“Not just a driver,” he said. “I need him to be part of my American F1 team. He’s just the man to guide Belamar Racing when … eventually. And I can’t get him until I make things right with you.” He pulled a manila folder from the pile next to him, leafing through the papers. He placed three stacks of what looked like contracts in front of her and one white envelope.
“Here.”
“What’s this?”
“My attempt to make things right.”
He tossed a pen onto the sheaf of papers.
He looked at the door to the suite at the sound of Maddux’s raised voice and sighed.
Brynn picked up the white envelope.
Inside were two checks. One for $423,000, the exact amount remaining on her student loans. The other check was just over $300,000. Her annual salary at Gates.
“This is supposed to make it better?” she asked, shaking her head.
The door opened and a flushed Maddux strode in, followed closely by Ellen. “Don’t sign anything,” he barked.
Belamar smiled.
“I haven’t,” Brynn said, calmly.
“We’ll need an attorney to review it,” Maddux said.
“You’ll need to do more than that. You need to set up a foundation,” Ellen put in.
“Set up a foundation?” Brynn echoed. “What are you talking about?”
“If you can’t get a job, make one. You’d be the perfect person to run a cancer foundation,” Ellen continued.
“A what?” she said.
“I talked to Adams about it yesterday. He’d be happy to sit on the board of your foundation for blood cancer research.”
“My foundation?” she said, blankly.
“Yours.”
“Yeah, why not?” Maddux said. “Four million seems like a good start—and I’ve got money, we can figure out something.”
“No, that’s … Maddux, no.”
Maddux came over and took her hands. “Take it easy. It’s Ellen’s idea, and I like the sound of it. She even has some ideas about the type of cancer foundation needed.”
“MDS,” Brynn muttered.
Belamar nodded. “That’s what Adams suggested. Among other things.”
“What’s MDS?” Maddux asked.
“It’s not one thing,” Brynn replied absently, “it’s a group of blood cancers—myelodysplastic syndromes. They’re found in older adults, a problem with the bone marrow. It’s debilitating and common, and the medications to treat the disease are out there, they’re just new and expensive, and the screening ... ”
Belamar pushed the stack of papers toward her.
“Ellen did some research. Each of these stacks represents thought leaders and some needs-based analysis. Adams and Ellen agree about MDS, but she also compiled information on multiple myeloma and—”
“No, no,” Brynn said, flipping through the reams of paper Ellen had collected. “It has to be MDS. Screening, earlier treatment. And I could run this?” She glanced up to see she was surrounded by various expressions of encouragement.
“After the way you handled yourself with the heavy hitters of Formula One, you’ll be a natural with fundraising,” Ellen said.
There was no way. Brynn was only three years out of her fellowship. But she knew some of the best people in myelodysplastic syndrome research, thanks to her fellowship at Sloan and then her work at Gates. If she put the right board in place, it was possible. And she was unemployable. At least until this nonsense died down, if it ever did.
“I’m not sure I can. I love patient care.”
“No one says you have to quit patient care. You can divide your time however it best fits your practice of medicine,” Ellen said gently.
“As long as you set it up in a way that’s agreeable to my accountant,” Belamar said.
Brynn studied Ellen. She could do this—with the right team in place.
“Thank you,” she said.
“No, thank you,” Ellen replied.
“I can’t decide if this is better or worse,” Maddux said.
“What?” she said.
“That we have our careers back.”
Brynn beamed at him. “You’ll be racing for Belamar?”
Belamar was grinning, the red complexes on the monitor racing across the black screen.
“Maybe not just racing.” He and Belamar shared a look. “But only as long as you get what you want,” Maddux said to her.
Brynn’s fingers touched Belamar’s on the hospital bed. “You could have years, Carl, if you cooperate, really cooperate, with a treatment plan,” she said, giving his hand a squeeze. “And for your sake, I hope you do.”
She gathered the stacks of papers and stood. “I’ll be in touch,” she said with a nod to both Ellen and Belamar.
Maddux followed her through the suite, and they stepped out into the silent hallway.
“So?”
She set the stack of papers and her handbag down on the floor carefully, straightened, and wound her hands into Maddux’s thick, dark hair to pull his mouth to hers.
“So,” she whispered against his lips, “did you get everything you wanted?”
“Yeah,” he whispered back, “but that happened when you scraped me off the floor of an elevator in Brussels.”
About the Author
Fueled by black jelly beans and Pinot noir (never together), Rachel Cross writes fast-paced contemporary romance with a twist. She lives by the beach in California with her surfer dude/helicopter pilot husband and two daughters. Before becoming a romance author she was a professional firefighter, paramedic, clinical research manager, small business owner, and Weekly World News tabloid “model.”
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Crimson Sneak Peek
High Octane: Unleashed
Ashlinn Craven
Avon, Massachusetts
Copyright © 2014 by Ashlinn Craven.
All rights reserved.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher; exceptions are made for brief excerpts used in published reviews.
Published by
Crimson Romance
an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.
10151 Carver Road, Suite 200
Blue Ash, OH 45242. U.S.A.
www.crimsonromance.com
ISBN 10: 1-4405-8557-1
ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-8557-9
eISBN 10: 1-4405-8558-X
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-8558-6
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
Cover art © iStockphoto.com/Brosa; 123RF/Yuriy Panyukov; 123RF/David Manno
Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank my beta reader and friend, Rachel Cross, and all those in my life who love Formula One—Ulf, Fionn, John, Siobhán, and Caoimhín.
As always, thanks to my wonderful editor, Julie Sturgeon, and also to Stephanie Riva, Tara Gelsomino
, and all the great folks at Crimson Romance who helped make this book happen.
Finally, thanks to those dedicated F1 drivers out there whose fascinating and dangerous lives have inspired this story.
Chapter 1
Abu Dhabi
When he heard a warm, female laugh rise like a delicate butterfly above the buzz of masculine noise, Adam Fontaine did a swift scan of the Formula One crowd for its source. Not many girlfriends or wives hung around for this drinks session after the regulations briefing meeting. Given that the bar was jam-packed, loud and sweaty, any women present had to be desperate to please. Or lonely.
But that laugh didn’t sound like either; there was nothing artificial about it. Her voice exuded confidence and humor, tempered with restraint—the qualities a woman needed if she were to survive this tramping ground of male egos. He put down his beer that tasted of mass production and chemicals—only a slight improvement on two years ago—and twisted the barstool around to get a visual on her.
There she was, over there with Reece Marlowe. A slender blonde with a severe haircut that showed off a beautiful neck held with ballerina poise. No doubt she’d have a cute little pixie face to go with that hair when she turned around. Bloody Marlowe and his women. Couldn’t he have one single night without a conquest?
Adam swiveled back to the bar.
“That’s Vivienne McCloud, the new reporter with the Beeb,” Bruce, his lead chassis engineer, said, pointing a beer mat to the center of the room.
“Serious?” Adam swung around again to get a better look.
“Yeah I’m serious. And with that cropped hair of hers, she looks like she means business. Just watch what you say around her, mate.”
He shot the older man a look.
Bruce laughed. “Yeah, right, no danger of that.”
So this British woman got the BBC F1 reporting slot that Peter Dreyson vacated last season. She’d been the girlfriend of fellow drivers Ronan Hawes and then Maddux Bates, an unlikely progression if ever there was one, but each to his own. Thanks to his mashed leg, Adam had missed all the fun and games of last season, held no opinion of her, and that seemed to put him in the minority around here. His view of her was now obscured by a wall of male bodies.
“Don’t worry, she’ll make it her business to meet you,” Bruce said, still grinning.
“And move on swiftly. My life is uninteresting for the readers of gossip rags.”
“It’s the freaking BBC, not a gossip rag.” Bruce rapped Adam’s knuckles with the edge of his beer mat. “And be sure she’ll want to know all about the Belgian Comeback Kid.”
“Good luck to her.” Adam shoved the empty beer bottle toward the barman. She’d last about two months. If the attentions of Reece Marlowe and his sort didn’t make her want to run screaming, then the politics would.
• • •
Viv extricated herself from her conversation with reigning champion Reece Marlowe to focus on nabbing her next interviewee—his former teammate, Adam Fontaine. In Reece’s over-the-top ridicule of the Belgian driver’s new team colors, she detected a certain level of contempt for the man inside the radioactive green overalls.
Indeed, team Gatari’s trademark colors sparked some good-natured cries of revulsion in the pressrooms across the world, too, but its record in the pre-season testing had everyone on silent tenterhooks. The main source of this awe was the driver standing at the bar just ten feet away.
Her file said the twenty-nine-year-old Belgian had developed an affinity for cars and engines even before he could talk. On his twelfth birthday his parents gave him money and he spent it, unknown to them, on an eighties Chevrolet Camaro IROC-Z that was basically a wreck. He stripped it down, dismantled the engine and rebuilt it piece by piece over the next two years, and by the end of the process knew how cars worked.
He drove that Camaro around the private lanes of their country estate in Wallonia long before it was legal for him to do so. The family moved to the United States when he was fourteen, and two years later, his younger brother died in a quad bike accident. He left home soon afterward to pursue his dream of becoming a driver, proving a severe disappointment to his now-divorced father, who had wanted him to take over the family winery.
Her new boss had warned her in his briefing that Adam was “more taciturn than usual” since he’d crashed in Malaysia two seasons ago and shattered his ankle and lower leg, which explained why she hadn’t found any decent coverage on that story. The injury had kept him out of the championship last year.
Thank God, because that meant there was one man in this teeming pit of testosterone who hadn’t witnessed her own little saga with her exes in the hotel bars of the world last season. He was clean slate. Sure, she’d seen a few pictures of him—boring crewcut, broad forehead, dark eyes, finely drawn mouth and jaw, sort of the antithesis of shaggy-blond Reece Marlowe. In none of the photos did Adam Fontaine look like he was enjoying life very much.
She kept her phone glued to her ear in fake conversation as she pushed her way through sweating bodies, reaching Fontaine quickly. He was staring ahead at the display of single malts behind the bar. The mid-fifties man sitting beside him must have sensed her presence first because he slid his barstool away from the driver to grant her room.
“Adam,” the older man said in a gravelly voice, giving her a wink.
Her interview subject turned around. The intensity of his dark eyes torpedoed out from a face that otherwise exuded serenity. The photos had failed to capture his essence.
She offered her hand, smiling. “Hi, I’m Vivienne McCloud, reporting for BBC Sports this season.”
He took her hand, shook it briefly, and then glanced around, presumably for a stool.
“No, it’s fine, I’m not staying long,” she said. Five minutes tops. This could definitely be done standing.
Still, he slid off his seat and maneuvered it to her using his foot. “I insist. It’s yours.” Fontaine’s voice, with its crisp, staccato North European accentuation, suited his reputation for perfectionism somehow. Scant trace of his fifteen years living in California there.
“Thanks.” She propped her handbag on the stool in a show of compromise.
“This is Bruce.”
“G’day.”
She shook hands with the genial-looking Aussie with oil stains on his fingers and a twinkle in his faded blue eyes.
But the crew technicians weren’t on her list. Her assignment was to talk to drivers tonight, twenty-two of them in fact, and she wasn’t going to muck up her first official assignment. “I thought I’d introduce myself before my history does the talking for me.” She held his gaze to see how this registered. A flash of understanding, perhaps, but no particular interest. Excellent.
“Can I get you a drink?” he asked.
“I’m good, thanks.” She raised the lethal Lemon Bomb cocktail Reece had bought her. “So, you’re first driver for team Gatari? That’s quite an impressive comeback from your injuries of the season before last with team Supernova.”
“I’m first driver, yes.” His expression was steady, his body language mimicking hers.
“How does it feel to be back?” Emotions, emotions, emotions, that’s what Mack wanted, with an extra dollop of drama.
“The beer tastes better this year. Slightly.”
She maintained a smile and waited, but nothing else came out. The lengthening silence whispered the words “blood” and “stone” to her. She beckoned to the label on his beer bottle. “And you being half Belgian would know how to judge that, yes?”
“I’m better judge of wine,” he said. “But thanks.”
“For what?”
“For not saying ‘French’, or worse, ‘half French.’”
She chuckled. “Well, I do know the difference between Belgian and French. I’m British. We’re practically neighbors. So are you a wine snob then?”
“Nobody who’s worked in a winery is a wine snob.”
“I’ll take that as a no.” Good thin
g, too. Fontaine wines were exclusive and highly regarded, and if he were a wine snob, they’d be here all night. It looked like they’d be here all night anyway at the rate she was extracting information from him.
“Is French your mother tongue?”
“He’s bilingual,” Bruce chimed in. “Speaks Flemish.”
“Poorly,” Adam added.
“I see. So, you must be looking forward to the Spa-Francorchamps circuit. All those Belgian … Wallonian fans?”
“It’s halfway through the season. Ask me then.”
“Oh, I intend to,” she said, pen poised for the next question.
Just then, the phone in Adam’s pocket buzzed. She got a glimpse of white teeth as he grimaced in apology and slunk away into the crowd, leaving her staring at Bruce. Why Adam, despite the good looks, wasn’t another Formula One player was starting to become clear. His charm quotient was sparse. But the appraising manner he had of looking at her suggested he wasn’t totally cold-blooded either. Nope, those eyes gave him away whether he liked it or not.
Fifteen minutes later, she shot a doleful look at Bruce. It was way past time to move on, even if Bruce was lovely company, his humorous ways reminding her of her late father. “He’s not coming back, is he?”
Bruce shook his gray head.
“What’s wrong with him? Why the reticence?”
He patted her hand kindly. “Nothing personal, love. He just doesn’t like reporters.”
“Has he had a bad experience?”
“I think it’s what he’s generally trying to avoid.”
“Avoid? Why?”
“The thing you need to know about Adam is that he tries to preempt disaster.” Bruce rolled his eyes. “He spends most of his waking hours obsessing about what could go wrong—with the car, with the circuit, with the weather—and figuring out how to avoid it. I’ve only worked with him for a month now, but he’s worn me out more than any other driver with his preparations and his questions.”
“So, he sees being interviewed as some kind of disaster?”
High Octane Page 36