Checkered Past

by Abby Gaines

  Chad loved the sound of one day—it sounded like a future. He leaned over again.

  Turned out Brianna kissed pretty well in her sleep.

  THEY TOOK A TAXI directly to the hospital from Atlanta’s airport.

  “Brian Hudson,” Chad told the nurse at the desk in the cancer ward. “My wife’s father.”

  It took Brianna a second to process that he was calling her his wife, but the nurse caught on immediately. “Room 205,” she said. “I’ll see if I can get the doctor to come and talk to you.”

  Brianna half expected to find her father sitting up in bed, railing against the incompetence of medical staff who didn’t know a healthy man when they saw one.

  Instead, she found a sunken-faced man, lying so still that if it hadn’t been for his labored breathing, she’d have thought he was dead.

  “Dad.” She dashed forward, slowing as she reached the bed. His eyes opened, and after a moment they focused on her.

  “Bri…anna.” Sighed, more than spoken.

  She took his hand, was shocked to find his fingers almost fleshless.

  “Dad, you promised me you’d pull through,” she said fiercely. “I’m holding you to that.”

  He nodded, and she thought his mouth moved in a smile.

  “I’m going to sit with you,” she said. “Don’t tell me I can’t, because I’m not going anywhere.” At a movement behind her, she remembered. “Chad’s here, too.”

  Her father’s gaze moved to Chad.

  “Sir,” Chad said. “I’m sorry to see you so unwell.”

  Brian’s mouth quirked with what might have been skepticism.

  The doctor arrived and requested a private word with Brianna.

  “Your father’s organs are beginning to fail,” he said. “I don’t expect him to last the night.”

  Thousands of words—the myriad things she’d never said to her dad, never confided in him for fear of his condemnation or rejection—rushed over her. “Can I stay with him…until he goes?”

  “Of course. Though he’s on some heavy pain meds, so he won’t have much to say.”

  “But I do,” Brianna said.

  HER FATHER, naturally, defied the doctor’s prognosis and was still alive the next morning. He’d had a peaceful night, with the exception of one fretful stage where a nurse had administered more morphine and he’d slid back into unconsciousness. Brianna had stayed at his bedside, holding his hand, talking about NASCAR, about the hotel business—the kind of easy conversation they’d seldom had. The doctor had said her dad would have periods of lucidity; she wanted to wait for one of those to say the things in her heart.

  Chad stayed, too. Twice, he’d told Brianna to get an hour’s sleep, promising to wake her if her dad’s condition changed. She didn’t think Chad had slept at all, apart from a couple of ten-minute power naps.

  Around lunchtime he brought her a milk shake from the hospital cafeteria. She flashed him a smile of gratitude. Together they observed her father in the bright afternoon sunshine.

  He seemed smaller than he had last night, and Brianna guessed he was near the end.

  She couldn’t put off what she had to say any longer. She set her shake on the nightstand.

  “Dad,” she said, and perhaps the urgency in her tone communicated itself to him. Her father’s eyes fluttered open, then closed, then open again.

  She leaned forward, clasped his bony hand. “I love you, Dad,” she said. “I haven’t said it, I guess I haven’t shown it much, and I’m sorry.” She drew a deep breath. “Dad, I’ve always been scared of showing my love, in case I get hurt…but I learned recently that if I back down from something so important, I’ll never get to give and receive the love we both deserve.”

  Chad squeezed her shoulder.

  “It takes courage to love the way I want to,” she said. “I’m sorry I didn’t find that courage earlier. But please—” her voice cracked “—know now that I love you.”

  Her father’s eyes met hers. She looked intently, trying to see his love, desperately willing him to find the strength to speak. His throat worked, then his mouth, as if he was forcing words to the surface.

  Then her father’s gaze flickered to Chad. “Look,” he muttered.

  Chad bent down.

  “After…her.” A tiny but emphatic nod of the head accompanied the words.

  “I will, sir.” Chad took Brianna’s free hand, and the three of them were joined in an unlikely partnership.

  “Dad…” Say you love me.

  Her father’s eyes closed.

  A couple of hours later he stopped breathing. Chad called the medical staff, but Brianna knew it was over. Her father had slipped out of the world with an uncharacteristic lack of bombast.

  Her eyes dry and burning, she kissed him goodbye.

  Chad led her from the room, took a briefing from the nurse about paperwork and administration. He called her father’s lawyer, and they learned Brian had left detailed instructions about his funeral and burial. His belief in his survival hadn’t been as unwavering as it had seemed.

  When there was no more they could do, Chad threaded his fingers through Brianna’s. “Do you want to go back to your father’s house?”

  She shook her head. “That’s not home.”

  “Let’s go somewhere that is home,” he said. “Or at least, closer to it.”

  She had no idea what he was talking about, but she let him find a taxi and negotiate a fare up front for what sounded like a long journey. She fell asleep almost as soon as they pulled away from the hospital. If Chad confessed any more fears or worries during the trip, she was oblivious.

  When he gently shook her awake, they were at…

  “A race track?” she asked. Not one she’d seen before.

  “Yup. The one in Atlanta,” he said.

  He must have used the journey to make some arrangements, because they were allowed straight through to the empty stands. Chad led her up the first flight of stairs, and they gazed out at the enormous, slightly misshaped oval.

  “One and a half miles,” Chad said. “Trent and Zack both love this track. Dad does, too—several of his engines have won races here.”

  “What about you?” she asked.

  “I crashed my truck here once. Looked spectacular, but I walked away.”

  “You said we were going somewhere closer to home,” Brianna said.

  He put an arm around her shoulders. “It’s not Charlotte, but it is NASCAR.”

  She looked up at him, surprised.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “about your dad.”

  “I wish…I wish he could have said what I needed to hear.”

  “Your father wasn’t the kind of guy to wear his heart on his sleeve.” Chad turned her to face him. “He asked me to look after you. I think protecting you, making sure I’ll be around to protect you, was his way of showing his love.”

  “It doesn’t seem—”

  “Brianna,” he said, “I know something about protecting the people I love. And maybe letting them see the protection, but not the love.”

  Recognition seeped into her. She wasn’t quite able to trust it.

  “I won’t hold you to that promise to my dad,” she said.

  He chuckled. “No, but I’ll hold you to it.”

  “Really?” she said hopefully.

  “I’m holding you to a couple of other things, too.” He took her hands. “Brianna, sweetheart, two years ago you promised to be with me for better or for worse, until death do us part. I’m holding you to those promises. And if you won’t hold me to mine, well, I’ll hold myself to them.”

  She bit down on a smile that would have turned into a joyous laugh. “What about our divorce?”

  He groaned. “Didn’t you listen to a word I said when you were pretending to sleep on the plane? There’s not going to be a divorce. If you haven’t figured out by now that I love you so much I don’t have a life without you, that you are my life…”

  Now she couldn’t help grinn
ing, because that was exactly what she’d figured out. “Okay, so I’m your life,” she said. She went up on tiptoe and kissed him. “But am I on your team?”

  “There’s no team without you,” he said. “Not for me. I wish that wasn’t true. Life was a hell of a lot easier when I called all the shots and if anyone didn’t agree with me I could steamroller over them.”

  She laughed at the image, at its painful honesty.

  “But it seems—” a gusty sigh “—I no longer know everything. I need someone to talk to, to share my problems with, to tell me when I’m getting out of line with Dad, to pull my bratty brothers apart…” His eyes brimmed with tenderness. The tenderness Brianna thought she’d seen in Las Vegas, but this was deeper, truer, forever. “I need a teammate,” he said. “A wife.”

  “And a sponsor.” She was teasing, but his face darkened.

  “Hang the sponsorship,” he said roughly. “Dammit, Brianna, if that’s going to come between us, I don’t want it. I don’t know who you’ve chosen, but if it’s Matheson, I want you to un-choose us. Who knows, with your father gone, the whole thing may not happen anyway.”

  “But if Getaway doesn’t sponsor Zack…”

  “Then we’ll make it happen some other way,” Chad said impatiently. “We’ll fund him out of MPI’s pockets for a couple of months, and if he’s not showing good-enough results to sign a sponsor by then, he can pull out. He won’t like it, and Dad certainly won’t like putting his own money in, but they’ll have to live with it. I’m not going to risk our marriage.”

  She was laughing now in sheer delight.

  “Hey,” he protested. “This thing you have of laughing whenever I bare my heart is a little disconcerting.”

  “I never said baring your heart had to be painful,” she said. “We do get to have fun on our team.”

  Suddenly he didn’t look so certain. “What I’m not sure of is how you feel,” he said. “I know I don’t deserve to have you love me back after I’ve been such a jerk.”

  “You have been a jerk,” she said severely.

  But not severely enough. His lips twitched. “Brianna, darling, do you think you might find it in you to love me back?”

  “I don’t think I ever stopped.” She didn’t get to say more, for Chad caught her in a kiss that robbed her of speech, of air, of pain. And filled her with hope.

  “Tell me,” he demanded, when they surfaced. “Tell me you love me.”

  Her voice wobbled. “Chad Matheson, I love you. I love you more than I did the day I married you, which wasn’t nearly enough. Now, I love you enough to work through every problem we have. Your dad says it takes twenty years to know you, but I’m giving it the rest of my life. I’m never going to quit.”

  She was laughing and crying and she’d have sworn he was doing the same. Their lips melded.

  Chad’s cell phone rang. He ignored it in favor of discovering the tender region behind her ear. It rang again, but the ridge of her collarbone proved far more interesting.

  Just as they sank down onto the hard plastic seating, his phone beeped to say a text message had arrived.

  Chad hauled the phone from his pocket, clearly intending to hurl it onto the race track.

  Then his gaze was arrested by the message. His jaw dropped.

  “What is it?” Brianna demanded. Knowing that even if it was bad news, he would share it with her.

  His mouth worked. “It’s Zack.”

  “Is he hurt?” She tightened her hold on him, her heart plummeting.

  Chad’s face broke into a grin. “He won Daytona!”

  Brianna whooped along with him, gave him a smacking kiss for good measure.

  “You realize there’s no way Getaway will let you turn down the sponsorship now,” she teased. “They’ll throw millions of dollars at you whether you want them or not.”

  He kissed the tip of her nose. “Ah, well, if that’s the way it is…”

  “I love you,” she said, and kissed him again.

  Chad said, “Remember how I told you there’s a moment in a race that your gut tells you is the moment where you’ll win or lose?”

  “Uh-huh. You said great race car drivers throw everything into that moment, no hesitation, no matter how crazy it seems.” Zack must have done that today.

  “That’s where you and I are now,” Chad said. “At that moment where we decide to win or to lose in this marriage. Brianna, sweetheart, we knew each other three days before our wedding, then we split up for two years—that’s about as crazy as a marriage gets. I promise, from this moment, no hesitation, I’m all-in, for always.”

  She lay back on the plastic seats, tugged him down to her. “For always,” she said. “Winner takes all.”

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-2952-9

  CHECKERED PAST

  Copyright © 2009 by Harlequin Books S.A.

  Abby Gaines is acknowledged as the author of this work.

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