He chuckled as he read the description on the window. “Well, it certainly sounds bad-ass: ‘Internal combustion three-cylinder turbocharged engine.’ ”
As usual, she couldn’t tell if he was kidding. “So what does that mean—like, twenty hamsterpower?”
“Ha. Probably at least twenty. All right, give it a go.”
Grace started the car and followed the path down the road. “I feel so small. Like we’re in a space shuttle. People are laughing at me, I just know it.”
“People are thinking how earth-friendly you are.”
“That truck we just drove could run this right over and hardly feel a bump. But the turning radius rocks.”
She made the U-turn and returned to the lot. When she handed the keys back to Andrea, she said, “It was surprisingly not terrible. But I can’t see myself driving it any more than I could see myself driving that truck.” She turned to Tanner. “Any other cars to try?”
“The Scion FR-S is a sweet car. A few of the drifters run them, and they handle like a dream.”
“And we have a red one on the lot,” Andrea said.
“After that, you can look at all the boring—I mean practical—cars you want.”
Chapter 6
Tanner enjoyed watching Grace change with each car they drove. As much as she’d protested, she morphed into the personality suited to the vehicle. All he’d wanted was for her to expand her boundaries.
She drove four “practical” cars and clearly did not have as much fun. In fact, she spent more time talking to him than paying attention to the cars’ performance—pointing out bars and filling him in on what they’d been in previous incarnations.
“They had soap bubbles on the dance floor there. And that one turned into a gay bar between visits, so after the second woman came up and tried to get me to dance I asked if I was giving off some kind of signal, and she said, ‘You’re in a gay bar.’ Like duh.”
“Ha. Some of us guys had a bet: whoever came in lowest after the current race had to go to a gay bar and ask a guy to dance. Spitz, one of the drivers, lost, but the son of a bitch asked me to dance. So I did, in a most embarrassing way. Don’t judge. I was twenty.”
She just laughed. “I wish I could have seen that. I bet you’re a good dancer if you’re not goofing around.”
“Try me.” He didn’t mean for it to come out quite so provocatively, but he liked the way her breath caught. Before she could say no, he said, “Let’s hit a bar tonight, do some dancing. Let loose.”
“Uh-uh.”
“No Jose Cuervo, no whiskey, and no losing control.”
He could see her fear of that as he talked, figuring that a few drinks would loosen her up a little too much. She needed that, needed a lot of things that he could give her. Because if any woman needed to lose herself in some hot, sweaty sex, she did. Forget Jose; he wanted to make her lose control, to scream out his name….
She came to a stop at a red light. “What about flirting?”
“I can flirt if you want me to.”
She punched him right on his tattoo. “No flirting! You knew exactly what I meant.”
“Grace, I’m not sure you even know what you mean. Or want.” He gave her a teasing smile. “I know what I want.”
“Dare I ask?”
“I want you to come dancing with me. Just dancing. We don’t even have to slow-dance, ’cause I know you wouldn’t want your body pressed against mine, hips grinding together—”
She placed her hand over his mouth. “I get the idea. I’ll think about the dancing,” she said. “Though if you keep looking at me like you’re going to eat me up, we’re driving straight back to Chambliss.” She snatched her hand back as though she could sense how close he was to sucking her fingers into his mouth.
He rubbed his stomach. “I’m just hungry, that’s all.” No need to specify that it was for her, since she obviously suspected as much. “A big, juicy burger snuggled up with a heap of glistening, golden fries is sounding pretty good about now.”
“And completely decadent and bad for us.”
“Sometimes it’s good to indulge in something that’s bad for you when you know it’s going to be so good.” He worked hard to maintain a totally innocent expression, which wasn’t easy, because he wasn’t feeling innocent in the least.
Her narrowed eyes called him on it, too. “You’re not talking about burgers anymore, are you?”
He planted his elbow on the center console, leaning close to her. “I’m talking about whatever you want me to be talking about.”
“How do you do that?” She focused on the road as the light turned green. “Look so ingenuous when I know you’re not?”
“Because part of me really does mean the burger and fries, so I focus on that.”
“The part of me that means the burger is in. I’m starved.” She pulled back into the lot and parked.
“What did you think of this one?” he asked, coming around to her side and opening her door.
“Oh, I—”
“You weren’t paying a whit of attention, were you? Because it’s boring. B-O-R-I-N-G.”
“Practical. P-R-A-C-T-I-C-A-L. Besides, a car is for getting from one place to another.”
He leaned close, planting his hands on either side of her on the car. “It’s all about the journey, babe. Fast, slow—doesn’t matter, but it should make you feel something.”
Their eyes met, and he decided to lean closer and kiss her.
“How was the ride?” Andrea’s voice interrupted from a near distance.
Grace stepped back and met the blonde’s smile with one of her own. “It didn’t move me.” She flicked a glance toward Tanner. “We’re going to have lunch, think about what we want. What I want, I mean. Thank you for your time.”
Forty minutes later, they were seated at a table at a beachside restaurant, him with an ice-cold Corona complete with lime wedged inside. It was a beautiful day, the sun glinting off the choppy water, a breeze taking the edge off the heat. Being with Grace made it all the better.
She sipped at an iced tea and gazed out at the blue Gulf of Mexico, a soft smile on her face. He enjoyed drinking her in more than the beer. She had a beautiful mouth, full and tinted a soft pink. Thick lashes fluttered as she blinked. The sea breeze washed her hair across her forehead. He wanted to run his fingers through those dark-chocolate strands, wanted to bury his face into the nape of her neck.
Hell, Tanner, what are you doing here? You tell yourself you want to cheer her up, loosen her load a bit, yet you can’t take your eyes off her. Or your mind.
The last thing he needed was to fall for a woman who was in the middle of some kind of crisis. The last thing he needed was to fall, period. He hadn’t trusted a woman in a long, long time. Hadn’t wanted to trust one, either…until now.
She turned toward him then. “Now who’s lost his smile?” She searched beneath the chair and the table. “Maybe one of those seagulls took off with it, thinking it was one of our discarded French fries.”
Which, of course, made him break out in a grin. “It happens sometimes.”
“Oh, no. I’m infecting you with my dark mood.”
She was infecting him, all right, but he wasn’t about to tell her how. “Not at all. I’m just sitting here trying to figure out what it could be.” He leaned back, took a swig of his beer, and stroked the hairs on his chin. “You had a case go rotten. You confessed that much. So let’s see. You’re what kind of attorney?”
“Criminal defense.”
“Ooh. Lots to go wrong there.”
“But that’s the thing. I had a rock-solid success rate because I had a knack for telling when my clients were guilty. I’m not interested in helping a criminal get a lesser charge.”
“Ah, you’re an idealist attorney. I like it.”
Just as he was deciding how best to probe her, a family landed en masse at the table next to them. A boy of about six chased off a seagull as it hovered above their basket, waiting for th
e chance to snatch another fry. The mother yelled at her twin daughters, who’d plunged their hands right into the sand, pulling up fistfuls that oozed out between their chubby fingers. The oldest of the kids was immersed in a noisy video game.
Grace took it all in with a wistful smile before turning to him. She started to say something that was drowned out by the girls’ screams as their mom hauled them off to wash their hands.
Tanner stuck a bill in the folder, giving Grace a Don’t even argue with me about who’s paying look. Then he scooped up the sandals she’d tucked to the side, took her hand, and pulled her onto the sugar-sand beach. White, wide, and crowded, with plenty of families still on summer break. He kept hold of her hand as he wove through the various encampments.
“Uh, I guess we’re walking on the beach,” she said.
“There’s that laser-sharp attorney’s eye.”
She smacked his arm, which he liked. “I must have missed the request, though.”
“The last time we walked on this beach you ditched me. You don’t have to apologize again,” he said before she could do just that. “But you owe me a walk. Don’t worry, I’m not calling in the rest of how that night was supposed to go.” He tightened his fingers over hers. “You running off has been bugging me big-time, Grace. It has nothing to do with a ding to my ego or losing out on a night of sex. It feels like unfinished business. Like watching a two-hour movie and the electricity going out right before the ending. Like qualifying well for a round and having the car crap out on the first run. Like—”
She swung around in front of him, planting her hands on his shoulders. “I told you, it had nothing to do with you. It’s all me. My screwed-up life.”
“And something about me kissing you too well, and feeling too good, and—well, that just makes it worse. Maybe if you tell me what’s screwing up your life I can get past it. Because I can’t right now. I tried, but I can’t.”
He liked the feel of her hands on him, even if it was only his shoulders.
“All right, all right. I’ll tell you. But only if you promise not to try to fix this.”
He raised his hands in surrender. “I’ll just listen.” Then he settled them lightly on her hips. “Talk to me, Grace. Someone has wrung out your heart and dropped the husk of it by the side of the road.”
“Well, I hadn’t thought of it that way.” She dropped her hands and stepped back. “Let’s walk. I feel better talking and walking.”
He held his hand out to her. Her expression softened, and she slid her hand into his. It had been only a few days ago that they walked down the beach all casual like this. And yet not casual, in a way that he couldn’t quite understand. He wanted to sling his arm over her shoulder as he’d done then, but he was probably pushing things as it was.
“I’m in sort of a career crisis. Since I was a kid, I wanted to be an attorney, get justice for the downtrodden.” She laughed softly, shaking her head. “Sounds stupidly idealistic, right?”
“Not at all. The idea of the underdog triumphing was what fired me up about drifting. That it wasn’t about the car, how expensive it was. The first event I ever went to, this guy in a piece of crap car did better than the dude in a Viper.”
“When did you start drifting? You must have been pretty young.”
“The sport was just coming to the States, and we happened to catch one of the events on television on a Saturday afternoon. The other foster kids thought it was stupid, but my heart started beating for the first time. My life was completely out of my control. The idea of taking chaos and controlling it, and doing it competitively—man, that was boss. I went to a couple of local events, did some ride-alongs, and—uh-uh, Madam Attorney. No diversion tactics allowed. You were beautifully idealistic. Then what?”
She narrowed her eyes at him but continued. “Stupidly idealistic. Big difference. I worked hard, got some scholarships, sacrificed a lot. I was proud of my ability to tell the liar from the innocent. The Grace you’ve met, this isn’t me. The Grace I used to be fought like a bulldog, butted heads with the asshole sheriff, and walked into a courtroom as though I owned it. And I won a lot of cases.”
“I can see that Grace. She was the one who put those pickup lines in my mouth, who wasn’t falling for some arrogant dude out for a cheap hookup. The one who drove the big-ass truck and glowed with her power. I like her.” A lot. He paused, brushing his finger beneath her chin. “But I like this Grace, too. Soft, vulnerable, wounded. Even if you don’t like her.”
“I hate her…er, me, like this. I’ve worked so hard.” Her voice thickened, and she swallowed. “That’s all I’ve done—work, work, work. And I felt good about what I’ve accomplished.” She stared off for a moment, taking a soft breath. “I was one of the lucky ones, you know? Like you, I knew what I wanted to be right out of the gate. I thought I was good at it. Now I don’t know.”
“So what happened to throw off this kick-ass Grace?”
She continued walking, though she didn’t pull away from his hand. In fact, her fingers tightened on his just a little. “There’s a case I’ve been working on for years, a man convicted of second-degree murder. He claimed he was innocent, and I believed him. I fought for appeals, spent time—a lot of time—researching, filing motions, visiting him.”
“Were you in love with this guy?”
“No.” She laughed, deep and throaty, which made him feel better. “The thing is, that supposedly wrongful conviction drove me into law in the first place. It was a big case in my small town. Not Chambliss—this was before we moved there. I grew up watching and hearing about this case. I wanted to fix it. The day you and I met, I’d gone to the prison facility to tell him that the latest appeal had been denied. I wanted to keep fighting, but he stopped me and admitted…he admitted that he had killed the guy on purpose. Not in an accident but in a fit of rage.” The pain in her voice was fresh, raw.
He rested his hand on her back. “No wonder you were so down. Damn. But, darlin’, that’s no reason to quit.”
“Don’t you see? It’s not the lost time and money. It’s not even that he lied to me. I believed him. Being able to tell if someone is telling the truth is integral to my career, and I missed it in the most important case of my life. What does that say about me? My skills as an attorney? My judgment? Now I’m wondering how many guilty men I’ve helped evade justice.”
He wasn’t supposed to try to fix the situation, and, frankly, he wasn’t sure how he could. She’d accused him of always saying the right thing, but he only said what felt true in that moment.
“So is that what you were looking for when you wanted to learn how to maintain your car? A new career?” he asked.
“Throwing away seven years of college, my firm, that would be crazy. But now that I have more free time I want to fill it with something meaningful. I’m not sure what I’m looking for beyond that. That’s the lost-ness I feel. I only know I need something that will give me a sense of accomplishment. And passion. And confidence. So I made a list of things that even marginally interest me.”
“How about friendship? A relationship?” He thought about Pax and Gemma, Raleigh and Mia. And himself. But he wouldn’t be around for long. Yet, right now, he didn’t want to think about moving on. “Sounds to me like that’s what you need.”
She shook her head. “I want to be more like you. Unattached. Free. Then someone I trust won’t let me down.”
He should tell her that no, she didn’t. It was lonely even when he was with people he considered to be friends. The words bubbled up, and he pushed them back down and told her the lie he told himself, because that’s what she needed to hear. “Yeah, it’s the way to go. No one can disappoint you in that knife-to-the-gut way.”
A Frisbee flew past, and a teenage boy ran after it.
He watched the kid trip and tumble into the water, then spring up triumphantly, disk in hand. He turned back to Grace. “I like the idea of exploring different things. So what interests you?”
She pulled
out her phone and called up a notebook app. He leaned close as she searched a list of documents.
“ ‘Mr. Right’? I want to see that one.” He pretended to reach for the phone, which he knew would get him another slap. But since he liked any contact with her it was worth it.
She obliged with a quick, soft tap. “No way.” She opened one called POSSIBLE HOBBIES. “I can cross off car maintenance. I’m definitely not feeling that. I don’t think I’d want to be a computer guru, either. Maybe working with kids in some way. Or…”
He couldn’t help smiling at the organized way she’d gone about tackling a hobby. Finally, though, he put his hand between her and the phone. “So you approach it the way you did the car shopping. Be open to trying anything. Everything. Instead of the list, go out in the world and look around. When you find the right thing, the right car, you’ll feel it down to your bones.”
She met his gaze, swallowing hard. “But I need to have—”
“Fun,” he finished. “Don’t be so serious about it.”
She blew out a breath. “Fun? What’s that?”
“It’s what happens when you stop trying so damned hard. It’s letting go. Falling free. Hanging out with corruptive people. Being spontaneous.” He grabbed her around the waist, hoisted her over his shoulder, and started running down the beach.
She let out a yelp, though not entirely of protest, and grabbed on to the waistband of his cargo pants. He gripped her thighs, feeling her weight bounce with his steps. Spying a vacant area, he bounded through the soft sand and gently dropped her onto it, coming down over her as though he were doing a push-up. Damn, did he want to lower his mouth to hers, but she needed to make that move. And he felt that she might, because of the way she was looking at him. Breathing hard. Needing what he could offer her.
And what’s that? A week of fun?
“I can’t believe you did that,” she said at last.
“I followed my impulse. I won’t judge you when you follow yours.”
She hooked her leg around his waist and flipped them so that he was on the bottom. “Good to know.”
Falling Free ( Falling Fast #3) Page 10