake with her, since she didn’t grimace. “Nice to meet you, too.”
Pax liked that he treated Janey exactly the same as he had Gemma and Mia, giving her a warm smile and a handshake, too.
“Mia, Gemma, you’ve been hanging out with Grace lately,” Pax said. “She and Tanner met at a bar a few days ago. They clicked big-time, and then she did a Cinderella on him. Any ideas why?”
Gemma shook her head. “No, but while she’s very, er, mouthy when it comes to other people’s interests, she’s coy about her own stuff. But I can tell you, when we talked a couple of weeks ago her recent dates had been pretty bad, with undertones of just plain strange.” She sized up Tanner. “I can’t think of any reason. In fact, you look like just the kind of guy to spice up her life.”
“Think she’d mind accidentally seeing him again?” Pax asked.
Both women grew wicked grins. Gemma gave an exaggerated shake of her head. “I’d say she’s more than ready.”
To every woman and man who has ever been violated. You are whole, beautiful, and worthy of healing…and of love.
Acknowledgments
Loads of gratitude to Andy Haase of the Three Palms Speedway in Punta Gorda, Florida, for answering my many questions and connecting me with the right people.
And to my Random House team, for being supportive and helping to shape this book into something better, and for your enthusiasm! Sue and Gina, you are totally awesome! So is my agent, Nicole Resciniti!
BY TINA WAINSCOTT
Falling Fast
Falling Hard
Falling Free (coming soon)
Justiss Alliance
Wild Hearts (novella)
Wild on You
Wild Ways
Wild Nights
Wild Ties (coming soon)
PHOTO: © KELLY MACDONALD PHOTOGRAPHY
TINA WAINSCOTT is the USA Today bestselling author of more than thirty books with romantic thrills and suspenseful chills. A happy ending is a must, but the road to it is full of ravines and shaky bridges. In her Falling Fast series, each couple must overcome a rocky past to find love. In her Justiss Alliance series, five Navy SEALs take the fall for a covert mission gone wrong and join a private agency that exacts justice outside the law. As Jaime Rush, Tina is the author of the Hidden series, featuring humans with the essence of dragons, angels, and magic, and the award-winning Offspring series, about psychic abilities and government conspiracies.
tinawainscott.com
Facebook.com/TinaWainscottBooks
@Tina_Wainscott
The Editor’s Corner
Happy Holidays from our hearth to yours! This month we’re sending you some hot Loveswept romances to keep the fires burning:
USA Today bestselling author Bronwen Evans’s new Disgraced Lords novel is about a marriage of convenience and its delightful pleasures—and mortal danger—in A Whisper of Desire. K. J. Charles turns up the heat in her new Society of Gentlemen novel, A Seditious Affair, as two lovers face off in a sensual duel that challenges their deepest beliefs. Samantha Kane’s Birmingham Rebels series proves that three’s never a crowd…at least not for the hard-bodied football all-stars who give teamwork a sexy twist in Calling the Play. Welcome to Forever, new from author Annie Rains, introduces a small coastal town where America’s
best and brightest risk everything for love. Jackie Ashenden ups the ante in the seductive Deacons of Bourbon Street series, co-written with Megan Crane, Rachael Johns, and Maisey Yates, with Hold Me Down, a story about what happens when the biker who broke Alice’s heart rides into town, and she must choose between passion and duty. Another story for MC fans is Violetta Rand’s irresistible novel about a sexy-as-sin biker who tempts a good girl to go bad, Persuasion.
In USA Today bestselling author Tina Wainscott’s gritty, emotional small-town romance Falling Hard, passions run high as a reformed bad boy reconnects with an old enemy…and gets her engine revving. In Laura Marie Altom’s tale of forbidden love, Stepping Over the Line, meet two tortured souls with an unbreakable bond. Then comes a tender military romance from Serena Bell, USA Today bestselling author of Hold on Tight, in which a war-shattered veteran gets a second chance at love with the one that got away in Can’t Hold Back.
Writing duo MJ Fields and Chelsea Camaron release another sizzling-hot Caldwell Brothers story: Morrison, which hits the Vegas strip as a bad-boy gambler from Detroit Rock City shows a single mom what it means to play for keeps. Then it’s off to Los Angeles where Hollywood’s hottest young actor hits the road to chase his big break—and discovers a leading lady where he least expects in Cassie Mae’s No Interest in Love.
I can’t believe 2016 is upon us, can you? Thank you for spending your reading time with Loveswept, and we hope to entertain you all over again in the new year.
Happy Romance!
Gina Wachtel
Associate Publisher
Read on for an excerpt from
Falling Free
A Falling Fast Novel
by Tina Wainscott
Available from Loveswept
Chapter 1
Grace Parnell settled onto the chair in the visitor’s room of the Northwest Florida Reception Center as the guard led in the inmate with whom she was meeting. She consulted with clients in prison, but this man, with his coloring and the world-weary lines on his face, was far different.
When the door closed, she leaned forward and gave him a quick hug. “Hi, Dad.”
“Hi, baby. Any news?”
She felt just as world-weary as she sank into her chair and shook her head. She imagined herself as wrinkled and sallow as he looked, though at thirty-three she hadn’t developed any lines yet. The rock of defeat in her chest grew even heavier as she faced him across the table.
“Our appeal was turned down again. I’m sorry.” She squeezed his hand as his expression deadened, injecting as much hope as she could muster in hers. “Don’t give up. I’m going to—”
“Nothing more, Gracie. I can’t do this anymore.”
She searched his face, his Cherokee features more pronounced than hers, which had more Caucasian mixed in courtesy of her mother. His dark brown eyes mirrored her own, though his thick hair had lost its gloss. “Don’t give up, Dad. Please, let me—”
“I did it.”
Those three tiny words stole away anything more that she might say. Of course, she’d misheard him. “What?”
Those eyes brimmed with tears, though they didn’t spill over. His voice was a mere whisper. “I killed him. The jury, they got it right. And I’m so, so sorry that I let you do all this. The appeals. The hope. All your work. I was so selfish, Gracie. But it wasn’t just so I could have a chance to get out of here.” He squeezed her hand when she wanted to pull it back. “I didn’t want you to hate me. That day they came to arrest me, I looked into your sweet little face when you screamed at the officers that I was innocent. That I couldn’t possibly kill someone. I saw your belief in me. Nobody’s ever believed in me. No one but you.”
Now the tears spilled over, leaving a glossy trail on his pocked skin. “I couldn’t lose that. When you told me you wanted to become an attorney so you could get me out, I thought that was a pipe dream. And when you got the grants and went to college you were so proud, so loyal….God, Gracie, I couldn’t tell you the truth, not then. Every time you came to see me, I wanted to tell you. But you were so full of hope and love, and you were here. It brought you to see me.” He lowered his head to their linked hands and started crying. “Please don’t hate me.”
She stared at their hands as that rock sank to her stomach, then to her feet. All her blood seemed to drain along with it. “No,” she said. “You’re just saying this to…” But she couldn’t think of one reason that he would lie about his guilt.
He lifted his face, racked with that guilt. “I’m a terrible man. Not for killing Peters; the guy was a true scumbag, and he got what he deserved. I’m even worse than a murderer. I told myself that you were pursuing law for yourself, too. You had this need for justice, and you were helping other people. But I could see it lately, that you were losing your fire for it. And every time you came to tell me about a setback it hurt you as much as me. But you’d pull up your big-girl panties and paste on that beautiful smile and outline your next strategy. I promised myself that if this one fell through I would tell you the truth. For once, I’m going to do the right thing.”
She was trying to make sense of his raspy words and the pain she heard in them. He had been lying to her all these years. And she had believed those lies, not just as a little girl but as a professional lawyer who prided herself on her ability to tell whether someone was lying. But she’d failed. What about all those other people she believed were innocent and saved from prosecution? Had she misjudged them, too?
“Say something, Gracie. I’d even take you cussing me out over that blank look.”
She couldn’t. If she let one word out, she’d let out a torrent. Accusations, pain, the shattering disillusions of that idealistic girl who still lived inside her. She rose and went to the door, pounded on it. “I’m finished,” she could hardly push out, the words cracked.
She exited without looking back at the man for whom she’d chosen a profession, a life. He’d let her spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars searching for that one witness, one shred of evidence that the police had missed.
She hardly met anyone’s eyes as she went through security and walked to her car. His car, the baby-blue T-Bird she’d lovingly kept and restored in the hope that he’d be able to drive it again when he was released. The car he’d called Birdie, his nickname for her before his arrest. This car had been her hope, a symbol of the justice she knew the future would bring.
She wouldn’t crack. Wouldn’t explode or implode. The last time she’d let herself feel the pain was after the police took her father away. Her mother had said, “Good riddance,” and gone to her room, letting Grace cry alone.
Grace sat in the driver’s seat and sucked in several breaths, her fingers wrapped tightly around the steering wheel. She couldn’t go home to her dining-room table covered in boxes and files and papers. Her notes with strategies about moving forward. She needed to go somewhere else. Anywhere else.
The route back to Chambliss and the shoreline took her right into Panama City She usually took 98 around the city, then down the shoreline to home. But at the intersection she turned right instead and crossed the bridge to PCB—Panama City Beach.
She’d spent many a night partying there when she was younger, before she was even legal to drink. Looking for love in all the wrong places, as the song went. Then she’d gone a few times in the past few years when she needed to touch that wild, fun side of herself far from those prying eyes in Chambliss, Florida. She’d worked damned hard to overcome her reputation. Then she’d seen two young men she knew and stopped doing that. Good thing, because she’d ended up representing one of them on a trumped-up murder charge, and become friends with both of them.
But right then the idea of sitting in front of a shot of amber Jose Cuervo at a noisy bar filled her with a longing she couldn’t deny. Just the thought of the lime made her mouth water. She took the road into the touristy beach city made famous by raucous spring breaks.
Driving down the strip brought back a lot of g
reat memories. The admiring, or downright lust-filled, gazes of men as she danced on crowded floors, losing herself in a sensuality she hadn’t felt in years. Free drinks and stolen kisses on the dark beach. And some not so great ones, too. Walks of shame, hungover, as she’d tried to remember the guy’s name. Yuck.
Tonight, she just wanted to lose herself, period. She wasn’t that hot babe anymore, the one who walked in and commanded a room. That self-confidence only played in a courtroom nowadays, in her oh-so-professional pants and suits. She’d trained her ass not to sway and eradicated all those sensual gestures that had once come naturally. Working in a predominantly man’s world, she had to play like a man. The only thing she’d kept was her smart-assed mouth, and that had served her well.
Most of the time, anyway.
It wasn’t likely that she’d run into Pax and Raleigh again; both were now in relationships with amazing, beautiful women. Women who’d become her friends, too.
She walked into the Love Shack, a low-key bar with high ceilings, a long bar, and a large dance floor. Not that she’d be dancing. Watching would be fun, though. Forget about who she was, what her dad had just admitted, and sink into other people’s high jinks.
It was early for the crowd, though. Maybe thirty people littered the joint, and no one danced to the music floating over the sound system. Not surprising, considering it was rock and roll. Having her pick of stools at the bar, she chose one at the very end. She’d start kicking back the tequila shots, and if she felt too buzzed to drive she’d get a room at one of the nearby hotels.
Hardly anyone gave her a second look, which was just fine with her. She wasn’t here for a pickup. The bartender had already brought her second shot, with a slice of lime. She licked the spot between her finger and thumb, sprinkled on the salt. Then she licked off the salt, threw back the shot, and sucked the lime. The tequila burned and warmed at once, prickly and soothing. Two shots on an empty stomach was enough for a nice buzz, but she didn’t want to end up on the floor. Note to self: order nachos with the third shot.
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