Racing Outside the Line: A Love Story at 190 Mph (30 page)

I waded into the water until I was next to him stretching my arms up around his neck and staring into his damp eyes. The water felt amazingly warm and sexy as it swirled around and between us. I was so lucky to be there with him, so lucky to be embarking on the rest of our lives together. The emotion of the moment was taking my voice from me as well, so I finally just gave in and pulled his head toward mine to kiss my husband with all the passion and love I knew I would have for him for the rest of our lives.

We had spent what was left of Thursday night making love and playing in the ocean and the splash pool. When the sun rose Friday morning, we were wrapped in a blanket sipping champagne on the beach. It seemed as if we were living on a different planet than everyone else, and I ached to stay there with him forever, but real life had to kick in and screw everything up at some point… even I had to accept that. Friday night was our last night in paradise so Seth had a romantic candlelit dinner set up for us on our intimate private dock and we watched the sunset before enjoying the multitude of stars that came out to greet us.

"Chelsea’s going to have a fit," I said as I sat naked and cross-legged on the bed repacking my suitcase.

"Why is Chelsea going to kill you, love?" he was sprawled out diagonally across the bed next to me watching me pack and allowing his eyes to wander to areas that certainly got my heart pumping. It was about two ‘o’clock in the morning and I was utterly exhausted. We’d have to be at the dock to leave the next day by 5:00am, which did not sound like a happy time to be waking up after several days of curling up in Seth’s arms and sleeping whenever I got tired.

"She went to all this trouble to take me shopping for some clothes to wear on our honeymoon, and I didn’t even wear any of it."

"Blame me," he pulled out a pair of panties he hadn’t gotten the chance to see on me, "tell her I put a ban on clothing for the entire time we were alone. I’m sure she won’t have trouble believing
that
. Anyone who has every looked at your sexy, tight, hot, little body would understand my wanting to enjoy you naked for a few days." Okay, so I was blushing. Despite the fact that he had been saying things like that ever since we got engaged (a whole three days ago), I couldn’t help but still have a physical reaction to his words and, let’s just say, the only physical reaction I’m willing to discuss is the blood rushing to my, um, face.

"You know that I’m far too intelligent to hide it for very long," he was in such a relaxed mood that I really hated to leave this private paradise to return to the real world.

"What will tomorrow be like for me?" I was suddenly worried about how I would be received. I knew it couldn’t be good because he grimaced and rolled over onto his back letting out a loud sigh. Would they throw stones? Give me the silent treatment? Go all Stepford on me?

"I think I’ll get most of the crap from the media. What
does
come your way, Desmond, Wyatt, and I will do our best to deflect from you. But, those racing wives, they always seem to wind their way in to make things more dramatic. That’s why I’m glad Chelsea will be with you, she doesn’t seem the type to take any crap off anyone."

I began meticulously refolding my underwear and arranging it into neat stacks in my suitcase. He rolled back on his side and watched me. "What about your crew and your crew chief, what’s his name? Jason? Jared?"

"Gary."

"Right, Gary," I tried to think of a way to remember that. "What kind of a reaction can I expect from them?" They were, after all, the more important people to worry about. They held Seth’s racing success in the palms of their hands. If they didn’t agree with us, then how would that affect Seth’s ability to win races?

"Well, they’ve already met you."

"Yeah, but that’s when they thought I was just your
kid sister
, what will they think of me now? Clearly you can’t pass me off as your kid sister anymore—I can’t believe you actually tried to do that to begin with." I shook my head and rolled my eyes at the thought.

He rolled back onto his side and ran his hand up the side of my thigh as his eyes burned into mine. "You proved to me pretty damn quickly that you are
not
a kid and that, despite my best efforts, I certainly did
not
think of you as a sister. I can’t believe I ever tried to tell myself that I thought of you as a kid." His eyes travelled lower than my face, examining areas on my body that were certainly not childish. "You are
so
damn sexy."

Momentarily, I stopped packing and leaned forward to kiss him softly and sweetly, "I’m glad you like what you see, but you haven’t answered my question."

He let out a large sigh and rolled back onto his back. "I can say that they will be incredibly skeptical and negative when I tell them, but, the first time they see us together, they’ll see what you do to me and be cast under your spell. Then, they’ll defend you to the death. I’m betting Gary will only have to talk to me for a few minutes to hear the change, he seems to understand me better than most people do."

"Better than me?" Feeling insecure about my husband’s connection with another man may sound silly considering my husband was sprawled out in front of me buck naked drawing circles on my outer thighs, but his crew chief was a central figure. He was the guy who kept Seth safe out on the track, and made decisions, and calmed him down when he was too anxious, or got him more anxious when he was too calm. The kind of connection they had was something I could never underestimate.

"Yes, I think he does understand me better than you do," he said rolling back toward me. My heart, despite the previous lecture about the crew chief’s importance, dropped at the thought that our connection wasn’t the strongest in his life. "For example, right now, he would know exactly what I am thinking. He would understand that I really want you to throw that suitcase on the floor and make love to you, whereas you don’t seem to have a clue that I want that. It’s a shame, really, that my own wife can’t predict my needs."

I rolled my eyes at his dramatics. Of course I was satisfied to hear this, but I was so pleased that I leaned my head close to his, running my hand through his hair. He was so cute when he was trying to get my attention. "Poor wittle Sethy Wethy. His mean wife just hates him so much," I leaned down and pinched his cheek before sitting up and returning to packing, "You can deal for another five minutes while I finish." He sighed loudly again. "Would you feel better if I let you pick out my panties for tomorrow?"

"Hell no!" he surprised me by exclaiming and propping himself up on his elbow to look at me angrily. "If I can’t ban
all
clothes for tomorrow, I should at least be able to ban panties."

"I was tricked. Flashing those sexy legs of yours and your thigh poking out, you distracted me on purpose so I wouldn’t notice that you didn’t say obey. I demand a recount."

"You want to divorce me already?" I asked in a tone feigning seriousness.

"I guess not," he grumbled as he went through the panties in my carefully folded pile making a complete mess of everything I had just folded. "Can’t even make my wife not wear panties when I want? What kind of a marriage is this anyhow, I got jipped." Finally, he pulled out a sheer lavender thong and tossed it at me, "fine those then."

I held them up to the light, "these are like wearing nothing at all, pick a different pair."

"You didn’t stipulate, so you’re stuck with those," he smiled in victory. I rolled my eyes adding them to the pile of clothes I had set aside for the following day. Men were so easy sometimes. Flash some sort of lingerie at them and you could get them to agree to practically anything. I closed up my suitcase and got up from the bed to move it to the floor.

The second my fingers left the suitcase, Seth’s arms were around me and his bare skin was warming mine. I softly twisted back and forth enjoying the friction for a few moments before Seth let out a little growl and pulled me closer for a kiss. I don’t know specifically what it was about his kisses, but I was struck dumb every time he grabbed my face and pulled my lips to his. Maybe it was something about the undeniable desire he had for me or maybe it was the easily ignitable torch I carried around for him, but it was definitely full of fireworks every time his lips touched mine. This particular kiss was no exception to the rule. I was so wrapped up in him and in the freedom of our surroundings that I barely heard his horrific next words.

"Alexandria will be there."

He just said that other woman’s name. No, he couldn’t have. Why would he?
The small voice in the back of my head continued to try to break through the haze of our passionate kiss, but it was as if I were trying to read a street sign through a thick misty fog, I knew it was right in front of me, but I couldn’t read the words. My lips moved of their own volition and my arms refused to leave his waist, but my mind was wrapping around what he said. You could practically hear the squirrels in my head come to a grinding halt as his words finished ricocheting around in my head to settle into every crevice in my brain
… Alexandria will be there.
I felt the muscles in my body tense.
Why? Why would she be there? What possible reason could she have for being there?
He disengaged his mouth from mine, which was wise since my mouth had joined the rest of my body in doing its best impression of a statue.

His lips just barely brushed mine as he said, "I’m sorry, love, she’s best friends with Jamie Kale’s wife. She made it clear to me that she wasn’t going to give up her friends just to avoid me. She uh—also—kind of thinks," he put his thumb to my chin and tried to get me to allow his tongue to capture mine in another passionate kiss, but I wouldn’t budge. I was too aware now that he was trying his best to distract me. Realizing this, he seemed to settle for stroking my jaw line with the back of his hand, "that she can win me back."

That did it, that sunk it all in for me. The nerve of that skank! I tried to pull away from him angrily, "She what?!" I saw his shoulders slump, but he didn’t let me go. Instead, he dejectedly dropped his forehead until it rested on my shoulder. Trying to calm down, trying not to overreact was really difficult, but I managed to take deep breaths and remind myself of the circumstances. I was standing in the middle of a magically romantic private villa on a private island after marrying my lifetime love who was naked and standing extraordinarily close to me running his hands up and down the sides of my own naked body. And I was worrying about a woman in another country who was
not
Seth’s wife and was
not
wearing a ridiculously huge diamond, whom he did
not
call "love" and tried to keep from allowing her to wear panties all day.
You clearly have the upper hand here
, I reminded myself. I was about to wrap my arms back around his waist and allow him to carry me away with a passionate kiss when the masochistically logical portion of my brain decided to kick in. "How do you know that she’s going to try to win you back?"

It wasn’t hard to notice the difference in the way he was suddenly touching me, there was a drastic shift. He now seemed to be cautiously placing his hands on my sides seemingly in fear of a possible attack from me. I tried to brace myself for the obvious unpleasantness of the forthcoming information. "She, uh, sort of told me, when I broke up with her."

"What do you mean she
sort of
told you? What
exactly
did she say?"

His eyes dropped to my chin, and I knew this would be bad if he couldn’t even look me in the eye. "Well, you know, uh—"

Getting frustrated, I sought an end to this sickening suspense, "Stop stalling and give me the full truth."

He peeked up at me, but remained quiet.

"Look, I need to know it all in order to defend myself against her; you
know
that. If she catches me off guard with words she has said to you that you didn’t share with me, it will be so much worse than if you’d just tell me now, so spit it out."

He nodded reluctantly and stood up a little straighter. "She said that it didn’t matter what I thought I felt, that it would become obvious to me that I will always be in love with her and I would come back to her." I could have crushed diamonds in the fists that were clenched to my sides, and for the first time in my life, I felt the muscles in my jaw twitch with the stress I was placing on them. "I tried to nicely tell her that was not a possibility. I told her that I was in love with you, and she said she wouldn’t give up. She said she would fight for me, and because she was older, classier, and could never have been"—he swallowed hard—"could never have been mistaken for a kid sister, I would come crawling back to her, begging her to take me back." He stopped and looked at me out of the corner of his eye, judging my response.

"Is that everything?" He looked away again. "Seth, I swear if you don’t tell me everything right this second—"

"Okay," he exhaled sharply and took a very deep breath, "she uh… she said that if I brought you to the track again, she would make sure that everyone treated you as the uh—fiancé stealing slut you are. Then she called
me
a few choice words. When I ended the conversation telling her that I was more in love with you than I had ever been with her, she stomped away."