And then there’s him. Kip with his neat shirts and his meticulous notes, the walking definition of order and polish. Me with my grease-stained hands and knack for swearing at pneumatic guns. We don’t fit. Not on paper, not in real life. He plans things down to the minute. When I’m not responsible for keeping someone alive at 200 miles an hour, I wing it and hope the bolts stay tight.
So yeah. Best to keep it buttoned up. Act like the look I saw last night was nothing, and I didn’t feel the air shift when he smiled.
I slide into the seat opposite, ignoring how my stomach twists when I sneak a glance at him. There’s no denying it. Kip is a beautiful man. Lean, cut in all the right places, as though he was sketched with more precision than the rest of us. The kind of beautiful that makes you forget your own name if you’re not careful.
He taps the map with his finger, yanking me out of my daydream. “If we leave by nine, we can be in Calais by dark and make it to Silverstone before midnight.”
His tone is brisk, businesslike, as if last night didn’t simmer with something unspoken. I nod and take a sip of the coffeethe waitress just dropped off for me, swallowing the bitter taste of both.
“Autobahn to Stuttgart,” I say, keeping my eyes on him, though I shouldn’t. There’s a deliberateness to the way he holds his spoon, the careful angle of his wrist as he stirs his coffee. It’s infuriatingly particular. Which would be easier to ignore if he weren’t so damn handsome. I have to tell myself to look at the map, not at him.
“Then the Channel Tunnel. Straightforward enough if we leave on time.” I do my best to match his dead-serious, no-mucking-about tone because if I start thinking about last night again—about the spark in his eyes, the way he looked at me—I’ll never get anything out without sounding like a proper fool.
He nods, eyes still on the map, and I notice the furrow in his brow as he concentrates. Distracting, that. Every tiny motion, every controlled gesture is throwing me off. I should be focusing on routes, travel time, logistics. Instead, I’m thinking about the line of his jaw, the way wisps of pale blond hair fall across his forehead, the subtle flex of his hands around his mug.
I clear my throat, shaking off the mental spiral.
“Pull it together, Hutch,” I hiss under my breath. But something warm curls low in my chest anyway, and I’m caught between wanting to look away and wanting to memorise every detail.
Kip glances up at me, one eyebrow arched. “Did you just tell yourself to pull it together?”
I freeze mid-sip. “No.”
“Sounded like you did.” The faintest hint of a smile flicks across his face, half amusement, half restraint. He looks unfairly good, eyes still heavy with sleep, lips pink from the hot coffee.
I shrug, leaning back in the chair to disguise the fact that my pulse is doing its own bloody race start. “Bit early to be hearing things, isn’t it?”
“Maybe,” he says, tracing the edge of the map with his finger. “Or maybe you’re just talking to yourself because you’re sick of my company.”
“Hardly.”
I don’t mean for it to come out that way—rough, too honest—but it’s out before I can reel it in. His eyes dart up, and for a second there’s that same look from last night, quick and searching. Then he looks away, folding the map like it’s the most complicated bit of origami on the planet.
When he’s done messing with the map, he sets it aside and nods toward the buffet in the corner. “You want anything to eat? They’ve got—I think that’s supposed to be eggs.”
I glance over. The tray’s a sad yellow swamp. “I’ll pass. Not much of a breakfast bloke.”
One eyebrow disappears under his bangs. Again. “You’d rather subsist on gas fumes and bad coffee?”
“It’s worked so far.” I drain what’s left in my cup to prove the point.
He shakes his head, eyes rolling. “I’ll grab the bill. You pack up the car?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
But I don’t move. I watch him cross to the counter, sunlight catching in his hair again, and I can’t stop the thought that maybe I’m in trouble here. Real trouble. Because somewhere between the pit lanes and the backroads, between his ridiculous schedules and my bad driving, I’ve gone and started to like the tosser.
CHAPTER 7
Kip
By hour four, the rumble of the road is starting to sound like white noise. The kind that seeps into your skull until even the map blurs. Hutch is driving, one hand loose on the steering wheel, sunglasses on, humming off-key to some French pop station that keeps cutting out. He looks irritatingly relaxed for a man who refused to use the GPS.
I glance at the map—paper, because he doesn’t “trust the bloody sat-nav.” We’re somewhere in eastern France between Metz and Reims.
“We were supposed to stay on the A4 west.” I tap the map, irrationally hoping the emphasis will somehow make him care. “I still don’t understand why we left the motorway.”
“Trust me,” Hutch replies patiently. “I’ve done this stretch before. This cuts fifteen minutes and dodges the usual traffic snags.”
