Picture this: you’re sitting at a red light one day, when the oddest car you’ve ever seen pulls up beside you. It’s covered in black and white geometric figures, and if you stared at it for too long, you’d get a migraine. The driver notices you checking out the car (and her), and when the light changes, she hits the gas and screams away. You think, What’s her problem?

More than likely she pulled away quickly because she thought you were a member of the Carparazzi, a group of industrial auto spies who trek around the world, attempting to take pictures and video of never-before-seen automotive prototypes. Like the paparazzi, these photographers sell their pictures to the trade magazines for lucrative paydays. Car enthusiasts who long to see the next great model and the new features flock to the magazines for these unauthorized pics.

My upcoming romance, Pleasure of the Chase, explores this fascinating lifestyle and the relationship between two members of the Carparazzi, veteran photographer Nellie Rafferty and newcomer Jos Grant. Nellie is well known for her fierce competitive nature and her willingness to do anything to get the shot. Once she dressed up as a nun and infiltrated a convent that overlooked an Italian proving ground just to get a picture. However, trotting around the globe is tiring. Nellie has chased cars her entire adult life and is discovering her priorities are shifting.

Jos Grant joined the Carparazzi after happening upon a prototype parked in a fast food lot. She sells a picture to a magazine and is hooked. Jos is a mom and getting the shot equates to putting food on the table. She’s a rookie, still learning all of Nellie’s tricks. She tries to be as ruthless as Nellie, or at least, she tries to live up to the legend that is Nellie.

Both have a love of the chase and soon find themselves drawn to each other while they compete for the same shots. Romance waits behind the camera lens and competition becomes more difficult. When a ruthless automaker manipulates both of them, they must join forces to prevent a dangerous car from being mass-produced.

One theme that surfaces throughout the novel is America’s love of automobiles. Most of us have car stories—our first car, the family car we rode in for summer vacations, the first time we made out in a car, or a favorite make and model. My favorite car is the ’66 Mustang. I’ve owned two and I often reference Mustangs in my books. The picture you see here is my second Mustang. If you look closely you can see two of our dogs, Wylie, the World’s Most Relaxed Ridgeback, and Babe, a little black spaniel Many treats were used to cajole Wylie off the couch and into the car for this photo.

I inherited my first Mustang from my grandmother, and I have fond memories of tooling around Sun City with her, as she routinely exceeded the 15 miles per hour speed limit and scared the heck out of the golf cart drivers. Grandma was hell on wheels.

As we move closer to self-driving cars, there is talk that cars will become non-descript black boxes. We’ll board, sit down, and enjoy the ride. Some believe the days of choosing a color or a model are numbered. Car aficionados scoff at such talk, believing that a person’s car is an extension of personality. I guess time will tell.

CHAPTER ONE

Verde Valley, Arizona

Just a hair to the right and the Jeep would’ve spun out, careened over the embankment and plunged into the Verde River. Fortunately, Parnelli “Nellie” Rafferty had learned from prior experience. She pulled the wheel ever so slightly, avoided the river and kept pace with the car in front of her.

Her prey was hard to miss: a black-and-white-spotted Toyota prototype, a vehicle not yet green-lighted for manufacturing. First it had to pass hot weather testing. Similar to the Chrysler Prowler, its rear was boxier, but she could see the sleek lines of a hot sports car beneath the camouflage. The engineers had taped pieces of Styrofoam to the car’s frame before applying the black-and-white shell. The camouflage often distorted photos taken by industrial auto spies like Nellie.

She snapped the pictures car fanatics longed to see. As a freelance photographer, her goal was to scoop her competitors and sell the photos to the highest bidder, who would publish them prior to the manufacturer’s planned launch. She didn’t care which magazine bought the photos so long as someone did. Those in her line of work were referred to as the carparazzi.

Much like the paparazzi, the carparazzi had a love-hate relationship with the automakers. They hated when auto spies undermined months of their PR department’s work, but at the same time, they loved them—when it was someone else being scooped. If consumers didn’t like what the carparazzi revealed, they’d buy a different model from a competitor. In Nellie’s mind, it all balanced out for each company’s profit and loss column.
She checked the speedometer. Ninety-five in a fifty-five. That would be a hefty ticket if a highway patrolman happened to be parked behind the stand of chokecherry trees ahead. If she was going to get the shot, it needed to be in the next seven miles. When they hit Camp Verde, the speed limit dropped to twenty-five and a clear shot would be nearly impossible amidst the townspeople, other cars and buildings.
“Go big or go home,” she said as she accelerated to one hundred.

The prototype’s bumper was so close she could see the seams of the boxy hatchback. It was fake, another common trick of the manufacturers: add falsies to make the proto look like a different model or different brand. Normally she wouldn’t chase a car to get a shot. It was too dangerous. But as she’d followed the vehicle, the diaper, the trade name for a back camouflage, had fallen off, exposing some interesting taillights that looked like fins. It was too tempting not to pursue.

And she loved to drive fast. Her Jeep’s soft top had long ago been discarded after someone sliced it to ribbons. She assumed the vandal was an automotive engineer, angry that she’d exposed a model before it hit production. The vandal had done her a favor. She’d never known such freedom until she sailed down the road without the confines of a roof and windows.

Finally in position, she readied her camera around the windshield. This was the most suspenseful moment of the chase. The hot August wind blasted in her face. The desert landscape rushed past her. She held the camera and steered the Jeep with her knee, ignoring the pain in her back. It was a tricky and dangerous thrill ride not found in any amusement park.

There was a rumble and the prototype pulled away. She clicked madly, swearing all the while. She knew the photos would be fuzzy at best. She shook her head. She should’ve guessed a sports coupe would be designed for power.
“That’s certainly impressive pickup,” she said dejectedly.

She slowed to a legal speed and smacked the steering wheel. She hated missing the shot, but the first rule of spying was to know when to call it a day. She wondered if she’d get another chance to photograph the prototype. She’d heard through her sources that Toyota wanted a showstopper in next year’s line, and the car leaving her in the dust would certainly qualify. Perhaps there would be a need for more hot weather endurance tests, and the prototype would brave the sweltering August sun again before it returned to the proving ground in little Wittman, Arizona, the place Nellie called home.

She winced and shifted painfully in the Jeep’s custom-made bucket seat. She’d avoided back surgery despite an MRI that indicated two vertebrae needed to be fused together. At forty-eight, the last thing she wanted to do was go under the knife. Instead she’d had a friend who worked on Lamborghinis make special seats for her Jeep. The lumbar support guaranteed she’d be able to walk after a five-hour drive to Palm Springs or Nevada, two of the other hot weather testing sites.

Up ahead she noticed the prototype had also decelerated. She sighed and made a plan for the rest of her day. She’d stop at the Verde Brewing Company for lunch, and then she’d traverse the length of Maricopa County to a press conference in Mesa. The old proving ground formerly owned by Chrysler had been sold to the French carmaker, Argent. Nellie had a short but colorful history with Argent and its strong-arm security team. She wondered if they knew Phoenix was her home. In the space of a year it was customary for her to travel throughout the world to get the money shots. Another proving ground in the immediate area would afford her some easy money without the airfare and hotel bills.

Far ahead the prototype was a mere dot against the expansive desert landscape. Suddenly a helicopter appeared from behind the neighboring mountains and set down in the brush, its nose pointed toward the highway. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought it had landed in front of the car and was waiting for it to pass.

“Okay, this is interesting.” She gunned the engine and reached for her binoculars. “C’mon, c’mon,” she mumbled as the road dipped and her long-range view momentarily disappeared. The road leveled out again and she raised the binoculars for a quick look. The prototype had pulled off the road. The driver exited the car and headed across the highway, probably concerned that something was wrong. He suddenly stopped on the blacktop and ran back to the prototype. He sped away just as Nellie pulled up.

Sitting next to the pilot was a woman with a camera. Her head was down and she was studying the images through the viewfinder, oblivious to Nellie’s arrival amidst the noise from the swirling blades of the chopper. “Shit,” Nellie said with a scowl.

It was Jos Grant, a newbie member of the carparazzi who also worked as a photographer for a trade rag. She tended to stay in the Arizona area, unlike Nellie who’d hop on a plane and fly halfway around the world at a moment’s notice. They’d never been formally introduced, and she’d only seen her from a distance at some of the carparazzi hangouts, like the Circle K in Wittman. She was certainly a looker, but Nellie had never seen her as serious competition since she refused to travel.

Only when the pilot tapped Jos’s shoulder and pointed did she glance up and see Nellie in her Jeep. Surprise quickly shifted to amusement when Nellie held up her camera and smiled. Jos laughed and pointed at her own camera, almost sheepishly. Hers was a Nikon 8008 with a large zoom, probably a five hundred millimeter mirror lens. Not a bad choice for a beginner. Nellie heard she was around thirty-five, but from her looks she probably got carded every time she bought alcohol. She wore a pink tank top and white walking shorts that made her skin look coppery from exposure to the sun. Her blond hair was pulled back in a tight bun. She looked like she was ready for a set of tennis, not a ride in a helicopter.

Many of the other auto spies would be gloating and puffing up their chests at staging such a coup. But Jos adopted a look of concern and pointed at her own camera and then at Nellie, as if to say, “Did you get a good shot?”

Nellie shook her head, and Jos mouthed, “I’m sorry.”

Nellie waved her off and pointed at the chopper’s blades before offering thumbs-up. It was a great idea and it proved she’d done her homework. She knew the car would be too fast to tail, so she’d found faster transportation. Today it was Jos who deserved the money shot.

Jos replied to Nellie’s thumbs-up with a smile that, despite the August heat, warmed Nellie in a very different way. If they’d been somewhere else, like a bar or a coffeehouse, Nellie would’ve attempted conversation and turned on her charm. But they were pantomiming across a state highway while a male helicopter pilot watched. Clearly not meant to be.

She set her camera on the passenger’s seat and grabbed her shades from the visor. Although the possibility of a money shot was gone, she’d look cool as she drove away. She turned to wave goodbye, but Jos was bounding toward her. Nellie immediately noticed her long, muscular legs and the freshly pressed shorts with their razor-sharp crease. Nellie couldn’t picture her crawling across the desert floor to hide from engineers, at least not in those clothes.

Jos held out her business card. “I’m Jos. Jos Grant. I thought we should at least know each other’s name since there aren’t many women who do this—at least I haven’t met them.”

“Nellie Rafferty. Um, hold on. I know I have a card in here...” She scanned the console, tossing aside gum wrappers and old receipts.

“You don’t need to find it. I know who you are.”

Surprised, Nellie dropped the collection of trash. “Oh, really? And how is it that we haven’t met before?” she said seductively. She leaned out the window, invading Jos’s personal space. A hint of lavender surrounded her.
Jos didn’t move or flinch. “Actually, we’ve sorta met. You cut me off on I-17 a few months ago when that Volvo go-out team headed to downtown Phoenix.”

Nellie attempted to look penitent. “Sorry, I cut off a lot of people to get the shot.” It was true. She remembered the morning. She’d waited for a week for the car to leave the proving ground. There was a lot of traffic, and Volvo had surrounded their new model of the xc90 with other cars to keep the carparazzi away. It hadn’t worked. She’d been determined and Car and Driver magazine had been happy to give her a payday.

“I’m still a rookie. I haven’t developed your cutthroat tactics,” Jos said with a wink and a smile.

Nellie gasped. “Me?” She threw her chin in the direction of the chopper. “That certainly wasn’t a rookie move. That was brilliant. Wish I’d thought of it.”

Jos blushed and leaned against the Jeep. She gazed at the twin storage lockers behind the seats. “Wow. You’ve totally customized this baby. Look at all that room for your gear.”

She smiled broadly, showing the dimples on her cheeks. Nellie’s gaze strayed from Jos’s light blue eyes to the crease between her large breasts. A bead of sweat had trickled from her neck downward past the scoop of the tank top. She suddenly yearned to see its destination. She blinked, realizing she hadn’t responded to Jos’s statement. “Yeah, they’re bulletproof, hammer proof, you name it. My stuff fits and I still get great power. But it’s not as fast as a helicopter,” she added.

“He’s a friend.” Jos nodded over her shoulder at the pilot, who was tapping his wrist. She held up her index finger and turned back to Nellie. “I know we’re competitors, but I’d really like to talk to you sometime since we’re both based in Arizona. Are you on social media?” Before Nellie could answer, Jos’s cell phone rang. “Hold on a sec,” she said, pulling the phone from her pocket. “What is it, honey?”

Nellie leaned forward. She wanted to know who Jos was calling “honey.” Boyfriend? Girlfriend? Jos listened for another ten seconds and said, “No, you tell Grandma that cookies are not lunch, even if they have oatmeal in them.”

Her child. She glanced at Nellie and mouthed, “Sorry.”

Nellie shrugged, as if this happened all the time.

“Bridget, I don’t have time to argue. I’ve got a helicopter waiting for me. Cookies are not for lunch, not even if they’re stuffed with broccoli, blueberries and all the other super foods. Even if you’ve done an ingredient analysis. Are we clear?”

Nellie couldn’t help but chuckle as Jos signed off. “Ingredient analysis?”

Jos shook her head. “I’m sorry. My daughter has learned persuasive arguments need evidence.”

“How old is she?” Nellie asked, impressed.

“Nine.” Jos glanced at the helicopter and folded her hands as if begging. The pilot waved her off and she turned back to Nellie. “We were talking about social media.”

“Uh, yeah. I don’t do a lot with it.”

“Well, maybe we could work an exchange. I’ll show you how to make social media your friend and moneymaker, and you can give me some tips on using my camera. I’m still not great with the action shots and choosing the best settings. I’ll be lucky if one of these pictures turns out.”

“Hmm. That would be a shame. Uh, sure, we could get together.” Nellie tried to sound enthusiastic, but learning how to use Facebook wasn’t what she wanted to do with a woman like Jos.

“Great,” Jos said. “Now that you have my card, feel free to call.”

Nellie watched her return to the chopper. The back pockets of her shorts shifted left and right with the gentle sway of her hips. Nice ass. Great legs. As she stepped into the cabin, Nellie got a profile view of her chest. Tank tops were definitely an excellent wardrobe choice.