His hands fell away. As hot as he’d been a moment ago, when he stepped back and plunged his hands into his pockets, his blue eyes were as cool and reflective as a mountain lake.
“How about we have dinner tomorrow?” she cajoled, swamped by anxiety. As perfect as it was to feel his arms tighten around her, she needed to sort out her chaotic emotions before she saw him again.
“Sure.” Short and terse.
“Here?”
“If you want.” He gave her a stiff nod.
She put her hand on his cheek, offered him a glimpse of her longing. “I want very much.”
His eyes softened. “Five o’clock.” He pressed a kiss into her palm. “Don’t be late.”
Seven
Ming parked her car near the bleachers that overlooked the curvy two-mile track. Like most of the raceways where Jason spent his weekends, this one was in the middle of nowhere. At least it was only a couple of hours out of Houston. Some of the tracks he raced at were hundreds of miles away.
Jason was going to be surprised to see her. It had been six or seven years since she’d last seen him race. The sport didn’t appeal to her. Noisy. Dusty. Monotonous. She suspected the thrills came from driving, not watching.
So, what was she doing here?
If she was acting like Jason’s “friend,” she would have remained in Houston and spent her Saturday shopping or boating with college classmates. Driving over a hundred miles to sit on a metal seat in the blazing-hot sun fell put her smack dab in the middle of “girlfriend” territory. Would Jason see it as such? Ming took a seat in the stands despite the suspicion that coming here had been a colossal mistake.
The portion of track in front of her was a half-mile drag strip that allowed the cars to reach over a hundred miles an hour before they had to power down to make the almost ninety-degree turn at the end. The roar was impressive as twenty-five high-performance engines raced past Ming.
Despite the speed at which they traveled, Jason’s Mustang was easy to spot. Galaxy-blue. When he’d been working on the car, he’d asked for her opinion and she’d chosen the color, amused that she’d matched his car to his eyes without him catching on.
In seconds, the cars roared off, leaving Ming baking in the hot sun. With her backside sore from the hard bench and her emotions a jumble, it was official. She was definitely exhibiting “girlfriend” behavior.
And why? Because the past week with Jason had been amazing. It wasn’t just the sex. It was the intimacy. They’d talked for hours. Laughed. She’d discovered a whole new Jason. Tender and romantic. Naughty and creative. She’d trusted him to take her places she’d never been, and it was addictive.
Which is why she’d packed a bag and decided to surprise him. A single day without Jason had made her restless and unable to concentrate.
Ming stood. This had been a mistake. She wasn’t Jason’s girlfriend. She had no business inserting herself into his guy time because she was feeling lonely and out of sorts. She would just drive back to Houston and he’d never know how close she’d come to making a complete fool of herself over him.
The cars roared up the straightaway toward her once again. From past experience at these sorts of events, she knew the mornings were devoted to warm-up laps. The real races would begin in the afternoon.
She glanced at the cars as they approached. Jason’s number twenty-two was in the middle of the pack of twenty-five cars. He usually saved his best driving for the race. As the Mustang reached the end of the straightaway and began to slow down for the sharp turn, something happened. Instead of curving to the left, the Mustang veered to the right, hit the wall and spun.
Her lungs were ready to burst as she willed the cars racing behind him to steer around the wreckage so Jason didn’t suffer any additional impact. Once the track cleared, his pit crew and a dozen others hurried to the car. Dread encased Ming’s feet in concrete as she plunged down the stairs to the eight-foot-high chain-link fence that barred her from the track.
With no way of getting to Jason, she was forced to stand by and wait for some sign that he was okay. She gripped the metal, barely registering the ache in her fingers. The front of the Mustang was a crumpled mess. Ming tried to remind herself that the car had been constructed to keep the driver safe during these sorts of crashes, but her emotions, already in a state of chaos before the crash, convinced her he would never hear how she really felt about him.
“Wow, that was some crash,” said a male voice beside her. “Worst I’ve seen in a year.”
Ming turned all her fear and angst on the skinny kid with the baseball cap who’d come up next to her. “Do you work here?”