Chapter 5 #2
“So...” she said. She’d never been good at leaving something alone.
If she had a scab, she picked at it. Not that she was saying that Inigo was like a scab, but the way he made her feel was similar.
Her skin felt too tight when she was around him.
Like she had an itch that couldn’t be scratched.
Part of it was sexual, but a bigger part was just the mélange of emotions he stirred in her.
“So, you and Jose, huh?” he asked.
She put her arms on the table, holding her coffee cup loosely in her hands. Of course they were going to have to talk about Jose. “Yeah. Do you really want to discuss that?”
He turned away from her and she noticed he had a strong jaw, especially when he clenched it. “No. I don’t. I just don’t get it.”
“What’s to get? He was funny and charming. He told me his marriage was over,” she said. “I believed him.”
“He was funny,” Inigo agreed, ignoring the rest. She really didn’t blame him.
“Yeah. How well did you know him?”
“He was my mentor. I started racing karts when I was thirteen. The next year he started dating Bianca, and he sort of took me under his wing. I thought...well, it doesn’t matter, but his death was hard on me.
Then after he died, I learned about the thing with you.
It was like losing him again,” Inigo admitted.
She could tell he hadn’t meant to tell her that last bit.
But it really drove home the fact that the two of them shouldn’t be doing this.
She wanted closure and not friendship, yet his pain mirrored her own.
She had been betrayed by Jose as well—not that Inigo would see it that way.
But the truth was she’d had an expectation that Jose was an honest man.
“I’m sorry. I miss the fun person I knew. Not the other guy that I learned he was later,” she said.
She put her hand on Inigo’s where it was clenched on the table. He looked over at her, and she couldn’t read the expression in his eyes. That troubled her. Had she said the wrong thing? Hell, when didn’t she?
“I’m sorry too,” he said. “I wish you hadn’t known him.”
“I’m not,” she said. Without Jose she would never had gotten the wake-up call she needed to figure out what she wanted for her life instead of following the script of what everyone expected her to do.
Her response surprised him. He thought she’d have said she wished she hadn’t been the other woman, but she seemed pretty okay with it to him.
The idea of revenge stirred again in the back of his mind.
He thought back on his sister’s pale face, which served as a strong reminder of how much Marielle had hurt her.
He wanted to think he wasn’t petty and base, but every time he tried to be the better man, it came back.
He didn’t need the distraction, which Dante had been quick to point out, yet at the same time, when would he have a chance for payback like this again?
“I’m surprised. I’d think being with a married man—”
“It wasn’t like that. You more than anyone know how it is on the road during the season. I was a cup girl. I was traveling around with the teams, and we met. There are the drivers who don’t have sex at all, and then the others who are always looking to get laid.”
She was so blunt. Her words were the truth.
He’d seen it himself as he walked through the trailers.
He was aware of the women with hot passes waiting to see who was looking to get lucky.
Some of the drivers even believed if they had sex right before a race it improved their performance behind the wheel.
Esteban was one of those men. It definitely hadn’t hurt him behind the wheel.
“I guess the lives of the families back home don’t matter,” he said glibly. Why had he sat down with her?
A part of him wanted to believe she was more than she seemed. More than Bia had made her out to be. He couldn’t help remembering their night together in the O’Malleys’ guesthouse. It had been special.
“It’s a different world. You know it doesn’t feel like real life,” she said.
“Hmm. That’s interesting. For me it’s where I’m most at home and more myself than anywhere else,” he said.
“You would say that. You’re a driver. You probably don’t feel alive unless you’re going three hundred miles per hour. You’re not human like the rest of us.”
“Not human?”
“You know, you’re like a demigod moving that fast. Not paying attention to anything that gets caught under your tires and blown toward the side of the road.”
“You don’t know me,” he said. “Some drivers might be that way, but I’m not.”
She shrugged, taking a sip of her coffee. He noticed her lipstick left a mark on the side of the cup. She was like that mark on the cup, but on his psyche. Their one night together was bright red.
Had it been a fluke? He wished he could easily figure that out. If it was, then he could walk away. Should he try it again? What the hell?
He wondered if it was the lack of sleep or just his nerves at the thought that someone might be working to actively keep him from winning. Or if it was her crystal-gray eyes watching him like a dare. Causing him to stop weighing the consequences and teasing him into taking what he wanted.
And he did want her.
But then he thought of that smug look on her face when she’d said that during the racing season regular rules of decency didn’t apply.
It wasn’t that he normally gave a crap about how people behaved unless it affected him, but she’d hurt Bia.
That kind of thinking had been responsible for hurting his sister.
He couldn’t let her get away with it. She might find someone else to hurt by her actions.
He wasn’t holding himself up as some sort of moral police—he knew he had flaws—but he couldn’t just walk away after she’d said that.
She wasn’t even taking responsibility for her own culpability in the affair.
She’d pretty much said that since drivers have big egos, it was Jose’s fault.
He wasn’t letting Jose off the hook, but he was dead, so there wasn’t much that Inigo could do about that.
“I don’t know you,” she said. “I did sort of like you, though.”
“Did?” he asked. If he was going to make this work, he had to let go of showing her he was pissed and at least try to be charming. The only thing was, when he tried to be, he never could pull it off.
“Well, you haven’t been very nice today,” she said.
“You gave me the finger,” he said. He could still picture her hand in the air as she walked away from him.
“You thought it was funny, didn’t you?” she asked.
He had. “I don’t know what to do with you.”
She tipped her head to the side, and her long blond hair flowed over one shoulder. She pouted at him with those full lips for a second and then said, “You did okay when we were in the bedroom.”
Immediately he felt a jolt go through him. “We got along pretty good, didn’t we?”
“Uh-huh. Was it just a one-night hookup? I mean, before you found out about the thing with your sister, did you think we’d see each other again?”
Wow. That was the million-dollar question. If he said no, he’d come off like a douche, and if he said yes, he’d seem like a sap who had placed an emotional price on their night together.
“I don’t know,” he answered as honestly as he could. “I liked you, and I wasn’t ready to think about more than spending the day with you.”
“Fair enough. So, are we going somewhere from here? Or is it so long?” she asked.
“You’re very blunt,” he said.
“I am. It’s just that when I expect things, they never turn out like I think they should. If I ask and still get disappointed, I’ve got no one to blame but myself.”