And why? Because the past week with Jason had been amazing. It wasn’t just the sex. It was the intimacy. They’d talked for hours. Laughed. She’d discovered a whole new Jason. Tender and romantic. Naughty and creative. She’d trusted him to take her places she’d never been, and it was addictive.
Which is why she’d packed a bag and decided to surprise him. A single day without Jason had made her restless and unable to concentrate.
Ming stood. This had been a mistake. She wasn’t Jason’s girlfriend. She had no business inserting herself into his guy time because she was feeling lonely and out of sorts. She would just drive back to Houston and he’d never know how close she’d come to making a complete fool of herself over him.
The cars roared up the straightaway toward her once again. From past experience at these sorts of events, she knew the mornings were devoted to warm-up laps. The real races would begin in the afternoon.
She glanced at the cars as they approached. Jason’s number twenty-two was in the middle of the pack of twenty-five cars. He usually saved his best driving for the race. As the Mustang reached the end of the straightaway and began to slow down for the sharp turn, something happened. Instead of curving to the left, the Mustang veered to the right, hit the wall and spun.
Her lungs were ready to burst as she willed the cars racing behind him to steer around the wreckage so Jason didn’t suffer any additional impact. Once the track cleared, his pit crew and a dozen others hurried to the car. Dread encased Ming’s feet in concrete as she plunged down the stairs to the eight-foot-high chain-link fence that barred her from the track.
With no way of getting to Jason, she was forced to stand by and wait for some sign that he was okay. She gripped the metal, barely registering the ache in her fingers. The front of the Mustang was a crumpled mess. Ming tried to remind herself that the car had been constructed to keep the driver safe during these sorts of crashes, but her emotions, already in a state of chaos before the crash, convinced her he would never hear how she really felt about him.
“Wow, that was some crash,” said a male voice beside her. “Worst I’ve seen in a year.”
Ming turned all her fear and angst on the skinny kid with the baseball cap who’d come up next to her. “Do you work here?”
“Ah, yeah.” His eyes widened as the full brunt of her emotions hit him.
“I need to get down there, right now.”
“You’re really not supposed—”
“Right now!”
“Sure. Sure.” He backed up a step. “Follow me.” He led her to a gate that opened onto the track. “Be careful.”
But she was already on the track, pelting toward Jason’s ruined car without any thought to her own safety. Because of the dozen or so men gathered around the car, she couldn’t see Jason. Wielding her elbows and voice like blunt instruments, she worked her way to the front of the crowd in time to see Jason pulled through the car’s window.
He was cursing as he emerged, but he was alive. Relief slammed into her. She stopped five feet from the car and watched him shake off the hands that reached for him when he swayed. He limped toward the crumpled hood, favoring his left knee.
Jason pulled off his helmet. “Damn it, there’s the end of my season.”
It could have been the end of him. Ming sucked in a breath as a sharp pain lanced through her chest. It was just typical of him to worry about his race car instead of himself. Didn’t he realize what losing him would do to the people who loved him?
She stepped up and grabbed his helmet from his hands, but she lost the ability to speak as his eyes swung her way. She loved him. And not like a friend. As a man she wanted to claim for her own.
“Ming?” Dazed, he stared at her as if she’d appeared in a puff of smoke. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to watch you race.” She gripped his helmet hard enough to crack it. “I saw you crash. Are you okay?”
“My shoulder’s sore and I think I did something to my knee, but other than that, I’m great.” His lips twisted as he grimaced. “My car’s another thing entirely.”
Who cares about your stupid car? Shock made her want to shout at him, but her chest was so tight she had only enough air for a whisper. “You really scared me.”
“Jason, we need to get the car off the track.” Gus Stover and his brother had been part of Jason’s racing team for the past ten years. They’d modified and repaired all his race cars. Ming had lost track of how many hours she and Jason had spent at the man’s shop.
“That’s a good idea,” she said.
“A little help?” Jason suggested after his first attempt at putting weight on his injured knee didn’t go so well.
Ming slipped her arm around his waist and began moving in the direction of the pit area. As his body heat began to warm her, Ming realized she was shaking from reaction. As soon as they reached a safe distance from the track, Jason stopped walking and turned her to face him.
“You’re trembling. Are you okay?”
Not even close. She loved him. And had for a long time. Only she’d been too scared to admit it to herself.
“I should be asking you that question,” she said, placing her palm against his unshaven cheek, savoring the rasp of his beard against her skin. She wanted to wrap her arms around him and never let go. “You should get checked out.”
“I’m just a little banged up, that’s all.”
“Jason, that was a bad crash.” A man in his late-thirties with prematurely graying hair approached as they neared the area where the trailers were parked. He wore a maroon racing suit and carried his helmet under one arm. “You okay?”
“Any crash you can walk away from is a good one.” Leave it to Jason to make light of something as disastrous as what she’d just witnessed. “Ming, this is Jim Pearce. He’s the current points leader in the Texas region.”
“And likely to remain on top now that Jason’s done for the season.”
Is that all these men thought about? Ming’s temper began to simmer again until she saw the worry the other driver was masking with his big, confident grin and his posturing. It could have been any of these guys. Accidents didn’t happen a lot, but they were part of racing. This was only Jason’s second in the entire sixteen years he’d been racing. If something had gone wrong on another area of the track, he might have ended up driving safely onto the shoulder or he could have taken out a half dozen other cars.
“Nice to meet you.” As she shook Jim’s hand, some of the tension in her muscles eased. “Were you on the track when it happened?”
“No. I’m driving in the second warm-up lap.” His broad smile dimmed. “Any idea what happened, Jason? From where I stood it looked like something gave on the right side.”
“Felt like the right front strut rod. We recently installed Agent 47 suspension and might have adjusted a little too aggressively on the front-end alignment settings.”
Jim nodded, his expression solemn. “Tough break.”
“I’ll have the rest of the year to get her rebuilt and be back better than ever in January.”
Ming contemplated the hours Jason and the Stover brothers would have to put in to make that happen and let her breath out in a long, slow sigh. If she’d seen little of him in the past few months since he’d made it his goal to take the overall points trophy, she’d see even less of him with a car to completely rebuild.
“The Stovers will get her all fixed up for you.” Jim thumped Jason on the back. “They’re tops.”
As Jim spoke, Jason’s car was towed up to the trailer. The men in question jumped off the truck and began unfastening the car.
“What happened?” Jason called.
“The strut rod pulled away from the helm end,” Gus Stover replied. “I told you the setting was wrong.”
His brother, Kris, shook his head. “It’s so messed up from the crash, we won’t know for sure until we get her on the lift.”
“Do you guys need help?” Jason called.
Jim waved and headed off. Ming understood his exit. When Jason and the Stovers started talking cars, no one else on the planet existed. She stared at the ruined car and the group of men who’d gathered to check out the damage. It would be the talk of the track for the rest of the weekend.
“Looks like you’ve got your hands full,” she told Jason, nodding toward a trio of racers approaching them. “I’m going to get out of here so you can focus on the Mustang.”
“Wait.” He caught her hand, laced his fingers through hers. “Stick around.”
She melted beneath the heat of his smile. “I’ll just be in the way.”
“I need you—”
“Jason, that was some crash,” the man in the middle said.
Ming figured she’d take advantage of the interruption to escape, but Jason refused to relinquish her hand. A warm feeling set up shop in her midsection as Jason introduced her. She’d expected once his buddies surrounded him, he wouldn’t care if she took off.
But after an hour she lost all willpower to do so. Despite the attention Jason received from his fellow competitors, he never once forgot that she was there. Accustomed to how focused Jason became at the track, Ming was caught off guard by the way he looped his arm around her waist and included her in the conversations.