Full Throttle(33)

“Kane!”

“In the kitchen, Dad! It’s fine,” he added to her in a quiet voice. “We’re adults, remember?”

Funny, but she didn’t feel like an adult. She felt like a teenager caught necking the backseat of her dad’s car.

“I smell breakfast,” Anton said, then ground to a halt when he reached the kitchen and caught sight of her. “Lexie?”

She smiled weakly. “Want an omelet?” There’d be plenty, since she felt nauseous all of a sudden.

“I—” Anton shook his head. His gaze darted to his son. “How long has this been going on?”

None of your business was the answer that came to Lexie’s mind, but she said nothing.

“A couple of weeks,” Kane said.

Anton’s expression turned from shocked to thoughtful, bordering on calculating. “Who else knows?”

Kane shrugged.

“Who else?”

Lexie’s embarrassment was fast giving way to anger. Anton had no right to barge into Kane’s house and demand answers about his personal life. But then it wasn’t her house or her father. She’d backed down and burst into tears when her own dad had questioned the wisdom of her dating Kane. Maybe they could switch parents. Kane could take her dad, and she could take Anton.

In fact, she’d like that immensely. She’d take great pleasure in taking Mr. Hall of Fame down a notch or two.

“A few close friends,” Kane said. “But I’m sure it’ll be common knowledge soon. We’re not hiding.”

Anton dropped his head and sighed. “You can’t go out with a member of your crew,” he said, as if this was obvious.

Which it was, as Lexie had often pointed out. Though neither she nor Kane had listened.

Kane crossed his arms over his chest. “I can. I am.”

“The marketing people at Sonomic won’t stand for it, and what do you think Bob Hollister is going to say?”

“They can’t tell me how to live my personal life.”

“Sure they can. They pay the bills.”

Lexie knew Kane was on the edge of losing it, and she could hardly blame him. Being confronted with the truth was hard, and she was getting a strange sense of déjà vu.

“They don’t run my life,” Kane said, his tone growing harder, the muscles in his jaw jumping.

“It’s bad for PR.”

“I don’t care. I’m not you.”

“I don’t expect you to be me,” Anton said, his eyes growing frosty. It was clear he didn’t appreciate his son’s belligerent attitude.

Many times Lexie had wished Kane would tell his father off, or at least to mind his own business, but now that the confrontation was happening—and she was the cause—she felt lousy and selfish.

“I expect you to have respect for your career and for your team,” Anton continued. “You don’t need this distraction now.”

The smoke alarm shrieked through the room, and Lexie rushed to the stove to deal with the now-crispy omelet. Her heart pounded as Kane and his father continued to argue behind her.

She’d been so busy worrying about the team, she hadn’t even considered Bob Hollister discussing her love life with his staff, other executives, sponsors and heaven only knew who else.

Her cheeks burned with humiliation. She’d worked so hard to be taken seriously, to always be professional, to excel in a male-dominated world. Was she risking all of that? Had she really expected this much drama over her and Kane?

“Come on, Kane,” Anton said, breaking into her thoughts. “You know how racing works. Your reputation is everything. You’re the center of a multimillion-dollar ad campaign. Everything you do affects that—what you say and how you say it, your personality, your lifestyle.”

“Who I date shouldn’t matter.”

“It does.” Anton cast her a look she might think was actual regret from anybody else. “I’m sorry, but it does.”

The déjà vu grew stronger. She recalled the party in the suite during the NASCAR Busch race, when she’d realized that though she was angry at her father, he was right.

Anton was right. Both of them were right.

And Lexie was light-headed.

“I don’t appreciate your interference,” Kane said.

“You’ve always welcomed my advice before.”

“You always give it. You don’t ask if I want it.”

“I’m your father. It’s my job to guide you.”

By now the two men were just inches apart. Dark and light. Older and younger. Scruffy and polished. Their expressions of rage were the only things that matched.

“I’m not you! I’m never going to be you.”

“I’ve never asked you to be.”

“You expect me to do what you’d do. You always have. You’ve never supported my racing.”

Anton took a startled step backward. “That’s not true. I never stood in your way—even though you only started racing to defy me, so you wouldn’t have to play football.”

“I was terrible at football.”

“You could have been great! If you’d given it a chance, if you’d tried harder.”

“I tried! But I hated it, I hated every single minute of being compared to you, knowing I’d never, ever measure up.”

“I can’t control what other people said,” he whispered. “I always encouraged you to do the best you could do.”

“My best wasn’t good enough. You know it wasn’t.”

Anton cupped the back of his neck, as if trying to rub away the tension of the increasingly confrontational discussion. “Is that what dating a teammate is all about—defying me? Doing something I would never consider?”

Lexie felt the blood drain from her face.

Kane paused in answering just long enough that the idea grew in Lexie’s mind, spreading like poison. Was Kane using her to get back at his father? Did he really want her at all?

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Kane said.

Maybe he wasn’t doing it consciously. But on some level Lexie knew it was true.

She’d never believed she and Kane would last, so why was she surprised? Why was her heart pounding and her stomach hollow?

“Lexie?”

She blinked and focused on Anton, who had seated himself at the bar running the width of the kitchen.

“You haven’t said anything,” he said to her. “Aren’t you concerned how you and Kane will affect the team?”

Kane watched her but said nothing. He already knew she was worried. But while she agreed with Anton, there was no way she was siding with him in front of Kane and humiliating the man she loved.

“We’ve done pretty well the last two weeks,” she said.

“Will it last?”

Considering they had already cost the team the best crew chief in NASCAR, she didn’t see how. And she decided she liked Anton Jackson even less when he was right, instead of just always acting like he was right. “This isn’t a conversation I want to have wearing only a T-shirt. I’m going to change.”

Kane grabbed her arm as she strode from the room. “I’ve never seen you run from a fight,” he said quietly.

She couldn’t look him in the eye when she said, “Then this is a first, isn’t it?”

In Kane’s bedroom, she stripped off her T-shirt and rushed toward the bathroom, bypassing the rumpled bed and fighting not to think about the intimacy and affection between her and Kane that she’d become used to so quickly.

She snagged her clothes from the bathroom floor, put them on, then stuffed everything else in her overnight bag. Her throat was tight, but she refused to give in to the threatening tears. She was a professional, and it was high time she started acting like one.

Taking a deep breath, she headed toward the stairs. At the top, she paused, noticing Kane standing at the bottom. She continued more slowly, her pulse pounding, her mind racing.

Kane was still pissed, and now she’d certainly been added to the list.

“Where’s your dad?”

“Gone.”

“I’m leaving, too.” She paused and drew a bracing breath. “I’m not coming back.”

“You agree with my father.”

“Yes.” And she was checking the weather report as soon as she got home, just to make sure hell hadn’t frozen over. She was aligning herself with, if not the enemy, then certainly one of the few people she’d never understood.

“You’re serious.”

“We’ve worked too hard and too long for this championship to let it slip away now. If I leave, my dad will come back to the team, and you and your dad won’t have anything to argue about.”

He laughed, but he wasn’t happy by any means. “My father and I have plenty to argue about.”

“Maybe so, but I won’t stand in the middle.”

“You’re really going to let them manipulate us like this?”

“I’m not being manipulated. I’m doing what’s right.”

“For the team.”

“And for us.” Standing one step above him, she prayed her hand would be steady as she laid it on the side of his face. “If we lost, we’d never forgive ourselves, or each other.”

He stepped back, his rejection of her touch unmistakable. “So we’re just going to break up every time we face a problem?”