Page 17 of Speeding Hearts

“Mom!” I said, shoving it in my pocket. I couldn’t help it, I felt like a damn teenager, and it wasn’t just being around my mom. It was Stella, making everything go loose and electric inside of me without even doing anything but jamming a few letters into a keypad.

“Let’s get that closet sorted. Then I’ll go take a look at the trailer.”

Mom rubbed her hands together like some kind of evil genius.

I laughed. She was crazy. In the best way.

Chapter 6

Stella

“You weren’t kidding,”I called to Dean as I got out of my car, keeping my eyes on the rugged dirt path running through the forest beside me. “What was the word you used? Rustic?”

“Yeah,” he said. “A little rough around the edges, but not bad, right?”

“And this is the car?” I asked. Adrenaline shot through me so sharply it made my heart race.

It wasn’t exactly comfortable.

You’re scared.

I shook that off. I didn’t get scared. I was Stella Archer, one of the guys. The toughest girl in Jewel Lakes… Oak Bend, now.

I crossed over to the other side of Dean’s truck. Parked there was a low-slung modified stock car—a late 1990s sedan that had been taken apart and welded back together again to take a dirt track at speeds of up to 165 mph.

Dean had explained that his dad had this one parked in the back of his shop for years, and Dean had managed to get it up and running just for me.

“It wasn’t too much work,” Dean had assured me, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t touched.

Touched as hell that he’d spent so much time on me during the week and again today.

“That’s what friends are for,” he’d said, and while the sentiment was nice, the emphasis on friends had stung just slightly, and I wasn’t sure why.

“This is really nice of you,” I said to him now. “I’m sure you have better things to do with your weekend than help an amateur get freaked out trying to race on arusticdirt track.”

“Nah,” Dean said.

Once again I was reminded that he probably had better things to do. Iknewhe had better things to do—like look after his father.

“How’s your dad?” I asked.

“Better every day. He can shower and get dressed on his own, thank God. But he still can’t get the energy together to cook a meal for himself or do basic tasks like his laundry or cleaning a toilet. So, you know, I’m over there pretty regularly.”

“You must be exhausted, what with taking over the garage on top of it?”

Dean shrugged. “It’s fine.”

Why did I get the feeling like Dean didn’t want any praise for what he was doing? It was above and beyond what most guys would do. From what he’d told me, it didn’t seem like his dad was the doting type. He must have gotten all of his sweet qualities from his mom.

“How about your mom? How’s she doing?”

Dean looked away, squinting into the late morning sun. “She’s nuts.”

I laughed, slightly shocked. “Nuts?”

“In a good way. She’s always got these ideas… She just got a bullet trailer she wants to turn into some kind of vacation accommodation. Can you believe that? She can barely take care of her own house, and she wants to run some kind of hotel out on her country property.”

“Sounds lovely, actually,” I said. “Haven’t you seen those tiny home shows? People are nuts for those things.”

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