In Too Fast

by Mara Jacobs

“I’ll be right back. Wait here,” he said, then turned and walked up to the gate. He reached for the gate panel.

  “Come on, Stick, don’t be an asshat,” I said, assuming he was going to ring the bell, something even my mother never did.

  He turned to me. “I have to drop something off. I’m…I’m sorry,” he said, pulling the white paper bag out of the front pocket of his hoodie. Then, instead of ringing the intercom bell on the panel, he punched in a code and the damn gate started opening.

  “Stick? What the hell?” I said, but he was already jogging up the long, winding drive, the gates slowly closing behind him.

  I was in shock. Then pissed, though I wasn’t certain why.

  Screw this. I moved back around the car and settled myself into the cockpit, only to discover that Stick must have taken the keys from the ignition after I’d gotten out.

  And still had them as he entered the home of Caroline Stratton.

  Chapter Eleven

  I stared straight ahead as Stick got back in the car fifteen minutes later.

  “You don’t want to keep driving?” he asked as he got into the driver’s side. I had moved to the passenger seat while he’d been—still unfuckingbelievable!—in with Caroline Stratton.

  “Nope¸” I said. “Let’s go. I have a party to get to tonight.”

  “Montrose going to be there?”

  No. There was no party. And since when did he know Montrose’s name? “Yes, that’s why I’m going.”

  It was probably the fast answer, or the pissiness of my voice, but Stick just snorted and said, “Yeah, right. Party my ass.”

  “Just drive, dickwad.”

  He roared Yvette to life, and I hated to admit that she seemed to like his touch better than mine. For now.

  “Listen, I’m sorry. I should have said something sooner. Way before you talked about coming here as a kid.”

  “Umm…yeah, you should have.”

  “I didn’t know that, though—that you used to come here with your mom. I thought you just randomly stopped at the bottom of the hill. I was going to explain whose house it was and why we were driving out here.”

  “So how about explaining it now?”

  “Caro said to say hello, by the way.”

  “Caro? Jesus. What, am I, like, in bizarro world or something? What the hell is going on?” There wasn’t whininess in my voice, it was something else, but I didn’t like how it sounded.

  Shape up, Jane. Don’t let him see how this rattled you.

  Never mind that it was Stick and I couldn’t give a flying crap what he thought of me.

  “I’m restoring her father’s car collection.”

  “Her what?”

  “Her father had a really extensive car collection. Which I guess is hers now. I guess he died a couple of years ago? And the mom a while before that?”

  “Yes, she was their only child, and sole heir.”

  He chuckled. “Sole heir. I love how rich people talk.”

  I opened my mouth, ready for combat, but he held up a hand. “I know, I know, you’re not rich. I get it.”

  “So, there are cars involved?” I said, wanting to get back to the matter at hand, crazy as it was.

  “Yeah, twenty-two to be exact. And we’re bringing them down from the dead guy’s house in Boston. I guess she’s selling that place or something.”

  I hadn’t known that, but really, why would I? I had a sneaking suspicion that my mother did, though. She always seemed to be up on all things Caroline Stratton. Or Betsy or Joey.

  I could attest to the fact that she’d grilled me for the rest of my holiday break once I got back from the wedding weekend. Every friggin’ detail, asking me to describe all the people, what they were wearing, everything that was said.

  I left out the crude comments about her that spewed from Edgar Prescott. Not because I wanted to spare her feelings, but more because I thought she’d take it as some weird-ass compliment that he remembered who she was.

  “And some of these cars have been pretty neglected over the years. Still in great shape, just not the pristine condition that apparently her dad used to keep them in.”

  “And you’re the one restoring them?”

  “Yep.”

  We were out of the area with the gorgeous estates and heading back toward Chesney. Crazy, I know, but my breathing became more normal, my heartbeat slowed down. Just like it had when I was a kid and we’d be driving away. Relief would flood through me that nobody had seen us—caught us.

  “What? There’s nobody in Boston that can restore cars? That’s a little hard to swallow.”

  “You have problems swallowing, Jane? I can help you out with that. It’s all in releasing the back of your throat. I can teach you all about loosening up your gag reflex.”

  “Screw you,” I said.

  “Well, yeah, there’s always that too. We could skip right to it.”

  I was about to throw another verbal volley when I realized that was what he wanted.

  “Keep dreaming, asshole. Now, back to the cars. Isn’t it kind of like handing the key to the henhouse over to the fox?”

  “I told you, I’m done with that.” There was a forcefulness in his voice, and it was deeper and a bit growly.

  I believed him. For no reason really other than I just…did. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t continue to bust his balls about it. “Yeah, we’ll see. I suppose it would be pretty stupid to steal what you’ve been entrusted with. And you may be a thief, Stick, but you ain’t stupid.”

  “And I’m no longer a thief. So I guess that makes me a smart, stand-up guy.”

  “I didn’t say smart. Just not stupid. There’s a difference.”

  “Never give an inch, do ya?”

  “Give an inch, they’ll take a mile.”

  “Christ, and I thought I was guarded.”

  It shouldn’t have made me bristle, but it did. Still, he wasn’t wrong, so I decided to just let that one slide.

  “So, back to the cars,” I said.

  We were driving through Chesney now, and I watched Stick’s handling of Yvette at the stop lights, trying to store it in my memory.

  “Yeah, you’re going to need to practice with lights. And the first couple of times you’ll probably stall out and the assholes behind you will honk their horns and start yelling. And that will tense you up and make you stall out again. Block ’em out and just listen to Yvette. She’s the only one whose opinion matters when you’re behind the wheel.”

  I was grateful for his words, because no doubt a bunch of people honking and yelling at me would tense me up. And then no doubt that I’d strike back, flipping them the bird and starting a nice little road-rage incident.

  As we eased through the last light in town and hit open road toward Schoolport, Stick opened Yvette up and let her run. I again wished it was warm enough to put the top down.

  “You’ll be a master at driving her by the time it warms up enough to have the top down,” Stick said, eerily reading my mind. “And then, man, will you be a sight on this highway. And down the freeway? To DC? Shit, they won’t know what hit them.” It wasn’t like he was even talking to me. And perhaps he wasn’t. He might have been talking to Yvette, because there was just a bit too much admiration in his voice for it to be directed at me.

  The feel of her beneath us, so strong, so powerful—exactly the way I pretended to be and wished that I truly was. I admired her too, and was quickly becoming quite attached to my new baby.

  “And so you’re restoring these cars. Driving them down from Boston and—”

  “Not driving them down. They’re being brought down on semis. We don’t want them on the road.”

  “Okay. So you’re bringing them down from Boston and working on them here.”

  “Right.”

  “Forget for a minute that there must be three hundred guys in Boston that could be doing it.”

  He snorted. “Hardly. But yeah, it could be done in Boston. But she needed them off the estate
there because of selling it, there’s room for them here and I can do the restoration basically twenty-four seven, so she can put the whole collection on the market.”

  “She’s selling her father’s car collection too?”

  He shrugged. “I think with Betsy married now, and Joey in Africa, she’s doing some downsizing.” He laughed. “Jesus, can you imagine a life where your downsizing is getting rid of a Boston estate, a car collection, and who knows what else, but keeping a place like the Chesney Hills house and a place on Cape Cod?”

  “No,” I said, “I can’t imagine a life like that.”

  He looked over at me. “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking.”

  I waved his apology away. “Believe it or not, I don’t lament the fact that Betsy and Joey lived in a house like that—or several of them. It’s not the money that I envied, it was—” I stopped, realizing what I was revealing—that I envied their situation in any way. And to Stick of all people, who would no doubt needle me about it and use it to his advantage.

  But he didn’t. He said nothing for the next fifteen minutes until we reached the town of Schoolport. Bribury was on the edge of town closest to Chesney. I happened to know that Stick and Lucas were from the other side of town. Literally from the wrong side of the tracks.

  “Yeah, I know it wasn’t—isn’t—about the money for you, Jane. But a shitty home life is a little easier to take when you have your own wing of the house to hide out in.”

  “True,” I conceded, though I would never know for sure. Still, it would have been nice to hide from Pandora and her periodic smothering.

  But it did make me think about Stick’s home life. “You sound like maybe you could’ve used that private wing growing up, yourself.”

  He shrugged, downshifting to take the corner onto the Bribury campus. “We’ve all got our shit to deal with. Joey Stratton is in Africa to escape his. So, yeah, maybe having a whole wing to hide in isn’t even enough.”

  “And how’d you deal with your shit?”

  He lovingly stroked Yvette’s steering wheel and I had a flash of his long, strong fingers stroking me that way. “Cars,” he said. “They were my salvation.”

  “And your income.”

  “That came later. I started working on cars when I was eight years old. Would just hang out at my old man’s shop, handing him tools and shit. Nudie calendar on the wall, the smell of oil, allowed to get as dirty as I wanted—I thought it was the greatest place in the world.”

  “So why aren’t you still working there? Instead of…restoring cars?”

  He tensed, his knuckles whitening on the gearshift. It was so close to my knee, I almost wanted to touch it, but I didn’t.

  “Shop’s gone. Father’s dead.”

  “Oh, I’m sor—”

  “Open the glove box. There’s a sticker in there for Lot H.”

  He was obviously changing the subject. And as someone who often did the same when the subject of parents came up, I gave him a pass.

  I pulled out the sticker, peeled the back off and stuck it on the inside of the windshield in my corner. I might have imagined it, but I thought Stick winced. I kind of felt the same way—I didn’t want any blemishes on Yvette.

  “And don’t go putting stupid-ass bumper stickers all over her, either,” he said, thinking along the same lines as I was.

  “I won’t,” I said, but not because he was telling me not to.

  “She’s too gorgeous to be a billboard for your political or social commentary.”

  “I won’t. Jesus,” I said under my breath, but loud enough for him to hear.

  “Not even a ‘Stratton for Governor’ one.”

  “Right. As if.”

  We both smiled at the thought of that—me riding around town with a Joe Stratton sticker on my car. No way, no how. Though I supposed I was going to have to wear a button or something at campaign events this summer.

  Another point to negotiate with Grayson Spaulding when the time came.

  “How’d you get this sticker, anyway?”

  “I registered the car for you with the admin office, got the sticker, got it all squared away.”

  “Thank you,” I said, though I was pretty sure he’d done it all to protect Yvette, not me.

  “I also installed an extra theft-protection system. If someone tampers with her locks, you’ll automatically get a text. So will I.”

  “Okay.” Wow, he’d gone to some trouble. This must be the kind of stuff he was doing for Grayson Spaulding—restoring Caroline’s cars, getting one all set up for me. Still, it seemed like an odd coupling—Stick and Grayson. Throwing serene, refined Caroline into the mix even made it weirder.

  “At first I hated the idea of you leaving her out here in a student lot. Still do, actually.” We passed my dorm and took a right turn to head toward the edge of the small campus and the lots where students parked their cars.

  Some colleges didn’t even allow freshmen to have cars on campus, or only if you lived so many hundreds of miles away and got, like, a special dispensation or something.

  But Bribury kids would not be denied their sports cars and luxury SUVs, and so all students were allowed to have cars on campus, but you had to walk quite a ways to get to them.

  “But then I figured, what the hell—every car in this lot is going to be expensive as hell. I still think you should park her in a corner or something so someone is less likely to scratch or ding her.”

  “They tell women not to park in dark corners, or out by ourselves.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, that makes sense. I guess scratch that idea.”

  We entered Lot H and found a spot that was away from all the other cars, but still out in the open and under a light pole.

  “Do you want me to drop you back at your dorm?” he asked as he pulled a phone out of his jeans pocket.

  It was still light out, and I thought the walk would feel…refreshing after being so close to Stick for so long. “No, I want to walk.”

  He nodded, then flipped the phone open and dialed. “Yeah. Hey. I need you to pick me up at Lot H on campus.” He listened, then said, “Now. Yeah. Thanks.” He snapped the phone shut and put it back into his jeans.

  “A flip phone? Seriously? Must not have been too good of a car thief if that’s all you can afford. No wonder you’re getting out of the business.”

  Out of his other pocket he pulled an iPhone, flashed it at me, then put it back. “I just haven’t taken the time to transfer my numbers over yet.”

  “Because you just got the iPhone?” I wondered if Grayson Spaulding had gotten it for him. If I’d be expected to be in such close contact like that?

  “No, I’ve had the iPhone for a couple of years.”

  Then I remembered watching Sons of Anarchy and that they all used flip phones that they could easily ditch and weren’t traced to them in any way like a cell contract. “Burners,” I think they called them.

  “Oh,” I said, getting it.

  “Yeah, well, I’m using the iPhone mostly now, but still have some numbers that I haven’t—or don’t want to—transfer over.”

  “Your hoodlum buddies don’t rate being in the iPhone contacts?”

  He cut the engine, pulled the keys from the ignition and looked over at me. “You have some mouth on you, you know that?”

  The way his gaze moved down my face, I knew he was going to kiss me.

  Chapter Twelve

  He didn’t kiss me. And I wasn’t about to admit to myself how much that pissed me off.

  Instead, he dropped the F-bomb, got out of the car (points for not slamming the door, though it seemed like he wanted to) and made his way to my side, opening the door for me. (Again, not yanking it open, but giving Yvette the deference she deserved.)

  I got out of the car and he softly shut the door behind me, then showed me how to set her alarm system. While we waited for his ride to show up, he walked me around Yvette and pointed out different features as if he was a proud father bragging about his kid’s littl
e league scores.

  I listened and asked questions, quickly becoming a proud mother.

  I stuck my hands in my pockets, and he noticed and motioned me to him. When I reached him, he backed me into the side of the car and pulled my hands out of my pockets. He sandwiched them between his own, like we were doing some kind of group prayer or something. Then, ever so slowly, he moved his up and down over mine, causing the nicest friction. And heat. Heat that could make a girl forget it was early February and she’d forgotten her mittens in her dorm room.

  And also forget just who was causing the oh-so-delicious heat that was now spreading beyond my hands.

  I would be wise to remember who Stick was. Is.

  Yes, I had developed a hard shell and was pretty world-wise. But even though I was brought up in a world of power-hungry vipers, I hadn’t been exposed to the criminal element much.

  Well, yeah, I suppose I had…just of the very, very white-collar kind. And the kind that never get caught.

  Starting to pull my hands away, knowing I needed to keep my distance—lovely heat or not—I looked up at Stick and met his gaze.

  It was like he read my mind—knew the moment when I decided that he was not the type of guy I wanted.

  That I thought I was too good for him.

  “Fuck you,” he whispered with not much accusation. More, almost, with a bit of hurt in his voice.

  Which pissed me off. Yeah, maybe I did think he wasn’t good enough for me, but he was a known car thief, for Christ’s sake—that pretty much defined that he was not the route I wanted to take.

  “No. Fuck you,” I whispered back, no heat in my words, though I was pissed at him for his past. Pissed at myself for wishing he didn’t have it. Pissed at life for putting us both in the positions we were in. Pissed at how much I wanted to feel his hands all over my body.

  I yanked my hands away again, but he not only held on fast, he pulled my hands, arms and body into his. He took a step closer, then another, backing me up against Yvette.

  “You don’t know shit about me,” he said softly.

  “And I don’t want to,” I replied, though nothing was further from the truth. But even though I could be wild and outrageous, I did have a streak of self-preservation a mile wide. I’d had to.