Full Throttle (Fast Track) by Erin McCarthy Read Free Book Online

doing? She was engaging in some kind of verbal sparring with a man she absolutely could not date. Not only was he way too young, he was a driver, her friend’s brother-in-law, and he was the type of guy she didn’t even understand. She had always gone for the big talkers, the loud, friendly, work-a-crowd guys who never met a stranger and could work any angle, whether it was in a boardroom or on the golf course.
    Rhett was . . . intense. He didn’t say a lot, and he smiled infrequently, yet somehow she felt like when she was with him, she was his only focus. That his stare could set her on fire, which was frankly annoying. Unnerving. She felt off-kilter with him and that was the last thing in the world she needed to be feeling given that she was about to lose everything.
    But maybe that was why it was so easy to let Rhett steal her attention—if she was distracted by him, she didn’t have to contemplate life after Hamby Speedway. Because that reality was something she didn’t even want to consider, yet she had no choice.
    Unless she got married.
    It was insane.
    So really, the last way she should be spending her evening was with a man who made her nervous, yet here she was.
    “Sounds like a plan,” he told her, pulling his keys out of his pocket. “This is my truck here.”
    Of course he drove a truck. He was essentially comprised of testosterone, so nothing else would be acceptable. But he was also a gentleman. He opened the door for her and helped her into the truck, which while not necessary was certainly helpful, because while she was no shorty, there was some serious air between the ground and the seat.
    “At the risk of sounding like your father,” Rhett said as he got in and started up his truck, “you know you really shouldn’t be hanging out in the track offices by yourself in the dark at night. I just walked right in, and if I could do it, anyone could.”
    Shawn wasn’t offended by his concern. He had a valid point, and most of the time she was more careful. “I’m not usually there alone. I have a couple of employees who leave at the same time as I do. If I am there alone, I try to keep the door locked, but today my lawyer had just been in to see me so the door was open.”
    “Hence the bad day?”
    “Oh, yeah.” She fiddled with her seat belt and debated how much she could or should tell Rhett Ford. She was dying to blurt it out to someone—to have them sympathize with how appalling the whole situation was, and maybe let her bounce some ideas off them on how to increase her profits this season. Yet at the same time, she really didn’t think it was a good idea to have more than a couple of people know the reality of the situation. One, because she didn’t want anyone to think less of her grandfather. Two, because she didn’t want anyone to think they could swoop in and try to buy the track from her at a rock-bottom price. Three, because if she decided to fake a marriage, the less who knew the truth, the better.
    Not that she was planning to fake a marriage, because how would she do that? But it seemed best to proceed with caution. She may not know what the hell she was doing when it came to men, but she knew her way around the business world, thank you very much, despite what, apparently, her grandfather thought.
    That, she had to admit, was at the crux of her dismay and shell shock. She’d thought her grandfather trusted her with the business—to find out he didn’t was salt in the wound of her grief.
    “How was your day?” she asked Rhett inanely, suddenly realizing she didn’t want to talk about Clinton’s visit, because then she would have to say out loud that she was going to lose the track because her grandfather hadn’t trusted her.
    “It was a day like any other,” he said, shifting gears and gunning it across the four-lane road to the opposite parking lot. He handled his truck like a driver, and she was attracted to that, to the way his hand rested lightly on the