CHAPTER 32

Nathalie froze. She’d known it was coming, but she’d expected the question about getting into one of Mr. Spencer’s cars from Zion. Not from the billionaire! She had her excuses lined up. Mr. Spencer couldn’t possibly have time. He didn’t even know them and couldn’t be expected to let just anyone ride in one of his cars.

She’d imagined the powerful businessman would readily agree with everything she said, likely because he’d be angling to get out of there and back to making more billions as soon as possible. But now that he’d made the unexpected offer, though Zion was already jumping up and down shouting his glee, she couldn’t possibly take him up on it.

“Thank you for the lovely offer, Mr. Spencer, but Zion and I have already taken enough of your time.”

“Like I said, I’ve got all afternoon.” He smiled at her again.

“And it’s Darius.” Sweet Lord, that man had a smile on him. It was cocky, sexy, and somehow sincere, all at the same time. He had to be aware of the effect it had on the female gender.

She guessed he used it knowingly, undermining resistance, so that he could get whatever he wanted. But why would he be using it on her?

“I don’t think—”

“Come on, Nathalie.” Zion gave her his best hangdog expression.

“We want to go out in the fast car!” “Yeah, come on, Nathalie.” Amusement laced the billionaire’s voice as he echoed her brother. Darius’s gaze was deep, startlingly blue, like the Mediterranean ocean of his heritage.

“We really do want to go out in the fast car.”

His hair was as dark as the devil, his features more handsome than a man with his wealth deserved. She’d half expected to be met today by a flock of Spencer Imports publicity reps. After all, she’d figured the slick, filthy-rich business owner giving his time to a young man like Zion would be a publicist’s goldmine.

Yet Darius had come alone and was dressed casually in jeans and a dark T-shirt—one that emphasized his muscled biceps, but was as far from a five-thousand-dollar suit as anything could be. Just as Zion had researched Darius’s cars,

Nathalie had researched the man himself. There was a great deal of information online about how he’d built his business, but very few details about his personal life or past. None of her research had helped her understand why someone as wealthy and powerful as Darius Spencer would even bother to answer Zion’s letter.

The invitation to meet at his hangar had floored her. After all, he was a luxury importer—and she wasn’t even sure what that meant, exactly. How could a man make billions off luxury? And all his cars she’d seen profiled on the Hot Cars show Zion had made her watch smelled of money. Darius was a collector of things, so she’d assumed he probably collected people, too…until he got tired of them.

But then she remembered the way he’d looked at her and Zion, with a longing that she didn’t quite understand, but felt all the same, right in the center of her chest where her heart was beating just a little too fast from nothing more than the look in his eyes. Plus, she hadn’t expected him to be so nice. He didn’t laugh at Zion. In fact, Darius hadn’t looked at her brother as if there was anything wrong with him at all.

And now he wanted to take Zion for a ride in one of his super fast cars.

Knowing they were both staring at her, waiting for her answer, she finally said,

“Where would you take him if I said it was okay?”

“Just down the runway. I’ll check with the control tower to make sure there won’t be any planes coming in. You can watch us the whole time.”

“Please, Nathalie,”

Zion pleaded, not at all afraid of going fast even though speed had taken so much away from him. Darius didn’t know their story, even though Nathalie sometimes felt like everyone else did, as though it was the only thing that defined her and Zion.

Eleven years ago, her brother had been hit by a car driven by a rich teenager who was driving way too fast. The teenager’s father had not only bought him out of a prison sentence, he’d also forced her parents to accept a payoff in lieu of the litigation that they’d been told would have dragged on for years otherwise.

Nathalie had never blamed her parents for their decision to take the money. Zion had suffered irreparable brain damage and now he was an eighteen-year-old who had never progressed mentally past the age of seven. She understood why economics won out over justice sometimes.

Her brother’s road to recovery hadn’t been cheap, but thankfully, as long as she was careful with her investments and earned enough with her salary as a recruiter, there was still money left to support his current needs, like the special school he attended. When her parents had died six years ago,

Nathalie had made it her mission to carry on their legacy and protect Zion. But in many ways, on the day of the car crash she hadn’t only lost her little brother, she’d also lost her parents to financial worry and emotional turmoil, years before they’d passed away in a private plane crash. Speed had taken so much from her and her brother, but Zion was a good kid.

He always had been, and she couldn’t help giving in to him when he wanted something badly. Surely one ride here today had to be a safe way for Zion to experience that speed he so longed for...and if she had any longing left inside of her for just that same thing, she shoved it down. It was up to her to be the responsible one, after all.

“All right, Darius.”

She wanted to keep on thinking of Darius as Mr. Spencer, but somehow he made that impossible with those smiles of his and his charming insistence that she call him by his first name.

“But not too fast.”

Darius’s expression was solemn as he crossed his heart.

“I promise. No faster than my mechanic would allow.”

“How fast is that?” He smiled again.

“Nothing that would hurt the pristine engine.”

She had no idea what that meant, but she was helpless against the combined power of his smiles and promises.

“All right, fine. But I’ll be watching.”

“I’m thinking the Mercury Cougar for our first ride.” He turned to Zion.

“Sound okay to you?”

“Yay!” Zion crowed. Nathalie suspected Darius had chosen the Mercury Cougar because it was the one he’d personally labored over, the one that held the most meaning for him.

“Let me call the tower so they’re ready for us.” Once again, Darius keyed a code into a pad next to an office door. The lights inside turned on automatically, illuminating a desk and bookshelves crammed with manuals, the names of the cars written along their spines.

There were trophies and framed photos, mostly of the cars, with only a few including Darius. He punched a couple of numbers on the phone, spoke quietly into it, then turned back to them with that killer smile while he waited for the person on the other end to respond to his request to clear the runways. Nathalie’s heart beat faster despite herself.

“All clear.”

He put the phone down, then grabbed a key off a board on the wall, tossed it up, and caught it in his fist.

“Let’s go.”

Zion followed him like a smitten puppy and worry swept through her stomach again. Darius Spencer had a hangar full of ridiculously expensive cars, a personal mechanic, and one call to the control tower allowed him to take over the runways.

So why was he wasting so much time with them? Nathalie knew she was sometimes a little too careful with her brother. It was just that if anything happened to him, she’d never, ever forgive herself. But here in the hangar with all the amazing cars, Zion was so happy and excited that she couldn’t bear squashing him down.

Darius opened the Mercury Cougar’s door. “Hold onto the roll bar back here to get in.”

He demonstrated with a pat on the curved bar behind the passenger seat.

“Don’t use the windshield.” The car had no top, just the roll bars behind each of the two seats. The interior was brushed metal, with no carpeting, and the seats were a simple leather bucket. After Zion was in, Darius leaned over the passenger door to secure the buckle, which was much thicker than a normal seatbelt. Clapping Zion on the shoulder, Darius said,

“There you go, buddy,” then rounded the hood. He climbed into the driver’s seat after a jaunty salute to Nathalie. The engine roared to life, and Darius pulled onto the tarmac with Zion vibrating with eagerness and sheer joy in the seat beside him.

It was a small airport for light planes, not big commercial airliners. Two runways ran down the center with a long row of hangars on either side. Some had business signage over them—carrier services, flight insurance, maintenance, and one for a local flying club. It hadn’t occurred to her that a person could actually rent a hangar to store anything other than a plane, not until Zion had received Darius’s return letter.

She watched the classy race car cruise down the closest runway. True to his word, Darius kept his speed down. He turned at the end and headed back on the opposite runway, picking up the pace as they came around to pass her. Zion waggled a thumbs-up over the windshield. His lips moved a mile a minute, talking Darius’s ear off. Nathalie smiled, feeling much better about everything...at least, until she realized the car was going faster.

And faster. When they made the next turn, she heard tires squeal. Her stomach jumped and she rolled her bottom lip between her teeth, biting down hard, as if the pain would distract her. Ever since her parents had passed away at the end of her senior year of college, Zion had been her responsibility.

He was the only family she had left. He had difficulty learning new skills, and while he loved the computer, he needed a lot of help. In the morning, he went to a special school, and he bagged at the local grocery store on weekday afternoons. She hadn’t gotten Zion the job because they needed the money, but because her brother needed to feel useful. It was good for his self-esteem. She did everything she could for him.

Yet she’d just let him get in a car with a madman. Some guardian she turned out to be, she thought as Darius and Zion roared along the runways as if they were on a racetrack. Her heart hammered as the whoosh of their passing blew her hair across her face. She hated speed after what had happened to both Zion and her parents. Or at least, she should have hated speed.

Yet her heart, a traitor to everything she knew to be right, secretly ached to be in the car with them, to taste the rush of air as it raced right through her...and to feel the same rapture that was now shining on Zion’s face. The Mercury Cougar made two more laps before Darius slowed and eased to a stop beside her.

“Careful getting out,” he said to Zion. “

The pipe down on the side is hot and I don’t want you to burn yourself.”

Before she could rush around the car to make sure Zion didn’t touch the big black exhaust pipe, he was already pushing himself out, using the roll bar, not the windshield, just as Darius had told him. She crossed her arms over her chest and gave Darius a narrow-eyed gaze as he also climbed out of the car.

“How fast were you going?”

He answered her with the solemn, sincere look he’d used on her earlier when he’d promised not to go too fast.

“Fifty on the straightaway.”

“No way.”

“I swear.”

He crossed his heart, just like before.

“Well, then, fifty is too fast out there.”

It probably wasn’t, but she had to argue, because Zion was her responsibility.

Or maybe it was because Darius was so darned gorgeous and persuasive that she felt as though she had to fight the urge to automatically give in to him. Zion bounded around the car.

“Wasn’t that cool, Nathalie?”

He’d had to learn to talk again after the accident, and even now, all these years later, his speech was careful, almost strained sometimes, as if he was searching for the right words. But he’d clearly been feeling great today—almost like the eighteen-year-old he should have been.

And she could see that he’d just had so much fun. His elation was bursting out of him like an excited puppy who’d just been let out of his crate.

“Was it good?” she asked in a gentle voice. The wind had gusted his hair into spikes and tangles, and she smoothed down the soft brown locks.

“The best.” Zion’s eyes gleamed, his gaze bouncing between her and Darius, then finally settling on her.

“Your turn now, Nathalie.” She shook her head. Hard.

“I’m not getting in that car.” Darius smiled winningly. Or cunningly. She honestly wasn’t sure at this point, her heart beating fast at even the thought of getting into the sports car with Darius.

“I promise I won’t take you any faster than I did Zion,” he told her. “And you just saw for yourself that he didn’t come to any harm.” Another easy promise. There was a challenge there, too.

And for a moment of pure insanity, she wanted to take the dare, feel the exhilaration, inhale it. She wanted to go fast, feel the wind beating her face, feel her blood rushing wildly through her veins. But she was not insane. Safe. She needed to keep everyone safe.

Not only Zion, but herself, too. Just because she might want something didn’t mean she could have it. Not if it was something that was bad for her or for Zion. Unfortunately, the best refusal she could come up with in the face of both of them looking at her so expectantly was,

“I’m wearing a skirt. There’s no way I can get down into that seat.”

But even as she said it, a part of her—a really big part—wanted to take what he offered. Just once, she wanted to close her eyes and race with the wind.

“I’ll help you.” Darius held out his hand.

“It’s fun, Nathalie.” Zion had to add his two cents.

“Once around,”

Darius said, his voice low, his gaze deep, his hand still held out to her as if he had no doubt she’d eventually agree.

“That’s all it will be. A fast ride that you’re going to love. I promise. Once around,” he said again, before smiling and adding,

“Unless you want more.”

As if he’d known how close to the edge she already was, his coaxing words had her falling right into his blue gaze, like a cliff diver hurtling down to water as smooth as glass. For the first time in forever,

Nathalie wanted to forget about what was bad for her and just do what felt good. Which was why she finally said,

“I’ll go with you for one turn around the runway.”

She made sure to add as a reminder for them both, “But I won’t be wanting more than that.” Only, she wasn’t sure he believed it any more than she did.