Hard and Fast (Fast Track #2)(7)
Author: Erin McCarthy

Imogen spoke again before he could because she wasn’t sure she was prepared to hear what might come out of his mouth. “I think that for Nikki, you would be her high heels. What she wants to wear when she wants attention and to feel good about herself.”

Maybe that wasn’t true. After all, what did she really know about Nikki and her true emotions and motivations? But given what Imogen had seen and heard from the girl, she thought she was fairly accurate in her assessment. Nikki was using Ty for fame and fortune. Imogen wanted him to recognize that at the same time she didn’t want him to suffer hurt feelings.

“I can see that,” he said slowly. “I know exactly why Nikki is involved with me. It’s for my money and her share of the racing spotlight. It doesn’t exactly bother me because I know it is what it is, and I am not in any danger of falling in love with her.” His knee bumped Imogen’s when he shifted in his seat. “But the truth is, I want to be some woman’s work boots, not her high heels.”

“Work boots?” What was sexy about that? And did women have work boots?

“Yeah. You know, the boots she pulls out when she wants to get down and dirty, hiking or gardening or boating or painting the kitchen. The ones she relies on and trusts and lives her life hard and good and on her terms in. Her favorites.”

Oh, my God. Imogen was having a little trouble swallowing. That was the weirdest and sexiest description of a man’s role in a relationship that she had ever heard, and it suited Ty. He was weird in that she didn’t really understand him and he was damn sexy, and she was mentally reminding herself that he was in fact still involved with Nikki and she absolutely could not molest him in her car in Tamara’s driveway.

“But a woman doesn’t feel sexy in work boots. Don’t you want to make her feel sexy?”

“Of course she does. In her favorite shoes, playing or working hard, she feels strong. And feeling strong makes a woman feel sexy.”

Ty touched Imogen’s knee and pulled her legs slightly apart, sending a hot rush of warmth to her inner thighs.

“What shoes do you have on, Emma Jean?” He leaned over and checked out her footwear.

“Black ballet flats,” she said, her voice a little raspy.

“Do you feel sexy in them?”

His hand was still on her knee, his thumb making little circles on her jeans, and it was driving her to distraction. “I feel reasonably cute when I wear them,” she admitted.

Ty gave a soft laugh. “You look more than reasonably cute in them.”

She knew she should tell him to leave. That they were weaving into dangerous territory when he was still technically with Nikki. It was totally inappropriate and she was going to tell him that. Immediately.

No words left her mouth and they sat in her warm car, the heater cranked, the windows fogged, and the wipers rushing back and forth combating the driving rain.

“Thanks,” she said, then jumped when something slammed into the hood of her car, causing the whole vehicle to rock slightly. “What the hell was that?”

Ty could honestly say he didn’t give a rat’s ass if a meteor had dropped onto Imogen’s car, but he looked anyway. Maybe the distraction was a good thing, because he was damn close to kissing the woman sitting next to him and he knew she didn’t want him to. Well, she wanted him to. That wasn’t arrogance on his part, just the truth. He could read the desire in her eyes. But she didn’t think he should because of Nikki. Big difference. And she was right. Just because he had made the decision to break things off with Nikki didn’t mean Nikki knew that.

So he looked out the windshield and commanded his erection to disappear.

It did when he realized that the thump on the hood of Imogen’s car had been made by Nikki.

As her skinny ass had been slammed onto the car by a man whose face wasn’t visible because it was buried in Nikki’s ample chest.

“What . . .” Imogen’s sentence died out as they both stared in shock.

At least Ty was shocked. Maybe Imogen wasn’t, but hell, he was. Nikki had just dropped the M word on him an hour earlier, had pursued him relentlessly the entire four months they’d been dating, and now here she was, making out in a goddamn downpour with some random guy?

Nikki didn’t like the rain. She hated the rain because it messed up her hair. Yet she was perched on the car hood, thighs spread, arms around the dude’s back as he nuzzled her br**sts, her head thrown back in ecstasy, normally meticulous hair sopping wet. Didn’t seem to be a major concern for her at the moment.

Ty tilted his head, still not sure who the guy was. Nikki was blocking most of him from view. Not that it mattered, really, unless it was one of his good friends, which would piss him off on principle.

Whoever he was, he was into it. The guy pushed Nikki back in a fit of passion, their hands and lips everywhere on each other, her moans of excitement so loud they could hear them in the car over the rain. Wow. Here he’d been thinking the sex with Nikki had been alright, but he could honestly say she’d never shown that much enthusiasm with him. Her back and head rested on the hood, and rain pummeled her as her friend pulled down the neck of her shirt and suckled the tops of her br**sts.

“Why . . .” Imogen started to say, then stopped.

“Why are they doing this in a f**king downpour? Yeah, I was wondering the same thing.” God, he was as horny as the next guy, but when it was raining so hard it hurt your skin and you couldn’t even see what you were kissing and where, it was time to get a room.

“I’m so sorry,” Imogen said, glancing at him in sympathy.

Was he sorry? A little disturbed, but not really sorry. Especially when the guy raised his head to wipe his face off and Ty saw it was Jonas Strickland, a rookie driver in his first cup series season. Ty didn’t know Jonas all that well, and he would throw down a hundred-buck wager that the kid had no idea Nikki was dating anyone. He was a good kid—God, when had Ty started thinking of rookies as a lifetime younger than him?—and a methodical driver, but he didn’t strike Ty as all that socially savvy off the track.

’Course, he seemed to be doing alright for himself at the moment.

Nikki was going to drown if she didn’t close her mouth. In that position, with her head tipped back and repeated exclamations of “Yes!” coming out of her open mouth, he figured it was only a matter of time before the rain had her full-out choking. Unnerved by the fact that Nikki and Jonas were actually only a few feet away from them and he and Imogen could get a bigger eyeful than either of them cared for if Jonas’s pants came off, Ty wondered how he should go about alerting the little love bugs to his presence.