The music stopped, and she glanced over at him. Her eyes were sleepy, but she flashed him a smile. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“You didn’t,” he admitted. “I have a testing session I need to get to. I wasn’t sure you’d still be here.”
“I was going to leave but didn’t want to slink out. We didn’t say goodbye last time. And this time...well, I thought we needed that. To make sure it’s officially ended,” she said.
“Definitely,” he agreed. “Do you need some clothes?”
“My assistant is bringing some stuff over for me,” she said. “I don’t think I’d look as good in your sweats as you do.”
He smiled at the way she said it. She was keeping things light, and he would do the same. “Bianca keeps some clothes here.”
“I don’t want to wear your sister’s clothes.”
“Of course not.” Clearly, he needed coffee. That had been...the wrong thing to say.
“Coffee?” he asked her.
“Do you have green tea?”
“I think I might have some. I’ll go and check,” he said, moving farther into the living room, walking past her into the kitchen. As soon as he was in the kitchen, he let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.
He still wanted her.
How was that possible?
Last night should have cured him of the desire for her. But to be fair, what guy could resist Marielle wearing his T-shirt and playing the piano? It was so sexy and sensual, and it literally took everything in him to keep from walking back in there and seducing her on the piano bench.
He went to the big espresso machine he’d been gifted last year when he’d done an ad for the company and flicked on the button to start the warm-up process. Then he realized he had no idea where his housekeeper might store tea.
He started opening up cabinets and then stopped. She wasn’t playing anymore, and he knew his comment about Bianca had affected her. He didn’t need to do anything more than get her some tea—if he could f-ing find it—and then go to training.
He finally found the cupboard stash of tea. It was a mahogany case he’d been given when he’d done the fastest qualifying lap at the Singapore Grand Prix last year.
He walked back to the living room, where she was sitting at the piano but looking at her phone. Her shoulders were slumped, and to him it seemed like she’d gotten bad news.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yup. Jim dandy,” she said. “My dad always says that. No idea what it really means.”
“My dad says things that I really don’t get too,” Inigo said, coming over to her. “I found this. Any tea in here excite you?”
She took the case from him and set it on the bench beside her, finally opening it up and looking through the selection. She handed him a tea bag, and he took it, along with the case. “When did you learn to play the piano?”
“Starting when I was six. One of my brothers showed an aptitude, and my parents thought I might enjoy it too. I think they thought we’d be this famous classical duo for a while. But Leo lost interest when he hit puberty. Apparently, girls were more interesting than piano.”
Inigo smiled. “And you stopped?”
“I was the add-on child, so it seemed best,” she said.
“Add-on?”
“Sorry. I’m dealing with some family stuff and feeling like a total bitch about them,” she admitted.
“I’m sorry too. Want to talk about it? Or should I just go and get your tea?”
She looked over at him. “Why do you have to be a Velasquez?”
He sat down next to her, putting his arm around her shoulder and hugging her close for a minute. “I don’t know,” he said, then after a moment of silence, continued. “Tell me about this thing with your family,” he said. “It will make us both stop thinking about each other.”
“I don’t think it’s going to work that easily.”
He used his knuckles on the black keys to play the one thing he could, the riff on “The Knuckle Song.” And she smiled, as he hoped she would. “We won’t know if we don’t try.”
“Fair enough,” she said. “My dad had an affair two years before I was born. He was a prominent congressman, and the identity of the young aide he’d had the affair with was found out—it was a big scandal everywhere. My dad realized he could be ‘that cliché mid-life crisis guy.’ That’s how he puts it. Like that explains everything. Darian, my oldest brother, said that it changed Mom. I’ve always been her consolation baby. I showed how my parents got back together and proved to the world that they were still solid.”
* * *
She shouldn’t have brought up the circumstances of her birth. Not to Inigo. But she was feeling down, and in this sort of mood she got destructive. And it wasn’t like he was thinking of her as anything other than his booty call from last night. Even if they wanted it to be more, there was no way. He’d confirmed that when he’d sat down next to her on the piano bench.
Playing the piano had started her down this path—or maybe it was waking up next to him. She would deny it out loud, but she’d slept better in his arms than she had in a long time.
“That’s horrible. I’m sure that’s not true,” he said. “When you were a kid, it might have seemed that way to you, but your parents love you.”
She started laughing. “How would you even guess at that? Do you think you know them from articles and TV documentaries?”
“No. I’m just basing it on my own parents. When I was a kid, I thought that they liked my twin brothers best because they always got the most attention. It was only as I aged that I realized they needed the most attention. The rest of us were pretty self-sufficient. Diego has always been more at home with horses than people. Bianca was into fashion and her own thing, and I had racing.”
Marielle looked over at him. He was an odd contradiction—at times brutally honest and then sweet. She wished she were wrong about her parents but she knew she wasn’t, given that her mom was still very reluctant to even invite her to events she was in charge of. The thing was, 85 percent of the time Marielle didn’t care about what her parents thought. She was busy doing her own thing, and so were they. It was just when she needed something...did they ever come through for her without giving her a hard time? If she could just say screw it to her mom and not attend the events, it would be much easier.
“That’s nice, but I really am a reminder that he cheated and she wanted to leave. But he talked her into staying. I was supposed to make things better between them...but my mom had a difficult pregnancy and birth. She also didn’t like having a daughter as much as she thought, and everyone was surprised that my dad took an interest in me. He hadn’t really spent a lot of time with the boys when they were babies...anyhow, that just made it worse with the two of them. And they did a shit ton of press after my birth because Carlton—he’s Dad’s head of staff—thought it would help in the polls.”
Inigo just stared at her, and she realized that she’d laid too much truth out there. But she got tired of lugging it around, and this morning her guard was down.
He didn’t say anything. He just pulled her into his arms and hugged her closely to him. “God, what a mess.”
She smiled.
He’d said just the right thing. Again.
Why couldn’t she have met him instead of Jose all those years ago?
But she hadn’t.
“It really is. You already know the worst side of me, so sharing it with you doesn’t seem so bad.”
“I’m glad. Despite everything else, I’m glad we had this night together.”
She nodded and looked away from him, back at the keyboard. “Yeah, me too.”
“Why were you thinking of them?”
She shook her head. She wasn’t going there. Not with Inigo and not this morning. They were essentially strangers with the hots for each other, and
that was good enough. She decided she’d done enough soul baring for now.
“Who knows,” she said. “So...what exactly does a testing session entail?”
“I’m trying out different cockpit setups at the facility. My engineering team has made some adjustments from my last run in the simulator. We load up the different tracks and then the weather conditions and my placement to see how I react to different variables.”
She shifted on the bench, tucking one leg underneath her as she studied him. “That’s fascinating. When I worked for F1, I really never knew much of what the drivers did when they weren’t at the track.”
“Yeah, there’s a hell of a lot more involved than just getting behind the wheel. Some of the technical stuff fascinates me, and because I’m good friends with one of the engineers I know more about that part than some drivers. But most of it is over my head. I mean, I tell them what I want the car to do, and they make tweaks either here at the facility or in the trailer at the track and the car is adjusted. It’s cool.”
She smiled. He was so cute when he was getting all nerdy about cars. Mentally she slapped herself. She couldn’t fall for him. They could never be friends. There was too much heat and too much baggage between the two of them for that to ever happen.
“So, you want your tea?” he asked after a few minutes.
“Yes,” she said as her phone pinged with a message. “My assistant is downstairs with my clothes.”
“Great. I’ll let the doorman know to let her up.”
“Him. It’s PJ.”
“Okay,” Inigo said and hit a button on his smartphone to let the doorman know that her assistant was okay to come up. He slid off the bench and stood there for a minute.
“I liked your piano playing. No matter why you learned, it’s part of you, and you shouldn’t deny it.”
Then he left to go back into the kitchen, and she could only watch him leave. And firmly remind herself this time their goodbye was for good.
* * *
Inigo wasn’t surprised when he got to the Moretti Motors testing facility to see that Dante was already behind his computer working away. Matteo was running a circuit on the Melbourne track, and both of the bosses were observing from their conference room. He’d heard that Malcolm had been invited out to the track so that when he went to place his bet those running the betting ring would think he had inside information.
Inigo rubbed the back of his neck. The dancing and the sex with Marielle had completely zoned him out. He was so chill right now that he wasn’t sure if he was going to be good behind the wheel or not. Normally he was tense and focused. But this chill feeling wasn’t that bad.
“Inigo, hop in the cockpit and let’s see if this setup is working for you.”
He walked over and started the process of buckling himself in. He put on his helmet and then flexed his fingers, cracking his knuckles and gripping the steering wheel. He heard everything his engineers were saying as they cued him up. Then he waited for the green light and took off on the simulated track. His instincts were more heightened then they had been the last time. The car seemed an extension of him, and he moved through each turn and curve with ease. He kept accelerating, and he knew he was having the drive of his life. He didn’t question it—he just did the laps. When he stopped, there was silence on the headset.
“Guys? How was it?”
“Good...damn good. We need to check a few things,” Dante said.
Inigo got out of the simulator and noticed that everyone was working at their monitors. Had his chill attitude made him drive like a rookie? Had that drive of his life really been a huge mistake?
“How’d it go last night?” Dante asked when Inigo walked over to him.
“Good, man, the best,” he said. “What’s up with my time?”
“We are still checking a few things. I’ve sent my data over—we should hear something in a minute,” Dante said, spinning around to face him. “So last night was good...guess you gave up the revenge thing?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I mean, it’s not like I’ll see her again. Last night...was goodbye.”
Dante just chuckled and shook his head. “If anyone else said that to me, I’d call them a liar, but I know you have ice in your veins when it comes to women.”
“I’m not cold,” Inigo said.
“Dude, you are. And that was envy you heard. I wish I could be more like you,” Dante said. “Relationships are messy, but you always skate right by them. And it’s not like the women you hook up with hate you later. They’re cool too.”
Inigo wasn’t sure he liked the way Dante was describing him. He couldn’t argue with his friend because his description was spot-on, but he didn’t know if that was the kind of man he wanted to be.
“Yeah, lucky me,” he said, feeling some tension seeping into his Zen attitude.
Marco came into the room with Keke behind him. Both men had a look on their faces that Inigo hadn’t seen before. He felt nervous. Hell, why had he slept with Marielle last night? His celibacy during the racing season had sort of been his way of making sure he stayed in the right headspace to race. Of course, last night he hadn’t been thinking about the season or his time.
It had all been Marielle.
Which had felt so damned good at the time, but now, in retrospect, he regretted it. Maybe it was because he knew she was forbidden fruit, or maybe it was just that he didn’t like to have anyone walk away from him. He was always the one who left, he thought, but with Marielle it had been different.
“Inigo, we want you to drive again. Your time was faster than Matteo’s and the best you’ve ever done,” Marco said, his Italian accent slightly more pronounced than usual.
“Whatever you did last time,” Keke said, clapping him on the shoulder, “do it again.”
“Yeah, okay. I can do that,” he said. But now he was worried he couldn’t, and he knew that was going to mess with his mind. He stepped away from everyone, turned his back on the room and remembered the way Marielle had been when he’d left her this morning. She’d still been sitting at the piano playing some classical song as she’d watched him leave.
Leaving had been hard; he’d wanted to go back and make love to her right there on the piano bench. He felt that chill feeling sweep over him again. He was getting back to that numb mind space where he was able to feel physically sated from the night before but with that tiny tinge of excitement that he could have her again tonight.
He didn’t bother to let doubt or anything other than that calm but edgy feeling fill him as he turned and walked over to the cockpit of the simulator. Everyone stepped back and let him do his thing. Even the engineers who helped strap him in didn’t speak to him. They were used to drivers and their rituals. Inigo flexed his fingers and cracked his knuckles as he always did and then put his hands on the wheel.
There was no room in his mind for doubt, and as they counted down to starting, he let go of everything that didn’t serve the course. He became one with the car the way he always did, felt the road underneath the wheels even though it was just a simulation. As he maneuvered around the track with ease, the car responded to him the way Marielle had last night. Every touch was strategically placed to keep the car purring and doing exactly what he wanted it to do.
When he stopped and got out of the simulator, he looked over at Marco and Keke, who were standing at Dante’s station. Both men let out a whoop, and Inigo knew he’d done it again.
But it wasn’t just him...it had been Marielle. The woman he’d mentally and of course literally said goodbye to looked as if she were the key to him driving and posting the fastest time of his career.
Well, hell.
Ten
Malcolm left the Moretti Motors facility and drove back into the city after texting the bookie he’d been dealing with for the racing bets. He then pulled off on the side of the highway and texted h
is best friend, Mauricio Velasquez. Mo called back instead of texting.
“Hey, what’s up? You said you were going to be in New York for a few more days?” Mo asked.
“Yes. The Moretti thing is really blowing up. I thought if you had any clients you wanted me to meet with while I was here, that might be a good thing. I need to keep my focus and remember that gambling isn’t paying my bills, my job is.”
“Got it. I’ll send you some information. Actually, there’s a property I’m trying to get that’s in Hadley’s old building. One of her neighbors owns it. I think Helena met her once, and of course she knows all about me, so she doesn’t want me to be her agent even though I’m licensed to sell in New York—but she’s ticked at what I put Hadley through, but she’d probably talk to you. Got time to do that today?” Mo asked.
Mo and Hadley had been through a lot. At a certain point, Mo had hooked up with someone else while still texting Hadley he wanted her back. She’d come back to town to surprise him and found another woman in his bed. She’d broken up with him on the spot and moved to New York before Mo had realized he was an idiot to let her slip away and set about winning her back once Hadley had moved back to Cole’s Hill.
“Yes,” Malcolm said. “I definitely do. I don’t want to be lingering with the bookie looking at the racing form and thinking I could use the money to get rich quick.”
“Good. You doing okay?” Mo asked. “Inigo can find someone else if you’re not sure you can handle it. It hasn’t been that long since you stopped.”
Was he doing okay?
No.
Hell, no.
But his fiancée and her family had asked him to use his expertise—which was also his weakness—to help them, and he wasn’t going to let them down. Nothing had compared to how he’d felt when he had let Helena down the first time. He’d promised himself he’d never do it again.
And this was nothing. Just a little walk through fire, but hey, he could handle this. He needed to prove to himself that he was stronger now. That he wouldn’t fall again. Because Helena wanted the whole enchilada with him. Kids, golden anniversary, growing old together. He couldn’t fall back into his old habit. He needed this.
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