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Miller shook her head. ‘Are you ever serious about anything?’
He threw her a bemused look. ‘Plenty. Are you ever not serious about anything?’
‘Plenty.’ Which was so blatantly untrue she half expected her nose to start growing.
He passed another car and Miller absently noted that after her earlier panicked response he was driving marginally less like a racing car driver. That thought triggered something in her mind and her brow furrowed.
Determined to ignore him for the rest of the trip, she pulled her laptop out of her computer bag.
‘What happened to the getting-to-know-you part of our trip?’
He threw her a sexy smile that shot the hazy memory she’d been trying to grab on to out of her head and replaced it with an image of the way he had insolently leant against the bar last night.
‘I know you run, swim, work out, and that you take your coffee black. Your favourite colour is blue and you have four siblings—’
‘I also don’t mind a cuddle after sex.’
‘And you don’t have a serious bone in your body. I, on the other hand, take my life very seriously and I am not interested in whether you like sex straight up or hanging from a chandelier. It’s not relevant. What I’m looking for this weekend is someone to melt into the background and say very little. Starting right now.’
* * *
Tino smiled as he revved the engine and manoeuvred the Aston Martin around a tourist bus. He hadn’t enjoyed himself this much in...he couldn’t remember.
He was in a hot car, driving down a wide country highway on a warm spring afternoon, completely free from having to answer questions about his recent spate of accidents, his car or the coming race. The experience was almost blissful.
With any luck his anonymity would hold and he’d forget the pressure of being the world’s number one racing driver on an unlucky streak. Because, as he’d told Sam, it was all media hoopla and coincidence anyway, and he’d prove it Sunday week.
He glanced at the stiff woman beside him and involuntarily adjusted his jeans. He hadn’t expected her to give him a hard-on but she had. Which was surprising, given that her black linen trousers and matching shirt were about as provocative as a nun’s habit.
His eyes drifted over the blade-straight hair that curtained her delicate profile from his view down over her elegant neck to the gentle swell of her breasts. Was she wearing lace underneath? By the blush that had crept into her face before he’d guess yes. The thought made him smile, and his gaze lingered on her hands as they poised over her computer keys.
She had an effortless sensuality that drew him, and whenever she glared at him hot sparks of sexual arousal threatened to burn him up.
They’d be good together. He knew it. It was just a pity he had no intention of using the weekend to test his theory.
He wasn’t looking for a relationship right now, sexual or otherwise, and he had very strict guidelines about how women fitted into his life. The last thing he wanted was a woman getting into his headspace and worrying about whether or not he was going to buy it on the track every time he raced. He’d seen it too many times before, and no way would anyone land him with that kind of guilty pressure.
He still remembered the day he had watched his father clip the rear wheel of another car, flip over and slam into a concrete barrier. It had been one of those races that had reinvigorated race safety procedures and it had changed Tino’s life for ever. He’d still known that he would follow in his father’s footsteps, but after feeling helpless in the face of his beloved mother’s grief, and fighting his own pain at losing his father, he’d locked his emotions away so tight he wasn’t sure he’d recognise them any more.
Which was a bonus in a sport where emotions were considered dangerous, and his cool, roguish demeanour scared the hell out of most of his rivals.
His approach was so different from his father’s attitude to the sport he’d loved. His father had tried to have it all, but what he should have done was choose family or racing. Emotional attachments and their job didn’t mix. Any fool knew that.
CHAPTER THREE
‘THIS it?’ Valentino pulled the car onto the shoulder of the road and Miller glanced up from following the GPS navigator on her smartphone.
‘Yes.’ Miller read the plaque on the massive brick pillar that housed a set of enormous iron gates: ‘Sunset Boulevard.’ So typical of TJ’s delusions of grandeur, Miller thought tetchily.
