One in a Million (10 page)

J
EN CLIMBED INTO THE
taxi feeling as bereft as Cinderella must have leaving the ball. She would see Eli again if she took the job Gil had offered her, but tonight felt like the severing of their personal ties. He'd made the Chase, and now he would go on without her.

When she'd kissed him before the race she'd seen in his eyes that he cared about her. But she no longer believed he had it in him to get over the hurts of his past. Out on the race track, he was fearless, but in his heart…

As she reached for her seat belt she saw Eli crossing the pavement, looking right at her. Her heart leaped. Then a woman, a gorgeous blonde, stepped in front of him. She appeared to be gushing about his race. Two other women waited their turn behind the blonde.

It was like a replay of that first time they met, in the garage at Bristol. This was the way it would always be for him.

She clicked her seat belt. “The airport,” she told the driver.

As the cab pulled out, she didn't look back.

Which was why the sudden wrenching open of the door startled her so badly. She shrieked as Eli threw himself into the car.

“You idiot. You could have been killed,” she yelled.

“Not me, chickadee.” He had the nerve to wink at her.
“Stop the car,” he told the driver. He grabbed Jen's hand. “We have some celebrating to do.”

“There are a thousand other women out there who'd love to celebrate your result.” She freed her hand from his. “Drive on,” she ordered.

“It's not my race I want to celebrate,” he said cryptically. “But you're right, we need somewhere special. Take us to the fanciest restaurant in town,” he instructed the driver.

The guy flipped his turn signal from left to right.

“The airport,” Jen told him firmly. “That's where I'm going.”

With a sigh, the driver turned left onto the expressway.

“There's a NASCAR museum around here somewhere,” Eli said. “Maybe I can convince them to open specially for us.”

Jen would bet he could. He radiated excitement, and it made him even more compelling than usual. She realized with a pang of regret that he must have accepted the ride with Fulcrum Racing. He was moving on from Double S, just like he was moving on from her.

The driver slowed, clearly expecting another redirection.

“I'm going to the airport,” Jen snapped. “If you want to celebrate, go back to those women you were flirting with back there.”

Eli started to laugh. “Dammit, Jen, I'm trying to find somewhere special so I can tell you I love you!”

The world spun around her. The taxi swerved in sympathy, the driver obviously equally shocked.

“What did you say?” she whispered.

“I love you, Jen.” He brought her hand to his lips, kissed her knuckles with a tenderness that melted her heart. “I know you might take some convincing after the jerk I've
been, but in my defense, I'm only just figuring what it's all about.”

“What
what's
all about?” she asked, unable to believe he could love her the same way she loved him. Did he mean he wanted a fling with her?

“Commitment,” he said. “I've made a start, but I've got a long way to go.” Then he told her Fulcrum Racing had made him an incredible offer, but he'd turned it down to stay with Gil.

“I realized some things are meant to last,” Eli said. “Like you and me. You're so deep inside me, like nothing else has ever has been, this is forever.”

A glorious hope suffused her, left her speechless.

He froze. “That is, if you still love me. If I haven't screwed this up completely. Have I?” he asked, the words an agonized groan.

Jen couldn't stand to see him lonely or vulnerable for another moment…but she checked her impulse to throw her arms around him and declare her love. Because Eli might think he loved her now and for always. But what if he changed his mind?

Terror engulfed her…a flood of fear. Suddenly she knew exactly how he'd been feeling.

“Jen?” Eli shook her hands. “Sweetheart, please, talk to me.”

“I love you, Eli—” he reached for her, but she put up a warning hand “—but we have a lot of things to work out.”

“What things?” he demanded.

She didn't want to tell him she was worried he'd change his mind. “My grandfather, for one. He won't be happy about me rushing into this. Maybe we should take it slowly.”

 

E
LI HADN'T COME SO FAR
, so fast to put the brakes on now.

“Chickadee, no way am I giving you time to figure out you could do much better than a guy like me.” He pulled his cell phone from his pocket. “Watch this.” A moment later he was talking to her grandfather. “Mr. Ashby, this is Eli Ward.”

“What time do you call this?” the old man barked.

Damn. “Uh, yes, it is late, sir, and I'm sorry about that, but this can't wait. I'm in love with Jen and I want to marry her.”

Jen gaped—had he forgotten to mention the part about marrying her? He flashed her a cocky grin.

“We'd like your blessing,” he said to her grandfather.

There was a pause.

“I didn't raise my granddaughter to have her head turned by some hotshot NASCAR driver who'll break her heart,” Carlton snapped.

“Mr. Ashby, I won't—”

“So you can damn well keep your hands off her!”

No fair. Eli hadn't even had his hands on her yet!

“Sir, I promise I'll do everything I can to make her happy.”

It was no use. Carlton had worked up a head of steam and he ranted down the phone without pause, making it clear that if he had his way, Eli would never, ever marry Jen.

Then Jen took the phone from him. “Granddad? I love Eli, and I always will,” she said, soft enough that her grandfather would have to stop blustering so he could hear. “He's a good man, a forever kind of man.”

Words that should have made Eli want to run. Instead he was proud, prouder than he'd ever been at the end of a race. Jen saw him as a forever kind of guy!

“Yes, I know it's a risk,” she told Carlton. “But it's a tiny one, and the reward is so much greater. I plan to marry Eli.”

Eli's heart started thumping.

“I plan to have children with him eventually.” She shot Eli a querying look and he gave her a thumbs-up. He'd never thought about kids, but now he wanted them with Jen—not right away, but one day. Right now, he'd settle for getting his hands on her and making slow, passionate love to her. “So I'd very much like the blessing of those children's great-grandfather,” she told Carlton.

He could still hear her grandfather sputtering, though less aggressively, when she ended the call. She collapsed into laughter.

“I just about had a heart attack!” Eli complained. “What's so funny?”

She wiped her eyes. “You, so convinced that your incredible charm could sway my grandfather.”

“It swayed you,” he pointed out, then started laughing, too. He loved laughing with her. He swept her into his arms and vowed to himself they would always laugh. Then he kissed her.

When he lifted his head, the taxi was pulling up outside the airport terminal, seething with departing NASCAR fans and media. They got out, and Eli paid the driver.

“Where shall we go?” he asked Jen. “I want to propose to you properly.”

“The best place for me is wherever you are.”

His heart swelled. “You're right, as always.” He dropped to one knee, right there in front of the crowd.

“Eli!” she squawked.

He took her hands in his, looked up at the sweet, beautiful face he would never tire of. “Jennifer Ashby, you're
a woman in a million. The only woman for me. Will you marry me?”

“Yes,” she said, and drew him to his feet for what just became the best kiss of his life.

Marisa Carroll

To Marsha Zinberg, Tina Colombo and Stacy Boyd—thanks for inviting us along for a great ride!

I managed to get word to my children, but they refuse to see me. I shouldn't be surprised, I know. They've made their contempt clear.

Damn it, they hurt me. I know, I know—I hurt them first.

But they don't understand. This isn't about my pride or asking them to love me again. I don't want to dig up the past, and I've already asked for the forgiveness they refuse to grant me. This is about survival. About family they don't know they have.

Lily, sweet, angelic Lily with that rosebud mouth always ready to grin at me, her chubby little arms reaching for me, closing around my neck and laying her head on my shoulders.

She makes me feel ten feet tall. How delighted she is to see me, how she cuddles into me, listens raptly to my silliest story as though I were spouting pearls of wisdom.

Why did I never have time for my first four when they were small?

I was making a living for them, I told myself. Meeting the standards Maeve's family expected for her, Texas royalty that she is. Her father made it clear to me that the price of gaining access to their privileged world was that Maeve should never be disappointed, never have to emerge from that ivory tower in which he'd placed his little girl.

I took that bank of his, and I made it more than he ever dreamed it could be. I created an empire, and I had the respect and admiration of high rollers all over this country.

But there was a price, and I never knew it. Not until Rose.

They'll take the news hard, my first family, and it's not fair. She's the innocent—they can't hate her, though they will want to. Even if they do, they have to help me save her. Amelia, too, even though she isn't mine. Doesn't matter—she belongs to Rose, and Rose is special. And Lily, little Lily…

I want to rage, to howl. Hit something. I can't stand sitting here, rotting here with no money, no power, no way to fight back while those thugs at Biscayne Bay threaten everything I love.

Maeve. She's the answer. She forgave me already—said she was done with me, but she'll fight like a tiger for her children. She always did. Penny and Will have children of their own now—surely they'll understand that nothing else matters.

Begging sticks in my throat, but pride is not the issue anymore. My pride has cost all of us too much already.

I can bear my children's contempt—I've earned it.

What I can't bear is to lose a single one of them.

I have to make them listen.

D
AISY
B
ROOKSHIRE HELD
the faded, rainbow-striped umbrella above her head and walked slowly uphill toward the line of granite markers at the top of the gentle slope. Her grandmother, a stickler for etiquette, would have frowned on the frivolous choice of rainbow stripes to visit a gravesite, but it was the only umbrella Daisy owned and she wasn't about to spend any of her small savings on a black one.

Her baby's father lay beneath the largest of those monuments. Her heart thudded heavily in her chest as she drew close enough to read the name and dates chiseled into the ebony stone. She hadn't gone to Brendan Carlyle's funeral, or even his wake. She wouldn't have been welcomed there. She probably shouldn't even have come here today. What if she ran into Brendan's father or stepmother? She had successfully avoided the wealthy couple for the past few months but she didn't delude herself that they had given up trying to coerce her into giving up her child—Brendan's baby. But she couldn't stay away. She had to risk this one short visit, some small, still-grieving part of her needed to see his tombstone, needed to face the awful finality of his death.

Oakhill Cemetery was a beautiful place to spend eternity, she supposed, but not when you came to your small portion of it six months shy of your twenty-fifth birthday.

Daisy halted, taking a moment to catch her breath. It was an unusually cool August afternoon in Concord, North Carolina, still and quiet all around her, the sound of raindrops
hitting the leaves of the live oaks that gave the cemetery its name, muting the rumble of distant traffic on the busy highway beyond the stone and wrought-iron fence. The hillside wasn't particularly steep, but when you were eight and a half months pregnant even getting out of bed in the morning could cause you to lose your breath. She stared down at the wet ground beyond her swollen belly—her feet had disappeared from view weeks ago—and contemplated turning around and going back to Cut 'N' Chat, the Mooresville, North Carolina, beauty salon where she felt most at home.

Instead she began climbing again, still looking at the ground. Turning tail and running back to the familiarity of Rue Larrabee's salon was out of the question. She needed to say her goodbyes to the handsome, high-spirited, selfish young man she had thought was the love of her life—until he told her, while he cared for her, he wasn't about to marry her and more than likely be disinherited by his wealthy father—even if she was carrying his child. He'd support their baby financially, but he wasn't ready to settle down. They would work something out later, after he'd broken the news to his parents. Then he'd jetted off to Bermuda with his father and stepmother, leaving Daisy brokenhearted and three months pregnant. Six days later he was dead, the victim of a freak paragliding accident.

She had gone to ground since Brendan's death, working quietly at the salon that catered to a number of NASCAR drivers' and team members' wives and sisters and daughters, but her conscience—and her heart—insisted she seek out his resting place and say her last goodbye. He had betrayed her trust and broken her heart but he was still her baby's father. She squared her shoulders and lifted her eyes to the granite marker the lady at the old-fashioned gatehouse office had given her directions to and found she was not the only mourner at Brendan Carlyle's grave. A tall, dark-haired man in a gray suit, head bowed, blocked her path.

Expensive suit. Italian shoes. Money. One of August Carlyle's minions? A lawyer, possibly. One of the high-priced, high-powered attorneys that kept sending her letters demanding she give Brendan's father access to her child or suffer the consequences—consequences never spelled out and all the more terrifying for their vagueness. She wondered if she could somehow turn and hurry back down the hill without being seen, but she knew that wasn't possible. The moment he looked up he would see her standing there staring at him, look at her pregnant belly and know who she was. And of course that was exactly what happened. He raised his head. His hair was the color of midnight, his skin bronzed by the sun, but his eyes when they met hers were a clear and startling blue. There was a bump on his nose from a long-ago injury and a scar at the corner of his left eye.

She knew, suddenly, how he'd come by those injuries—and a broken collarbone, as well—falling out of a tree trying to rescue his little brother, Brendan, who had climbed high into the branches to try to touch a cloud.

“Daisy?” he asked, a frown pulling his dark eyebrows together over those startling blue eyes.

She responded with a question of her own. “Are you Brendan's brother?” She was shaking so hard she had to clutch the umbrella handle with both hands to keep it from shaking, too. Brendan had idolized Quinn Parrish. He had talked about him constantly during the time they were together, even though Quinn had had little or nothing to do with the Carlyle family since he'd left home when Brendan was thirteen.

“Stepbrother,” he clarified and his voice was hard when he spoke the word. Quinn, who was in his early thirties, was the owner and CEO of Parrish Commodities, the makers of Rev Energy Drinks and sponsor of Double S Racing's No. 502 car in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. “You're
Daisy Brookshire, aren't you?” It wasn't really a question, more like a command to respond.

“I'm Daisy.” Daisy was her nickname. Her father had given it to her when she was small. Her real name was Deidre. She never used it. No one did—except August Carlyle's lawyers.

“You weren't at the funeral,” he said straightforwardly. “I would have remembered you.” He wasn't wearing a hat. Raindrops beaded in his dark hair like diamonds but he seemed oblivious to the weather.

“I didn't think I would be welcome.” Her voice broke despite her best efforts to keep it even and steady. The baby moved restlessly inside her and it took all her willpower not to cup her hand protectively over her swollen stomach.

“I know the feeling.” He turned his head and looked at the monument again. His stance was easy, relaxed, but Daisy saw him swallow hard and knew he was far more moved than he appeared to be. “He was a good kid.”

She nodded. It was all she could manage. Brendan hadn't been good to her, not at the end. Quinn continued to stare down at his brother's grave and she continued to watch him, her wariness of the living much stronger than her grief for the dead and gone. But she had to be careful what more she said. Just because Quinn Parrish was estranged from the older Carlyle didn't mean he still didn't pose a threat to her and her baby.

Any man who could take a small, barely-breaking-even regional soft-drink bottler and in five years parlay it into a brand of energy drinks known round the world was a force to be reckoned with. For a fleeting moment she wished that some of this man's drive and ambition had transferred itself onto her baby's father. Maybe then everything would be different. Brendan wouldn't be dead and she wouldn't be afraid for herself—and her baby's future.

“Was my brother going to do the right thing and marry you?” he asked.

The unexpectedness of the question surprised her into answering just as bluntly as he had spoken. “No.”

“Damned fool,” he said, but his voice was gruff with suppressed emotion. “Did he make any financial provisions for you and the baby?”

“No.”

“What about my stepfather and my mother? Are they helping you?”

“No.” He might not know about the Carlyles wanting custody of her baby. He had been out of the country for over a year. The age-old fight or flight instinct urged her to flee for her baby's sake. “I don't want anything from Brendan's family. Nothing. I'll do fine on my own. Look…I have to go. I have to get back to work.” Foolish. She had let herself be lulled by this man's sorrow for his lost brother. He was still a Carlyle, if not by blood then by marriage. He was as big a threat to her as August Carlyle himself.

The baby moved again, increasing her anxiety. The rain had begun to come down in earnest now. She started backing away. “My condolences on your loss.”

 

“W
AIT
.” Quinn held out his hand. He had to know more about her. Daisy Brookshire had been nothing more than a name attached to a photograph his brother had e-mailed him. He had recognized her honey-blond hair, her heart-shaped face and stubborn chin the moment he spotted her, but he hadn't realized how small she was in real life, how fragile-looking. She was young, too, about Brendan's age, seven or eight years his junior.

Brendan hadn't told him she was pregnant. Maybe he hadn't known himself when he sent the picture, Quinn thought, casting back through his memories to pinpoint the date the photo had shown up in his e-mail. He hadn't learned
she was carrying his dead stepbrother's child until a week ago when his mother had told him. In the days since then he'd been debating whether to try to contact her or not. Now the decision had been made for him when fate had chosen to bring them both together over Brendan's grave.

She was a stranger but she was carrying Brendan's child and that made her important to him. He hadn't been able to save his little stepbrother when he fell out of the sky a second time but he wasn't about to let the mother of his child disappear out of his life as suddenly as she had appeared. “Daisy, wait. We need to talk.”

She stopped backing away and stood stiff and still. “I have to get back to work,” she said.

“Did you love my brother?”

She turned pale beneath the soft golden tan of her skin, but looked him straight in the eye when she replied. “I thought I did.” He admired her honesty.

“He would have come around, Daisy. He was a good kid. He was just spoiled and immature.” He spoke the truth as well, but he wondered how long it would have taken for Brendan to become his own man. Far longer than this young but determined woman would have waited, he suspected.

“I'd like to think you're right for his daughter's sake, but we'll never know, will we?”

“The baby's a girl?”

“Yes.”

“Brendan would have been happy about that. I have a picture of the two of you—” His voice faltered for a moment. “My brother e-mailed it to me a couple of weeks before his death. You were sitting in front of a fireplace. His arms were around you. You looked happy.”

“We were happy,” she said. “We went skiing in Colorado. I had never been out west, never seen the mountains. I told him about the baby just after that picture was taken.” Her
lips tightened and a flicker of anger and hurt flashed behind her eyes. “We…we were never that happy together again.”

And six weeks later his brother had died, leaving Daisy and their unborn child to fend for themselves.

“Daisy, we can't keep standing here in the rain. Let me take you somewhere we can—”

She shook her head. “No. I already told you I don't want anything to do with Brendan's family.” She tipped her head back, lifted her chin, her voice was steady, her tone implacable. “That includes you.” She turned on her heel and started down the gentle incline toward the graveled lane that wound among the older headstones.

“Wait.” He started after her. He had no idea where she lived or how to contact her. He couldn't just let her walk away. His mother had told him she would have nothing to do with her or her husband. He didn't blame Daisy for that: August was a hard, old bastard, but she was carrying his brother's child and she wasn't going to be rid of him so easily. “Daisy, wait,” he called again.

She flung up her free hand, shook her head and began to run, an awkward little jog. He sucked in his breath. Should she be doing that when she was so far along? What if she tripped and fell? He wanted to holler at her to slow down, to stop and wait for him to give her a hand where the roots of the old oaks had heaved up through the ground, but she just kept going, fighting to close the incongruous rainbow-striped umbrella as she ran. He followed her down the hill, staying far enough back so that she didn't catch sight of him out of the corner of her eye.

She headed for a beat-up sedan parked at the base of the slope. He'd left his SUV another hundred yards closer to the entrance; she'd have to pass him to get out of the gate. He slowed his pace, knowing that by the time she followed the narrow, winding driveway to the nearest cul-de-sac so that she could turn her car around, he would be able to intercept
her, and hopefully get her to agree to talk with him about the baby's future, and her own, somewhere warm and dry. But he miscalculated her determination, and her driving ability.

While Quinn watched in consternation she got into the ancient car and began backing toward the entrance gate. He hadn't expected her to do something like that. He broke into a trot keeping one eye on the treacherous footing and one eye on Daisy. “I'll be damned,” he said under his breath as she maneuvered expertly along the narrow driveway. “Where'd she learn to drive like that?” Then again this was the heart of NASCAR country and home base for a lot of NASCAR Sprint Cup teams. Why wouldn't she know how to drive better than most?

He didn't have any more time for speculation. She arrowed past his big black SUV and wheeled the sedan onto the concrete apron that paralleled the stone wall inside the main gate. Quinn sprinted for his car. He pushed the button on his key ring and the SUV's engine roared to life. He was close enough now to see Daisy's face through the windshield. Her eyes met his for a second and panic flared in their golden-brown depths.

“Damn.” This time the curse was for himself. He'd scared her and that was the last thing he'd wanted to do. Old August and his lawyerly threats must have really done a number on the kid. He slowed his pace. He was going to have to let her go for the time being. He glanced at the rear bumper of her rusty car and committed the license number to memory. He'd track down her address through the car registration and talk to her later when she'd had time to calm down.