“That wasn’t so bad,” Marie says, as soon as we’re out of earshot. “I was afraid he was going to pump you about your intentions,” she adds. The look on her face is so relieved, it’s comical.

“Maybe he’s saving that for when we’re alone,” I say, laughing. “This time, it was all mechanical stuff.”

“Yes. And, you did good! He doesn’t hate you,” Marie laughs. “So you just came by to check out the track, huh?”

“I…uh.” I pause, lips pursed. How much should I say? “Well, I admit, I figured I’d see if you were free, if you were still here. Any excuse to spend a bit more time with you.”

She squeezes my hand tightly and smiles up into my face, dazzling me.

As soon as we get into the truck, she slides over to me and wraps her arms around my neck for a long, slow series of kisses.

Jesus Christ. Her kisses are like candy, and they just go on and on, heating up the inside of the truck and making my cock press painfully against the fly of my jeans.

“Mmm,” she says, finally, as she slides over to her side and buckles up. “It’s so good to see you, handsome.”

“Double back to you, gorgeous,” I say, heart pounding, head spinning and dick as hard as a rock. I adjust it, feeling it throbbing away in my jeans.

Her warm eyes watch avidly. “You see what you do to me,” I say, quietly.

Her nipples are poking through her shirt. Good to know it’s mutual.

“I can’t wait, if you wanna know the truth,” she says. Her words are bold but her cheeks turn a deep red.

Adorable!

I feel like my body is pulling towards her, magnetically attracted to her nearness. I wish she could sit in my lap…or that we were at my place, alone, cuddling in my big bed.

Argh!

Pulling away from the Speedway, I push those thoughts away and settle for holding her hand all the way to her place.

“This won’t take long,” Marie says as we walk into the foyer of her house. Shutting the door behind us, she says, “If no one’s home, you can come up to my…oh!”

A tiny, extremely attractive older woman with short, dark hair appears in a doorway down the hall. “Hiya,” she says, dark eyes dancing.

“Oh! Hi, Mom,” Marie says, “Didn’t know you were here. I’m just popping in for a quick shower and then we’re going straight out again.” She takes my hand and leads me forward. “This is Mark Mollenkamp. Mark, this is my mother, Vivian.”

“Hello! Nice to meet you, Mark!”

I’ve seen Vivian Sinclair around town here and there, but never had any reason to talk to her before now.

Up close and personal, she’s a stunner.

Like mother, like daughter.

She extends her small hand. When I grasp it in my own big mitt, it completely disappears.

Her smile is no less infectious than her daughter’s. The shape of her mouth and her generous lips are an older but just as lovely version of Marie’s.

Wow! These Sinclair ladies are damned hot.

“Nice to meet you too, Mrs. Sinclair.”

“Come in, come in! Can I offer you something to drink?” She has a very clipped and sexy British accent.

“Uhhh…well, I’m not sure how long we’ll be…?” I look at Marie uncertainly.

“I’m just going to have a quick shower but please, do have a drink,” Marie says as we accompany her mother into the kitchen.

“Sit here, hon,” Vivian says, patting a tall stool by the island.

“Okay. Umm… I’ll be right back,” Marie says, but she doesn’t make a move to leave. “Try not to miss me too much!”

“Hard to miss you when you’re still here,” Vivian observes dryly.

Marie snorts and starts towards the stairs. “I’m going,” she says. “Be kind when you’re discussing me! Remember, I am shy and not well-adjusted socially!” She yells that last, laughing, then turns and noisily bounds up the stairs.

Vivian and I grin at each other. “Would you like a coffee or tea? Iced tea, perhaps? I’ve also got Coke or Dr. Pepper.”

“Iced tea would be nice. Thank you.”

“Sure.”

She opens the fridge and extracts a pitcher of dark, frothy tea. “So Mark… my daughter is quite taken with you. I’ve never seen her so giddy about any of her dates.”

“That’s great to hear,” I say. “I’m impressed with your daughter, as well. She seems like quite a girl.”

She smiles. “We think so.”

That nicety over with, an awkward moment of silence ensues.

Then, my curiosity gets the better of me.

“Hey, Mrs. Sinclair, I’m wondering…”

“Call me Vivian.”

“Okay, Vivian. Thank you. Your accent has me curious about how you happened to come to this country.”

“Oh! Well, that was a result of a rather strange coincidence. You see, Carson had been engaged to be married before he met me. A girl from Cincinnati, who was in Columbus to attend university. Long story short, he…they…well, they had change of heart, and, a few days before the wedding, he called it off.” She takes two glasses from a cupboard and holds them, one after the other, under the ice-dispenser in the fridge.

“Oh? That sounds awful.”

“Yes. But Carson had already booked the honeymoon and couldn’t get his money back. So he took the trip on his own.” She smiles at me, then pours the frothy liquid into the glasses. “I’ll give you one guess as to where he went.”

“I’m gonna say…Britain somewhere?”

She lets out a tinkly laugh and brings the drinks to the island, “Right you are! London, to be exact.” Taking a seat next to me, she crosses her legs and warms up to the story.

“Understandably, he didn’t end up having a very good time. He’d been unable to find anyone to accompany him, and of course he was heartbroken. Quite a sad and lonely holiday. He spent most of the time in his hotel, eating fish and chips, depressed and listless. He didn’t do any tours, didn’t go to see any of the sights, nothing. On his very last night there, he stirred himself to go for a walk, went well off the beaten path and got lost.”

She takes a sip of her drink. “He went into a little pub to ask directions. It just so happened to be the pub where I was working…my very last shift, before I was off on holidays myself.” She touches my arm. “Guess where I was going!”

“Um…I’m gonna say…the US?”

“Right again! As if that wasn’t coincidence enough, I was coming here, to his hometown of Columbus, to visit my uncle and his Japanese war bride, who’d settled here a few years prior.”

“Wow. That is quite a coincidence.”

“Indeed,” she says. “We talked, hit it off, exchanged information and promised to get in touch in the US. When I arrived, I stayed with my aunt and uncle for the summer, but I barely saw them. I barely saw anyone except Carson. We were in love by the time I left. He came back to Europe several times over the next year. Subsequently, I immigrated here and we were married. And the rest, as they say, is history.”

“Well, how about that,” I nod, smiling at her. “Everything seems to have worked out for the best.”

“Yes. Here’s to chance meetings and coincidence!” She holds her glass up.

“Hear, hear,” I say, holding mine up as well. We clink glasses and drink.

Our talk turns to business and work. Vivian shows a shrewd understanding of her company’s business affairs and asks me intelligent and pointed questions about my own plans and goals.

I answer her honestly, casually outlining my plan to obtain high-end custom repair business in Columbus. She listens carefully, her dark eyes never wavering from my face.

“You’ll be competing with Sinclair’s for some of that business. Do you realize that?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say, “I do.”

I don’t tell her there’s something else I’ll be competing for. They’ll find out soon enough.

She lets out that tinkly laugh again, and it’s so infectious that I have to chuckle. “You certainly have your share of courage,” she says. “I wish you all the luck.”

“Thank you, Vivian. I appreciate that. It’s not that I particularly want to compete with Sinclair’s, but, business is business.”

“I wouldn’t bet against you,” she says kindly, smiling and patting my hand.

Marie comes down the stairs, freshly showered and dressed. “I hope you guys had fun talking about me! My ears were burning the whole time I was up there!”

“Oh yes, dear, we talked of nothing but,” Vivian says, winking at me.

Marie kisses her mother and then grabs my hand, saying, “Let’s go!” pulling me towards the door.

“Okay, okay, I’m coming!” I say, laughing. “Nice meeting you,” I call over my shoulder to Vivian.

“You too, dear! Have fun, kids!”

* * *

Later, over dinner, I tell Marie what her mother and I talked about.

“Yeah. Mom’s theory is that broken engagement is one of the reasons my father has trust issues .”

“Huh. Maybe so. Anyway, I told her about my plan to steal some business from Sinclair’s.” I can’t help but smile. “She wished me luck.”

She’s watching me with those big brown eyes of hers. They’re warm and inviting, with a smile lurking behind them, just waiting to burst forth like the sun over the horizon.

“She probably thinks you’ll need it,” Marie says, tartly, surprising a chuckle out of me.

With that unconscious sensuality of hers, she feeds herself her last bite of the diner’s homemade curry and then places her spoon into the bowl.

She dips a corner of her napkin in her glass of water, and fussily wipes her mouth with it, her gaze fixed on my face. Then she takes a tube of lipgloss from her purse and deftly re-applies it to those full, rosebud lips of hers.

Fuck!

I can’t wait to see that mouth wrapped around my cock.

The thought makes it throb in agreement. I have to keep shifting in my seat as, over coffee, Marie tells me about how her mother helped Carson get the business going in the early days, using her secretarial skills and a feminine wile or two.

Listening, I marvel over how Marie’s already becoming a big part of my life, much sooner than I imagined possible. She’s in my thoughts all day, every day. And even, in my dreams.

In fact, I think of little else since we met. Hard to believe it was only a couple weeks ago.

And I can’t help but picture Marie being part of my business too…my success.

Our success.

Everything is different now. I can’t deny this attraction and how important this girl has become to me.

I’m not gonna let her family intimidate me, but naturally, the way things go with them is starting to matter a lot to me.

A whole lot.

It’s funny how suddenly life can change. How the appearance of one other human being can make your heart seem so full, and your decisions, so important.

Mid-sentence, Marie yawns hugely, covering her mouth with her hand. Her eyes, her beautiful eyes are half-closing with fatigue at the moment.

Sexy, bedroom eyes.

“Tired, sweetie? Want me to take you home now?”

She blinks at me sleepily. “Yes. But not to my place.”

“No?”

“No. I want to go home with you.”

She tilts her head and gives me that smile.

Fuck! I love that smile…and so does my cock. I grin back, and feel it pulsing again. She wrinkles her nose, making herself look so goddamn adorable!

Jesus. She’s totally under my skin.

What resolve I had to hold off is steadily dwindling. That blind need for her is rising in me, rising and rising.

In my mind, her delicate fingers gracefully draw a long-handled spoon around the rim of an ice cream sundae. She feeds herself the spoonful, eyes closing in ecstasy.

My dick wants to get hard and I have to think about doing my taxes to make it stop.

Okay, that’s it. What the fuck am I waiting for again? I can’t remember.

I signal the server, pay up and take my sexy vixen home.