Authors: Katherine Garbera
JARED WAS STARTING to really dislike the men in Annie’s family. They were loud and extremely large in numbers and totally shutting him down. Jared told himself it didn’t matter to him if the Jenner men liked him, but he knew that was a lie.
Though Annie thought he was keeping her at arm’s length, he wasn’t. He watched her with her cousins, laughing and talking, and he wanted…wanted to be the one next to her.
Annie moved around the fringes of her family gathering, snapping pictures of every event and every person. She talked and laughed with her family. But it didn’t take Jared long to realize that she was avoiding him. The tension that had developed in the car just as they’d arrived hung over them like a storm cloud.
She brought that Nikon up to her eye, shooting pictures of him. He wondered what she saw through the lens of her camera. He tried to relax but was too conscious of the fact that she might not find what she hoped to in his face.
He waved her over to him, crooking one finger at her. The camera dropped and she put her hands on her hips as she approached. “Tell me you didn’t just do that.”
“Hey, it worked,” he said. “What do you see through the lens of your camera?”
“I don’t know that I can really explain it,” she said. “The camera doesn’t lie so I think I’m looking for truth.”
Truth, he thought. “What do you see when you photograph me?”
She tipped her head to the side and he caught a glimpse of that vulnerability that she did a good job of hiding. “I’m not sure yet. That’s why I keep shooting, hoping I can find some answers.”
She leaned forward, resting her cheek against his chest. Her arms snaked around his waist. For a moment it didn’t matter what she was searching for when she looked at him. It didn’t matter if she didn’t find it or if he didn’t have it in him to be what she needed.
There was a peace in the moment, and in each other’s arms, that he wanted to let envelope them forever.
“Hey, lovebirds, enough of that,” Dave said, coming over to them.
They stepped apart.
“So, MacNeil, are you one of those office types who only works out in a gym?”
“No,” he said, not sure where Dave was going with this.
“Wanna join the boys for a game of touch football?” Dave asked.
Jared had a really bad feeling about this. But he wasn’t one to back down from a challenge. And a challenge had been definitely issued.
“Uh…Dave, we’re not really planning to stay that late,” Annie said.
“Can’t take too much of our family?” Dave asked.
“Not at all,” Jared replied. “I’m good for a game. Whose team am I on?”
“You can be on mine,” Alan said, as he joined them.
“You don’t have to do this,” Annie stated, as Dave and Alan moved off to gather more players for their game.
“I think I do.”
“Dave and Alan may have said
touch
football but the game always gets rough,” Annie said. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“That’s sweet but I’m sure I can hold my own unless they are going to cheat.”
“They won’t cheat but they consider
touch
to include knocking the other player to the ground.”
“I’m good, Annie. I played rugby at prep school and in college. I still play a couple of times a year when my schedule allows.”
Jared joined the men on the field. The game was as rough as Annie had promised it would be. Jared took a tackle from Dave and then got one of his own in on the next possession changeover. They played for almost two hours and his team won.
“You’re a good player,” Alan said, passing him a cold beer.
“You are, too,” Jared said, taking a long swallow of the cold beverage.
“If you’re serious about Annie”
“Do you honestly think I’d play a game like that if I wasn’t?”
“I guess you have a point. But you better remember that we were playing
touch
out there. You mess with Annie and we’ll really kick your butt.”
Alan walked away and Jared rubbed the back of his neck. The Jenners didn’t make it easy for him. But then he didn’t back down from challenges. And he didn’t need to be best buds with the men in her family.
“Jared, come on over here and join us.” Carol Jenner waved him over to the picnic table, where she sat with a cluster of Annie’s female relatives.
He sat next to Carol and Annie joined them a few minutes later, sitting on his other side. When Dave and Alan tried to sit down, the women closed the other men out. It was the second time that Carol had made him feel welcome and he tried not to read too much into it, but it had been a long time since any one had tried to mother him.
It touched him more deeply than he’d expected and he had to excuse himself. Had to get away from the welcome that he felt at that picnic table. Annie followed him into the house.
“What’s the matter?”
“I just remembered something that I need to do back at the track. Do you mind if I take your car?”
Annie frowned at him. “I’ll go with you. Let me say goodbye to my parents.”
“I’ll wait out front.”
He walked out of the house, aware that she was watching him leave, and he knew that if she’d had a camera in her hands she’d capture an image that would show her a man who came up lacking.
ANNIE DIDN’T SAY anything on the drive back to Daytona. She wasn’t sure what had happened back at the picnic table, but later, as he parked her car at the condo in Daytona and he still hadn’t said anything, she realized he was going to pretend everything was normal. Even though it was clear to her he was disturbed by something. Had her brother finally convinced him that she wasn’t worth the effort?
“Did you have fun today?” she asked.
“Yes. Thanks for inviting me,” he said.
“You’re welcome.”
She studied his profile in the setting sun. The play of light would illuminate his skin too much if she took a picture and he would look washed out, but the shadows it created would be interesting. She reached between the bucket seats for her camera bag, thinking that she might be able to capture him half in shadow and half out.
Hidden behind the facade of the man she knew was another man. The one she could never reach.
“No pictures,” he said quietly.
“Why not?”
“You hide behind the lens.”
She did. Annie knew it and was a little surprised to realize she’d let him see her enough to know it, too. “You’re right, but just now I wasn’t hiding. I wanted to capture something elusive about you. I can’t ever get the exact picture I want.”
“I’m not sure that there’s anything more to me than what you see.”
She heard a note of something in his voice. She couldn’t really assign it any emotion because it wasn’t like that. But she knew he was trying to tell her something without coming right out and saying the words. “I’m sure there is.”
He pinned her with his hard, cold stare. “I don’t want you to be disappointed, Annie. I promise not to hurt you.”
“And you think if I don’t find what I’m looking for, I’ll be hurt?”
“You might make the mistake of thinking that because I can’t express what I feel for you, you’ll assume that I don’t feel anything,” he said, then cursed under his breath. “Damn, I don’t want to have this conversation in the car.”
“What conversation?”
“One about our relationship.” She felt as if they were getting to the heart of why he wanted to leave Uncle Steve’s house so abruptly.
“Let’s go inside,” she said.
They both went into the condo and Jared paced around the living room.
“What happened there?”
“Nothing important,” he said, keeping his eyes on the carpet in front of him.
“Jared, don’t shut me out,” she said.
JARED WAS TEMPTED to not only shut her out but to walk out of this condo and never stop. To keep moving so that he wouldn’t have to admit to the emotions roiling through him. A part of him wondered what she’d do if he laid the truth on the line. If he told her that he’d been alone for too long and that the closest he’d found to a home was in her arms.
But he wasn’t ready to be that weak in front of her. To give her power over the relationship and the direction it was taking. This afternoon when he’d watched her with her family he felt a keen longing for something more from this woman.
Normally he was able to keep himself from caring too deeply in a relationship.
“Do you want me to go?” he asked.
“Do you want to?” she asked him.
“No.” He searched for the right words, for something to say that would explain what he meant without revealing too much, but he came up empty.
“I’m just not sure where we’re heading from here. I’m not good at long-term, but everything about you makes me want to give that a try.”
“That doesn’t sound bad. I think you know I feel the same way,” she said.
He rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“That sounds so lame. You know that, right? It’s like a cop-out that you use when you don’t want to have to admit that
you
might be the one who gets hurt.”
Her words were like a punch in the gut. Not because they were harsh but because they were true.
“I guess you’re right. I’m not…hell, I can’t do this.”
She walked over to him and he was struck again by how beautiful she was. How the emotions in her dark brown eyes never failed to get to him and shake him to his core.
“I’m not going to let this go. A few times we’ve come close, with both of us admitting more than either of us is comfortable with.”
He rubbed his neck again, then realized what he was doing and dropped his hands. He shoved them into his pockets and hoped he looked cool and collected even though inside he was shattering. “Why don’t you go first?”
She shook her head and he thought that this was going to be how their relationship ended. Both of them standing next to each other but afraid to reach out and take what they wanted.
And suddenly he was pissed off at himself and at her. At the life he’d always lived that hadn’t really prepared him to keep her.
“I want you. But I’ve never kept a relationship alive.”
She exhaled a long breath that sounded like a sigh. “I want you the same way. I’ve had lots of relationships…my problem is holding on way past the time to let go.”
“I haven’t noticed that.”
“Trust me.”
“Your marriage?”
“Yeah. All the signs were there that it was over but I didn’t want to admit I’d made a mistake.”
“I can understand that. I’m kind of stubborn about things.”
“You think?”
“I’m not sure where we are going from here, but I’m willing to try to make this work.”
“I’m going to want you to open up more about what you’re feeling,” she said.
He hated that. What if she realized that he was empty inside?
“WANT TO GRAB some lunch?” Jared asked after the stock cars came back in from their test laps. He’d only managed to see Annie for about ten minutes earlier in the day. But she’d had her camera and was heading into Dave’s garage.
“Sure. You want to go to the infield cafeteria or drive into Daytona to find something to eat?” she asked.
“Neither. I asked our chef to prepare a special lunch for us that we can enjoy in my motor home.”
It was the first time he’d invited her there and he hoped she’d see as him opening up a little more.
“Okay.”
All of the team owners and drivers had motor homes in the designated lot for the different race tracks.
She followed him through the rows of motor homes to a cream-colored Prevost Vantare with black-and-gray striping on it. He unlocked the door and held it open for her.
“Welcome to my home away from home,” he said.
She climbed up into the recreational vehicle. A large plasma television dominated the front of the coach. There were a pair of long couches, tables and two large chairs that looked comfortable in the main sitting area.
She took a seat on one of the leather couches. “Where do you consider home, Jared? I know you own a lot of houses and have places all over the country, but do you have one place that you can always relax at?”
He didn’t. Places had never been that important to him. His family owned a lot of properties around the world and he’d grown up used to a very transient way of life. Similar, he thought, to Annie’s childhood, when she traveled with her dad each weekend as he raced.
“Not really,” he said, easily admitting to the emptiness in his life.
“Why not?”
“Most of the houses I own have been in my family for generations and when I go there I…” God, was he really going to tell her?
“What, Jared?” she asked, pushing to her feet and coming over to him.
“I realize how alone I really am. My family isn’t large like yours. I have a few third cousins somewhere but we’re not close.”
“You miss your parents,” she said.
More than he wanted her to know. They’d died when he’d been just trying to figure out how to stand on his own, how to get out of the large shadow his dad cast, and their deaths had left a void.
“Yeah, but I didn’t invite you to lunch to talk about them.”
“Why did you invite me to lunch then?”
“Something you said the other day about building a real relationship…at the track we’re both careful to stick to our own drivers’ areas, but we can’t keep our lives apart.”
“NASCAR is a part of both of our lives,” she said.
NASCAR was the closest thing he had to a family. Tucker was like a brother to him. “Yes, it is. And your family is a huge part of NASCAR.”
“Is that a problem?” she asked.
“Well, it’d be a lot easier on me if the men in your family would back off.”
“Don’t let them scare you off, Jared.”
“I won’t.”
“Promise?” she asked. “Ah, forget I said that. What’s for lunch?”
“I’m not forgetting that. I do promise that your family won’t scare me off.”
She tipped her head to the side, studying him.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
She shook her head.
“No more secrets, remember? You want me to bare my soul then you have to step up, too.”
She stepped back to the couch. “One of the things that broke up my marriage was that we lived separate lives so far apart from my family. I had no support network….”
“I don’t want that for us,” he said. “I’m not promising smooth sailing, but I want this lunch today to be the start of something new.”
She smiled up at him and all of the emotional confession stuff was worth it. He only hoped that he could keep doing it, because he was sweating and he didn’t like the way he felt at this moment. Didn’t want to give her the chance to realize how much she was coming to mean to him.