“Dad. Can’t you talk to her after the Cup race today? It seems kind of silly to just pack up and leave.”
He gave her The Look, the one he gave her when he preferred she keep her opinions to herself.
“We’re going home,” he said flatly. “Now.”
“Okay, okay,” she said, holding up her hands. “Just let me go inside and get my stuff.”
“What stuff?” he asked. “Or did you pack a bag I don’t know about before inviting yourself to stay with the Sanderses?”
“Actually, Cece went to their souvenir rig last night and got me a shirt to sleep in. It says ‘Lance Cooper’ on it and it’s really cool,” Lindsey said, trying to remain upbeat when inside her mind was going a hundred miles an hour.
“Ask her how much it cost and I’ll reimburse her.”
“Okay, sure,” she said, knowing better than to argue with him. “I’ll be right back.”
She ducked back inside the swanky motorcoach that Blain and Cece stayed in while at a track. The couple was already up, their three-year-old son having woken them earlier than Lindsey would have believed possible. The kid obviously didn’t need sleep.
“What’d he say?” Cece asked where she sat on the floor, a rainbow-colored array of Mega Bloks spread out around her. Cece’s son had a whole row of the things plugged together, the little boy taking great delight in snapping them in place and then beating the things apart.
Boys.
“He said we’re going home.”
“Going home?” Cece repeated, scooting up from the floor.
“They had a fight.”
“Is that what he told you?” Cece asked, her long blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. She didn’t look like the glamorous co-owner of Sanders Racing Lindsey was used to seeing on TV. That was the weird thing about all the people she’d met. They were all so down to earth and so…nice.
“Are you kidding? If my dad won the national lottery, he wouldn’t tell me until the day he went to collect the check. That’s the way he is. But I can tell something happened. He’s as surly as a herd of monkeys with missing bananas.”
“Darn it,” Cece said, turning and then pacing the family room floor—if one wanted to call the area near the front of the bus where the two slide outs expanded a “family room.” “I can’t believe it.”
“
You
can’t believe it? What does this say about my dad’s skills as a boyfriend?”
Cece spun toward her, mouth open. She looked like a woman who’d just been licked on the tongue by a dog. But then she put her hands on her hips. “Lindsey Samantha Drake. I can’t believe you just said that.”
Why did everybody call her by her three names?
Why?
“Me? You’re the one that said they were in for a night of drunken debauchery.”
“I did not say ‘drunken.’ I said ‘wild.’ And I can’t believe you heard that.”
“I heard it.”
“Brother,” Cece mumbled, her gaze moving away. But her face lit up a second later when she spied something on the kitchen counter. A cell phone, Lindsey noticed. One with NEXTEL written in yellow letters across the front.
“911,” she cried into the phone’s receiver after pressing the direct connect button. “911.911.911.”
What? Cece Sanders was calling 911 over this? Was she psycho?
“Cece, what is it?” Blain asked after a loud chirp, his voice sounding panicked. “Is it Randy?”
Oh. That explained that.
“No. Randy’s fine,” she said with a glance at the toddler who still snapped blocks together only to swing them like a bat and break them apart. “It’s that darn Becca Sanders that has something wrong with her.”
And Lindsey could hear the way Blain’s voice had relaxed when next he spoke. “What’d she do now?”
“She fired Adam.”
“She
what?
”
“What?” Randy echoed, looking up at his mother. He reached out his tiny hands, saying, “Talk. Daddy?”
Cece shook her head, “In a minute, BamBam. Let Mommy talk first.”
“Bam. Bam,” their son said, picking up blocks and tossing them at the floor.
Cece just rolled her eyes. “I need you to come here for a second,” she told her husband after her son had stopped yelling.
“Why?” Blain asked.
“Because we’re going to offer Adam Drake a job.”
“Yes!” Lindsey cried, bouncing up and down on her toes and causing Randy to glance up at her curiously, his big blue eyes wide. “Yes, yes, yes,” she said to him with a big smile.
“Yes,” Randy echoed back.
“ABSOLUTELY NOT,” Adam said when Cece invited him in a few minutes later.
“But, Da-ad. What are we going to do? Go back to Kentucky?”
“Did she put you up to this?” Adam asked Cece. He’d been surprised when the team owner had invited him in only minutes after Lindsey had gone in to fetch her stuff. He’d thought she was being polite, but now he could see they had ulterior motives.
Women.
“Actually, it was my idea,” Cece said. “I’m the official owner of our truck team and so it’s my decision as to who I hire.”
“Yeah, but what about your current driver?”
“We have a lot of drivers in our development program, including Sam Kennison.”
Adam winced at the mention of that name.
“One more driver isn’t going to hurt us. In fact, we would love to have you since you came in first at the time trials.”
“What do you think Carl Kennison’s going to say if you bring me in to drive for you?”
“What Sam’s father thinks is immaterial.”
It’ll be material when we’re out on the track,
Adam thought. “Look, I appreciate the offer, but I don’t think it’d be a good—”
“It would piss off Becca,” Blain interrupted from the doorway.
All three of them turned toward the door, Randy abandoning his blocks and screaming, “Daddy!”
Blain scooped his son up while he was still standing on the bottom level of the motorcoach’s steps, his little boy delighted to be at almost eye-level with his dad.
“I play blocks,” he told his dad.
“I see that,” Blain said with a grimace at the mayhem on the floor.
“Mr. Sanders, look—”
“Blain,” he quickly corrected.
“Blain,” Adam said, a part of him still finding it hard to believe he was on a first-name basis with Blain Sanders.
The
Blain Sanders. “I really appreciate the offer your wife made, but I think it’s a bad idea.”
Lindsey let out a huff of exasperation. “So you’re really going to move us back to Kentucky?”
“I don’t know what we’re going to do, but I’ll find something. Maybe wrench for one of the teams. I just think it’s best if I stay away from the track.”
And Becca.
“So that’s it?” Cece asked. “You’re just going to give up. Like that?” she snapped her fingers.
Adam almost smiled. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been chasing her all over Mooresville. I think maybe she needs more space.”
“Space is what we’ve been giving her for years. She doesn’t need any more space,” Cece said. “She needs a man.”
“Dad, you can’t say no to driving. You just can’t. You’re
good
at this. And I don’t care how much space you think you should give Becca, or how much I like her, I think it’s silly of you to let her interfere with your driving career.”
“I have to admit,” Blain said, “I agree with your daughter.”
“Me, too,” Cece said. “You’re good, Adam. The way you raced last night only proved it. You were aggressive, and every owner in the garage applauded the way you took Jason out, not that they’d ever admit that to your face, and if you tell people I said that I’ll call you a liar. But the fact is we’re not the only one that’s going to offer you a job. And since I’ve taken such a shine to your daughter,” she said, pulling Lindsey close—his daughter making a funny face when Cece hugged her a little too tight, “I don’t think you have a choice in the matter. You’re driving for us and that’s that.”
Adam shook his head, but Blain said in a low voice. “You better give in right now. They won’t leave you alone until they get their way. They’re a mutant species. That’s why men used to keep them locked away in harems.”
But Adam didn’t laugh. He was already shaking his head. “I just don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“Give in, man,” Blain said. “It’s a conspiracy.”
“This is ridiculous,” Lindsey shouted, startling Randy, who hugged his dad tighter. “Sorry,” she said to the little boy. “Dad,” she said after turning to him, “this is our future we’re talking about here. Are you really going to let Becca Newman ruin that?”
You know, he really hated it when his daughter sounded like an adult. And she’d been doing that since she was five.
“I’ll think about it,” was all he said.
But she must have taken that as a yes because she bounced up on her toes, her face lighting up as she said, “Right on.”
Let’s All Be Silly
By Rick Stevenson, Sports Editor
Everyone knows how crazy it can get around a certain time of year. “Silly Season,” as they call it, usually means owners are swapping crew members like chess pieces on a game board, and drivers are suddenly backing out of contracts two years before said contract is up.
But I ain’t ever heard about no driver being fired the day after his first race.
Forgive my lapse in grammar there, folks. You can credit it to my absolute shock that Adam Drake, Newman Motorsports’s newest talent (and I do mean talent), has been released from his contract less than a month after being hired by Becca Newman, and this after a promising debut in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race this past Saturday.
The garage was abuzz on Sunday after Ms. Newman made the announcement—understandably so when you consider the rumors of a romantic entanglement between Ms. Newman and her newest driver—rumors I’ve heard are true. Yes, folks, more than one crew member has reported that the beautiful Ms. Newman is, shall we say, smitten with Adam Drake.
And so I ask myself, was Adam Drake fired because Becca Newman has been scorned? That would certainly add fuel to the fire that women make lousy race team owners—something I don’t personally believe. Or is it that Ms. Newman feels that employees should not become, er,
good friends,
which is what she proclaimed Mr. Drake to be…right before she informed the racing community that he’d been released from his contract.
I’ll have to admit, my money’s on the “woman scorned” theory, but I suppose only time will tell. In the meantime I’ll butter some popcorn, because this promises to be very interesting.
PART THREE
Woman inspires us to great things,
and prevents man from achieving them.
—Alexandre Dumas
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“DAMN IT,” Adam said, slamming down the phone for the tenth time.
“Daddy, you shouldn’t swear,” Lindsey said from her position on their new couch.
Adam glanced in her direction, squinting against the glare that sparked along the surface of Lake Norman. Their condo overlooked one of the popular coves, sailboats and motorboats anchored only a few hundred feet from his back window.
Boy, how things had changed.
“Don’t tell me not to swear,” he grumbled. “I’ll swear if I want to.”
Okay, so he’d sounded younger than Lindsey just then, but he didn’t care. Becca Newman was driving him nuts. Not only did she refuse to return his calls, but every time he dropped by the shop, she avoided him there, too. Heck, he’d even gone to her house, hoping to run her to ground like he had not so many weeks ago. No such luck. She must have seen his car in her driveway and driven right on past. Or hidden her car in the garage and not answered the door.
“There’s no need to act like a jerk,” Lindsey said, her homework spread out around her on the dark brown couch. “You’ll see Becca next weekend.”
“Not if she can help it,” Adam grumbled.
Lindsey shot him a quick glance, all but rolling her eyes. The faux-suede couch she sat on was new, thanks to the signing bonus he’d gotten from Cece Sanders when he’d agreed to drive for her.
“I would have never figured you for a quitter,” his daughter said.
“I’m not quitting.”
“You sure sound like it.”
He swiped his hand through his hair thinking you couldn’t
live
with women and you couldn’t keep them medicated so that they did things that made sense. What a messed up world.
He crossed over to the tinted glass that was supposed to keep sunlight from baking the insides of their living room. Didn’t help. Even though it was still fall, he had to keep the AC buzzing in the background to ward off the heat.
“You
are
going to try and see her at New Hampshire, aren’t you?” Lindsey asked.