Rocco cut him off. “Yes. She did. I don’t know why I said it.”
What the hell were Nico Angelini’s words doing in his mouth? What were they even doing in his head?
“I think I know why,” Dario said. “Trouble is, no one else knows. She hit you where it hurts with that first tweet way back when, and you’d rather hit back and make yourself out to be a sexist pig—no, not a pig … What was it?”
“Amoeba.”
“Yeah, well, you’d rather the world think that than know the truth. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I don’t think she was targeting you with that first tweet that started the feud I don’t know how long ago.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Rocco muttered.
“Look, there’s no way in hell Nico Angelini knows anything about thespecial circumstancessurrounding your jump from F3 to F1. So how in the hell could she be tweeting about it?”
Thosespecial circumstanceswere one Carolyn Wickham—the real reason Rocco and Dario had left a swanky New Year’s Eve party and come to this shithole. Rocco had told his cousin he’d wanted a change of scene. What he didn’t tell him was that he’d wanted it because he’d seen Carolyn at the party.
Rocco shifted his feet, unable to keep his body still as he watched the woman glide around the pool table. She picked up the chalk and stared back at him, rubbing the tip of the stick back and forth.
Back and forth.
Back.
And.
Forth.
There was too much fuel pumping through his veins. He needed to be behind the wheel moving at over two hundred miles per hour. Now more than ever, he thought, trying to swallow that fear that had lodged a lump in his throat. There was a real possibility he might not be racing this upcoming season.
He couldn’t accept that. Last season—hislast? No. Especially not after the disaster it had been.
Who was he kidding, the last fewyearshad been a disaster. Ever since he’d left Carolyn’s Formula 1 team, or rather her husband’s, Blue Jet Lightning, he’d been floundering. And that had provided fertile ground for the doubts and fears that festered in his gut. If he couldn’t race and get back to that podium, he’d never be rid of the feeling he was a fraud.
He needed to race. He needed it like he needed oxygen.
What he didn’t need was to be standing in a dive bar that smelled of whiskey and sweaty balls on New Year’s Eve—correction: New Year’s Day, now—about to lose a game of pool he’d thought he would win easily.
He watched the woman as she chalked that stick, waiting for the moment she’d purse those luscious lips and blow.
Something about her was unsettling—but not in a good way. Her cheekbones and jaw were too bold, her lips too lush, her eyebrows set too low, and her hair, blinding—platinum blonde cut short and so sleek it looked like a helmet.
But she was sexy.Damn sexy, he thought, feeling the hum of a V6 turbocharged engine vibrating from his loins.
He could feel his body itching to go hurtling down that track. And yet there was something else that kept his foot hovering over the brake.
He stared at those eyes as she chalked the cue. They were cat eyes. When they narrowed, he imagined her pupils tapered like the vertical slivers of a cat. Only he couldn’t see her pupils. The bar was too dark and her eyes were too dark—or at least they looked it to him.
Finally, she put down the chalk, blew on the tip of the stick, and leaned over the pool table as she lined up her shot.
Rocco’s eyes flashed as he stared at that triangle—the small space of flesh at the base of her neck framed by her collarbone.
Most of the women he saw these days were so thin the space collapsed into a deep valley and the collarbone jutted severely, looking like a dry bone in the desert he could snap between his fingers as easy as a chicken wing. But not this one. This one merely hinted at its presence, like a seductive ripple in a stream left by some elusive creature beneath the water.
He glanced at the guys standing behind her. They were ogling her ass. One of them muttered something to the guy who stood beside him. It was probably something filthy given the lascivious looks on their faces.
Suddenly, the woman’s cue stick zoomed back, ramming the guy who’d spoken right between the legs. He groaned. Hunching over and clutching his package, he fell into the guy behind him and that guy went down as well, causing the guy behind him to drop too.
Dario chuckled. “Like bowling pins.”
The entire bar was lit up with laughter, but she seemed not to notice. As the last guy fell, so did the last stripe, leaving only the eight ball on the table.
