Full Throttle(20)
“Still have no idea.”
Kane was optimistic and skeptical. Was that even possible? He needed some sleep. Maybe he was getting punchy from the pressure.
“Fans loved him at the autograph session,” James commented.
“Don’t they always?”
Kane flipped channels. The baseball playoffs were boring, so he focused on the college football polls. Florida was doing well, so James would be happy. Maybe they could invite a few of the alumni players up for a race if they made the top ten. Well, definitely they could if they didn’t make it, since life as they all knew it would come to a sudden, grinding halt. Given this week’s warning by Bob Hollister, some of them—especially Kane—might be out of a job.
“I think he’s up to something,” James said, though he was slumped in the recliner and didn’t look like he was planning to pursue the topic too strongly.
“Maybe, but what?”
“Publicity for him when you make the top ten?”
“What does he need my publicity for? Half the people he knows don’t even consider what I do a sport.”
“True.”
He wanted to find something to be aggravated about with his dad’s visit, but either nothing was there or he was too tired and too full to care. “The hell with it.”
“You always have me,” James said.
Kane glanced over at him. With both his professional and personal lives converging and chaotic, friends like James were so important. “Thanks, buddy.”
“At least until a really big-busted blonde comes along.”
THE NEXT MORNING Lexie paused before she knocked on the door of Kane’s motor coach. The newspaper she clutched in her hands was damp with sweat. The knot in the pit of her stomach tightened. Happy Hour practice was still a couple of hours away, and Kane wasn’t his best in the morning, but she knew he’d want to see the article.
Well, he wouldn’t want to see it, but he had to. And it was up to her to be the bearer of lousy news.
She had diagnostics to run, parts to go over, operations to review, a team to lead and last-minute orders from her father to follow. But this morning she was Messenger Girl.
Ah, the luxurious life of a NASCAR car chief.
She opened the paper and glanced down at the front page of the sports section of the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
While other NFL greats are starting their own team, Anton Jackson probably doesn’t even know his way to the garage.
The Hall of Fame quarterback and broadcaster has never been a vocal supporter of his son’s NASCAR dreams—a fact made all too evident by his continued absence at racing events. A source close to the team admits their driver doesn’t have a close relationship with his father.
“We never see him,” the source says. “It’s an embarrassment.”
Lexie cringed again. She’d never been much of an Anton Jackson fan, but the article was just plain mean. She had no idea who the “source close to the team” was, but from long experience she recognized it could be anybody from a member of another team who happened to walk by their garage to Bob Hollister himself.
Bottom line?
They didn’t need this. Not now.
But they would have to deal with it. Now.
The media—both print and visual—was just yards away. There was no way the journalists could pass up the chance to question Kane about the hot-button father issue. Their distance had been a whispered thing in the garage for years, and most people had dismissed it as gossip, but now it was out there. Part truth, part sensationalism.
And out there.
Before she could knock, the door cracked, and James’s head appeared around the corner. “Did you want to come in, or just hang out there?”
She was so glad to see James, she nearly cried. Though he stayed in a hotel on race weekends, he sometimes crashed on Kane’s sofa if they had stayed up late the night before playing video games.
“Is Kane up?”
“That’s rhetorical, right?”
That meant no. Just as well. She could use a cup of coffee to fortify her. And maybe a shot of whiskey. And maybe some cucumbers over her eyes and soft music playing in the background—hey, she’d learned a lot during that makeover Cheryl had forced her into.
Once she’d settled at the bar with a mug of James’s famous French-roast coffee, he nodded at the white elephant in the room—the newspaper she’d laid beside her. “Anything interesting this morning?”
“Yep.”
“Good?”
“Nope.”
“Bad?”
“Yep.”
“Gee golly, Betty-Sue, did the Russians drop the bomb?”
“Somebody did.”
“You know you’re making me crazy.”
Lexie blew on the surface of her coffee, then sipped. “Yep.”
“Give me the damn thing.”
She handed it over without comment and continued to sip as he read. The warmth that spread through her body wasn’t just because of the coffee. She now had an ally for facing Kane. It would still be bad, but she wouldn’t be alone, and with James’s help, maybe they could come up with a response before the rest of the NASCAR world even rolled out of bed.
“Hell,” James said, setting down his mug.
“Yep.”
“Who’s the ‘source close to the team’?”
“Got me. Have you given any quotes to Terry A. Lufton lately?”
“Humor? You think you’re funny this early in the morning?”
“It’s gotta be better than crying or screaming.”
James dropped the newspaper on the bar. “This isn’t good.”
“Nope.”
“He was here.”
She looked over at him. “I hope he’s still here. We have practice.”
“Not Kane. I meant Mr. Football. He was here last night.”
“Kane’s father was here?”
James took a deep gulp of coffee. “He showed up at the hospitality tent last night. He and Kane signed autographs for a while, then he came back here with us and had dinner. We wondered what was up.” He paused and met her gaze. His eyes were no longer bright and teasing. “I guess we know what it was about now.”
“I guess so.”
Lexie hadn’t come close to anticipating this turn of events. The article was accurate in saying that Kane’s father probably couldn’t find his way to the garage. He hardly ever came to races. But she considered the details of their relationship private. Plus, Kane had enough to worry about without adding family drama.
Still, she wondered about Kane’s dad. Had he been tipped off to the release of the article? And, if so, was he that concerned about PR? Did it really take negative publicity to bring him to his son’s side when he needed him?
She didn’t want to answer any of the questions zooming around her head. Neither, she assumed, did James. “Is there any liquor in this joint?”
“It’s seven-thirty in the morning.”
“You got a better idea?”
“No.”
Still, they didn’t go on a search for booze. They groused into their coffee and played poker to determine who had to break the news. By the time Kane shuffled into the room, their tension had reached ridiculous proportions.
Kane walked by them, poured himself a cup of coffee, then watched them over the rim of the mug. “What’s up?”
Rendered embarrassingly speechless by the sight of Kane strolling by, exposing his abs and shoulders by wearing nothing but a pair of sweatpants barely hanging on to his hips, Lexie simply stared at him.
With a long-suffering sigh, James laid the newspaper on the bar. “Something you need to read, buddy.”
Men! He couldn’t just spring it on him like that. She reached for the paper, but Kane had gotten there first. Her hand wound up covering his. He stilled and glanced at her.
“Problem?” he asked, his blue eyes sharp and focused despite the early hour.
Heat radiated up her arm. In fact, she wouldn’t have been surprised to see smoke emanate from her fingertips. Why did he always manage to affect her this way?
Just like the other night at the club, when she’d been so determined to cast him as the fun-spoiler bad guy, he’d bowed like freakin’ Rhett Butler and left the party he’d been so determined to disrupt. His passion and focus on the track at Bristol had been amazing, exactly what she’d been pushing for all season. His passion and focus with her had her thoughts scattering and her practical side desperately searching for a reason to find fault with him, so she could protect her heart.
If only his body wasn’t such a distraction…
She jerked her attention back to her poker hand. “I, uh, does a flush beat a straight or the other way around?”
James tossed his cards on the bar. “Oh, please, woman.”
She glared at him. “Woman?”
Fueling her anger and frustration was the sudden recollection that James had been the one who’d invited the curvy blonde to lunch. Hoping to distract his buddy from her, no doubt. The traitor. “Listen, PR Boy, I’ve had about enough of you and your—”
“Time out, guys,” Kane said, grasping the newspaper from beneath Lexie’s hand at the same time. “How bad can it be?”
“It’s—”
James kicked her lightly and shook his head. “Just read it,” he said to Kane.
While Kane read silently, Lexie glanced at James’s cards, which lay faceup on the bar. “I had a straight, by the way,” she whispered, laying her cards out in a fan. “That beats your two pair without even breathing hard.”