Ballet Shoes and Engine Grease (9 page)

Nick bent over the document.
“I thought Hank Rasmussen took
this with him when he stormed out of your office on
Friday.”

“
He did. I went to ask for it back. He
bristled with macho resentment and finally shoved it at me so hard
the paper got crinkled.”

Nick jerked to attention.
“Do you want me to talk to
him?”

Cr
imson considered the question. Her gaze strayed to the
glass panels that gave a view of the landscaped grounds. Sunshine
gilded the neatly cut lawns. In the sky, two birds were chasing
each other. Because of the air conditioning, she couldn’t open the
window to hear them sing, couldn’t enjoy the rich, earthy smells of
the gardens in full bloom. For a moment, she longed to jump up to
her feet, scatter the documents to the floor, run outside and
frolic barefoot on the grass, like a carefree child.

“
No,” she said with a sigh. “I’ll deal with
him.”

Nick tossed the blueprints
aside. “You don’t have to
understand these.”

T
oday, he was wearing a pristine white shirt, and the fine
cotton stretched taut across his shoulders as he reached for a
notepad. He drew three circles on the page. “Hank builds the cars.
Jorge sells them. Peter counts up the money.” He inserted an
initial in each circle, then drew a square box in the middle of
them and connected each circle to the box with a line. “If I had
colored pens, I’d paint this box crimson.” He gave her a sideways
glance, humor glinting in his eyes. “How did you come by that crazy
name, anyway?”

“
My mother was a fan of
Gone with the
Wind
. She wanted to name
me Scarlett, but the lady next door had just had a baby girl, and
she’d called her daughter Scarlett. They expected us to play
together, and naming me Scarlett as well would have caused endless
confusion. So, in a stroke of inspiration, my mother came up with
Crimson.”

“
Did you?”

“
Did I what?”

“
Play with Scarlett.”

“
No.” Crimson felt her raw nerves easing.
With a rush of gratitude, she understood what Nick was doing—he was
using small talk to bring her down from her frenzied agitation.
“Scarlett moved away when she was two. Her mother ran off with the
washing machine repair man. We’d been wondering why her washing
machine kept going wrong. I have no idea what happened to
Scarlett.”

“
Did you have a nickname as a
kid?”

“
Puce. Purple.” She grimaced at the
memories. “My mother realized her mistake, and she tried, but
nothing stuck. Crim sounded too much like Grim, and Son sounded
like a boy, and Crimmy sounded too close to Crummy.”

“
Crimsy?”

“
Hey. I like that.” She sent him a bright
smile. “It might make people think I’m
clumsy
, which is okay. I can be a bit inept at times.”
Their eyes met, and held for three long seconds. Something twisted
low in her belly. Nick’s eyes were dark brown, almost opaque, and
as the air between them grew thick with tension, they narrowed,
wary and challenging. If the eyes were a door to a person’s soul,
Nick’s were locked and bolted, it occurred to her.

“
Crimsy it is then,” he said, keeping his
voice light. Too light. She could hear the effort it cost him to
appear at ease. He pretended to be busy, shuffling papers that
needed no shuffling, until the emotional charge that had flared up
between them had died down again.

“
Your job is to coordinate,” he told her.
“Hank and Peter will estimate how much the improvement will cost.
Jorge will tell you if customers will be willing to pay the extra.
That’s all there is to it.”

“
All right.” She scored a tick on her list
of questions.

Nick leaned back
in the seat, hands laced behind his head. “What’s
next?”

Crimson studied her notes.
“Taking the vintage Spur to a
trade fair in Detroit.”

“
No way,” Nick said flatly.

“
Why?” she countered, equally
flatly.

“
Where’s the damn thing now?

Her brows drew together. “Hanging on a
glass shelf in the showroom.”

“
And how do you think it got there?” When
her frown deepened, Nick abandoned his relaxed pose. “With great
difficulty, that’s how.” He gestured to emphasize the point. “That
thing is priceless. I can imagine the fuss the insurance company
would make to take it down and ship it across the country, and then
string it back up again when it returns. And, while it’s here, at
the factory, what do people have to do to see it?”

She shrugged.
“They have to come here, I guess.”

“
There is no
I guess
about it. They
have
to come here. And they see, not only the Constantine Spur
that took part in the very first Le Mans 24 hour race ever held,
but they also see a row of brand new Constantine Panthers that they
can drool over, giving us an opportunity to convince them that they
simply must have one.”

“
Okay.” Crimson scored another tick. “The
Spur stays at home.”

Nick resumed his carefree pose.
“Next.”

“
Funding for an advertising
campaign.”

He nodded his chin toward the
notepad.
“Three
circles.”

A ripple of ex
citement swept over Crimson. She had thought he
was talking down to her with those simplistic circles, but he’d
been sincere. It was starting to make sense now. She raised her
gaze to Nick. His eyes were softer, warmer now as he embraced his
love of the company that was his heritage. The dark curls were
beginning to look a little disheveled, and one of the buttons on
the front of his white shirt was perilously close to popping open
as he rocked back in his chair, hands laced behind his
head.

She spoke slowl
y, watching Nick’s face, searching for
confirmation in his expression that she was on the right track.
“Jorge and Peter need to figure out how much it will cost,” she
said. “Then they have to figure out if the advertising campaign
will allow us to sell extra cars, or sell the same number of cars
but get a higher price for them.”

“
And Hank?” Nick said. “What’s Hank’s role
in it?”

At a loss for an answer,
Crim
son chewed the end
of her pencil. Nick had been studying her, waiting for her answer.
Now, his gaze fell to her mouth. His eyes narrowed. With a crash,
he brought the chair back down to four legs. Awareness flooded
Crimson at how her lips had pursed around the shaft of the pencil
in what might be regarded as a suggestive gesture. A blush rose on
her skin.

“
I don’t know,” she said, her words muffled
as she slid out the pencil.

Nick swallowed
, hard. She could tell by the strained movement of
his throat. He spoke in a low, almost strangled voice. “Production
cost. Can the manufacturing schedule handle more cars, or will
there be overtime? Will some externally sourced components need to
be ordered as a rush job? Or, will the increased quantity trigger
discounts with suppliers? Those are the kind of questions you’ll
need to consider.”

“
Okay,” she told him, although her brain
had stopped working.

H
e made a small, inviting gesture with one hand.
“Next?”

Perspiration beaded between her
breasts
as she met his
gaze. Color burned on her cheeks, but valiantly, Crimson forged on.
“Hank wants to produce cars into inventory, so that the factory
doesn’t have to go on a four day week.”

“
Hmm…” Nick’s mouth flattened. “That’s a
tricky one. What do you do if you have inventory of unsold goods
you want to sell?” When she failed to respond, he gave her a clue.
“Like fashion shops do with unsold clothes at the end of a
season.”

Her brows inched
up. “You have a sale?”

“
Right. You discount the product. And
there’s the problem. Constantine Motors never discounts. Never. We
only have one product. The Constantine Panther. It comes in two
versions. Two seater, Panther Duet. Four seater, Panther Quartet.
The color is always the same, dark green and purple, with chrome
accents. There’s a long list of options for the client to
customize. Seat color. Walnut or maple dash. Heated seats. Music
system. Trip computer. Apart from the paintwork and chassis, which
are always standard, every Constantine Panther is fully customized.
And if you manufacture to inventory, without a customer lined up to
make their choices, you can’t customize.”

“
So.” Crimson drew a thick line around the
square box with her initial. “This time, there’s no input from the
three circles. It’s just me. I’ll have to decide if we should take
the risk of manufacturing cars that someone might not want to buy
at full list price.”

“
You’ve got it.”

“
Could we make the inventory cars a special
offer?”

“
Not unless you want to annoy every single
person who’s ever bought a Constantine Panther. The no discount
policy is considered a courtesy, ensuring that everyone is treated
the same.” Nick’s brow furrowed, giving him a troubled look. “In
truth, there’s never been any need to discount in the past. This is
the first time in fifty years we don’t have a waiting
list.”

Crimson flinched.
The words summed up the enormity of her
task. Not only did she have to keep things level until the end of
the year—she had to reverse a declining trend. What could Uncle
Stephan have been thinking of when he put her in charge?

Nick
cleared his throat, startling her out of her thoughts. “If
your mother and mine are making themselves into a nuisance, I have
a solution.” When she gave him an uncertain nod, he continued
talking. “It’s taking me three hours each way to commute. The only
options for short term accommodation in Longwood are a guesthouse
with shared bathrooms or a motel full of long term residents on
welfare.”

He paused, appeared to hesitate, and then
he spoke slowly, his eyes searching hers
. “If I could stay with you and your mother at
Longwood Hall, I’d be happy to let your mother use my condo in
return. She might enjoy visiting New York for a bit. And, if my
mother is her new best friend, she’ll go home too. It would keep
both of them out of your hair.”

“
Sure,” Crimson said, a little breathless.
“Come and stay with us.”

And wondered if she’d just made a huge
mistake.

Back to Contents

Chapter Six

A
wareness of Crimson beside him in the narrow bucket seats
of the Panther prickled on Nick’s skin. Every time he wrapped his
hand around the gear stick to shift up or down, the back of his
knuckles grazed her thigh. If he pressed a little harder, the
motion might make her skirt bunch up, exposing more of those long,
long legs.

Enemies, friends, or
lovers?

Ever since he’d agreed to help her, the
question had
burned in
his mind. Did she understand what was happening between them? They
had already evolved from being adversaries to an uneasy friendship,
and were now headed toward an affair, with no more control over
their emotions than flotsam drifting in a stream.

T
urning off the main road, he steered between two stone
pillars, onto a gravel drive that wound its way through a copse of
stately old oaks and sycamores. As the three-story mansion in gray
granite came into view, a wave of nostalgia rolled over him, echoes
of a hundred childhood homecomings.

His
eyes fell on the lawns that sloped up gently toward the
house. It hit him hard at that exact moment, like falling into a
time warp. For a few seconds, he was fifteen again, running down
the drive from the gate, where the racing team van had deposited
him.

He saw his father, crouching on the
lawn, tossing a soccer ball to
a small boy with a chubby face and golden curls that glinted in the
evening sun. The boy missed the ball, but instead of appearing
annoyed, he gave a delighted gurgle of laughter and trundled off
after it.

Nick halted in front of his father. “Where
were you?” he asked, almost pleading.

“
I…” Realization flashed in Stephan
Constantine’s dark eyes, so very much like his own. “I’m sorry,
son. I…”

“
You forgot.” Nick spat out the words with
the turbulent, all consuming anger of an adolescent, still partly a
child, with a child’s need for reassurance, and partly a man, with
a man’s prickly pride.

“
Is that him…?” He nodded toward the small
boy.

“
That’s Bobby,” his father replied. “Tamara
and I got married on Saturday. Bobby is your stepbrother
now.”

The words sent another wave of
bitterness
surging
inside Nick.
Tamara.
The
young woman, barely in her twenties, who had caused his mother to
become a discarded ex-wife. His hands clenched into fists. Nick had
heard his mother cry at night. She might fool the rest of her world
with her cool composure, with her impeccable manners, but she
didn’t fool him. His mother was hurting, and he didn’t know how to
help her.