Free Hard and Fast by Erin McCarthy Page B

“Did you see any new girls at the gym today? Like maybe your new friend?”
    “Of course not,” he lied, not willing to admit the truth. It was just too embarrassing and too confusing to make any sense of it all yet, and he didn’t need Toni’s ribbing.
    He crossed his arms across his chest, rubbing the cotton of his T-shirt in distraction as he tried to sort it all out. What was Imogen doing?
    If their roles were reversed, he had no doubt Imogen would just ask him straight out, but Ty wasn’t sure he wanted to do that. What if he hated the answer? What if she said she wanted to marry a driver, any driver, and was willing to follow a book to get that result?
    He just couldn’t believe it.
    “Does it suggest anywhere in there that you should have sex with a driver right after you meet him?”
    Toni’s dark eyebrow shot up, but she didn’t say anything. She just licked the tip of her finger and turned the page. After a few minutes of flipping through the book, she said, “Actually, it says you shouldn’t have sex until a commitment is firmly established. The whole ‘don’t give it away for free’ adage.” Her brown eyes pinned him. “Why?”
    “No reason. Just curious.” It was strangely satisfying to know that Imogen had fully intended to sleep with him, despite what that book said and why she might have it.
    He suddenly felt the irrational regret that he should have taken her to bed. That he should have stripped her naked, licked and touched and sucked every inch of her, until she could no longer think, and she was his. All his. Only his.
    “Alright, that’s good, thanks, Toni. I’m going to make a phone call.”
    “You’re done learning how to win a race car driver? Who knows what little gems might be in Chapter Two.”
    Rolling his eyes at her, Ty said, “It’s so nice to have an assistant who is a comedienne.”
    With that, he stood up and went into the interior office that was his personal space. It was actually smaller than Toni’s office, because he had no paperwork, no calendar, no computer. He had long ago perfected the art of memorization, and once Toni told him his schedule verbally, he remembered it. He programmed alerts onto his phone as an added reminder, eternally grateful that technology had gone the route of using picture icons for menus.
    Mostly his office was a place for him to relax between doing whatever Toni told him to do, and he had a minifridge and a TV with video games in there. He had no desk, just a couch and an easy chair, and he flopped down on it now and dialed Imogen’s number. He wasn’t really sure what her schedule was like, but he knew she was a grad student, so hopefully her classes were done for the day.
    She answered on the third ring, but her hello was wary.
    Sinking back in the chair, he said, “Hello, Emma Jean. How are you doing today?”
    There was a slight pause. “Fine. How are you, Ty?”
    “Full of regrets.”
    “About what?”
    No sense in beating around the bush. “About you getting upset last night. I was just trying to do the right thing. Make sure you didn’t have any regrets this morning. But it seems like we both do.”
    “I’m sure you were right,” she said carefully.
    “Maybe I should have trusted you to know what was right for you and we should have gone forward with it and had wild, boot-stomping sex.” He hadn’t intended to say anything like that, but the very idea of Imogen trolling the gym for other drivers, following some goddamn manual to win a man, had his skin tight and his gut twisted in knots.
    “Maybe we should have,” she said with the honesty he appreciated in her. “But it’s irrelevant at this point. I think, unfortunately, when two people rush the traditional mating process, it results in awkwardness whether there was any extreme physical relationship or not. I don’t see where we could go forward in any capacity now that there is confusion and reservations on both our parts.”
    Damn, her logic turned him