“She
what?
”
“She’s one of the popular girls, Dad, and she’s a total you-know-what. She’s always making snide comments about my clothes, my shoes, my hair—”
“What’s her name again?”
“Dad, it’s no big deal. I’ve gotten used to it. But I can’t wait until you have your first autograph session. I’m going to make sure she knows about it.”
“Lindsey, I may not be able to convince Becca to hire me.”
“You’ll do it.”
“And why didn’t you tell me about that girl before?”
“I don’t know,” Lindsey said. “Stuff like that happens all the time, so I hardly notice it anymore. But getting back to you and Becca, all you have to do is talk to her. She’ll realize she’s made a mistake when Blain and Cece offer to hire you.”
“They haven’t done that.”
“Bet you they will.”
“I don’t know. But I guess we’ll see.”
Lindsey stared up at her dad, noting the worry in his eyes. “Talk to her,” she said.
“Not today. Let me wait a day or two.”
Why did she have a feeling it’d be longer than that? “You promise?”
“I promise.”
Good, because if he didn’t talk to Becca,
she
would. And if that didn’t work she’d do something else.
She just didn’t know what.
SHE RODE HOME with the truck driver.
Becca knew it was the coward’s way out, but when it came time to leave she just couldn’t face Adam.
Or Lindsey.
Neil, one of her big rig drivers, wasn’t the talkative type, which was good. She had a lot to think about on her way home.
She had to hire him.
She knew that. Cripes, she hadn’t gotten as far as she had in this business without making sound business decisions. And the truth of the matter was she needed to find
someone
to drive her race truck. Her financial situation had gotten dire, so much so that she was thinking about putting feelers out for an investor. She didn’t really want a partner, but she’d do whatever was necessary to keep her team.
When they got back to the shop she headed immediately for her car in its private parking spot near the back of the shop.
Adam was sitting by the curb waiting for her.
“We need to talk,” he said, the light fixtures overhead making him look pale. Her, too, probably.
“Where’s Lindsey?”
“Inside,” he said, motioning with his chin toward the shop. “The guys who stuck around to unload the haulers are keeping an eye on her.”
She nodded, fishing her keys out of her purse at the same time she asked, “What’s up?”
“You know what’s up.”
She met his gaze, her keys jingling as she pressed the unlock button. “I told you what the deal is, Adam.”
“Did you? I didn’t hear any deal. All I heard was that you didn’t want to hire me.”
That was how it’d come out sounding. And to be honest, at the time she’d meant the words. “I was wrong,” she admitted, shaking her head. Her face felt burnt from her long day in the sun, and she was exhausted, both physically and emotionally.
“Does that mean you’ve changed your mind?”
She looked him in the eye. “I’ll let you drive for me, Adam—on one condition.”
“Name it.”
“We can’t cross the line.”
“What line?”
“You know very well what line I’m talking about.”
“Maybe I don’t. Maybe you should explain it to me just so we’re absolutely clear.”
Maybe she should. “We can’t be friends. We can’t…”
Kiss.
“Socialize,” she ended up saying. “We can’t be seen together. We have to keep things on a professional level.”
“I see.”
“Do you?” she asked. “Do you really, Adam? Because this is nonnegotiable.”
“I understand,” he repeated, crossing his arms in front of him. He wore the same polo shirt he’d had on earlier, his big shoulders looking twice as wide all of a sudden.
Maybe that was because she wanted to lean on them.
“Then you agree to my terms?”
“I agree.”
“Good. When you get your things in order, give me a call. I’ll get Sylvia started on finding you an apartment.”
“Fine.”
She opened her car door.
He was there at her car door before she could stop him.
“What is it?”
“I just wanted to say thank you again,” he said, resting his hands across the top of the door frame.
“You’re welcome.”
“Lindsey will be thrilled.”
“I’m sure she will be.”
“You won’t regret your decision,” he added.
“I hope not,” she said with a flick of her head. Adam watched her drive away, and if Becca had looked back at that moment she might have rethought her decision.
“We’ll see about your ‘rules,’Becca Newman,” he muttered as she drove off. “We’ll just have to wait and see.”
PART TWO
The tragedy is not that love doesn’t last.
The tragedy is the love that lasts.
—Shirley Hazzard
One Guy And A Precocious Baby
By: Rick Stevenson, Sports Editor
Sometimes there’s truth to the rumors you hear, and sometimes there’re ten-year-old girls who aren’t afraid to tell it like it is.
Most of you have no doubt heard the stories swirling around Newman Motorsports’s newly hired driver, Adam Drake. I don’t think there’s a Web page anywhere on the Net that didn’t post at least a sentence or two about Carl Kennison’s recent allegations. Most of us dismissed the tale as sour grapes—his son didn’t win
The Variety Show,
but there was quite a buzz about the matter, especially when Kennison refused to let the matter drop and Becca Newman refused to comment. For the most part, I ignored the story—until Drake’s ten-year-old daughter called my radio show last week.
I don’t usually publish stories told by children, but this one’s too good to keep under wraps. Plus I was able to verify most of what the daughter told me, and after the response from my listeners, I don’t think I have any choice
but
to write about it.
So here goes. Let me start with some backstory. Seems Lindsey Drake’s responsible for her dad getting his shot at the big league. She personally rode down to North Carolina—on a Greyhound bus, and without her dad’s knowledge—and begged Rebecca Newman to give her dad a look. Becca Newman did, and Adam Drake blew the doors off the competition.
As far as the allegations of a romantic entanglement between driver and owner, Lindsey Drake denies them. She said her dad has never, not once, kissed Becca Newman. That’s not to say Adam Drake’s daughter wouldn’t like Becca Newman and her father to start dating. Ms. Drake thinks Ms. Newman is “totally awesome.” She also told me that she’s pretty certain her dad thinks she’s “totally hot.” Given the fact that lots of men around the country also think Ms. Newman is “totally hot” (present company included), I can’t really fault the guy for that.
But now that the rumors have been laid to rest, a question comes to mind:
Does Rebecca Newman think Adam Drake is “totally hot,” and if so, what is she going to do about it?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“LINDSEY SAMANTHA DRAKE! Get out here
now.
” Adam yelled, his arms crossed as his daughter emerged form her room.
“Yeah, Dad,” she said sleepily, wiping at her eyes.
He stood in the doorway of their tiny kitchen, a multitude of boxes filled with appliances, utensils and cookware sitting at his feet. He was half tempted to find the box with the spatula, bend her over his knee and give her a good spanking—except he’d never spanked her in his life and so she’d see right through his threat.
“I just got off the phone with KYZX channel 21,” he said.
“Really?” she said, still blinking up at him.
“Guess what they wanted to talk to me about?”
“What?”
“You know.”
And there it was, just a glimmer of discomfort. “I know what?”
“It appears one of the reporters at the station heard your call in to
NASCAR Live!
”
And now she winced, her hand falling back to her side. But he had to give her credit. She recovered quickly, her freckled face stretching into a grin so wide she would give a slice of watermelon a run for its money.
“They heard me? Really?”
At least she didn’t deny it. “They heard you,” he said, and the look he gave her should have had that smile fading—only it didn’t. That was the thing about his daughter. Even when she’d done something outrageous—like call into a national radio show and tell the world about how he came to be employed by Becca Newman—she always brazened things out, making it seem as if she’d done nothing wrong. He admired that about her even when it made him want to throttle her.
“Wow, Dad. That’s wild. I didn’t expect anyone local to hear.”
“Really?” he asked, arms still crossed. “And what did you think? That nobody in Kentucky had radios?”
“No,” she said, shrugging. “I just didn’t think about it, I guess. It’s kind of weird, actually. I mean, what are the odds that someone from our own hometown would be listening to
NASCAR Live!
at the same time I was on—”
“Lindsey!” Adam snapped. “Rick Stevenson wrote a piece about it. The column’s in this morning’s paper.”
“So?”
“So,” he repeated, flabbergasted. “The media’s going to be all over this and I’m not so certain Becca Newman wanted the story out.”
The phone rang again.
“That’s probably another damn reporter wanting to know if I really
do
think Becca Newman is ‘totally hot.’”
At last she looked a bit cowed. Well, at least as cowed as his daughter
could
look, which was to say her smile faded, but only a bit.
“Aren’t you going to get that?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m half-afraid it’s
her.
What do you think she’ll say when she hears what you’ve been up to?”
“She should be happy. I was setting the record straight. That Carl Kennison was all over the place talking about how you slept with Becca to get your job. That’s wrong. You didn’t sleep with her.” Her eyebrows squished together. “Did you?”
“No!” he shot back, exasperated.
“See. So he’s a bald-faced liar. I couldn’t let him get away with that. So I called the show.”
“And told the world that Carl Kennison is a ‘butthead.’”
“He
is
a butthead.”
The answering machine kicked on, Drake listening to his daughter’s innocent voice asking people to leave a message.
Innocent. Right.
“Hello, Mr. Drake,” said a sexy feminine voice. “This is Christy Lawson from
We
magazine. We’re doing a story on employees attracted to their bosses and wondered if you’d be interested in giving us a quote.”
“I don’t believe it,” Adam said, turning to the answering machine and dialing the volume down as low as it would go, but they could still hear her—like a tiny little person was captured inside the phone. He shook his head and faced his daughter again. “Not only does Rick Stevenson have a radio show, but he’s also a stringer. His columns appear in newspapers nationwide. There’s no telling what you’ve unleashed.”
“Da-ad. All I was doing was setting the record straight.”
“That’s not the point and you know it.”
“It’s not?”
“You shouldn’t have done it, Lin. I might get fired. Again.”
“Becca wouldn’t do that,” Lindsey said. “She likes you too much.”
Okay, that did it. He couldn’t let her go on living in a fantasy world. “Lindsey, there’s nothing between Becca Newman and I.”
“There is. You almost kissed her.”
“Once.”
“And she was about to let you.”
“We don’t know that for sure.”
“The point is she didn’t pull away.”
He sighed in exasperation before saying, “Look,” and swiping a hand through his hair. “My attempt at kissing Becca was a mistake, one I won’t repeat, and so there is nothing between us. You can stop your matchmaking machinations right now.”
“Matchmaking? I’m not doing that. And what’s a machination?”
He gave her a long look. “It means you’re trying to manipulate someone.”
“Oh,” she said, starting to look uncomfortable.
The phone rang again. They both dropped into silence, Adam even leaning forward to hear who it might be. Yes, even after he’d turned the damn volume down, some perverse part of him wanted to hear who it was. A few seconds later he had their answer.