she’d cringed at all the heartless, dishonourable comments she’d perpetually tossed in his face.
The thought that she’d been so prejudiced against his type, his Casanova proclivities—enough to use him as an easy scapegoat for Tom’s death—was making her seriously dislike herself.
The door opened on a soft swish to reveal the man himself, wearing a deep red polo shirt—yum—and a pair of washed-out stomach-curling jeans riding low on his lean hips.
As her gaze touched his bare toes that delicious drawl rumbled over her. ‘Do I meet with your approval this evening, Miss Scott?’
Her heart thundered like a freight train through her chest and she crossed her arms over her breasts before it burst through her skin. ‘You’ll do.’
The ghost of a smile softened his sinful mouth—only to veer into a scowl as he searched her face. ‘What’s wrong? Has something happened?’
Yeah, I feel wretched.
This was a stupid, stupid idea, she thought for the millionth time. Fair enough doing practice laps and talking designs, but to come to his trailer? She was making their awkward truce personal and she knew it.
‘Can I come in?’
His eyes said, Do you have to? His mouth said, ‘Sure.’
Unconvinced, she battled with the urge to turn around and flee. But he’d offered, hadn’t he? To be a friend if she needed one? And maybe, just maybe, he needed one too.
She was worried about him. Her conscience pleaded with her to help him before he well and truly did some harm. She just didn’t know how. While she knew tons of men, she hadn’t felt ready to spontaneously combust with any of them as she did with Finn. So just ignore it, like you have for the last four years!
Sucking in a courageous breath, Serena followed him into the spanking new motor home—all sharp lines of glass and steel alongside huge cushy leather sofas.
‘Nice place. Biggest and best on the lot. If I hadn’t heard the endless man-muck around the pits—’ she was not about to admit he was dubbed the world’s greatest lover ‘—I would think your penchant for size compensated for some kind of deficiency.’
He flashed his sexy suggestive smile and her knees turned to hot rubber. ‘Nothing lacking in that department, I promise you.’
‘I’ll take your word for it,’ she muttered. Meaning it. Only to curse blue when her traitorous mind provided her with an image of the first time she’d ever seen him in the flesh, bar-boxer-shorts-naked, strolling into his bathroom. Where Serena had been… Oh, God.
A tingling flush crept up her neck until she felt impossibly hot. And the idea that she looked like some gauche ninny made her vibrate with pique.
‘Uh-oh. I sense trouble.’ Finn leaned against the slash of the kitchen bench, gripped the ledge on either side of his hips and crossed one ankle over the other. ‘Okay, baby, spill it.’
Baby. Baby. She had to stop dissolving in a long, slow melt when he called her that!
‘I’m…’ Shifting on her feet, she eyed the door. South America was wonderful at this time of year. Maybe—
‘Enraged? Incensed? Hopping mad? Splenetic? Thoroughly bent out of shape?’
‘You swallowed a thesaurus, or something?’
‘Nah, it’s that school I went to. You know—the one that specialises in breeding the most arrogant and annoying people ever?’ he said, flinging her words back at her.
‘As you can see, I’m rolling around the floor laughing.’
He grinned.
She sighed. Glanced at the door again. Wondered why she felt hideously exposed. Sharing woes and asking for help wasn’t weak or too feminine, was it? She didn’t enjoy giving men the impression she was weak—it was like hand-delivering an invitation to be messed with.
Oh, to hell with it. ‘My dad just decided not to launch the prototype at Silverstone.’
‘Why not?’
A tinge of anger fired in his eyes. One that made her feel infinitely better. Even though her bad funk was technically his fault.
Because Finn here had officially earned the title ‘too wild and problematic’ to handle her multimillion-pound prototype. And she was angry. Noooo. She was upset. There—she’d admitted it, and miraculously the sky hadn’t caved in.
‘Doesn’t matter the reason. His decision is final.’
Next year wasn’t so far away. It felt like forever. It wasn’t as if it would never happen. There was really no need for her to be so…devastated. ‘Point is, he has a brunette over there, and I refuse to play nice when I feel—’
‘Like someone peed in your biker boots?’
‘Exactly.’
One side of his mouth kicked up ruefully before his focus drifted to the window, far into the distance, as if he’d virtually left the room.
Angst crawled through her stomach and Serena gnawed her top lip.
Yes, she was crushed, but she could easily have gone to a hotel. It was a convenient excuse and she knew it. Somehow she had to slide him back on track.
Letting go of a long, soft sigh, she sprinkled some candour on her remorse.
If she’d been courageous enough to look into her heart, to face her own fears, she would have accepted that culpability lay with fate. Otherwise she couldn’t possibly have kissed Finn with everything she was. And, if she wanted to be brutally, painfully honest, blaming him had been a grand excuse to hate him even more. Since the moment she’d laid eyes on him he’d stirred a hornets’ nest of inadequacies to sting her pride and spawn desires that defied logic. Reason.
Inadequacies she’d been slammed up against from when she was nine years old—ribbed for being ‘too girly’ to play—and had stolen a pair of blunt scissors to hack off her hair.
Desires she’d always had to force, coerce, to do her bidding. Determined her past would not define her.
Disaster.
Until Finn. Who had never failed to spark every female cell in her body to ignite. The sexual pull of his velvet gaze roving over her when he thought she wasn’t looking jacked her pulse. Made her dream about the firm, sinful stroke of his hands moving over her skin and the hot drive of his tongue between her lips. Then came the heat, spearing through her veins like arrows of fire.
She didn’t want her heart to thump when he was near or for weakness to spread through her limbs. He was still a Casanova. A prolific player.
He took a long, sensual pull of water from a tall glass bottle and she watched his smooth jaw work, his sexy throat convulse, and knew this was a stupid, stupid idea. Tough.
‘So, can I stay here?’
