This Time, Forever

by Pamela Britton

  “Be back in five,” Bart called.

  “Bart,” Marley said, trying to call him back.

  But the driver didn’t listen and reluctantly, everyone followed him out, although the photographer didn’t look happy about it. Linc saw Marley start to leave, too, and raced forward to stop her.

  “Stay,” he ordered.

  “Why?” she asked sharply.

  “Because I’m in love with you.”

  She gasped and whispered, “Oh!” Her eyes filled with tears.

  “And if I’m not mistaken,” he said, gently lifting her chin, “you love me, too.”

  He saw her swallow, saw her blink back tears. “I do,” she admitted softly.

  He couldn’t keep the grin from his face. “That’s what I thought.”

  “But, Gil. Your job. If we start dating, my brother will throw a fit—”

  “I resigned.”

  “You did what?”

  “I quit.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  He clasped her face between his hands. “Why? Are you the only one that’s allowed to find another job?”

  “Well, no,” she admitted. “But if one of us has to quit, it should probably be me.”

  He couldn’t wait any longer. He folded her in his arms, and as he did so, he realized it felt right…absolutely right. Bart had been right. This was what it was all about. Family. Connections. Being loved—and loving someone in return. His lips found hers, and if he had any doubts that she loved him, too, they evaporated beneath the heat of that kiss. He wanted to push her up against Bart’s car, but he knew he couldn’t do that. No. That could wait. For later.

  “Marry me, Martian Girl?” he asked, pulling back.

  He saw her lips twitch before she softly answered, “Yes,” and then sank into his arms. “Yes, yes, yes,” she muttered, hugging him tight.

  “And you’re not going to quit your job,” he said, resting his chin on top of her head. “Your brother would hate me even more if I forced you to do that.”

  “I don’t hate you.”

  They both drew apart. Gil stood in the entrance, the look on his face one Linc would never forget.

  “I just needed to make sure you loved Marley more than anything else in life.” He held up a letter. “And I have that proof right here.”

  He heard Marley gasp back a sob. “Gil,” she said, her voice clogged with tears. “I’m so glad to see you. I feel so bad about everything that happened.”

  Her brother came forward, Marley sinking into his arms. “I promised our parents I’d look out for you, Marley. I needed to make sure he really loved you.”

  “He does,” Marley answered.

  “I know that now,” Gil said, looking Linc in the eye.

  “I do,” he admitted.

  “Good, because I can’t have my future brother-in-law driving for me if he doesn’t truly love my sister.”

  “Oh, Gil,” Marley said, pulling back.

  “Here,” Gil said, handing Linc the envelope he’d slid across the man’s desk less than a half hour ago. But Linc hesitated.

  “Take it,” Gil repeated.

  “What if I’ve lost my touch?” Linc said, confessing his biggest fear to the both of them.

  “Then we’ll figure something out,” Gil said. “But something tells me you’ll do just fine.”

  He heard Marley sniff again, knew she was fighting back tears. Linc opened his arms. Marley sank into them. “Thank you,” he mouthed to Gil over the top of her head.

  Marley’s brother had tears in his eyes, too. “You’re welcome,” he answered back.

  AS IT TURNED OUT, Gil was right. He didn’t do “just fine.” Two years later, Linc won his third championship, and as Marley stood beside him in Victory Lane, paper pieces fluttering down around them, he knew they’d made the right choice all those years ago.

  “I love you, Martian Girl,” he whispered in her ear.

  “I love you, too,” she replied over the sound of the crowd.

  They kissed, the crowd going wild all over again. Linc smiled to himself, knowing in that moment that he hadn’t been given just a second chance, he’d been given a shot at a whole new life, one he couldn’t imagine without Marley.

  Talk to Me

  Dorien Kelly

  CHAPTER ONE

  SUSIE EDMONDS found it a little scary that she was beginning to feel an emotional bond with her daughter’s hamster. Both she and the hamster ran in endless circles, ultimately getting nowhere—the hamster on his wheel and Susie on her daily after-school route. The hamster, however, remained blessedly oblivious to the fact that his owner, fourteen-year-old Camille, had taken the hormonal plunge into adolescence. As a non-English speaker, the hamster couldn’t discern between the standard sweet, agreeable Cammie or the diva-in-training who was taking over her body with increasing frequency. Sadly, Susie could.

  “Mom, we need to pick up my new riding boots before Matt’s soccer practice. If you drop him off first, there won’t be time to get them and my life will be totally ruined,” Cammie announced from her seat beside Susie in the family’s SUV.

  Susie did her best to hide a smile at her daughter’s dire tone. The diva was most definitely in the house…or at least the vehicle. But it was a lovely early October Monday afternoon, with just a bit of cool to the North Carolina air, and Susie wasn’t going to allow Cammie’s mood to dim the sunshine.

  “Sweetheart, I fail to see how getting Matt to practice on time is going to ruin your life,” she said.

  Susie glanced in the rearview mirror to see how ten-year-old Matt was holding up. Wise boy that he was, he’d tucked his earbuds in and was rocking away to the beat of his favorite band. He was so much his father’s son, from the cleft in his chin right down to that wonderful “go with the flow” personality that Susie adored.

  Cammie gave a drama queen sigh to accompany a toss of her brown ponytail. “I need to get those boots broken in before the show next Saturday. If I don’t, it’s going to be a disaster!”

  “You can wear your old boots for the show.”

  “I’d die first!”

  Susie gripped the steering wheel a little tighter and reminded herself that patience was key when dealing with a teen. Well, patience and perhaps an adults-only beach vacation. She’d have to talk to Ben and see if they could steal a few days. As the wife of a NASCAR driver, Susie knew that finding time during the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season was going to be a challenge, but they both needed it.

  “Death seems a little extreme,” she said to her daughter. “I’m doing all I can to make sure everything is covered. There’s only one of me. What do you expect me to do?”

  “You could have picked them up before you got us from school.”

  Susie didn’t feel compelled to explain her busy daily schedule to a fourteen-year-old. Instead, she focused on finding a parking spot by Matt’s soccer field.

  “Okay, buddy,” she said to her son once he’d left the land of music and rejoined the family Edmonds. “I’ll be back here just as soon as I’ve dropped Cammie at the stable. Take your water bottle and leave your music, and don’t forget to—”

  “I know, Mom. Have fun,” Matt said before opening his door and slipping out to join his friends.

  Have fun.

  While her advice had been automatic, Susie found the thought a little bittersweet. When she and Ben had married, they’d decided that the one never-to-be broken rule was to find fun in everything they did. Even back in the early days, when they didn’t know how they were going to scrape together the money for utility bills, let alone rent, they had always found a way to have fun. Usually it had been something as simple as a picnic lunch at their favorite park outside Mooresville.

  Now they could scarcely find time for a family moment that wasn’t centered on Cammie’s show jumping or Matt’s soccer or hockey activities. And as for couples’ time? Forget it. With Ben on the road virtually every weekend during the season, and the loss of relative freedom s
ince Susie was no longer home-schooling the children, they couldn’t seem to get it in synch. She missed Ben as surely as though she hadn’t seen him in months.

  Cammie shifted restlessly in her seat. “Mom, if we don’t leave now, how are we going to get my boots?”

  “I’ll pick them up tomorrow,” Susie replied before pulling her cell phone from its nook in the SUV’s console.

  “But—”

  “Sorry, sweetheart,” Susie said firmly. “Right now I want to call Daddy.”

  “Why does it always have to be about you?” Cammie asked.

  Susie had done her reading and knew the adolescent brain didn’t yet fire properly, so she would cut her daughter a small amount of slack.

  “Don’t be rude,” she said.

  Cammie made the wise choice of silence.

  This time, pick up the phone, Susie thought as she hit Ben’s top spot on her autodial list. Please be there.

  MID-DISCUSSION, Ben Edmonds looked down at his phone, which sat before him on the mahogany conference room table at Double S Racing. His wife’s name flashed on the phone’s screen, signaling her incoming call. Ben was pretty sure he’d told Susie that he’d be with his team owner and crew chief all afternoon, and probably not home for dinner, either. Pretty sure, but not positive. Life had been a little crazy lately.

  “Are we distracting you from something more important, Ben?” asked Chris Sampson, who was, as far as Ben was concerned, the crew chief from hell.

  “No,” Ben said as he tapped his phone’s Ignore feature and sent Susie off to voice mail.

  “Good,” the younger man flatly replied. “Now, I think we can all agree that yesterday’s finish in Kansas was unacceptable.”

  “It goes without saying that nineteenth place is not what we’re shooting for,” Ben said.

  “Does it?” Sampson asked.

  Ben had thought he was becoming numb to the guy’s barely-below-the-surface antagonism, but apparently not.

  “I don’t know how you got it into your head that I don’t care or that I have found anything about this season acceptable,” he said.

  Topping the list of unacceptable events was Gil Sizemore, team owner and current silent observer at the head of the table, firing Ben’s longtime crew chief and hiring Chris Sampson. Sampson was blunt to the point of rude, confrontational and nowhere near the sort of personality Ben found to be conducive to good teamwork. Beyond that, Ben was just generally ticked to have this guy shoved down his gullet.

  “It’s good to hear that you care because I’ve had my doubts,” Chris replied.

  Ben didn’t believe in violence, but a man also had his limits. He shoved away from the table and stood, knowing he would have to walk from this room before he did something damaging. Still, he had to finish saying his piece.

  “Just because I’m out of the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup this season doesn’t mean I don’t hold myself to high standards,” he said. “NASCAR was my life before you had any damn idea what a stock car might be. Sure, I don’t doubt that you have your skills. Your record prior to this year has proven that. But what I can’t tolerate is the lack of respect toward me. I’m putting you on notice now that the next time you make some crack about my dedication, you’re going to find yourself on a whole new level of getting to know me…right down to my fist. You understand that?”

  Chris rose. “I understand more than you’re able to see.”

  “You think so?” Ben asked in a voice as distinctly unfriendly as Chris’s had been.

  Suddenly, though, he saw the humor in the situation. Yes, he was ticked, but he wasn’t about to take on a guy probably ten years younger and definitely a whole lot meaner. Especially one who he had to find some way to work with, or a lot of people might well lose their jobs—himself included.

  Gil, who had about five inches on Ben’s five feet ten inches stood, too.

  “Gentlemen,” he said in an “I’m the boss and we’d best not be forgetting that” tone. “Why don’t we all sit down and talk about what we’ve learned from this season? We have seven races yet to go, and I can guarantee that no progress is going to be made with you two at each other’s throats.”

  Gil was, of course, correct…so far as his statement went. After Ben traded apologies with Chris, he took his seat but felt no better about his future. Truth was, Chris Sampson was nearly the least of Ben’s issues this season. He was just the easiest to face down.

  SUSIE LOVED THE NIGHTTIME. She loved the song of the crickets drifting into the bedroom through the screen door to her reading porch. And she loved the time she had alone with Ben. Or, at least Ben and the television as he sat on the sofa at the far end of their large room, watching yesterday’s race with the sound muted. The only thing she didn’t like was the stress that rolled off him like a storm coming in over the mountains.

  “Today was a long day for you,” she said as she finished off some trim on a sweater she was making for the boutique in Charlottesville. While knitting had started as a hobby—something to do with her hands because she never liked being perfectly still—it had grown into a business for her.

  “I told you this morning I’d probably miss dinner, didn’t I?” Ben asked absently, gaze still fixed on the screen as he replayed a segment of race footage.

  “Yes, you did. I only meant that you must be tired. I haven’t seen you take a real day off in weeks,” she said.

  “It’s the wrong time of year.”

  “I know, but we used to have our Mondays,” she replied. Because of the NASCAR Sprint Cup schedule, Monday nights had always been their date night.

  “I’d like my Mondays back, too,” he replied. Still, he didn’t look her way.

  She wouldn’t have felt so slighted except she knew that he’d be watching this same recording with his team tomorrow and had likely already looked at it earlier in the day. She wanted something of more value to her than the jewelry he’d given her over the years; she wanted his undivided attention.

  Susie set aside her knitting and rose from the bed. She was aware that after sixteen years of marriage she wasn’t exactly a novelty and that her long cotton nightgown was hardly alluring. Still, she also knew that Ben loved her. She crossed the room and positioned herself in front of the television.

  “Babe,” he said with a shake of his head. “You have to move. I can’t see.”

  “The race will be there later.”

  “So will you,” he replied after a brief pause.

  It felt as though his words had pushed the air from her. Susie wanted to leave the bedroom…the house….

  Ben stood. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.” He rubbed his hand over his short-cut hair, making it stand even more upright than usual. “The pressure at Double S is pretty bad right now. I don’t know what all I need to fix between myself, the car and the crew, but it’s a lot. One hell of a lot.”

  The tension she’d been feeling was replaced by a different kind, but one no less difficult to hide.

  “I know things haven’t been good,” she said. “Even if we don’t talk as much as we used to, I see things, Ben. I see you. I see how frustrated you’ve been.” She’d never been one to offer unsolicited advice, but she couldn’t help herself. “Maybe you need to be a little kinder to yourself…allow yourself time to breathe.”

  “No. You just don’t get it. I’m not a rookie. I’m not even in my prime. This is it, Susie. I’m forty-one and it’s not going to get any easier.”

  Susie sought the right words, the right cheerful tone. “Forty-one? That’s nothing, honey. Everyone says that forty is the new twenty.”

  He snorted. “Maybe if you’re a desk jockey, but if you’re a race car driver? Forty might as well be seventy in terms of reflexes. I have to be better studied and in better shape than anyone else out there. How am I going to pull that off if I don’t spend more time training?”

  Hello? How did she do all she did?

  Even though she’d stopped homeschooling Cammie and Matt this yea
r when they’d asked to try the local schools, between helping them keep in touch with their homeschooled friends and accommodating all the new additions to their schedules, she’d gained very little time. It seemed that work was demanding more, too. She’d hired a couple of women to do piecework for her. But Ben never asked about that part of her life, and she didn’t want to burden him with more information when he was already distracted, so she kept it to herself.

  “Multitask,” Susie said. “It won’t buy you a full day back, but it will help.”

  He gave her a skeptical look. “Multitask, how?”

  It had sounded like a good idea in the abstract, but she struggled for an actual application.

  “Well, you could put your race on the television downstairs in the exercise room and spend some time on the treadmill or even just the hot tub while you watch.”

  Ben’s hazel eyes narrowed. “If you wanted me to watch the race in another room, all you had to do was ask.”

  So much for helping. Ben stalked from the room, and Susie watched the cars silently circle the track.

  CHAPTER TWO

  IN SIXTEEN YEARS OF MARRIAGE, Ben had never slept apart from Susie while they were under the same roof. Last night, he’d come close—too close—and it was all on him, not Susie. He was the one who’d spoken without thinking and then snarled when, in his heart, he’d known she was trying her hardest to keep peace between them. He’d joined her in bed after he’d run off some of his stress on the treadmill and then showered. She’d been sound asleep, or at least faking it. He couldn’t blame her if she had. He’d barely been able to tolerate himself. And early this morning, she’d already been downstairs having breakfast with Cammie and Matt when he’d risen, so they’d had no chance to talk.

  Now, as he drove past the stone pillars marking the entry to Havenhurst Country Club, Ben didn’t feel a whole lot better. Even though he was a couple of minutes overdue for a breakfast meeting with his agent, he bypassed the valet parking and pulled into the lot. Once parked, he reached for his cell phone and debated calling Susie. She’d be on the road, he knew. Doing what, he didn’t.