I watch as Quin taps my boyfriend’s number into his phone, then he smiles charmingly and says, “You’ll have to let me know what you think of it.”
The implication couldn’t be any more obvious, and I’m about two seconds away from a total mental collapse when Travis glances around, and notices me standing there, and smiles.
All of my jealousy melts away in a heartbeat.
“You made it,” he says.
I move toward him, smiling back so hard my cheeks hurt. “Yeah.”
“Good flight?”
“A nine-month-old barfed on me.”
He laughs. “That sucks.”
“It does,” I agree. I don’t really care about the vomit stain anymore, though. Not with Travis smiling at me like that, and shifting closer like he can’t stand having two feet of space between us.
“Do you want to wear my sweater?” Quin asks.
It’s a very nice offer for him to make to a stranger, even though I’m pretty sure he only says it to draw Travis’s attention back to him.
“That’s okay,” I say. “Thanks, though. I’m Jacob,” I add, holding out a hand.
He shakes it politely. “Quin McCarthy.”
“I know,” I say. “I saw that war movie you were in. It was really good.”
He smiles a bit sheepishly, as if he doesn’t like getting compliments. “Thanks. Do you work for Harper, too?”
“Jacob is a test driver for Crosswire,” Travis says. He hasn’t looked away from me once, which I don’t think has escaped Quin’s notice.
“That’s cool,” Quin says. Then his eyes move between us. “Well—I should probably get out of the way, it looks like things are about to kick off soon. It was really nice to meet you, Travis.”
“You, too,” Travis says. He doesn’t even watch as Quin walks away, just nudges my arm and says, “C’mon.”
Twenty seconds later, at the end of an empty hallway, he pulls my sweaty, vomit-stained body against his and kisses me hard enough to bruise. It’s only been a few days since we last saw each other, but the way he kisses me, you’d think it had been months.
The way my heart races, you’d think it had been years.
“You have practice,” I say hoarsely, when we finally break apart.
“There’s tons of time.”
“There’s five minutes.”
He grins. “Yeah, well. They probably need a little extra time to check things over.”
“What happened to the car?”
He pulls a face. “Cole Milton. There was a tiny bit of rain on track earlier, and he spun out like a moron and sideswiped me.”
I make an aggrieved noise. Cole is easily my least favorite driver on the F1 grid. He only got his seat because his family is rich, and he’s an arrogant little shit on the best of days. “That sucks.”
“Yeah. It wasn’t that much damage, though.” He leans back a little and scrutinizes my face. “Did you get any sleep on the plane?”
“None. I’m pretty wiped.”
He runs an absent thumb over my cheek, like he doesn’t even care that his entire race team is waiting for him just down the hall. “Do you have to stick around here, or can you head back to the hotel?”
