Erin McCarthy - Full Throttle

Yeah, she shouldn’t have asked. Because now she felt like complete and total crap. Honest? Hardly. Neither one of them were being honest, and she felt lousy about deceiving Sandy, who clearly had her son’s best interests at heart.

Shawn also felt something that was suspiciously similar to jealousy. She envied the woman who would capture Rhett’s heart someday, who would have all that intense loyalty, that straightforward, never-wavering devotion.

She didn’t know what to say, afraid that if she did speak, she would either confess the truth or admit that she was suddenly wishing she were Rhett’s type. Fortunately, she didn’t have to respond, because Charity called to them from the living room.

“You have got to see this dress, Shawn! I think you should wear this to the party.”

Relieved and horrified all at the same time, she gave Mrs. Ford a sheepish smile. “I hadn’t even thought about a dress.”

The truth was, there were a lot of things she hadn’t thought about before she had gone and asked Rhett to marry her.

* * *

EVE watched her brother-in-law moving around the garage and frowned. She had known Rhett for years, but only in the last three months had she really spent any time with him. Initially, she had thought that he was arrogant, a charmer, who didn’t show you who he really was. She still thought he kept himself private and remote, but she knew now he wasn’t arrogant, and, frankly, he wasn’t particularly charming. He didn’t play games with women or his coworkers, and he really only spoke if he had something to say that was relevant.

Whereas Eve’s own husband could work a crowd, laughed easily, and was almost never angry, Shawn’s new husband simmered quietly beneath the surface with something Eve had never quite understood.

Even more so, now she wondered what really went on in his head.

Nolan, who had a rare weekend off from working on her brother’s pit crew, had come to the track with her to see her new engine. She had placed fifteenth the day before, and they were all pretty excited at the possibilities. Her truck was running well, and she was getting the attention she had wanted on the circuit. Her two-year plan was to break into the cup circuit and garner a major sponsorship, and so far, so good.

Even better, her husband appreciated her new engine.

But now she was worried about Rhett and Shawn, because well, she was a worrier. “I don’t know about this,” she told Nolan for about the twentieth time in the past three days.

“Eve.” Nolan put his hands on her shoulders and rubbed her through her sweatshirt. “Rhett is a grown man. Shawn is a grown woman. They know what they’re doing.”

All she could do was shake her head. “Something is fishy here, Nolan. It’s not like Rhett to just dive into a wedding on a minute’s notice with a woman he just met.”

“He is pretty intense, you know that.”

As Rhett came toward them, Eve stepped slightly away from Nolan, rocking in her sneakers as she pondered what was really going on. Shawn was impulsive, sure, but Shawn didn’t fall head over ass for men. Her starts tended to be more about racing and drinking, not about relationships. While she was perfectly willing to get a tattoo with Eve, she had never even let a guy live with her. But now she had eloped with a virtual stranger? It didn’t add up.

“Hey, can I knock off early today?” Rhett asked as he came up to them. “I just got a text from Jeannie that Mom went over to Shawn’s, and I would like to head over there and save her from being endlessly grilled.”

“Sure, no problem.” Eve felt a pang of sympathy for Shawn. “Your mom must be pissed off. I don’t envy Shawn right now. Sandy was suspicious of me for a good three months. She thought I had ulterior motives.” Fortunately, now she and her mother-in-law had come to a mutual respect and admiration for each other, but at first it had not been easy.

“She thought you were nuts for marrying beneath you,” Nolan said with a grin.

Eve snorted. “Hardly. But I’m sure the prenup didn’t help her opinion of me.” She still regretted bringing that stupid document to Nolan to sign.

He groaned. “Oh, God, let’s not bring that up again. It almost destroyed our marriage before it barely started.”

“I still don’t get why you cared,” Rhett said. “I signed one and it’s not a big deal to me. Shawn has the right to protect her assets.”

Eve felt her jaw drop. “You signed a prenup? When the hell did you have time to do that?”

“On Friday, before we got married.”

He looked like he thought it was completely normal. Inconsequential. “See you tomorrow at the apartment, right?” he asked Nolan.

Her husband nodded, then Rhett was gone with a wave.

“What the frickety-frack?” Eve asked, the second he was out of earshot. “Who the hell elopes after knowing each other for five minutes, which would indicate massive amounts of passion and insanity, yet still has enough time and a business head on their shoulders to whip together a prenup? No one. That’s who.”

“No one but Shawn and Rhett.” Nolan shrugged, but he looked puzzled, too, staring off at his brother’s retreating back.

“This is not right. Something is off. I feel like Rhett and Shawn are lying to us about something.” None of this added up.

“What the hell would they be lying about?” Nolan rolled his eyes at her. “She can’t be pregnant. There hasn’t been time.”

“Or has there?” Eve narrowed her eyes at her husband. Was Shawn pregnant with someone else’s baby? No, that didn’t add up. She would have told Eve, and she hadn’t been dating anyone for quite some time. But there was definitely something off. “What is really going on here? Because I feel like they’re pissing on my leg and telling me it’s raining.”

“Mind your own business, Eve.”

“When have I ever done that?” she asked him, incredulous.

Nolan smiled. “You got me there, babe. Now can we go home? I need you to hold me before the shit hits the fan tomorrow.”

Eve laughed. “Oh, yeah? So I need to comfort you with sex?”

“Now that you mention it . . .” He gave her a cute, pleading look.

“You’re ridiculous.” But he was her kind of ridiculous.

RHETT had driven to Shawn’s faster than was strictly legal.

He wasn’t afraid of a lot in life—not snakes or spiders or confrontation—but his mother still scared the shit out of him on occasion.

This would be one of them.

God only knew what she was saying to Shawn. Or worse, what she was asking her.

He had promised Shawn Chinese food but he was way earlier than expected, and he’d take her out to dinner as an apology for being subjected to a sneak attack from Sandy Ford.

Damn it. His mother’s car was still in the driveway. Not good.

He was covered in motor oil from being jostled by Travis, an eighteen-year-old kid who was nervous and still learning his way around a pit crew. But he was not going to disappear into the shower until he had a good measure of Shawn’s misery and he could politely send his mother home.

When he entered through the side door, kicking off his dirty boots on the rag rug, he heard something unexpected. Shawn and his mother were laughing. He had expected cold tension, his mother voicing all her objections to their impulsive marriage, while Shawn pursed her lips in stoic silence. But no, they were yucking it up in the living room. What the hell could be so damn funny?

Coming around the corner, they both looked up at him in surprise.

“Oh! You’re back early,” Shawn said. She didn’t look like it mattered one way or the other to her.

“Rhett,” his mother said, her expression . . . guilty? Her reading glasses were perched on her nose. “I stopped by with some muffins for Shawn, and we’ve been making wedding-party plans. Her girlfriends just left.”

And that was funny?

Feeling suspicious, he skirted the coffee table and kissed his mother on the cheek. “Thanks for stopping by, Momma.” When he wasn’t there. And when she had never met Shawn before.

His mother wrinkled her nose. “Good Lord, you smell bad enough to gag a maggot. Go change your clothes, and then we can show you what we’ve been up to.”

He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

But he did have the urge to kiss Shawn. To show her and his mother both that he was relevant here.

So he came around to her side of the couch and gave her a smile that she could interpret however she liked. “I got off work early because I missed you.”

Her eyes widened in surprise but before she could respond, he kissed her. Not a brief kiss of greeting, but a firm, drawn-out kiss that put a pink tinge to her cheeks. “I’m sorry I stink,” he told her as he straightened up and out of her space.

“I don’t mind,” she said. “You smell like gas and rubber. I associate those scents with speed. Winning.”

It was the kind of answer that made him wish his mother were nowhere near them. If she weren’t, Rhett would have eased Shawn back onto that couch and peeled down those yoga pants to show her what winning really felt like.

But his mother most definitely was three feet away and Rhett nodded, turning abruptly so neither woman saw his growing erection. Screw dinner. He wanted Shawn more than lo mein noodles.

In the bedroom, he stripped off his smelly clothes and pulled on a clean T-shirt and jeans. The dirty ones bunched in his hand, he came back down the hall and asked, “Where is the washing machine, Shawn? I’ll throw these in.”

“Oh, here, I’ll show you. Excuse us for a second,” she told his mother. “It’s in the basement.”

She led him through the kitchen and down the steep stairs to the cold and poorly lit basement laundry room. “Sorry, it’s gross down here.”

He could care less. He flipped the lid on the washing machine and dropped the clothes in. “Listen, I’m sorry about my mom. I had no idea she’d just show up here. I hope she didn’t give you too much of a hard time.”

Shawn shook her head. “She’s being really nice, which is almost worse. She’s happy for us, and I feel like a jerk.”

“She’s happy?” That was something of a head-scratcher. His mother had nearly had a heart attack when Nolan had eloped with Eve. She had ranted and raved for days.

“Yeah. She says she wants you happy and that since you’re not impulsive, she trusts that you know what you’re doing.”

That was interesting. His mother trusted him to choose his life partner wisely. Maybe she knew him better than he had realized.

Though she clearly didn’t know what was really going on here.

“I feel like shit, Rhett, honestly.” Shawn poured some laundry detergent in the machine on top of his clothes, looking flustered. “I didn’t know how bad I would feel about lying. I didn’t think about it at all, frankly.”

Rhett moved in behind her and brushed her hair off her shoulder so he could kiss her neck. He didn’t like to see her so stressed. He didn’t particularly like lying to his mother either. But his interest in Shawn wasn’t feigned, and he intended to focus on that. “This isn’t a purely business transaction, you know. We are having a relationship.” His erection grew as he pressed her against the machine, her pert backside a soft cushion for his thighs.

She shivered. “Rhett . . .”

“Yes?”

“It’s not the same thing,” she protested, even as her ass angled to give him a better position, his cock resting between her cheeks.

“No, it’s not.” He nibbled on her ear, loving the delicate skin there. “I don’t want you unhappy, Shawn. If you want, we can pull the plug on all of this. Right here, right now. We can say it was a mistake, and walk away.”

While he waited for his words to sink in, he ran his hands down her sides, letting one reach around to stroke down between her legs, the cotton pants giving him access to every curve of her body. He bit her ear gently, then soothed it with his tongue.

“We can?” she asked, growing breathless, her hips starting to rock back and forth, teasing her clitoris against his hand, and brushing her ass into his erection.

“Of course we can. We can do whatever you want.” He actually would be disappointed if she said she wanted to annul their marriage and forget this whole thing had ever happened. He tried to tell himself it was because then he wouldn’t have access to her in bed every night, but there was more to it. He and Shawn hadn’t finished exploring each other, physically and emotionally. There was something there between them, besides sex, and he wasn’t entirely sure what it was, but he was curious to find out.