Thunderstruck (10 page)

Thank God for Whit. He really did want her there. “Who all do you have, Whit?”

“There’s about seven of us, with Mick.”

Seven guys and Shelby. “No, thanks. I’m going to go back over to the garage for a while.”

“No one’s there, Shel. Everyone’s left for the night.”

“Then I’m going to crash,” she said, happy with that decision.

Three hours later she was clean, comfy and still reading the same page of a novel she’d opened a long time ago. She almost folded the corner of the page but glanced around for something to use as a bookmark. Grabbing a business card from a dish where she kept her keys, she slid it into the page, and the words on the card jumped out at her.

TNC Racing Enterprises.

Options. Shelby had options. Pulling out her cell phone, she dialed Tamara Norton’s cell phone.

“Oh, my God, Shelby!” Tamara cooed into the phone. “What are you doing? Where are you?”

“In my coach.”

“On Friday night in Daytona Beach? Are you nuts? I’m on my way over to DayGlo. Want to come?”

She peeked out the blinds at the lights of the infield. Boom boxes were already at war and the place hummed and buzzed with a party. And beyond that, the city of Daytona Beach rocked with the influx of two hundred thousand NASCAR folks. What was she doing here?

“What’s the name of the place again?”

“DayGlo. It’s the hottest club in town, Shelby. Just give my name to the guy at the door. I’ll be at the bar in an hour or so.”

Did she want to spend the evening with Tamara? Did she want to get dressed up and find a cab and go across the causeway just to sit and hear about the divorce from hell?

Not particularly. But she didn’t want to sit alone in her motor home and feel sorry for herself. And if Tamara really was an option as an investor in the team option, she should know her better. She had to get out of this trailer or she’d go crazy.

“DayGlo?” She glanced down at her bare feet. “I’ll change and meet you there.”

“R
OXY
’
S IS GOOD
.”

“Biggins is bigger.”

“Bigger isn’t always better.”

“On what planet?”

The rumble of low laughter filled the van, where all seven seats were stuffed with men who’d shucked oysters and drunk drafts, dinged several waitresses with twenty-dollar tips and were just lubricated enough to discuss the merits of every strip club in Daytona Beach.

Mick turned onto the causeway, the only one who’d chosen soda at dinner and gotten rewarded with the keys to the van.

“You can just drop me and Pete at the hotel, Mick,” Whit said. “You clowns are welcome to go watch the ladies climb the pole at Biggins, but the only pole I’m interested in is the first row.”

“Yeah, yeah,” one of the mechanics mumbled. “We won’t be out late.”

Whit tossed Mick a look from the passenger seat. “You up for a little more babysitting? ’Cause I really need these guys crashed by one, but I know they gotta blow off some steam.”

Mick shrugged with less than no enthusiasm. The last thing on earth he wanted to do was go to a strip club. “Tell me there’s another option for steam-blowing. I prefer women to undress for an audience of one.”

Billy punched his shoulder from the seat behind him. “I bet you get plenty of that, Mick. That waitress practically sat on your lap.”

“They have lap dancing at Roxy’s,” someone offered from the back.

“No, thanks,” Mick said.

“Go hit a club,” Pete suggested. “There’re a couple of good ones down near the Seabreeze Bridge. Razzles, the Shores, DayGlo.”

A pub. That’s what Mick wanted. Something with seven-foot ceilings and overflowing pints. “DayGlo?” he asked. “Isn’t that some kind of nylon?”

“That’s some kind of impossible to get in,” Billy said. “You gotta know the frickin’Queen of England to get through that line.”

Mick looked up into the rearview and grinned. “I know her.”

They were still laughing about that when they stepped into a warehouse where neon was the wall paint of choice and the music was as deafening as the Shootout final practice Mick had witnessed earlier.

The two crew chiefs and one of the pit crew—a jack man, Mick had learned—opted out of the continued fun. But Big Byrd, Ryan Magee and Robbie Parsons, the bloke who’d driven the hauler, were determined to use the Queen’s name to squeeze into what looked like every club Mick had ever been in from Miami Beach to Notting Hill.

The three of them fanned out to check the scene, which Mick knew meant
look for women,
leaving him to slip into an empty seat that afforded perfect eye contact with anyone else sitting at the round bar. He ordered an O’Doul’s, chatted with the bartender and glanced around the circle more in search of his mates than to check out the female population.

But his gaze locked on a very familiar face directly across from him.

Tamara Norton.

She lifted her index finger and gave him a one-fingered wave. He nodded in acknowledgment. She turned her hand and transformed the “hello” to “come here.”

When he hesitated, he received an eyebrow arched in impatience and disbelief. The only thing less appealing than a strip club at that moment was a woman on the make. But this one had some sort of relationship with Shelby, so he tilted his head in agreement, picked up his watery nonbeer and ambled over to the viper.

“Imagine seeing you again,” she said into his ear, embracing him with the familiarity of a long-lost friend—not a stranger she’d met for thirty seconds the day before.

“Is this a popular spot for the racing scene?” he asked, still standing even though there was a seat next to her.

“For some of the drivers and the celebrities that gravitate to the sport. Next Friday, you won’t believe the stars who’ll show up in here. You’ll feel right at home.” She crossed her legs, showing plenty of skin, and looked pointedly at the bar stool. “Sit down, Mick.”

“Can’t. I’m on babysitting duty.”

She pointed to the left. “Isn’t that one of your charges? I believe he just spent way too much money buying that young lady a drink.”

Mick glanced just in time to see Big Byrd paying a waitress and leaning down to talk to a blond.

“Would you like to go join him?” she asked. “I won’t be offended. I’m waiting for someone.”

“I’ll keep an eye on him.” He took a sip and held her gaze. “So I understand you used to be married to a driver.”

She squished her nose as though the concept were as distasteful as the lousy alcohol-free beer he’d just sipped.

“We all make mistakes, and now he’s writing alimony checks to pay for his.”

Ouch. Mick looked past her and caught Ryan Magee’s gaze from where he had hooked up with a few other guys, probably from the track. Ryan gave him a questioning look, but Mick just raised his drink. He didn’t need help escaping. Not yet anyway.

“How well do you know Shelby Jackson?” she asked.

“Better every day. And you?”

“We go way back.” She took a drink of something pink in a martini glass. “We girls have to stick together at the track.”

Mick looked dubious. “You don’t seem like you’d have that much in common with Shelby.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised.” She leaned forward, giving him a shot of a set that might make it into Biggins. “For one, we’re both female.”

He toasted in acknowledgment. “Utterly.”

“We’re both interested in racing,” she continued.

“She’s gone way past interested, I think.”

“We’re both intelligent, attractive and successful.”

He considered a diplomatic response as her gaze shifted beyond him.

“And we’re both right here in this room.”

Mick angled to follow her look and froze as several people parted to let someone through the deepening crowd. The last bit of beer caught in his throat and all he did was stare.

The woman wore leather like a second skin. Tight, long, lean pants the color of rich amber ale and just as intoxicating. He could tell by the sway of her hips and the movement of her body that she’d abandoned the work boots in favor of something sky-high and dead sexy.

Cascades of auburn framed her cheekbones and drew his focus to one single place: her darkened, glossed, parted and kissable mouth.

Slender white-tipped fingers closed over his arm with more force than he’d expect from the petite Tamara. “Told you we’re friends.”

At that moment, Shelby caught sight of him. Even in the bizarre neon light he could see her expression change when she saw him, her gaze slip to where Tamara had him by the arm. But in a millionth of a second she had her game face back on and continued her approach as though his appearance didn’t faze her in the least.

But already he knew her better than that. Or did he? He’d have bet a million pounds she wouldn’t hang out voluntarily with this other woman. And he’d have been wrong.

He’d have also bet a million pounds she didn’t have a cropped top in her bureau, but her pale pink sweater stopped about two inches above the low-rise leather.

He despised gambling, but in this case he liked being wrong.

She spared him one cool look and a half smile. “What did you do? Plant a GPS under my skin?”

He laughed. “I could accuse you of the same thing. Billy Byrd and company brought me here.”

“I thought you went to Down Under.”

So she
was
keeping tabs on him. “I heard you turned down the invitation.”

“I was busy. Hi, Tamara,” she said, stepping past him and taking the seat he’d refused. “I hope you haven’t been waiting long.”

“Not at all. I’m just getting to know Mick.” Tamara reached over and air kissed Shelby, a move that wasn’t returned. Then she flicked a finger at the bartender, who appeared in seconds. “What are you drinking, Shel?”

“Just…” She glanced at Mick, then back to the bartender. “Whatever’s on tap.”

“On a school night?” he asked.

She laughed lightly. “We’re ready for tomorrow. At least I assume we are since half the crew is barhopping instead of adjusting the ride height and tuning the RPMs.”

“If it’s any consolation, I dropped the crew chiefs off at their hotel. And—” he tilted his head in the general direction of Ryan Magee “—the engineer seems to be involved in shoptalk.”

“Not Big Byrd,” she said, looking the other way. “He seems to be involved in getting someone’s phone number.”

Robbie Parsons approached the group, his surprise evident. “Whoa. Didn’t expect to see you here, boss.”

Shelby merely smiled and made a round of introductions, then Ryan left his group and joined their circle. Fortunately Tamara was wildly adept at small talk and seemed just as interested in chatting up the other two men as she had been in Mick. Leaving him to concentrate on the lady in leather.

He slipped behind Shelby’s chair and leaned close enough to get a whiff of lemony shampoo and a fragrance that, for once, didn’t belong in an auto repair shop.

“Vanilla?” he whispered. “Or cinnamon?”

She turned the stool away from the others, giving him her profile. “I have no idea. As you can tell, I don’t get the opportunity to wear perfume that often.”

“Or shameless pants and an abbreviated sweater,” he added.

She smiled. “My daddy taught me contingency planning when traveling to the track.”

He dipped low and close so that no one else could hear. “You’re killing me.”

She sipped the beer. “Not my intention.” She gave him a teasing look. “Unless Ernie was watching.”

“His spies are everywhere.”

“Then you better be careful.”

“I am still amazed that you’re such close friends with—” He tipped his head a millimeter to the right to indicate Tamara.

“I’m not close friends with her,” she said softly. “This is business.”

He purposely sized her up, taking a good long time on the way her sweater fit. “The business of what? Breaking men’s hearts?”

“I’m dressed to go to a club. And it was her idea to meet here.”

He took advantage of a burst of laughter from Tamara and the boys to move even closer to Shelby, draping his arm over the bar stool.

“I think you should wear this outfit tomorrow.”

She gave him an incredulous look. “For practice?”

“For the
Sportsworld
photo shoot. You didn’t forget that, did you?”

“It’s second on my agenda tomorrow,” she assured him. “First up is seeing how those two cars handle the track.”

“And what was your agenda tonight?” Her hair brushed his wrist, and he felt the tickle right down to his bones. “With Tamara?”

“Shoptalk.” She inched away.

Shoptalk? “Why don’t I believe that?”

“Believe what you want.”

“We’re dancing,” Ryan announced from behind him, taking Tamara off her throne with one hand. Still relieved that she seemed more interested in the Thunder crew than in him, Mick stepped aside to give them room.

Shelby eyed him over the rim of her glass. “I love to dance.” She narrowed her gaze. “I bet you won’t dance with me.”

He took the drink from her hand and placed it on the bar. “Here’s something you need to know about me.” He got very close, face-to-face, mouth to mouth, noticing that she sucked in a little breath. “I don’t bet. Ever.” He took her hand. “All you have to do is ask for what you want.”

She slid off her chair. “I’ll remember that.”

He followed her to the dance floor, his gaze riveted on the way her leather pants hugged her backside and that sliver of silky, slender waistline. Good thing soccer trained him not to use his hands.

Because he literally ached to get those hands on Shelby Jackson.

D
ANCING
, S
HELBY HAD
decided years earlier, was a hereditary trait. Either you were born with the ability or not. Like racing. Like math. Like risk-taking and neatness. Some things are not learned, they are programmed into the genes.

Mick Churchill, no surprise, was a natural dancer. He moved to the beat as if the music flowed through him, inches away from her, in charge of his body. And hers. With just his gaze he touched every inch of her, winding a path from her eyes to her toes and taking lots of dangerous detours in between.

All making it much more difficult than it should have been to dance in high heels. But more fun than any dance she could remember since the time she was nineteen and she and Daddy won a rockabilly dance contest at a bar in Martinsville.

She twirled around at that thought, her back to Mick for a second. Instantly, large, warm hands landed on the bare skin of her waist, swaying her a little left and right.

“Slow dance,” he murmured in her ear.

Was it? The beat plummeted to something much more like a ballad, and Shelby closed her eyes and leaned back, completely hypnotized by the strength in his arms, the solid man’s body fitted to her back.

He turned her around and scorched her with a look that warned of a kiss. But he just pulled her against him so leather grazed denim and their chests pressed against one another. Nothing, absolutely nothing could make her break the contact. She slid her hands up his arms, slowly enough to enjoy each corded muscle along the way. She locked her hands around his neck, letting his hair flutter, silky and long, in her fingers.

“I know.” He laughed softly. “Get a trim.”

She drew back in surprise. “Are you nuts?”

His grin was so rich with satisfaction that she felt the jolt through her stomach. “You like it?”

“Right, like I’m the only woman who ever said you have nice hair, Mick.”

“I never heard you say that.”

She rolled her eyes. “You have nice hair, Mick.”

Without warning, his hands moved up her back and his fingers curled into her hair. “So do you, Shel. Nice…” He eased her even closer. “Everything.”

She looked at him for a moment, her breath trapped, her heart out of sync with the slow tune. “What are you doing?”

“In my country we call this dancing.”

In hers they called it foreplay.

“This is nice,” he said, leaning into her hair and inhaling. “Very nice, very intimate, very…” His hips rocked slightly. “Well, not exactly comfortable.”

“Careful, Mick,” she said, trying to ignore the fact that her knees had suddenly forgotten their main function was to keep her standing. “Ernie has spies.”

“And that’s the only reason you danced with me, isn’t it?”

“That and to hear you say
dahnce
.”

He laughed again. “I think you just want Ryan or Billy to see us together and pick up the phone and call your grandfather.”

“Maybe.”

“And what can they say? We’re dancing at a club. No harm there.” No harm
yet
.

She tightened her arms just enough to ease him a centimeter closer. “What if we kissed on the dance floor?”

He angled his head, lining up their mouths. “No one’s looking. Go ahead.”

Heat hummed from the center of him straight through her body. She lifted her toes and brushed his lips.

“That wasn’t a kiss,” he said. “That was a fake pass.”

She leaned her hips against his and gave him an I-told-you-so eyebrow. “Worked, though.”

“Who knew you’d be such a tease, Shelby?”

“I’m not teasing,” she said, feigning innocence. “I’m just trying to get you kicked out of my life.”

“Careful, sweetheart. I’m the kicker around here.” He wrapped her tighter and placed his mouth over her ear. “I don’t do fake passes.”

Was that a warning or a promise? She laid her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes.

He feathered her bare skin with his fingertips as the song neared the end. “I have to get your team back for an early garage call in the morning,” he whispered to her. “How long will you be here with your buddy Tamara?”

“She’s not my buddy.”

“Oh, that’s right,” he said. “This was a business meeting.”

Stepping back, she managed to level a cool gaze, regardless of how warm she felt. “It was and still is. Remember, you’re not the only game in town when it comes to rescuing my business.”

He glanced over her shoulder, then back. “She’s vying to buy the team?”

“A possible angel investor.” She gave him a tight smile. “I’m considering all my options.”

The music slammed into loud hard rock, but Mick didn’t move. “She can’t offer you what I can.”

“She probably doesn’t
dahnce
as well, but a team owned by two women could get a lot of interest from the media. From certain sponsors. She happens to have a lot of money. And I know what she wants and why she wants it.”

He frowned slightly. “You know what I want and why I want it. Don’t you?”

“I know what you say.” Someone gyrated into her and she stumbled, but Mick caught her arm.

“Come here for a minute.” He guided her away from the dancers, cocooning them in a corner of the club. “What am I saying that you aren’t believing?”

“Everything you say is suspect. I’ve heard you with the media. You spin and weave a great picture, Mick. You have reporters eating out of your hand. Why would I be any different? This is what you do. You enthrall and captivate and spellbind someone into believing what you want them to believe.”

Lines of confusion and disagreement cut into his brow. “I like that you find me enthralling, Shelby, but I’m not trying to
hypnotize
you into this deal. I’ve meant everything I’ve told you. I like the sport. I like the company. I like the opportunities. I have reasons and they are sound.”

“That’s what you did to Ernie, didn’t you? Hypnotized him.”

“You didn’t hear a word I said.”

“I heard you. You like the sport, the company, the opportunities. Whatever.”

He held up both hands in surrender. “Never mind, Shelby. You’ve made up your mind that I’m some kind of con artist and you’re wrong.”

“I made up my mind that you’re an outsider. And I just don’t know about the rest.” She had to yell over the music, straining her voice. “You might wreck my team.” And just forget her body and heart. They were headed straight for the wall. And that, she knew, was the real cause of her anxiety.

“You’re wrong,” he repeated so softly she actually read his lips more than heard him speak.

“I bet I’m not.”

His green eyes sparked. “I just told you—I’m not a gambling man.” And then anger and something she couldn’t interpret flashed on his face. Resentment? Regret?

Something she’d never seen before.

As she watched him stride toward the bar, ignoring the admiring gazes from half the females and a few of the men, she clenched her hands so tight she could feel the half-moons forming in her palms.

“Don’t let him win.” Tamara was so close Shelby jerked at the sound of her voice. She must have overheard the whole conversation.

“You’re not wrong,” Tamara insisted. “He’s everything we hate in this sport.”

Shelby blinked at her, still plummeting from dance high to argument low.
Was he? We?
Nothing made sense right now.

“You don’t need to cave in to that pressure,” Tamara insisted, handing Shelby a freshly poured beer. “Let’s go find somewhere quiet to talk. I had such a nice time with the guys from the crew and I have some ideas for how we can move this thing along briskly.”

Shelby glanced across the club just in time to see Mick shepherding three of her crew out the front door.

Taking a deep drink, she turned to Tamara and nodded. “Let’s talk.”

C
ON ARTIST
?

Shelby shot up from her pillow, eyes wide in the pitch dark.

Why would he say that? She’d never thought of him as a con man—just an outsider who didn’t know, love or understand her sport and a player who wanted to take Thunder Racing far from its roots.

But con artist? Was he hiding something, some deeper, insidious motivation? Pushing hair off her face, she peered at the travel alarm clock. Three-eighteen. In four hours she needed to be in the garage, ready for the final checks and setups of two cars for practice at ten thirty.

She fell back onto the bed with a thump. No way she was going back to sleep. Not going to happen. Her brain was doing four thousand RPMs and her body pulsed in a gear she didn’t know she had.

In five minutes she was dressed in jeans and an ancient Gil Brady T-shirt with a faded autograph across the back. Given, she thought wistfully, before Sharpies were invented and wouldn’t fade if they were washed a thousand times.

She stuffed her bare feet into sneakers, slipped out the door. In the distance she heard a few late-night revelers on the infield, the occasional shout or strain of Lynyrd Skynyrd, but mostly it was quiet.

Wishing she’d grabbed a sweatshirt, Shelby rubbed her bare arms against the evening chill. Security lights flickered around the track, but the real light came from a wide white moon hung midsky and surrounded by a smattering of stars. She slipped through the narrow passageways between motor homes and stopped at the navy-blue one, giving it a hard knock on the metal door.

“Mick,” she called in a loud whisper. “I want to talk to you.”

Nothing. Maybe he was still clubbing. The trailer was darkened, and, like the others belonging to owners and drivers, very quiet.

“Mick!” She stood on her toes to see into a window, but the blinds were drawn.

Either he slept like the dead or he was in no mood for company at three-thirty in the morning.

Or he wasn’t alone.

She held her fist over the door again, then dropped it. Maybe he had gone somewhere else after he’d left DayGlo. Maybe he had a blond or a brunette or a whatever in there.

Had she driven him to that? Teased him with slow dancing, then started an argument? Had she?

She backed down the two steps, kicking a piece of gravel under her toe and peering through the steel monsters at the infield. If one of the Thunder golf carts was available, she could zip over to the turn two corner of Lake Lloyd and sit on that little square of grass where she and Daddy had celebrated her sixth birthday alone on a picnic for two one July. He’d gone all over Daytona to find Ho Hos because she liked them better than Twinkies. And he’d taught her how to whistle through grass.

Or she could sneak into the grandstands, sit in turn two and really wallow in some blues.

Aw, Daddy. Where are you when I need some help?

Ernie had long ago given up the infield for the comforts of a hotel, and her drivers’motor coaches were dark, too, as she’d expect them to be in the middle of the night before practice. There was no one to talk to.

She jogged to the area where the carts were parked but didn’t see theirs. Someone might have left it on the far end of the garage, near one of their stalls. She said hello to the night guard at the opening to the chain-link fence that surrounded the D and O lot and headed toward the garage area. Stuffing her hands in her pockets, she inhaled the night air, hoping for a little engine fuel, some lingering rubber. The smell of home and peace and…the past.

But her hair drifted into her face and all she could smell was the remnants of a man she’d danced with. A man who didn’t bet.

All you have to do is ask.

Where was he at this hour anyway?

The con artist.

She rounded the garage area and FanZone, lit only by security lights. The wide patio was empty, of course, the food stands and gift shops closed for business. None of this was here the last time Thunder Jackson raced at Daytona. This was all new, spiffy, catering to the millions who’d discovered that there was no better day than a day at the track.

Why did that irritate her so much?

Why couldn’t she see the growth and change as good—the way everyone else did. The way Mick did. Why wasn’t it a cool thing that the new garages had windows for fans to look in?

She wandered to one of those windows, trying to imagine a housewife from Atlanta, an executive from Boston, a painter from Denver seeing her sport the way she did. Revering its history, praising its past.

She peered into the blackness of the garage, then stepped down a few bays to get closer to her own cars. What could they see, these outsiders trying to get inside her secret, private world?

They couldn’t see the engineering. The gut-level decisions. The camaraderie. The ghosts of Gil Brady and Thunder Jackson and so many others.

Something wet her face and she blinked. Holy hell, she was crying. What was wrong with her? She’d die if one of the crew saw her out here in the middle of the night all maudlin and weepy over nothing.

Wiping her cheek with way more force than it took to remove an unwanted tear, she cupped her hands around her eyes and flattened her face to the window, looking into the shadows of the garage, scanning the row of cars.

And then she froze.

The hood of the number eighty-two car was wide-open. No one on either of her teams would leave it like that. And…was the monitor of the computer on? She couldn’t tell. She wiped the window and pressed her face harder against the glass.

Where was security? She jogged around the other side of the building, to the front. There were no guards posted, but the garages were locked tight. They would all open at precisely the same moment the next morning.

Across the patio she saw something move in the shadows. Then the hum of a golf cart motor. Tiny hairs prickled up her neck. Instinct told her to stay still and wait until the cart hummed away.

When it did, she made her way back to the D and O lot. As she rounded the area where the carts were parked, her gaze drifted to the spot that coincided with the number of her trailer spot.

The Thunder golf cart was back in place.