by Abby Gaines
“It rains in April,” Brady said. “A lot.”
The flatness in his tone communicated itself to her, and she sent him a worried look. Kelly did the same.
Brianna, thankfully, changed the subject, asking about the architect who’d designed Brady’s house. From there, Kelly talked about the minor redecoration of Trent’s place they planned.
Julie-Anne didn’t join in quite as animatedly as before, Brady noticed. Damn, he was going to hurt her. If not now, then later. If he had any guts, if he wasn’t a selfish jerk, he’d do it now.
Instead, he reached across the table and took her hand. And felt like a heel when she gave him a smile that radiated love, and faith in him.
It was five o’clock, almost sunset, by the time everyone left. Brady cleared the table while Julie-Anne worked in the kitchen. She hummed a Beatles song. He loved the way she sang or hummed all the time.
Drawn by the sound, he moved into the kitchen, where he stood, watching her.
She poured detergent into the dishwasher, turned it on. Then she straightened and looked at Brady. The gleam in her eye told him what she had in mind.
He said, “I’ll make coffee.”
She raised her eyebrows. “An energy boost. Great idea.”
Unfortunately the coffee was done in five minutes, even though he went to the trouble of making it in a French press the way Julie-Anne liked. Brady would have been happy with instant.
They carried their mugs through to the living room. Julie-Anne sat on the enormous sectional leather couch and patted the cushion next to her.
Brady sat, and then found escape in the form of the TV remote control. “I want to catch the news, learn the latest about the Grosso baby.” The kidnapping three decades ago of newborn Gina Grosso, Kent Grosso’s twin sister, was recently in the news—rumors had surfaced that Gina was still alive and somehow involved in NASCAR. A mystery blogger kept adding fuel to the fire.
“Since when are you interested in the Grosso baby?”
He might have been fooled by Julie-Anne’s casual tone if he hadn’t happened to look at her and see her mouth set in a tense line, her eyes narrowed. He’d never been able to fob her off.
Still he tried to dig his way out. “I’ve known Dean Grosso twenty years. And Patsy.”
“What’s their other daughter’s name? The youngest?”
What was this, NASCAR trivia? He tsked. “It’s, uh, Susannah.”
Julie-Anne folded her arms beneath her chest, pushing her curves up, and Brady willed himself to feel something. Anything.
“I’ll be sure and tell Sophia your concern for her family next time I’m talking to her,” Julie-Anne said.
“Just because I got the girl’s name wrong—” there was probably a solid argument here, one he could drag on until Julie-Anne got so riled she’d forget all about cozying up together “—doesn’t mean I don’t care about her family.”
“What’s going on, Brady?”
It was a chance to tell her, but he couldn’t do it.
“Have you heard from Amber lately?” he asked. A desperate attempt at diversion, and her indrawn breath told him it was a low blow. Amber was Julie-Anne’s daughter, who was currently wandering the world somewhere. The two had been estranged since the death of Julie-Anne’s unfaithful first husband, Billy Blake. Although she’d had an awful marriage, Julie-Anne had nursed Billy after an accident on the interstate paralyzed him. She’d sent Amber to stay with her sister to escape Billy’s reckless behavior, and the girl had never gotten over the misguided belief that her mom didn’t want her around.
When Julie-Anne had e-mailed Amber to say she and Brady were engaged, the girl had sent a furious reply about “not learning from her mistakes.” Then nothing.
Julie-Anne found it painful to talk about Amber these days. Kids. You couldn’t win.
“I’m sorry,” Brady said. Because no matter how much he didn’t want to discuss their relationship, there was no excuse for causing her pain.
“Is this prevaricating all because you don’t want to set a date for our wedding?”
He gazed at the TV. “It’s not that I don’t want to.”
She snatched the remote, turned off the set. “Have the decency to be honest,” she snapped. “At least before your heart attack, you had the guts to say you didn’t want me.”
“That wasn’t true. I said that when I was too stupid to know what was good for me.” He would forever be grateful to his faulty heart for showing him how much she mattered to him.
“Do you love me?” she demanded.
“You know I do.”
Her hands bunched into fists. “All I know is, every time I mention our wedding, which isn’t a strange thing to do, given I’m your fiancée, you change the subject.”
“I just don’t see what the hurry is, when we’re busy with Trent’s wedding.”
She gave him a searching look. “When you proposed, it was right after you almost died of a heart attack. Your proposal might have been a heat-of-the-moment thing, and now that the doctor says you’ll be fine, you’re regretting it.”
“It wasn’t the heat of the moment,” he growled. He took her hand, squeezed it harder than he should, but she didn’t seem to mind. “I love you, Julie-Anne. More than I knew I could.”
Her smile was hesitant, watery, but still the smile that gave his heart a lift. “You don’t have to sound so gloomy about it.”
He kissed her hard, and she opened into his embrace with all the warmth and generosity he cherished.
Then she pulled away, buried her face in his neck. “I want you so much,” she said, her voice muffled. “The sooner we get down the aisle and into bed the better.”
The doctor hadn’t cleared Brady for sex yet, but that should happen in the next month. Then he’d have no excuse.
“Maybe we shouldn’t worry about the weather and get married early March,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be a big event if you think it’ll strain your health. As long as you and I are there, that’s all that matters.”
Dammit, he had to tell her.
“Julie-Anne,” he said, “there’s a reason I can’t set a date.”
She paled, then visibly braced herself. “Tell me.”
Brady squirmed. How could a guy say this and keep any kind of dignity? “The medication they put me on after the heart attack, the beta blockers…it turns out they have a few side effects.”
Her eyes widened. “The doctor mentioned dizziness,” she said, “and fatigue.”
“Yeah, well, there are some others he didn’t mention. I guess at the time there were more important things to worry about.”
She swallowed, but her gaze held steady.
“It seems that on these pills, I can’t get, uh…” Brady sought refuge in jargon and said, “Beta blockers can cause a reduction in libido.”
His face burned hot as a T-bone on a grill.
“You’re worried about our sex life?”
He couldn’t tell if she was horrified or just plain surprised. He nodded.
Julie-Anne laughed and flung her arms around his neck, knocking the wind out of him. “Brady, my dearest idiot, if that’s all it is, we can get married tomorrow.”
“Do you understand what I’m saying?” He disentangled himself. “As things are now, there’s no way I can, uh, satisfy you.”
It was humiliating to even talk about something he’d always taken for granted, about his basic ability to be a man.
Brady ran a hand over his face. “Gypsy, what if the effect of these pills is permanent?”
“Is it?”
“I don’t know,” he said, frustrated. “I only found out they were to blame for this libido thing by searching on the Internet. I don’t know how long I’ll have to keep taking them, or if I’ll recover to the extent that I can…or if that particular side effect will clear up.”
“Why don’t you ask your doctor?”
“I’m not going to talk to him about—”
“He’s
your doctor,” she said. “You’re supposed to tell him that kind of thing. For all you know, there might be a simple fix.”
She was right, of course. Brady felt better already. He drew a breath. “Okay, I’ll tell him.”
“Regardless of what he says,” she continued, “we can set a date.”
“I want to wait until I’ve seen him,” Brady said.
Julie-Anne turned away, dashed a hand over her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he said miserably. “I know this is disappointing.”
“I don’t give a damn about whether you can make love to me or not,” she said fiercely. “What upsets me is that you think it would make a difference to how I feel.”
What could he say? She might not think it made a difference now, but who knew what the future held?
CHAD WAS THANKFUL for the breathing space afforded by the team’s practice at Kentucky—even though they had to share the track with two other teams, and even though his dumb-ass brothers were responding to the tension of testing by acting as if they were about to launch preemptive nuclear strikes on each other.
He drew in a breath of the Kentucky air, redolent of gasoline, as he walked toward the garage. And felt happier. This was what racing was about—the rubber meeting the pavement. If he could just keep things this simple…
It was so much easier than being at Matheson Racing, wondering when Brianna might call or turn up, his dad prowling around like a suspended driver. Brady was a walking advertisement for why a guy shouldn’t jump into marriage with a woman he didn’t know very well, and why he shouldn’t marry someone who was integral to his work.
This season was falling apart before it started, but Chad couldn’t get his brain into gear to put his focus where it should be. He’d be crunching the numbers with Tony Winters, and instead of searching for ways through their sponsor difficulties, he found his mind wandering to Brianna and the way she’d fitted right in with his family on Saturday. To the way neither of them was good at handling their own kin, but it seemed they could give each other a few pointers.
Chad’s cell phone rang; a glance showed it was his lawyer. He shut off the call. It was about the divorce, no doubt, and he couldn’t think of a damned thing he wanted to say on that particular subject.
“Chad, wait up,” Kelly called from behind him.
He stopped. She walked briskly toward him, her clumsiness not allowing her to risk anything faster, like jogging.
“Hey, Kel.” He grinned at her. One thing about Kelly, she could cheer him up. She was so levelheaded, and she had Trent’s number so completely, it was a relief to have her around.
“I enjoyed meeting Brianna at Brady’s place,” Kelly said.
Uh-oh. Kelly was a sports psychologist, so you had to watch yourself or you’d find your thoughts pegged open for inspection.
“Good,” he said cautiously.
“I talked to her some more after lunch, but she was a little guarded.”
Go, Brianna. “You can be scary when you’re doing your lie-down-on-my-couch thing.”
Kelly chuckled. “She seems to like you.”
Chad stopped. “How do you figure that?”
“I have my ways.” She tapped her nose. “Thing is, if you’re interested in her—”
“I’m not,” Chad said.
“—then you need to know she’s not the independent type, like you.”
“You think?” he said.
“I’m not saying she’s not strong—I think she’s very strong. But when it comes to a relationship she’s going to be looking for a guy who’ll give a lot.”
“Did she tell you that?” he demanded.
“Are you kidding? She doesn’t know me from a hole in the ground.” Kelly put a hand on Chad’s arm to slow him down—unconsciously, he’d sped up. “I gathered both her parents are emotionally distant. She’s craving an antidote to that.”
Chad had never been the antidote for anyone’s emotional problems. “Thanks for the heads-up. I’ll make sure I don’t give her the wrong impression.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Kelly scolded, “and you know it.”
“I’d be more interested,” Chad said deliberately, “to hear your views on Zack.”
She sighed and went with the change of subject. “That guy is a closed book with a padlock on it. And I thought it was hard getting Trent to open up when I first met him.”
“Do you think Zack can race well this season?” Chad asked. He knew from Trent’s losing stretch before Kelly came along that a driver whose head was in the wrong space was going to struggle on the pavement.
She considered the question. “I’m trusting your and Trent’s opinions that Zack is a great driver, at least sometimes.”
He nodded.
“Anything’s possible,” she said, “but my impression is Zack has a lot happening beneath the surface. There’s a danger it’ll boil over at the wrong times.”
That meant bad decision-making. Lack of focus in crucial moments. Wrecks. Damn.
They stepped into the garage area.
“Thanks for your thoughts,” he told Kelly. “If you could keep trying to get Zack to talk to you on an informal basis…”
“I’ll try. But Zack doesn’t trust his family,” Kelly said. “Right now, I’m not quite family, so he’s said a couple of things. But I guarantee you that’ll change after the wedding.”
Great, another problem—an even more reticent Zack—on the horizon.
FULCRUM RACING and FastMax were also testing at Kentucky on Friday. FastMax had brought Brianna with them.
At the sight of her in the FastMax garage, bands tightened around Chad’s chest. Was this how his dad had felt before that heart attack?
This wasn’t about his physical health, Chad knew. This was about the fact that he was divorcing a woman he’d once been crazy about, a woman who was everywhere he looked, strolling around in tight jeans and a casual fur-lined jacket, her chestnut hair swinging. She was in his face. She was in his thoughts. She was in his soul.
Chad didn’t need this. Not with Trent seething about Zack squeezing in an extra day’s testing yesterday and Zack acting all smug about how well his car was running. Not with Brady here against doctor’s orders, and the strain between him and Julie-Anne painfully obvious.
As Chad watched Brianna, Garrett Clark broke away from the TV-news crew he was chatting to and made a comment to her. She laughed and Chad’s stomach knotted. No way was he going to let Clark charm her out of that sponsorship money. He strode down the garage.
Maybe she sensed his intention to forcibly drag Clark away from her, because when she saw him, her chin shot up in the air, defiant.
“I didn’t expect you here today.” Even Chad heard the accusing note in his voice, and the TV cameraman was giving him an odd look. He dialed it back and said, “Welcome to Kentucky.”
“As you can see, FastMax invited me.”
He should have done the same, of course. Chad cleared his throat. “I hope you’ll have time to come by Matheson Racing. Maybe you could join us for lunch. Zack can tell you how things are going with the car.” Since his brother got on so well with Chad’s wife.
“I’m busy at lunchtime.” The way she kept her eyes fixed firmly on Chad, not letting them stray to Garrett, told Chad who she was lunching with.
Testosterone surged. “Dinner, then. Are you staying over?” It was a two-day session.
He’d been trying to keep his distance from her since he’d spoken to his lawyer. But what was he supposed to do? Stand aside while his wife ate lunch and did goodness knows what else with Garrett Clark?
“Dinner with Zack?” she asked.
“With me.”
“Thanks, but I thought I might go into Cincinnati for a look around.”
She hadn’t hesitated to turn up for lunch with his family when he didn’t want her to, but now that he asked her to a meal, she refused.
Still, he wasn’t going to argue in front of Clark. “Then I’ll se
e you in our pits later.”
BRIANNA DIDN’T REACH the Matheson Racing pits until after her lunch with Garrett, having spent an enjoyable morning with Andrew Clark and his team.
Trent was done for the day—his team had a list a mile long of things to fix—but Zack was still out on the oval, and his crew chief, Dave, was hunched over a screen on the war wagon. Chad and Trent watched the lap-time monitor down below.
“How’s Zack doing?” she asked Chad.
He smiled, which was an improvement on his surliness earlier. “His last two laps have been faster than Trent’s best.”
Trent muttered, “There’s a first time for everything.”
Even Brianna could see Zack was driving better than he had at Halesboro, holding his line into the turns, then out again.
The dour Dave Harmon whooped as Zack posted an even faster lap. Chad spoke into his headset. “Great job, Zack.” He grinned at something his brother said in reply.
Zack kept up his sterling performance, and when he pulled into the pits, he wore a grin a mile wide. Trent’s trademark charming smile was markedly absent.
Zack got out of his car, pulled off his helmet, then vaulted the pit wall. He sauntered up to Trent. “I tell you, little brother, I’m going to whip your—” Zack glanced at Brianna “—behind at Daytona.”
“In your dreams,” Trent said. “Any fool can drive a fast lap when he’s the only guy on the track.”
“Any fool except you, it seems,” Zack said.
Trent snorted. “When you’re out there with forty-two other cars, you’ll be buried so far back in the pack you won’t have a chance to clock up anything other than a mediocre time.”
“I plan to start up at the front,” Zack said. “Ahead of you.”
“Not a chance,” Trent scoffed.
“Guys…” Chad issued a warning, but his brothers ignored him. Chad’s momentary relaxation was gone, replaced with the assertive style that so often drove Brianna crazy.
This time, she saw the infinitesimal sag of his shoulders before he squared them again, the bleakness in his eyes as he realized a couple of the myriad balls he was juggling were about to come tumbling down. The poor guy. If only he didn’t feel he had to carry the load by himself. A lesser man would have buckled by now. Brianna’s heart went out to him. He was stubborn and bossy, but he would do his darnedest for his family, even if the effort tore him apart.