Afterward, Carly could only remember the next ten minutes as a hazy blur. The Mustang accelerated with a throaty roar as Shane worked the clutch and the gear shift with practiced ease, darting in and out of lanes of traffic with a seeming disregard for safe distances between cars. Twice he swerved around corners without stopping, right after the lights turned red but before cross traffic could start. And each time his eyes slid to the rearview mirror.
Knowing that whoever was following them had to know by now he’d been spotted, Carly swiveled her head around as much as she could without removing her seat belt—and there wasn’t a chance in hell she would do that the way Shane was driving. After a minute of watching anxiously over her shoulder she said, “There’s no white truck back there anymore.”
But Shane didn’t slow down. “Maybe not, but I want insurance.” So he continued driving like a lunatic for another four minutes, until he spotted a police car coming the other way. He braked abruptly, downshifted and the Mustang slowed to the speed limit.
She let out the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding when the police car rolled right on past them without turning on its red-and-blue lights and signaling for them to pull over. Then she laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“Me,” she explained, still laughing, but softer now. “I just realized the only time I panicked in the last ten minutes was when I thought you were going to get a ticket.”
Shane grinned at her, and there was more than a touch of the unrepentant wild teenage boy he must have been at one time in his expression. “Would you believe I’ve never—not even once—gotten a ticket?”
She smiled and shook her head at him. “No, I don’t believe it.”
He raised his right hand from the gear shift and held it up as if he were taking an oath. “True as I sit here.” Then he amended, “Came close a couple of times. But both times I was stopped I was in uniform, and the cops let me off with just a warning.”
The laughter that pealed out of her this time wasn’t just for Shane’s narrow escape from the law all those years ago, but also for their escapes today—from the police and the man tailing them.
Shane sedately turned left onto the road that would take them to Niall’s condo. Curious, Carly asked, “How did you learn to drive like that?”
“I learned a few defensive driving tricks in the Corps. But to be honest, I already knew how to drive a muscle car to an inch. My dad...” He smiled to himself. “My dad had a candy-apple red sixty-nine Camaro he’d rebuilt practically from scratch. He rarely drove it—a man with a living to earn and a wife and five children to support doesn’t have a lot of free time for nonessentials—but he owned it. And the guys he worked with envied him that car. That was more important to him than actually driving it.”
He chuckled. “That car in the garage drove Niall and me crazy. We couldn’t understand leaving it to sit there in all its gleaming glory. So one day when our parents were out of town visiting relatives, taking Alec, Liam and Keira with them, Niall and I ‘borrowed’ the Camaro. We were just going to take it out for a quick spin, then put it back as if had never been touched.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Yeah. Uh-oh. Best laid plans and all of that. Do you remember the Porsche scene from Risky Business? The movie that made Tom Cruise a star?”
“Oh, no,” Carly said, dismayed. “I mean, yes, I remember, but please don’t tell me you drove your dad’s Camaro into a lake.”
“Not quite that bad. But we did end up in a ditch. Nobody injured, but one fender took a beating. We managed to drive the car home after Niall and I wrestled it back onto the road, but there was no hiding the damage.”
“How old were you?”
“Seventeen. And my brother was sixteen.”
“What happened?”
They’d arrived at Niall’s condo by this time. Shane pulled into the underground garage and parked the Mustang before turning to her and answering. “We ’fessed up, of course, when our dad got home. After he made it very clear we were paying for the damage—and it wasn’t cheap, by any means!—and after he tanned our hides, he took Niall and me out once the Camaro was repaired and taught us how to drive it.”