Hearts Under Caution

by Gina Wilkins

  It was when she had realized that she and Wade had been falling into the same patterns as her parents that she’d started to consider breaking off their engagement. She’d known she was too much like her father to be content for long in trying to live like her mother.

  Lisa had to put that memory behind her when she said, “But, Daddy, I thought you would be pleased that Wade and I are spending time together again.”

  Her father had, after all, approved of the engagement—once he’d gotten over his resistance to his innocent little girl dating a man five years her senior. After some consideration, Lisa assumed he’d decided that it would be nice to keep the business in the family. Since he didn’t have a son to pass his interests to—and couldn’t imagine a woman, even his own daughter, taking over his team—it made perfect sense to him for Lisa to marry a man with racing in his blood.

  He had not at all approved of her decision to break off the engagement and enter law school. And when he’d found out that she intended to be a criminal prosecutor rather than specializing in softer areas of the law—prenuptial agreements and high-profile divorces—he’d, well, blown a gasket, to use the jargon of his avocation.

  He shook his balding head. “It’s not that I mind you seeing him again. Never understood why you broke up with him in the first place. I hope you are coming to your senses about that job of yours. Dealing with criminals and murderers all day. Not the way I raised you to live.”

  Lisa exchanged a look with her mother. Both of them had heard this speech plenty of times before.

  As different from her husband as night from day, Ellen Woodrow was short, softly rounded and quiet natured. Perfectly content to live in the shadows of her husband’s very public lifestyle, she was a homemaker in the old-fashioned sense of the word. She had never worked outside the house, enjoyed baking and sewing and had loved being a room mother and PTA member during her only child’s school years.

  There was no doubt that she adored her husband, and her habitual deference to him was by choice rather than coercion. Even as she had rebelled against that future for herself, Lisa had known that her mother was happy.

  The only time Lisa had ever seen her mom stand up to her dad was to defend Lisa’s decision to enter law school. She had raised her daughter to follow her dreams, she’d asserted firmly. If Lisa had been content to follow in her mother’s domestic footsteps, that would have been fine, but if her ambitions lay elsewhere, then she had her mother’s full support. Woody’s sputtering refusals had somehow faded away after that, grudging acceptance in their wake, and Lisa would always be grateful for her mother’s intervention.

  Which didn’t mean her dad would ever be completely happy about her decision.

  “I still like my job, Dad. I just needed a little break. While I’m here, Wade and I want to spend some time together to, um, see if there’s still a spark between us,” she finished lamely.

  “You can’t do that here? You have to travel with him?”

  “And when would I see him here?” she countered. “If I want to see him at all I’ll have to go to Pennsylvania. Besides, I’ve never really been behind the scenes at a race. I’m sure I would find it fascinating.”

  “You’ll be in his way. I don’t want you interfering with his concentration. We’ve got a race to win. Jake needs all the points he can accumulate to stay solidly in The Chase.”

  So that was the real problem, she thought in resignation. Not that she might be hurt again if her imaginary relationship with Wade fell through for a second time. But that she might interfere with Wade’s work during a season that had a good chance of ending with Woody’s first NASCAR NEXTEL Cup championship trophy. Woody was already chafing at the enforced confinement that was keeping him from micromanaging at the racetrack; this was just another way for him to try to minimize any problems that might develop in his absence.

  “I won’t interfere. Wade’s already assured me that he’ll be able to focus on winning even if I’m there.”

  “It doesn’t look right, you staying in his motor coach when you aren’t even married. I’ve already given my suite to someone else and it would be rude of me to take it back now for you. If I were going, it would be different, since you could stay with me, but those damn doctors won’t let me travel for another month. At least, that’s what they think.”

  “And they’re right,” Ellen said with a flash of determination. “You aren’t traveling until your doctor clears you, even if I have to tie you to your chair.”

  Woody chuckled and reached out to pat his wife’s hand. “Okay, honey, don’t get your panties in a twist. I’m trying to be good.”

  He’d mellowed in the past few years, Lisa mused. There was a time when her father would have been very impatient with her mom’s attempt to get him to take care of himself. But that was before she’d developed a heart condition that now required constant monitoring and made both Lisa and her father aware that in her quiet, unassuming way, Ellen served as the solid center of their family.

  But then his faint smile faded and he frowned at Lisa again. “It doesn’t look right.”

  She sighed. “Daddy. I’m twenty-eight years old. I’ve been out on my own for quite a while now. And besides, Wade said he’d bunk with Jake while I’m there. We just want to spend some time together during my vacation. I won’t distract him and I won’t get in his way, okay?”

  Ellen tapped her chin thoughtfully, looking from her daughter to her husband, but she kept her opinion to herself, to Lisa’s relief.

  Woody reached for his despised aluminum walker that stood next to his chair. “I’ve got to get to work. Got three conference calls and two meetings scheduled before two o’clock this afternoon and then a workout with the physical therapist. We’ll talk about this later, Lisa.”

  “We can talk about it, but I’m still going,” she replied, giving him a little smile to soften the remark.

  Grumbling beneath his breath, Woody thumped out of the kitchen, leaving Lisa sitting alone with her mother.

  “More coffee, honey?” Ellen asked.

  Lisa shook her head. “Actually, I have a couple of calls to make myself this morning.”

  “Just like your daddy,” Ellen murmured with an indulgent shake of her still-blond, stylist-enhanced hair. “Working even on vacation.”

  “Just a couple of things I’m trying to monitor long-distance while I’m away.”

  “Mmm. So the real reason you took this long vacation was to try to renew your relationship with Wade? You certainly kept that a secret.”

  Trying to stick to the cover story she and Wade had concocted—despite her guilt about doing so—Lisa sipped her coffee and shrugged, letting that serve as her answer.

  Her mom looked worried. “I know you and Wade have never stopped loving each other. But I don’t know how much either of you has changed since the last time you were together. I hope you’ll be careful, Lisa. I would hate to see you hurt as badly as you were last time.”

  There were so many things in that little speech that Lisa wanted to address. Her mother didn’t think she had changed after all this time, after finishing law school and embarking on a challenging career? She made it sound as if Wade had been the one to end the engagement rather than Lisa herself.

  And what made her mom think that she and Wade still loved each other? They had barely spoken during the past six years. Obviously, they had both moved on.

  Because none of those comments fit into the cover story intended to protect her parents from the unnerving truth, Lisa swallowed her questions and said simply, “I’ll be careful, Mom. It’s just a vacation, really. A chance to spend some time at the track, watch an entire race weekend. I’ve never really done much of that, you know.”

  “That’s true,” her mom acknowledged. “Your daddy always thought of racing as a ‘man’s’ sport. He liked keeping that part of his life separate from his home life. He’s getting better about that, though. As racing has opened up more to women, your father has come around. H
e has quite a few women on his payroll now—mostly in the offices, but a few in the shops. One’s an engineer.”

  “That is quite progressive for Dad,” Lisa said, trying to smile. As she moved the conversation along—and far away from potentially dangerous territory—she was still fretting over her mother’s assertion that Wade was in love with her.

  Ridiculous, of course, and completely misguided, but she couldn’t seem to get the casually spoken words out of her mind.

  CHAPTER THREE

  WADE TOOK LISA TO DINNER THAT evening at an Italian restaurant that had once been their favorite. Ellen extended an invitation to them to dine at home, but Lisa declined, saying she and Wade needed some time together before leaving the next afternoon for Pennsylvania.

  She’d been torn by that choice. As reluctant as she was to be alone with Wade for even one meal, she was also disinclined to spend time with him and her parents.

  Despite their agreement to mislead her parents—at least for now—about the real purpose for her present alliance with Wade, she didn’t want to have to spend an entire evening pretending to be falling for him again. She wasn’t sure she was that good of an actor. It was much safer, all in all, for them to be alone where they could be completely frank about the pragmatic nature of their temporary partnership.

  Apparently, she wasn’t the only one who had misgivings about them spending too much time together. Jake Hinson joined them at the restaurant, obviously at Wade’s invitation.

  Wade and Lisa had just been seated when the hostess brought Jake to their table. Lisa hid her surprise as she greeted the good-looking driver, who was already the object of attention from other diners in the restaurant.

  She had always thought there was something about the way a driver walked that singled him out even to people who didn’t follow racing. A cocky assurance that served him well on the track, a no-nonsense gait that took him where he wanted to go swiftly and with few distractions. Accustomed to walking and signing auto graphs at the same time, he kept his eyes on the goal, but he was aware of everything that went on around him—another benefit of driving around a hundred and eighty miles an hour only inches away from the other forty-two equally fast cars on the track.

  Or maybe she was just romanticizing the profession, she thought with a smothered smile. “Hello, Jake.”

  Dark haired and dark eyed, with a dimpled smile that had graced the cover of quite a few magazines, Jake searched her face as he slid into one of the two empty chairs at the table. “Hey, Lisa. How are you doing?”

  Something about the concern in his voice gave her a clue that he and Wade had been talking. “Wade told you why I’m here?”

  Both men nodded. “I figured Jake could help us out at the track,” Wade explained. “I’ll be bunking with him while you’re in my coach and he can help me keep an eye out for you.”

  “I don’t need either of you keeping an eye out for me,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t expect any trouble, but if anything crops up, I can handle it.”

  “Oh, yeah? And how do you plan to do that?” Wade asked a bit too politely.

  “I’m as capable as anyone of calling 9-1-1. I’ll keep my cell phone with me at all times.”

  “Good plan,” Jake said conciliatorily. “But it still doesn’t hurt to have reinforcements on your side.”

  She deliberately soothed her frown. She wasn’t going to spend the entire meal arguing with them, she promised herself. Instead, she changed the subject. “So, Jake, I hear your season is going very well so far.”

  Though she wouldn’t admit it tonight, Lisa rarely missed watching a race. She spent almost every Sunday afternoon sprawled on her bed with a pile of paperwork, race coverage blaring from her TV. No matter how hard she always tried to resist, her eyes turned inexorably toward the screen whenever Wade was even mentioned.

  He flashed a grin. “Nineteen races down and I’m fifth in points. All I’ve got to do is race clean and finish well for seven more events and I’ve got a shot at the Championship.”

  Though Woody’s other three drivers were doing well this season, thirty-year-old Jake, competing in his third season of full-time NASCAR NEXTEL Cup racing, was considered the best bet to take it all. Wade and Jake made a formidable team, their close friendship seeming to give them the ability to communicate almost psychically at times.

  Wade had been Jake’s crew chief since Jake moved to NASCAR NEXTEL Cup racing from the NASCAR Busch Series, where he’d been extremely successful, taking the championship his final full-time year there. Though she hadn’t been around much during those years, Lisa had heard from her mother that the two had bonded like long-lost brothers almost from the beginning. She figured their mutual obsession for the sport, combined with an overwhelming drive to win, was the real foundation for their friendship.

  She had met Jake only a few times through her father, but she had always liked what she’d seen of him. He had a reputation for being congenial and even-tempered, a fierce competitor, but a clean racer. Not one of the young hotheads, or one of those few drivers with an air of arrogant entitlement, Jake seemed genuinely happy to be allowed to pursue a career he loved and grateful to his owner, his team, his sponsors and his fans for supporting him.

  “I’m glad things are going so well for you,” she said, looking directly at Jake as she spoke. “I know Dad’s really pleased with the way the season’s going.”

  Jake chuckled. “It’s always good to keep the owner happy.”

  A server approached the table—a young man who obviously recognized Jake and Wade, and was rather star-struck waiting on them—and they placed their orders. When the server moved away, Lisa felt obligated to say something to fill the slightly awkward silence left behind.

  “How do you like your chances this weekend?” she asked Jake. “I’ve never been to this race, so it will be a new experience for me.”

  Jake grimaced. “It’s a tough track. It’s got three straights, each one a different length, and three corners, all with different levels of banking. We go as fast there as at any superspeedway, but then we have to downshift into the curves, the way we would at a road course. Tough on the engines. There’s always a few that give out toward the end of the race. And this is also where we face the toughest turn in racing.” He exaggerated a shudder. “Turn Two. You go into that one single file, or you smack the wall.”

  “Yeah, but Turn Three is wide enough for some good racing,” Wade interjected, also speaking for Lisa’s benefit. “You can really build up some momentum there. Which is why we’re setting the car up more for Turn Three than Turns One and Two.”

  “Making Turn Two even more difficult for the driver,” Jake grumbled.

  “You just let me know what you need and I’ll give it to you,” Wade promised him.

  Jake made a comment about being too loose the last time he’d raced in Pennsylvania, and Wade assured him that the problem had been addressed for the upcoming event. They fell into a discussion about track bars and spring rubbers and wedge adjustments and Lisa zoned out, entertaining herself by dipping bread into herbed oil.

  She’d heard dozens of talks like this, of course, back when she and Wade had dated, when he was still moving up through the ranks toward crew chief. Her father’s star driver then had been Ed Jablonski, a solid racer who finished several times in the top five in points, twice in second place. Jake had been moved up the year after Ed retired due to health problems.

  Jake and Wade had won their third NASCAR NEXTEL Cup race together, finishing near the top enough times that season for Jake to be named rookie of the year. Ever since, it had been taken almost for granted in the sport that Jake would eventually win a championship, a prediction bolstered by seven more wins, two of them earlier this season. He’d barely made The Chase last season, but a run of bad luck at the final racetracks had kept him in fourth place rather than first, at the end of the season.

  “We’re being rude,” Jake said, brought back to his surroundings when their food was
delivered to the table. “Sitting here talking about mechanical stuff when we have a beautiful civilian at the table with us.”

  Even as she told herself it was just a line, Lisa still found herself charmed by Jake’s smile. Those dimples should be registered as lethal weapons, she thought. “Don’t mind me. I’m used to this.”

  “Which doesn’t make it any more polite,” he insisted. “Tell me about your job in Chicago. Is being a prosecutor as exciting as it looks on TV?”

  “Hardly. Trust me, my present circumstances are extremely unusual. If my boss hadn’t been the overcautious type, I never would have been put on leave just because of one thug’s threats.”

  “More than threats, apparently,” Wade murmured, cutting into his manicotti. “You said people have already been injured and someone tried to break into your home. I think your boss had good reason to be cautious.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe.”

  Jake took a sip of his wine and set his glass on the table. “You were right to come to Wade for help. We’ll keep you safe at the track.”

  Frowning, Lisa clarified, “I didn’t exactly come to Wade. He sort of found out about my situation accidentally and he offered to help. I accepted because I don’t want to upset my parents.”

  “Good plan. Your folks have enough to worry about now, what with your dad’s recuperation and all.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “So it’s a good thing you and Wade stayed friendly, huh? You don’t see many exes who can turn to each other in a time of crisis like this.”

  Lisa met Wade’s gaze across the table, then forced a smile. “Wade has been very generous to offer his help.”

  “I told Lisa I’d keep out of her way,” Wade added with a slight shrug. “We stay too busy at the track for her to have to worry about spending too much time with me.”