Hearts Racing (13 page)

Buck braced himself for the mental backlash of seeing his rival ride away. He couldn’t allow himself any thoughts of doubt. He just had to keep riding, minimize the time loss, and regroup. But thoughts of doubt surfaced. Had his win at the crit in New Lyon been a fluke? Was Polini—not even an all-rounder but a sprinter, for god’s sake—really just that much stronger than he was? He forced the thoughts down. He had to ride, now. Ride through the doubt, ride through the pain, just ride.

Soon Polini was far enough ahead that Buck lost sight of him in the switchbacks up the mountain. After what seemed like hours of riding, he began to hear cheering in addition to the sound of the ever-present press helicopters. He was near the top. He kept the pressure on himself, churning the tortuous pedals again and again.

He arrived at the top barely able to see. He rolled across the finish line and was mobbed by press. They asked him question after question about his battle with Polini, about being a Miami rider, but he couldn’t comprehend any of them. He just stared blankly. LeMond was there, propping him up and trying to clear a path through the press to the team car.

When Buck could finally speak, he said, “How much time?”

LeMond wore a grave frown. “A minute twenty,” he said.

“He got a minute twenty on me in three kilometers?” Buck asked, his voice cracking in an incredulous whine.

All LeMond could do was nod. It wasn’t just a defeat but a crushing obliteration. Polini had to have been riding nearly half again as fast as Buck was to get that much time. Buck was now in second place overall but nearly two full minutes behind Polini, with only two stages left to make that time up. Polini, as a sprinter, had always been a better time trialist, but Buck could count on the climbs to gain time. No longer. He’d just had his ass handed to him in his own specialty. All that was left now was to see how badly Polini would thrash him.

“Hey,” Faith said from the driver’s seat of the car. She was twisted around to eye Buck, who collapsed into the back seat, his chin on his chest. It was a short, curt sound. It sounded like anger.

“Hey!” she said again, louder.

This time he looked up at her. “What?”

“Your blood sugar is terribly low right now, I’m sure, so I’m going to forgive you for the negative thoughts you are very clearly having,” she said through tight lips. “But you need to get your shit together, Buck Heart. You’ve got three more stages to race, and you’re our team leader. Get your chin off your chest and your mind right.”

“Well maybe if I got a proper massage instead of you jumping on me, I’d have been in better shape to ride.” He spat the words out without giving them even a moment of thought.

She stared at him, eyes wide.

Merde.
“Faith, I’m sorry,” he said.

“You’re lucky I don’t come back there and make you sorrier.” She turned around and stared out the window.

He was a dangerous mix. He didn’t want to talk to her like that, but how dare she? She had no idea what he’d just been through. Had she ever been defeated like this? Such a stupid mistake of his—there was no way he concentrate on the race with sex on the brain! And then a small voice reminded him: she did know what it was like. She knew worse. She had a brother on the line. A brother he was supposed to be fighting for. Add to that her strong-armed engagement to that prick Barker locked in the basement back in Miami, as well as losing her gym. And the whole time up the mountain he’d been thinking of himself, of his own need for victory, chasing that asshole Polini and fueled by his own desires. There was more at stake here than his ego, and he’d just lashed out at someone who cared about him.

He couldn’t think of anything to say, so he just sighed. He heard her sigh, too.

LeMond got in the car and said, “Okay, we’re going to run you down the mountain to the hotel and then come back for the rest of the guys. They’ll be a while yet.”

What LeMond wasn’t saying was that he’d realized Buck wouldn’t want to wait around to see Polini on the podium after winning his second stage of the race. Back at the hotel, Faith dropped them off. Buck and LeMond headed up in the elevator in silence.

Finally, after Buck showered and LeMond was massaging his tired muscles in hope of stimulating their recovery, Buck spoke. “LeMond, I’m telling you, he just rode away from me, like I was standing still. Never seen anything like it in my life.”

LeMond nodded. “We saw it on the monitors.”

“How can he be that fast on the climbs? He’s a sprinter! He’s gotta weigh 180lbs!”

“I don’t know. But look, we’re here to do a job and we’re doing it. The press is going nuts. The French are loving the battle between you two. We’re here to do a job, to give them a show, and we’re doing it.”

“But don’t you want more than that, LeMond? We’re not actors.”

“What I want is a good result. For me, for you, for the team, for Faith, everyone. Of course I want to win. Without a win, we’re all facing the same thing. But I’m talking about the big win.” LeMond twirled a finger to indicate that he was talking about more than just cycling, but Buck also took it to mean he was urging care not to directly mention the Mexicans and their role against the French. Did he really think their rooms would be bugged or something? Buck thought it unlikely, but the French were a strange people. “I spoke to our team owner today,” he said, seemingly changing the subject, “and he’s very pleased. He says things are going extremely well.”

Buck absorbed this in silence. He was glad to hear there was good news but still felt ineffectual. He wanted to be the leader the team needed and deserved. Not just a dog and pony show.

LeMond examined his injury sustained in the crash and pronounced it likely to be a bruised rib, possibly a broken one. Buck would waver between discomfort and searing pain, but there was nothing that could be done for it. At least it wasn’t a broken leg. But then again, if it was a broken leg, he wouldn’t have to ride. Ah, the pleasures of road bike racing.

Later, lying in his bed and staring at the ceiling, he let his thoughts wander. Faith had been right. He needed to get his mind right. He had a race to win, and if he couldn’t win, at least he would leave no doubt in anyone’s mind that he gave it everything.

Buck had seen the televised replays of the days racing. The announcer’s comments echoed in his head. “A big move by Polini, this, and no reply at all coming from Heart,” the announcer stated, his voice charged with excitement. “He took a look straight into the eyes of Heart and said, ‘Well, here I go. Are you coming or not?’ and the answer is ‘Not!’”

It hurt most because it was so true. He’d had no answer.

Just before he drifted under, he thought about Faith. She wanted the win, needed the win as much as he did or more. But her mind was in the right place, and she wasn’t afraid to call him out when his wasn’t. A guy could go a long way in life with a partner like that, if he didn’t totally screw it up by lashing out at her like an asshole when he was feeling sorry for himself.

Chapter 21

Faith didn’t buy it. Yeah, she’d heard LeMond and Buck wax philosophical about how cycling was a mental game, blah, blah. The most beautiful sport and all that. Whatever. Seemed like a bunch of grown men getting all emotional about riding kid’s toys around in fancy costumes. She’d never have said as much to Buck before, but now that he’d lashed out at her when he was down, she had a good mind to point it out.

What she knew for sure was that Buck was a strong, healthy athlete. Or, he was until he did a somersault onto a rock. As a trainer with knowledge about the human body’s processes under load, it was her professional opinion that under no circumstance could Polini be that much faster than Buck was. So how had Polini done it?

Simple. Polini was cheating. Probably with Bernard’s help, or at least his knowledge. And she was going to find proof. But how? She knew what she was looking for, but not necessarily where to look or how to get to it. She’d need help—LeMond.

“Maybe you could flirt with someone?” LeMond said, leaning on a corner of the dresser in her room. “Get into their rooms that way? If you put on a low-cut shirt . . .”

Faith raised an eyebrow.

Buck, sitting on the bed, shifted uncomfortably. Probably because of his bruised rib.

“I mean, you know, because you’re uh . . .” LeMond made a gesture toward himself to indicate his body from chest down. “. . . because you’re an attractive woman,” he finished finally.

Faith considered it. Well, she’d been willing to marry Barker, after all. What was a little flirting? Then again . . . “I don’t think we have that kind of time. Just leave me here at the hotel and I’ll come up with something.” She wasn’t needed to drive the team car on the third day, because the time trial started and ended near enough to the hotel that a team car wasn’t necessary, and most teams were feeling the crunch of a lack of gas. 

“Okay, but be careful. This place is crawling with press just dying for anything to dig up about Buck or his team,” LeMond said, standing. “Let’s roll, Buck. You’ve got a bike to ride.”

Buck nodded and stood. “Give us a second?” he asked.

LeMond exaggerated a startled motion then grinned and walked out.

Buck turned to Faith. He fixed her with those beautiful eyes of his, and she saw that the fire had returned to them. “I just wanted to say thanks. For kicking my butt when I needed it yesterday. And I’m sorry. I was an asshole. Maybe the biggest asshole in a sport full of assholes.”

“You really were,” she said. “That hurt.” She’d been mulling it over all night. He’d been exhausted, defeated by his arch enemy. Plus he did kind of have a point about jumping him, even if it’d been monumentally indelicate to say so.

He nodded. “I won’t make an excuse. This time with you has been . . .”

Has been what? she thought. If ever there was a sentence that needed finishing, surely that was one. Typical. Just when there’s about to be a breakthrough.

“Great,” he finished. He let out a sigh as though it had taken a lot of effort to say it. “Maybe the best time of my life.”

Her arms had been crossed, but they fell to her sides. Then, completely unbidden by their owner, they reached out and embraced him. She was close enough to feel his warmth and smell that delicious smell of his, but she wasn’t ready to stop being pissed just yet. “Be careful out there today,” she said, letting go. “Don’t do a flip onto anything.”

“I didn’t know there was a rock there.” He turned to go but stopped. Then he whirled, grabbed her, and kissed her full on the mouth. There it was again. That thing he did to her with his eyes, his body, his way. He held her for a moment, and then sighed. “Okay,” he said. “Now I’m ready.”

“You and me both,” she said. He stared at her, and she cracked a smile at him, which made him laugh. She laughed, too. The tension melted away. He turned to go, for real this time, and she gave him an open-hand smack on the butt.

When they were gone, Faith was left alone with her promise to find out how Polini was so much faster than he should be. The only problem was she had no good plan for how to make that actually happen. Outside her window, the crowd gathered around a big tent where the riders were starting once every minute. As the second place rider, Buck would start second-to-last. Polini would be last.

The first thing she needed was to find out where in the hotel the New Orleans team’s rooms were. She’d seen a couple of them in the elevator before, which meant their rooms might be above hers, but she couldn’t very well go downstairs and ask for a key to every room above hers in the hotel. Her room was on the sixth floor, so that left just the seventh and eighth.

She took the elevator up to the eighth floor and looked around. The hallway was quiet. Something told her the hallway was slightly different from the one on her floor, but she couldn’t put her finger on just how it was different. Different carpet? Wallpaper?

She took the stairs to the sixth floor and poked her head into the hallway. Same carpet. Same wallpaper. But it definitely looked different somehow. How? Think! She walked up to the seventh floor. It looked similar to the sixth, but different from the eighth. She took a photo with her phone then went back to the eighth floor and held it up for comparison. She’d been so stupid. How had she not seen it straight away? The eighth had fewer rooms, and therefore, fewer doors!

That made sense. Obviously there were some larger rooms up here. Suites or something. Downstairs were normal sized rooms, so there were more doors. Would New Orleans put Polini up in a suite? Maybe. But she thought probably not. She decided to focus her efforts on the seventh floor.

Once back on the seventh again, she walked the hallways, looking for any clue that would mark rooms as being those of the New Orleans team. There were a couple of food trays sitting in the hallway, some with newspapers on them. She nudged a coffee cup off of a newspaper with her toe, and it showed a photo of Buck, his face a twisted grimace of pain from yesterday’s battle with Polini. Above it was a photo of Polini, arms raised, from the awards ceremony after the stage. She didn’t know the man, but from the smug face she’d seen on TV yesterday when he was riding away from Buck, she thought it might be like Polini to take pleasure in reading press about himself. What a prick, she thought. Then she thought, wait, this might not even be his room. No, he’s still a prick for cheating against Buck.

She kept looking around the hallways for a better clue, but there wasn’t anything to see. At the other end of the hallway, the elevator door dinged and a woman in uniform pushed a cart out.

Decision time, she thought. Do I guess that the room with the newspaper might be Polini’s and try to get in it, or do I try something else?

Wait a minute. If the team is on this floor, and they have something incriminating in one of their rooms, they probably won’t want a cleaning lady in there at all. She felt a rush of excitement at this revelation and hurried to put it to the test.

She walked back down the hall, thankful that the cleaning lady was inside one of the rooms. She didn’t want to be spotted skulking about the hallway. The lady might call security or something, and then Faith would have, instead of no good options, no options whatsoever.

About halfway down the hall, she spotted a room with a do-not-disturb sign. Not that it meant anything, of course, but it was something. She kept walking then heard a crackle of static from the end of the hall. It was followed by a woman’s voice, who said, “Yep, I’m just finishing 703 and moving down the hall now.”

Shit! The cleaning lady would come into the hall any second. Faith reversed direction down the hallway and stood in front of the door with the sign. The cleaning lady walked into the hallway, and Faith raised her hand and said, “Madame, could you let me into my—”

Faith was cut off by the sound of the door she was standing in front of opening. She whipped her head around to face the door. To her horror, as if in slow motion, the person opening the door was Polini himself, dressed in his cycling kit and obviously leaving to head down to the race. He must have recognized her, she thought. A quizzical look crossed his face.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded, stepping out the door and closing it behind him.

Faith thought the motion seemed suspicious, like he didn’t want her looking inside his room. Of course he didn’t, the sneaky, smug bastard. The door clicked closed with the do-not-disturb tag swaying.

“Oh,” Faith said, her voice sounding thin to her own ear. “I was just, uh . . .”

“Madame, do you need assistance?” the cleaning woman asked. “I can have the front desk make you a new key.” She was walking toward Faith now, handheld radio at the ready.

Faith’s mind whirled. She had to talk her way out of this somehow.

Polini narrowed his eyes. “This is my room.”

“Of course,” Faith said. “What—uh, what floor is this?”

“The seventh,
madame
,” the cleaning lady said. Her name tag read “CLAIRE” in block letters.

Faith made a show of digging her key out of her pocket and looked at it, which, she realized, was a pointless gesture. The magnetic-stripe keycards all looked the same, without any numbers printed on them.

“Oh, I must have pressed the wrong elevator button,” Faith said. “Maybe my room is on the sixth.”

“Let me take you down to the front desk,
madame
, and we can find out for sure.”

“Hmph,” Polini said, turning to leave. “I do not wish to have my room cleaned,
s’il vous plait
,” he said over his shoulder. He stalked down the hall to the elevators and jabbed a finger at a button.

“
Oui, monsieur, bien sûr
,” Claire said. She smiled at Faith again, but her eyes held a question. She inclined her head to the elevators, and Faith nodded. At least there were two elevators so they wouldn’t have to ride down with Polini.

“You know,” Claire said, after she’d punched the button for the Lobby and the elevator doors closed, “I know what you were doing.” Her face was serious and her eyes steady.

“What do you mean?” Faith asked. God, what a guilty thing to say, she thought. Here it comes. She’s going to call security and have me thrown out.

“Sneaking into Monsieur Polini’s room. That’s what you were doing, wasn’t it?”

Faith remained silent and stared straight ahead. She’d let the team down this time for sure.

“I can see why you would want to,” Claire said, turning to look at herself in the polished steel elevator door. She smoothed her hair in its tight bun. “He is absolutely gorgeous. I’d like to peel that outfit off him and show him what a real woman can do. But take it from me, honey, it’s better to wait until after the race is over. Then the cyclists are all looking to relax. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel, and I’ve made quite a few of them shoot,
n’est-ce pas
?” She laughed at her own joke then turned and looked at Faith again, smiling conspiratorially.

Faith couldn’t think of what to say, so she just said, “Oh. Well, um, congratulations?” She expected Claire to give her a look for saying something that lame out loud, but Claire was lost in a happy memory of some kind.

The elevator door dinged and began to draw open. Claire didn’t respond except to give Faith an eyebrow wiggle that said “wait and see.” She swept out of the elevator, her uniform dress and stockings sighing with each step, and presented Faith to the front desk.

“Madame needs some help with her key,” Claire said. The man at the desk reached a hand out to take Faith’s key, and Claire turned. She gave one more conspiratorial wink, and then was gone.

“What room are you in Madame?” the man asked. He looked like he might have been born to a sect of monks who valued primness above every other possible human trait.

Faith said she didn’t know. The information was in her brain somewhere, but the last few minutes had removed her ability to call it up quickly. The prim concierge looked her up by name. He swiped her key through a machine so that it would “work once more.” Faith took it from him, though she might as well have just thrown it in the trash. Spying was a hell of a lot harder in real life than the movies. She’d only been at it for an hour and already she’d blown her cover and been apprehended.

“Please let me know if you have any further trouble, Madame,” the man said. “But I think you merely made a mistake in choosing your floor. You are room six twelve, not seven twelve.”

Faith nodded and forced herself to smile. “Oh! Merci,” she said. “How stupid of me.” She turned to walk back to the elevator. She rode up to the sixth floor and tried her key in her door. It worked.

Inside her room, she flopped on the bed. What was she going to do? She couldn’t charm Claire, and she didn’t think it was likely she could charm the prim concierge. She was totally screwed.

From outside, a cheer went up. One of the riders must have just begun his attempt at the course. She flipped her TV on. It was already showing the race. Sure enough, a rider from a team she didn’t recognize was making his way down a ramp set up inside the tent, bent low over the bike and pedaling hard.

Hell, she thought, I might as well watch this live. She went to the window, which was a sliding door that led out onto a narrow balcony. She could see the rider she’d just seen on TV disappearing around a corner. It was a bit odd to have just seen on television seconds ago something she was now seeing with her own eyes.

Damn it. What could she do? She’d thought trying to find a way into the room was such a good idea, and she’d even found the right one. It was lucky Claire thought she was a groupie, or she’d probably have been tossed out of the hotel altogether.

She turned her back to the crowd and looked up at the floor of the balcony above. Wait a minute. If Polini’s room was the one directly above hers, that meant she was looking directly at his balcony. That’s what the concierge had said, right? Seven twelve?

It wouldn’t be easy. In fact, it would be terrifying. The hotel’s architects had designed the balconies for looks, not to facilitate the guests climbing from floor to floor. But as a CrossFit athlete, Faith was no ordinary hotel guest. Most of her students couldn’t even do one good pullup. Faith could do dozens. In fact, she preferred the muscle-up variation of the pullup done on free-hanging rings instead of a solid bar. And she usually did those with weights attached to her body to make them more challenging.