“Can I meet you there?” Grady asks him, his gaze flicking to me for the briefest of moments. “I, uh, need a few more minutes with Ben.”
“Go ahead,” I say. “We’re done here.”
The look on his face makes me regret the words the second they’re out of my mouth. Yes, I need to create some distance between us. Physically and emotionally. But I did I have to be so mean about it?
Elodie looks from me to Grady then back to me again, one carefully tweezed eyebrow arching suspiciously. “Is everything all right with you two?”
“No,” Grady says.
“Yes,” I say at the same time.
“We just need to—clear something up.” He’s talking to Elodie, but his eyes never leave mine. It’s unsettling. And I’m not someone who gets rattled easily. Which tells me one thing: as pleasurable as kissing him was—and it was damn pleasurable—I need to stop this. Stat.
“It’s fine. I’m on it.” Overeager Kip jumps in. He’s practically salivating at the chance to save the day. “I’ll let the press know you’re on your way.”
He sprints out of the office, leaving me with Grady and Elodie.
“Whatever this—” she waves a hand wildly in the space between us—“is, fix it. We’ve already fired one race engineer this season. We can’t afford the speculation if we lose another one. And by we, I mean all of us. LaRue. You.”
She jabs a finger at Grady. “And you.”
Another jab, this time in my direction. “So you better start making nice with each other. Because if you don’t, your days with LaRue are numbered. And your odds of anyone else hiring you mid-season will be slim to none.”
With that parting shot echoing in my ears, she leaves, closing the door behind her.
Grady sags against the wall, like he needs help to stay upright. “Fuck, that was close.”
“Too close,” I agree.
The tension starts to drain from his face, replaced by that surfer-boy smirk I’ve grown to hate. Or so I tell myself. “Do you suppose she’d suggest we play nice if she’d seen us with our tongues down each other’s throats?”
“Not funny.”
“I dunno. From where I stand, it’s freaking hilarious.” He pushes off the wall and saunters over to me, balancing one ass cheek on the corner of my desk. “So what do you say? Wanna keep making nice?”
I shove my chair back, creating some of that much-needed distance between us. “We can’t.”
“Why not?” He leans an elbow on the desk so that he’s practically draped across the damn thing like a 1940’s nightclub singer on a piano, waggling his eyebrows suggestively. “I promise to lock the door this time.”
“Kip is waiting for you on the track, along with a throng of reporters.”
“Right.” He straightens with a resigned sigh. “Later then? My motorhome. 11:00. That should give me time to put in an appearance at the after-race party.”
As good—no, great—no, fan-fucking-tastic—as that sounds, I summon up all the mental reserve I can and steel myself to utter the words I know are necessary to save my sanity. And my job. “When I say we can’t, I mean we can’t do this again. Not now. Not ever.”
“Why not?” His lips morph from that sexy smirk into a somehow even more sexy pout. “We’re both adults. We can have some fun together without it affecting our working relationship.”
No, we can’t. At least, I can’t. It was hard enough being responsible for my best friend out on the track. And look how well I handled that? I crippled him and nearly drowned myself in Jameson. I can’t risk something like that happening again.
“Maybe you can, but that’s not how I’m built.”
The hang-dog look on his face almost kills me, and it hits me that no matter what happens from here on out, it’s going to be awkward as fuck between us. At least for a while.
Grady slides off my desk, dislodging a stack of papers. He bends to pick them up, giving me a bird’s-eye view of his ass, perfect even in his less-than-flattering race suit, and making me momentarily regret my decision to ice him out. “Maybe you should have thought of that before you kissed me.”
“You kissed me first.” I know, I know. I sound like a whiny preschooler. Not my finest moment, to be sure. But it’s the only thing I can think of to say. And it’s true.
He folds his arms across his chest, pulling his Nomex shirt tight over his pecs. It’s like the universe is conspiring against me, throwing all these reminders of what I’m giving up in my face. “You kissed me back.”
