that had nearly cost her father his life.
For a year she’d played the part of peacemaker, insisting her mother be understanding of her father’s moods; they’d come so close to losing him, after all. Insisting her father be patient, that his recovery would be a long process, not one with the overnight results he expected from his doctors and himself.
Insisting her grandpa cut his son a break and answer Eddie’s questions; he’d been the one to break up the fight before either of the other men got hurt…so, yes. He did have a right to know why Aubrey Davis had taken a swing at Jeb. And since that blow-up twelve months ago that sent Eddie to the hospital had involved Trey’s father, well, Cardin figured he owed her.
Of course, he was totally unaware of her plans to use him.
And she still wasn’t sure how to go about her…proposal.
During her Thursday visit to the Dahlia Speedway, she’d had no time to lay out for him her thoughts. All she’d managed to do was test the waters, see if the electricity that had always crackled between them was still there.
It was, burning as hot as the night his unyielding body pressed hers into the bedroom wall, trapping her, molded to her, an imprint she felt always and would never forget.
She shivered, silenced a moan. This was not a good time to be remembering the bristly sensation of his beard against her cheek, or the hardness of his bare chest beneath her hands.
But that was the direction her mind had decided to travel, following a map that took her imagination into territory that had her pulse thumping, her breath quickening, her belly growing taut…
“Cardin?”
“Hmm?”
“You didn’t leave any room for the drinks.”
“What?”
“The drinks. The ice. Cardin!”
Cardin pulled her attention from the hands holding the corn that she wished were holding her, and turned toward the biting voice and the woman with the teeth.
Sandy Larabie had been working at Headlights as long as Cardin. She was six years older, had two divorces under her belt, and was both the most caustic and well-tipped of all the ice house’s serving staff.
She nodded at the tumblers Cardin held, not a hair out of place in her big brassy ’do. “Get your head in the game. It’s hopping like hell bunnies in here.”
Cardin’s head was in the game. Just not the game Sandy was talking about. “Sorry. I got…distracted.”
Sandy scooped ice for her own drink order, following the direction of Cardin’s gaze. “You know he’s staying behind when the team checks out tomorrow, right?”
She did know. She’d even heard it earlier than most; as Dahlia’s unofficial herald, Jeb had his ear to the ground. She’d been surprised by the news, as had everyone, but the lead she’d gained from her grandpa’s announcement had given her time to put together her plan.
Too bad she’d got caught up in kissing Trey before she could explain it to him. Just seeing him again had unraveled her to the point of barely being able to think.
She turned to Sandy. “So I’ve heard. Hard to believe, isn’t it?”
Pop, pop went Sandy’s gum as she nodded. “Tater told me Whip’s taking a few months to get his place cleaned up and sold.” Winston Tate “Tater” Rawls, a mechanic at Morgan and Son Garage, had been Trey’s best friend in high school, and was Sandy’s newest boy toy.
“I don’t think Trey’s set foot on the property in a year, at least. I wonder how long he’ll be here.” Might as well see what else Sandy-by-way-of-Tater knew. The more information Cardin could sock away, the more convincing she’d be when she finally talked to Trey.
“According to Tater,” Sandy said, “Whip’s gonna join back up with the Corley team later this season. But since they’ve put the kibosh on coming back to the Speedway, I’d say this might be the last time we see him around here.”
Sandy spun away at the sound of the order bell, while Cardin just spun. She’d heard the rumors of Corley Motors blacklisting the Dahlia Speedway. The winning team was a Dahlia favorite and a huge draw; having one of their own working as crew chief was a highly prized bragging right.
But now with that moron Artie Buell having put the moves on Butch Corley’s wife, “Bad Dog” Butch was done with Dahlia. A shame, too, because the town needed the income generated by the big boys. Big boys like the team that employed the man she was about to ask to pose as her fiancé.
Both her parents and her grandpa Jeb needed to move beyond the hell of the last year, and get back to acting like a family. Her thinking was that introducing Trey as her fiancé would shake them out of their funk, would give them a new outlet for their focus, a common goal toward which they could pour their combined energies—that of doing all they could to break up the engagement.
Trey was Aubrey’s son. Aubrey who had taken a swing at Jeb. Aubrey who had sent Eddie to the hospital. Aubrey who had instigated a fight with an elderly man, and taken the genesis of his beef with Cardin’s grandpa to his grave. If the thought of her marrying Aubrey’s son didn’t shake them out of their blind self-absorption, she knew nothing ever would. This was a last-ditch effort, and an admittedly desperate one.
But there was more to her choice, to her plan. Trey was also the man Cardin hadn’t been able to get over in seven long years. She had to find out if what she felt for him was as real as her heart insisted it was, as real as her head told her every time she thought of him.
He’d been two years ahead of her in school, but since the teen crowd in Dahlia was small, they’d crossed paths regularly. At school functions. At sporting events. At parties classmates threw behind their parents’ backs.
Like Tater’s post-graduation kegger. Where Cardin had opened what she’d drunkenly mistaken for the bathroom door only to find herself looking into the master bedroom, and into Trey’s eyes. His pants had been around his ankles. And Kim Halton had been kneeling open-mouthed in front of him.
Cardin had been more tipsy than not, but Trey had been one-hundred percent sober. She’d seen it in his face when the light shining from the hallway spilled into the darkened room; it had exposed his raw emotions as fully as the part of his body she’d been certain he’d wanted her—and not Kim—to take care of.
She was twenty-five now, not eighteen, but she had yet to forget the way their eyes had connected, the intensity in his craving, the look that had beckoned her to wait, to stay, to want him the way he wanted her. She had waited. Wanted. Watched him while he’d come, knowing all the while he was imagining it was her hand stroking him, her lips sucking him, her tongue slicking over the head of his cock.
Kim had finished her, uh, service, caught sight of Cardin in the shadows, and smirked as she’d stormed out of the room, leaving Trey halfway dressed and Cardin’s cheeks to flame while she watched him tuck himself into his pants, while she listened to him curse in a voice harsh with anger.
Once he’d caught his breath and his composure, he’d come for her, swiftly, pressed the length of his body to the length of hers and told her to forget what she’d seen.
He’d
