The Hot One

“Nothing wrong with that since I know a ton.”


He smiles and shrugs sheepishly. “Excellent. I’m looking for a builder who can make the best. Total custom job. Like this one, I presume?” he asks, pointing to the sleek green beauty I’m keeping watch over at the show. I’m here with a client since I built this baby from the ground for Wagner Boost—an NFL lineman who’s off signing autographs somewhere at this event. Wagner is a mammoth. At 6’ 8” and 350 pounds—that’s his morning weight, since he jokes that he shoots up to 360 after breakfast—he needed a car tailored to fit his frame. So I made it for him, and he loves it and likes to show it off.

“Let me tell you something,” I say, patting the hood of Wagner’s prized possession. “If you can dream it, I can damn near make it. If you want aftermarket tires, a brand new engine, custom upholstery, I’ll take care of it. If you want to marry parts from a roadster you’ve see in a gangster flick into a futuristic prototype, I’ll find a way. I’ll deliver on your vision because that’s what I do.”

The tap tap of stiletto heels across the asphalt sounds closer now, as David fires off another question. “Can you—?”

A woman’s voice interrupts. “Can you paint a badass tiger on the door?”

No. Fucking. Way.

That voice. That sexy purr. Like honey, like whiskey. Like dirty dreams.

Everything in me goes still. I haven’t heard that voice in years. I don’t even have to turn around because one more click, then another, and here she is, standing in front of me. Looking even hotter than she ever did before.

Long brown hair. Dark chocolate eyes. Legs than go on forever.

Henley Rose Marlowe.

Fuck me senseless.

It’s her.

The woman who drove me crazy.

I’m momentarily speechless as I take her in because she’s not twenty-one anymore. She’s five years older and twenty-five times hotter. Yes, her hotness has squared with the years.

But I’m not about to let a potential deal slide through my fingers. I never let women get in the way of work, especially not one who’s inserting herself into the middle of a conversation with a fucking tiger comment.

So I get around her interruption by going along with it.

“The tiger can even be roaring,” I suggest, as if she’s just some random car lover who’s keen on chitchatting, not a girl who used to work under the hood in my shop.

“Maybe even breathing fire,” Henley offers, like we’ve got this rapport down pat, who’s on first style.

David gets into the action too, emitting a rawr as he holds up his hands like claws.

Henley flashes him the sexiest smile I’ve ever seen, and in less than a second, the fire-breathing tiger inhabits me. Because I’m jealous as hell. For no fucking reason.

David smiles back at her.

Okay, maybe for that reason.

Which is not an acceptable reason at all. I shake off the useless emotion as David speaks again. “That’s it. I’ve officially decided I want a tiger on the door of a Delorean. Painted in green, like the color of money.”

Yep, he’s rainbow sprinkles all the way, and I focus on the sprinkles, not the flirty grins exchanged between this guy and a woman who was never mine.

“You can have it in royal purple, in emerald green, in sapphire blue,” I tell him. “You can have it with a flag on the hood, a pinstripe on the door, and you can even have it with a monkey in the passenger seat.”

“Purple, plus a monkey? I’m sold.” He clasps my hand in a good-bye shake. “I’ll be in touch.” He takes a step to go then stops. “Is purple too crazy a color? What do you think?” he asks the woman who’d make any red-blooded man gawk. Perfect figure. Pouty lips. Tight waist. Gravity-defying tits.

When God made the ideal woman to sell a red-blooded man any bill of goods, he crafted Henley.

Not sure he intended her to have such a smartass mouth though.

She licks her lips. “Purple is hot as sin,” she says to David, like the words are for his ears only. She presses her fingertip to her tongue then touches the hood of the car as if it burns her. She raises her hand, letting the imaginary flame fly high.

David eats up her show, laughing and grinning.

“That’s an excellent selling point of purple. What about you, Max? Favorite color?” He holds up a hand as a stop sign. “Wait. Let me guess. Gold? Silver? Red? Blue?”

I shake my head. “Black.”

Then David says good-bye and heads off, and I’m left with the vexing vixen who hates me.

She stares at me. Like a cat who won’t look away. I don’t break her showdown.

“Black,” she repeats, tapping the toe of her red suede pump as she glares with dark brown eyes full of fury. “Like your heart.”

Have I mentioned the last time I saw her she marched out of my shop in a blaze of glory and cursed me in what sounded like twelve different languages.

Might be because I fired her sexy ass five years ago.

Yeah, there’s some bad blood between us.



* * *



Chapter Two



* * *



Henley Rose and a hot car went together like peaches and cream, like fine Scotch and a long, dirty night.

Which meant working with her was like walking into the Garden of Eden every single day.

It was a test of willpower because the woman could craft a car like it was an erotic dance.

Not a strip tease.

Not an in-your-face pelvis thrust.

But a beautiful fucking ballet of woman seducing machine. Those hands, the way she wielded tools, the intensity in her focus. It was sensual, and it was sinful, and it was this man’s fantasy made flesh.

Imagine what it was like working with her for one hard-on year.

I mean, hard year.

But I survived the challenge because she was the best in the class. And I never treated her differently because she was a woman, or because I thought about her naked an obscene amount of time. I treated her like anyone else—specifically, all the people I work with who I never ever imagine in anything less than full-on Siberian winter garb, complete with the thermals and Michelin Man coat.

“Black heart. That’s an upgrade from cold, dead heart,” I say coolly, reminding her of the words she uttered the day she stormed out.

“So you had the ticker replaced then?”

I tap my sternum. “All new model. But apparently, I’m still just the same cruel bastard,” I say, using another favorite phrase of her from the last day I saw her.

She arches a brow. “Shame. You should have let me work on that part of you. I’m good at making all sorts of clunkers run better.”

Jesus Christ. She still takes no prisoners. “I’ve no doubt you have all the tools to fix anything, and if you couldn’t find the right one, you’d use a blowtorch.”

She adopts an expression of indignation. “There’s nothing wrong with using a blowtorch,” she says, taking extra time on the first syllable.