Right Before His Eyes

by Wendy Etherington

  Before he could decide if flowers or a dinner gift card would be more appropriate, Rafael appeared in the doorway.

  “It’s like the frontstretch at Daytona around here,” Gil muttered.

  “You’ve got to do something about Sheila,” his driver said, his expression fairly close to the fierce one he adopted while driving.

  “No kidding. Any ideas?”

  SHEILA LEANED INTO RUE’S tight hug.

  So maybe accepting help and understanding wasn’t the worst thing in the world. Maybe there were people whose trust was returned tenfold. Maybe she could find the strength to fight for something besides independence.

  “You just need to go to him and explain,” Patsy said, rubbing Sheila’s knee.

  “Can I give him a good jab before that explanation?” Rue wanted to know.

  “No,” Shelia said. “I lied to him.”

  Everybody ignored her.

  “Really.” Emma-Lee looked disgusted. “How could Gil possibly believe Sheila was a real criminal?”

  “I was a real criminal,” Sheila felt bound to point out.

  “But there were extenuating circumstances,” Patsy said. “Your ex was a user and complete jerk.” The comforting strokes against her knee increased. “He abused you.”

  “Okay, sure.” Sheila straightened. “But Pity Fest is over.” She let her gaze sweep the women around her, so loyal and true. A lump of a different kind formed in her throat. “Getting arrested saved me in a way. Who knows how long I would have stayed with him if we hadn’t been parted by force? As weird as it sounds, prison gave me discipline and structure.”

  “And we’re here to give you love and affection,” Rue said.

  Sheila clutched her hand. “You guys are the best. I’m going to be fine.”

  “But you’re going to talk to Gil,” Emma-Lee prodded.

  “I’ll try,” Sheila promised, though she wasn’t sure anything she said would make a difference. Still, the Tarts were right. She owed it to herself to fight for happiness. Whatever she’d done in the past, she’d paid for, and she deserved a future free from judgment and betrayal.

  Rue nudged Emma-Lee. “This is about Sheila, not peace and quiet at Double S.”

  “Peace and quiet? What’s that?” Exhaustion was evident in Emma-Lee’s eyes. “We’re in the racing business. I don’t see how—”

  “Mind if I interrupt?”

  At the familiar deep voice, everything inside Sheila froze. Then her heart lurched, crashing against her ribs, as if it recognized its mate and wanted nothing more than to bond with its other half.

  Swallowing hard, she managed to shift her gaze toward the man in the doorway.

  Oh, wow.

  Was he always that beautiful? Had his eyes always shined with that glorious light?

  She didn’t want to hurt anymore. She didn’t want him to walk away from her again. He was everything, and surrender to him wasn’t a sacrifice, it was the path to happiness.

  But before she could move, Rue leaped to her feet. “You can just back up, Gil Sizemore. Sheila’s been abused long enough.”

  “Abused? What are you—” He stopped, his eyes going blank briefly before he fisted his hands at his sides. “Something happened to her, something bad,” he whispered.

  “You bet it did,” Rue said, advancing on him. “And unless you’re here with flowers, apologies and serious declarations, you can just turn right back around.”

  Gil held up a single red rose. “I’ve got all that.”

  Tears burst behind Sheila’s eyes. Her friends had defended her, the love of her life was standing mere feet away. How odd was it that life could turn around in a moment? How miraculous that a woman of her humble beginnings should be so blessed?

  Patsy kissed her cheek, then urged everyone out the door—even Rue, who seemed determined to find a protest, though it was obvious Gil hadn’t come to argue.

  Sheila found herself facing him, and everything inside her calmed. There was so much to talk about, so much to figure out, but she knew they’d find a way. The trust and hope that had been broken in her life over and over was healed.

  Gil was all she wanted and needed.

  Without a word, she ran toward him, hooking her arms around his neck and holding him tight. “I love you.”

  “I loved you first.” Laughing, he kissed her cheeks, her forehead and chin, then her lips, each caress more tender than the last. “And always.”

  She let his warmth overtake her. Nothing could have prepared her for a bond like theirs, but she knew she’d always treasure him.

  Leaning back, he kissed the tip of her nose. “I had a lot of advice and plans that involved huge bouquets, chocolate, banners hooked to airplanes and even exotic trips to the beach, but in the end, I only have me.”

  “You’ll do.” As her heart rejuvenated, pumping full of new life, she glided her fingers across his cheek. “I should explain—about the conviction, what I’ve done in my past.”

  “I don’t care. I love you.”

  “But it matters, and I trust you. You need to hear it all—from me, not court records.”

  “Is there an abridged version?”

  “Why?”

  “I want to kiss you again. And soon.”

  Of course she gave him the quick version. They had all the time in the world for details.

  Her ex-boyfriend had come up with a scheme to con seniors in Florida out of their savings with promises of a posh retirement community that didn’t exist. He’d been a controlling and abusive man, and Sheila was so afraid of him, she went along with the swindle—at least until the seniors her ex was so sure were clueless figured out what was going on and went to the police.

  “I’m sorry he hurt you,” Gil said, holding her face gently in his hands.

  “I’d go through it all over again if that path led me here to you.”

  “But I hurt you, too—by not trusting you.”

  She grinned. “You can make it up to me with an exotic trip to the beach.”

  “Anytime.” He paused, wincing. “Well, after the championship’s decided this weekend.”

  She angled her head, her lips a breath away from his. “Isn’t there a beach near that track?”

  End of the Line

  Jean Brashear

  To all the members of the NASCAR Nation—what a great group you are, and what fun I’ve had becoming a fan!

  To the ever-wonderful Marsha Zinberg, for giving me a chance to come play; Stacy Boyd, who’s a force of nature and such fun to work with; and Karen Reid, who’s a marvel of efficiency (and always cheerful, to boot.)

  And for my beloved Ercel, who’s never once complained about race day!

  CHAPTER ONE

  Late August

  “COME ON, BRO, I’M buying dinner to celebrate,” said Will Branch. “At least one of the Branches is still in contention.”

  Bart knew he should be on top of the world because he’d already qualified for the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup with two races left, but he couldn’t celebrate, not when his twin had wrecked at Bristol and was now too far back to make the cut.

  Yes, they were competitive with each other and always had been—they’d battled over everything from toys to grades to girls all their lives—but Will was also his best friend. This achievement was sweet, but his joy was tempered by knowing his twin’s extreme disappointment. Didn’t matter that last season Will had made the cut and he’d missed it.

  “Maudie’s, huh?” he quipped because it was their way to tease, not be sentimental. “Couldn’t spring for a steak house, you cheapskate?”

  Will grinned. “Mellie doesn’t work at a steak house.” His eyebrows rose suggestively as he spoke of the waitress Bart found more intriguing by the day. She wasn’t his usual type, too serious, too skittish—not that she didn’t have plenty of reason to be serious. She was a mother, a very young one, and that was no easy job.

  “You wouldn’t be matchmaking, right? Doesn’t Mom do enough of that?”
Bart complained. “Ever since you discovered Sam was your child and you and Zoe got married, Mom’s developed way too much interest in my love life. And when the twins were born—”

  “Zoe and I make cute babies, so sue me.” Will’s eyes sparkled with a joy that had been missing for a long time before he and Zoe reconnected and he learned he had a ten-year-old son. After their father, Hilton Branch, had embezzled millions and left his family in tatters, there had been little to smile about.

  But Bart was not going to think about his no-good father. Hilton was in prison now, and Bart wanted nothing to do with him.

  As they approached the door of Maudie’s Down Home Diner, Bart hesitated. “Listen, Will, I’m—”

  Will clapped him on the back and practically shoved him through. “Don’t say it, man. Look, it sucks not to be in the final field, but I’ll live.” His expression turned fierce. “Next year, my man. Count on it. But for now, it’s all about you. Just the way you like it, showboat.”

  Bart had to laugh. Will was the attention hound, not him. “Yeah, well, your ugly mug would stink up the newspaper pages. Better me than you.”

  They exchanged grins, back on the safe ground of giving each other grief. Then Will’s face lit. “Well, if it isn’t Miss Lily.” He pushed past Bart to take Mellie’s little curly haired daughter from her and toss her in the air.

  Lily squealed and giggled, but the instant she was safely back in Will’s clasp, she turned toward Bart and stretched out her arms. “Bart!” The demand was clear.

  Bart plucked her from his twin’s hold. “Hey, pretty girl. How are you today?”

  She began to babble about what the bear he’d given her had done today and what she’d had for dinner. Bart answered her seriously, but he couldn’t help glancing past her where Mellie stood a few feet away. Slender and delicate, a pixie with short, spiky black hair and too-old brown eyes, she bore only a faint resemblance to her round-cheeked cherub of a daughter.

  For once, Mellie was smiling, all the way smiling, at Bart. “Congratulations,” she said quietly, then cast her eyes down as she so often did. She glanced up again. “I’m very happy for you.”

  Bart kept his voice low, too. “Thank you.” His gaze locked on hers. “Want to go out and celebrate?” he found himself asking.

  Mellie looked as shocked as he felt. In the months since she’d arrived in Mooresville, they’d done an awkward dance. Bart would tease her, Mellie would blush and shy away. He sensed she was interested, just as he was, yet her innate caution never allowed him to close the gap.

  “I’m serious, Mellie.” To his surprise, he realized he was. “Go out with me.”

  “I can’t. We can’t, you know that.”

  “I don’t know that—and I don’t understand why.” An unaccustomed anger rose within him, born of frustration. She’d had shadows in her eyes from the first day, and she was maddeningly unwilling to trust anyone. Her boss, Sheila, maybe, and he thought she and Daisy Brookshire were becoming friends. Recently he’d seen her relax around some members of a group of local women who met at Maudie’s once a week, but mostly she kept to herself.

  “I—I have to get back to work. Come on, Lily. Louise will be here any second to babysit you.” She took Lily from his arms, and Lily protested.

  “I want Bart,” she whined.

  Bart nearly argued, but Mellie’s beleaguered expression kept him quiet. “It’s okay, Lily. I’ll see you next time, okay?”

  Lily frowned but quieted. The older woman who kept her arrived just then, and Bart heard his brother hailing him from a booth.

  Bart shook his head at Mellie’s retreating back and wondered yet again why he bothered. A more skittish woman he’d never met.

  If only he could dismiss her so easily himself. Or figure out the attraction. He wasn’t one for troubled souls. He liked his women cheerful and easygoing, not prickly and reclusive.

  “C’mon, hotshot. Your adoring public awaits,” called out Will.

  Bart snorted. Then he threaded through the crowded dining room and focused on the handshakes and backslaps of congratulations coming his way.

  SEVERAL DAYS LATER, ON the way to see Daisy Brookshire and her new baby, Lily was pouting in her car seat. “I wanna go see Bart.”

  Amelia Parsons, known by everyone in Mooresville as Mellie Donovan, sighed. Why her baby sister—half sister, actually—had formed such an intense bond to Bart Branch was a mystery. He was wonderful to Lily, of course—a surprise in itself for a hot bachelor—but he was way out of their league, to say nothing of the fact that she wasn’t in North Carolina to have a fling with a gorgeous man.

  She was only twenty years old and on the run. She desperately needed to find Hal Walker, her mother’s second husband who’d abandoned them all months before her mother had been diagnosed with an aggressive cancer. Her mother had died, leaving Mellie with no money and a baby half-sister to raise—along with eerie anonymous phone calls and their house turned upside down as though being searched for something…and only her mother’s deathbed mumblings about Hal and North Carolina to go on.

  Amelia hadn’t known what to do or where to turn, but after the day that a dark van tried to drive her off the road, the stakes had risen. She’d reported the incident but with no witnesses and no evidence, the sheriff hadn’t been able to help her. It was then that she’d been certain of only one thing: she had to find Hal Walker, whatever it took. At a minimum, he would have to take care of his child. Amelia was terrified that she wasn’t up to the job, though she loved her baby sister with everything in her.

  So long raven hair was chopped off.

  Amelia Parsons became Mellie Donovan.

  And a young, terrified girl headed for North Carolina with only her last paycheck to support herself and the little girl she let every assume was her child, for fear Lily would be taken from her. She’d wished to be able to change Lily’s first name, too, but at two—just recently turned three—Lily was too young to play along or understand. Thank goodness Lily already called her Mellie, their mother’s pet name for Amelia, and not her real name. Everyone who knew Lily understood that Lily had a mind of her own, and that made for an easy explanation of why Lily called her “mother” Mellie instead of Mommy. Mellie did everything she could to moderate her little sister’s temperamental nature, but Lily had been through a lot in the past year, losing her mother and her home.

  Mellie couldn’t let herself think about all she, too, had lost.

  She was, however, more than grateful for the day she’d stopped at Maudie’s Down Home Diner to get food for herself and Lily. Meeting Sheila Trueblood, the owner, being offered a job, a place to stay and a loving grandmotherly woman, Louise, to watch over Lily had been the beginning of a new life Mellie wished she could keep.

  But every day of lying was getting harder, she thought as she pulled up in front of the cabin where her friend Daisy Brookshire was staying.

  She’d found no trace of Hal Walker. She couldn’t wait forever to resume her search. Lily had a father out there somewhere, and Hal should take care of his responsibilities to her.

  “I want Bart!” Lily shrieked.

  “Me, too, Lily,” she murmured, gathering the child to her and rocking her. “But it’s been a long time since I got anything I wanted.” She pressed Lily’s cheek to hers.

  “We’ll be okay, sweetie. I promise we’ll be okay.”

  A tear rolled down her cheek as she reassured her little sister and wished there was someone to make her believe the same.

  Then Sheila walked out the front door.

  Lily’s eyes went as wide as her grin, and Bart Branch receded in importance. “Sheila!” She adored Sheila and had from the first day.

  Sheila came to Mellie’s rescue, swinging Lily to the ground and dancing her around as Lily giggled.

  Thank you, Mellie mouthed to her friend and employer who’d become much like a big sister. She and Lily had no family, no one but each other, and unless she found Hal Walker, that wouldn’t
change.

  If only she could figure out exactly where to look.

  “BE CAREFUL, LILY,” MELLIE said as the toddler squatted in front of baby Brianna’s carrier a while later, as they sat on the cabin’s front porch. She wasn’t positive Lily understood that Brianna wasn’t a doll to play with, so she couldn’t let herself settle back into the hickory rocker.

  “She’ll be all right,” Daisy assured her.

  “I don’t know why you’re so calm about this.”

  “Were you a nervous new mother?” Daisy asked.

  Lordy, she was tired of lying to good people. “I don’t know, maybe.” She glanced up. “But I do know Lily. She wouldn’t mean to do anything wrong, but she’s never been around a baby before.” Mellie chewed at her lower lip.

  “Come inside, everything’s ready,” Sheila called from the screen door.

  “Okay!” Lily leaped up, baby forgotten.

  Mellie picked up the baby carrier and took Brianna inside. Daisy was still recovering.

  “Looks yummy. Thank you, Sheila.”

  It did indeed—salads and fresh bread and fluffy key lime tartlets, perfect for a hot, humid late-summer afternoon.

  Once they were settled, Sheila turned to Daisy. “There’s a NASCAR retrospective on TV that I’d like to see. Do you suppose Quinn will mind if I turn on that gigantic flat screen?”

  Daisy shook her head, though Mellie would have preferred to sit and visit. Sheila turned on the TV, but Mellie focused on fixing Lily a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. None of them watched very closely, as Mellie teased Sheila about doing her homework on NASCAR for the benefit of one Gil Sizemore, the owner of Double S Racing, who spent a whole lot of time at Maudie’s—and not for the meat-loaf sandwiches he claimed to crave.

  It was fun watching Sheila get all flustered. Her boss was just about to zing Mellie back when she glanced up. “Hey, look at the TV. There’s Bart and his brother, Will, back when they were both driving in the Camping World Truck Series. Get a look at those haircuts. I swear Will’s sporting a mullet!”