“You look happy this morning.”
He turned toward the door, his breath catching like a missed gear. Lisie.
The years hadn’t done anything to dim her light, he thought, as a familiar sensation zipped through his body. If they took his blood pressure when she was in the room, it’d go through the roof.
“You still here?” he asked, trying not to look as foolishly sappy as he felt. “Thought you’da hightailed it back to Connecticut after you had a look at what a bag of crap I turned into.”
She floated in with that effortless grace that always made him feel so big and clumsy.
“I’m going to stay for a few weeks.” Taking the seat next to his bed, she folded her hands on her lap. “I plan to take care of Celeste during her recovery from the operation.”
There went his heart rate again. “You’ll have to fight Beau for the honors.”
At her surprised look, he coulda bit his lip off. Damn. Didn’t she know about those two? Hell, maybe she wouldn’t like the idea of her baby foolin’ around with a race car driver.
“Is that who gave her the diamond ring?” The hint of a smile made him doubt she minded too much.
“Well, truth be told, that was my idea.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s a long story, Elise. How much time you got?” A lot, he hoped. But he’d better not meander down that path—she was married now. To a schmuck, but married just the same.
“As a matter of fact, I have all the time in the world. But this morning, I thought I should start with seeing my daughter. Do you know where she is?”
Probably tangled up in Beau’s sheets about now. The thought made him strangely comfortable. Even though Celeste was his daughter, he didn’t mind her with Beau. As long as the son of a bitch did right by her. “You might try callin’ Beau’s house.”
“Is it that serious?”
He shrugged, attempting to be casual. “Would it bother you if it was?”
She stood and walked to the window, leaving a trail of her delicate, flowery perfume. “Would you care for some sunlight, Chas?”
After Elise, he had never let anyone call him Chassis Chastaine again. “There you go, Lisie. Changin’ an uncomfortable subject.”
If his old name for her or the gentle tease made her own stomach get all balled up, she was too classy to let it show. “It’s not an uncomfortable subject. If they are happy and he’s a good man…”
“That’s all that matters, isn’t it?” He deliberately let the inference sound loud and clear in his voice. If that were all that mattered, their lives would have turned out differently.
She stood at the window and fiddled with the blinds. “She deserves to be happy,” she said softly, then turned to him. “Everyone deserves to be happy, Chas.”
For a long time, they just stared at each other. The light poured in from behind her, making her blond hair glisten and clearly showing the little wrinkles that had formed around her eyes. Son of a gun, but they just made her prettier.
“Chas.” It was almost a whisper. “I want to tell you something.”
He waited, scared to death that some beeping monitor would give away what his heart was doing.
“I just want you to know that…I’m sorry for how it all happened. For how it ended that day. For—”
“Stop,” he said gruffly. “Regret tastes like day-old beer, Elise. Spit it out and let it go.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, then smiled. “I never could spit as well as you.”
“Yeah, it’s an art form.” He fought a grin and tugged at the hospital blanket on his chest. “Now, I gotta tell you something, Lisie.” He reached up and held his hand toward her, the IVs tugging at his flesh, but his need to touch her outweighed the pain. She stepped forward and slipped her small hand in his, bending his arm to relieve the pressure of the IV.
“Yes?” she asked.
“You did one helluva job on that girl,” he said, not caring that the goddamn faucets got turned on in his eyes again. “She’s a class act and has a heart of gold.”
Elise beamed. “Thanks, Chas.”
“Plus she knows her racing,” he added with a sly smile. “Thanks for…well, for all you done with her. You should be real proud.”
“She can be very stubborn,” Elise said.
He just raised an eyebrow.
“Really, Chas, she’s a regular steamroller when she wants something.”
“Beau calls it my bulldozer quality.” He laughed softly. “Guess it’s hereditary.”
“At least she doesn’t give up when things get rocky, like you did.”
His eyes bugged out of his head. “Like I did?”
She treated him to that sweet Tinkerbell laugh again and sat down beside him. “I’m teasing. But you are the one who quit racing after one serious wreck.”
“You knew about that?”
This time she raised an eyebrow. “I know your career history better than you do, Chas.”
A gush of warm happiness washed over him. “How’d you manage that? I mean, with your dad and your husband and all?”
“I managed.” She tried to look serious, but he saw the twinkle in her eyes. “I wanted to be sure you did something worthwhile with your money.”
Ah, the money. “Actually, I did.” He shifted in the bed.
She waved a dismissive hand. “Don’t even think about that old agreement. Daddy’s in an assisted-living home in Danbury and he has no recollection the whole thing ever happened. He’s almost ninety now and, well, all is forgotten.” She smiled sadly. “Literally and figuratively.”
He felt like someone had hit him over the head with a bat. “Excuse me?” He tried to sit up and ignored the pain that grabbed his belly. Had she read the fine print in that letter? He couldn’t have the money—or what it turned into if he invested it—if he had anything to do with Elise or her offspring. “Do you mean that the contract…that piece of paper…is null and void?”
She nodded. “My mother passed away about three years ago and Daddy…well, I don’t think it’ll be long now.” She looked away and then back into his eyes. “I certainly won’t hold you to anything you signed. I always hoped it was that money that got you started in racing, Chas. I hoped your dreams could come true even though…things didn’t work out for us.”
Shitballs of thunder. He had the answer to all his problems right in his hand.
“Did you use it to buy your first race car?” she asked.
He shook his head, feeling a big fat grin breaking across his face. “I did not.”
“What did you do with it?”
He chuckled. “I invested it in an unknown racer named Gus Bonnet.”
“The man who died last year in an accident?”
“The very one. My investment in his estate is worth, oh, about ten million.” Her eyes widened and Travis grinned. “Guess that’s enough to keep Beau racin’ till he finds a new sponsor.”
When her mother opened Travis’s front door, Celeste didn’t know whether to laugh or act like it was perfectly normal. She still couldn’t get used to the idea that Elise Hamilton Bennett had moved into Travis’s Spanish ranch. And although she had her own bedroom, the excuse of “overseeing the home dialysis until the transplant” seemed flimsy, at best.
But the radiance on her mother’s face was real. As real as the glow Beau had put on her own face—until he’d left yesterday for Bristol, with no invitation to join him and not a single word about future races, future trips…or the future in general.
For two weeks they’d lived in lovers’ limbo, and Celeste had waited for him to repeat the words he’d said the night she’d almost died. They made love, they joined hearts and bodies and souls, but neither one had said what they both were thinking.
At least, she was thinking it…but something stopped her from revealing her love to Beau. He had said he didn’t want anything but occasional mutual pleasure—and Celeste wanted so, so much more.
“You could have gone
to Bristol,” her mother said as she let Celeste into the house. “The doctor’s appointment could easily have been moved to Monday.”
Celeste looked beyond her mother into the sprawling family room, where Travis’s favorite chair sat empty. “Is he resting?”
“He’s in his office. It’s been impossible to get him off the phone with Tony Malone. He thinks he can run this race from his bed.”
“I can.” Travis came around the corner, wearing a black-and-white checkered bathrobe and a teasing grin.
“But I’d like to know what my sponsor liaison is doing here instead of at that racetrack.”
“You are the sponsor, remember?” She stepped forward and planted a kiss on his cheek. “And I’m liaising with you at the doctor’s in about one hour.”
“That’s bull—baloney. This is a routine appointment that can wait until next week. I want you there.”
Celeste walked past them and sank into one of the sofas in the family room. “Beau doesn’t.”
Travis pulled the ties to his robe and sat down next to her. “He needs you there. You broke the curse.”
She laughed softly. “There is no curse.”
“Not anymore there ain’t.” Travis looked at her mother, who had taken a seat across from them. Their shared smile tore at Celeste’s heart.
“You need to listen to him,” Elise said. “Because if ever in the world two people didn’t want history repeating itself, it’s us.”
“You guys don’t get it,” she insisted. “Beau is looking for…something more fleeting than I want.”
“What did you tell him before he left?” Travis asked.
“Did you tell him…well, do you love him, honey?”
Swallowing, she nodded. Then shook her head. Damn. “I think I do, but it happened so fast, it can’t be real.”
Travis laid his hand over hers. “It’s real.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “It is for me.”
“And it’s real for him,” Travis told her. “I know that boy like he’s my own son. He ain’t never been in love before. But he is now.”
She turned her hand over and threaded her fingers through his calloused ones. “What if he isn’t? All he ever wanted was for me to donate my kidney, and now he has that. I just don’t know if he loves me.”
“So you gotta find out.” Travis leaned closer and squeezed her hand. “ ’Bout thirty years ago, I got into a rickety old Ford and drove that piece of crap a thousand miles to get my woman back. Got three speeding tickets that I couldn’t talk my way out of, and nearly fell asleep and died on a highway in West Virginia. And you know what?”
She shook her head, holding her breath.
“I failed. Miserably. But I never regretted tryin’. There’s a joy in giving it your all, missy. I’ll go to my grave knowin’ that’s what I did for the only love of my life.” His eyes misted. “Can you do any less?”
Unexpected tears stung her eyes. In her whole life, she’d never had fatherly advice. How could she ignore it when it was finally offered?
“Okay,” she sniffed. “I’ll talk to him when he gets back.”
Travis pulled away and glared at her. “Like hell you will. There’s a flight out of Orlando on Sunday morning, and if you move that skinny little behind when you get there, you might only miss the first sixty laps.”
A burst of joy washed over her as she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. Pulling away, she asked, “What should I say to him when I get there?”
Laughing, he chucked her chin as if she were a little girl. “Tell him straight out where you stand. Just wear your love like a badge of honor. He’ll figure it out.”
And suddenly, she knew exactly how to tell him.
Chapter
Thirty-one
The Bristol Motor Speedway thundered with the deafening roar of forty-three stock cars rumbling over the steepest banked turns on the racing circuit. A sea of color in the grandstands washed by Beau at a 150 miles an hour as he tried to focus on the half mile of unforgiving concrete in front of him. But his mind was five hundred miles away, imagining the haunting green eyes and heartbreaking smile of the woman he loved.
“Damn it, Beau, hold your line!” Tony shouted into the radio. “Stay off the outside in turn two or you’re gonna turkey walk right into the wall.”
Beau squeezed his eyes and the wheel at the same time. He had to concentrate. Had to win this race, for Travis and the team. For her. He flew up to another car and shot past it on the outside, nearly kissing the wall and ending his day.
“Go easy on the right tires, man, you don’t get new ones for twenty more laps,” Tony warned as Beau came down the front straight directly in line with Pit Road.
“I hear ya, Tony,” he said into the mike tucked into his helmet. “I’m gonna suck up some of the Almighty Dallas Wyatt’s fumes and let him pull me along for a while.”
Why wasn’t Celeste there? He could win with her sitting up there on top of the pit cart. Shit, he could do absolutely anything if she was with him.
The knowledge hit him like a kick in the stomach. He loved that woman and he hadn’t even told her. He’d gotten in a race car and took off without ever telling her how he felt. What if something did happen to him? What was he thinking?
“What are you thinkin’, man?” Tony shrieked, eerily echoing his thoughts. “Focus on your line, Beau.”
He swallowed and stared at the back end of his enemy’s Ford. What was he thinking? The minute this race was over, the very second he crossed the finish line, he was going to find Celeste and tell her that he wanted to be with her for the rest of their lives. Wherever, however, whatever form that took. And, damn, he wanted kids. Her kids. Lots of kids.
A broad grin broke across his face. “What am I thinkin’? I’m thinkin’ about the future, my man. It looks as bright and shiny as Wyatt’s piece of junk, which I am about to pass.”
He heard Tony chuckle as he sailed up the steep bank and thrust into turn one, backing off the throttle just as his car nearly grazed the wall, then he rammed the Chevy down the track. Dallas still had him by a few car lengths, with about six cars in front of him, but none faster than the two of them.
Beau could sense a shoot-out coming, and he wanted it so bad he could taste it. Dallas Wyatt would eat his dirt before the end of this race. Beau didn’t care if he even won; he just wanted to whip Dallas’s butt. Then he was going home to start the rest of his life with his woman.
“That’s it, Beau, that’s—” He heard the sudden halt in Tony’s voice.
“What’s the matter, Tony?”
“Man, oh man.” Whatever Tony mumbled was lost in the radio static.
“What?” Was there a wreck, a spinout?
“Nothin’, buddy. Just hold your line. How’s the suspension?”
The Chevy tore down the straightaway, and Beau could tell from his tach that he’d hit 160, top speed for this meat grinder of a track. “She’s runnin’ great, Tony.”
Back up turn one again, sliding just a scooch, as Travis would say. Nineteen more laps until he could get four new tires, and he needed them in the worst way.
But the competition did too. Wyatt’s Ford slid way loose, then fired back down the track—he was having serious problems. Beau let off a tiny bit to get some room between them; he could make a run on him if Wyatt stayed that loose.
A chill washed over him. Just like Gus.
He backed off a little more.
“You’re losin’ speed, Beau. What’s up?”
Beau didn’t answer as two other cars flew by him and got between him and Dallas.
“Hey!” Tony exclaimed. “Don’t give in, man. Don’t do it, Beau.”
Four more cars shot past Beau in the back straightaway, but he kept his eye on Dallas Wyatt as the Ford flew into turn three.
“You got trouble, Beau?”
Go away, Gus Bonnet. You can’t spook me.
The next second, he saw Dallas’s back end slide loose. Centrifugal force w
hipped the car sideways and it shot up the track like a bullet, right into the wall. There was a hailstorm of dirt, debris, and smoke as Dallas wrecked, and so did every car between them.
Beau jammed his brakes, steering through the chaos and driving on pure gut instinct. In front of him, he saw flames and smoke erupt from the front of Dallas’s car as it barreled to the bottom of the track in the next turn like a burning rocket. Beau let the side of his car drag along the wall to slow him down as Dallas continued like a fireball down the straight chute.
What the hell was the matter with Wyatt? Why didn’t he stop and get out?
His brake line must have been cut on impact, starting a fire from a smashed oil cooler. But the crash trucks couldn’t get on the track until the other damaged cars stopped spinning.
Beau stayed focused on Dallas Wyatt’s burning car. Get out, man! The gas tank was going to blow any minute. Wyatt had to be dead or unconscious.
Beau cut his wheel sharply to the left, his foot hitting the throttle, flying toward Dallas’s car.
“What the hell are you doing?” Tony screamed. “Where are you going?”
He had to get in front of Dallas Wyatt’s car and stop it. In thirty seconds, Dallas would be dead.
Just like Gus.
Gritting his teeth, Beau raced forward and slammed into Dallas’s right front fender, forcing the car to stop with a resounding smash of steel against steel. Beau ripped at his seat belt and restraint fasteners, then threw open his window net. He leaped out of his car and ran around the back, screaming Wyatt’s name as he choked on the smoke.
He couldn’t hear anything but the riotous roar from the grandstands.
The crash trucks had finally hit the track, but there wasn’t time to wait for their hoses. He tore frantically at the window net and reached into the burning car. With one swift movement, he freed Wyatt’s seat belt and harness.
“Wyatt!” Beau screamed as he struggled against the heat and fumes, pulling the man’s dead weight with strength he didn’t know he had. He had Wyatt’s head out, his shoulders, and then finally his legs. “Son of a bitch, Wyatt, wake up!”
Killer Curves Page 27