Checkered Past

by Abby Gaines

  “Huge,” Chad agreed. “It’s not just the cars and the races—it’s a significant business in its own right, and every year it grows a new dimension. These days, to run a NASCAR team, you have to be part investment banker, part technician, part strategist and a whole lot of marketing expert.” He topped up her coffee, then his. “I’m good on the numbers and the strategy, and Dad’s the greatest technician I know. Neither of us is too hot on the marketing.”

  In the world he described, it didn’t sound as if he had much free time. Brianna ventured warily, “You said, when you asked me to marry you, we could go anywhere, do anything. Did you mean that?”

  CHAD SHIFTED in his seat. “I meant…” What had he meant? Anywhere in North Carolina? It didn’t sound like a generous offer. “I meant, we get to travel a lot.”

  When they’d met, Brianna had been excited about the change of scene her new job in Miami offered. Knowing she would be living several states away had been a factor in his hasty marriage proposal.

  “To be honest—” he wished he had been more honest, less carried away by his emotions “—I’m pretty much tied to the team during the NASCAR season. But we can vacation anywhere you like.” Anywhere with cell phone coverage.

  “So, we’ll live in Charlotte?” she said.

  “I have a place out at Mountain Island Lake. That’s about fifteen, twenty minutes from uptown.” It was quiet out there, and Brianna was apparently used to cosmopolitan living.

  Her chestnut hair swung forward as she busied herself spreading jelly on her sourdough toast. “I guess I have a lot to learn about NASCAR.”

  “Once you start coming to races, you’ll pick it up in no time.” Chad was back on familiar ground, and his confidence rose. “Hopefully you’ll love it.”

  She grinned that wide, delighted smile he’d fallen in love with. “I will, I know it. So, is the rest of your family involved in the team? You said you had two brothers. One of them is…Trent, right?”

  “Uh-huh. Zack, who’s between me and Trent, used to race for the team. He quit a couple of years back—he has a stake in a racetrack-simulation software company in Atlanta.”

  “Did you used to race, too?” she asked.

  He downed half his orange juice. “I drove in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series for a couple of years. I won a few races—not enough.”

  “I’ll bet you were great,” she said loyally.

  Chad’s heart lifted. “I was good, not great,” he corrected her. “There’s often a moment in a race that your gut tells you is the moment where you’ll win or lose. Great drivers throw everything they have into that moment. No hesitation, even if it looks—” he shook his head “—insane. I’m not that kind of guy.”

  “And Trent is?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Chad laughed, remembering the many occasions when Trent had just about given him a heart attack with his full-throttle, no-holds-barred ducking and diving on the track. “That’s Trent, through and through. He’s brilliant. He just needs to get a bit more responsible so he has more control over his results.”

  “I can’t wait to meet him and Zack,” she said. “And your dad.”

  Chad could definitely wait to make that particular introduction. “Do you think you’ll get a job at the Getaway in Charlotte?”

  Brianna shook her head. “I can’t work for Getaway.” The finality in her voice raised a question. Before he could ask it, she stuck a finger in the air, as if she’d had a lightbulb moment. “But you know what? I have those marketing skills you and your father are missing. Maybe I can join you in running the team.”

  Chad froze, then consciously relaxed. He tried to sound regretful as he said, “You don’t have the knowledge of the sport.”

  She waved her piece of toast at him, dismissing his argument. “Like you said, I’ll get the hang of it fast. And you can give me after-hours tutoring.” Her saucy smile told him some of that tutoring would take place in bed, and even while his brain warned him to close down this line of conversation, his body was tempted.

  “Seriously, Chad, I’m good at what I do—sponsorship, media relations, corporate communications, image-building. You need all that, right? It would be so cool to work together.”

  Cool. The word reminded Chad she was eleven years younger than his thirty-four. Which made her idealistic, romantic. Appealing qualities—lovable qualities—but there was no place for them when it came to running a NASCAR team.

  “I’m not a big fan of mixing business and marriage,” he said. “Too much scope for disagreement.” He knew that firsthand.

  Her smile faltered. “Surely we can weather a few disagreements.”

  “Why ask for trouble?”

  As she pushed her plate away, her fork clattered onto the table, then fell to the floor. Chad leaned down to pick it up; he wiped at the grease mark on the carpet with a napkin. Giving her time to forget the idea.

  “Maybe I could start working with you,” Brianna said when he sat up again, “then quit if you’re not happy with how it’s going.”

  Dammit, this was their honeymoon, not a job interview. “I don’t want my wife working with me,” he said. Even he could hear that sounded harsh; Brianna’s expression turned tense. He reached across the table for her hand. With his thumb, he traced the narrow gold band on her ring finger. He’d bought it at the wedding chapel; he wasn’t even sure it was real gold. He’d buy her a much better ring when they got home.

  “Sweetheart,” he said, “this isn’t about you, it’s about the nature of running a team. I get so busy, I wouldn’t have time to enjoy your being there. I’d probably snap at you.” His fingers brushed her wrist, circled her pulse. “I’d rather you worked somewhere else, and I could look forward to cozy evenings with you at the end of each day.”

  Her expression softened. “I like the sound of the cozy evenings.”

  “Me, too. On race weekends we’ll have those evenings in my motor home at the track,” he said.

  “Cool!” She entwined her fingers with his. “Chad, it doesn’t matter where we are, as long as we’re together.”

  “You’re right.” He paused. “Though I should warn you, I work long hours during the season.”

  “Oh?” she said cautiously.

  “But the minute I walk in the door, I’m all yours,” he promised. “No shoptalk.”

  “But if NASCAR’s such a big part of your family’s life, I’ll want to hear about it,” she objected.

  “Obviously there’ll be some NASCAR talk,” he improvised. “But I won’t bore you with all the petty frustrations and problems.”

  “But, sweetheart—” her smile turned perplexed “—that’s what I’m there for. You and I are a team.”

  “I already have a team,” he joked. “You and I are a marriage.”

  She flinched. What the heck was that about? Chad felt as if he was standing in the middle of a race track, dodging cars.

  “Brianna, that doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear all your frustrations and problems,” he said. “It’s just that I get enough of mine during the day.”

  “You don’t think I can help you deal with them?” Brianna asked. Her voice sounded damp.

  This was exactly what he hated about mixing business with his personal life: the constant danger of causing offense through some innocuous comment. “Of course I don’t think that. I’m sure you’re great at…dealing with stuff. But I’m good at it, too, so, you know, I don’t really need…” He trailed off.

  Brianna was rubbing her cheeks with the palms of her hands, as if anticipating that they would soon be wet. Chad felt in his pocket for his handkerchief.

  “I think of marriage as being an equal partnership,” she said.

  “Me, too.” He hadn’t thought about it before, but it made sense. “We’ll have a great partnership,” he promised. “We’ll be partners at home, in bed…” His voice dropped at the thought of making love with her.

  “But I won’t be part of your work.”

  “Exactly.�
�� He grinned, relieved. “And when you’re ready, we’ll have kids, and we’ll be partners looking after them.”

  “I do want kids,” she said, and it occurred to Chad that this was a conversation they should have had before they got married. Luckily they felt the same way. “But I’d like to have you to myself a few years first.”

  “Ditto.” He lifted her fingers to his lips, kissed her knuckles. “I’m not looking forward to spending weekends apart from you. I want you coming to the races as long as possible.”

  Brianna frowned. Uh-oh, had he just stuck a spade back in that hole he’d managed to fill in?

  “Can’t our children come to the races?” she asked.

  It was such a wildly hypothetical question on the first day of their marriage…they might not even have kids…we might not even stay married…. He closed down that line of thought. “Some people do take their kids,” he admitted. “I’ve always thought it seems pretty disruptive.”

  She pulled her hand back. “But if the kids and I don’t mind that, we can come, right? Even if we need a bigger motor home.”

  Chad’s motor home was the biggest you could buy. “We’ll talk about that when it happens,” he said. Firmly.

  “We’ll talk about it, or you’ll decide?” Definite annoyance in her voice now. Her chin went up in the air, challenging him.

  He decided it was a rhetorical question.

  When he didn’t say anything, her eyes widened. Her mouth formed a slow O of shock.

  “What do you want to get out of this marriage?” she asked.

  Brianna spoke so hesitantly, Chad didn’t hear the first word of her question. He thought she’d asked, Do you want to get out of this marriage? His instinctive, internal response was a horrified No. Then Yes.

  “Of course I don’t want to get out of it.” But still grappling with his conflicting reactions, he didn’t sound convincing. Then he realized, from her horrified gasp, what she’d really said—and that she’d seen the uncertainty, the betrayal, in his face.

  His stomach lurched. Do something! Fix this! He might know squat about marriage, but he knew how to fix things.

  “We don’t know each other very well. It’ll take time to settle into life together, maybe a long time.” He was babbling, hardly aware of what he said. “Brianna…sweetheart, I’ve always thought of marriage as a kind of haven from the rest of my life.”

  She opened her mouth, but he hurried on. “A partnership, like you said—absolutely. But also…separate. It’s not easy running Matheson Racing, and it’s taken a long time to get the place operating smoothly. Marriage and family—” he glanced down at his enormous breakfast and realized he’d lost his appetite “—with their high emotional component—”

  “Their what?” she said, incredulous.

  Chad realized that the glitter in her brown eyes was anger, not tears. “Bad choice of words,” he said hastily. He drew a long breath. Dammit, he was trying to explain something serious, and she was pulling him up for being unromantic. “Marriage and family are complicated. Mixing you—us—with the running of the team will make everything harder.”

  “But you already have family involved in the team—your brother, your dad.”

  “Believe me, that’s more than enough.” He shoved a hand through his hair. “Between them, they can be impossible. Often as not, I’m struggling to keep it together.”

  “And you think having me around will make it harder to keep it together, not easier.”

  He wasn’t stupid enough to answer that.

  “Let me tell you what I want out of this marriage,” she said. Her face was somber; she sounded older than she had a few minutes ago. “I want a partnership that will last through thick and thin.”

  “So do I,” he said promptly.

  “A true partnership, where you and I are an integral part of every aspect of each other’s lives, for better or for worse. Where we make decisions together, and when we mess up, our love for each other doesn’t suffer. Where we share our thoughts, our hopes, our disappointments. All in, nothing held back. That’s a healthy marriage.”

  She sounded as if she wanted to fuse herself to him. Chad stared at her, his mind scrambling to find the words that would say enough, but not promise something he couldn’t deliver.

  Brianna swiped at her lips with her napkin and stood up. She moved to stand behind her chair, putting it between them. “Is that what you’re offering, Chad?” Her voice wobbled, and he had the sense of something precious slipping from his grasp, about to shatter…yet he couldn’t will himself to grab hold of it.

  “Not in those words,” he said cautiously. “Brianna, can’t we find a compromise?” Though he was pretty sure he didn’t have much room to move within her ideal-marriage picture. Which meant she’d be doing most of the compromising.

  But, heck, one of them had to budge. He got up, walked over to her; she took a step backward.

  “When we met, you were so into me, so intense,” she said. “What you’re saying now seems so different.”

  “I didn’t lie to you,” he said. “We’re on vacation, the whole getting-to-know-each-other was on fast-forward. Of course it was intense. Then, neither of us admitted the full truth about our families. There were bound to be some bumps when we hit the real world.”

  She nodded, acknowledging his point. But she gripped the back of her chair so hard, her knuckles whitened. “Chad, I can’t compromise on what I see as the fundamental building block for a marriage. I want a close, loving relationship with a man who needs me as much as I need him.”

  “I need you.” Then, truthfully, “Hell, Brianna, I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  She gave a half sob, half laugh. “I’m starting to realize that.”

  He reached out, ran his thumb across the satin skin of her cheek. “I want to tell you I’ll do whatever it is you want…but I’m not sure I can.” He’d never felt so helpless in his life.

  “And you’re not sure you want to,” she suggested.

  A denial sprang to his lips, then fell away. Truth was, he didn’t like the sound of what she was asking, didn’t think it should be necessary for them to have a good marriage. He swallowed—his throat was so parched it was like being out there in the desert under a scorching sun.

  “I think,” she said, “we might have made a mistake.” She clapped both hands to her mouth as if she could push the words back in.

  Too late.

  Chad had thought the same thing a hundred times in the past half hour. Yet hearing it from her now, he felt as if all the oxygen in the room had disappeared.

  Then came a sense of relief, like the valve being opened on an overinflated tire.

  He heard himself say, “What are you suggesting? You want a divorce?”

  She gulped. “I…yes…if you think so.”

  What the hell did that mean? Yes or no? Of course he didn’t want a divorce, they’d only just got married. But she might want one—he’d rushed her into this, worried he might lose her. Sure, she’d told him she was impulsive…but he should have known better. She was so much younger, but he hadn’t even considered that her expectations might differ from his.

  It was clear from the conversation they’d just had that she would be miserable married to him.

  If she wanted out, did he have any right to stop her? Did he want to stop her?

  “If we decide that’s the best course of action—” he sounded more like her lawyer than her husband “—I can take care of the process.” Oh, yeah, now he was willing to step up to the plate. Still, he’d started this mess by proposing, so it was only fitting that he should clean it up.

  He tried to gauge what Brianna was thinking. Her lips were pressed together, but she wasn’t crying. He supposed it wasn’t possible to be heartbroken over someone you’d known just a few days. He rubbed at the ache in his chest. Hell, he hoped it wasn’t.

  “I, uh, I guess this kind of thing happens a lot in Vegas,” he said, the words stilted. “Mi
stakes. People making them.”

  She didn’t reply.

  He ran a hand around the back of his neck. “If we split up now, you’ll go to Florida?” He slapped away the urge to tell her they could work this out. He’d never been one for self-delusion.

  She nodded. “And you’ll be back with Matheson Racing.” Her voice was high and distant, as if she was holding her breath.

  “Yeah.” He looked at her, held her gaze. Stay. It’s not too late. But that was the crazy part of him talking, the one that had started this. It wasn’t the real him. “I can apply for a divorce in North Carolina.”

  Brianna looked away. “It’ll be as if this never happened.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  New Year’s Day, twenty-two months later

  BRIANNA’S FATHER’S house was a glowing testament to Brian Hudson’s indomitable will to succeed and to the lofty standards he set himself and others.

  As Brianna swung her Mustang into the parking bay adjacent to the marble front steps, illuminated by impressive outdoor lighting, she couldn’t help but acknowledge what her dad had achieved.

  He’d parlayed his own father’s legacy of a half-dozen three-star hotels into a nationwide chain of five-star hotels and resorts. Before she was born, he’d torn down the family home in Buckhead, Atlanta’s wealthiest suburb, and replaced it with this ten-thousand-square-foot neo-Georgian mansion.

  After Brianna’s mom left, he and Brianna had rattled around the place, disappointing each other, until she went away to college.

  She climbed out of the car. She shivered, not at the sharp needles of sleet that hit her face, but because this was the nearest she’d been to Charlotte—where Chad lived his well-ordered life without her—since Vegas.

  He was 240 miles away; if she got back in her car now, she could—

  Margaret, her father’s housekeeper, opened the front door. “Happy New Year!” she called.

  Brianna’s New Year’s resolution, made at a friend’s party in the small hours of this morning, had been to stop thinking about Chad.

  It had taken a long time, after Las Vegas—even in the privacy of her own thoughts she avoided using the phrase since the wedding—to piece together her shattered heart. Then anger had flooded it, testing its newly healed cracks to the limit. Anger with herself for marrying Chad on the false assumption that he loved her, valued her, just as she was. Anger with Chad for his refusal to share his life with her in a meaningful way.