Racing the Hunter's Moon (Entangled Bliss) by Sally Clements Read Free Book Online Page B

Carter, is an undercover FBI agent hunting Charmers too.”
    “I should meet up with him then,” Leonora said.
    “Not yet.” Betty leaned forward. “I haven’t told him about your involvement. He thinks you’re just an unwitting victim, let’s keep it that way for now, okay?”
    …
    Betty pulled up outside Alice and Mark’s after work. Joe’s pickup was parked outside. She grabbed her bag containing the map and stopwatch from the passenger seat, walked to the front door, and rang the doorbell.
    Alice answered the door. “Hi.” She turned and called behind her. “Betty’s here.”
    Mark and Joe walked out of the living room. Joe looked up. “Hi, Betty. All set?”
    “Yes.”
    “She’s all fueled up and ready to go.” Mark handed over the keys to the MG. “Have a good drive—no need to hurry back. Why don’t you stop off for dinner?”
    Betty’d come straight from work and had planned to make herself something when she got in, but Joe nodded at Mark’s advice. “That’s a good idea,” he said. “We might just do that.”
    Her head buzzed with questions as she climbed into the tiny car and strapped on the seat belt. Joe pushed the seat back as far as it would go, pretzeled his long legs getting in, and tested out the pedals. He spent a few moments fiddling with the mirrors and fastening his own belt before he turned the key in the engine, put her into gear, and…stalled it.
    The words that came out of his mouth would make a nun blush.
    Betty smothered a giggle. “You know they’re watching from the doorway, don’t you?”
    “Yes, I do.” He shot her a glance, ran through the procedure again, and this time they pulled out of Alice and Mark’s drive. “I reckon I stalled it because I was so aware of Mark watching. He was giving me one hell of a talk about how to look after his baby before you arrived.”
    “He does love this car,” Betty agreed. “You’re saying you’re not just a terrible driver then?”
    Joe smiled. “I’m not a terrible driver. But I haven’t driven a stick shift in a while.”
    He was working the gearshift like a pro now, weaving the little car through the end-of-day traffic as though born to it. He obviously loved to drive. “So, the first stage is up into the mountains?”
    “Yes. Take a left up ahead.”
    He complied.
    “Okay, the starting line will be just up ahead—parallel to the bank. There are thirty-five entries this year, and the cars leave from the starting line one by one. The road is closed to general traffic, so we don’t have to worry about that.”
    “So I guess we want to get ahead of the pack as quickly as we can.”
    “It’s not that sort of a race,” Betty explained. “Have you even seen a vintage rally before?”
    “It’s a race. How difficult can it be?”
    Betty puffed out a breath. He had a learning curve to climb, straight up. “I think we should rethink this evening. Let’s go and have dinner and I’ll talk you through it, then we can go for a drive to get you used to the car.” She gestured ahead. “Take a left—we’ll grab a burger at the diner.”

    Once they were seated and had ordered, Betty pulled a number of items from her bag and laid them out on the pitted Formica tabletop. “Okay, when Mark and I say we have been driving the first stage of the route, we’ve actually been driving what we think might be the first stage. We won’t know the actual route until just before the race, when they give us one of these.”
    She put a route book down on the table before them, angling it so both could see.
    Joe took it. “What are the numbers down the side?”
    “The diagram on the left shows each step of the race, and the numbers show the distance. The navigator is handed this at the beginning of the race, and I have twenty minutes to plot the route onto the map.” She pulled out a map and put it on the table too. “Then”—she rooted in the bag again and retrieved a small card—“our time is recorded on this card