Erin McCarthy - Full Throttle

But Rhett didn’t laugh. In fact, his eyes darkened. “Say that again,” he told her. It wasn’t a request, it was a demand.

Shawn felt her face and chest burn, from the alcohol, from desire. “What?” she asked him, bewildered. “What do you mean?”

“Say ‘cock.’ I want to hear you say it.”

It could have been a creepy request. But somehow it wasn’t. It was just a complete and total turn-on. It was the oddest thing to her, that all Rhett had to do was look at her, his gaze trained on her and only her, and he commanded her full attention. Commanded her.

“Cock,” she whispered, licking her lips nervously.

“Louder.”

“Cock,” she said more confidently, aware of how he subtly shifted toward her, his body firm and masculine, his knee brushing hers.

He made a sound, in the back of his throat, that told her what she’d just said was as effective as if she’d gripped his cock itself with her hand. Her nipples beaded, and she realized that he might be younger than her by more than a couple of years, but he was fully mature and in control of himself and his desires. Possibly more so than she was.

It was so sexy, so hot, that she did exactly what she had been hoping she wouldn’t. She blurted. Instead of approaching him with a business proposition, the words just spilled out of her mouth like ice water on a flame.

“Will you marry me?”

RHETT blinked at Shawn. All the blood had gone south to his cock just watching the dirty word roll off Shawn’s plump lip, so maybe he was at less-than-full mental capacity, because he could have sworn she had just asked him to marry her. Which could not be what she had said. Hell, he’d had to talk her into a beer.

“What?” he asked, wanting to shake his head and rattle it into a reset like they did in old-school cartoons. “What did you say?”

Shawn blushed. She looked down at the bar, fiddling with her empty Guinness glass. “See, here’s the thing. I need a husband. I’m offering money. Are you interested? A business deal, pure and simple.”

He was not following her at all. “Why the hell would you need a husband?” This wasn’t the fifties. If she was knocked up, no one was going to think anything of it. It couldn’t be for any sort of tax advantage. God knew, she was better off being single if she wanted a break from the IRS, so he didn’t understand.

Her eyes finally met his, and she looked emboldened, determined. The shift was dramatic, and it had his body responding again. There was something so damn sexy about her, vulnerable yet strong at the same time.

“Let’s just say that if I don’t get married, I’m going to lose something that means a lot to me. It’s ridiculous, but there it is. I’ll give you a hundred grand if you stay married to me for a year.”

Rhett actually felt his jaw drop open. A hundred thousand dollars? Was she serious? That was more money than he could ever hope to see at once. While he had made a decent living on Evan’s pit crew, he’d taken a pay cut to switch to Eve’s crew, and he’d be lucky if he made five grand off his dirt track racing this year. There just wasn’t a lot of cash at this level, and he wasn’t expecting to win right out of the gate. He was aiming more for breaking even on his car and expenses. A hundred grand. Damn. That was a lot of cheddar.

But he shook his head. “I need more details. That’s a lot of money, and this doesn’t seem above board to me, Shawn. I don’t want to get involved in something illegal. Or be some sort of pawn to make a boyfriend jealous.”

Now it was her turn to look surprised. “I would never involve you in something like that! Either of those things! I wouldn’t ever do anything illegal. Hell, I don’t even jaywalk. And I am not the kind of woman to play games in relationships.”

She looked so indignant that Rhett instantly trusted what she was proposing was something that, while not exactly typical, wasn’t sketchy either. “So then tell me what it really is.”

Shawn sighed. “I guess I can’t expect you not to have questions. I shouldn’t have just blurted it out like that. But the thing is, I’m desperate. I’m not sure if you heard, but my grandfather died in November.”

She paused, jaw working, he suspected both from grief and from struggling to find the words for what she needed to say.

“I’m really sorry, Shawn. That must be very difficult.” His own grandparents were all still miraculously alive, and he knew he was fortunate in that regard.

“Thanks.” She ran her finger around the rim of the glass, slowly, methodically, her nails painted a rich, ruby red that surprised him.

He would have expected something more natural, clear polish or a pale pink. The image of those red nails on her pale flesh popped into his head. He wanted to see them splayed over her breasts, trailing down her belly to bury inside her hot, moist inner thighs. Rhett cleared his throat and shifted on his stool. He needed another drink. Preferably with ice he could pour down his jeans to cool him down.

“Pops owned the track and ran it for forty years. I’ve been working there since my midtwenties. It’s my . . . life.” She looked pleadingly at him, as if she were begging him to understand.

He did understand the love of racing, but he still didn’t understand what she was getting at. “You love racing. I get that, Shawn. It’s my life, too.”

She nodded. “I assumed the track was left to me. Or at least a portion of it, so that I would continue to run it as operating manager. My father hasn’t been around since I was a kid, and my mother hates everything about racing. My brother is an optometrist, go figure, and he was never big on being a Hamby anyway. So it was always me and my grandfather, playing in the dirt, as he called it. But it turns out he didn’t leave me the track free and clear. His lawyer read his will to me today, and it seems the only way I can inherit is if I’m married.” The grimace on her face showed him exactly what she thought of that.

“Are you serious?” Rhett could see why she was having a bad day. “Why would he do that?”

She gave a bitter laugh. “I guess he thought I was devoting too much time to the track and racing. He wanted me to settle down and breed, like a good girl.”

Oh, yeah. That was bitterness. He couldn’t exactly blame her. “Jesus. And I thought my mother was bad, always dropping hints about how I should get married sooner than later.”

“She does? But you’re only twenty-five.”

“I know. But she thinks that I should be married and have a baby by now, like she did. You have to start early to rack up nine kids, you know. She’s always on my case about it, giving me advice in front of my whole family.”

“What kind of advice?”

“She thinks I should smile more,” Rhett told Shawn. “She says I scare women.” It was true and he knew it. But somehow he didn’t think he scared Shawn much.

In fact, Shawn laughed. “Now that’s funny.”

“Clearly, I don’t scare you.”

“Only a little,” she admitted. “But that’s more because I can’t figure out why I’m attracted to you.”

“I mean, who would be?” he asked ruefully.

Shawn smacked his arm. “That’s not what I mean! It’s just bad timing, you know? But then I thought, well, maybe it’s not bad timing. If I have to be married to save the track, maybe you’d be a good candidate. But now it just sounds crazy and rude and creepy. I don’t know what I was thinking. If anyone should be frightened here, it should be you.” She fussed with her bun, which was sliding south. “You must think I’m a total freak, popping the question to a guy I just met.”

“I’m flattered.” He actually was. Yes, it was crazy. It was crazy that her grandfather would expect her to jump into a marriage. It was a plan bound to fail. But he respected that Shawn was willing to do whatever it took to save her property, to save what was meaningful to her. He would probably consider doing the same thing, though he wasn’t exactly one to like being told what to do. But he admired her guts and her businesslike approach to the problem. Instead of crying, she’d sought a solution. “And I’m not saying no straight out. I just need to hear what would be expected of me.”

“You’re not saying no?” she asked, eyebrows shooting up as she froze with her arms above her head, tightening her hair thing.

“No, I’m not saying no.” He wasn’t. Insane or not, she had just dangled a hundred grand in front of him. Not to mention, he’d been looking for a good excuse to get to know her better, both with clothes on and off, and what could be a better excuse for that than marriage?

Was marriage a huge commitment that he shouldn’t take lightly? Yes. But this wasn’t a real marriage. He didn’t think. “What does this marriage mean exactly? Is it paper only? We would never see each other?” He wasn’t down with that. He couldn’t walk around and be secretly married, shagging other women and taking money for something he hadn’t really done. It all just seemed too dishonest to him. He liked his cards out on the table. If he was going to be fucking anyone, it was going to be Shawn.

His wife.

Oh, damn. He should walk away. This was dicey.

Yet, he wasn’t. He flagged down the bartender and said, “Can we get two more shots of Jameson? Skip the Guinness this time.” This was a straight-up liquor conversation.

Shawn took a huge breath. “The deal is this. We have to be married for a year, but we have to live together at least for the first six months. So you would have to move in with me. I have a guest room that you can use, and I suppose the positive is, you’ll be saving on rent for six months.”