Speed Dating (9 page)

She found she wasn’t in a big hurry to wake up.

“These places are great. You’ll love the condo. Great view.”

“Great view?” Her idea of a view was rolling waves on the Pacific Ocean, the Eiffel Tower in moonlight, mountain vistas. This was a square block of windows butting onto an oval of dirt.

He must have caught her thoughts, because he grinned at her. “Great view of the track. You could watch the whole race from up there. Except you’ll want to be hanging out with me.”

“I will?”

“Yep. So the TV cameras get lots of pictures of us and those pictures are beamed straight into Ashlee’s cockeyed brain.”

“Good strategy.”

“Thanks.”

“I was being sarcastic.”

“I’m working with what I’ve got. This is the best I can come up with.”

She shook her head. Who was she to quibble? Her notions of strategy had won her a sideways promotion and the derision of her company’s top execs.

Dylan hauled her single suitcase while she followed with her carry-on bag.

The condo was gorgeous and dominated by a wall of windows that, as he’d promised, overlooked Turn One and offered a great view of the track. She could see the luxury motor homes in the infield, where she knew Dylan would live while he was on the road. A moving
crowd of people milled around, some sitting in the tiers of seats. There was room for more than 150,000 fans, Mike Nugent had told her. Billboards advertised sponsors, and logos blazed at her even from the grass beside the track.

The condo was decorated in neutral tones, which made a soothing escape from the blaze of color and action outside. A galley kitchen in white came complete with a granite breakfast bar, which opened onto a living area with a fireplace and full entertainment system.

There were two bedrooms and two bathrooms. Dylan put her stuff in the master, which boasted a queen-size bed and full en suite.

“Pretty nice,” he said, wandering to the windows and looking down on the track he’d be racing on tomorrow.

“Great view,” she agreed.

He turned to her. Against the background, he looked like a colossus, king of the racing world below. He was obviously itching to get back there.

“Want some down time?” he asked.

“For my imminent nervous breakdown, that would be great.”

“The kitchen should be stocked. I’ll give you some numbers if you need anything. I’ll come back and get you for dinner.”

“Dinner?”

“A casual barbecue with some of the other drivers and their families. Throw on some jeans. You’ll be fine.”

Jeans? She hadn’t packed jeans for a corporate convention. She’d have to make do with cream linen trousers that would no doubt look completely out of
place. Oh, well. She couldn’t possibly look any more out of place than she’d feel.

He headed for the door, then turned. She hadn’t moved. She was still standing in the middle of the cream-colored wall-to-wall carpeting in a condo overlooking Turn One of the Charlotte Speedway.

He stepped forward and squeezed her shoulder. “You’re going to be fine, Kendall. You’ve got to trust yourself more. You’re smart, decent.”

She nodded, glad to be reminded that some of who she thought she was still remained. “Right.” She repeated the words. “I’m smart. Decent.”

He grinned at her. “And a great kisser.”

R
ACE DAY
. Dylan was ready. He heard the noise of the crowds, but almost as a background buzz. More, he felt the energy of all the fans, excited to be here. For many, races were part of their annual vacation. They were here for the noise, the speed, the action, to cheer their favorites and take sides in on-track rivalries. Dylan and forty-two other teams were here to make sure every one of those fans got his or her money’s worth.

Kendall stood beside him taking it all in. Her eyes were big as they scanned the bleachers that seemed, from down here by the track, to stretch to the sky.

A TV reporter wandered over to do a prerace interview. Media was as big a part of this sport as the fans and the sponsors, and Dylan always tried to play nice. This one asked a lot of questions about his string of recent bad luck and wondered aloud and on camera when his streak was going to break.

“Today,” he said, smiling broadly at the camera pretending, as he always did, that the lens was the face of a real fan. “Charlotte is my track.” Kendall was still standing beside him and he made sure to pull her close in case Ashlee ended up watching this interview.

“Do you have any superstitions before a race, Dylan?” the reporter asked.

He thought it was a pretty stupid question, but he didn’t say so. Instead, he grinned, seeing another opportunity to beam his message to his ex-wife. “I sure do. Kissing a beautiful woman is about the luckiest thing I know.” And with that he turned to Kendall, who’d been doing her best to hide from the glare of the camera lights, and pulled her close. Her eyes widened and he liked the way she looked up real close. He remembered how she’d felt in his arms the other night, had a feeling she remembered, too. He took his time and kissed her until the oh-no-you-don’t vibe melted beneath his lips.

With a cheer and a lot of wolf whistles from his team, he figured the lady reporter had a pretty good sound bite and some nice visuals.

“Good luck, Dylan, and thanks,” she said before heading on her way.

“Good luck, Dylan,” Kendall echoed. Then she added, “Drive carefully.”

He slid into the car with a smile on his face and the taste of her still on his lips. She had it wrong. He always drove carefully. What he needed to do was drive fast.

People often thought that all a driver needed to do was jam his foot down hard on the accelerator and hang on. In fact, Dylan believed that a great driver was one who could read a car, one who was perceptive to small changes. Using restraint made him faster, which he’d had to learn when he first started racing. He’d trained himself to channel that impulse to win into a heightened awareness of what his car was trying to tell him, which he in turn would communicate to his crew chief, and they’d made adjustments during pit stops, fine-tuning as they went.

He took his place, midpack because of his less-than-
spectacular qualifying results, and cleared his mind of everything but the machine surrounding him.
Talk to me, baby,
he told the car silently. He’d probably have spoken aloud if it weren’t for the fact that a whole lot of people were listening in. He only heard two voices, that of his crew chief, sitting on top of the war wagon, and that of his spotter, up high on top of the grandstands with a bird’s-eye view of the course.

He settled in and prepared to do what he did best. The race began.

There was something about five hours of nonstop concentration, where it was him and the track and the sound of the other cars that put him in a zone. Everything was so clear—well, it had to be. He didn’t have a lot of time to mess around.

He listened to his spotter, used his wits and his own observations to get his car as good as he could get it. “I think we might need a pressure adjustment,” he told Mike, and at the next pit stop, they made small changes and he was off again in twelve and a half seconds.

The heat inside the car climbed, but he was used to that and pretty much ignored it, sipping water as needed from the built-in water system.

There were days when nothing went right and he’d known too many of those lately. Then there were days when everything settled and it was absolutely right. He’d thought he was there yesterday, and then suddenly he wasn’t. Today, he had that feeling, only stronger.

There wasn’t room for much idle thought, but he knew Kendall was enjoying her first day at the track and he didn’t want to be towed back in, or coast in. Not today. He didn’t want to think about the possibility that
he was pushing himself and his vehicle to impress a girl he barely knew, but something was giving him an extra edge today.

Maybe, he thought with an inward grin, it was that kiss. The way she had of looking at him all wide-eyed as if she’d never been kissed before. She did that every time he kissed her, and it gave him a crazy thrill. He’d kissed his share of women, and he never recalled one who looked at him afterward in quite that way. As if he’d given her a gift.

Crazy.

He licked his lips. They were dry. Hot. Like he was, coming into the final laps.

He was racing well, he knew that. His spotter was warning him of debris ahead, but he saw it and skirted the problem easily. It was so simple it was scary. He felt in control. Fast. Slick. Everything working together as it was supposed to, from the car’s engine and parts all meshing and revving together to the team, working fast and efficiently.

His pit crew had been a dream team today. He wanted to reward them with the best possible time.

He told himself he was glad to finish at all, after yesterday’s fiasco, but in truth he couldn’t get there fast enough. He wanted more than a finish. He wanted a good finish. Not just for the placement in the race, but to show Kendall a good time.

Everything was humming and he felt good. “You’re the fastest car on the track, Dy,” Mike told him.

“Awesome,” he yelled back. All he had to do was repeat the process every lap.

There were half a dozen cars ahead of him; if he could hold it together, he was going to have a sweet finish.

“Go high, Dylan,” his spotter’s voice crackled through his headset. “Looks like some trouble ahead.”

What it looked like, from where Dylan sat, was that somebody’d taken a sharp left without signaling. And there went the car in the number-two spot, shooting into the grass. The third-spot holder had been hanging on, riding his draft, and he got sucked right off the track, too. Dylan was already climbing, coming into Turn Four. It was a decision moment. He could play it safe and guarantee a fourth-place finish or he could put the pedal to the metal and have some fun.

He thought of the mess they’d been having the last few weeks and fourth seemed like a dream come true.

Then he remembered that Kendall was out there watching. This was her first race ever, and he thought about how her lips had felt under his, and the way her eyes lit up when she wasn’t calculating the interest on the retirement nest egg she wouldn’t be needing for three or four decades.

The heck with it. He pressed his foot down and hung on.

His arms ached. He felt as if everything from his butt to his ears were on fire. Luckily, so was his driving.

He came out of Turn Four close enough to the car ahead to kiss its pretty paint job and squeak in front.

“How do you like that?” he yelled. He was sitting in third.

“How many laps?”

“Twenty-six,” Mike told him. “You goin’ all the way?”

Dylan laughed. He gave his trademark rebel yell. That was plenty of answer.

He didn’t know when his chance would come, but he knew it would and he tried to be as patient as a man can be who smells victory and knows how easily it can be snatched.

A third-place finish was good. It was fine.

It wasn’t good enough today. Not nearly.

Of course, the other two gentlemen currently holding the first and second spots felt pretty much the same way. So the three of them stuck together. Even inside the car, he could feel the energy of the crowd. There’d be discussions over beers and tailgates, in the media and in the dens and TV rooms across America about how this happened and how that other thing could have been avoided, but that would all come later. He’d be a hero or a goat depending on how he performed in the next ten or so minutes.

“I love Charlotte!” he yelled, because he felt like yelling.

“Looking good. Take it home, buddy.”

And so he did. Not through any trick or maneuver, or even superior driving, though he’d like to think it was that. In these last few laps, all he could do was drive fast and hope the tires, engine, transmission and every little piece of his car held together. And that on this particular day, the only luck coming his way would be the good kind.

He edged past the vehicle in the number-two spot and felt a glorious kick of energy in his gut. He was getting tired. His arms were approaching the rubber stage, his scalp was itchy under his helmet and his eyes felt gritty—and he loved it.

At this moment, he knew, he was truly happy.

Hang on, baby,
he told his car silently, the way he’d soothe a horse.
We’re almost there.

K
ENDALL HAD
half her fist in her mouth. She couldn’t take her eyes off the tiny blue-and-yellow blur that was Dylan’s car. Her breathing was coming so fast and shallow she was amazed she didn’t pass out from lack of oxygen.

She was on top of the war wagon, a big metal box that housed the tools and supplies for pit stops, on a chair that reminded her of a bar stool, right beside Mike Nugent. He’d given her a headset so she could hear the three-way conversation between Dylan, Mike and the spotter. Her heart was bumping crazily.

She smelled the hot dust, motor oil, hot dogs and the odor of thousands of warm bodies packed together. The fans were incredible. So colorful with their T-shirts, jackets, caps and seat cushions of their favorite drivers. They rose and cheered when the action heated up, colorful waves of bodies.

At first, she’d wanted Dylan to hang near the back of the crowd of bright cars, where it seemed quieter and he was less likely to get into any pileups. But then she watched him move forward, a little at a time, fighting his way through the pack of whizzing, colorful bullets and a crazy excitement filled her.

She’d never known anything like it. The speed, from this close, was too much for her eyes to focus on, so she saw blur after blur. For the first few laps, it felt like a sonic boom each time a car flew by, and she jumped in her seat until she became accustomed to the noise.

The crowd was crazy, the energy infectious.

“Yes!” she yelled when Mike confirmed he was in second place. “Go, Dylan,” she shouted so loud she’d have embarrassed herself if everybody around her wasn’t yelling a whole lot louder.

By the time he’d maneuvered his way into second she was a wreck. Her throat was sore from cheering, her palms were damp and her entire body was keyed up. When she’d learned that this race took more than five hours, with each team making about twelve pit stops, she’d imagined she’d be bored stiff. But she was having possibly the most exciting day of her life.

Now there were only minutes to go and she didn’t think she could take any more. Still, her eyes stayed riveted on the contest between two front-running drivers. Dylan pulled ahead and then the other guy did, and then it was Dylan again. Suddenly there was a huge cheer and she realized the race was over.

“Who won?” she asked frantically, but there was so much noise and activity that nobody heard her.

Then Dylan’s car kept going, and he was driving into the middle of the pristine lawn and making a big mess of it by turning his car in circles. Nobody seemed to mind.

That’s when she knew he’d won the race.

D
YLAN COULDN’T
believe it.

They’d won.

In eight weeks he hadn’t come closer than a tenth-place finish, but today it was as if the black cloud had blown away. A curse lifted. His bad luck routed.

Nothing was different. The team was the same, he was the same, the stock car was one of the two that had given him problems for weeks. Why today?

He gazed out at the crowd, at the TV cameras running for him, the crew and anybody who could get close, and he remembered that moment when he’d stated before a television reporter and her camera that kissing a pretty woman was his good luck superstition.

It had been a foolish piece of bravado, not said seriously, not meant to be taken that way, and yet…look what had happened.

He’d kissed Kendall Clarke and his team won a race.

Dylan wasn’t a big believer in good-luck charms.

He wasn’t a fool, either.

You didn’t throw good luck away.

He hauled himself out of his car and looked out into a sea of people, looking for his four-leafed clover.

And there she was, beside Mike Nugent, shading her eyes with her hand and looking his way. He still had his mic, so he yelled into it to whomever was still plugged in, “Bring Kendall, will you?”

His crew chief turned and grabbed Kendall’s arm and started dragging her forward. She didn’t need a lot of persuading; she ran toward him. She squeaked a little bit when Dylan picked her up and swung her around, high in the air, but her eyes were dancing with excitement.