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After being dumped, Isla Morris makes a pact with her ex's biggest competition, F1 driver Matthew Carr, to get inside Lucas's head.
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Isla Morris is dating the world's best F1 racer - at least, she w...
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The room was large — larger than most English hospital rooms, anyway — and it smelled of sterile chemicals and peppermint. Someone had put flowers on the windowsill. Matthew was propped up in bed, calmly eating what looked to be rice pudding. Burns decorated his arms, and his blond hair was matted with blood.
But he was alive.
He was alive.
Matthew looked up as she entered. "Ah, Red. Fancy some pudding?" He held out the half-finished cup. "It's absolutely terrible, but if you plug your nose, it sort of tastes like salted caramel."
She stared. "You look terrible."
Matthew gave her an exhausted smile. "Cheers, Red. You always know just how to fluff a bloke's ego."
"How do you feel?"
"Oh, splendid," Matthew said airily. "I'm thinking of regularly burning my skin off. Really helps to prevent wrinkles, I hear."
"Doesn't sound all that enjoyable."
"I know," Matthew said, "but just think of what I'll save on skincare."
She perched on the edge of the bed. Matthew set down the pudding, resting his hands on top of her legs. They were swathed in white bandages — two miniature snowmen — and it might have been comical if Isla wasn't on the verge of tears.
"You really scared me," she whispered.
His face sobered. "I'm sorry."
"I thought..." She traced a pattern on his bandage. "Matthew, I thought you were going to die."
"So did I."
She swallowed. "It was Sebastián all over again. I looked at that burning car, and for just a second, I thought... I wasn't sure you'd make it."
"I thought you were a hallucination," Matthew said softly. "When I saw you on that track, I thought I'd imagined you. That my brain was giving me something to hold on to at the very end. But you were real." There was wonder in his voice. "You stayed to watch the race."
Her smile was watery. "Of course I did."
"Thank-you."
She picked up the rice pudding. Not because she wanted some — Isla was fairly certain that she wouldn't be able to stomach anything for the next three to five business days — but because Matthew was eyeing it. And his hands looked too damaged to handle a spoon.
She scooped out a spoonful. "Your whole family's here."
"At the hospital?" Matthew asked incredulously.
"Yeah."
"Even Benedict?"
"Even him." Isla fed him the pudding. "He shouted at a nurse about the inefficiency of the hospital water fountains."
