Page 16 of Over & Out (Redbeard Cove #3)

Hopper

M abel did a full background check before Chris signed her contract.

She insists on this elaborate one involving a PI company for all new members of my team.

We used to only do reference and criminal record checks.

Then we hired this temp to replace Cindi when she took a leave to help her daughter with her new baby.

I woke up on the temp’s first day not with the whole team in my bedroom, but just her, quivering and sweating as she sat in a chair next to me, watching me sleep.

She didn’t even flinch when I screamed, just reached out and stroked my face.

I shudder, remembering it. So now we do more, and Mabel makes me read the reports.

Except this time, when I started reading and saw that Chris had grown up in Redbeard Cove until she was twelve, that her dad was a firefighter, and that he died at the age of thirty-five, I closed the report.

The fact that I wanted to read the thing like a novel—and that even those few words had made my chest feel heavy for my assistant—meant it was a bad idea.

Tru told me there were no red flags, so as far as I was concerned, I didn’t need to know anything else.

The fewer personal details I had, I reasoned, the less interested in her I’d be.

This tactic is failing miserably right now, because I want to know every fucking mundane detail of this girl’s life.

This morning, I’m specifically thinking about how Chris probably grew up with her dad skillfully navigating the corners of the local highway in his rig, and presumably in the car with her.

Since he was a single dad, I like to assume they were close.

I think she’s probably a very good driver and am not worried in the slightest. But fuck if I’ll tell her that.

“Is this the car you want to take?” Chris asks when we get to the four-car garage around the side of the house. She looks unimpressed.

I look at the very expensive sports car I’ve stopped next to. “What’s wrong with this car?”

She shrugs. “No torque.”

With anyone else, I might think they were trying to impress me.

Does she know I was big into cars when I was a kid?

It was one of the few plusses of being a Hollywood kid.

Sure I got abruptly pulled away from my friends and school and baseball and BMXing in the empty lot by my house, but I got to sometimes ride in nice cars.

But I don’t get the sense Chris knows about this.

Plus, she and Tru and the hair lady had a half-hour conversation about their menstrual cycles over my head yesterday, which I found both horrifying and fascinating.

She doesn’t give a shit about impressing me.

I picture her as a kid in the passenger seat next to her dad, the two of them exchanging a conspiratorial look before he gears up and flies. Even this imagined image of a good dad makes my chest pinch, seeing as my dad treated me like a cash cow.

“Right,” I say. “A girl’s gotta have torque.”

Chris rolls her eyes and I roll mine back. But when she turns away, I don’t. I can’t, not when she looks so in her element. She leans over, peering into the car, her teeth biting her lip. A finger trails along the hood like she’s tempted to pop it and inspect the engine.

“The problem with this particular car,” she says, blowing a strand of hair out of her eyes before doing this little twisty thing to tuck it back, “is that for a luxury vehicle, it tends to degrade at an unacceptable rate.”

Chris gazes over at some of the other vehicles—a big F-350 that came with the house, a minivan Cindi insisted on driving up here from California herself, a few others.

But while she rattles off problems with this particular car, her fingers dance over the buttons up the denim jacket under her wool coat.

She’s wearing two coats, which should be ridiculous but just looks good.

But I’m starting to suspect Chris looks good in whatever she wears because it’s her wearing the clothes.

“Are you done?” I ask when she’s wound down her rant. I bring my eyes back up to her face and that full bottom lip, slightly crooked nose and squinty eyes.

“Yes, I’m done,” she says, annoyed.

“What kind of car would you prefer to drive, Miss Picky?”

She shrugs. “I mean, if I had my choice, a Bugatti, for the performance. Or maybe a Koenigsegg, just to turn heads. Or I don’t know, a Ducati?”

She’s clearly thought about this before. “Really? You compete in the Indy on the side? Or do you prefer MotoGP?”

“There’s a lot about me you don’t know, Donnach. A whole world.”

She’s right, of course. And I suddenly want to know way, way more. I’m desperate for it. Maybe I should read that background check. “Okay, then. Ride or drive?”

“Pardon me?” She looks startled.

“There’s a bike out back. We could ride.”

For a moment, she almost looks excited. Then she shakes her head. “I don’t ride.”

I examine her a moment longer, but she’s back to ogling the car. She mentioned a Ducati, but I guess that just means she’s a bike passenger princess. Doesn’t really track for her, but who knows? Some people don’t feel safe on motorcycles.

“Driving it is,” I say. I run my hand over my chin as if considering. “Well, shit. Hate to disappoint you, but all I’ve got that you can’t already see is this old thing.” I stride over to the far side of the garage and lift the corner of a car blanket, making my face regretful.

That full lip of hers drops, giving me a tantalizing glimpse of the tip of her tongue.

Cotton candy.

But my trick has worked; Chris is running over here like a kid at Christmas. “No fucking way.” She drops to her knees .

“Please get up,” I croak. My lower half is doing untoward things.

“A One-77? Are you kidding me?” She stands up and whips the blanket off. “Bro!”

Okay, bro helps.

I open my mouth to give her shit about that, but she’s going off on this car too. Only this time, she might as well be writing it a love poem. She glides her hands over the smooth lines of the vehicle in a way that I swear to God is making me physically jealous of a machine.

“There were only seventy-seven of these made! Ever!” Her expression is like a drug. I’ve dabbled in several bad choices in my life, so I know what I’m talking about. “Seven hundred fifty horsepower!” she exclaims. “Zero to sixty in four seconds.”

“Three point five,” I mumble.

She laughs, and I actually feel the sound inside of me.

Little jingly bells that bounce around in my belly.

That’s when I start to sweat again. I place my hands on my hips like I’m admiring the car too.

But my mind is freaking out. My superpower is turning off inappropriate feelings.

It comes from years of watching my dad hit on everything that moved while on set with me while my mom sat at home, so far away it hurt.

I refused to be anything like him. Ever.

So I learned early on to contain even the earliest nascent hints of attraction until I’m sure we both feel the same way.

But with Chris? All my systems are fried.

All the needles are in the red. With anyone else, I can turn attraction off like a tap.

But this tap? It’s a goddamned firehose.

I want to take it back, to cover this car up with a blanket and insist we drive in some kind of plain beige sedan, which, of course, I don’t have.

Or, I don’t know, call a fucking cab. Get out the bicycles.

But making her happy makes me feel like an idiot moth flapping my wings as I head to a fiery bug-light death.

And Chris is already climbing into the Aston Martin.

Things only get worse—particularly for my pained lower half—when she opts not to use the door and instead hoists herself onto the open window frame.

Her skirt slips dangerously high as she swings her legs into the car.

As she drops into the driver’s seat, I swear to God I feel a jolt of pleasure so strong I think I’m perilously close to begging her to get out just so she’ll do the whole thing again.

Chris looks up at me, grinning like the she-devil she is. “Well? Are you getting in or are you just going to stand there like a half-cooked noodle?”

I think I should probably die right now. Just cross my arms over my chest and expire. That would be easier than this.

“Yes, I’m getting in.” I jerk my sunglasses out of my pocket and plant them on my face.

“I’m using the door too. It works like this.

” I open it and slump into the passenger seat, pulling my hat down low since I’m failing at hiding all these feelings playing out on my face.

Someone needs to take away my actor card.

I relax a little once Chris revs the engine. At least we’ll be on the road in a minute, and soon after that, we’ll be in a work meeting I’ll be co-leading. That should distract me, right?

But when she pulls out of the garage a moment later, she doesn’t peel out like I was sure she would. Instead, she goes as slowly and tentatively as a granny.

“Hoo, boy,” I say, tipping the passenger seat back a notch. Thank God I was wrong about how she’d drive. This hesitancy is cute, not sexy. “All bark and no bite, huh?” I pull out my phone. “Should I tell them we’ll be there at noon?”

“I’m being safe.” Chris flicks on the turn signal, even though we’re alone. Then she slowly bumps us onto the street.

“You’re being geriatric.” I laugh. “What did I say earlier?” I rub my chin. “Small-town girl. Slow as f?—”

But my words are cut off, my hand flying off my face as my head presses hard into the back of my seat. Chris has smoothly geared us up to speed in a matter of seconds.

We’re now flying down the empty road, Chris laughing at my expression.

“The fuck, bangles?” I squeak out.

“What’s the matter, Donnach?” She grips the wheel with one hand, hugging the shoulder with the precision of a drafter. “You scared?”

Yes, I think. Yes I fucking am. Only not for the reason she thinks.