Tonight You’re Mine

Prologue

JOHNNY

“Johnny, please—”

Cupping Cassie by the neck, I swallow her protests with a kiss.

Like always, my girl melts right into me. Her hands fly up, palms flat against the pressed white t-shirt I have on under my worn leather jacket. I’ve been looking forward to tonight’s race for two weeks now, and with my pride on the line, I showed up at the gravel pit wearing my best.

My hair is slicked back with pomade, the teeth from my comb leaving track marks in the short pompadour do.

I’ve cuffed my jeans over my boots. I swapped out my oil-covered, stained coveralls for the greaser’s uniform that secretly drives Cassie Miller wild.

A splash of my old man’s stolen cologne and I look like the winner I’ll be when I beat Scotty Hilton and drive away from this race with his pink slip on my dash.

He thinks he can beat me in his Olds 88. And, yeah, that’s a beast of a car, but he’s not Johnny Gray. Let him think he can win. It’ll never happen, and when I win tonight, that shiny ring I’ve got tucked in my back pocket will look real sweet on Cassie’s finger.

She tastes like cherry. As I tilt her back, turning her worry for me into my good luck kiss, I get drunk on her sweet taste, wondering what it’ll be like when Cassie Miller becomes Cassie Gray—and I finally have the chance to find out what it’s like to get her under me.

Sweet to the bone, she loves me, but she’s not an easy lay.

She’s made me work hard to earn her love these last few years, but I know she’s mine.

Every inch of her, from her gentle curls to her soft brown eyes, and the curves poured into her sweater and her skirt…

there isn’t anything I won’t do for her.

Except chicken out of a race.

I release her, a sense of pride filling my chest as I see the dazed look on her face, the way her lush lips are slightly bruised from my kiss. I’m sure I have her pale pink lipstick smeared all over mine, but I couldn’t care less. Like I said, call it a token of Johnny Gray’s good luck.

She rests on her kitten heels, peering up at me through her bangs. “Johnny,” she whispers, her voice breathless. “I mean it. Racing on Halloween… that seems like taunting the devil. I don’t think you should do it.”

I haven’t been scared of Halloween since I was a dumb kid of fifteen who thought ghosts and ghoulies and monsters were something to be worried of rather than an old man who gets lost in the sauce half the time, and wants you working your ass off for booze money the other.

I dropped out of school back then, getting a job with Mac at the garage. For a decade now, I’ve been a man, and men don’t pay no mind to the legend and stories that get our girls all worked up.

To me, Halloween is a day like any other. Even in Shadowvale, where you kind of have to believe in ghosts and demons.

Lord knows we each have too many of our own.

Lucky for me, I have my own bonafide earth angel looking out for me.

Cassie, who I met by dumb luck when I was twenty and she was eighteen, walking past the garage with a stack of books held to her impressive chest. I took one look at the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen, told Mac I’d one day make her my wife, and every last damn thing I’ve done since was so that I would.

Including this race.

I rub the height of her cheek with my thumb.

“Let me get Scotty’s pinks.” When I win his Oldsmobile, I’ll sell it to the first customer I can find.

That should net me enough to give Cassie the hitching she deserves.

“Once I win, I’ve got two tickets to the flicks in my pack of smokes.

‘From Here to Eternity’ is still playing, sweetheart. You love Montgomery Clift.”

She lays her hand over my heart. “I love you more, Johnny.”

I know she does. That’s why I’m gonna make her my missus because there isn’t anyone in this whole damn world that I love more than Cassie Miller.

Dipping my head, I steal another kiss, then stand up straight, tugging on her pale blue scarf. It highlights the slender column of her throat while hiding the hickey that I gave her last night.

“You be a good girl, yeah? Stay here in the gravel pit. Scotty and me will race from here to the old Reed House and back, winner take all. Wait for me. I won’t be gone long.”

Releasing her scarf, I goose Cassie in the side, then slide my hand over the curve of her ass. Her tight skirt makes her a walking temptation, and I glare over her shoulder when I see Mickey watching Cassie’s backside way too closely.

I raise my eyebrows, a silent warning.

He holds up his hands, a just as silent apology.

Better.

I palm her ass, knowing this is as much as I can expect from her before I have my ring on her finger. “One more kiss for good luck?”

Cassie goes up on her tiptoes, pressing her lips against mine.

“That’s my girl.”

I can tell she doesn’t want to let me go, but when Scotty honks his horn, the impatient bastard, I turn toward my own car and smirk.

It’s a 1951 Ford Custom Deluxe Coupe. Another hotrodder had paid the big bucks for it, but when he spun out, he blamed this beauty. He brought it down to Mac at the garage, ready to wash his hands of the car, calling it bad luck.

Bad luck? I only believe in good luck, and when the Shoebox Ford—a nickname for the Coupe describing its slab-siding, coming fresh off the Second Great War—came puttering into the shop, I pooled all my savings together and offered to take it off his hands.

For a whole year, I brought the Shoebox back to life.

Rebuilt the engine with spare parts, hammered out every dent, and replaced the smashed headlights.

Once it was done, I painted it Cassie’s favorite color: turquoise blue.

She liked to tease that I loved my car more than her, but even though I never feel more alive than when I’m sat behind the wheel, the turquoise makes me feel like Cassie’s with me even when she can’t be.

Let Scotty be impatient. I take my time in walking over to the driver’s seat, giving him a crooked smile as I lean up against the door.

Taking my smokes out of my t-shirt pocket, I smack the bottom of the pack, popping one of the cigs out.

Once it’s tucked between my lips, I light it, sucking in that first lungful of smoke as Scotty revs his engine.

I exhale through my nose, still wearing a smirk as I reach for the door handle.

Suddenly, the sound of heels clacking against the gravel reaches my ears. I look over my shoulder just in time to see—

“Cassie?”

She grabs my forearm. “Let me come with you.”

“Sweetheart—”

“I mean it, Johnny. You’ll win. You always win. But it’s Halloween and I… I don’t want to be alone.”

Cassie’s never rode shotgun with me before. Sure, she’s been my passenger a hundred times, but in a race…

I look down at her. Her bottom lip trembles and I fold. I fucking fold.

“Get in,” I tell her.

Scotty rolls down his window. “You sure that’s a good idea, Gray?”

I take in his rich boy haircut, his expensive clothes, his amused expression, and I flip him off. “You worry about the race, big shot. Let me worry about my girl.”

With a shrug, he rolls his window back up. I wait until Cassie has settled herself on the bench seat of my Shoebox, then climb in beside her and turn the ignition.

Standing in front of us, perched between the twin paths we’ll take out of the quarry, is Amy Harris. She was wearing a scarf similar to Cassie’s, only red instead of blue. It’s in her hand now, a makeshift flag.

She lifts her arm up over her head.

I squeeze Cassie’s thigh before taking the cigarette from my lips, resting it between two fingers, and grabbing the steering wheel.

Amy drops the flag, and we’re off.

The gravel kicks back, sounding like gunshots as the rocks fall. Tires squeal as we both hit the gas. As Scotty and me dig our way out of the pit, I already have a slight lead.

The first length of the road is narrow. Only one car can take the lead, and unless we want to wreck before we know for sure who will win, one of us has to play chicken, falling back to let the other car go ahead.

Johnny Gray is no chicken. I go out in front, and Cassie’s joyous laugh as I cut off Scotty’s Olds has me taking a welcome drag off of my smoke.

I know better than to celebrate too soon. On the next stretch, the road widens enough that we’re stuck together like two sardines in a can. This is the risky part. Drift a little and you’ll get rewarded with a screech as the cars collide and the metal drags against each other.

“You got it, Johnny. You got it!”

I blow Cassie a kiss, then focus on the curve coming up in front of us.

It’s the last day in October. A warm afternoon gave way to a chilly night. Whispers of fog had swirled around the quarry. The curve in the road is bracketed by a dense thicket of woods on one side, a fenced-in cliff overlooking the dark, serene Shadowvale Lake on the other.

The water blows up and in a denser patch of fog. I lean forward, gripping the steering wheel, focused on maneuvering around the curve while also holding my lead.

And that’s when Cassie screams.

Now, us hotrodders race along this path because no one in their right mind ever visits the Reed House after dark, especially not coming from this direction.

Plus, it’s Halloween. There’s a reason that Scotty insisted on doing this tonight.

Sick shit goes down up at the manor, and there are always bodies left behind on November 1st.

So why is a pair of headlights staring us down all of a sudden?

Because that’s why Cassie screamed. That’s why she inched forward in her seat, pointing through the dash at the gleaming lights cutting through the fog, heading our way.

I’m in the lead, but not by far enough that I can cut Scotty off completely, leaving one of the two lanes open. The car is heading right toward me. If I go left, I’m smashing into Scotty and his Olds, maybe even knocking one or both of us past the fence and into the lake. If I go right…