Unfortunately, she couldn’t. And, if it was up to her to hold out against jumping into bed together, they were in big trouble.
Noah made his pursuit of Kayla more dogged as the days passed. He lured her to dinner one night. Two days later, when she was at Whittaker Enterprises again, he coaxed her into having a drink with him after work.
He was fiendishly persistent. But, because he’d promised not to, he didn’t put any heavy moves on her—as much as it killed him not to. Now that he’d had a taste of her, he found himself wanting more.
Yeah, she was still a gossip columnist, and he was often gossip fodder. But she was also a leggy blond with a great shape, and he was weak. Weak.
Not only that, he liked the way she challenged him, refusing to be cowed. Sometimes, he admitted to himself, he worried about losing brain cells when talking with Huffy, Fluffy, Buffy or any of the rest of them. He remembered Kayla’s jibe at the book-launch party about his taste in women, and now he let himself admit that what she’d said may have contained an iota of truth.
Still, he was patient with her. He bided his time. After the night at the Charlesbank Association event, he knew that building trust with Kayla was key. Now that he understood the nature of her relationship to Bentley Mathison, he figured being left by her biological father—even if she was too young to remember when it had happened—had done a lot to influence her relationship with men. Particularly men like him.
So, he pursued her unfalteringly but quietly. On Saturday afternoon, he got her to go out with him to a racetrack near the New Hampshire border where he still occasionally raced cars for fun. She’d tried to demur, but he’d argued it would give her a fuller picture of Noah Whittaker, computer guru.
So, she’d agreed to come along, ostensibly for research purposes, and he’d tamped down the well of satisfaction at having her along. If nothing else, it meant he could keep an eye on her. Because he’d be damned if he held back only to see some other guy take advantage of her availability.
When they arrived at the racetrack, he watched as she looked around. “Do you come here to keep your driving skills honed?” she asked.
“That, and doing a few laps around the track is a good way to blow off steam. It gets my mind focused on something different.” He didn’t expect her to understand about his love affair with fast cars. Nevertheless, he cocked his head and said, “Want to tag along and find out what it’s like?”
“How?” she said. “Don’t Indy cars have room only for the driver?”
“There are two-seater stock cars here at the track that they keep for instructors and students.” Unlike low-to-the-ground, bullet-shaped Indy cars, stock cars superficially resembled regular cars on the road; they could be modified to include a front passenger seat.
“Didn’t you race Indy cars professionally?” she asked quizzically.
He shrugged and gave her a wry smile. “Sometimes I race stock cars down here. I like the variety. Besides, stock-car racing’s taken off in the past few years.” He slipped his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. “So, are you game?”
She looked at him, then shrugged. “Sure, why not?”
“Yes?” He couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice.
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Why?”
“Because you expected me to say no,” she said wryly, her lips quirking.
Well, well, he mused. Apparently, his Ms. Rumor-Has-It—he didn’t stop to analyze when she’d become his Ms. Rumor-Has-It—didn’t shy away from a challenge. He found he liked that about her, and he filed the information away for future reference as they went to get the correct protective equipment and wait for their race car to be pulled out.
At the administrative office, they signed the required forms, and then he grinned as she tried on a helmet.
“How’s this for a fashion statement?” she asked, amused.
“Would you believe sexy?” he replied.
The moment stretched out between them—fraught with need and suppressed desire—until she cleared her throat and said, “We should be getting back outside. The car’s ready.”
He had it bad. Since when did a woman in a helmet send his temperature shooting up?
When they’d walked back outside and were strapped into the race car, he said, “Last chance to bail. You know, no one will fault you for reporting from the sidelines on this one.”
“Forget it.”
“If you beg for mercy, I’ll stop,” he teased.
“Fat chance,” she retorted.
He grinned. “Anyway, I plan to go easy for the, uh, virgin riders in the car.”
She lowered her visor with a click and, chuckling, he angled the car onto the track.
The ride was like it usually was for him: the next best thing to sex. He accelerated to a cool one-hundred-fifty miles an hour, and they were jostled and bumped as the well-tuned machine roared beneath them and raced over the asphalt. His attention was focused on the racetrack ahead and on every pull and jerk of the car beneath him. Everything else faded into a peripheral blur as he took oncoming turns with smooth calibration, correcting for the car’s tendency to head in a straight line.
It was fifteen minutes later when he finally pulled into the pit and stopped. When they got out of the car, he looked over at Kayla. Whatever he’d been expecting to see, it wasn’t the grin that greeted him. She looked exhilarated.
“That was great!” she said, still holding her helmet.
His lips quirked up. Not a single one of the women he’d dated had shown any interest in racing, let alone riding in a car with him. The helmet alone would have ruined their hair—but Kayla was apparently a different breed.
“Are you sure you’re not a speed addict?” he teased.
She arched a brow. “Oh, didn’t I tell you? I love roller coasters. I guess that was one thing Samantha forgot to mention to you.”
Her smile almost undid him. After that, it was a real effort to keep his hands off her. He wanted to make love with her again and again, mate with her, and stamp her as his.
It was crazy to get an acute stab of primal lust just because a woman liked speed, but there it was.
Fortunately, he knew his days of having to take cold showers were numbered. Soon, their remaining week and a half would be up and Kayla would announce she had enough to write her story.
“Really?” Noah said as casually as possible on Kayla’s last day visiting Whittaker Enterprises on the following Tuesday.