Imogen suddenly remembered that Ty had come to the party with Nikki.

That was enough to send her stepping back three feet and grabbing her wet sweater off the railing to use as a shield. How could she have forgotten for one minute that Nikki Borden intended to follow the six steps to marrying a race car driver and that her target was Ty?

Nikki and Ty were dating.

And he was playing with Imogen.

Elec went back into the house and Imogen turned toward the front steps, rain be damned. She needed to go home and take a hot shower.

“Where are you going?” Ty grabbed her elbow.

Feeling mildly insulted and majorly disappointed in both herself and the fact that she was not going to get to experience a kiss, Imogen paused on the top step, still under the porch overhang. “I’m going home. Please give my apologies to Tamara and Elec for leaving early, and to Nikki for monopolizing your time.”

“It’s not what you think, Emma Jean. I had every intention of breaking up with Nikki after we left tonight. I should have done it two months ago.”

Imogen frowned. Now that had the same ring to it as male statements like “I am going to leave my wife, I promise,” and, “You feel so good with a condom, I just want to feel you without one.”

She may not have a lot of experience dating men like Ty McCordle—okay, she had none—but apparently a man was a man and they were all just full of it.

“Okay,” she said.

Now he frowned, still gripping his T-shirt in his hand. “Okay? What the hell does that mean?”

“It means okay. Break up with Nikki or don’t. It’s irrelevant to me.”

With a deep breath and a wince, Imogen rushed down the steps in the pounding rain and left Ty standing on the porch.

CHAPTER TWO

EXCEPT that Ty had followed her. Imogen couldn’t believe it. After running through the rain, beeping her car doors open, and sliding in, wet and miserable, she had barely gotten her own door shut before the passenger side opened and Ty climbed in.

He was sitting in her car.

“What are you doing?” she asked in disbelief.

“I’m dripping, that’s what I’m doing.” He shook his head and ran his fingers through his shaggy wet hair. “Damn, that’s a lot of rain.”

And he was still shirtless.

Ty was sitting in her car wet and bare-chested.

“Why are you in my car?” Hadn’t she made it completely clear that she was leaving the party to go home?

Yet he looked at her like she was the one overlooking the obvious. “So we can talk.”

“About what?” Imogen considered herself a fairly bright woman, but she was having troubling following Ty’s train of thought.