In the Groove (9 page)

Okay, well, maybe not that innocent, but certainly less worldly than the women who'd been a part of his recent past.

"You looked nervous on TV."

Ahh, so she'd been watching. "I was."

Her expression turned serious for a moment. "It's just a race, Lance."

He took the tray of cooling cookies with him as he sat down at his bar. "Only someone who doesn't understand racing could say that."

She looked stricken.

"No, no. Don't look like that. I know you don't get racing and so let me explain," he said, placing a half-eaten cookie back on the plate. She gave him a kindergarten teacher frown. "Sorry," he said, moving the cookie back to his hand.

"We don't spread our germs by putting half-eaten food on other people's plates."

He almost laughed. "Okay, Miss Teacher. And like I was saying, you have no idea how important this is—at least to me."

"No?" she asked.

"No."

"Then tell me."

"I don't think I can," he said with a frown. "I don't think I can explain how it makes me feel to go 190 MPH down the front straightaway. What it's like to know that you're right on the verge of spinning out of control, but that if you hold on to it, you'll come out in front, maybe. What it's like to feel that adrenaline rush during the last few laps when you know you might just win, or not, but finish good enough that you might get a shot to race for the championship. There's nothing like this, nothing like this in the world."

"Yes, but what if something happens? What if you're not able to drive again? What will you do then?"

He shrugged.

She shook her head. "Look," she said. "If I asked the average fan who won the championship in 1968, assuming there was a championship back then—"

"There was. David Pearson won it, one of the few to snag two in a row."

"Okay, you know who won, but do you think the average race fan would know?"

"I don't know." He shrugged a bit. "Probably. Maybe."

"And that's my point. Probably. Maybe. You're not curing cancer here."

"Ouch."

"I'm sorry," she said, running her fingers through her hair in an agitated way. "I'm really sorry. You just looked so nervous on TV, Lance, and there's no need to be. It's just a race. You're not saving the world. You're not helping to promote world peace. You're just driving a car in a circle and I have a feeling you used to have fun doing it, but it sure doesn't look like it anymore."

"So you baked me cookies," he said with a half smile, not sure if he should be offended at how inconsequential she made his job sound, or touched that she tried to help.

"I used to do it for my class," she said. "Back when I was a student teacher, my third graders would get upset on test days, too. So I'd bake them cookies. Just by taking the test you'd get one cookie. If you got all the answers right you
got five."

"How many would I have had to have gotten right for eating four?"

"You would have had to have gotten a B on your test."

"Then I guess I better do good during the next practice session because that was very definitely an F performance."

"You will."

"I will if you're there with me."

It surprised him how much he wanted that. She was so completely unimpressed by what he did that he wished he could capture some of that. Maybe if he went back to just having fun, his driving would improve.

"I can watch from here."

He shook his head. "Nope. I want you there in the garage, holding up a bag of cookies every time I come in."

She laughed, and the realization that he'd put a smile on her face—well, it made him feel almost as good when he roared down the straightaway.

Actually, it felt better.

"You're not serious," she asked.

"Yes, I am."

Her look turned somber. "I can't do that. I don't know the first thing about being in the garage."

"What's there to know? Stay out of everyone's way and when you hear a car coming toward you, make sure you're not in front of it. Drivers have been known to run people down—by accident, of course."

Which made her lips twitch again. "Lance, I can't"

He bent down and kissed her on the cheek, the cookie scent of her hair filling his nostrils. Suddenly Lance felt so filled with pent-up longing that it was all he could do not to pull her to him. But he didn't. He just straightened, unable to resist cupping one side of her face with his right hand.

Stupid, Lance.
Stupid move. She might read more into it than she should.

But he didn't care. Her skin was as soft as it looked. No, softer.

"Please, Sarah, come be in the garage with me." Because, damn it, he needed her.

"Jeez," he thought he heard her murmur, the word so softly muttered that it was barely audible over the sound of A/C humming in the background. He felt his whole body still, wondering if maybe she'd felt the same thing he did whenever they made eye contact—as if some sort of charged energy stretched between them. If she did, she hid it well. Then again, she didn't exactly hold men in high esteem.

"Please," he said again.

She looked away from him, her brown eyes flecked with tiny streaks of mint green that sprouted from their centers. Pretty eyes, he found himself thinking yet again.

"All right," she said at last. "When do I need to be there?"

"In an hour."

"Okay," she said, nodding, then moving away from him. Lance was smart enough to let her slip away. If he touched her again, if he bent his head and kissed her like he wanted—well, there was no telling what else might happen. And while he was selfish enough to insist on her company in the garage, in hopes that she might be able to help him get his head on straight, he knew that anything more than that would be a serious distraction.
Serious.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

It boggled Sarah's mind that after suffering a horrible humiliation at the hands of her wacked-out ex-boyfriend, she was actually considering— yes, truly considering—jumping into bed with Lance Cooper.

There. She'd said it... or thought it. Whatever. She could admit that when he'd walked into his motor coach, his eyes having gone all warm and gooey at the sight of her baking him cookies, she'd just about told him the cookies weren't the only things available for consumption.

She moaned aloud as she took the latest batch of cookies out of the tiny oven, depositing them on the counter, all the while wondering if she should do as he asked and show up in the garage. For some reason she couldn't help but think that showing up at the garage meant something. She didn't know what, exactly, she just thought that making him cookies had straddled the line of the boss/employee relationship and so going into the garage in order to rah-rah Lance, well, it just seemed too personal.

But she wanted to.

In the end she decided she really had no choice. She'd given her word and so she needed to show up. If she didn't she worried he might get mad at her, which might distract him, which might affect how he practiced.

The heat just about slapped her back when she stepped out of the motor coach, and the humidity, too. If she'd thought North Carolina humidity was bad, it was nothing compared to Florida. It was one of those days where so much moisture filled the air, it turned the atmosphere a hazy gray.

It wasn't hard to find the garage. All she had to do was pause, listen for the sound of revving engines and follow her ears. She glanced at the grandstand; three layers of seats rose up, red and blue chairs on the bottom two, seats painted in a checkerboard pattern signaling the uppermost grandstand. There weren't a lot of people up there, something that surprised her. The brief glimpses she'd caught of racetracks on TV showed grandstands packed to capacity. But maybe this type of racing didn't have a high attendance, she thought, her eyes catching on the word DAYTONA that stretched across the white retaining wall near the center of the track.

"Credential?" a wizened old security guard wearing a blue hat with Daytona Security emblazoned on the front asked her. Sarah stopped in surprise, eyeing the chain-link fence at the same time the realization hit her that access to the garage appeared to be restricted.

Credential? Oh, yeah. That was that postcard-sized thing that she'd been told to carry around with her. She reached in the back pocket of her jeans, having to unfold and smooth down the paper so the darn thing could be read. The security guard looked at her like she was nuts, and by the time he'd finished looking at it Sarah felt the familiar sting of embarrassment. What? Was she not supposed to fold it or something? She had her answer less than two seconds later when someone walked out of the garage, a clear plastic holder bobbing around with each step he took. Inside was the credential.

"Guess I need to buy one of those holder thingies," she said to the guard, who just frowned. Okay, so maybe he wasn't used to people being friendly.

In fact, the whole atmosphere seemed a bit tense, Sarah noticed as she stayed to the right of a thick yellow line that she assumed had been painted there as a way of keeping unwary tourists like herself out of harm's way. Multiple garage doors with race cars inside were the focus of some mighty serious stares as men in brightly colored outfits dashed between the garage and the big rigs to her right. Someone started an engine; Sarah just about shot out of her tennis shoes. Jeez, those things were loud.

"Excuse me," she asked a man in a bright-blue outfit, the name of an auto parts store emblazoned across his chest. "Do you know where Lance Cooper's garage is?"

The man didn't smile, didn't flinch, didn't do anything other than point in the direction of the car stalls. "Name's on top."

Name's on—?

"Ah," she said, seeing that, indeed, someone had had the foresight to put the driver's name and car number above the garage door. "Thanks," she said, only to realize a second later that there appeared to be no rhyme or reason as to the order they were placed, which meant she had to walk all the way to the other side of the garage before finally spying LANCE COOPER in big, bold letters.

Okay, so now what? She stopped directly opposite the garage, near a stack of tires on a red dolly. Did she go into the stall? Lance had said to meet him there. But those men inside the garage looked awfully scary, and she didn't see Lance.

She looked around for help again, only to spy the logo of Lance's sponsor on some tinted glass doors, doors that appeared to belong to the truck that carried Lance's race car around. Above the doors was a metal flap that hung off the back of the big rig like a castle drawbridge, only elevated so that it afforded some shade. Someone had placed lawn chairs along one side, orange coolers with white lids snuggled beneath the truck's rear bumper.

How... bizarre, she found herself thinking. It appeared to be some type of mobile office. But where did they put the race cars?

Just then one of the doors opened, a man Sarah recognized from TV and the World Wide Web stepping outside, his white shirt with a bright orange star on the left shirt pocket. What was his name? Billy? Bo? Burt?

"Hi," she said, catching his attention as he started to walk by. "Do you know where I can find Lance Cooper?"

Blain, she suddenly remembered. Blain Sanders, the owner of Lance's race team.

"He's inside," he said, eyes narrowing. "If you want an autograph, you'll need to wait until after practice."

"Autograph?" she said, brows lowering. "Oh, no. I'm Sarah, his new driver and he asked me to—"

"Sarah," Blain Sanders interrupted, his expression undergoing a dramatic change. The guarded look was instantly replaced by warmth. "Lance told me all about you."

"It's not true," she said, smiling up at him. Dark-haired and green-eyed, he was a man that made you want to smile back. "Whatever he told you, it isn't true."

"You mean he didn't try and turn you into a hood ornament?"

"That he did do," Sarah said, feeling somehow better now that she'd found a friendly face. "Unfortunately, I ended up looking more like bug guts. I did a belly flop atop his window."

Blain Sanders winced. "That had to hurt."

"It did," she said, nodding.

"Well, Lance is inside. We've got to go out in about twenty minutes so you're just in time."

"Should I wait here?"

"No, no," Blain said. "Go on."

"Thanks," Sarah said, suddenly nervous again. Actually, she'd been nervous since the moment she'd passed through the chain-link fence. For some reason she'd thought this was a lot less—she frowned, trying to find words for what she'd thought—she'd thought it'd be a lot more casual than this. But this was no casual operation. This was a big deal. Most of the crew members ran around with expressions on their face akin to Irritable Bowel Syndrome sufferers, something that told her there was a lot at stake. And if that hadn't tipped her off, the fact that TV crews darted around attempting to catch all of the drama on film would have. She was almost glad to get inside.

"I'm looking for Lance," she said to a crew member who stood just inside the door, fluorescent light glinting off the lenses in his glasses.

"That way," he said, pointing toward the front of the big truck, the finger he used to guide her covered in grease.

Sarah thanked him, realizing the big rig wasn't so much of a mobile office as it was a garage, one that smelled of burnt grease and chemical cleaners. Dark gray cabinets stretched down either side of an aisle with a rubber mat covering the floor.

"Pretty cool, huh?" said a familiar voice.

It happened again. Her body shot what felt like a hundred volts of energy to various parts of her body.

"It's bizarre." She said the first thing that came to mind, although what she was actually referring to was her reaction to him, not the big rig.

"What's bizarre?"

Think, Sarah, think.

"Umm, that race cars appear to travel in as much luxury as their drivers."

He smiled, his tan skin making his perfectly symmetrical white teeth stand out. Obviously, he'd had braces as a child.

"I guess they do," he said. And then his eyes warmed as he crossed his arms in front of him, his firesuit turning his skin a nutmeg brown that turned his eyes even more blue. "Thanks for coming."

"You're welcome," she said.

"Do you want me to show you around? I don't have to climb inside for another fifteen minutes."

"Ah, sure," she said, thinking the last thing she should do is spend more time in his company. But she was like those bugs that dove into a pool of water only to end up drowning themselves—she couldn't seem to keep away from him. And what was it with the bug analogies lately, anyway?

"Come on," he said.

It was a short tour, as necessitated by Lance's impending duties, but during that time she was introduced to his crew in the garage, then brought back to his big rig where she learned that microwaves and refrigerators were standard options on a "hauler" and that computers had become a necessary part of stock car racing. Of course, it ended with a glance at his watch, Lance's face growing tense as he said, "It's time."

And she felt her own heart thud in response.

"C'mon. Let's get you a headset," he said, brushing by her as he headed to the front of the transporter. Inside one of the cabinets about a half-dozen headphones hung on a metal rod, the things looking like plastic earmuffs.

"Put this on," he instructed.

"Why?"

"Because you'll be able to hear me."

"You want me to listen to you?"

"Of course," he said, the smile he gave her a pretty pathetic one given what she knew he was capable of. "Maybe you can tell me some jokes while I'm out there."

She shook her head. "I have a feeling the knock-knock jokes I'm familiar with won't be as amusing to you as they were my kindergartners."

"Try me," he said, then handed her a headset. "Put this on. The black strap goes across the back of your head. Leave the mike retracted unless you want to talk. You have to press the button on the side in order to speak."

"Okay," she said, sliding the thing over her curls, which became an immediate problem. Obviously the people at Racing Radios didn't realize that women wore their equipment, too, women who had long hair and curls that liked to tangle. Lance started to help her, and when he lifted his hands, she saw that his fingers trembled.

She wasn't sure why she did what she did next, but one moment she was standing there, waiting for him to help her and the next she was clasping his fingers, the radio forgotten.

"Wait," she said.

"What?" he asked, his fingers cold and clammy.

"You're nervous."

"No, I'm not," he said.

"Yes, you are," she contradicted, almost laughing at the way he'd said, "No, I'm not." He'd sounded exactly like one of her students when she'd caught him trying to pull the feathers off one of the class's baby chicks.

"Are you talking about the way my hands shake?" he asked. "That happens every time I'm about to climb into a car. Adrenaline."

"Yeah, right," she said, placing a hand on her waist. "You're nervous, Lance Cooper."

"I'm not nervous—"

"You're about to strap yourself into a car that goes 190 miles per hour. It's only natural that you'd be a little nervous."

"Professional drivers do
not
get nervous. They get edgy."

"Edgy," she said with a slight grin. "Is that what you call it?"

He crossed his arms in front of him and didn't say anything.

"Well, what you call edgy, I call nervous. And before you start up again, I'll tell you right now that the look on your face is the exact same look as my third graders used to get before a test. They might have been eight years old. They might not have understood what real stress is, but their dilated pupils looked the same as yours."

"And your point is?"

"I'm going to tell you the same thing I used to tell my students."

"What? That it's just a test? That it's no big deal in the scheme of things?"

"No," she said with a shake of her head. "I'm going to tell you a story."

She saw his brows lift, saw the brief glimpse of surprise on his face before bis eyes narrowed. "What kind of story?"

"Once upon a time there lived a man who predicted that airplanes would never fly, radios would never broadcast, and who proclaimed that the good people of Earth had discovered everything there was to know about physics. Obviously, this was a pretty stupid man." She waited for him to ask because she knew he would.

"All right. Who was it?"

"Thomas Kelvin, the man who revolutionized thermodynamics. The same man who outlined major principles about heat and its conductivity and whose Kelvin scale scientists use to this day."

He smiled a bit, though it was really more of a smirk, one that seemed to say, "And your point is?"

"Even some of the world's most brilliant people blow it sometimes, Lance. Nobody's perfect Nobody's going to always get it right. The most you can hope for in life is to get it right
some
of the time."