Fast & Hard: A Formula 1 Romance (The Fast Series)

by Kat Ransom

  “Fuck off, don’t talk to me,” I bark at them through the radio in my helmet. That’ll be a fine.

  Good.

  It’s easier to fixate on one thousand and one ways to murder Digby than think about her, anyway. Digby has always been a prick, always will be. But she was supposed to be different. I let myself believe she was. Even though she showed up as another media cretin, another nanny sent to stuff me into the perfect Celeritas mold, I tamped down my suspicions and fell for it, believing she was real.

  She’s no more real than the rest of them. Even Matty and Jack I pay to be here, for christ’s sake. That’s all I have to offer anyone, money and fame. I thought that lesson has been ingrained in my brain real good the last time, but nope. Had to touch the hot stove one more time and now I’m surprised when my hands are burnt.

  Wonder how long it’ll be before my face is plastered all over Infinity Magazine, photos of the inside of my home across the Cooper Media websites, stories Mum and Pop told her printed in thirty-five languages for global distribution. I stayed holed up alone in a London hotel until I flew to Austria, I don’t even want to go home and see the sanctuary she’s ruined.

  I’ll stay in hotels, for now. Maybe I should get disposable apartments, at this point. I’m certainly not staying at Celeritas anymore so I can see her strolling out of Digby’s flat every morning.

  Jack’s been running interference, assuring me she’s staying on the opposite end of the current hotel - his floor, of course. In a fog, Jack and Matty direct me through the motorhome and paddock in a strategic dance to avoid either one of them. We’re men, we don’t discuss it. It just happens.

  In the post-quali press pen, there’s no avoiding her proximity, though. All the drivers, including Dickless, are there along with their PR people. Journalists surround us on the opposite side of the metal crowd fencing. At least I can go back to being my normal asshole self now though, there’s no incentive to give these senseless questions any dignity.

  “Lennox, has the team determined the cause of the engine failure in France?”

  “Beats me,” I shrug and down a bottle of water with as little regard as I can muster.

  “I’m sorry, you don’t know happened?”

  “Don’t know, don’t care. Next question.” I look behind me to toss my water bottle into a bin. Mallory’s next to Digby holding her voice recorder in front of him as he speaks to another journalist but I catch her eyes for the smallest measurement of time. They’re glassy and shaking.

  Yeah, that doesn’t work anymore, love. Sell the lies somewhere else.

  “Lennox, it looks like you had other things in your mind last week. Several photos surfaced of you clubbing in London. Do you have a comment?”

  “Aye, there were other things on my mind but they’ve been worked out of my system, all better now,” I wink at the journalist and speak loudly enough for her to hear me. She thought I was an asshole before? Ha.

  “Some online comments suggested supermodel Kate Allendale was spotted with you. Can you confirm if you’ve reunited?”

  “Pff,” I exhale and scratch my head, “there were a lot of women, mate, I couldn’t tell you.” The British journalist’s jaw drops and he tries to stifle a laugh but out of the corner of my eye, I see Mallory turn and dart out of the media pen, her chestnut hair floating out behind her.

  I could tell him I stumbled to a hotel room alone, as usual. That I haven’t seen Kate in over a year and I wouldn’t fuck her with Digby’s dick, much less let her near mine ever again. But that wouldn’t hurt her. That wouldn’t make her feel even an ounce of how she’s made me feel. Plus, she’s full of shit.

  She’ll give up the act eventually. Unfortunately for her, hitching her wagon to Digby isn’t going to be the saving grace she thinks it is. He’ll ditch her as soon as he gets bored with her, just like he did with Kate. And all the others.

  Not my problem.

  From here out, my head’s down. I’ll do my contract for the rest of the season. There should be four open driver seats next season and Jack has scheduled meetings with two of those teams already to discuss the move. I don’t care if they offer ten pence and a free beer every Sunday as a compensation package, I’m out.

  I’ll race again, legitimately, for any other team and that’ll be the end of this bloody nightmare. I won’t have to lie to Mum and Pop again, be embarrassed in front of my fans. I’ll redeem myself on track like I always have.

  As for her, she can fulfill her agenda, get her experience and references, spite her parents and build her brand with Cooper, then fuck off back to America.

  ◆◆◆

  “Sorry, your name is Candy?”

  “Yes, but with an i.”

  “Candy with an I…”

  “Right. C-A-N-D-I.”

  It’s Sunday post-race and I’m leaning on the sidepod of my car in the garage bay. I blew the race and couldn’t care less. Jack is rubbing the bridge of his nose with his eyes closed and shaking his head. Matty is watching us like he’s witnessing a car crash.

  Across the garage bay, on the devil’s side, Mallory is pretending to swipe through yet another new phone after Digby berated his assistant, but I notice her glancing our way when she thinks I can’t see her.

  “This is the new nanny. Candi. With an I,” Jack sighs.

  “Nanny?” The tiny barbie thing in front of me tee-he’s, “I’m a PR professional! I just graduated!”

  “From high school?” I chuckle.

  “From college, silly,” she slaps my arm and twists her shoulders. “I’m perfectly… legal,” she winks.

  My shoulders heave with laughter and I slap Jack on the back. “Bloody perfect!”

  Candi with an I is about 125 centimeters tall with a chest circumference to match. Her hair is down to her ass and bleached bone white, she has gigantic hot pink lips and fake eyelashes. Her voice could shatter crystal. She won’t stop touching me.

  I absolutely loathe her.

  “Can I get a selfie?” She smashes herself into me without waiting for my answer, holding her pink bedazzled iPhone up in front of us. Looking straight ahead for the camera, I can see steam coming out of Mallory’s ears. She glares at me and takes a step toward Digby and… runs her hand up his arm to his shoulder.

  Oh, that’s how it’s going to be.

  I school the tick in my jaw and the lump in my throat. I silence the spike of adrenaline that just surged into my bloodstream.

  “Did your mum name you candy because you’re so sweet?” I ask and watch her making duck lips in the phone screen. The words coming out of my mouth make me sick but I force them. Or, the nausea could be from the copious perfume wafting off Candi with an I. She does not smell like jasmine.

  Stop it. She chose him over you. She’s choosing him right now, over there, smiling up at him.

  Duck Lips giggles, “You’re so funny! My mom is your biggest fan, I can’t wait to show her this!” She wiggles into me.

  “Your mum…” I mutter as she springs up and turns to her next victim. What the hell parallel universe am I in?

  “Jackey, you’re next!” She tries to back into Jack to get a selfie with him, too.

  “My name is Jack. And I’m gay. Extremely gay,” he puts a hand up to stop her and makes a heaving motion with his shoulders feigning being sick.

  Duck Lips pouts then bats her eyes at Matty.

  “Stay away from me,” he deadpans.

  I haven’t been sleeping for shit and maybe I’m delirious but I can’t stop myself from laughing as I rub my exhausted eyes. I mean really, what the fuck has happened to my life?

  “Ahem,” Jack clears his throat, “Candi with an I is apparently the best candidate the Dragon Lady could find on short notice.” His eyes swing to Mallory, then back.

  “I’m very eager to please,” Duck Lips pips at me, swiveling her upper body back and forth on her hips. I don’t know if she thinks that’s attractive or if she has to piss.

  “Are ya’ now,” I ra
ise an eyebrow at her. “Go fetch me a bottle of water, will you, Candi with an I?” I almost called her ‘love’ at the end but even though Scots call everyone ‘love’, I couldn’t do it. I called the bloody trash collector ‘love’ last year when I was half asleep, but now I can’t speak the word.

  The woman I thought I loved is presently twenty feet away from me running her hand up Digby’s back, oblivious to me. He puts an arm around her and runs one finger through her long brown hair.

  “Go on, get,” I swat the most vapid nanny on earth on the ass and she squeals and skirts out of the garage giggling. As I thought, Mallory couldn’t ignore that, a flash of her eyes gave her away.

  This feels like shit. I feel like shit acting like this but there’s nothing else to be done about it. As much as she hurt me, I called Sandra the Dragon Lady and had Mallory transferred to Digby so she wouldn’t even lose her precious job. So her dream would be intact when she leaves after the final race in Abu Dhabi.

  Now I can either mope around like a pussy or I can keep the mask up for the next three months.

  “Come on,” Jack slaps my arm and I suck in a breath and jerk awake. I hadn’t realized I was leaning up against the car in a vacant trance for who knows how long, staring at her. Staring at her staring at me.

  I can’t read her eyes. They’re swollen but I can’t place the emotion. Fuck, I’m exhausted and out of my skull. Pity, it’s probably pity in her eyes.

  “She looks like shit,” Jack mumbles when we’re out of earshot and walking back to the motorhome to pack up and leave for the night.

  “Aye, and how do I look?”

  “It’s not a competition,” he snaps.

  “Everything in my life is a competition.” I don’t want to talk about this. I want it to go away. Unless I keep up the sarcasm and facade every waking minute, the pain in my chest returns.

  “You can’t do this the rest of the season.”

  “Do what,” I grumble as a statement instead of a question because I know damn well what he means.

  “She’s hurting, mate. You’re hurting her.”

  “Me?” I snarl. “What the fuck, who’s side are you on?”

  “I’m just saying, this isn’t going to work for the next three months. Just let Sandra fire her if this is how you’re going to act.”

  “No,” I fire back immediately. I’m filled with rage and hurt but I won’t steal her dreams like mine have been taken from me.

  “Christ mate, figure your shit out.” Jack throws open the door to the motorhome and leaves me standing in the entryway alone.

  Figure my shit out. What is there to figure out? I have my plan.

  Twenty Seven

  “I hope you’re happy now, I could never make you so. You were a hard man, no harder in this world. You made me cold and you made me hard. And you made me the thief of your heart.” - Sinead O’Connor - You Made Me the Thief of Your Heart

  Mallory

  I can’t make it ninety days.

  Not being this close to him, watching him take alternate routes around the paddock to avoid me. Not when I have to stand in the garage with him so close I could take ten steps and shake him, slap him, scream at him, wrap my arms around him, kiss him.

  Despite the awful things he said to the media today, despite how much I hate him right now, I have memory flashes of being held in his arms. Fantasies that he’ll come to me. He’ll wake me up. He’ll tell me this has all been a nightmare, a sick joke. I’m in an endless loop going back and forth between angry and agony.

  He won’t come to me. He won’t forgive me and even if he did, I couldn’t forgive him now. I may not be able to find it at this exact moment, but I know I have a small scrap of dignity deep inside that wouldn’t let me take back a cheater. I can’t take back someone who could hurt me so badly and so deliberately.

  The Paddock Playboy, what was I thinking? He was never going to change.

  It’s over. There will be no happy ever after, no leaping into his arms and being carried off into the sunset. But that doesn’t keep the thoughts away when I have to see him. I wish there was a switch to turn it off loving someone, but there isn’t.

  Between fractured thoughts of Lennox, I have Digby to deal with. I’m so tired and disoriented I can’t even keep coming up with nasty names for him. He is a horrible human on every conceivable level. He is vicious to his own personnel, terrible to any Celeritas staff he finds beneath him, and yet when he goes before the media he acts like a prince. Prince of darkness is more like it.

  Fucking fraud.

  He has me launching brand new social media pages for him in some twisted pissing contest to outdo Lennox. The idiot never had any personal pages but now it’s suddenly priority number one. Well, it may fall secondary only to his priority to get into my pants. Oddly, I feel better knowing that he only wants me to destroy Lennox. His preoccupation isn’t really about me.

  On the wrong side of the garage today, I’m working on Digby’s new Facebook page and grinding my teeth trying to dream up anything positive to say about this piece of trash pervert. He can’t stop to answer my questions for thirty seconds without yelling at William, his poor beaten down assistant. Everything and anything William does is seemingly unacceptable.

  “Do you have personal photos from Monaco you want me to use?” I squeeze my eyes closed and force my mouth to speak the words to Digby. I need to get through this godforsaken Facebook page and leave the garage before Lennox shows up and makes me cry again.

  “Of course I do, Mallory. I live there. William! How many times do I have to tell you? Take this back and bring me an Evian!” Digby sends the battered William away again. He must jog a hundred miles a day on these demeaning errands.

  “Now then, where were we? Monaco, yes?” He turns back to me and blathers.

  Yes, Monaco. Where Lennox borrowed a boat one night and just the two of us went out alone onto the sea, far enough to be away from telephoto lenses, and he made love to me and whispered sweet things in my ear.

  Like he’s done with half the free world, you naive girl.

  I clear my throat and try to concentrate. “Yes, I need photos if you want me to backfill your feed from all the earlier races this season.”

  “If you’d have listened to me and left that uncultured lout in Melbourne, you would have had all that you need by now, wouldn’t you?” His lips flatten into a line. I have never punched a human in my life, but he’s going to be the first one. This is all his fault.

  “Why do you hate him so much?” How much hatred and jealousy can live inside one person?

  “Oh Ms. Mitchell, I don’t think I hate him as much as I imagine you do these days after he humiliated you in such spectacular fashion!”

  “Why?” I ask again, my voice getting growly.

  “It’s simply sport at this point, darling,” he puts a finger under my chin and I close my eyes, try to keep my fists from connecting with his face. “I’ll take everything from him, even his women!” He laughs like the maniacal bastard he is.

  I grit my teeth and shake my head.

  “You’ll come around, Mallory, they all do. The sooner you forget that unrefined dolt, the better off you’ll be. I can take you places, you know. Sky’s the limit.”

  Before I can respond to Digby’s asinine comments, Lennox, Matty, and Jack stroll into their side of the garage and the air leaves my lungs. Lennox is leaning up against his car acting so calm and cool, so unaffected, like I was nothing to him. I guess I was. And those two friends of his that do his bidding, they can eat a bag of dicks, too.

  “Just give me the photos, Digby.” I try not to look at Lennox.

  William has returned with a warm bottle of Evian. I don’t know if William is so abused his brain no longer functions, if he’s not the brightest bulb in the box, or if he’s just being spiteful. They’re all valid possibilities.

  Digby takes the warm bottle of water from William and shoves it in his face. “You absolute imbecile. Why do I pay you? I’ll g
et my own water, like a peasant! Do something useful and send her the Monaco photos!” Digby points his head at me then slithers his way out of the garage. God forbid he get his own fucking drink.

  William reaches into his pocket and hands me an iPhone, “I guess they’d be on here?”

  I swipe and open up the phone as William steps back and enjoys his moment of silence from his tyrannical boss. Is this Digby’s phone? Are the photos he took of me on here? I look around nervously and find the photo folder, my fingers going as fast as they can. I can’t find the photos of me, damn it. Pictures of yachts, pictures of women in bikinis on yachts, oh my god he’s such a douche.

  Maybe they’re in the Recently Deleted album if he’s as stupid as I think he is. Scroll, scroll, scroll. I don’t see them. More yachts, parties, and several videos. My thumb hits one of them and it blows up on the screen and starts playing.

  A party? No wait, there’s a half-naked girl on a table. Is this sick fuck recording other unsuspecting women? The phone is propped on a surface and I have to crane my head to keep the perspective. A shirtless Digby comes into view on camera he bends over the girl, taps a vial of something onto her abdomen, then - oh my god. He’s doing coke off her!

  “What are you doing?” Oh fuck, Digby’s back.

  I drop my hand with the phone and hit the home button over and over to hide what I was looking at. I don’t think he saw. “What are you doing with my phone?” He jerks it out of my hand.

  “Getting the Monaco photos, like you said,” I smile at him with as much phoniness as I can muster.

  Holy shit holy shit holy shit.

  My gut is rolling, between this and the turmoil I have been in for days now over Lennox, I feel like I’m going to faint. Lennox, I have to tell Lennox. This would solve all his problems at Celeritas.