Falling Free ( Falling Fast #3)

by Tina Wainscott

  “Sure. Seems like a nice kid.”

  She was seeking Tanner out. He had found her first, however, and was eyeing Nick with an amusing glint of propriety. With anyone else, it would have grated. But with Tanner it just felt good. Of course, Nick probably looked older from a distance.

  Nick was all smiles at the sight of Tanner, who was assembling a canopy.

  “It’s Tanner,” Nick whispered urgently. “The Fixer, right there.”

  “Want to meet him?”

  “Hell, yeah. You know him?”

  Grace had to laugh at that, and at all the implications of the answer as she led him over. “Quite well, actually. Quite—” Words dropped away as she drank him in, as though it had been weeks and not five days since they’d last shared breathing space. She came to a stop in front of him.

  Despite his obvious curiosity about the young man who was with her, Tanner gave her a smile. “Hey. Heard you stopped by earlier.” His attention shifted to Nick.

  “Tanner, I’d like you to meet Nick Cassidy, a new client of mine.” That helium feeling filled her chest. A new kind of client.

  Tanner turned to Nick, who was jamming his hand at him.

  “Frickin’ great to meet you, Tanner. I’m a big fan. I thought you should have won that last run against Greelson in Long Beach. That was a rip, total rip.”

  Tanner gave him a warm smile and lifted his shoulder in a half shrug. “Shit happens, but thanks. You drift?”

  “If I had a car. I’ve done it a few times in my friend’s car. It’s rad. I’m going to buy a ride-along. Thought maybe you could give me some newbie advice.”

  “Sure, but it’s on me. Only if Grace does one, too.” He shot her a challenging look.

  She met it with a lift of her chin. “I’m in.” Why not? Being with you is like skidding out of control anyway.

  With a rather victorious smile, Tanner turned back to Nick. “Who else you follow?”

  “You, Gitten, Jr., and JTP are my faves.”

  “I appreciate that. They’re good guys.”

  “What is it about Tanner that makes him a favorite?” Grace asked.

  Nick didn’t even have to think about it. “He’s fair, and he runs clean. He pushes his car to the limit, but you get the sense that he’s not reckless. Plus, if you hang at his Facebook page you know he’s a cool guy ’cause he’s always sharing tips.”

  She searched Tanner’s face—his cheekbones, the curve of his lips, the soft hair that he’d let grow back around his mouth. “Yeah, he is a cool guy.” Okay, wipe silly grin off face. Back to business. “I came by earlier because I wanted to find out more about Kids at Risk. Nick just came out of the foster-care system. He’s eighteen.”

  “And in a bit of trouble, if he’s your client,” Tanner added sympathetically.

  Nick’s shoulders straightened. “My former foster dad started wailing on me when he caught me in his house.”

  “With his daughter,” Grace added.

  “We were only talking,” Nick put in, obviously not wanting his idol to think he was banging the girl.

  “Talking about running away together,” Grace clarified. “And she’s only seventeen.”

  “Ah, I see. You love her?”

  “With everything I am. She was the only person who ever saw me. Really saw me. You know?”

  Tanner’s gaze slid to her for a second, then back to Nick. “I do know. I know well, because I was in the system, too.”

  Nick’s whole body relaxed, and his expression opened. “No shit?”

  “Yep.” He angled his thumb at the canopy. “This is the Kids at Risk booth. When the folks from KAR get here, come on over and see Fiona. She’s incredible, and she’s also a foster mother. One of the good ones. What KAR does is help kids get on track once they’re out of the system. They’ll help you figure out what you want to do with your life and how to get there. They also help with clothing, housing, and transportation.”

  “I’ll do that, thanks. I want to work with cars, I know that much.” Nick nodded toward Grace. “She’s putting me to work today, so I’ll be around.”

  “Glad you could help.” Tanner gave Grace a sly grin. “Though you probably didn’t have a choice. See that guy in the garage? His name is Raleigh West.”

  “Yeah, I know of him. He’s one of the best kick-ass mechanics around.”

  “Go over and ask if he needs any help at his shop. He’s about to get real busy. Then, see that cute little blonde over by the front? That’s Gemma, the track owner’s girl. She’s helping to organize all the various tasks, so ask her what you can do.”

  “Gotcha. Thanks.” Nick bounded across the track toward Raleigh’s shop.

  “That was nice of you.” Grace gestured for Tanner to give her one of the poles of the canopy he was working on, and she pulled it to the farthest spot and anchored it with the rest. They fell into the task together.

  “It is tough, starting life with a deficit. No money, possessions, or people.”

  “He has no place to sleep tonight. I’m thinking of letting him stay with me.”

  “He seems like a good kid, but I don’t know if that’s the best idea. He assaulted someone.”

  “I doubt that he’d assault the attorney who’s helping him.” She wasn’t particularly comfortable having him stay at her apartment, but that was mostly because he was a stranger, not because she saw him as a threat. “Did Kids at Risk help you?”

  “I wish there had been an organization like that back then.” When they finished, Tanner was standing in front of her, taking in her face with his eyes. “I’ve missed you.”

  “I’ve missed you, too. I figured it was good practice for when you leave.” Have you made it clear that you’d like him to stay? Gemma’s question haunted her, taunted her now.

  While Grace fumbled with those words in her mind, he searched her with eyes filled with an emotion that she couldn’t quite pinpoint. “Grace, I—”

  “There you are!” Gemma skipped over, a clipboard in her hands.

  As perceptive as the woman could be, she seemed oblivious of the fact that she’d interrupted what Grace suspected was something important. “Sorry, Tanner, I need to whisk her away. Who’s the kid, anyway?”

  “A young man who could use some direction,” Grace said as Gemma hooked her arm through hers and started to lead her away. She decided not to divulge Nick’s arrest to anyone else. At least not just yet. “I thought helping us today would be a good start, especially since he’s into drifting.”

  Tanner sprinted around them to block their path. “Gemma, sorry, but I’m pulling rank. I need Grace’s help with something. I will deliver her to you when I’m finished with her.”

  “Tanner, you’ve done all this for Pax. How can I say no? Just bring her over to concessions, please.”

  Tanner’s stealing her back tickled Grace’s tummy. The feeling intensified when he linked his fingers with hers and led her off in the opposite direction. “Come to the mountaintop with me.”

  “Mountain? Where’s a mountain?”

  “Well, it’s more like a little hill. Maybe a mound. I like to think big. There’s shade, and a view of the track. I’d invite you to Harvey, but that might give folks the wrong impression.”

  Grace loved that he respected her reputation. “And it’s a lot busier over there,” she said, seeing three other travel trailers parked near his.

  “A couple of the advanced drivers are staying onsite, too. One belongs to my pit crew. They came in midweek so we can get back to tuning the car before the seventh round of Formula Drift in Fort Worth next weekend. So tell me about this kid. When you were talking about helping him, you buzzed with this fierce energy. I liked it.”

  “Caught that, huh?” Of course, the man missed nothing when it came to her. “He was being booked at the sheriff’s office while I was there on other business. I saw him and thought of you at that age. One of the deputies told me about his past, and I felt a fire for my job that I haven’t felt in years
. But with a shift in focus. I want to help children who don’t have a voice in the system.”

  He gave her the most beautiful smile. “I love that. It suits you.”

  She absorbed his pride in her for a moment. “It’ll mean possibly going back to school and taking courses pertaining to children. I still have to figure it all out.”

  “And you will. That’s the bulldog in you. When you want something bad enough, you fight like hell for it.”

  Why did she get the feeling that he wasn’t just talking about figuring out her future plans?

  They ascended the hill and sat down on the grass next to each other, his fingers still clasping hers. “You, and what you’ve been going through, has made me think about my life, Grace.”

  She leaned forward, planted her forehead against their hands, and wailed, “Oh, no! I’ve tainted your carefree, happy self!”

  His soft laugh brought her head back up. “You didn’t taint me. See, Grace, that carefree shit was a veneer, one I perpetrated on myself as much as on everyone else. The day at the Beach Shack, the bluesyness that compelled me to come over to you…it was the same bluesyness that’s in me. I just hadn’t faced it.”

  “Why are you bluesy? You seem to have everything: freedom, money, success.”

  “I do have all of that. But deep inside I’m damaged. I’ve been living with this idea that I wasn’t even worthy of my father’s presence. My mother confirmed it by putting drugs above me and my sister. Then my sister stole from me, also putting drugs above me in terms of importance. I told myself a story about my value based on those facts.”

  “But that’s not true.”

  “It doesn’t matter what’s true or not; it’s what you believe.” He stared at their linked hands as he rubbed his thumb over the back of hers. “And the more you believe, the more you’ll find people to prove you right. People used me, took advantage of me. I never wanted to be let down like that again, so I didn’t get close to anyone. It was easy. Lonely, but easy. Your beauty caught my attention; your shadows drew me to you. My need to chase away your shadows reflected my need to chase away my own, shadows I’d never even acknowledged. Once I realized that, I had to face them. I can’t talk to my mom or my sister. I have no idea where they are or if they’re even alive. But I did have your father.”

  She was on a teeter-totter with him, softening over his pain, stiffening at the shadows he saw in her. With that last sentence, he’d thrown her completely off. “What do you mean, you have my father?”

  “I went to see him in prison this morning.”

  “That’s where you were when I thought…you’d gone? You were visiting my father?”

  “Yep. Your story is that your father used you, lied to you, and that reflects on your judgment. Your worth. I knew that wasn’t true, but I realized I was buying into the same kind of story. I wanted to find out your father’s motivations. If there was more to the story with him, then maybe there was more behind my mother’s and my father’s. Maybe it had nothing to do with me at all, and everything to do with them. Know what your father told me?”

  Grace was stunned, confused. “No.”

  “Initially, he lied for both of you. You believed in him, and he so badly needed that. And you needed to believe in his innocence, because what little girl can fathom that her father murdered a man in cold blood? Then your determination to free him kept you focused on a path that was straighter than the one you were straying onto. True?”

  She nodded reluctantly. “I went through a period of using prescription drugs to numb myself.”

  “So making plans to go to college and become a lawyer gave you purpose.”

  Again, she had to agree.

  “Right or wrong, he lied for you. Because he loved you so much. Hearing that clarified things for me, helped me forgive my parents and my sister. It wasn’t about me at all. And your father’s crime, Patrick’s defection, had nothing to do with you.”

  She saw peace in his eyes, the deep release of things that had haunted him for too long. “But I made mistakes.”

  “You wanted love,” he said, pulling their linked hands to his heart. “So you made mistakes. We all do. You think that makes you unworthy of being loved? You fight for everyone but yourself. Has anyone ever fought for you?”

  She felt emotion catch in her throat, keeping the answer from emerging. The idea of that, she couldn’t even fathom.

  “That’s what I thought. What I feared.” He stood and pulled her to her feet. “I’m going to fight for you, Grace Parnell. Because you’re worth it. Because I can’t walk away from you. You found yourself in my kiss, and I found home in yours. I’ve never had a home before, and I’m sure as hell not turning away from it. I talked to Pax and his business partner, Wade, about buying into the speedway. Then I can practice all I want and develop some serious drift events here. I’ve been thinking of retiring from the pro circuit and just doing the events I want to do anyway. Chambliss will be my home base.”

  He leaned in and gave her a quick kiss. “You’ll be my home base. I know I’ve just knocked you for a loop. Believe me, this has knocked me, too. So have you. But it feels right. As right as drifting did all those years ago. So sit on it, roll it around in that attorney mind of yours, but don’t overthink it. Go on, before Gemma marches up here and drags you away. She wants this to work for Pax. She loves him that much. And I get that.”

  He held her gaze as those words settled into her heart. Softened the edges. Then he led her back down the hill.

  She didn’t let go of his hand when they reached level ground. Instead, she took a deep breath and let herself be all right with it. Yes, his words had thrown her for a bunch of loops. She wasn’t sure how to handle being fought for.

  “Let me go check on the next object of your bulldog energy,” he said when they reached the busy part of the track. “I’ll see you later.” Another kiss, this one to her forehead, and he headed over to Nick.

  “Whoa,” Gemma’s voice said from a short distance, making Grace spin around. “That looked interesting.” She had a big grin as she nodded toward the mound.

  It truly felt as though Grace had come down from the mountaintop after that heartfelt speech. “Yes, it was.” She wanted to go off and think about everything Tanner had said, but there were things to do. “What do you need help with?”

  “Tight-lipped attorney,” Gemma muttered, gesturing for Grace to follow. “Except when she’s digging into other people’s business.”

  “And don’t you forget it,” Grace said with a laugh. But inside she was kicking herself for not saying anything back to Tanner. Not questioning him—could he really settle down and be happy? And, more important, could she trust her feelings and let go in the biggest way possible?

  Gemma put her to work in the track’s small office folding flyers for the day’s schedule. When her cellphone rang, she saw Tom Green’s name on the screen. Uh-oh. Had something happened with Nick’s proceedings? Had they found some new charge to bring him in on? “Hey, Tom. What’s up?”

  “I only have a second. I found out something about Artemis Tanner. That’s not his real name.”

  Her throat tightened. No, not now! “Maybe it’s his stage name. For racing.”

  “No, it’s his legal name. I mean, it’s not the name he was born with. I did a quick search and found nothing in the records before 2011 under that name. More digging unearthed his real name. I’ll do more research on that as soon as I have a few minutes, but I can’t use our computers without giving a reason. I just wanted to let you know. Be careful, okay?”

  She was biting her lower lip hard. “Okay, thanks.”

  Be careful. That’s what she’d been doing since meeting Tanner. Except for those times she’d let go. So why did a man change his name? To escape a past? To hide from someone? It didn’t jibe with what he’d told her. But what hadn’t he told her?

  Logic. She always did better when she appealed to logic. What had he said about the name Artemis? That there was a com
ic-book character with that name. She did a search on her phone and found the books. They’d come out in 2009. Had he chosen that name? Did the change have something to do with his money? With his tidbit about the car theft ring?

  Damn, there was nothing logical about the way she felt about Tanner. If she asked him outright about the name change, he’d think she’d had him checked out. His reaction to her unfair testing of his character told her how he’d feel about that. After everything he’d just revealed to her, how could she do that to him? But this was resurrecting all her insecurities about trust.

  And giving her a door to exit through. To stay safe.

  She took the box of flyers to the concession stand. The event officially opened in an hour, and it was already busy. There were now lots of small trailers as drift participants set up small encampments along the back side of the track.

  Of course, she had to seek out Tanner, who was pointing out something on the track to Nick. He handed the kid a helmet, and they both got into his dark-blue ride. The engine fired up, and the Supra took to the track. Smoking tires. Careening through the course he’d set up, cutting so close to the cones that she wondered how he didn’t knock them over.

  When they returned, Nick got out and shook his head. He pumped Tanner’s hand, and his awe had doubled. Tripled, even. This was good for the kid. It would give him purpose, provide a distraction from his girlfriend. As Grace knew from experience, being in love could be hazardous to your well-being. Look where it had already gotten Nick.

  But look at what it’s given him.

  Tanner glanced up at her, then waved her over, indicating the car and the track. She shook her head and turned away. She needed space, some distraction of her own to think about what Tom had told her.

  Chapter 14

  An hour later, Grace was surrounded by smoke of a different nature—from the grilling hamburgers and hot dogs that filled the concessions building where she volunteered as a cashier. Crowds flowed through the gates. A local band rocked reggae-flavored tunes from a stage at the side of the track. Balloons flapped in the breeze. Pax was making announcements about the first heat over the sound system. Soon after, the rumble of engines filled the air.