Hot Finish (Fast Track #3)(48)
Author: Erin McCarthy

She’s a little bit country, he’s a little bit rock ’n’ roll, folks, and one of stock car racing’s most famous couples is back in action.

Cue the karaoke and the chocolate fountain, and let’s hope this race lasts longer than their first time on the track.

That bitch. That lower-than-a-snake-belly blogging bitch. How dare she say that Suzanne was dating Ryder for his money? That was the last reason in the world she would be with any man.

Then there was Ryder. Where the f**k did he get off taking her to the same goddamn hotel he’d taken other women? The only thing that would be worse would be if he’d taken those sluts to the Bellagio where she and Ryder had honeymooned. If that were the case, then Suzanne would have had to cut off his junk and have fed it to the white tigers.

As it was, she just still might.

Suzanne started to read the comments people had posted in response to the blog, but after seeing people write that she was an idiot and/or a gold digger, she just closed the window on the screen and pushed the chair back. She was no gold digger, but she was an idiot. Tears streaming down her face, she ducked her head and fast-walked to the elevator, praying it would be empty.

It wasn’t, and she had to pretend there was something in her eye for the elderly couple gazing at her in concern. When she finally got to the haven of their room, Suzanne went for her empty suitcase and started tossing her clothes out of drawers into it. There was no way on God’s green earth she was sticking around to be humiliated any further.

She had known this was a bad idea, yet she’d chosen to ignore her gut, and now look at her. Being mocked by some twit with a made-up name, and thinking that this had been so romantic when Ryder had brought a string of women here previously. Probably even had stayed in the same room, had sex with them in the same bed where he’d loved on her.

“Damn it!” She kicked his suitcase sitting next to hers and resisted the urge to squeeze a tube of toothpaste all over his clothes.

She was in the bathroom, sweeping all her makeup into her cosmetic bag, throat tight from holding back sobs, when Ryder came in.

“Suz? What are you doing?” he asked, coming to stand in the doorway, hands in the front pockets of his jeans.

“I’m leaving. Going back to Charlotte, where I should have stayed in the first place.”

“Why? What the hell is the matter? We’ve been having a good time, I’m pretty damn sure.”

Where did she even begin to list all the things that were the matter?

Zipping her makeup bag shut, she turned to him. “I am not going to be just another woman that you brought to this hotel for a weekend screw.”

“Why would you even say that?” Ryder knew he was gaping at Suzanne, but there were times he just could not follow her thought processes. “I just suggested we get married!”

“If that was a marriage proposal, it was a shitty one! And I know I’m not the first woman you brought to this hotel, and now so does everybody else thanks to Tuesday Talladega and her damn gossip website.”

Ryder’s confidence they could work things out, which had already been seriously dented in the last hour, was smashed completely. Uh-oh. “First of all, that Tuesday chick is the modern equivalent of a rag magazine, and no one listens to a word she says. Second, you and I have both dated other people since we’ve been divorced. That’s no secret. You’ve had a life and lovers and so have I.”

“The same hotel, Ryder? That’s tacky with a capital T.”

“This is where the awards ceremony is! It wasn’t any sort of conscious choice. Why does it matter anyway?” Those women hadn’t been important to him. They had been diversions, amusement, company for a few of his many lonely nights. Nights he much would have preferred to have spent with Suzanne.

“Was it this room?”

“Huh?” Ryder felt a certain amount of desperation creeping over him. This was going terribly, horribly wrong.

“Did you stay in the same room with them?”

“You mean like a threesome? No, of course not!”

“I didn’t mean two at once, you dumb ass, I mean, did you have them share this particular room with you on those three separate trips . . . did you screw those women in the same bed you screwed me?”

“No.” He didn’t think. Hotel rooms all looked the same. “And that’s not fair anyway. I am positive you’ve had more than one guy share your bed at your condo and we’ve spent the night there together, and trust me, that is not a happy image for me. I mean, Carl, Suzanne? He didn’t have brawn or brains.” That idiot Suzanne had dated right after their divorce had been nothing short of totally unworthy of her. “But we were apart for two years, Suz. There’s nothing we can do about that but accept it’s the past. And as a side note, stop calling me dumb ass. I really hate that.”

“Stop being one.” She shoved past him and threw her makeup bag into her suitcase. “God, I’m so stupid.”

“Why? What is so wrong that we can’t talk about it and fix it?” Ryder was truly bewildered. “Maybe my suggestion about getting remarried was too soon, or poorly delivered, I can admit that, but the thing is you don’t make it easy for me. Half the time I’m afraid to tell you how I feel, because you tear me a new one, so I hold it in, then blurt it out.” He tried to touch her arm but she shook him off. “When you care about a woman as much as I care about you, there’s a lot at stake. I never want to mess it up, and yet, that’s all we seem to do.”

“We’re just talking in circles again. The same old arguments that never get us anywhere.”

“Maybe we should try talking instead of yelling then running.”

Yet Suzanne just zipped her suitcase closed, yanked it off the bed, and pulled up the handle. “I’m leaving.”

Ryder’s anger dissolved as the enormity of what she was saying hit him and his heart splintered yet again.

“Well, that is what you do best.”

Her lips tightened at his parting shot but she didn’t say a word. She just rolled her suitcase across the room and left. The door closed with a final and loud click.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“I’M worried about Suzanne,” Tamara told Imogen under her breath as they suffered through Nikki’s bridal shower together.

“I am, too,” Imogen said as she bit into the vegan cupcake that had been served for dessert. “She looks exhausted and she will not even discuss what happened between her and Ryder and it’s been a week already.”