In High Gear

by Gina Wilkins

  The moment Kent stepped off the elevator onto the second-floor office area, he could hear his crew chief, Neil Sanchez, yelling. Tobey Harris, Neil’s long-suffering assistant, leaned against the wall outside Neil’s office, a glum expression on his face. Looking younger than his twenty-eight years, Tobey had piercing blue eyes, a mop of blond-streaked, light-brown hair, and a quiet, competent manner that served him well when dealing with his temperamental and unpredictable supervisor.

  Giving the younger man a curt nod of greeting, Kent asked, “What set him off this time?”

  Tobey sighed. “Who knows? But he fired Joey. Again.”

  Kent winced. Joey was one of the best fabricators in the shop. Unfortunately, he and the crew chief had a habit of butting heads whenever the pressure mounted, as it surely had this close to the big opening race. “Joey knows he isn’t permanently fired. As soon as Neil cools off, everything will be back to normal. Why don’t you go in and talk to Neil while I find Joey?”

  “Can’t. He fired me, too.”

  “Well, hell.” Disgusted, Kent shook his head and moved toward Neil’s closed door. “Fine. You go find Joey. I’ll talk to Neil.”

  “Good luck,” Tobey muttered, pushing away from the wall and ambling toward the fab shop.

  Squaring his jaw, Kent rapped twice on the door and walked in without waiting to be invited. Neil whirled around in his desk chair, obviously prepared to do battle, but he cooled a little when he saw who had entered. Kent was one person he couldn’t fire, even temporarily.

  He slammed down the phone he’d been yelling into. “I guess you’re here to try to talk some sense into me,” he muttered.

  Kent took a moment to study his crew chief, deliberately letting the silence build. At five-eight and 165 pounds, Neil was fifteen years older, six inches shorter and thirty pounds lighter than Kent. He wore his shiny black hair slicked back from his face, and liked to wear flashy shirts that emphasized the excellent physical condition he maintained through diet and exercise. Married and divorced four times, he had fathered three daughters by three different wives, and spent a great deal of the time he wasn’t cruising for the next ex-wife moaning about his exorbitant child-support and alimony payments.

  He was a good crew chief—most of the time. He and Kent had accomplished a lot together, sharing a bond on the track that allowed them to complete each others’ sentences, often letting each know what the other wanted or needed without even being told. The problem was that as Neil’s private life became more stressful and complicated, his professional life suffered. His flash-point temper became more difficult for him to control and his concentration wavered, two very large drawbacks for a successful crew chief.

  Kent had hoped winning the championship last season would bring Neil back into focus, but the troubles seemed to have only escalated during the off-season. Privately, Kent blamed Neil’s latest girlfriend, Erica, a spoiled, demanding lingerie model with a fiery temper of her own. Neil, however, wouldn’t listen to any advice from his friends when it came to his capricious love life.

  There were some who had begun to hint that Kent and owner Dawson Ritter should be thinking about finding a replacement for Neil, someone who could bring a more calming influence to the team to keep the championship momentum going. But both Kent and Dawson loyally maintained that Neil was the right man for the position—if only he could regain the single-minded dedication he’d brought to the job in the beginning.

  “What’s going on, Neil?”

  “I’m just tired of incompetence, that’s all. The season’s starting in a matter of days and nobody’s even trying to do their jobs right.”

  “Come on. Joey and Tobey? Two of the hardest workers on the team.”

  Shifting in his chair, causing it to squeak in protest, Neil cleared his throat. “Joey can’t keep his mouth shut. He’s just got to argue with me every time I tell him to do something. And Tobey kept siding with Joey. I can’t be the boss if everyone’s going to question my decisions.”

  “Look, Neil, I’m not telling you that you have to rehire either of them. But you know Dawson’s going to be asking a lot of questions. Joey’s his nephew, man. And Dawson hired Tobey himself. Now, Dawson would be the first to tell you to get rid of either of them if they really weren’t doing their jobs, but if he thinks you’ve just had one of your temper tantrums and run off two of our best men…well, I don’t know if he’s going to back you up in that. You’d better have plenty of evidence to support your actions.”

  “I have the right to hire and fire who I want,” Neil said, bristling.

  “Absolutely. As long as you’re doing what’s best for the team.”

  Neil glowered. “You want me to hire them back, don’t you?”

  This was their routine. Neil had his tantrums and fired people, Kent came in and requested he rehire the ones who didn’t deserve to be let go, and Neil rehired them because “the diva driver insisted,” thereby saving his own tattered pride. It was a dance that was getting old, as far as Kent was concerned, but he wasn’t sure how to stop doing it. Dawson stayed out of it all, for the most part, figuring that winning the championship proved the old “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” axiom.

  “Yeah, Neil,” he said wearily. “I want you to hire them back. The team needs both Joey and Tobey. And we need you. Whatever’s going on in your personal life, you’ve got to put that on the back burner for now, okay? We’ve got to be ready for Daytona and we can’t get there if everything’s in turmoil here all the time.”

  Scrubbing his hands over his face, Neil muttered, “I know it. I’m working on it. It’s just that those guys made me so mad.”

  “I know.”

  “And Erica—well, you just don’t know what it’s like to have problems like me and Erica do. You and Tanya have the perfect relationship, you know? I keep looking for that, but I just can’t seem to find it. I thought maybe Erica…but now I don’t know.”

  The disjointed, uncharacteristically revelatory speech made Kent’s chest hurt in response to his friend’s obvious unhappiness. Not to mention his own fear that his “perfect relationship” with Tanya was falling apart. All because of a stupid teenage mistake that he’d thought long since left behind him.

  If that was really all it took to break them up, maybe their relationship wasn’t so perfect, after all.

  Taking his own advice to keep his personal life out of the workplace, he pushed his worries about Tanya to the back of his mind and concentrated on making sure his team was getting ready for the upcoming week.

  “OKAY, NOW PUT YOUR ARMS around her waist and both of you look at me and smile…and…great. That’s a lovely shot.” Tanya lowered her camera late Monday afternoon and nodded approvingly at the happy couple posed in front of a glowing fireplace. “You’re such an attractive pair, it would be hard to take a bad picture of you.”

  The bride-to-be giggled, and the shy young prospective groom blushed. They were in Tanya’s studio, taking photos for engagement announcements, and the shoot had gone quite well, since they’d been refreshingly cooperative.

  The young man, Darren, cleared his throat as he and his fiancée prepared to leave. “Um, Ms. Wells?”

  “Please, call me Tanya.” She had told him that before, but he seemed, for some reason, to be a bit intimidated by her, even though at twenty-eight she was probably only five or six years older than he. “Is there something else?”

  His already ruddy broad face went even pinker. “I was just wondering…do you really date Kent Grosso? I mean, I heard you do…”

  “Darren!” his fiancée, Michelle, protested in embarrassment. “That’s really none of our business.”

  “No, it’s okay,” Tanya assured them with a strained smile. “Yes, Kent and I have been seeing each other for a while.”

  “He’s my favorite driver ever,” Darren confessed eagerly. “I’ve been watching him race since I was just a kid.”

  Oh, Kent would just love to hear that, she thought, though all
she said was, “I’m sure he appreciates your support.”

  “Is he really as cool a guy as he sounds like on TV?”

  Her smile was starting to ache. “Yes, I suppose he is.”

  With a burst of courage, Darren asked, “Is there any way you could get me an autograph?”

  Michelle groaned in embarrassment.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Tanya promised, ushering them into the small reception area where Mandy, her part-time assistant, worked—though Mandy wasn’t working that afternoon, leaving Tanya to deal with the couple on her own. “He’s really busy right now, you know. He’s leaving for Daytona tomorrow and the next two weeks will be crazy hectic.”

  “You think he’ll win the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship this season?”

  She opened the exterior door. “I think he’s going to try his hardest. Goodbye, now. I’ll see you both soon, okay?”

  Even through the closed door, she could hear Michelle fussing at Darren as they walked away from the studio that was located at the end of a tidy strip center on the outskirts of Charlotte. Shaking her head in exasperation, she walked back into her studio—then nearly jumped out of her shoes when she saw a man standing on the other side of the large, brightly lit room.

  “Darn it, Trevor, you nearly gave me a heart attack,” she scolded, putting one hand to her chest. “When did you come in?”

  “Just now. I came in through the back while you were hustling Kent’s biggest fan out the front door.”

  She grimaced. “You heard that, huh? I’m sure he’s going to keep asking for an autograph until I finally get him one.”

  “So blow him off.”

  “Easier said than done. They’re having a huge wedding in a few months’ time with several pre-events they’ve already hired me to cover. I’ll be seeing him quite a few more times before I’m through with him.”

  Her twin brother crossed the large, airy room and dropped into one of the two leather chairs placed against one wall. Photo props, lighting and camera equipment were arranged around him, but he didn’t spare a glance to the accoutrement of her work, having seen it all before.

  “So,” he asked, “how come you blew Mom off for dinner tonight? She seemed to think you’re upset about something, and she sent me to find out what it is.”

  Turning off the studio lights that had illuminated her subjects in front of the gas-log fireplace that anchored one end of the large, high-ceilinged room, she sighed. “I didn’t blow her off. And I’m not upset. I just have a lot of things to do this evening.”

  Her twin studied her face, and she wondered what he saw there. She could hide her feelings from most people when she tried, even her parents and her oldest brother, Mark, but Trevor always read her entirely too well.

  “Okay, give,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “What’s wrong? And don’t tell me it’s nothing. I can tell something’s bothering you.”

  She crossed the wooden floor to her big desk, with its built-in hutch full of shelves and cubbyholes and storage drawers. Leaning against one corner of the desktop, she gripped the wood on either side of her as she faced her brother. “Kent and I are dealing with an…issue,” she admitted vaguely.

  His eyes, the same chocolaty brown as her own, were grave when he studied her face. “It sounds serious.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “Man.” Shaking his head, Trevor said, “This is hard to believe. You and Kent—I mean, you two have always been so great together.”

  A pang shooting through her heart, she tightened her fingers around the edges of the desk. “I know. But maybe—well, maybe Kent and I aren’t as compatible as I thought we were.”

  Trevor’s face suddenly hardened. “Has he done something to hurt you? Has he cheated on you? Kent told me himself that he would never be the type to give in to the temptations of celebrity and run around behind your back. If he…”

  “No, it isn’t that,” Tanya broke in to assure her overprotective brother. “He hasn’t cheated on me.”

  After her history with Michael, fidelity had certainly been a concern for her when she’d become involved with Kent. Yet she had always trusted Kent in that respect, even though she knew all about the temptations faced by the wildly popular race car drivers. She and Kent had talked about that aspect of their relationship from the start, and Kent had promised her, as he had her twin, that he had no interest in a series of meaningless one-night stands. Not with his long-committed, unwaveringly faithful parents for role models.

  But he had lied to her about his college situation, she remembered with a sudden wave of doubt. What if…?

  No. She couldn’t bear to believe everything they had shared was a lie.

  Trevor relaxed only a little, his gaze still focused intently on her face. “Then what is it? What can I do to help?”

  Choosing her words carefully, she said, “I found out about something Kent did when he was a teenager. He told me only because he felt like he had no other choice, or I never would have known the whole story. It turned out he hadn’t been entirely honest with me before.”

  “Something he did when he was a teenager?” Trevor looked taken aback. “It must have been really bad.”

  “Well, no. He didn’t hurt anyone but himself. It was just something stupid he did with a couple of his fraternity brothers.”

  Frowning, her brother said, “Who didn’t do something stupid with their fraternity brothers? What’s the big deal?”

  “The big deal is that we’ve talked about that period in his life several times during the past two years, and he lied to me about it. He told me an entirely different story about what happened.”

  “He was probably embarrassed.”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “You know, Tanya,” he said, obviously choosing his words with great care, “you do have a tendency to be a little hypercritical at times. Just a tad judgmental, maybe.”

  It wasn’t the first time he had accused her of either of those things. And as she always did, Tanya took umbrage. “I’m not judgmental. I simply expect people to be as honest with me as I am with them. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.”

  “People make mistakes, you know. It’s part of being human.”

  Because that was so close to what Kent had said to her, she grew even more defensive. “He lied to me, Trevor. Blatantly.”

  He grimaced. “I know how you hate that. I hate being lied to, myself.”

  “I know. It—well, it hurts,” she admitted, her fingers tightening on the desk.

  Trevor pushed a hand through his hair. “But you said it was about something relatively minor.”

  “It doesn’t feel very minor right now.”

  He stood and crossed to her, putting a hand on either side of her face and brushing a kiss across her nose, something he’d been doing since they were just teenagers, themselves. “You’ll have to decide for yourself whether you can live with knowing that Kent’s not perfect. Whether this was big enough to destroy your trust in him, or something you can forgive and forget. Just don’t do anything rash, okay, sis? Give yourself time to make sure you’re doing the right thing.”

  She nodded, still irked that he had called her judgmental.

  Trevor was still watching her face, apparently aware that he’d ticked her off—not for the first time, of course. Despite their closeness, they were normal siblings with the usual history of squabbling. “So, are you going to Daytona?”

  She still hadn’t quite decided that, herself. “I have a busy week ahead. I’ve already told Kent I can’t spend all of Speedweek in Florida.”

  “But you can go for the big race, can’t you? You always keep that Sunday open on your calendar.”

  She bit her lip.

  “Everyone will notice if you’re not there,” Trevor reminded her. “Unless you’re ready for the break-up gossip to start circulating, you really should go.”

  “I know you want everything to work out between Kent and me,” she murmured, her c
hest clenching at the mere hint of a breakup, even only in rumor. “I know how much you like him.”

  “I consider Kent a friend,” he agreed readily. And then his voice grew firmer. “But you are my sister. And you will always come first with me, got that? Whatever you decide to do, I’ll back you up. I just want you to be happy.”

  Some of her irritation with him evaporated. She could never stay mad at Trevor for long. “Thank you.”

  He gave her a bracing smile. “So will you come to dinner with Mom and Dad and Mark? There’s no need for you to sit alone and brood about what Kent did.”

  She hesitated, then shrugged. “Okay. I guess so. But I don’t want to talk about this tonight, okay?”

  “No one will ever know you have a care in the world,” he assured her. “I’ll help you keep everyone distracted.”

  “Thanks.”

  “My pleasure.” He hugged her quickly, then stepped back. “I’m always here if you need to talk,” he reminded her.

  She wondered if he had any idea how much that meant to her.

  KENT CALLED TANYA LATE that evening, just as she’d been about to call it a day. “Were you already in bed?”

  “Not yet,” she said, sitting on the edge of her bed in her nightgown. “I was just getting ready.”

  “How did your shoot go this afternoon?”

  “Fine. They were very cooperative. The groom’s a big fan of yours, by the way. He wants an autograph.”

  “Yeah, sure, remind me next time I see you and I’ll sign something for him.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “So, when will that be?” he asked ultra casually.

  “When will what be?”

  “When will I see you again? You’re coming to the track next Sunday, aren’t you? Cappy’s all lined up to fly you to Florida either Saturday or Sunday morning, whenever you can make arrangements.”

  Cappy was the pilot of Kent’s small private jet. He and Tanya had become good buddies during the past year as Kent had gone to extraordinary lengths to accommodate her schedule so she could attend races.