Driving in Neutral

by Sandra Antonelli

  “Monster is right. You’re brave. Ella’s not beyond putting out a contract on me if I don’t do Exactly. As. She. Says. It’s amazing how this wedding has turned my sweet little sister into such a dragon.” Pete smiled again, but this time it was softer. “You know, this is the first time I’ve had a chance to talk to you alone since you got back from Germany. I’m sorry about what happened with Karl. I never saw any of the crap in the papers. I never even looked at the stuff on the net. It must have sucked big time. I’m glad Ella was able to get you a damages settlement from that magazine.”

  Olivia gave him a nudge. “Thanks, Pete. You know your sister was amazing. The divorce was one thing; painful as hell, but sorting out the legal junk with that publisher was the real nightmare. Ella flew back and forth between here and Stuttgart so often she could have applied for German citizenship.”

  “I’m glad you decided to come back to Chicago.”

  “So am I. It’s quieter here. How are Kim and Owen?”

  A thoughtful glimmer trickled into Pete’s eyes. “They’re great. They’re down at my in-laws’ in Tennessee. It’s strangely silent at home. I didn’t know I was so used to the noise of an inquisitive three-year-old. I think I miss it. Hey, how about we have you over for a barbeque after the wedding?”

  “I’d like that.”

  “Good. Now, I’m sorry to rush this. We’re a little tight on this job, and every second is going to count, so we’ll get you started as soon as possible. If Emerson ever shows his ugly face, we’ll get you set up in an office and take you through the floor. Since it’s Friday, we’ll all go to lunch and he can give you a run-down of the structure for this project. Meanwhile, while we wait, we have…the view.” His hand swept across the windows like a game show host. “What do you think?”

  The storm had passed, but a fine drizzle and heavy clouds cut the visibility to about nine feet. “I bet it’s spectacular when it’s not raining,” she said.

  Pete pressed a hand to the glass and leaned forward to look down. “On a clear day you can see all the way up Michigan Avenue, right down to the Drake Hotel. It would rain when I want to show o—” Pete broke off and looked over his shoulder as the door opened. “Great, Emerson. Wow. You make me look like a liar. Get over here and welcome our newest employee.”

  The pleasant smile on Olivia’s face vanished when she turned.

  A black and white Chicago White Sox baseball jersey had replaced the business shirt with nervous pit stains, but the indigo trousers remained and Maxwell limped across the room, his grin two miles wide.

  Chapter 3

  Instead of letting his mind dwell on the memory of how her damp skin felt beneath his hands, like he wanted to, Emerson Maxwell crossed the room and maintained a business-like air. “We’ve met, Pete,” he said and offered his hand. “How nice to see you again.”

  Pleased he’d left the posturing outside the room, Olivia gave him a weedy smile and displayed the same courtesy, adding a curt nod. “Mr. Maxwell,” she said, gripping his hand. His straightforward, firm handshake created an unexpected buzz, like a direct line of champagne into her veins, and his spiced autumn fragrance fed into the line to imbue her system with another bubbly kick.

  “Please, it’s Emerson. I’m sorry, I never did get your last name.”

  “Regen.”

  Emerson grinned, waiting to see if her business-like demeanor would change. When it didn’t he said, “You know, I just heard this funny story about a woman getting caught in an elevator. Would you like to hear it?”

  “I wonder if it’s the same one I heard about the winking claustrophobic jackass.”

  “We’re a little pressed for time, folks,” Pete said. “We can tell our stories at lu—” The next second, a thunderous boom of laughter rolled from his throat. “Oh my God! Olivia was your naked chick in the elevator? I thought Timmons made this up. Olivia? Oh man! Oh man!”

  Puzzled, Emerson looked from Pete to the woman in the fuzzy pink sweater, one eyebrow boosted. “Olivia? Wait. I thought you said your name was Jerry.” It took a second…and then it twigged. He’d completely missed her ongoing mouse jokes and reference to Tom and Jerry cartoons. “Oh, hell, you’re here for the translating thing! You’re Ella’s friend, the maid of honor.”

  While their paths had never crossed, for years Ella had raved about Emerson, Pete’s college roommate. Back then, whenever Pete brought Emerson home, Ella said she’d needed a dental vacuum to suck up the drool that had collected in her mouth. Over the years, it became standard for her to talk about the erotic fantasies she had about her brother’s roommate-turned-business partner. Until she met her fiancé, Craig Fulton, the man of all her dreams, Emerson had been cast as the face Ella pictured when sex with her boyfriends was less than stellar.

  Now Ella’s former sex fantasy was the best man at his cousin’s wedding.

  Emerson Maxwell was Craig’s cousin. Olivia took a breath and released it slowly, softly, without a sound. Best man indeed.

  Pete got his laughter under control. “Jesus, Em, who did you think she was?”

  “Jerry, my naked elevator—”

  “I wasn’t naked,” she said quietly.

  “No you weren’t.” Emerson nodded his agreement, trying to keep his expression stony, “but I got a good look at your—”

  “You said you weren’t looking.”

  Pete held up his hands. “Olivia, I don’t want to know this, I don’t want this picture in my head. Oh, I so do not want this picture of my sister’s best friend in my head.”

  “Okay, look, Pete, she wasn’t completely naked.” Emerson waited for her face to turn as pink as the little scar near her mouth.

  Olivia looked at him placidly, but the pleasant buzz she’d felt from his touch turned into scratchy irritation. “You know I wasn’t naked at all,” she said evenly.

  “That’s your story. In mine you were practically naked.”

  “And you were breathing so fast you practically passed out.”

  “Well, your dress was see-through.”

  “Because I was soaking wet.”

  “Yeah, and everything you wore was see-through.”

  “The lack of oxygen must—” she broke off, suddenly aware of the scope of his story telling. The expression the amused receptionist had worn when she’d taken the jacket popped up like an instant message, and Olivia knew that look had nothing to do with how her sweater had been buttoned. “Okay. Who else did you tell this little porno fairy tale of yours? Who else besides Pete and those prepubescent boys drooling outside the elevator heard about what happened? Does the entire office know?” she asked, lifting her head a fraction.

  “Oh, come on. I didn’t know it was you. I didn’t know the woman we were meeting for business would be you.” Emerson was annoyed to hear how much he sounded like Josh, but it didn’t stop him from continuing, “I only found out we had a new employee coming ten minutes before the elevator thing, so how could I know you were the you, you were supposed to be?”

  Pete rubbed his hands together, moving backward toward the door. “The suit. You were blinded by the suit, weren’t you? Oh, please tell me it wasn’t his suit, Olivia,” he mumbled. “Yeah. Okay,” he said as he opened the door, “maybe I’d better leave you two to sort this out.”

  Emerson barely noticed Pete’s departure. The gray matter traffic control tower in his head directed him to land, but the pilot flying his body took the opposite bearing. He contemplated wrapping an arm around her waist and zeroing in on that Cupid’s-bow top lip with both of his, but who knew what sorts of stories that would start. Emerson crossed his arms and glanced out the window, chewing over his options.

  Olivia thought the situation was absurdly funny. Air rushed out of her nose in a long rumbling snort.

  He met her eyes and started laughing too. His fingers tucked into the soft, fuzzy angora on her shoulder.

  Olivia glanced at the fingers on her arm. It was easy to admit this sort of high-speed tension she felt with him
was fun, attractive, and addictive. She’d always been drawn to lively and quick-thinking men. For a few seconds, a fine mist, like rain spray on the windows, obscured the view she had of a laughing Maxwell. His face blurred and all she saw was Karl, Karl, Karl.

  From touring cars to open wheelers, she’d raced them all, on and off track. Over time, she moved on to engineering and design, settling into working as a test driver for various European car companies as well as the Halray Racing and Klimat racing teams. She gave it all up for Austrian Formula One driver, Karl Abenteuer. Blond, with a strong jaw and blue eyes, Karl had been good-natured and worldly—everything her first husband, Adam, wasn’t—and Karl was exactly the man to make up for the scrawny, moody boy she’d married too young. For two years, Karl had been a doting affectionate husband, who enjoyed playing practical jokes that shocked her.

  And boy, had his little video been a shock.

  Rumors were part of Formula One racing. Success made a driver a target for professional jealousy and mud-slinging. People liked to gossip. Photos with Miss Indy and scantily clad Grid girls could always be misconstrued, but world number eleven Karl Abenteuer’s homemade movie was impossible to misconstrue.

  Especially since it involved getting caught with his fingers in someone else’s pot of honey.

  Especially since the proof became one of the most watched videos on YouTube.

  Especially since British tabloids and trash magazines throughout Europe were suddenly interested in Mrs. Karl Abenteuer’s reaction to images of her decade-younger husband tonsil-wrestling with a naked, tattooed redhead.

  Olivia had had one or two impressive crashes in her test-driving days. The traction control electronic stability program failed on an icy course in Norway, which caused the prototype Roadster she was testing to flip and roll several times. Bits of rubber on a test track jammed into the air intake on the first run of another new design and that car slammed into a wall, the nose cone taking the brunt of the impact, the engine catching fire. Banged up and singed, she limped away from the twisted metal. Yet nothing was as spectacular as when she walked away from the wreckage of Karl.

  With the car crash of a second disastrous marriage part of her history, Olivia wanted to continue life far away from chicanes, finish lines, checkered flags, and people who spoke about life with allusions to Motorsport.

  Maxwell was sexy, he had an appealing sense of humor, and there was an incontestable spark between them, but her life was private again, everything was in order, and she wanted to keep it that way.

  Never again. Never, ever again.

  She looked at Maxwell’s fingers and up into his green eyes. He smiled. Her stomach did a little pirouette and there it was again, that disco tune in her head. Ding-dong-ding, ah-aaah ring it!

  Oh for God’s sake, Olivia, turn off the music, drop the clutch and floor it!

  Snorting out another laugh and pushing his hand away, she walked across the room, taking the same route around the conference table Pete had.

  Emerson took a few steps in the same direction. “Does this mean we’re not having dinner?”

  She opened the door. “Who knew your brain fired with such spark plug-like precision?” she said, crossing the threshold, leaving the door to swing closed behind her.

  Annoyed with himself, he limped to catch her before she got too far, reaching out to grasp her elbow. “Hang on. Don’t you like me?”

  “Like you?” She laughed at his insecure, boyish question and pulled her arm from his grip. “Is this standard practice with all new employees?”

  “Okay, Olivia. I owe you an apology. I was an ass.”

  Deftly, she began to unbutton the sweater, pulling it off as she walked into the hall. “One of us can be professional about this. I’m not going to leave Pete in the lurch. I’ll give him the name of a man who’s pretty good at translating the technical stuff you wanted me to do. He can be here Monday.” Halting, she tossed the fluffy cardigan into his face. “Here. Give this to the receptionist. She has your jacket.”

  “Hey, wait, Olivia, please. You can’t quit this job before you even start just because I acted like a dick. Pete would kill me. I’m aware it was completely inappropriate and unprofessional. I’ve been having a bad couple of days and I was…I was embarrassed.”

  “You were embarrassed?” She rolled her eyes, turned her back, and continued down the hall toward the elevator. “Boy, you’re something out of the box!”

  Emerson followed her. “It was a blow to my ego. Okay? Everybody here knows about my claustrophobia and the elevator. My avoidance of the damn thing is company lore. I was trying to make light of it and save face.”

  Turning slowly, she looked up at him with marvelous, spirited brown eyes, almost laughing. “Save face, huh?” she said. “How am I supposed to save face? Look, I know it was pretty funny. I was laughing too, but nobody here is going to take me seriously now. I’ve lost all credibility. I’ll be the naked chick in the elevator—”

  “I was scared. You saw me. I was petrified.”

  “We’re all scared of something, but normal people don’t…I’m not going to waste my time doing this.” Amusing or not, she didn’t care how good he smelled or that he was an astonishing kisser. Nope. No way. Not another man who arcs electricity like a spark plug. Not in this lifetime.

  Olivia started down the hall and left him pinching his bottom lip between his fingers.

  For a moment, Emerson watched her hurry away and called out, “So what scares you?” By the time she stepped into the elevator he’d caught up to her. His hand shot out to catch the closing door and he stopped it, asking again as she stood alone in the open car, “What scares you, Olivia?”

  “Get in the elevator and we’ll discuss it.” She crossed her arms and waited.

  Emerson knew a challenge when it was tendered and he normally had no trouble rising to meet it, but this time he stood outside the elevator frowning, looking at her, his tongue licking at the corner of his mouth. He dropped his hand and tried to think of something smartassy to say, tried to get his feet to move, tried to man the fuck up and get in the goddamned elevator. His neck was hot; moisture had sprung up at the base of his skull.

  The door slid shut and covered her triumphant smirk.

  “Son of a bitch,” he muttered, and something whimpered behind him. When he turned around the expression on Pete’s face said it all. Emerson had never seen his best friend look ashen. “Let me guess.” He tried to grin. “Somehow this has the potential to fuck up Ella’s wedding and your sister will take a knife to my scrotum if I don’t fix it.”

  “Not just your scrotum, mine as well. Our balls hang in the balance here, Em. Our balls.” Pete groaned and rubbed both hands over his face.

  Ella had rigid ideas about the ceremony, flowers, cake, and the shoes she wanted her bridesmaids to wear. She had a specific picture clear in her mind and she wanted to make damn sure it was in everyone else’s too. Olivia found it amusing that when it came to implementing all Ella’s demands and actually assembling the wedding, the bride-to-be sort of turned into Blanche DuBois and raved like a frazzled Southern Belle—one who did not believe in the kindness of strangers.

  Seeing ‘Miz Ella’ so overwhelmed was the primary reason Olivia had taken on the wedding planning. The silly old My Dream Wedding scrapbook sticking up out of her shoulder bag held the plan itself. The idiotic book was stuffed with pages of dresses cut from bridal magazines, pictures of bouquets, and table settings from the ’80s, but it was a goldmine. While some things needed a little updating, the details had already been scrupulously planned thirty-some years ago, and Olivia had everything in order. The only items she hadn’t supervised were the seating chart and mailing out the invitations—Ella and her mother had taken care of that.

  Olivia smiled at the bride. Ella sat in one of Javiera’s salon chairs, squares of foil folded around sections of her curling hair, and mumbled about those invitations, about the cake, the plan. Sighing, she flipped through a gossip ma
gazine and muttered, “Everything will go according to schedule, to plan. The wedding will be the triumph of the century. Olivia will drive the day to victory.” Ella sighed again and grabbed another gossip magazine. She was, quite plainly, pretending to read Us magazine. She flicked past glossy celebrity snapshots and diet tips, until something caught her eye and her cerise-painted fingernails paused at the top of a page. A dimple appeared in the smooth, dark skin of her cheek as she motioned to the hairdresser.

  Pink butterfly clips sparkled in Javiera’s champagne hair as she tipped her head forward. “Yes, my darling, what can I do for you?”

  “May I have a pen, please?”

  Javiera handed over a black pen she had clipped to her hairdresser’s belt.

  “Thank you,” Ella said with a soft southern lilt that hinted at the havoc beneath her effort to be relaxed. “Wait just a second please, sugar.” She opened the magazine again and began to scribble something inside. She folded down the page, handed the pen back to Javiera. Then she fanned her face with the magazine and spun her chair around to face Olivia. “I can’t wait to get this cape off,” she said. “It’s driving me nuts just sitting here doing nothing. Ah should be calling a dermatologist. Would you look at these zits on my chin! Why on earth did Ah decide to do blonde? Who am Ah kidding?”

  Annnnd here it comes. Olivia put on a soothing voice. “It’s not blonde, it’s rose gold and remember you wanted your hair to have that extra kick for your once in a lifetime day.”