Stick Shift (15 page)

“Lily?”

“Hmmm?” She didn't want to lift her head. Candi had such a huge crush on Cam and was likely more his type. He just hadn't had the chance to meet her. She was petite and cute with wavy brown hair and bright blue eyes. She was always dressed in the latest fashions but wasn't pretentious at all. Men loved her. Men's parents loved her.

Lily finally lifted her head and grinned. Though she loved her lifelong friend dearly, she was thrilled to death Cam hadn't met her. “Yes, it's true. I've been dating Cam for the last couple of weeks.”

Alli scoffed. “Dating? Is that what you call it? You two spend as much time fu—”

110

“Oh, like you and Grant haven't been doing the same thing, except you do it in public every chance you get.”

Lily heard Candi's gasp on the other end of the phone.

“What? Wait. Alli, you're dating someone too? Who?”

“Cam's jack man, Grant. I met him at the race last weekend.”

“Damn. I go away for a month, and you guys end up with these new men.”

Lily laughed. “Didn't you say there was a Greek man over there?”

“You did, Candi,” Alli agreed. “A gorgeous Greek man, I believe, is how you described him.”

“I also said he wouldn't look at me twice. But you two are having hot sex with a driver and a member of his crew. Maybe I need to come home now.”

“How much should we bet her, Lily, that the Greek god will have her in bed before they leave Rome?”

“At least a hundred.” What the hell was she saying? She didn't have a hundred dollars to be betting off the cuff like that.

“Are you nuts? A hundred? Dollars?” Candi gasped.

“What? The Greek isn't worth it?”

“Oh yeah, he's worth a hundred and then some. But if I win, and he doesn't have me in bed before we leave Rome, you each owe me a hundred.”

Lily laughed and readily agreed to the terms. Candi would lose. No man had ever resisted her or turned her down. She just had the kind of personality that pulled men in.

Alli agreed as well.

“My flight comes in next Wednesday. Who's picking me up?”

“I am.”

“Lily, what about you? Are you going to be there too?”

111

“I don't know. We'll have to wait and see.” She and Cam hadn't spoken of the trip to California again since he'd brought it up the morning after the wreck last week. It wasn't just about her being unsure she'd be going out there with him. It was that she wasn't sure she'd be seeing him anymore at all after the upcoming race weekend. Every word Ronnie had said stuck with her. She kept replaying the conversation over and over in her head.

Was she the distraction he believed her to be?

Was Cam focusing more on her than on his job?

She hadn't thought so before Ronnie had brought it up, but now she couldn't stop wondering and questioning the amount of time they spent together and whether it was having a negative impact on his racing.

“Uh-huh. If I had more time, you'd be explaining the uncertainty of picking me up at the airport, but I have to go. We're getting a tour of a vineyard outside the city.”

“Don't forget to let us know how the Greek is in bed, Candi.”

A very unladylike sound came through the phone line, along with some very unladylike language at Alli's request, and then Candi hung up. “So are you going to go with him to California?” Alli asked quietly.

“I don't know.” The more she thought about it though, Lily did know the answer, and it wasn't one he was going to like.

“Oh please, Lily. That's not likely, and you know it.”

“What about you? Are you going with Grant?”

“No. I can't get the time off work right now.”

“Understood. Want to get dinner later?”

Alli giggled. “I am dinner tonight.”

“Oh God. I don't want to know.”

“You aren't seeing Cam?”

112

“He said he had a meeting to attend and a dinner with the owners. We're having breakfast in the morning.”

“Oh. Are you breakfast?”

“I don't believe so. I think he will be.”

Lily said good-bye, then hung up. She looked around Candi's living room and wondered what she was going to do with the rest of her night. Alone.

113

“What's been going on with you this week? One day you're happy, the next day you're on the verge of tears. And I've hardly heard from you since the race last weekend. Have you even seen Cam in the last few days? Grant said Cam's been a pain this week at the garage, all moody and snapping at people.”

Lily sat back and tried to get as comfortable on the hard plastic seat as she could. After having spent one race sitting in the pits, returning to the stands among the regular race fans was interesting. She'd seen the race from both sides now, and she really couldn't say which experience she liked better.

The pits were all business and strategy; the stands were all about good fun and camaraderie and where, for the most part, everyone got along. There were some fans, however, who didn't like the fans of certain drivers. Cam was at the top of the shit list. Fans didn't like his no-holds-barred approach to racing. What she'd come to understand about him in the last couple of weeks was that he approached all of life that way. He didn't take a backseat, he didn't sit there and let life happen, and he wasn't about to go down without a fight and let anyone else win if his car was the better one.

As to Alli's questions, Lily didn't want to answer them. She was afraid she'd start crying if she did. She was in such turmoil as to what to do, and it wasn't herself she was thinking of, not really. It was Cam and what was best for him. She knew what she wanted to do, but she didn't know if it was the best thing for everyone involved. Actually, she was afraid she knew what she had to do, and it just plain sucked.

“Lily? Did something happen between you and Cam?”

114

Lily sighed. “No, nothing. Things have been great.” And they had been. They'd fucked, watched movies, laughed, cooked together nearly every night, even though she tried hard to distance herself from him. Every time she did, though, offering excuses left and right for them to spend their nights apart, he'd disregard her words and show up at Candi's door. He knew she wouldn't be able to say no, that she didn't want to say no.

“Then what? I know something is going on.”

Luckily, the “one to go” signal from the flagman saved Lily from having to answer, and the noise from the crowd drowned out anything she might have said.

Everyone stood up and waved their caps in the air. She was no different. She might have screamed too loud, however, as quite a few fans around her turned to look in her direction as she hollered when Cam drove by. He was starting on the outside in second position and he came terribly close to the wall a few times as he weaved back and forth, warming up his tires.

“You like that runt?” the beer drinker asked from in front of her.

She just grinned at him and nodded. What she really wanted was to give him a piece of her mind about the “runt,” but she didn't. She was there to enjoy the race, to cheer on her lover, not to get into verbal spats.

When the green flag dropped, she screamed even louder. Cam took the lead as soon as they crossed the start/finish line. For the first time since entering the gates at the track, she regretted not being in the pits. She wanted to be on the radio listening to him; she wanted to look over Ronnie's shoulder at all the stats on the laptop.

Ten laps in, there was a caution flag for debris on the track, and most everyone sat down. Alli leaned over and nudged Lily's shoulder.

“What about California? Are you going?”

No, she wouldn't be going. She'd be back home by then. She shrugged. “I don't know yet.” She hated lying to her friend, but she really didn't want to have to go into everything here at the race.

115

“I still wish I could. Grant and I have been going at it like rabbits ever since last weekend, and I don't know what I'll do while he's gone.”

Lily looked over at her. Was she serious? “He'll be gone for, what, five days?”

Alli pouted. “Exactly. I'll be a horny-as-hell mess by the time he gets back.”

Lily didn't want to think about how much of a mess she was going to be once she got back home and didn't have Cam to warm her at night, to hold her, to pleasure her. The flagman held up his first finger in the “one to go” signal and saved her once more as everyone stood and started waving their caps again. Cam was still in the lead, and she couldn't have been more proud. It gave her goose bumps knowing she would see him when the race was over, that she would be going home with him, that she would spend the night in his bed with him between her legs.

Those thoughts alone made her sex clench and throb. The pulsing of her clit combined with the adrenaline flowing through her body was going to drive her nuts if she didn't change her train of thought quickly.

The green flag dropped, and the cars picked up speed over the start/finish line.

She would focus on the race. She had been in one of these cars going two hundred miles an hour, and she'd sat up on the pit box. She had such an intimate knowledge of things, more so than she'd had before, more so than a lot of people would ever know. The word “intimate” ran in circles inside her mind. Just the word and she felt her hunger for Cam pulse.

Shaking her head to try to clear it some, she sought out his car and grinned wide, yelled loudly as he flew by. More people turned to her as she cheered him on.

Some had astonished faces, some just laughed at her, and some glared. She truly loved it, all of it. Cam was still in the lead at lap thirty and was coming up on lapped traffic. Things could get dicey. The flagman waved the blue flag with the diagonal orange stripe as a signal that the faster, lead lap cars were coming, but it didn't seem to be working. No one was moving out of the way; no one was giving up the tenuous hold they had on their position.

116

Cam drifted down to the inside groove, trying to pass the same car that had wrecked him the week before. Lily tensed as they came around turn four, headed for the front stretch and turn one. Jake Curtis bumped the rear quarter panel of Cam's car, causing him to swerve down onto the apron in order to not wreck other cars.

Son of a bitch. Jake was trying to screw Cam again.

“I wish we had the headsets like we did down in the pits,” Alli yelled.

Lily nodded her agreement. She'd love to hear what Cam was saying, what was going on. Not for the first time, she was regretting the decision to sit in the stands.

Cam pulled back in behind Jake, and each time he tried to pass, Jake blocked.

She wanted to believe Jake was just trying to keep from going another lap down, but at the same time, she couldn't. It was no secret in the racing community that there was animosity between the two drivers, but it seemed lately that Jake was blatantly out to get Cam rather than to simply race him hard.

She didn't understand it, why it appeared Jake hated Cam. Sure, Cam had a few racing moves that mimicked some of Jake's from earlier in his career and Cam drove the wheels off his car every race. No one was immune to his aggressive style, but he didn't deliberately try to wreck others. He was just out there to win. The fact that he could and did more often than not…well, she figured that rubbed other drivers the wrong way. He wasn't afraid of nudging someone out of the way and he wasn't afraid of payback. He liked good hard racing, the way it used to be.

Just before Cam and Jake got to turn one, Cam tried to make one more pass.

He pulled up alongside Jake on the inside. He had the pass made cleanly, and then…

“Shit! No!” Lily screamed.

Jake spun Cam out by catching the tail end of the car. Cam slid down onto the apron, then back up the track, catching traffic on all sides. By the time he came to a stop, the front end of the race car had been sheared off, the back bumper and driver's-side quarter panel were gone, and the driver's-side door was smashed in.

117

The cheers in the crowd during the crash sickened her. She couldn't believe the happiness people showed at what might be a fatal crash.

She stood there on trembling legs, trying to keep from hitting something, someone, anything to get out some of her anger. The car was pressed right up against the wall, and she couldn't see what was going on with him other than what the JumboTron in the middle of the field showed her, which wasn't much at all.

Her heart beat wildly in her chest, and fear traveled up and down her spine.

Was he okay? Was he hurt? She couldn't think, couldn't feel anything but the knot in her gut. Her gaze was fixated on the giant screen, which was now centered on the window net of Cam's car. It was still up and that wasn't a good sign. The signal that he was okay was for the window net to be down and it wasn't. She was shaking, so scared because she didn't know what the hell was going on with him. She'd never invested in a race scanner since she didn't go to races as often as she wanted, but she wished she had one right then so she could at least hear what was being said on the radio. Damn damn damn.

“C'mon, Lil. We're going to the infield. That's where we should have been in the first place.”

Alli grabbed the small duffel bag that held their wallets, a couple of towels, drinks, and snacks. She snagged Lily's hand and gave Lily no choice but to follow her.

“Awww, you leavin' already? If you backed a real driver, yo—”