The Chase (Fast Track #4)(4)
Author: Erin McCarthy

Tuesday shrugged. “Doesn’t mean I don’t want to find out for myself.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I’m like the girl that has to touch the fire even after I’ve been warned it’s hot.” Tuesday pushed up her sunglasses. “It’s a terrible personality flaw.”

“It sounds like a waste of time.”

“Besides, why would one date equate with sleeping with him?”

Because that’s what Kendall would do. Did. Only with Evan Monroe. It had been something about their chemistry together. One date and she’d been gone. Falling hard for him and naked.

Feeling the urge to sigh, she said, “You’re right, it doesn’t. But it still seems like a waste of time to me.”

“Some of us like to date,” Tuesday said pointedly. “Some of us like to go for a drink or to dinner or the movies with some male company. Some of us don’t think that going years with the only flirtation in our lives being romantic comedies from Netflix is acceptable.”

You know, Kendall had to say she resented that. “I’ve been building a career. There hasn’t been a whole lot of time to date. I travel all over the country.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“I date,” she insisted.

“When? When was the last time you dated?”

“Uh . . . like two years ago.” Damn. That was kind of a long time when she was forced to say it out loud. “But I could date if I wanted to. I just don’t want to.”

“But the real question is, do you want to date Evan Monroe?”

“What?” Caught totally off guard, Kendall felt her cheeks burning again. Twice in fifteen minutes. A new personal best, and not one she was proud of. “Why the hell would you ask that?”

“Because normally you don’t pay any attention to the other drivers. And normally you would never question my asking one of them out for a date.”

Was that true? Probably. “That does not mean I want to date Evan. Because I don’t.”

Now Tuesday stared hard at her, so intently Kendall had to break eye contact.

“What does it mean?”

Damn it. She was going to have to come clean. “I just don’t think you’re going to enjoy yourself with Evan, because the truth is, I dated him myself a long time ago, and it was miserable.”

Which wasn’t entirely true. Most of their relationship had been pure moony-eyed bliss, until they had crashed and burned. That had definitely been miserable.

“What?” Tuesday threw her hands up in the air. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me before? Great, I’m scum. I hit on my best friend’s ex-boyfriend.”

“One, you’re not scum. You didn’t know. Two, you didn’t know because I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know you were going to ask him out.” If any of that made any sense at all. “It’s no big deal. It was a long time ago.”

“Well, I’m going to have to cancel the date.” Tuesday looked around the track. “Where did he go? I’d better find him and cancel now since I don’t have his number.”

Kendall panicked, grabbing Tuesday’s arm. “No! You can’t cancel. If you cancel he’ll think it’s because we talked and I admitted to you that he and I used to date.”

Tuesday’s eyebrows shot up over the top of her sunglasses’ rim. “That is what just happened.”

“Yeah, but I don’t want him to know that because he’ll think that means I care that you’re going out with him, which I don’t. I totally don’t care. I mean, he and I, that was a hundred thousand years ago and totally irrelevant to now or to the future. If you want to date him and get married and have children, and think that makes any kind of sense given the kind of man he is, well, that’s your business and I support you.”

What she was doing was over-talking and incriminating herself.

At the end of her ridiculous speech Kendall sucked in a breath and tried not to wince.

There was a pause, then Tuesday said, “Fine. I won’t cancel the date because you don’t want me to, and I see the logic in the first part of what you were saying. The second half was just nuts. But there won’t be a second date. I don’t date my friend’s ex-boyfriends, under any circumstances.”

“It doesn’t matter—”

“If you say ‘it doesn’t matter, he meant nothing to me’ one more time, I’m going to write in my blog that you’re a hermaphrodite.”

Kendall felt all the blood drain out of her face. “You wouldn’t.”

“Of course I wouldn’t, but what the hell, Kendall, be honest with me. This was clearly more than a couple of dates ten years ago.”

Because she was superstitious and she was testing her car again the next day and didn’t want any slipups, Kendall crossed her fingers behind her back before she lied through her teeth. “That’s all it was. I swear.”

“Pinky swear?” Tuesday’s finger came out.

Damn it. “No.” Kendall gave up the good fight. “Okay, he sort of kind of broke my heart. But I was eighteen and naïve. Everyone gets their heart broken at eighteen.”

“Why? What happened?”

“Nothing. That’s what happened. One minute we were together, then we weren’t. It’s no big—”

“Deal. Yes, so you’ve said. Are you sure you don’t want me to cancel?”

“No! I really don’t.” The last thing in the world Kendall wanted was Evan thinking she was still carrying a torch for him. The very thought of how humiliating that would feel made her break out in a sweat under her driver’s jumpsuit.

Though she had to admit, she wasn’t thrilled with the idea of Evan flirting with her best friend. Not because she had feelings for him still. But because he was a jerk and Tuesday shouldn’t have to suffer through that. No other reason than that.

“Don’t worry, I won’t make out with him or anything, I promise.”

The feeling that rose up in Kendall was small and green, hot and tight, but she refused to acknowledge in any way that it might be jealousy. Swallowing hard, she managed to force out, “It doesn’t matter if you do.”

TUESDAY stared at her best friend with a fair amount of speculation. In the five years she’d known Kendall, there had been only one serious boyfriend, and Kendall had been thoroughly calm and content in that relationship, and equally calm when they had broken up. Emotion was something Kendall reserved for driving, and even then that was off the track, not on. To see her normally determined and in control friend blushing and blustering and panicking was bizarre. Unnerving.