Thunderstruck (15 page)

“I think you need to go now,” Shelby said, grasping at every ounce of self-control. “I have a lot to do today.”

“Like get rid of that driver.”

That wasn’t in her plans. “I just have a lot to do.”

“Of course. And my lawyer has the paperwork ready. Should I have him send it to you? The offer’s good, Shelby.”

“Whatever.”
Go!

Tamara opened the door and gave Shelby a sympathetic look. “Ernie knows about this bet, I’m sure. They must have just been protecting you.”

She nodded. “Yes, okay. Thanks.”

Tamara cocked her head. “You really need to get out from underneath that old man’s thumb, Shelby. Time to fly on your own, don’t you think?”

“Goodbye.”

After she left, Shelby dropped onto the couch and sucked in a deep breath. But all she could smell was rain and sweat and…Mick. On her. She stripped off his jersey, rolled it into a ball and pitched it in the trash with a grunt.

Lies. Lies.
Lies.
The only thing worse than a cheater was a liar, and she’d just made love to both. With a force that rocked the motor home, she shoved the bathroom door open and ripped off the rest of her clothes.

Maybe a blistering-hot shower would wash the scent and the memory and the hurt away. Maybe.

“W
HERE
’
S
S
HELBY
?” W
HIT
asked, looking around the quasi-deserted garage area, then focusing on Mick. “I thought she’d be here the minute they unlocked the garage door.”

Mick flipped his cell phone closed when Shelby’s number jumped to voice mail. Again. “I don’t know,” he said. “She’s not answering her phone.”

Something was wrong.

He knew it the minute he’d arrived at the garage area and she wasn’t there. She’d left his motor coach a few hours earlier, with plenty of time to shower, eat, dress, do whatever she wanted to do before seeing him again. Plenty of time to do other things, too. Like wallow in regret. Or hear rumors.

Surely she wasn’t sorry about what had happened the night before? She’d left him with an air kiss and a look of pure satisfaction, and he’d put it there. Three times, he thought with a knot low in his belly. A knot that wasn’t arousal but worry.

When Ernie walked in stuffing a newspaper into a satchel and looking as worried as Mick felt, he only had to ask, “Where’s Shelby?” once.

Didn’t
anyone
know where she was?

“I’m going to find her,” Mick announced. He shouldn’t have let her go off after Tamara. He shouldn’t have let her leave without knowing the whole truth of why he was there, buying her team.

Hell, he shouldn’t have made love to her without telling her that, and now he had to undo that wrong.

“I’ll go with you,” Ernie said. “I need to talk to her.”

“No.” He’d said it too fast, he could tell by the look on Ernie’s face. “I’m going to do a couple of other things, too, and she could be anywhere. You should stay here in case she shows up. Then call me, okay?”

Ernie’s look was sharp, but he nodded in agreement. “Bring her right back here,” he said, a subtle warning in his tone. “She should be here while we work on the setup.”

“No chance you could run today, is there? If it clears?” Mick knew the answer before he asked. But surely getting that car on the track would bring her out of hiding. “I mean, with a new driver and all.”

“No, not until practice on Wednesday. And—” Ernie looked up at the soggy sky and steady drizzle “—not much is going on in this weather. We’ll be in here or in the hauler.”

Mick jogged off in the direction of the Drivers and Owners lot. In minutes, hair was plastered to his head and neck, his jersey clinging to him.

He rapped on the door of her coach, but, as he’d suspected, no one answered. Where would she go? Why wouldn’t she pick up her phone?

He tried his own motor home, grabbed a jacket while he was there and then jogged toward the infield. The locals were all inside, grills covered, blinds drawn, tucked in for a rainy day.

Exactly what he should be doing…with Shelby.

He crossed an access road and walked through the alleys between motor homes and trailers, his sneakers squishing the wet grass. He nodded to the occasional passerby and peered under the covers of golf carts that drove past, in case she was in one.

He scanned the infield, then squinted into the rain to the empty grandstands. He could only see the front stretch and boxes, the rows of white tents where party planners were no doubt scurrying about and hoping the sun would break through.

Could she have gone to an event? A meeting? Could she and Tamara have left the track? Gone to breakfast or—he looked at his watch—lunch? He picked up his pace, slipped into an overpass to get dry and tried to reconcile the thumping of his heart and the anxiety that poked at him.

Why was it so important to find her?

Because he cared. Because he’d made love to her and seen inside her tough shell—and he bloody liked what he saw. A lot. She was no flighty soccer fan, no gold-digging headline seeker, no self-indulgent model. She was…

Real.

Real smart, real pretty, real intense, real right down to her unpainted toenails hidden in work boots. As he reached the opening of the tunnel, the rain kicked up, and he pulled the hood of his jacket over his head before stepping into it.

As he did, a golf cart came around the bend, and he leaned closer to the wall so he didn’t get sprayed or hit. As it drove by, he dipped his head to check out the two passengers and froze as he saw the profile of a face he’d recently punched.

What the hell was Kenny Holt doing here?

He was deep in conversation with a heavyset blond man whose jowly cheeks and hunched shoulders looked vaguely familiar. They buzzed past him in less than two seconds, and neither one took notice.

Back in the rain, Mick tried to think of everything he knew about Shelby. Where would she go? If something was wrong or right or confusing, who would she talk to? Who was she close to if not Ernie or the crew?

And then he knew. It was only a matter of retracing the steps they’d taken on Saturday night to get to the one person he should have thought of first. Thunder Jackson.

“I
KNOW IT SHOULDN
’
T
bother me so much, but it does.”

Shelby planted her feet on the railing that lined the grandstand, the rain drenching the tan suede boots to a dark coffee color. She swiped a wet strand of hair off her face and looked at no one in the empty seat next to her.

Mick took three more steps to the front row of the section, his sneakers soundless on the aluminum stairs. Waiting for the right moment to clear his throat or say her name, he listened to her talk to the ghost of her father.

“I mean, who cares how it happened or that he lied or that we got duped? We got all sorts of benes—good press, some trackside buzz, a great sub driver.” She let out a bitter laugh. “And something else which was, like, the most amazing night of my life, but I know you don’t want the details of that, Daddy.”

Of her
life?

Yeah, he felt the same way. He took one more step and waited.

She groaned and dropped her head into her hands, evidently abandoning the conversation with her father but still working this out in her head.

“He’s a liar!” she said to no one, frustration and fury rich in her voice. “A liar, a cheater and a gambler who’s using me to win a wager so he can pound his chest and say—what?—that he can win in two sports? Who the hell cares?”

His heart rolled around and dropped down in the vicinity of his heels. She knew.

She knew.

“Evidently you care.”

“Oh!” Shelby gasped at the voice, whipping around so fast her wet hair twirled and slapped against her cheeks. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you.” He trotted down the last few steps and looked at the empty seat. “Can I join you?”

She blinked through the rain, her eyes dark and her lashes spiky wet. Tears? No. He didn’t merit those.

“What do you want?” she asked, her flat tone even more worrisome than if she’d shot him a lethal dose of venom.

“I want to do something I should have done last night. I want to talk to you.”

She turned to face the track. “Go away.”

“I tried to tell you last night.”

She winced. “I guess I didn’t want to hear it then.”

He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jacket and shook off his hood, then climbed over the bridge her legs had formed and dropped himself into the seat next to her.

The chair squeaked and she closed her eyes. “Shut up.”

“Who, me or him?”

“Both of you.” She gave him a quick sideways glance. “I don’t suppose ‘I would prefer to be alone’ means anything to you.”

He swiped the rainwater off the armrest, sending a little splash into the air. “You’re not alone. You’re sitting here having a little heart-to-heart with your dad, and I’m joining the party.”

She said nothing but pulled her legs into her chest and wrapped her arms around them. Balancing her chin on her knees, she closed her eyes. “Are you leaving?”

“Not until we talk.”

“No, I mean after you win this bet. Are you leaving? I need to know if this is temporary.”

“Would it have changed anything?”

She glared at him. “Do you mean would I have slept with you? Yes. I would have. No regrets. I liked it and so did you. But you…” She sighed, abandoning whatever train of thought she’d been on. “How long you are planning to stick around changes the nature of the business arrangement, which is all I really care about.”

Was it? Was that all she cared about?

“Are you staying or are you out of here as soon as you win a race as a NASCAR owner?” she demanded.

He didn’t answer. Instead he sucked in a deep breath and squinted at the empty, wet track. He wouldn’t let her detour this again. It was time she knew the truth.

“A few months ago my brother Kip got into some trouble. A lot of it.” How many times had he said those words in his life? Too, too many.

“What kind of trouble?”

“I’m afraid he inherited the Churchill gambling addiction. The DNA got all twisted up somehow, and regardless of the fact that we’re identical, he’s—”

“Kip is your identical twin?”

He nodded. “In looks alone, believe me.”

“What does this have to do with what Tamara told me?”

“Is that who told you?” Somehow he didn’t think that woman knew. Scott Bronson had been on the cruise where the whole thing happened, but Mick was fairly certain he’d remember the bloodhound Tamara.

“Does it matter?”

“I suppose not.” All that mattered was that she didn’t hear it from him, and she should have. “But it does matter that you hear the real story and not the one that might be out in the world for public or private consumption.”

“You can tell me any
story
you like,” she said, snagging his gaze and holding it with the same ferocity she’d used when they’d made love the night before. “But it won’t change the fact that you lied to me. I asked you why you were doing this a hundred times from Sunday, and every time, every single time, you gave me some bullshit answer about ‘winning’ and ‘the challenge of sports’ and the ‘psyche of an athlete.’” She looked to the dreary sky in disgust. “Puh-lease. I almost fell for it.” Her laugh was entirely without humor. “Almost fell for you, too,” she added quietly.

He cringed at the words and her bitter tone. “I told you the first night we went out to dinner that this had to do with family.”

“Yes, you did. But you said a lot of things that night. Had me talking tires and transmission, as I recall. You just spun your web around me and I…” She shook her head. “Got caught up so bad.”

“I told you that I wasn’t doing this for ego.”

“You might have mentioned it was a bet.” She knifed him with the last word.

“You’d have sent me packing.”

“Ya think?”

He didn’t say anything for a moment, the only sounds a few random shouts from the infield, the splat of raindrops on the aluminum steps.

“I took my brother on the sports cruise,” he began again, “trying to help him get his life back together. Which, I might add, has basically been my second career for the past thirty-some years. Saving Kip from Kip.”

“From Kip? I can’t imagine it’s easy to live in the shadow of an icon,” she said drily.

That was Kip’s excuse. “Maybe not,” he agreed. “In any case, he’s been fighting an addiction to gambling since we were lads. An addiction to gambling, an addiction to women, an addiction to booze, an addiction to cigarettes. Hell, he’s addicted to addiction. Anyway, he was on probation. I think you call it parole.”

“From jail?”

Mick nodded. “He was busted for running numbers on cricket games, and one of the people involved was murdered. Kip got probation in exchange for giving some information that got someone arrested. Anyway, I took him on the cruise with me so he’d be safe and so he’d stay out of trouble.”

“But apparently that didn’t happen.”

It sure didn’t. Kip, being Kip, found trouble. “He’s mistaken for me quite a bit. And he never corrects the mistake. He digs the attention.” He shook his head a little at the understatement. “I made the monumental error in judgment of going to bed early while Kip spent some time mouthing off in a bar, pretending to be me and making an astronomically stupid wager that I could buy a team and win a NASCAR NEXTEL Cup race as an owner. And here I am.”

She released her legs from her bear hug, let them slide to the ground with an incredulous look. “There’s got to be more to it than that. Ernie said he approached you, and Tamara said there’s a million dollars involved. And why on earth didn’t you just explain that he made the bet, not you, and be done with it?”

Mick exhaled hard. “Kip made the bet with the wrong people. People involved with illegal sports betting who have a lot of power over my reputation, over the blasted tabloids, over Kip’s probation. And he didn’t bet a million dollars, he bet something worth a million pounds.”

“What did he have to bet that’s worth a million pounds?”

“Paper.”

“What?” She choked out the word.

“Paper that is actually a piece of British history.”

He felt her draw away in surprise. “What is it, the Magna Carta?”

He smiled. “Kip’s weakness is sports betting, my father’s weakness was artifacts. Years ago, back in the seventies, my father was involved in the gray market and some pretty untoward dealings with historic treasures and the like. Anyway, he got his hands on some personal writings of our buddy Winston.”

“Churchill?”

“The very one. My dad was a huge fan, because of the name, of course. He lost everything gambling, everything but some very historic letters Winston Churchill had written and that business card I showed you. Today, they technically belong to us. To our family. I’ve been planning to formally donate them to the Churchill Society or the appropriate British museum, but my mum was holding on to them. They were…the last piece of my father.”

“So, let me get this straight. Kip bet those letters that you—that he, acting as you—could own a NASCAR team and win a race?”

“Preposterous, isn’t it?” Mick replied. “To be accurate, what he wagered, as me, was that I could win in any sport, in any country, in any field of play. Someone suggested NASCAR, and he boasted that maybe he—or I—couldn’t drive, but I could win as an owner. Things got out of hand and he used the letters as a wager. Handshakes and some subtle threats were exchanged. There were several witnesses, and many of them no doubt would love to see me fail.”

She stared at him. “What if you do?”

“Then we lose the letters. If we don’t turn them over, I imagine my reputation will be sullied. But, far worse, someone could take their anger out on my brother if they don’t get the letters. And these someones can be brutal.”

She regarded him closely for a moment, processing all of this. “But how did Ernie get involved? He said he approached you.”

“He did. He was in the bar that night and heard it happen. He pulled me aside the next day, and I immediately told him the truth about the mistake. But by then, I knew these men were serious and they wouldn’t care who made the bet. Ernie and I started talking.”

“So Ernie knows?”

“Ernie knows.”

She blew out a long, slow breath but said nothing. He looked at her profile, waiting for any indication that he could ask for forgiveness, but her expression was blank, wet and distant.

Finally she turned to him. “Back to my original question. Are you going back to England when it’s over? Back to play soccer again?”

“I don’t know.” He searched her face, trying to psyche out her mind-set, but all he could see were lips just a wee bit swollen from lots of kissing the night before, her chin slightly chafed from his beard. He put his hand on top of hers. “I certainly never expected this little sojourn across the Atlantic to include anyone like you.”

She pulled her fingers away as though he’d burned her. “Don’t change the subject.”

“No.” He shook his head. “I’m not changing the subject. I’m telling you why I don’t know what I’m doing when…if I’m done here.”

She bit down on that swollen lip, her eyes tapered and unforgiving. “I’m still hurt and I don’t care if you did it to save your reputation or protect your brother or preserve the history of England. You lied to me.” He opened his mouth to argue, but she held up a hand to stop him. “And I still don’t know what to do about my race teams.”

“And I don’t know what to do about my life.” He looked at her just as a raindrop trailed down her cheek, almost like a tear. He wiped it away with his fingertip. She didn’t flinch, didn’t even blink. “I like racing. And I like racers. And, God, I like you. Could you forgive me, Shelby?”

She just looked at him. “I don’t know.”

He leaned closer, and the seat creaked, giving him an idea. “Ask your dad.”

She blinked again. This time he could have sworn the moisture came from inside her eyes, not the sky. “You know that’s just pretend. He’s not here.’” She tapped the chair.

“But he’s here.” He touched his fingers to her heart. “Listen to him. What does he tell you?”

She half smiled. “Oh, if he were here, he’d probably say,
Shelby girl—”
she lowered her voice and added a twang
“—the metal and smoke that’s in front of you is gonna spin you out way faster than the guy on your backside.”

Mick frowned. “Translation, please?”

“He’d mean that the unknown wreck that’s ahead is more dangerous than the trouble in your rearview. Don’t look back. Look ahead and forget the past.”

“That’s actually pretty sage advice. How come you don’t listen to it?”

“I do. I’m always worried about the wreck ahead of me.”

He took her hand. “I think you’re so busy looking in your rearview mirror at what used to be that you might be missing the track magic that’s right in front of you.”

She started to smile. “I think you’ve been hanging around the races too much lately, Soccer Boy.”

“Maybe I have, but I like it.” He patted her leg and stood. “Ernie’s worried about you, Shelby. He’s in the garage. Will you come back with me now?”

She shook her head. “I’m not ready yet. I think I’ll just sit here a little bit longer and be mad at you.”

“All right.” He slowly climbed over her legs and looked down at her one more time. “I have to ask you a question.”

She looked up at him, that lower lip caught in her teeth again. “Hmm?”

“When I got here, I heard you say something about the most amazing night of your life. Did you mean last night?”

She closed her eyes for a second, then slowly opened them again. “Yeah, but it was just sex, Mick. Just real good sex. Nothing else.”

He reached out and touched her chin with his fingertips. “You’re wrong about that.”

“It wasn’t real good?”

“It wasn’t just sex. And we both know that.”

S
HELBY TOOK A SECOND
shower, dried her hair and gathered her wits about her, all the while giving herself the mother of all pep talks. It was crazy and self-indulgent to sit in the rain and moon about a guy, about a bet, about her dad, about her team, about the cards she’d been dealt.