“You shouldn’t be worrying about my personal life, Lindsey. You should be worrying about your homework,” he said.
“Dad, I’ve been worrying about your personal life for years. Nothing’s going to stop me from doing it now.”
He turned to face her, crossing his arms in front of him. “Your new teachers aren’t going to be happy with you if you fail your classes.”
“You totally don’t need to worry about me and my grades. And I’ve got hours and hours to finish my homework. But if you try calling Becca Newman one more time, I’m worried she’ll have you arrested for stalking. You should wait until this weekend.”
“Stalking? I’m not stalking.”
“Just about,” his daughter muttered. “So confront her at the track. All three NASCAR series will be there. She will be, too. You can hook up with her there. Lock her in a storage closet and lay a big ol’ wet one on her. That’ll get her to forgive you.”
“Lay a big ol’—” The sentence log-jammed in the back of his throat. “Just finish your homework, will you?”
“Whatever,” she said in a way that boded ill for his sanity through her teenage years.
Lay a big ol’wet one on her.
He felt like telling Lindsey he’d tried that back at the hotel. Becca had shut him out, just like she was doing now.
But his daughter was right about one thing. He would see Becca in New Hampshire and when he did, he wouldn’t let her slip away. Oh, no. Not this time.
SHE HID in the spotters’ stand, high atop the grandstands, in plain sight beneath a partly cloudy sky. It was the only place she could think of where she knew Adam wouldn’t look for her.
Other spotters stood around her, including her own. Brian kept peeking glances at her in between keeping an eye on her race truck. He wasn’t the only one. It wasn’t unheard of for an owner to traipse all the way up to the catbird seat, but it was unusual enough that everyone seemed uncomfortable with her around. It made her rethink her choice to hide there. But it only took one glance at the track to solidify her resolve. Adam was out there. And instead of watching her own race truck with its new driver behind the wheel—the third place winner at
The Variety Show
—she couldn’t keep her eyes off the green-and-white Sanders’ Racing truck.
This had to stop.
She was driving herself slowly crazy by thinking about him. Well, she was already halfway crazy, she admitted. She didn’t have far to go to make it all the way over the edge. But Adam might just put her there.
She turned away, the sound of the truck seeming to grumble as it made its way around the track behind her. A stiff breeze kept sweeping her hair across her face, the loose red strands starting to annoy her. Turning toward the exit, she waved goodbye to her spotter. He looked surprised that she was leaving, but that was to be expected. She had a new driver behind the wheel of her race truck and she really ought to keep an eye on him.
She told herself she could still hear Brian and John’s voices dropping into her ear from the headphones resting on her shoulders.
Tate Evans wasn’t as good a driver as Adam, she thought as she climbed down the narrow steps that led to a utility door, then through a narrow corridor and to the top-most level of the grandstands. The announcer’s booth was to her right, as was the media center, network production office and scoring stand, but she kept on walking, climbing the stairs to the upper level of the deserted grandstands. There she found a seat, leftover peanut shells crunching beneath her feet as she slid onto an aluminum bench. It was colder beneath the overhang of the suites above her, but Becca didn’t care. She wore a long black jacket that kept her warm and so she ducked down into it like a turtle beneath a shell as she blindly watched the trucks make circles around the track.
Adam looked good.
Stop it, she told herself. She shouldn’t care if he looked good or bad or otherwise. He didn’t drive for her anymore. And it was over between them.
Her new driver nearly wrecked, Becca noticed, wincing at the sound of his tires screeching across the asphalt. But he kept it out of the wall, thank God. Still, she could feel adrenaline begin its familiar trek throughout her body, causing her heart to beat faster and faster.
Just hold on,
she told herself.
Things would get better soon. She almost had her deal worked out with Will Black. Once the financial burden she was under disappeared, things would get better.
They
had
to get better.
“Anyone seen Becca?”
Becca jerked, and when she came back to reality she realized final practice had ended and they were trying to find her via the radios.
Jeez.
“I’m here, John,” she said, dumbfounded that she’d been so deep in thought she hadn’t even noticed that the trucks had left the track, a rainbow array of vehicles lining up for final inspection. “What do you need?”
“Adam’s looking for you.”
And there it went. Her pulse.
Thumpthumpthumpthump.
She’d never had anxiety attacks before, but this new deal with Will Black and her falling out with Adam had nearly pushed her over the edge.
“Tell him I’ll catch up with him later.”
Silence. Then, “You can’t avoid him forever.”
“Is he standing right there?” Becca asked, peering down at the garage. It was impossible to see through the outbuildings and so she had to take John at his word when he answered, “No.”
“I told you I don’t want to see him.”
“I know. And I told him the same thing. But he’s not giving up, Becca. I think you better resign yourself to having it out with him.”
Not if I can help it.
“Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.”
Silence again and then, “Where are you?”
“Up with the spotters.”
“Liar,” came Brian’s voice, and she could hear laughter behind the word.
Okay, that did it. “Guys, I really don’t appreciate you interfering in my personal life. Now, if everyone wants to keep their jobs, I suggest they mind their own business.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Brian said, all traces of humor gone.
She’d been too terse. But, damn it, she didn’t have a choice. Things had gotten out of hand. It had to end. Now.
“One of the spotters said he saw her heading toward the grandstands,” she heard over the radio.
“Damn it,” Becca said, shooting up. She opened her mic. “Brian. You’re fired.”
“Hello, Becca.”
She gasped.
Adam stood over her, looking out of breath and out of sorts, the green-and-white firesuit that clung to his body meaning he must have parked his truck and run all the way up here.
“How’d you find me?”
“Spotters,” he said. “Your spotter told my spotter who told me you were on your way down here.”
Damn them. Damn them all to hell.
“Adam, look, I really don’t want—”
“I’m falling in love with you, Becca.”
It felt like a defibrillator had shocked her. Her chest actually stung from the force of the adrenaline that his words sent through her.
“You don’t mean that,” she said softly.
The smile he gave her was a humorless one, the twist of his lips seeming to be almost self-deprecating. “Unfortunately, I do.”
She shook her head. “Impossible.”
“No. It’s not. I’ve watched you, Becca. I’ve seen you when you think I’m not watching. You have a light about you, one that seems to glow even with the dark cloud hanging over your head. You’re goodness and light and you have so much love to share that I used to ache every time I saw you with Lindsey.”
“Adam, don’t. Please,” she said, feeling her throat tighten up. “Don’t. I can’t. I don’t think—”
“Don’t think,” he said quickly, shocking her by going to his knees while still holding her hand. “Don’t. Think,” he said firmly.
But she couldn’t stop herself from doing exactly that. Nor could she pull her hand out of his grasp, not after their one night together—
But she couldn’t think of that because thinking brought it all back. The joy. The tenderness. The pain of seeing Randy in her dreams.
“I’m not ready,” she said softly.
I don’t think I’ll ever be ready.
“You have to let go.”
She started to shake her head again. The breeze kicked up, ruffling his black hair. She resisted the urge to straighten it. “It’s not that,” she said softly.
“Then what is it?” he asked, suddenly shooting to his feet. He turned away from her, shoving a hand through his hair, the undersides still damp from being beneath his helmet. “What is it?” he asked, turning back to her.
She recoiled from the anger she saw in his eyes, the anger and the desperation. She was hurting him. She could see that.
“It’s not that stupid argument we had, is it? Because I see now that it’s better that we don’t work together. You’re right. It would’ve caused problems. Jason Ingle illustrated that point perfectly. But we’re over that now, Becca. I don’t work for you anymore and so the way I see it, there’s no reason why we can’t get involved.”
“How about the fact that you work for the competition?”
“Cece and Blain aren’t the competition. They’re your friends. You know as well as I do that they wouldn’t care if we dated.”
“But
I
do.”
“You do what?”
“Care,” she said, standing. “I already care,” she admitted in desperation. “It was me who told all those owners to call you. Me,” she said when she saw his eyes widen in disbelief. “I did that for you, Adam, because I understand how important racing is to you. And because I didn’t want anyone to think you were fired because you’d done something wrong.”
“I thought it was the Rick Stevenson article that got people’s attention.”
“No. It was me,” she said, pointing a finger at herself. “Nobody would have called you if they’d thought I’d fired you for any reason other than personal differences.”
“Is that what you told them?”
“I didn’t have to tell them anything. Everybody in the garage knows about our affair.”
“Is that what bothers you? That people will talk?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head sadly, wondering how much she should admit, deciding he deserved the truth. “My problem is that you’re a driver.”
He blinked across at her, his green eyes looking almost hazel in the grandstand’s half light. “Are you afraid it’ll happen to me? That I’ll end up like Randy—”
“No,” she interrupted, wiping a strand of hair out of her eyes. “It’s everything that comes along with your being a driver. I lived that life once before. I’ve watched what happens. It’s not easy being the woman behind the man.”
“But you wouldn’t be behind me. You’d be right alongside.”
She shook her head. “That’s how it might start out, but it wouldn’t end up that way. As your star rises—and it will rise, Adam, you’re too good for it not to—I’ll be left behind.”
“You could never be left behind. You’re Becca Newman. You’re more famous than me.”
“I’m famous because of Randy. For no other reason.”
“But your dad—”
“Was a racing legend. But no one would know my name if not for Randy. And just like with Randy, I’d be there, watching your career soar. I’d become Becca Newman, Adam Drake’s girlfriend. All my hard-fought independence, it would disappear. I’d lose myself again, just as I did before.”
“That would never happen with me.”
“Yes, it would. You forget I’ve lived through it once before. I’d want things for you, Adam. I’d want you to be at the top of your game. To be successful and in the limelight and happy. That’s the type of person I am—”
“And what’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing except that all too soon I’d disappear.”
Again. Just like she had with Randy.
“I won’t let that happen,” he said softly. “We’d be a team, you and I—”
“Oh, yeah? she asked softly. “For how long? What if you got tired of me? What then?”
“Don’t say that.”
“I’d be a laughingstock. It’d be worse than it was with Randy. At least when he died I had some dignity.”
She looked away from him, knowing she shouldn’t admit it, but unable to stop herself. “If things ended between you and me, I’d have nothing left.”
“Yes, you would, Becca,” he said.
She stepped back when he tried to enfold her in her arms. “I care for you, Adam,” she said as his arms fell back to his sides. “I think I’m in love with you. But I don’t want to be. I swore that I’d never fall in love again. That I’d never lose myself like I did with Randy.”
He didn’t say anything for a long moment, even looked away for a second before facing her squarely again. “So what are you going to do? Never date again?”