by Abby Gaines
Julie-Anne came out the door just as he got there.
“Hello, sweetheart.” Her warm, musical voice always gave Brady a lift. “I was on my way over to the team headquarters so you could take me to lunch.”
Brady started to grumble about not being allowed into his own office, and she said, “I need your input on the engine contract with Cargill-Grosso Racing.”
Unlike his sons, she wasn’t trying to shut him out of his business. He smiled. “Okay, Gypsy, I guess I could do that.” He’d given her the nickname soon after he met her, and it suited her. He kissed her mouth, and she responded with a mew of pleasure.
“Do you feel as good inside as you feel to me?” she asked when he lifted his head.
“I feel great.” And he did. He had a wonderful woman who loved him, a business solid enough not to go broke when he couldn’t make it into the office, and his youngest son about to marry a wonderful girl.
Julie-Anne said, “I bought a couple of T-bones yesterday.” T-bone was his favorite steak; Brady tensed. She continued, “How about I come to your place tonight and cook us a cozy dinner for two?”
Cozy—or romantic? To Brady, they were quite different, but to Julie-Anne, they were one and the same.
“We could light the fire,” she said, confirming his suspicions, “and snuggle up on that enormous sofa of yours.”
They’d had a few evenings snuggled on that sofa right after he’d got out of hospital. He hadn’t been up to anything more than watching TV. With Julie-Anne cuddled in his arms, TV-watching had become the most fun thing in the world.
“Brady?” Her voice was low, seductive. “What do you think?”
Brady pictured the scene: he and his beautiful, dark-haired Gypsy on the couch, her sexy curves, which he’d been dying to get his hands on since the moment he’d met her, tantalizing him.
The fluttering started in his chest again.
“Trent wants to stop by tonight and talk about the wedding,” he lied.
“I can hold off on snuggling until after Trent leaves, if you think it’ll embarrass him,” she said humorously.
Brady sighed, thought about saying what he had to, then chickened out. Again. “Not tonight, Julie-Anne. Let’s just stick with lunch.”
The disappointment in her eyes was nothing compared to the disappointment she’d feel when she learned the truth.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE NO. 548 CAR was booked in for wind-tunnel testing on Friday, Brianna’s last day with the team.
At seven in the morning, Chad, Zack, Dave Harmon, the car chief and the engine specialist, along with one of the engineers and Brianna, met at the tunnel, a few miles from Matheson Racing’s headquarters. They were allocated a private work bay that had its own bathroom and kitchenette, plus a workbench and power for the team’s tools. They could spend the day here, making adjustments to the car in complete privacy between tests in the tunnel.
“Confidentiality is paramount,” explained the wind-tunnel technician who met them on arrival. “Our other clients don’t know you’re here or what you’re testing, and you don’t know about them.”
The No. 548 car was taken into the tunnel—more accurately a large, long room dominated by a huge conveyor belt—and the group filed into the control room that overlooked it.
Through the wide window, they watched as the car was secured. Then the conveyor, which the technician called a “rolling road,” started up, accelerating from zero to 180 miles an hour in under a minute.
They made for quite a crowd in the control room. As a giant fan circulated air in the test area to simulate race-track conditions, Brianna hung back so the experts could watch the data appearing on the monitors.
Zack looked more relaxed than usual—maybe because the pressure was on the car today and not on the driver. He laughed at something his car chief said. When he smiled or laughed, he was darned handsome, Brianna had to admit. Around the team offices, she’d noticed that several of the women couldn’t take their eyes off him. Same with Chad, only more so. She stole a glance at Chad, who was talking to the wind-tunnel technician. To her mind, even taking into account Trent’s undeniable charms, Chad was the best-looking guy at Matheson Racing.
They ate lunch, pizzas ordered in, back in the work bay. When the team had made some adjustments to the car, they sent it back out for testing. As the data started coming in, the mood in the control room was upbeat. They were getting what they wanted.
Zack moved back to stand with Brianna while the more technical team members hung over the computer screens.
“What’s everyone so excited about?” she asked.
“When we drove at Halesboro, the car had more drag than expected,” he said. “At least, it did until I crashed. After that, drag was the least of my worries.” He spoke lightly, but she sensed the strain beneath the words. “We think we’ve found a fix.”
Brianna wrinkled her nose. “It can’t be easy, making a comeback.”
He grimaced. “Not on this team, where Trent’s the golden boy.” He didn’t speak with any resentment, more a pragmatic acceptance that he wasn’t top dog around here. “I shouldn’t have quit the first time around.”
“Too bad we can’t turn the clock back.” Brianna’s gaze drifted toward Chad.
Zack cleared his throat; she brought her attention back to him and found his sharp eyes on her.
“You’re too young to have regrets,” he said.
“No regrets,” she replied, telling herself as much as him.
He looked skeptical.
“I guess this comeback is a way of dealing with your regrets,” she said. “The next best thing to doing it over.”
“Dad’s illness was a wake-up call,” he said. “He and I haven’t gotten along in years—not in decades. But when I told him I wanted to rejoin the team, he didn’t hesitate to say yes. I realized I shouldn’t let resentment over the past get in the way of the future.”
Whatever the past sins that had created the rift between them, Brady Matheson was a good father. His words about Chad flitted through Brianna’s mind: Takes about twenty years to get to know my son…but it’s worth it.
Brianna’s father lost interest if he didn’t get what she was saying in twenty seconds. When he’d called this morning, he’d questioned whether visiting a wind tunnel was good use of her time, then suggested she was taking too long on her evaluation.
At four o’clock, during the third round of testing, cheering broke out in the control room. The latest data were the best yet, better than they’d hoped for.
“This could be it,” Zack said. “This could fix the problems I was having at Halesboro.”
He gave that gorgeous smile, and spontaneously Brianna squeezed his arm. “I hope so,” she said.
Chad said, “Fixing the aerodynamics doesn’t let you off the hook, Zack. You’ve got a long way to go before you win a race.”
Zack’s jaw set tight; Brianna’s blood boiled. Zack was at least trying to fix his past mistakes, which was more than Chad was.
“Don’t be such a jerk, Chad,” she said.
She’d thought the car guys were completely absorbed in their data, but every man in the room turned to stare at her. Dull color flooded Chad’s face; Zack sucked in his cheeks and took a protective step closer to Brianna.
“Excuse me?” Chad said, menace in his quiet tone.
This was her chance to turn it into a joke. Or to apologize.
“You should just be…nicer to Zack,” she muttered.
A ripple of interest ran around the small room.
“May I see you outside?” Chad said with jaw-breaking self-control.
“I’ll come, too,” Zack offered, worried.
“Stay,” Chad ordered.
“He’s not a dog,” Brianna said crossly.
Zack groaned. “Brianna, honey, if I promise I won’t let Chad push me around, will you please shut up and go with him?”
“Since you asked so nicely,” she said pointedly to Zack,
“and you said please, I’ll go.”
Zack looked as if he was muttering a prayer of thanks under his breath. Chad just looked mad.
Brianna followed him to the work bay. He closed the door behind them with an intimidatingly soft click.
No one will hear me scream.
“WHAT DO YOU THINK you’re doing, telling me how to handle my brother?” Chad demanded the second the door closed. Okay, he’d pounced on Zack in a way he might not have if Brianna hadn’t been hanging on to Zack’s arm…but everything he’d said was true. She had no right to butt in.
Brianna stalked across the room—why was she wearing high-heeled boots to a wind tunnel, for Pete’s sake? How was a guy supposed to concentrate with that click-clack distracting him every time she moved?
She perched her bottom on the workbench. “That wasn’t handling him. That was insulting him.”
“Someone has to tell it like it is,” he snapped. “Zack has a long way to go before he’s ready to race. He can’t afford to lose focus.”
“Sometimes people need encouragement. They need to know you see their good points, as well the bad.” Her face was pale, her hands clenched at her sides.
The last time Chad had seen that mix of anger and vulnerability was the moment he’d met her—she’d just finished talking on the phone to her dad. He remembered her saying at dinner last week that she’d never lived up to her father’s standards.
“Zack knows I see his good points,” he said, less heat in his voice.
“How?” she asked.
“He…I…he just does.” Chad paced toward the door. “You don’t know Zack, Brianna. This isn’t like you and your father—he doesn’t need my approval or some kind of connection.” Though now that he thought about it, disconnected was a good word for his brother. “Zack needs to win races and I want to help him.”
“He can’t win if he doesn’t feel part of the team.”
“Of course he’s part of the team,” he said. “That doesn’t mean we don’t argue. You can’t expect three brothers to always talk to each other like…like Barbie dolls.” He raised his voice to a falsetto. “Omigosh, Zack, that race suit is the exact color of your eyes.”
“You’re being childish,” she said. “You need to wake up and be thankful for your family.”
“You need to remember that they’re my family,” he retorted. She recoiled as if he’d slapped her. Which was crazy, for there was no way she could think of his family as her concern, no matter how well she got on with them.
“I don’t need your interference,” he went on. Especially not the way she’d done it back there, so that everyone knew what she thought of him.
Her eyes flashed fury—he must have imagined that moment of hurt. “Pardon me for trying to keep the peace,” she said.
“Keep the…? You just made things a hundred times worse,” he snapped. “Every guy in that room is deciding whether he’s on my side or Zack’s, and the next time something goes wrong at a race track, one of us is going to cop the flak. Next time you want to keep the peace, go to the Middle East.”
“Next time you want to insult your brother in front of the same people I apparently insulted you in front of, try shutting up,” she said. “I take back every nice thing I ever thought about you.”
He snorted. “What nice things?”
“None of your business. I meant what I said back there, Chad. You’re a jerk.” Brianna’s eyes were suspiciously damp, her color high, as she stormed past him out the door. Which she did not close quietly.
What nice things had she thought, dammit? And when had she thought them? Two years ago…or more recently?
It didn’t matter. What mattered was she was wrong about him and Zack. He might have been a little tough on Zack…but Brianna didn’t have the experience to see what Chad saw when he watched Zack out on the track.
A driver who’d lost his touch.
Chad wasn’t sure his brother had it in him to make a comeback. Yet here he was asking Brianna’s father to spend millions of dollars. There were no guarantees in NASCAR, of course, but Chad wasn’t used to taking quite such a leap of faith. Small wonder he was on edge.
Still, he shouldn’t have spoken so harshly to Brianna, either. It was just…he was starting to feel ganged-up on. As if Brianna liked everyone in his family except him.
I want her to like me.
As if she could like him after the way he’d spoken to her. Probably even made her cry.
“Damn.” Chad grabbed his jacket from the workbench. He wasn’t going to get a single thing done, let alone find another sponsor for Zack, when he knew Brianna was upset.
Outside, he scanned the parking lot. He saw her Mustang immediately, saw her chestnut hair above the back of the driver’s seat. Relief flooded him.
As he neared the car, he realized her shoulders were shaking.
Brianna really was crying. And was apparently so distraught that she couldn’t drive away. Chad didn’t think he’d been that monstrous. Which just showed how little he understood women and why getting married had been such a stupid idea.
Guilt and annoyance rose as he pulled open the driver-side door.
“I’m sorry,” he snarled. “All right?”
Her eyes widened with bewilderment, then she glared. “Are you telling me this is your fault?”
“Obviously it must be, or you wouldn’t be flooding the parking lot.”
A mystified silence, punctuated by a sniffle, greeted that. Chad whipped his handkerchief out of his pocket, handed it to her.
She blew her nose.
“I didn’t mean to say that about you interfering in my family,” he said belligerently. “You can’t go getting upset every time I open my mouth.”
“Can’t I?” she said, annoyed. “Is that an order?”
She was back on her kick about him being bossy; his hackles rose. “Yes, it is an order. We’re trying to work together here.” Those tears were drying fast, he noticed, which made him feel a lot better—even if her eyes were sparking dangerously.
“I don’t see how we can work together when you’re so rude and obstinate,” she said. “When I first met you I thought you were kind and…and soft.”
Soft? Everything inside Chad revolted at the word.
She blinked rapidly, water welling up in her eyes again…and his heart twisted.
“I am kind,” he said gruffly, then forced out, “and soft.”
Which had the unexpected effect of turning her incipient sob into a hiccup, then a chortle.
“Okay, maybe I’m not soft, exactly…”
The chortle turned into a laugh.
“I’m trying to apologize here,” he said, aggrieved.
“Chad, you’re about as soft as…as a crash barrier.”
He winced at the thought. The SAFER barriers they used in NASCAR these days were a hell of a lot softer than the old concrete, but they were still awfully hard. “How would you know how a barrier feels?”
She held up her hands, a peace offering. “I don’t. But I do know you’re not soft and—” she hesitated “—if you were, you probably couldn’t run a NASCAR team.”
He stared, surprised by her reversal. “You mean, I’m not the dictator you thought I was?”
“I mean,” she said, “that team owners might have to be dictators some of the time.”
He considered that a serious olive branch. “I’m sorry I made you cry,” he said.
She smiled. “Actually, you didn’t. You made me mad enough to cry, but it was this thing that pushed me over the edge.” She thumped the steering wheel. “My car won’t start. It was the last straw in a day that started with my father hassling me and ended with you telling me to get lost.” She turned the key in the ignition, and he heard only a click.
He decided not to reopen the discussion about his personality flaws. “You have gas, right?”
She gave him a look that said she would never run out of gas. Chad leaned in to look at the fuel gauge, anyway, and c
aught the scent of clean skin and her lily-and-lemon perfume. Got a close-up view of her lips, too—raspberry pink. It took him a good few seconds to focus his vision on the fuel gauge. Nearly full.
“Satisfied?” she asked coolly.
No, sweetheart, I’m not satisfied, not by a long shot.
The thought came out of nowhere and was reflected by a tightening in Chad’s whole body. Hell, that crying jag had played havoc with his nerves.
“It might be your starter motor.” He stepped away from the car before he did something stupid, like kiss her, and glanced at his watch. It was past four o’clock, and the guys would be wrapping up here soon. “I’ll have someone tow this back to the workshop, while I drive you wherever you’re going.”
“You can’t do that,” she said.
“Brianna, you’ve just accused me of not being kind. I’m going to drive you whether you like it or not.” He jerked his thumb in the direction of his Viper Coupe.
She glared. “Next you’ll tell me this is your idea of soft.”
“You got it.” He turned and walked away, heading for his car, determined not to let her refuse. He could do with a chance to repair the damage he’d done that afternoon; he didn’t want her last thought of him today to be that he’d never have made a good husband.
His dad and Rosie, Chad’s stepmother, used to say it was best not to let the sun go down on an argument. Chad could take Brianna where she was going, grovel a little on the way, then be back at the office in time to review the budget estimates Tony Winters, the team accountant, had been working on today. The estimates were running a couple of weeks late, as were several other financial tasks. Tony had been apologetic, but the guy was on edge. Chad wanted to make sure everything was okay.
Brianna caught up with him before he reached his car—obviously she wasn’t as averse to a little dictatorship as she thought. He helped her into the car and put her briefcase into the trunk.