False Start
Amazon
About the book
When the race ends, the real heat begins.
I know exactly how this is supposed to go: do the job, keep it professional, don’t get attached. Especially not to someone like Hutch.
Tire gunner. Menace. Walking bad decision.
He’s grease-streaked hands and a crooked grin, all sharp edges and zero filter, the kind of guy who says whatever he wants and somehow gets away with it. The kind of guy I don’t have time for.
Until a grounded flight and a string of bad luck strand us somewhere in rural France with a dying van, a questionable motel, and way too many hours stuck in each other’s orbit.
Somewhere between missed exits, bad coffee, and songs neither of us will admit to liking, the lines start to blur. What was supposed to be temporary starts to feel like something else. Something I don’t have a rule for.
Which is a problem.
Because the paddock has eyes. Because I’ve built my life on staying in control. Because Hutch doesn’t do careful—and I’ve never done this.
But the thing about bad decisions?
Sometimes they’re the only ones that feel right.
praise for False Start
“A total treat of a book, clever and witty, and I was grinning the whole time I read it.”
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
Kip
The thing about Formula One drivers is that they never actually stop performing.
Even now—hours after the race, champagne dried in his hair, tie crooked, eyes glazed from adrenaline and post-podium interviews—Grady Lewis is still on.
He’s leaning against a branded backdrop, pretending to listen to a sponsor rep drone on about “brand synergy” while I hover off camera, juggling three phones, his garment bag, and a half-empty bottle of sparkling water.
“Grady,” I hiss under my breath, flashing the kind of PR smile that hurts my molars. “If you don’t wrap this up in the next sixty seconds, I’m telling them you’ve developed a sudden allergy to networking.”
He smirks—the Grady Lewis trademark—and claps the sponsor rep on the shoulder. “You heard my guy. We’re wheels up soon. Can’t ease up now. Have to get back to Silverstone to prep for Suzuka.”
My guy.
That’s me. Kip Carmichael, handler of crises, buffer between ego and expectation, unofficial babysitter to a man who thinks punctuality is a myth.
By the time I get him out of the hospitality suite and into the car where Ben Carpenter, the team’s chief strategist and Grady’s former race engineer—and, to the grid’s collective shock last season, his boyfriend—is waiting for him, my spine’s vibrating with exhaustion. My perfectly tailored trousers have picked up at least three new creases, and my phone is buzzing like it’s having a panic attack.
Across the paddock, the pit crew’s still celebrating. Loudly. Someone’s blasting bad techno from a portable speaker, and the smell of beer and motor oil hangs in the humid night air.
I spot him in the middle of it all. Hutch, one of the tire gunners, hands streaked with grease and an lopsided grin plastered across his face, tossing a rag over his shoulder like he’s in a commercial for controlled chaos. I’ve seen him before, obviously—he’s hard to miss with that six-foot-something frame and coppery-red hair that never seems to fit under his team cap—but always in passing. Usually when he’s tracking mud through hospitality or shouting something indecipherable about torque ratios.
Now he’s surrounded by teammates, crouched over a wheel, spinning it on the hub with his palm for no reason I can fathom and laughing at a joke I don’t hear. Somehow, in this hurricane of energy and oil, he manages to look exactly like he belongs. And I totally hate that I notice it.
I tell myself it’s because he fits here in a way I never will, not because there’s anything remotely attractive about a guy covered head to toe in engine grime and grinning like he’s the king of the paddock. Me? I’m the one who’s out of place. Wired, worried about every schedule, every sponsor, every flashing camera. I’m here to manage the mayhem, not be part of it. And yet, watching him spin that tire like it’s a toy, I feel it anyway—a faint, uncomfortable tug in my chest that I firmly, sensibly, absolutely do not acknowledge.
He catches my eye. Or maybe he senses discomfort like sharks smell blood because his grin widens.
“Hey, Carmichael,” he calls, his voice rough and strangely sexy from shouting over engines all weekend. It shouldn’t make me want to wrap myself around him like a python, but it does. And that smoking hot British accent doesn’t hurt, either. “You look like you just got out of a board meeting with Satan. Loosen up, mate. Our boy finished in P2. His highest podium in Formula One.”
I adjust my cufflinks for the third time in as many seconds. “Congratulations. Some of us celebrate in moderation.”
He tilts his head, grin spreading. “And some of us actually enjoy winning. You should try it sometime.”
“I enjoy winning,” I say, voice clipped because clearly I need to defend my professional dignity. “I just prefer it with decorum.”
“Decorum, eh?” He arches an eyebrow, still spinning the tire. “Sounds exhausting. I’d rather have a little fun.”
It’s aggravating enough that he even exists, let alone makes my heartbeat do tiny handsprings. He’s ridiculous, feral, loud, oily, and I’m way too tired to deal with him. Yet I can’t stop looking.
He turns back to his crew before I can come up with another savage clapback, his laughter rolling out again like thunder.
I steer my suitcase out of the garage and stomp toward the shuttle van waiting at the curb, trying to ignore the way my pulse skitters. Not from attraction—fuck, no—but from irritation. That man’s entire vibe is a health hazard.
But if there’s any justice in the universe, that will be the last time Hutch Hutchinson gets under my skin.