Tracks To Love: An Enemies To Lovers Alpha Hero Romance Read online

  Tracks To Love

  An Enemies To Lovers Alpha Hero Romance

  Abbie St. Claire

  Southern Ink Press

  Contents

  Tracks To Love

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Other Books by Abbie St. Claire:

  Tracks To Love

  By

  Abbie St. Claire

  For Rob…

  A great friend, a great man and the most caring soul.

  Missed beyond words…

  1

  Willow

  In the middle of texting my best friend Amanda, I was puzzled when the barista behind the counter flagged my attention.

  “I’m sorry ma’am, but your card’s declined.” The girl’s wrinkled brow showed her annoyance when she handed the debit card back to me in haste.

  I assumed the issue was a slow processor at the bank or… “There’s probably just an error in your card reader. Try it again.” I remained calm but could feel a red glow coloring my flesh.

  With her hands placed on her hips in a defensive posture, she huffed loudly. “I ran it three times. Do you have another method of payment?” Her badge read “Judith,” and it seemed like an appropriately bitchy name for her.

  Coughs and sighs emitted from the crowded line behind me as I dug through my bag for spare change.

  A girl to my right leaned around me, almost shoving my body to the side, and slapped a large bill on the counter. “I got it,” she said without any warmth. That part didn’t surprise me, as New Yorkers rarely shared smiles with strangers. But gratuitously parting with their cash…? Now that was indeed a shocker.

  Southern hospitality in the East?

  “Thank you for your kindness.” I offered her a smile, satisfied my southern accent suggested I was a transplant.

  No smile returned.

  Stepping aside, I heard her mumble to the barista, “It was either pay up or wait all day while she dug through that luggage-sized purse of hers.”

  No shock, the barista snickered and lifted her eyes my way.

  Seriously, it was a $3.19 pumpkin-spiced latte. The daily power shot got me going and was a habit I’d had every fall for years. If I could make the Starbucks version at home, I would’ve loved saving the money. But old habits are hard to break.

  As I stood and waited for my order, I checked the bank app on my phone.

  Overdrawn by $698.00. How could that be?

  The shock caused me to drop my phone and expand the previously cracked screen. Could the day get any worse?

  My direct deposit from Zion had cleared last Friday, and I’d been watching my finances very carefully since moving to Lenox Hill, an expensive, but safer neighborhood on the Upper East Side. It was a choice I’d made for my new life, and the transition had been rocky for someone like me, who’d never been around money as a child. But, I was managing it all—new career, new city, new roommate—until now.

  Mom, the bottle, death, tragedy, and more death had left my mental bandwidth in shambles.

  Panic began to set in, and I took the next available empty seat while I researched the recent account activity.

  Checks I didn’t recognize popped up for cash, but who and how? I never wrote checks for cash. The app didn’t give me all the details. It just kept saying, “Processing.”

  Shit! I just wanted to scream.

  “Pumpkin spice latte with extra foam for Willow, ready at the bar,” the male barista yelled. When I made eye contact with him, he winked as if he knew I needed something to counterbalance the stress beginning to consume me.

  I retrieved my order, still sensing interrogating stares from the other patrons. When I glanced at the time on my phone, the overwhelming urge to run hit me. Not because glaring eyes wanna know, but because I had exactly nine minutes to clock in, or I’d be late for the second time in the two months since my hire date. Marcus Zion would love nothing more than to embarrass yet another employee on conduct, as he often did in the weekly staff meetings.

  A brisk walk in my well-worn tennis shoes didn’t come close. Arriving on time required a full-on sprint to my Park Avenue office, while darting in and out of pedestrian traffic as if I were being filmed for a sequence in Chase.

  When I entered the lobby of the Fremont Building at the corner of East Sixty-Second Street and Park Avenue, I checked the time on the large wall clock between the elevators… Four minutes ’til eight. Double shit. The ride up to the twenty-first floor usually took over six minutes with all the folks coming in or going out at almost every level.

  In the elevator, I changed into a pair of well broken-in Stuart Weitzman stilettos, a fabulous find at the Goodwill store years ago, and dropped my tennis shoes into the depths of my large bag. My mind flitted back to the gal’s comment at Starbucks, luggage-sized purse. Call it what you want, but a large bag is a necessity in New York City, and it doubled as a backpack when I unzipped the straps.

  As I pushed open the heavy glass doors of the Zion Agency, I smoothed my hair, certain it had become a frazzled mess during my quick run.

  “Good morning,” Yvette uttered as I whizzed past her desk.

  “Back at ya. Coast clear?”

  She coughed.

  We made eye contact over my shoulder. Dammit.

  Mr. Zion leaned his finely suited back against the wall facing my desk. Standing with his ankles crossed, he typed on his phone. Without making eye contact, he acknowledged my presence with a sinister tone. “Nice of you to join us this morning, Ms. Alders.”

  I quickly tossed my bag into the lower drawer of my outer office desk-without-borders. You know the one…where all eyes can vividly watch your every move. I clocked in on my computer only one minute late while Mr. Zion cleared his throat.

  “A meeting just started in the Sky Rise conference room.” His voice was low and deliberate. “I need you to fill in for Gabbie, since she conveniently failed to make her flight back from Paris last night.” He placed his hands firmly on his hips, swinging his black suit jacket aside and proudly displaying his tight build. I was guessing he hit the gym at least once a day, if not twice.

  Sexy simply wasn’t the right word to describe him. Even at his most intense, he could grab any woman’s attention. Tall, confident, with short GQ type blond hair, his piercing blue eyes seemed to read my every thought. That was Marcus Zion.

  “Happy to join the meeting and my apologies for my tardiness. It won’t happen again,” I uttered, retrieving the company issued iPad portfolio and my still full but unfortunately lukewarm cup of coffee from my desk.

  Without further ado, I followed Marcus to the conference room. In one moment, he could be such a sweetheart and in the next, an asshole on fire. Whenever he was in town, the employment door of the Zion Agency revolved like a spinning top…make an error while the boss was watching and clock out for the last time, or so it seemed.

  I was truly living out a remix of The Devil Wears Prada. My lowly position didn’t mean squat to most people, but an inte
rn job at the Zion Agency meant everything on a résumé in my new field of work.

  New field… I’d left critical care nursing for marketing. Each time I had to explain that one, another piece of me fell apart.

  Mr. Zion was quiet on the ride up, still concentrating on his phone, and my mind stayed focused on my financial situation. Hopefully, I’d have time to sneak off to the restroom and call the bank before the meeting got started. Otherwise, I’d be a bundle of nerves, unable to concentrate.

  The conference room sported a superb view of the city from the thirty-fifth floor. The only floor above it was a penthouse owned by none other than Marcus. From the insignificant mail that came and went across my desk, I could tell he didn’t live there, so it must have been his shag pad. Why else would he have a midtown Manhattan apartment and a penthouse within three blocks of each other? Even though he was photographed repeatedly with the same woman in the society pages, he kept talk about his private life to a minimum. But, the lack of a wedding band didn’t mean anything.

  “Glad you could join us for this meeting, Willow. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised,” he mumbled as he slid open the frosted glass door to the large room.

  My eyes landed on the multiple car racing photo mockups on easels filling the large corner room. With my peripheral vision, I determined there were suits in the room, but I couldn’t acknowledge them.

  Racing. It was my weakest link, my undoing.

  The room started to spin, my limbs began to tingle and my vision began to fade—fainting was a real possibility. With a thud, my coffee hit the edge of the table before landing on the floor. When I opened my eyes, the pumpkin spice latte covered a gentleman sitting at the end of the table, and splattered my white blouse as well.

  “What the hell?” he yelled as he attempted to brush the liquid off his designer suit jacket, but I could see his shirt was ruined. He stood so abruptly the rolling executive chair he’d occupied hit the wall behind him and barely missed me in the process. “You gotta be kidding me, Marcus,” he grumbled.

  “I’m so sorry, sir. I’ll get some towels.” After tossing my things on the table, I bolted toward the door and heard the man swear at Marcus.

  “Who the fuck is that idiot?”

  My skin crawled as he yelled the words. I’m no idiot. So I had a clumsy moment, but that’s all. It could have happened to anyone, including an asshole like him.

  The guest beverage center sat directly outside the conference room, and I grabbed a bottle of water and a handful of paper towels. All the while, I could hear the loud exchange of the men through the glass doors.

  “That’s Willow Alders, your new field liaison,” Marcus answered with a slight laugh.

  “Well, she’s fired, get someone else,” the man yelled.

  Fired? Heck, I’d quit first. Who needs jerks like them?

  Oh wait, poor girls like me.

  I gripped the edge of the granite countertop and inhaled and exhaled slowly, silently begging my body to calm to some level of normalcy. Meditation was something my grief counselor had often suggested, but I had never gotten around to it. Big mistake.

  Get a grip…don’t blow this…

  A firm grip on my right arm pulled me around to face my very angry boss. “What the hell are you trying to pull?” Marcus clenched his jaw so tightly the muscles in his neck rippled with tension.

  I hadn’t heard him leave the conference room, and I’d never seen him this pissed.

  “It was an accident.” I shrugged my arm loose from his hand. “Don’t ever grab me again.” My voice may have been low, but my tone and glare indicated I wasn’t about to be manhandled.

  “Do you know who it is that you just decorated with your frou-frou coffee?”

  My attention had been on the mess I’d made, and I’d failed to look our guest in the face. “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t get a chance to introduce my—”

  “That’s Tate Conway.” Marcus swooshed his arm through the air as he pointed to the conference room in a bold gesture.

  Oh, double-shit. The biggest name in the Corvette racing world was in our agency, and I was about to be assigned to work with him.

  Rather than swoon over Tate, I chose to play dumb, hoping Marcus would reassign me. “I think I recall the name, but food and wine are my specialty. I don’t do the sports or racing stuff, not my cup of tea. This is really Gabbie’s—”

  In a flash, Marcus was in front of me again, his long arms on either side of my body. His position pinned me to the counter, and his glare shut down my arguments. He brought his face to within inches of mine. “This contract is worth over a million. I know who you really are and how well you know the racing world. Your specialty is whatever I tell you it is. You’ll knock this assignment out of the park, or you’ll be finished in marketing forever. Do I make myself clear?” His blue eyes pierced through my flesh like needles.

  Trembling, I nodded.

  How dare he try to manipulate me? I’d make nice in the meeting to prevent embarrassing myself, but the conversation was far from over.

  This new life was everything I’d worked so hard to achieve in the three years since Rowan died. Going back to college, avoiding our friends, and oh, the hours and hours of grief therapy…

  And now, with a project assignment in racing, my whole world was about to come crashing down in an instant.

  2

  With trembling hands, I offered the water and towels to Tate. When we made eye contact, he paused for a moment before a bit of snarky amusement lifted the corners of his lips.

  He held up his hands in retreat. “Just go away.”

  What an ass… If he only knew just how fast I really wanted to run away…not because of him but everything he stood for. No matter what happened, I refused to give him that satisfaction.

  Years ago, I’d casually met the racing star several times. The first time had been at a holiday party, but I was certain he didn’t remember me now. He’d been too busy chasing the tail of every girl who would hold still long enough. And as drunk as he’d been, I seriously doubted he could have performed in the sack, much less recall having met me.

  In an effort to remain as poised as I could under the circumstances, I pulled my shoulders back and slowly picked up my belongings before taking about five steps toward the door.

  “Hold it right there, Willow. You’re required to stay for this meeting and be prepared to spearhead this project, as we discussed previously.” The sarcastic tone of Marcus’s voice echoed in the large room.

  Discussed? Me? Spearhead the project? I didn’t recollect a discussion in the hallway…more like an ultimatum.

  “Tate, please accept our apologies for the coffee mishap. Let’s get down to business, gentlemen. I’d like you all to meet Willow Alders, who will be the field liaison for this project.”

  I tried to keep my eyes on my Marcus, but my peripheral vision noted that Tate kept staring at me as I nervously took the only seat available at the table, which placed me directly in front of the jerk himself. My memory of him was as a womanizer, a dude with a bad attitude, and someone heavy on the bottle. His memory of me was going to be someone who couldn’t hold her coffee, let alone lead a marketing campaign.

  “Willow, I’d like you to meet Cord Collins to your left. And over here…” Marcus pointed to a guy wearing funky steampunk-style glasses, “Bryan Kapenski, both from Bolster Entertainment.”

  I nodded. “My pleasure to meet all of you.” Tate extended his hand in a moment of control, practically forcing me to make contact. When he took my hand with a soft, flirty grip, I wanted to snatch it clear and punch him. Perhaps he’d been up all night on a red-eye flight, because he was sporting a day or two of dark, shadowy scruff, but that wasn’t a reason to be such a grouch. Retard.

  “I’ll just call you coffee girl.” He snickered.

  “Well then, I suppose I could call you ass—”

  “Willow, can you start the video please?” Marcus inserted before I could claim my own
space in the world of sarcasm.

  Tate’s cockiness was a challenge, and normally one I’d accept. After all, he was definitely attractive, and there was something to be said about his broad shoulders and dark, unruly hair. But racing was off limits to me.

  It was a one-way flight straight into the core of hell.

  “So that everyone in the room is on the same page, today we’re discussing the new video game that Cord’s company is creating. It’s my pleasure to announce we will be marketing Corvette Force.”

  As the video presentation started, bile churned inside my stomach and fought its way up my throat. I swallowed hard to keep from further embarrassing myself by barfing in public, but it was only a temporary fix.

  There was no way in hell I could be involved with anything to do with racing, even just making and marketing a video game about it. Every psychologist on the planet would lock me up for making such a decision.

  Survival or insanity? The choice came down to those two options — stay and keep my job for financial survival, or leave and maintain my sanity.

  “We expect to wrap this project in time for limited release pre-Christmas, and a full launch party in January,” Cord interjected. “Our budget has considerable allowances for a quick turnaround, but getting Tate’s car wrapped with the necessary game graphics and the video recorded is going to be our time vampire.”

  “I told you both when you approached me for this project that my schedule was tight. I’ll be in Le Mans for a race on the dates you gave me for filming,” the hot-rod troublemaker interjected.