Page 1 of Road Rage Daddy
Chapter 1
Harley
Oh god, I’m going to die!I scream my apology as the driver of the eighteen-wheeler, whose lane I drifted into when my car lost power steering on a curve, swerves to avoid crushing my car like an empty soda can. Their horn is so loud that I nearly jump out of my skin, BERENSON TRUCKING painted in big letters on the side blurring into a red streak as they speed past.
“Fuuuuuuuck!” I scream as I wrench the wheel as hard as I can to steer the car into the right lane to take the exit so I can get off this death trap, aka Interstate 10. It’s like a twenty-lane drag race within Houston city limits, finally narrowing an hour outside, but no less dangerous. I hyperventilated and sweated the whole way through. Literally sweated my ass off since my A/C gave out hours ago, and I’ve had to drive with the windows down, which, by the way, does jack shit with it being hot enough to cook an egg on the dashboard in five minutes flat.
I grab the wheel and pull as hard as I can again, trying to regain control so I don’t go careening off the embankment, cutting off a black super-duty pickup truck, which also has to slam on its brakes and swerve. I was beyond delusional to think I could learn how to drive a manual easy-peasy when I bought it with the last of my cash a week ago from a friend of a friend aftermy old automatic finally died and had to be replaced. This car may as well be a Boeing 737, for all I know, as the engine screams as loud as me when I try to downshift. I’m learning the hard way thatyou get what you pay for.
The engine sputters, the car jerking forward before it stalls for good as the exit ramp descends the hill. The super-duty is on my tail, and for one terrifying moment, I think they’re going to rear-end me, forcing me off the road, which, you know what? Might not be so bad. At least I’d be put out of my misery and wouldn’t have to go back to school at the end of summer. Having failed my mission of finding a well-off husband before running out of funds and scholarships, I won’t be able to afford to start my junior year of college anyway.
The only reason I’m headed back home for the first time in two years is to beg my older brother, Luther, and his wife, Marsha, for some kind of help—either with tuition, if they can spare it, or by living with them since I can’t go back to the dorms if I’m not enrolled in school. Both scenarios make me want to crawl into a hole and die since Marsha hates me for whatever reason. Even if she didn’t, my brother has always been indifferent to me, so I have little hope. The only plus side is I’ll be able to spend more time with my niece and nephews—the bright, shining stars of our family. The cuddles will be worth the heartache.
The ramp’s decline is the only thing that keeps me moving forward. There’s nothing else around save for a small parking lot with an abandoned barn-turned-ice house thirty feet from the exit. No gas stations or fast food joints. Just nothing but miles of trees and weeds and dust. So much dust in this godforsaken swamp-butt-inducing weather I thought I had left for good after graduating high school.
My arms shake with the strain and eventually give out, so instead of being able to wrench the wheel sideways again tosafely steer the car on the feeder road that runs parallel to I-10, I run headlong over the curb and stretch of dirt that separates the ice house’s parking lot from the road. This car was not built for off-roading, and the front and back ends bounce and bottom out over the pits in the ground until I reach the busted concrete of the lot. I slam on the brakes, causing the car to skid and kick up a plume of dust behind me, finally coming to a lurching stop mere feet from crashing into a dead tree to the side of the building.
I made it. I’m alive. I’m—
The super-duty swings around and comes to a screeching halt next to my car, its nose pointed back toward the road. I scream and slap my hands to my face like I’m in some kind of low-budget horror film. You know the one. The kind where the ditzy girl always dies first because she’s too dumb to do anything else but freeze and scream hysterically. I slide my hands up to fist my wind-tangled light brown hair that’s threatening to choke me. It doesn’t even cross my mind to shift to neutral and try to restart the car since I can’t drive for shit anyway.
The truck’s driver’s side door is thrown open, and though I don’t stop screaming, I find the loose handle next to me and try to roll the window up. But again, my arms are nothing but limp noodles, and I’m not fast enough. From out of the dust cloud appears a thick, deeply tanned arm that reaches in through my window, pops the stupid manual lock up, and whips my car door open.
“You got a goddamn death wish, missy?” The pissed-off hulking cowboy yells right in my face with his features screwed up like he’s point-two seconds away from murdering me with his utterly massive bare hands. He reaches in, yanks the keys out of my ignition, then unbuckles my seat belt.
I haven’t stopped screaming, and I don’t think to do so until he yells, “Shut your mouth! You’re going to blow out my eardrums the same way you damn near blew out my truck.”
My jaw automatically snaps closed, and I whimper, shaking in my dollar-store thin sneakers as I assess the towering man. He’s wearing a pressed black button-down tucked into what has to be the starchiest of starched dark blue jeans that end in big, heavy black cowboy boots.
The terror hasn’t receded yet, but that doesn’t stop my brain from appreciating how sexy he is with his wide mouth atop a clean-shaven strong jaw, mahogany brown eyes, and the dark flop of hair he reveals when he takes his cowboy hat off. He’s rugged, pissed off, perfection.
“Holy shit, you’re the hottest man I’ve ever seen in real life,” I blurt with a scratchy throat. “You could be a model.”
Dumb. So fucking dumb.
I’m going to die.
He blinks while his jaw drops open momentarily. “Harley?”
That deep, gritty voice…that little scar on the edge of his chin where his puppy had accidentally nipped him too hard while play fighting when he was a kid…“Emit?”
I haven’t seen my brother’s former best friend in seven years. Though I shouldn’t have, since he and my brother are ten years older than me, I had a major crush on him. Back when he was kind of on the skinny side, nowhere near as stacked as he is now. Back when he treated me more like a sister than my own brother did. Back before Marsha, his ex-girlfriend, left him for Luther, and the only person who was ever kind to me was ripped out of my life.
But now, with his muscles straining his sleeves, I almost can’t believe he’s the same person. “Wow, Emit. When did you start working out?” I even reach out and squeeze his hard bicep, my eyes fluttering. “I bet Marsha’s pissed. Have you seen Luther recently? He let himself go. Like food crumbs in his beard and on his beer belly. I bet that bitch would leave him in a heartbeat if she got a look at the way your jeans hug your big, sexy thighs.”
See, I have this really awful flaw in which I say whatever comes to mind. There’s not one single iota of a filter between my brain and my mouth, and it’s always getting me into trouble. Like now, when Emit’s eyes turn molten, and he clenches his jaw.
Emit hauls me up with his hands fisted in the front of my white T-shirt and pushes my back against the car. “What is wrong with you, Harley? Why would you call a man who’s screaming right in your face ‘sexy’? Who does that?” He shakes me a little like a rag doll, and his manhandling is sexy in an I-don’t-value-my-life kind of way. Another flaw.
I slap his arms. “I’m sorry! It’s just slipped out! But I mean, have you seen yourself? Walking, talking sex on boots.”
Emit’s expression swings from frustration to disbelief, and he shakes me again, my knees knocking together. Apparently, his looks aren’t the only thing that’s changed. The Emit of old would never have grabbed and shaken me around like this.
I rake my nails down his arms since the slapping isn’t working. “Ow! Let go—you’re hurting me!”
Something in him snaps, and he yanks me away from the car into a hug tight enough to crack my ribs, my tiptoes barely touching the ground.
I scream into his chest, fighting to breathe. “Please don’t kill me!”
