Page 47 of Austin

I grab another rag off a nearby shelf and toss it at him to wipe the smug expression off his face. He’s laughing now, and I can’t help but find myself smiling.

“This is why no one wants to bet against you. You cheat.”

His palms go up in defense. “I can’t help it if I’m clever.”

I open the door to the car and climb into the driver’s seat, wanting to feel the steering wheel in my hands, hoping it will take my mind off what I really want in my hands. “If you were so fucking clever, you wouldn’t be here with me. Instead, you’d be sucking up to your fiancée.”

“Have you seen the size of my girl’s shoes? It was like getting clobbered with a sledgehammer. I’d better have a ring before I go back there.”

“So, you gonna tell me what you were doing out last night until four in the morning?”

He takes a piece of paper out of his pocket and hands it to me. “There’s a new driver hitting the circuit. You should check him out.”

I step out of the car, frustrated, before I look at the license plate number that he jotted down. “I will when I’ve got time.”

“He’ll be at the Dunnes tonight.”

Shoving the paper into my back pocket, I raise my chin to him. “I said I’ll check him out when I have time.”

Gregg’s grin is still plastered on his face as he walks himself out the steel door and closes it behind him.

Usually, when he comes around with the name of a new driver, I get an adrenaline rush. The need to scout out our next race is part of the excitement. The races are always announced in a rush and are over before the night is through.

Tonight is different. I don’t have that same feeling, and I don’t know if I should be relieved or annoyed.

I’m putting my supplies away in a locker I keep in the back when I hear the steel door open again.

“What’s the matter? Julie won’t let you back in?” I ask as I turn around to bust Gregg’s balls for returning so soon, but my smile fades when I see the figure who has entered my showroom is not my best friend. It’s my archenemy.

“Smoking in a public building is against the law,” Missy says as she appears in the doorway in red from head to toe.

I’m sure it’s meant to make her look classy. To me, she looks like the devil.

I slam the locker shut, causing it to ricochet a little off the hinge. “What are you doing here?”

“I was on my way home for the night when I saw Gregg leave. It’s a shame he hasn’t amounted to much since high school.”

“He’s a longshoreman. The guy’s got better benefits than all of us.”

She tsks with pity. “A dock worker is hardly something to be envious of.”

“An honest day’s work is quite the turnoff for you, isn’t it?”

“Poor men are a turnoff for me,” she states as her tongue runs along the front of her perfectly white teeth.

“Yeah, well, gold-digging bitches are a turnoff for most men, so there’s no hurt there.”

She smiles. “So much hostility.” Her heels clack with each controlled step as she walks further into the room and stops a few feet from me. “There was a time when you used to like me.”

I clench my jaw. “I was fifteen and a walking sack of hormones. It’s pretty sick if you think about it—an eighteen-year-old girl sleeping with a child like me. What would my father think?”

Let this go down in history as my one major regret. I was a sophomore in high school when I slept with Missy once during spring break. I just wanted to get my dick wet, and she was smoking hot.

While she was a great lay, it was clear she was only after one thing—bedding a Sexton. The girl knew from a young age that she wanted to be one of us. It just took her a few beds to figure out who was willing to take her.

She lets out a cackle, which has me pinching my eardrums closed. “You think your daddy cares that I slept with you when I was a teenager?” Her laugh dissipates, and she levels her gaze at me as she says seriously, “It’s a big fucking joke in our house.”

Her eyes roam over my black T-shirt and down the front of my jeans. I grind my teeth, not liking the way she’s appraising me, almost undressing me with her eyes.