by Melody Anne
Maybe it truly was just being with Maverick that made her feel safer. If that was the case, she was going to be in for a world of trouble when he was no longer around. That was something she couldn’t think about right now.
“We’re here.”
She looked through the window at the crowded parking lot. She’d been so lost in thought, she hadn’t even realized the truck had stopped.
“Where’s here?” she asked.
“Evergreen Speedway.”
“I haven’t been here before.”
“Then this will truly be a pleasure. We’re going to watch a race. Nothing will get your heart pounding like a good car race,” he assured her.
“Sounds interesting.”
She waited for him to come and open her door, and then they walked into the stands. “That’s why we met with your friend Bob today?” she questioned.
“Yes, he’s a big sponsor. Several of the racers do a lot for the organization.”
“I can see why you like fund-raising. There are a lot of perks,” she told him.
“I don’t do it for the perks,” he said, his face serious. “But I do love to enjoy life. I don’t see a reason not to. I make sure I live each day to the fullest. I try to show that to the people the organization helps, no matter what events I attend. I bring a lot of returning soldiers to these events too.”
“You are just a sucker for us broken people, aren’t you?” she said, trying to make a joke, but it fell flat.
“You’re anything but broken, sug. I’m bringing you out to places I love because I want to spend time with you,” he emphasized.
“I want to spend time with you too.” It was the first time she’d admitted it. His eyes lit up, and she was glad she’d told him.
“You know, you could get just about anything you wanted out of me,” he told her. He was smiling, but the serious light she saw in his eyes scared her a little. She wanted to feel empowered again, but not at his expense.
“How about we don’t try to take anything from the other?” she said with a laugh she hoped eased the more serious tone of their conversation.
He was quiet for a minute and then the sparkle returned to his eyes.
“Deal,” he said before they started walking again. She was grateful when he began speaking on lighter topics. “I like to watch the races on the big screen, but really there’s nothing more exciting than sitting in the grandstand and getting a taste of all the excitement.”
They got inside and took their seats, and Maverick quickly flagged down the vendor for hot dogs and beer.
“I have to admit, I’ve never watched a single race,” she told him.
“You’ve missed out then. I love being the one to pop . . .” He stopped and gave her a wolfish grin. “I mean, I’m glad you’re here for the first time with me. You might just become an addict after this.”
Though she didn’t even know why, her cheeks flushed as she looked at him. Finally, she focused instead on the track, where last-minute preparations were being taken care of before the race started.
“Who are we rooting for?” she asked, wondering how it would be possible to pick out certain cars in the huge lineup.
“Well, there are some great drivers out there for sure. I’m a fan of the Rodney Childers team, and they’ve been doing great, finishing first and second in the last several races. But I do sponsor a car. I’m not going to tell you which one yet, just to see if you become a fan anyway,” he said with a laugh.
“That’s not fair. What if I hate your car and boo it?” she said as she took a bite of her juicy hot dog.
“Then I will have to find a suitable punishment for you,” he told her with a gleam in his eyes.
The hot dog was forgotten when he captured her in his gaze. He might have been talking about punishment, but his expression promised satisfaction. She might just have to boo for every single car out there on the track.
When the race started, though, it was difficult to talk. Restarts happened, and Maverick tried explaining to her about repositioning and how the game could change easily since there were so many laps taken.
When Jeff Gordon and David Ragan easily maneuvered themselves around other cars toward the front of the pack, the entire stand was on its feet, including Lindsey, who didn’t even know any of the players.
“People sure seem to get excited when that number twenty-four car passes,” Lindsey said.
“Yep, that’s Jeff Gordon. He’s a legend. He’s won so many awards, it would take an hour to name them, but he’s going to be broadcasting now. The fans hate to lose him on the track, so they are showing their love.”
“I guess it’s sort of dangerous, not something people would do forever,” she said as the race finished and the fans went crazy.
She didn’t even know who’d won. But the stands had certainly been filled to capacity and the crowd was energetic. Even with the cars no longer speeding past them in unbelievable maneuvers, Lindsey was fascinated by it all.
“Want to meet the winner?” Mav asked, pulling her out of her daze.
“Can we do that?” she asked, then shook her head. “Never mind. Of course you can,” she added with a laugh.
“Yeah, I sponsor number nineteen,” he said with a chuckle. She hadn’t booed that car once, thankfully. Though that meant she wouldn’t be getting her punishment. Darn.
“I’d be surprised if that hadn’t been your car,” she told him with a grin.
Trophies were given and pictures taken, and then it was time for the winner—number nineteen—to take his victory lap.
“Ready, Mav?” the man asked.
“Yep, I’ve got her helmet,” he said with a grin.
When Lindsey realized what they were saying, her face went a little green as she looked back and forth between the grinning men.
“You think I’m getting into that thing?” she gasped.
“You haven’t lived ’til you’ve gone two hundred miles per hour,” Jet said with a laugh.
“How old are you?” she exclaimed. “You don’t even look old enough to have a driver’s license, let alone to be traveling at such high speeds.” That made the guy throw back his head with laughter.
“I’m twenty-five, Lindsey, but if it makes you feel any better, my dad had a mini-track for me and my first racecar when I was five years old. Granted, the thing only went five miles per hour at the time, but she could corner like nobody’s business,” Jet said with a chuckle.
“Okay, but if something happens to me, then I’m haunting you both,” she warned.
But when she was strapped into the car, securely in place with the motor revving, she felt a rush of adrenaline flow through her.
“You ready?” he asked, his grin almost as mesmerizing as Maverick’s.
“I guess it’s now or never,” she said with a nervous giggle.
And then they were off. The tires squealed as the engine purred. They were flying around the track. But he didn’t stop at just one lap. He took her around several more times before skidding to a stop where Maverick was waiting for them, a big grin on his face.
What she didn’t realize until the helmet was off and Maverick was scooping her up into his arms was that she was grinning madly too.
“That was the biggest thrill I think I’ve ever had,” she said, completely out of breath.
“I knew you’d love it,” he said before leaning down and kissing her.
“Hey. I’m the one who gave the thrill. Don’t I get a little kiss too?” Jet said, interrupting them.
Without even thinking about it, Lindsey let go of Maverick and gave Jet a hug, then kissed him on the cheek.
“Thanks, darling. It was fun,” Jet said before he was bombarded by media people.
Once he turned away, her smile fell as her eyes rounded in shock at what she’d done. She’d initiated touch with a stranger—and not just any stranger—a man.
She looked at Maverick, who looked very proud—and slightly jealous.
“A
m I going to have to kick his ass?” Mav asked with a crooked grin.
“I . . . I can’t believe I did that,” she gasped.
He wrapped his arm around her and began walking her out to the parking lot.
“It’s the adrenaline. I still get it when I fly. There’s a thrill that’s indescribable when you are speeding like that,” he told her.
“But . . .” She stopped. She didn’t know what to say or how to explain it.
“You’re learning to touch again. You’re learning it doesn’t hurt, but that it’s actually necessary,” he said before leaning down and kissing her on the cheek.
He was right. Everything he was doing for her was helping. She hated how absolutely right he was. The man was a freaking magician.
“Thank you for another remarkable day, Mav. Truly, it was indescribable,” she said.
“It was my utmost pleasure,” he told her as they reached his truck.
When a wicked smile appeared on her lips, she could see she had begun making him nervous. She spoke.
“Okay, now I’m going to ask you to do something truly dangerous,” she said.
“Is there something more dangerous than driving or flying fast?” he asked with a laugh.
“My parents are having dinner tomorrow. Want to accompany me?”
Her stomach was tied in knots as she waited. It was so intimate to ask him to her parents’. She kind of wanted to take it back now that it was on the table. But she didn’t know how she would manage to do that.
He grinned as he looked at her. “I’d love to. And trust me, that’s not dangerous at all.”
“Believe me, after an evening with my family, you might be rethinking that,” she said with a laugh.
She laughed even more when he got just a touch of worry in his eyes. Oh yeah, meeting her family was going to be quite the entertainment. Especially since she’d never brought a man home before.
Maybe she hadn’t really thought this out after all. Her family was going to be giving both of them the third degree all night.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
It was so odd to be at work and have her mind other places. For years, Lindsey would look forward to her shifts at the hospital, and now what she looked forward to was spending time with Maverick.
Yes, she knew that work was never going to be the same again after the attack, but she should still get satisfaction out of her job. She wanted to get that feeling back. She’d spent too many years in school to ever let one event, no matter how awful, stop her from doing what she’d wanted to do from the very first time she’d slapped a bandage on one of her brothers and declared him healed.
But she had only a couple of more semesters of school left and then she would be a nurse practitioner. Maybe she just needed a new scene. It had been her stubbornness that had brought her back to the hospital where she’d been attacked. She wasn’t letting those men beat her.
She’d proven she could come back. She didn’t need to keep tormenting herself. It was hard working at this hospital, and even harder when it was slow. But she wouldn’t dare voice that thought aloud, because she would be tempting fate, and in a hospital, you never wished for more activity. When you did that, emergency calls tended to pile up, and that wasn’t fun either.
Lindsey was startled out of her thoughts by the radio.
EMS please respond to 45893 Main Ave. Seventy-year-old female, cut on hand.
Betty turned to Lindsey and smiled before she laughed. Lindsey let out a long-suffering sigh. They all knew that address well. They also knew Lucy must be sitting at home feeling lonely.
“I guarantee you she scratched herself so she could get the ambulance there,” Betty said with a laugh.
“Yep. None of us are going to take that bet,” Lindsey told her as the new nurse on staff began walking up to them.
“Oh, I bet I can get Suzanne to take the bet,” Betty said wickedly.
“That so wouldn’t be fair,” Lindsey said with a scowl. “Quit hazing the new girl.”
Betty grumbled, but she did it in good humor.
Dr. Beel walked up as they were talking and heard who was coming in. He scowled.
“She had better have a finger hanging on by the skin,” he grumbled. He wasn’t feeling too good and obviously wanted to go lie down. He knew Lucy came in for attention, and not the medical sort.
“I think she has a crush on you,” Lindsey told him with a smile.
He grumbled before moving toward the ER.
It took only about ten minutes before the ambulance was pulling into the bay. Lindsey waited by the back door, a shiver rushing through her when it opened and the cold wind blew in.
Her favorite medics strolled inside with Lucy on the gurney, a grin on her face as she chatted with the young guys. They didn’t seem put out in the least. They got a kick out of the woman they called their favorite patient.
Of course she was their favorite. She’d been in the hospital more times than most of the nursing staff. She had come in for everything: complaints of chest pain (which ended up being her skin rubbed a bit too raw from a too-tight bra), a broken leg, arm, and hand, which had all been fully intact. She’d come in for burns that had really been scratches, and for fevers when her temperature was normal.
The first half-dozen calls, the paramedics had tried to assure her she was fine, telling her she didn’t need to come in. But she would always tell them it was an emergency, that she would die if they left her.
They couldn’t refuse to transport her. Lindsey wondered when her insurance was going to cancel her. They’d even given her a psych evaluation, but she’d loved that. There was nothing physically or mentally wrong with Lucy. She was just lonely.
“Hello, Lindsey dear. I’m so glad you’re here. How are you doing?” Lucy said with a smile more vibrant than most seventy-year-old women had.
“I’m fine, Lucy. The question is, how are you feeling?” Lindsey asked as the paramedics got her moved from the stretcher to a bed.
The team hooked her up to a cardiac monitor, checked her blood pressure, which was fine, and all her vitals. She was healthier than most twenty-year-olds.
“I got this cut on my hand, and I don’t want it to get infected,” she said, trying to make her voice sound feebler. It wasn’t fooling any of them.
Dr. Beel examined Lucy, asked her the standard questions, and put notations in her ever-expanding file. When he tried to find out what had happened with her bandaged hand, she refused to let them look at it. He blew out a frustrated breath and gave her his sternest look.
“I need to know what’s going on, Lucy, or we can’t help you,” he told her.
She nervously shifted on the bed as she gripped her fingers together. She looked at each staff member before looking back down at her hands.
“Well . . .” She paused as her eyes filled with tears. Lindsey pulled out a tissue and handed it to her. “I . . . um . . .”
“Come on, Lucy. Spit it out.”
Dr. Beel normally had more patience. It looked as if that weren’t the case on this shift. There was nothing crankier than a sick doctor with a patient wasting his time.
“I just wanted to be with my family today,” she said as a tear dripped down her cheek.
“Where’s your family?” Lindsey asked, feeling terrible for the woman.
“Well, I think of you guys as my family,” she said. Then the tears dried up, and Lindsey knew the woman was putting on the show of her life.
“What is it really?” Dr. Beel snapped, clearly not falling for her tricks.
“Well, I’m ticked off, that’s what it is,” she said, her expression turning sour. “I applied for a loan today and was denied. Who in the heck denies someone like me a loan when I want it?”
Lindsey and the rest of the staff were silent as they processed what Lucy had just said. It made no sense.
“What are you trying to buy?” Lindsey finally asked.
“A zoo,” she said with the utmost seriousness.
; Dr. Beel threw his hands into the air and stomped from the room. He’d had enough. He wasn’t even going to pretend to try to humor the patient. Lindsey was bored enough that this was the most entertained she’d been all day.
“A zoo?” she questioned Lucy.
“Yes, there’s a zoo in South Carolina where they are going to kill all the animals because they said it’s not getting enough people. I want to buy the zoo and move there so I can take care of those poor defenseless creatures.”
Lindsey had no idea what to say.
Suddenly, Dr. Beel popped back into the room, pulling his wallet out of his back pocket, and taking out a hundred-dollar bill. He set it into Lucy’s wrinkled fingers and actually grinned.
“I think that’s a fantastic idea, Lucy. I’m starting a collection for you right now.”
Lindsey stared at him in confusion, and then at the rest of the staff members as they all reached into their pockets and pulled out cash.
“Let’s buy this woman a zoo that moves her far away.”
When Lindsey realized what was going on, she was horrified. Lucy had no idea that they were all mocking her, or celebrating the possibility of her leaving.
“Horrible,” Lindsey choked out. “You are all horrible.”
She turned and walked from the room. She prayed that she would never get so cynical in her job that she would mock a little old woman. Sure, that woman was a lot slyer than the average person, but it all boiled down to the fact that she was lonely and wanted to come to a place that made her feel safe.
Lindsey could empathize with that. She went in and checked on Lucy several times during the rest of her shift. She was now complaining of heart pains so the staff couldn’t make her leave.
Good. They could deal with that after their awful behavior.
Maybe she related so well to Lucy because she was afraid she would end up like her—alone and in need of companionship. Maybe it was because she generally liked the woman.
Whatever it was, she decided she wasn’t going to keep pushing people away. She wanted friends and family surrounding her when she was seventy. She did not want to be alone at all. Lindsey was grateful she was going home for a visit.
