Reckless Hearts: A Billionaire Romance (12 page)

"I'll be there in an hour... No, there's no traffic now. Less. Be ready. The same place where you spied on me before."

My heart bunched up in my throat, "An hour as in an hour from
now
?" This whole situation had robbed me of my intelligence. I ran on pure instinct.

"Yes. Be ready." He hung up.

I held the receiver to my ear until the line started beeping at me.
An hour? An hour from
now?

No, less than an hour he had said. So little time. But also, somehow, so far away.

I realized that I had become someone different than I was before. Someone acting more on feeling and desire than rationality and reason.

It didn't scare me as much as I thought it might. I even thought I enjoyed it, a little. For the first time my life wasn't on rails I had built myself, and I loved it.

That sense of danger returned. That sense of some impending event hanging over me. I feared it, but it also excited me.

I still couldn't yet tell whether, in Jennifer's words, this whole thing was more dangerous to avoid than to embrace.

But I was soon going to find out. I knew that much, at least.

In less than an hour! Oh, man!

I went and tidied myself up as best I could. Splashing some water on my face, tugging a comb and then a brush through my hair. Brushing my teeth until I could taste that hint of mint.

Then I went and dressed, pulling on almost the same outfit as I wore on our hike. Except this time I stuffed my feet into my runners instead of the boots. I zipped my light jacket up, thinking that without the sun it was chilly out.

The echoing of my footsteps chased me down the stairs. And it was cool outside. A few degrees lower, I thought, and I'd be able to see my breath misting in front of my face.

I made a beeline for the amphitheater. My heart beat outpaced what cold did linger in the air, and soon I unzipped my jacket.

The place where you spied on me.
The back parking lot of the amphitheater, I knew. The place where I saw him pick up the helpless worm and toss it back to the safety of the grass.

The place where I realized that Mr. X wasn't who he let people think he was. If I had to pick one particular moment in time, I would pick that one as when I changed, too. When I became open to more in my life than school and what came after school.

The moment when I realized, even though I didn't quite consciously know it then, that there could be
more
.

I went through the quad where Jennifer convinced me to come with her to the speech. I eyed the bench where we sat, almost seeing the old me there. The me before him.

For a moment, I locked eyes with that ghost.

Fear flashed across her—my—face. Fear and a warning. I got the impression that this was my point of no return. For the first time since I called Owen, I slowed down. I thought, instinct receding.

It's the middle of the night! I should be back in bed, resting up, getting rid to put all this behind me and get on with my life.

Was that thought in my head? Or did the ghost of Allison past whisper that to me? I shivered. The cold didn't do it to me, though.

Then I heard more footsteps. And now, it wasn't my ghost chasing after me. It was campus security, I knew. They patrolled at all hours, and if they caught a student out after curfew that meant trouble. Trouble and questions. Questions I didn't want to answer.

So I beat my feet, scurrying away from my memory and toward whatever the future held. I rounded the corner where I had followed so many others not so long ago. There, in front of me, the amphitheater loomed up.

The lamps along the path and set around the building gave it a spooky light, made parts of it blend into the shadows. A few lights were on here or there. Ones they left on all the time, I bet. Bathroom lights, that sort of thing.

Not some professor burning the midnight oil, or a campus cop making a sweep. That's what I told myself.

I retraced my steps, following the perimeter of the building. My footsteps went from the solidity of the concrete path to the softness of the grass. The blades left little licks of dew on the toes of my shoes.

I hurried on, worried that I might slip and get grass stains all over my butt and not caring. The closer I drew to the parking lot, the more I felt the pull.

Except, when I got back there he wasn't waiting. I stepped down from the curb onto the pavement, making my way to the middle of the lot. Not the most inconspicuous spot if you wanted to avoid discovery, but my nerves crackled with too much energy to hide in the shadows anymore.

I spun in a slow circle, the bright lamps leaving pink and purple splotches in my vision, obscuring parts of the campus. I saw the back of the amphitheater, the campus road that the parking lot let out on. The grassy, manicured meadow on the other side of the road where students liked to study in the nice weather.

The trees shivered in a cool breeze along with me. A few leaves tugged loose and floated to the ground.

As far as I could tell, I was alone.
Did he mean another spot?
No, he couldn't. The back lot was the only place he could mean.

Maybe it wasn't that he was late, but maybe that I was early. I was overeager, and now I had to pay by standing here for however long it took him to catch up with me.

It turned out to be not as long as I feared, but still almost too long for me to stand.

I heard the rumble of an engine at first. A purr that grew louder the closer it came. Not the smooth one of the limo I had watched him leave here in. Not the raw growl of the Jeep.

This one had a thoroughbred, performance-oriented tone to it. And I saw why when the headlights flashed in front of me, the sleek black thing turning into the lot with the light from the lamps slipping off its oily skin like water along a shark's back.

It pulled up next to me, the cabin and its occupant invisible behind the tinted glass. The idle of the Corvette's engine rumbled deep inside my chest.

It was a new one. One of those vehicles unapologetic about its purpose. Two seats only in these things. All engine and no trunk. A car meant to drive, and drive hard, not to go get your groceries with or take your kids to school in.

The window whispered down and I saw the shadowy figure inside. "Get in." He tapped the gas and the beast under the hood growled at me, underscoring the command, impatient to get into motion once more.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Sometimes a drive is just a drive. We'll go wherever we end up."

I wondered if he meant the car ride or whatever it was that was between the two of us.

"Sounds good," I said. Words I never would have considered saying in this situation before meeting him.

He pushed the passenger door open from within for me as I rounded the long snout of a hood.

I sat down, the racing styled seats firm and supporting. When I closed the door, the world went quiet. Even the growl of the engine receded to a distant rumble more felt than heard.

"Another stick shift," I said, glancing down at the console as he threw it into first gear. The space was like an aircraft cockpit with all its screens and buttons and sliders.

He pushed the gas and I thumped back against my seat.

"Yeah, it's a stick," he said as we turned out onto the campus road. He forced the transmission into second gear. The back tires chirped.

"So you can feel it better? For control, all that?" I said. I rubbed my hands against my thighs, building up some friction heat against the denim.

"All that."

"You like having as much control over things as you can get, don't you?"

"It's the only way to make sure you get what you want in the end," he replied. We sped through the curves in the road, Owen not even touching the brakes until we reached the stop sign that let you turn off onto the first road not belonging to the school. Trees lined it, the 'vette's headlights outlined their silhouettes for a moment as he turned.

Again he punched the gas and we rocketed forward, the engine's response to his command instantaneous. It pushed me back into my seat.

I remembered part of this drive from my shuttle ride. The roads around the campus snaked and curved, riding the contours of the land. The shuttle driver had picked his way carefully around these obstacles. I didn't think Owen would.

My heart thrummed, the adrenaline running hot through my veins. I wondered how long it would be until help arrived if we wrecked.

"And what is it you want?" I said. It was under my breath, so I didn't think he heard. He did.

"That depends on what you have to say."

"You were right," I said.

"Right about what?"

We came up on one of those curves. A yellow sign by the roadside had what looked like a black squiggle drawn on it and the word CAUTION beneath it.

Owen dropped down a gear and slammed the accelerator down just as we entered the curve, the road graded to a slight tilt to help drivers keep their traction.

The inertia pushed me towards my door, the seat belt locking to hold me down.

"Right about me," I said, my eyes fixed on the road. The dotted lines flashed by with dizzying swiftness, and I didn't dare look at the speedometer.

He was outrunning his headlights, I saw. If anything came up in the road, a downed tree, a deer, an errant hitchhiker, we wouldn't be able to stop in time.

I got the impression that this didn't bother Owen in the least. And that the risk excited him.

We entered a brief straightaway, and then another curve, this one in the opposite direction so that momentum pushed me towards Owen.

"Are you really going to make me say it?" I said.

"Yes."

"Will you slow down if I do?"

A checkered sign came up on us almost too fast to read. It depicted an arrow with a right-angle bend in it, a square sign beneath that one dropped the speed limit by 20 miles per hour.

Owen sped up. This time I couldn't help looking. The car didn't have needles and gauges. Too old-fashioned, I guess. The bright LED readout said 75 MPH. Too fast. Far too fast.

My legs stiffened in the foot well, trying to brace me.

"Maybe," he said.

The headlights reflected off the little yellow warning markers up ahead leading into the right-angle turn.

"Yes, fine!" I said, "I admit it. I need you. I want you."

"How much?"

He still hadn't slowed down. We started entering the curve.
There's still time to slow down
, I thought. I wasn't sure I believed it.

"A lot!" I said.

We started the turn and he didn't take his foot off the gas.

"Owen!" I said. That guardrail loomed close. So close I could see the bolts holding the steel sheets to their posts.

"Not good enough," he said. His knuckled whitened.

I didn't have time to think. I could react, that was all. Maybe he wanted that. Maybe he thought if I couldn't think about it, he could get the truth out of me.

"I need you so bad I can't sleep anymore!" I said. I flung my arms over my face, waiting for the crunch of metal, the shatter of glass.

The car wrenched hard to the right. The ride changed from the smooth asphalt to rough gravel. We slid.

Owen gunned the 'vette's engine hard, forcing power to the wheels.

I don't know how, but it worked. The rear tires bit down, found some grip, and flung us away from that guard rail and our fate as a twisted hulk beside the road.

My throat burned while the rest of me trembled with the aftershocks of an adrenaline rush. My legs refused to relax, though, refused to unlock my knees. There was a small handle above the door and squeezed, holding onto it like a drowning person might cling to some piece of wreckage.

We had slowed from that terrible speed, though. Owen negotiated the next few curves with spirit instead of recklessness.

"You're crazy!" I said.

He didn't disagree, and I caught the way he gripped the steering wheel, his knuckles still pale. "I wanted to be sure."

"You mean you weren't?"

"No."

That chilled me, bringing a sense of stillness to me that was in no way comforting.
Maybe choosing him is the danger
, I thought. Except, and to my surprise, I was still committed.

He'd been willing to crash his car into that barricade to learn the truth. No one had ever been so committed, to use the word again, to me. It scared and excited me, possibilities flashing through my mind.

"Is that what you wanted?" I said, unclenching my fingers from the handle, seeing the way the plastic left a pale white line across my palm. My knees unlocked.

"I don't just want you to say the words, Allison. I want you. All of you."

It shocked me how fast the desire returned. That inner ache. Maybe there was something to all that near death stuff driving people together.

"Okay," I said. I began rubbing the tops of my thighs again, the friction heat building against my palms. It couldn't match the inner heat, though.

N
othing could stop what happened next. All the cold showers in the world couldn't have diminished that fire we both experienced.

The Corvette shot through the night, an oily shine on the road in the darkness. So fast that I hoped there weren't any speed traps out. I don't think I could have survived that sort of delay.

At first I thought maybe he couldn't wait. I wondered if we might pull off onto the side, our fire getting too hot to go any farther down the road.

And I was fine with that.

But Owen had a place. Of course he had a place. A cottage by a lake I didn't know the name of and didn't care to know. The moon flashed off the water behind the cottage, glimmering and ghostly.

I didn't get a good look at the place. Log walls, a covered porch, and a rustic feel is all I remember.

We pulled up to it in a spray of gravel. We jumped out of the car, both of us giddy. The coolness of the air kissed and caressed my skin, leaving me tingling with need.

Then Owen's impatient need betrayed him. He jumped and slid across the hood of the car. I shrieked with delight when he grabbed me in his powerful arms and pulled me hard against him.