The Race

by Alice Ward

  I found the comfiest pajamas I had and slid into them, feeling like it was a good day for early pajama donage. My mind immediately wandered to wondering what kind of pajamas Caleb slept in, or whether he slept in anything at all. I sighed and sat on the side of the bed.

  “Well, something is.” Grace pushed off the door. “You come in all flush-faced, avoiding us all, scurry to the shower…” She pressed a finger to the small dent in her chin. “I’d almost think you had really satisfying sex, if I didn’t know you better.”

  “Sex?” I squeaked and shut my eyes when Grace lit up and grinned.

  “You did! You had amazing sex! It’s all over your face.” Her footsteps came closer. “And is that beard burn?”

  I groaned and lightly pushed her away, flopping on my back on the bed. The room practically spun with my thoughts, all twisted up. “Okay. Okay. I did. But it was more than amazing, it was… razzle-dazzle.”

  “You had razzle-dazzle sex? Is that the kinky kind?”

  I pulled a pillow over my eyes. “Oh my god, Grace, no! And I’m never doing it again.”

  “What?” She tried to pull the pillow away, and I fought to keep it in place. “Why would you want to do that?”

  I sat up, hugging the pillow to my chest. “I can’t. I just can’t. I may have ruined everything.”

  “How? You did it with your trainer?”

  “Andre? No!”

  Her eyes went huge, and if I wasn’t mistaken, her face paled a bit. “Oh my god! You did it with the billionaire!”

  I groaned and fell back on the bed, going limp with surrender. “I did,” I whispered, unable to keep the awe out.

  “He didn’t, like, pressure you or anything, right?”

  I gave her a look. “Who could ever pressure me into anything?”

  “Good point, but you can’t blame me for wanting to make sure my best friend is safe.” But she wasn’t content to let the conversation end there. “So, is there a reason why you’re reacting like you just had a bad encounter?”

  I lifted my head off the bed and gave her a duh look. “Because I jeopardized everything by getting a lil’ somethin’ from the guy with the deep pockets. This is my chance. And I prioritized getting laid over my big break.” I covered my eyes with my hand, my stomach churning.

  “Have you considered that maybe, just maybe, this Caleb is a bigger man than that and that he wouldn’t let your razzle-dazzle affect your working agreement?”

  I uncovered my eyes, hope spearing into me. “Do you think so? I guess that’s possible.”

  “If you’d lower those walls of yours maybe you could see over them. So, do share. Is he hung?”

  I let out a squeak then smashed a pillow over my own face, muffling my response. “You have no idea.”

  “Really?” Grace sat on the bed next to me. “How hung?”

  “I’ve never in my life…”

  “You gonna tell me, or are we going to play twenty questions?”

  I elbowed her, laughing as I came up for air. “You’re bad, you know that? It’s like he’s some sort of magnet, constantly pulling at me with this crazy irresistible force. I can’t seem to make it stop.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t make it stop. But you should definitely tell me more details.”

  “I’m sure Caleb wouldn’t appreciate my telling everyone what his kisses—”

  My door burst open, and Honey danced in, jumping up and down on her toes. “Caleb! Caleb! Cherry has a crush on Caleb! She kissed him!” Her dark blonde hair flew as she leaped then came down on the soles of her feet, grinning ear to ear as she planted her hand over her mouth.

  I flew off the bed. “Honey! It’s not nice to eavesdrop”

  Honey looked up at the ceiling. “What’s dropping? Eve? Oh! Like Adam and Eve?” She began strutting, chanting, “Cherry and Caleb, like Adam and Eve.” At the “Eve,” her feet hit the floor hard in punctuation.

  I flew off the bed. “Shush!”

  She giggled as my brother, Sage, hit the top step out in the hall, bellowing, “Cherry has a crush on her boss?”

  My face heated. “He’s not my boss. And I don’t have a crush on him.”

  Sage stopped in the doorway, his dark brown wavy hair mussed from a day of work at the hardware store, rubbing his chin like he was thinking particularly hard about my predicament. But the sly upturn of the corner of his mouth told me that he wasn’t taking Honey’s proclamation as fiction.

  “You’re fidgeting, and your face is red.” He turned to Honey, who we all knew was like a town crier. “Honey, I think our big sister is in love.”

  Honey squealed at a pitch so high I was surprised it didn’t shatter the glass sconces on the ceiling fan over our heads and planted her hands on her cheeks. “Are you getting married?”

  Horrified, I went to the door, making a herding motion. “I don’t get crushes. I’m not in love. And I’m definitely not getting married.” I pursed my lips as if I was insulted at the very suggestion.

  Sage tapped his head. “Correction, you’ve never had a crush before. That doesn’t mean that you don’t have one now. And in the end, there’s a first time for everything, isn’t there? And sometimes it ends in marriage.” His eyes sparkled, telling me I was giving him the best entertainment he’d had all day. Probably all week.

  “Not this time.”

  His eyes widened, and I realized I’d given myself away. He had what he’d wanted. “Fine, whatever you say. But would it be so bad to have a crush on him?”

  “Yes!” I answered instantly. “Now out! All of you. Training takes a lot of energy, and I need my rest.”

  “Uh-huh. What about dinner? Trainers eat, don’t they? Mama left you dinner.”

  At the mention of food, my stomach rumbled. “Yeah, I’ll be down.”

  They all filed out, Sage asking Grace if she was staying for dinner — now, there was a crush. She declined but sent me a this conversation isn’t through look before she went down the steps.

  Shutting myself in, I groaned and let my head fall against the door. “I just have no idea what I’m going to do now,” I whispered to the empty room.

  I closed my eyes, and a sudden memory overtook me. It was me and my dad, out in the orchard digging a hole for a new cherry tree to expand the wide variety of trees we had already. I’d been about Clementine’s age and couldn’t make more than a teaspoonful of dirt move with the tip of my shovel and had thrown it down in frustration.

  “I can’t do it, Daddy.”

  Daddy stopped fingering the root ball of the new tree and looked me over with his piercing green eyes that never missed a thing. “Sure you can. Maybe you’re a little on the light side just yet, but you can wrangle that shovel into submission, girl.”

  “It won’t submit.” I shook my head, tears pricking, wanting to be as good a farmer as my dad. “It’s too hard.”

  “Hey now. Bowers have never had it easy, but we always come through on the other side.”

  As I sniffled all over the shovel, he pulled the story from me about how the girls at school were making fun of me because I liked to use the punching bag in the school gym.

  He listened, then picked up the offending shovel. “The important thing is that you hold your head high and march in there tomorrow like absolutely nothing happened. Don’t let them decide what possibilities you have. Be proud of your interests, and they’ll back off, then this will be a blip in your autobiography.”

  “What’s an autobiography?”

  He laughed. “The story of your life. Now we’re going to teach this shovel to submit. Submit, Mr. Shovel!”

  I’d giggled as he showed me how to put all my weight on it to get more dirt.

  I opened my eyes, and those precious memories faded away, a sense of calmness replacing them. Returning to my bed, I sighed heavily, feeling just a bit less lost.

  We Bowers have never had it easy, but we always come through on the other side.

  While it was true that we were still struggling afte
r my father’s death years ago, the one thing we had was a whole unit that we could trust with anything. Well, except Honey, unless you wanted your business broadcast on the six o’clock news. I knew people who didn’t even have one soul in their lives like that, so I really was lucky.

  Tucking myself under the covers for a nap, I fervently hoped that luck could spill over onto the dream job that I had possibly just torpedoed.

  Fingers crossed.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Caleb

  I stared out the window of my penthouse at the mid-February morning light barely tinting the horizon, but the view did nothing to quell the whirring in my mind.

  I had never been one to overthink other people’s reactions, but yesterday’s encounter with Cherry had kept my brain spinning all night. Thinking about her mouth under mine, the way the room lit up with sparks when our eyes clashed. The way she’d slipped out the door while I was still in the afterglow.

  While I was no stranger to someone making a hasty exit after the euphoria of sex wore off — usually me — her retreat had been so hasty that I’d begun to wonder if I had crossed some sort of line.

  What we did wasn’t professional by any stretch of the word. Hell, I’d fucked her on a mat where people had sweated throughout the day. What kind of bastard was I?

  Then again, we’d just erupted into a hot blaze. I hadn’t seen it coming. Didn’t regret it for one moment. Every moment inside of her had been rapture, and… I had never felt so complete with another human.

  Which was bizarre, to say the least. While I respected every woman that I bedded, I didn’t consider myself a romantic. Sex was a fun activity for two or more people, and that was it.

  But it wasn’t that way with Cherry. Not only was she breathtakingly beautiful, when she’d been bare and writhing against that gym mat, everything had seemed to have so much meaning. The sounds she made. The way she tensed around me. The experience had been perfect. So, when she’d practically run from me, I’d been astounded. I began to doubt if the experience was as good for her.

  I knew I hadn’t inadvertently pressured her. I’d asked her multiple times, and she’d given enthusiastic consent, even begging me not to stop.

  If this was any other woman, I would have dismissed it, chalked it up to playing games. But Cherry didn’t seem like one for games, so I just ended up turning the situation over and over again in my head.

  But that was getting me nowhere. My eyes wandered down to the street, and I watched a man wearing camo and a battered coat pushing a cart piled high with miscellaneous items. I needed to talk to Neddie.

  With a purpose other than running each individual breath of Cherry’s over in my mind, I showered and shaved, and stopped at Please & Thank You for an extra-large coffee.

  Neddie was already at his post, guarding the lane in front of the truck entrance from anyone who might deign to park there. He spoke to everyone who passed, and it seemed like he actually knew them. When he saw me, the smile he’d been sporting faded. “Morning, Mr. Birchmeir. I know why you’re here. I’ve enjoyed working this job, but now’s as good a time for an old feller like me to retire. So you don’t have to feel bad about firing me—”

  “Firing you?”

  “Yeah, I mean…” Neddie’s brows knitted together, “that’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

  “No, Neddie, I’m not firing you. I want to know more about Wayne and Rosemary, her husband and the little girl’s situation. I offered to put them in a hotel yesterday, and they wouldn’t accept.”

  “You did that?” Neddie’s voice rose to a higher octave, and his eyes blinked rapidly. “They didn’t tell me that. Or Kyle didn’t anyway. Proud bastard.”

  “The point is, Neddie, that those people can’t live underground. Now, I don’t care what part you had in it, and I’m sure you were just trying to help. But if they won’t accept my offer then I know there’s a couple of shelters where they could go.”

  But Neddie was already shaking his head before I could finish the sentence. “Damn shelters are full to bustin’, and only safe if you can sleep with one eye open. When the city shut down Good Samaritan Shelter, it left almost twenty families on the street. Place had separate bedrooms for each family so they could have some semblance of normal.”

  “So I’m told. What happened to make them close?” My stomach churned, knowing there were even that many homeless families in the city.

  Neddie spotted a potential parker in his protective lane and yelled, “Hey!” and the car sped up.

  “I’ll let you get back to work. Let me know if you hear anything. I’ll make some calls, and you see if you can convince them to let me put them in a hotel for now.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Birchmeir. Mighty fine man you are.”

  On the top floor, I sat at my desk, staring dolefully at my computer but not reading any of the reports in front of me. Normally, concentrating wasn’t an issue for me, but nothing seemed normal lately.

  Even with the distraction of work, the screen blurred into Cherry straddling me, raising up and—

  “Caleb!” I jumped when Hunter practically shouted my name, rushing in, holding his tablet up. “You have to see this!”

  A pounding headache began right then, joining the sensation of my skull full of cotton.

  I grimaced. “Good morning. What’s got you moving so fast this morning?” Hunter was notorious for his late nights, sliding in later than the rest of us.

  “Oh, sorry, good morning. Check this out.” He shoved the tablet under my nose, and I skimmed through the article.

  “Why are you so excited about this boxer? I thought you were only into MMA and wrestling.”

  “Well yeah, on a general basis,” Hunter pointed at the screen as I handed it back, “but do you see the event this guy is pulling? It’s the best free PR move I’ve seen in years.”

  “Wait, let me see that again.” I held my hand out, and he dutifully gave his device over. Looking the article over again, I saw that a fairly popular, middleweight boxer was holding a challenge event where anybody, as long as they passed a physician’s evaluation and signed a waver, was welcome to go toe-to-toe with him in the ring. The opponent would even get to choose a charity to highlight under their name.

  If Cherry could take Andrew the Giant, she could take this guy.

  I jumped to my feet as I scanned the details. The event was obviously pure publicity fodder, meant to drum up attention for the coming boxing season, and generate some pay-per-view revenue. But I couldn’t think of a better way to introduce Cherry to the world.

  The fact that she was at the end of featherweight category and maybe just bordering into lightweight, while this guy was a middleweight boxer, would be a pretty good bet-bait on its own. But then, adding that she was a woman on top of it would be the cherry on top — so to speak.

  The iPad faded as a new meaning to cherry on top clicked in my sex overloaded brain, and I remembered the way she’d ground down on me, the way she’d come apart…

  “Earth to Caleb. We’ve lost you, Caleb.” His words shot me from an x-rated scene to memories of late nights watching reruns of Lost in Space and setting up my treehouse to look like a rocket ship.

  I grinned. “She’s going to lose, that’s a given.”

  “Hey, you lay your bets where you will, but mine’ll be on Cherry.”

  I had absolute faith that she could last at least several rounds and give the crowd a fight to remember. After, her name would be plastered in forums everywhere.

  I made the called I’d promised Neddie first, and was stunned to find out the homeless shelter had been closed down because it didn’t have sprinklers. Apparently, that was an ordinance, one the shelter had in the works to fix when their funding didn’t come through.

  “Cancel my meetings and set them for in the morning sometime next week,” I ordered my secretary as I headed for the elevator.

  “But you’ve got that meeting—” I leveled a single look at Linda, and she cut herself off. �
��Right. I’ll make sure to do that. Will you need your driver?”

  “No. I’ll drive myself.” I stepped into the elevator brimming with energy. My mind jumped back and forth from fixing the Good Samaritan to risk versus reward lists. There were social media strategies for capitalizing on all the public hype for both the fight and the shelter. I should probably hire someone to do publicity, and had planned on it, but now we were jumping way ahead of the game.

  I had time to deal with that. We had two weeks to prepare, and Cherry had a long way to go before she could deliver the performance I knew she was capable of. The people I’d met in the tunnel —I thought about Isabella’s cough — they might not last so long.

  On my way to the gym, I stopped at the Codes and Regulations office. They knew my family, if not Dad himself, so they didn’t hesitate in giving me all the information I needed.

  After reading over the forms, I called my attorney, because even though everything seemed like it was correct, I wanted an expert to see if there were any loopholes to get these families back in the shelter right away.

  There weren’t.

  So I called a plumber, made arrangements for him to meet me tomorrow to see what would need to be done. My excitement grew as I considered all the possibilities.

  I knew the shelter was only for families, but maybe…

  Could I find her?

  My sister?

  I scrubbed my face with my hand, knowing that finding her in the displaced families was a longshot. But could it be such a longshot when the one you were looking for was a beautiful woman? Was it so out of the realm of possibilities that she could be with someone, even have kids?

  I instructed my car to call Neddie and filled him in on what I’d learned. “I’m going to have my secretary make arrangements at the Holiday Inn for them. I’m going to need you to convince them to go.”

  Neddie hummed. “That’s easier said, Mr. Birchmeir.”

  “Guilt trip them. I’m going to reserve a block of rooms. Tell them those other rooms are for the other families evicted from the shelter. It’s their job, in return for the rooms they’ll be staying in, to find them and make sure they accept the arrangement until the shelter is reopened.”