Racer

I love Belgium. The track here—the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps—is the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. Amidst rolling hills and a world of green trees, it’s also the most challenging track because of its twisted curves and up/down inclines.

“You’re in love,” he says. He looks childlike. Laughing.

“Dad,” I say, frowning as I open my yogurt. But my cheeks feel hot.

“You’re in love, Lainie.” He reaches out and pats my cheek. “Real love.”

“Why do you say that?” I ask.

“I have a pair of eyes. And … a father’s intuition.”

I flush, scooping yogurt and eating granola as I scan the people around the hotel coffee shop to distract myself. My dad is looking at me all this time.

“See, from the moment that boy walked into my hotel room in Australia, I could feel the charge between you two.”

“Dad!” I say, laughing and frowning as I open his yogurt. “Come on, eat.”

“He feels the same,” he says, as if he’s assuring me as he takes a spoonful.

“Is that your dad intuition? Are you his father too?”

He chuckles and licks yogurt off his spoon, pointing at me with that boyish look on his face. “Male intuition. Quite powerful. Plus that boy doesn’t even try to be subtle about it. Hell, he’ll stare even when your brothers throw him a thousand dragons’ fires with their eyes.”

I laugh, then I just stare at my dad, craving for him to tell me more.

“He’s a good kid. A bit of a handful, but you survived your dad and three brothers, so I think you can handle yourself,” he says.

“I’m afraid,” I whisper.

“Why?”

Silence. I just can’t put into words the way it hurts to even be apart from him. The way I crave everything about him, adore everything about him.

“Of getting hurt?” he asks me, peering into my face.

I nod.

“Don’t think that way. If I’d been afraid to open our team because we’d lose, I’d be on a couch somewhere, slowly dying.”

“Daddy, don’t talk like that.”

“It’s true. These past months, I’ve lived more than I had in years with your mom.”

“But see, Daddy … You got hurt. You two thought you’d be together forever.”

“We all get hurt. The question is: Who do you love enough, trust enough, and want enough to give the power to hurt you?”

He looks out at the streets and aims his gaze in the direction of the track.

“You race a car, you can die in an instant. And yet there they are. When you love it enough, it’s worth it.”

“We really had to talk about it in car terms, didn’t we.” I sigh.

He laughs, and I take his hand. “You look well.”

“I’m doing okay.” His eyes shutter as if he doesn’t want to tell me something, and my stomach tightens a little. But he smiles next and starts eating his yogurt, and I relax and eat mine, marveling how well my father knows me …

Also marveling that I can feel this light, this happy, this blissful in my life. I cannot get enough of Racer, of being near him, talking to him, teasing him, looking at him, touching him, kissing him.

Racer appears, and the sight of him in a grey hoodie and comfortable track pants as he walks the line for coffee makes me drool. His hair looks a little spiky today, damp from a recent bath and black as midnight. My knees feel mushy as I hop to my feet and approach him, aware of a pair of girls seated at the far end ogling him from afar and frantically snapping pictures of him.

“Hey,” I greet, a familiar warmth sweeping over me as his eyes flick down to me. “I’ll get your coffee, you go sit with my dad.”

He glances at my dad, then at me, and it feels as if there’s something so hot inside of him that his eyes look like pools of tender heat. “Lana. I want to talk to your dad, formally date you.”

My eyes go wide.

His eyes sparkle with devilish playfulness as I open my mouth, but I can’t say a thing.

A wave of giddiness washes over me, but I wave it off as I wave off his comment.

“He’ll likely say no anyway, so don’t make any dinner reservations.”

I say this mostly teasingly but Racer teases me right back, leaning forward enough that I quickly sense the girls in the restaurant shooting jealous glances my way.

“Get a sexy outfit ready, I mean to take you out—repeatedly.” He allows me a glimpse of his dimple before he heads off to order his coffee, and I head back to my dad, feeling frustrated that he won’t let me take care of him like all the men in my life do.

“G’morning, Mr. Heyworth,” Racer greets minutes later in his low, deep voice as he joins us at the table. I shove a spoonful of yogurt into my mouth to try to hide the way I’m blushing.

“Well, no rain in the forecast …” my dad begins, because the weather is always such a huge part of a racing weekend. “You glad for that?”

“Wet or dry, I can handle my ride,” Racer answers.

Gosh, I must have sex on the brain because I choke a little and both men glance at me in concern—but then Racer’s gaze seems to shift as he realizes what I must be thinking. And that damn dimpled smile appears as, beneath the table, he reaches out and gives my thigh one tight little squeeze.

I can barely keep my heart from stumbling on every damn beat as they keep talking race cars, and I keep waiting for that look, that stolen touch, that dimple, those eyes, this man.

Racer

“So you, Racer Tate, my number one, want to date my daughter?”