Racing Outside the Line: A Love Story at 190 Mph (34 page)

Seth was staring down each crew guy that came up to him, this wasn’t good. It had been a joke, and they really hadn’t intended Paulie to go through with it. I completely believed that, and I knew Seth believed it too. I also knew that Seth was pissed at himself for letting go of me. I could see it in the way he kept looking back at me to see where I was. I had to do something to stop this from cycling out of control.

I turned back to Des with a plan, "Hey Des, I’m going to walk over to Seth. When I do, yell for him to kiss me."

"Like I’m going to give you two an excuse to lock lips again, I don’t want to get my butt kicked for having to break you two apart."

"I think it will put Seth in a better mood to make it obvious that I’m off limits."

Des shook his head, "I don’t really think that it will help, but I guess it’s worth a shot."

I felt Seth’s eyes on me as I got closer, and the second I was within arm’s length, he had me pulled up against him. He continued talking to the two guys in front of him as I looked knowingly at Desmond.

He didn’t fail me as he yelled, "Kiss, kiss" and elbowed a few of the crew guys to join in until the whole garage was chanting it like we were at our wedding reception. It was actually sweet, and I was smiling up at him innocently when he brought his free arm up to caress my face. Leaning down, he briefly allowed his lips to touch mine, but I wasn’t having any of that. I reached up and tangled my hand in his hair pulling him toward me fervently. I pushed my tongue past his lips, and that was all that was necessary to set him off. In the span of a rapidly accelerated heartbeat, our kiss turned embarrassingly passionate amidst cheering, hooting, and whistling. When Seth turned his body more to meld it against mine, I knew this kiss could get quickly out of hand in front of a very large audience, so I attempted to slow it down and pull back. He tried not to let me pull away from him, but the guys were pounding him on the back saying things like, "Damn, I miss being a newlywed," and "oh yeah, they’re married alright," and my favorite, "looks like you might need a trip back to the motor coach there, Seth." He finally had no choice but to end our kiss and smile seductively down at me.

I shook my head at him before leaning up to whisper, "I need more than ten minutes." His low, deep groan was the sexiest thing I had heard all day and made me rethink my negative answer.

He let out a deep sigh in my ear, sending a wave of goose bumps down my arm, "Later, then." The feeling of the quick kiss he planted on my neck intensified the goose bumps and made me try to reach out to him all over again, but he held onto my shoulders and chuckled sadistically as he stepped back from me. I watched him for a moment as he walked toward the hauler with a broad smile on my face; he had such a nice butt.

I returned to Chelsea who was standing with Desmond and another woman just outside of the garage. As I got closer, I could hear the conversation.

"Is she pregnant?" I heard the woman ask boldly, and by the angry look on Chelsea’s face, I knew she was referring to me.

"No," Desmond said as I walked up managing to keep my calm. Desmond was chuckling, but Chelsea was
not
impressed with this woman.

"Lex, this is Lacy, Jake’s wife. Lacy, this is the now infamous, Alexis Winston, uh… Keller. Damn, I’m gonna have to get used to that." Desmond shook his head at himself, smiling. Now I knew why he was casually laughing about this woman’s question over my being pregnant, this was Jake’s wife, the one Seth said would love me. She must be good friends with Desmond too, if his relaxed stance was any indication. I put my hand out to her in a friendly gesture.

"Oh, please, hun, you’re practically family now," she lunged forward to wrap her arms around me. "I’m just in shock at how beautiful you are, I mean, when Jake told me Seth had fallen for Des’ sister, I thought you would have to be pretty ugly if you shared the gene pool with this ogre." She smacked the back of her hand against Desmond’s stomach. "But, geez, hun, you put good ole’ Alexandria to shame, but without the pretentious, superficial, look-at-me-I’m-Miss-America attitude."

"Uh… thanks, I guess." I wasn’t sure what to say. I never did well with compliments and she layered a bunch of them into thirty seconds of conversation. I felt like a six-year-old being praised for a hideously ugly ashtray I made at school. It was odd, but she was sincere and seemed to be a very warm person. Like me, I noticed she didn’t care about wearing sneakers and jeans, although her curly blonde hair and flawless, yet natural looking makeup made her stand out as someone who cared what others thought of her.

"So Desmond and I already spoke about this. Here’s the situation, hun: I need to introduce you to as many of the women behind the men as I can before Alexandria gets to the track tomorrow with Jamie’s awful wife, Priscilla. We need Alexandria to be behind on the gossip so that she is blindsided by your presence, but everyone else feels like it’s old news." I was following what she was saying and was really grateful that she wanted to help me, but I wasn’t sure if I was comfortable with her yet. Most of me wanted to hide out here with Seth rather than go traipsing around the track with this energetic, albeit very helpful, woman. As I debated which option I was going to go for, Seth came away from the hauler in his fire suit. God, he looked sexy. He was immediately bombarded with fans requesting autographs, pausing to sign a few he looked up and noticed me standing with Lacy. He waved off the rest of the fans and locked eyes with me as he took large, determined steps toward me.

"Hi, sexy," before the words were completely out, I found his lips pressed to mine. "Mmm," I moaned into his mouth wrapping my arms around his waist.

I had just enough control over my senses to hear Lacy point out, "Well, if she’s not pregnant yet, I’m sure she will be soon with them going at each other like that."

Clearly, Seth heard her too because his lips pulled into an uncontrolled smile as he laughed, resting his forehead against mine. He turned his eyes toward Lacy but left his hands all over me, "Geez, Lace, ever heard of subtlety?"

Unashamed, she replied with a straight face, "No."

"You know, Lace, my secret plan
is
to knock her up so she can’t ever leave me again."

"I guessed that, which is why I already asked Desmond if you had put that plan into action. What other possible reason could she have for agreeing to marry your stubborn butt? But Desmond insists I’m wrong."

"She married me because I’m irresistible, isn’t that right, love?" Happily, he brought his smiling lips to mine again allowing them to brush lightly across my own smile.

"Mmm hmmm," was all I could focus on enough to get out before his hand wandered beyond my lower back to my butt. Okay, the electricity of being in this very public area of the race track with fans watching us sent my senses reeling. He brought his lower body to connect with mine intimately.

"Better watch it, Seth," Lacy began in a very serious tone, "Jake would tell you that it’s pretty difficult to hide a hard-on in a fire suit."

That was enough to send both Seth and me into complete laughter, holding on to each other. I hid my face in his chest as he brought his hands back up to rest respectably on my face.

"Seth, it’s time!" Gary yelled.

Still chuckling he responded, "Yeah, I’m coming." Then, he turned a more serious face to me, "I’ve got practice and qualifying. I’ll be in and out of the car until almost 5pm. The guys know to look out for you, but they’ll be a bit busy too, maybe you should head back to the motor coach."

"Uh uh," Lacy marched closer to us, "we have work of our own to do, Seth. Tell her to trust me, huh, we gotta get her situated. Alexandria’s at some
wedding
," she said the word with clear disapproval leaving me wondering why, "so she won’t show up until tomorrow. I need to introduce her to all the girls before Alexandria can get her hooks in them."

Seth was nodding at me, but looked uneasy about it. "She’s right," but he was still staring into my eyes with concern on his face. He looked back over to Lacy, "you’ll make sure no one gives her any crap?"

"Seth, hun, do I let
anyone
give
any
crap without my permission?"

He nodded, a seemingly absent-minded response, looking back into my eyes before looking over at Chelsea, "You’ll stay with her too? Take ‘Cartman,’ you can drive both of you back to the motor coach if you need to."

I felt like a two-year-old. If I wasn’t so appreciative of having two strong women to cower behind, I might have been insulted. Safety in numbers, after all.

"Don’t worry, Seth," Chelsea smiled sadly, "she’s been through worse."

"She’s right," he whispered, locking his apologetic eyes with mine, "you have."

"I know." And I did know. I had suffered years of worse things than this, besides, why did I really care what these women thought of me? "I’ll be fine, Seth, I swear. I’ll stop by and check on you, but I’m coming back here at five to get you."

"No, I’ll meet you in the motor coach at five." His eyes were twinkling and I knew exactly what he was thinking because I was thinking it now too.

We hadn’t gone without making love for more than a few hours over the past few days and it had already been a long morning. "I can definitely agree with that plan, it’s been like six hours already."

"Ah, love, don’t I know it, don’t I know it." His hands wandered down to my waist as his lips returned to mine, where they belonged, but Desmond finally pushed us apart.

"That’s enough. Get in your car, Seth. Lex, go with Lacy and Chelsea. Come on, off you go."

"Wait!" I yelled as Seth let Desmond pull him away, I threw myself back in his arms, "promise to be safe?"

"Don’t worry, love, I promise." He gave me another chaste kiss, and I let him walk away from me, turning back to walk to Chelsea and Lacy.

"Never thought I’d see the day, hun. Do you mind if I call you Lexie? Alexis is just so similar to the beauty queen that I just can’t reconcile that name with you." All I had time to do was nod before she continued, "Good, and your friend is Chelsea, right?" I nodded again, "Okay, so I’ve known about you since last week, in case you were wondering. Jake came running back to the motor coach to tell me Seth had a new woman. Let’s talk and drive, shall we? This is a good time to catch the ladies for a momentary chit-chat. We’ll start here at the garages before heading to the coaches." She took a breath, but I swear it was only a short one as we climbed into one of the carts. "And I said, great another chick, he goes through ‘em like razor blades and the look on Jake’s face was crazy. He said he’d never seen Seth like this before, and then he told me he had asked him for our jeweler’s phone number, and I thought, crap, he’s really serious."

Woah
, I wanted to say,
he asked Jake for the jeweler’s number
, but she was rushing onto the next train of thought. Man, she moved quickly. "I just knew that mess last weekend had something to do with you, not that it was your fault, I can’t blame you for being pissed and hurt, but you should have seen Seth on Sunday. I’ve never seen him so upset, he was in some kind of pain, let me tell ya. Okay, so first up is Miss Jenny. She is one of the most respected women at the track. Her son is the driver, and she can either be your best friend or your worst enemy, no in between really, so be sure you give her a good show. Really lay the story on thick.

"Lacy, I’m not so sure I’m okay with this. It’s like I’m parading us around in front of everyone or something; I don’t think this is a great idea."

She stopped the vehicle and turned to face me. She was suddenly serious, really serious. "Look, Lexie, I like you. I like what you’ve done to Seth, and I can tell that you and I are going to be good friends, but I can’t lie to you. You and Seth… it’s not gonna go over too well around here." My stomach flipped again, and I tried to scoot a little away from the information I really didn’t want to hear. Chelsea grabbed my hand and thankfully, gave me some of her strength. "Most of the wives couldn’t care less about the drama, but they are fiercely loyal to one another. If it’s a straight-up battle between their loyalty to you and the prior claim Alexandria had on Seth, she’ll win, hands down. They don’t know you. They don’t have a reason to think you’re any different from her, except that you weaseled your way into getting Seth to marry you in the span of a week."

I winced internally at her words, but tried to keep a composed face. She was right, of course. I couldn’t argue with any of it. Anyone who didn’t know us would think the same way.

"Don’t get disheartened, hun," she patted my arm again before continuing on super speed. She really could talk fast. But how could I not get discouraged? "Just know that this is all necessary. The three of us all know the reality of the situation, we know you’ve belonged to him since day one and vice versa, but we need to make sure everyone else sees that too. Since you seem a bit reluctant to tell your story, I think the best and fastest way to get this all out there is for everyone to see you two together." I looked away at a car passing by me, why did I have to put myself on display to please a bunch of women. I didn’t need these people as my friends, I had Chelsea and Mel and Jamie and Christina, it’s not as if I was hard-up for friends. I could just tell them all to believe what they wanted to believe and leave it at that.

But I
was
going to be around these people for many years to come and many more races this season. Did I really want to hide out in the motor coach the whole time? And what kind of environment was I leaving Seth to? He would be constantly worrying about me and be tense around the other women. I didn’t want that. But, what was seeing us together going to really do, I mean, clearly they had seen him kiss Alexandria before, what could they possibly see from the exterior that would convince them?