Almost Famous

by Gina Wilkins

  If there was one thing he was used to, it was being photographed with fans. “Sure. No problem.”

  He only hoped Andrew showing the photo around the school wouldn’t somehow end up with the press on the door of his cabin, he thought as he stood with one hand on the boy’s shoulder and smiled for the camera-phone.

  Ten minutes later, a signed copy-paper rendition of the snapshot was clutched carefully in Andrew’s hand and father and son were standing at the door.

  “Nice to meet you, Jake,” Nick said. “And, uh, thanks,” he added with a glance at Andrew.

  “No prob. It was a pleasure to meet you both.”

  “So, you want to walk out with us?” Nick asked a bit too casually.

  “I, um—” He glanced at Stacy, who stood silently nearby, her arms crossed in front of her.

  “Jake isn’t leaving just yet, Nick,” she said after a slight pause. “He and I have some things to talk about.”

  Suppressing a wince at her tone, Jake wondered if he should make his escape with Nick and Andrew after all.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE CABIN WAS very still after Nick and Andrew left. Even Oscar was quiet for once, sitting on the floor and looking from Stacy to Jake as if he somehow sensed that something had changed between them.

  Stacy tried to think of something to say to break the silence, but it seemed that all she could do was stare at Jake. Her mind filled with the memory of the way he had looked in that television commercial. The face that had become so familiar to her had been framed on-screen, the mouth she had kissed hours earlier smiling at the camera and smoothly promoting some tool company.

  His hair had been shorter on-screen, more stylish. He’d worn a bright purple garment cover with sponsor patches rather than the jeans and Ts she’d become accustomed to seeing on him. He had looked polished and professional and completely at ease on camera—but there had been no mistaking that it was the same man who was even now looking back at her with a somber expression.

  He finally spoke, and when he did, he used the same words he’d used earlier. “I told you I was a driver.”

  She planted her hands on her hips, her annoyance with him returning. “You knew very well I thought you meant you drove a truck.”

  “Well, yeah,” he admitted. “I tried to tell you the truth a couple of times, but we were interrupted and…”

  His voice trailed off, as if he knew exactly how weak that excuse sounded to her.

  “You could have told me at any time.”

  He sighed. “I know. I’m sorry.”

  She’d held things back from him, too, she realized with a slight wince. But she had told him, eventually. “So your last name is Hinson. You never even told me that.”

  “I wasn’t keeping it a secret. I guess I just didn’t realize that I hadn’t given you my full name.”

  “I probably wouldn’t have recognized it anyway,” she admitted, hearing the stilted tone of her own voice. “Since I don’t follow racing, I don’t know anything about you.”

  “You know a great deal about me,” he corrected her, frowning. “Everything I told you was true. I just didn’t elaborate about my job.”

  “A fairly important omission.”

  “I know,” he said again. “I just…”

  Again, his voice faded.

  He just—what? Hadn’t trusted her? Had he thought she was the kind of woman who would pursue a famous man for the money and attention? Had he been concerned that she would notify the press or beg for free tickets and/or merchandise for family or friends? If any of that was true, he hadn’t gotten to know her at all during the past week.

  “It was nice being just Jake for a few days,” he said after a pause. “It’s been a while since I’ve had that freedom.”

  She thought of the time they had spent in town, surrounded by other people. “I’m surprised no one else recognized you.”

  “As you pointed out, several people said I looked familiar. And the boy at the drive-in theater concession stand knew me immediately. That’s why I was gone for so long—he wanted to talk.”

  She remembered asking him if there had been a long line. He hadn’t lied to her then, either, she saw now. He’d told her he’d gotten into a conversation with the kid behind the counter. He’d simply neglected to mention what the conversation had been about.

  She remembered other things now. The way he’d acted when she had mentioned the NASCAR museum in Batesville. The way he’d avoided the NASCAR merchandise at the old general store. The things he had said that just hadn’t seemed to fit the career of a truck driver.

  No, he had never lied to her. He’d just withheld the details. Which was exactly what she had done to him in the beginning. Because she had been tired of talking about her ordeal. Jake had probably felt the same way.

  Still, he could have told her before he had kissed her senseless. Made her start daydreaming about a future she knew now could never be.

  “I was going to tell you today,” he said, pushing his hands into his pockets and looking penitent. “I had just gotten started when your brother and your nephew showed up. I’m sorry you had to find out the way you did, with no warning.”

  Keeping her face unrevealing—at least, she hoped so—she replied, “You certainly had no obligation to tell me anything.”

  “I wanted to tell you,” he said with a shake of his head. “I want you to know me, everything about me. Things can’t go any further between us until we have it all out in the open.”

  That made her eyebrows rise sharply. “Um, things?”

  His smile was wry. “I’m not expressing myself very well, but I think you know what I mean. I think you and I have made a real connection. I don’t want to say goodbye to you in a few days and then never see you again.”

  She bit her lip.

  After a moment, Jake cleared his throat. “Maybe I’m misinterpreting a few things? We have made a connection, haven’t we?”

  “We hardly know each other.”

  He frowned. “I’d like to think we’ve gotten to know each other pretty well, considering.”

  Considering that she hadn’t known what he did for a living? That she hadn’t even known his last name?

  She pasted on a bright, fake smile intended to conceal her unreasonable disappointment that he wasn’t the simple truck driver he had portrayed himself to be. “Andrew was so excited to meet you. He’ll be a real hero at his school tomorrow, showing off that autographed picture of you and him.”

  Jake’s scowl deepened. “Now you know why I didn’t want to tell you,” he muttered. “All of a sudden, you’re treating me differently.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You just talked about my autograph, for crying out loud.”

  “I’m sorry, is that not the way it’s done? I’ve never really met a racing star before.”

  He muttered something she didn’t ask him to repeat, then took a step toward her. “Stacy—”

  She held up both hands. “I don’t—”

  He moved closer, until her hands rested on his chest. He slid his hands around her waist, his eyes locked with hers. “I’m the same person you knew this morning,” he murmured. “And I think I can prove that nothing has really changed between us.”

  He lowered his mouth to hers. And even though she told herself she should push him away, she simply closed her eyes and tilted her head back for him.

  THE KISS LASTED quite a long time. By the time it ended, Stacy’s knees were shaky, and she was clinging to Jake’s shirt for support rather than to hold him at bay.

  He rested his forehead against hers. His voice was almost hoarse when he said, “You aren’t going to try again to tell me we haven’t connected, are you?”

  “I have to admit there’s an…attraction,” she conceded quietly.

  “I think it’s more than that. Or it can be, if we give it a chance.”

  She shook her head against his. “It wouldn’t work. I live in Little Rock, you live i
n North Carolina, when you aren’t at a race track or en route to one.”

  “I’m here for another few days, and so are you,” he reminded her. “I don’t want to start over, exactly, because the past week has been great and there’s little I would change about it. But couldn’t we just go on from here, knowing there aren’t any more secrets between us?”

  He lifted his head then. “Um, there aren’t any more secrets, are there? You aren’t married, or engaged or anything like that?”

  “No. Are you?”

  He smiled. “No. So, are you going to kick me out? Or can we still be friends?”

  “I guess there’s no reason to avoid each other while we’re both here.”

  His mouth twisted. “I was hoping for a little more enthusiasm, but I’ll take what I can get.”

  Now that she’d agreed to spend more time with him, she wasn’t sure exactly what to do. “Would you like some coffee?” she asked, falling automatically back into hostess mode.

  He nodded. “That sounds good.”

  They sat across the kitchen table with coffee cups in front of them while Stacy searched her mind for something else to say.

  “Ask me anything you want,” Jake encouraged, as if sensing her dilemma. “I told you, I’m not hiding anything from you now.”

  She knew so little about racing that she hardly knew what to ask him next about his real life. “I heard you and Andrew talking about the championship. You said your friend Ronnie is in contention for that honor?”

  Jake nodded rather glumly. “It’s all based on points accumulated during the season. Only the drivers in the top ten spots compete for the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup championship during the final ten races. I was in the third spot when I had to pull out.”

  “So you would have been competing for the championship.”

  He gave her a sudden, cocky smile. “I’d have won the championship.”

  She sensed that his bravado was intended to hide bitter disappointment. And yet, she also believed she was seeing the face that racing hero Jake Hinson displayed for his public. The man she had met—sad, lonely, battered, but still sweet and charming—was completely different, and she wondered now if she had created an image in her mind of someone who didn’t even exist.

  “I’m sorry your season was cut short,” she said.

  His attitude changed, giving her another glimpse of the man she had seen sitting sad and alone on the deck of his cabin. “I can’t really complain,” he said quietly. “I was a lot luckier than Eric. He had kids, you know. Two boys.”

  And that was what kept eating at him more than the loss of his racing season, she realized. He wondered why a single man with no family had been spared over the father of two.

  She had read enough about survivor’s guilt to recognize it in Jake’s tone. “You were lucky,” she agreed. “But there was nothing you could have done to change the outcome of the accident. You told me the other driver crashed into your boat without any warning. There’s no way to know why you survived and your friend didn’t.”

  He sighed and pushed a hand through his hair. “I’ve spent a lot of hours replaying what I remember of the crash in my mind. Wondering if I shouldn’t have seen the other boat sooner, if I could have reacted faster. But it always comes back to the fact that I was caught completely unaware. Before I knew what was happening, I was underwater and blood and debris were everywhere. Some people nearby saw what happened and pulled me out before I drowned. By the time they got to Eric, it was too late.”

  She shivered at the thought of how close he had come to dying in that accident. She’d have heard on the news that a popular young race car driver had been killed in a boating accident, and she would have thought it was sad. But without having known him, she wouldn’t have realized just what a loss it would have been.

  She couldn’t even imagine now never having met him. And that made her even more worried about continuing this friendship…or whatever it was that had developed during the past week.

  “Is making television commercials a part of every driver’s job?” she asked to draw his attention away from the tragedy—and her own thoughts away from the complications between Jake and her.

  He grimaced at the reminder of the rather silly ad. “Most of us do various things to promote our sponsors. TV and print ads, personal appearances, that sort of thing. As my crew chief says, if the sponsor ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.”

  “It sounds as though you stay very busy.”

  He nodded. “I work a minimum of six days a week for ten months a year. During the other two months the schedule is somewhat less hectic, but still pretty full. And I’m on the road for at least thirty-six weekends a year.”

  Dazed by that schedule, she could only say, “Wow.”

  “It makes it a challenge to maintain a relationship with anyone,” he added, studying her face as he spoke. “But you’ve heard me talk about my friends who have managed to work it out.”

  She swallowed. Was there a reason he was suddenly talking about relationships?

  “It must be a very exciting life,” she said, hating the slight primness she heard in her own tone. She had a bad habit of speaking that way when she found herself in an awkward situation.

  “It’s my life,” he said, moving a hand in a matter-of-fact gesture. “Racing is all I’ve wanted to do since I was fifteen years old and started hanging around a dirt track just to have something to do while my mother was busy with one of her jobs. I met an old guy who’d been working in various pit crews since the early days of stock car racing, and he sort of took me under his wing. Introduced me to some people who helped me get jobs in the shops and garages.

  “One thing led to another and I met Woody Woodrow, who gave me a chance in the Craftsman Truck Series. The next year, I filled in a couple of times in the NASCAR Busch Series. I did well enough that Woody offered me a full-time Busch ride. Four years ago, he moved me into the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series when one of his longtime drivers retired.”

  “Are you sure you’ll be ready to race again in less than two weeks?”

  “I’ll be fine. I’ve been doing my exercises, and they get easier all the time. I’ll drive in that Saturday-night race I mentioned, and then the final five races after that one. I’m out of the Chase, but I can still get back out there and try to get a few more wins this season.”

  The sudden silence in the room when he finished speaking was jarring. Stacy could almost hear her own heartbeat as she toyed with her coffee cup.

  “You’re still processing all of this, aren’t you?” Jake asked after a few minutes.

  His wording amused her enough that her smile felt almost normal. “I suppose you could say that.”

  “It’s just a job, Stacy.”

  She leveled a look at him. “Granted, I don’t know much about NASCAR, but even I know it’s more than just a job.”

  He sighed and nodded to acknowledge her point. “Okay, it’s more than a job. But I’m still the same person.”

  He kept saying that. But the man she had met—or thought she’d met—had not been a famous race car driver.

  “Actually, I have some work I still need to do this evening,” she said, glancing pointedly at the package her brother had brought to her.

  Though he looked a bit disappointed, he stood obligingly, apparently realizing she needed to be alone for a while to think about what she had learned that afternoon. To completely readjust her thinking about him.

  At the door, he asked, “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

  “Perhaps.”

  He didn’t look particularly pleased by the noncommittal response, but again, he didn’t try to argue with her. “You have my cell number,” he reminded her. “Call if you need anything.”

  She nodded. “I’ll see you later, Jake.”

  “Yes. You will.” Smiling, he leaned down his head to brush her lips with his on the way out, as had become his habit.

  Just enough to leave her wanting more—as all those teasing kisses
before had done.

  STACY KNEW the moment she saw Jake’s face the next morning that something was wrong. She had just opened her door in response to his knock, and the grimness in his expression struck her immediately. “What is it?”

  “May I come in?”

  She moved out of the way. Watching as he bent to pat Oscar, she closed the door. “What is it, Jake?”

  He sighed and straightened. “I have to leave.”

  She blinked. “You just got here.”

  “No, that isn’t what I meant. I have to leave Arkansas. Go back to North Carolina.”

  “Oh.” Her stomach clenched. “When?”

  “A private jet is picking me up at the airport in less than two hours.”

  “Two hours,” she repeated slowly. “Is there an emergency?”

  “Not exactly. It’s a sponsor thing. A major contract deal has come through that I need to be involved with. It’s a good thing for my team,” he added. “A great opportunity, actually. Woody’s been working on this deal for quite a while, and he’s ecstatic about it.”

  “Then I guess congratulations are in order.” She forced a smile. “I’m happy for your team.”

  “Thanks. I can’t say much about the details yet, I’m afraid. They’ll announce it later this week and I’ll have to be involved with some media promotion. I tried to convince Pam to let me stay here a few more days and come back when it’s all a done deal, but Woody and the sponsor insisted I need to be there this afternoon.”

  “‘If the sponsor ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy,’” she murmured, remembering his crew chief’s quote.

  Jake nodded, his smile not reaching his eyes. “That’s the bottom line.”

  “Well.” She crossed her arms and tucked her hands, suddenly self-conscious. “I’ve certainly enjoyed knowing you these past few days. I’ll be watching for you on my television from now on.”

  Jake frowned, his fists planted on his hips. “You sound as if you’re saying goodbye.”

  “Isn’t that why you came over? To tell me goodbye?”

  “No. Well, I came to tell you I’m leaving, but not to say goodbye. Not permanently, anyway.” He moved toward her, setting his hands on her shoulders. “I’ll call you, okay?”