The Chase (23 page)

Jonas wandered off, and Kendall followed Suzanne to the large kitchen with its granite-covered center island. “The house is beautiful, Suzanne.”

It was very clean and decorated simply, with strong lines and warm, neutral colors. There was a lot of black-and-white photography on the walls, and fuzzy blankets in dark baskets next to chairs and the sofa. The kitchen had a few guests in it, including Evan, but most people were in the backyard.

Kendall couldn’t help the jump her heart gave at the sight of Evan, a beer bottle in his hand, leaning against the counter by the refrigerator. He was talking to Jonas and hadn’t seen her yet.

“Thanks. We figured with the rugrat on the way, we needed a fenced-in yard and a kid-friendly house and neighborhood. We’re five minutes from Tammy and Elec and thirty minutes from Ryder’s folks, so it’s nice.”

It was nice.

And something Kendall wondered if she would ever have.

She had been raised to feel like she had to choose between racing and a family life like this, in a house in the suburbs.

Her priority had always been racing, her choice a career. But now she wondered if that was the right one, because with Suzanne and her adorable pregnant belly in front of her, in her gorgeous new home, with Evan five feet away from Kendall, she had a longing she’d never had before, for a home and family of her own.

Which wasn’t good to dwell on.

This wasn’t an option for her. Not right now, anyway. She and Evan couldn’t even acknowledge their relationship in public, let alone set up house and start having kids. It was going to be five years before she could even consider kids, once she was established and could take a season off.

Suddenly feeling very depressed, she grabbed a brownie off the plate Suzanne had set on the island and bit into it. “Congratulations, by the way. When are you due?”

Suzanne opened her mouth to answer, but then clearly spotted something behind Kendall, her eyes going wide. “What the hell are you guys doing?”

Kendall swiveled around and saw that Ryder’s crew chief and two guys who drove for Carl in the truck series were sitting in the front of the computer. Which had an image of a very large, very naked penis on it.

The crew chief turned. “Hey, sorry, Suz. It was an accident. I was trying to show the guys the new fishing rod I got and I typed in dicks dot com, which apparently does not take you to the sporting goods store.”

“Oh, for crying out loud. Just close it then. I don’t want some porn site virus on my computer,” Suzanne said.

“Holy shit . . .” One of the drivers, Jake Wesson, who was in his early twenties and didn’t look like he needed a razor yet, stared in raw fascination. “That’s unnatural. That’s the biggest dick I’ve ever seen in my life.”

“How many dicks have you seen, exactly?” Suzanne asked him, which was a legitimate question. “Now turn that shit off, this is a grown-up house now. We’re not going to talk about big dicks.”

Kendall found herself liking Suzanne more and more, as she didn’t seem to realize the irony of swearing while saying it was a grown-up house.

“Wait, just let me print one of these out.” The other driver, Marlin Jasper, turned and grinned. “Figured I’d give it to Kendall. She needs a dick if she wants to win a race.”

Kendall wasn’t so amused anymore. He meant it to be funny, sure, but he also meant to get in a legitimate dig. Marlin had been none too happy when Kendall had hit the cup series. “So that’s what it takes? Interesting. Since I’ve won more races than you, I’m a little curious as to what that means you have in your pants.”

And with that, she turned and headed for the backyard, swiping another brownie on her way by the island.

 

 

EVAN
had been aware of Kendall from the very minute she crossed the threshold of Ryder and Suzanne’s new house. He had been standing in the kitchen, getting a beer out of the fridge and talking to Ty McCordle when he had heard Kendall’s voice, exchanging words with Suzanne in the foyer. He had watched out of the corner of his eye as she came into the kitchen with an opened bag of Doritos and set it on the counter.

He had desperately wanted to speak to her, but she wasn’t looking his way, and Jonas had joined him and Ty, his lips slightly orange.

“Dude, you should be able to eat whatever you want,” Ty was telling Jonas. “Seriously, man up and tell her no.”

“I can’t!” Jonas said. “Nikki gets really upset. She says that I think her ideas are stupid if I say I don’t want to do it, and Nikki really hates being called stupid.”

Evan found that rather entertaining since Nikki had the IQ of a chickpea. And weighed about as much.

“I’m just saying that she’ll beat you down if you let her. It should be an equal partnership between a man and a woman.”

“Ty?” His fiancée, Imogen, called to him from over the fruit platter, where she was piling grapes on her plate. “Remember not to drink too much tonight. It has a negative effect on your already compromised ability to get up in the morning, and we have that appointment with the florist for the wedding at nine.”

“I won’t.” Ty set his beer down on the counter and made a face.

“Man up, huh?” Evan told him with a grin.

“Screw you. I guess while Strickland here is bingeing in secret on chips, I’ll be chugging my beer in the bathroom.”

Evan saw that Kendall was coming back through the kitchen on her way outside, her face stormy as she grabbed a brownie and brought it to her lips. He had seen her at the computer with some of the guys, and clearly something had irritated her.

He wanted to touch her. He wanted to put his hand on the small of her back and lean in and kiss the top of her head. He wanted to hold her hand like a teenager and let everyone know that this amazing woman loved him.

It wasn’t planned or intentional, but he couldn’t stop himself. He blurted out, “Hey Kendall, want to be my partner in a game of cornhole?”

She stopped walking, startled, and turned towards them, brushing crumbs off her lips. “No.”

Then she went through the door to the back patio.

“Guess she told you,” Ty said.

Except that Evan had seen what Kendall was hiding by keeping her head down—there had been tears in her eyes.

His phone vibrated in his pocket. He had a text from Kendall.

Evan was both touched that she had confided in him and wanted comfort from him, and seriously pissed that anyone was giving her a hard time. He sent her a reply.

 

There’s a hug with your name on it.

But she didn’t answer, and Evan found himself eating chip and dip and worrying.

This secret relationship crap was not a good time, and he didn’t like it one freaking bit.

 

 

EVAN
was definitely feeling the cold sting of rejection all the way around.

Kendall had avoided him at the Jeffersons’ housewarming party completely despite her text, always leaving a room when he entered it and only staying an hour and a half before she just up and left.

He had wanted to point out to her that acting like he was contagious was just as noteworthy and obvious as a public make-out session would have been. But he hadn’t been able to tell her anything because she’d taken off like the hounds of hell were at her feet.

Now sitting on the patio at his brother Elec’s four days later, he was being ignored by his entire family except for his sister-in-law, Tamara.

The news of his firing Eve hadn’t gone over well.

So while he had still been invited to Easter brunch, no one was throwing any warm fuzzies his way.

Which was bad enough, but the burden of seeing Kendall in secret was also wearing on him. After a week of pretending they weren’t together, weren’t completely crazy about each other, he was wondering how in the hell he was supposed to pull this off long-term. It wasn’t natural to have to play it cool when you were in love. Not that he wanted to recite poetry to her or jump on a couch about it, but he wanted to not have to pretend that she was just a casual acquaintance.

Like here it was Easter and all he really wanted to do was spend the day with her, showing her off to his family. He wanted to claim her, around the people who mattered the most to him, and in public. Like a normal couple.

But Kendall hadn’t even answered the text he had sent her an hour earlier, and the other people who mattered the most to him, his family, were acting like he was the devil in a navy blazer anyway. Nothing felt easy or normal, and he was aggravated with the whole thing.

When his phone vibrated in his pocket, he eagerly pulled it out, only to have his hopes dashed when it saw it was Sara, Nikki’s friend he had slept with that one night on the guys’ camping trip. She had texted him a couple of times over the last few months and he had politely deflected her interest. It was kind of weird she was contacting him on Easter, but he didn’t even bother to read the message.

It wasn’t Kendall, that’s all he cared about.

Tugging his tie off, he wondered why the hell he had even bothered to dress up. His mother demanded it, but then she’d said all of two words to him all day.

Elec, wearing his own monkey suit, plopped down on the chaise chair next to him, holding his hand up against the sun. “Damn, it’s bright out here.”

Evan just grunted and took a sip of his beer. Elec’s stepkids were in the yard playing on their swing set, and Evan figured they had about three minutes before their mother realized and came to holler at them about ruining their Easter clothes.

Women were difficult. No two ways about it.

“You’re being a douche bag, you do know that, right?” his brother asked.

Evan glared at him. “Me? I’m the one getting treated like an infectious disease.”

“You fired Eve, man, that’s heavy-duty shit. And you didn’t even bother to talk to anyone about it.”

“It was overdue. She and I don’t work well together, and I don’t know on whose behalf she’s strategizing, but it sure in the hell wasn’t mine. She basically handed me over on a platter to Carl.”

“I can appreciate that she’s difficult to work with, trust me. But Eve’s intentions are always to sell you and me to the team owners and to the public.”

“Look, I don’t really want to talk about this.” The truth was, he knew Eve wanted to advance his career. But she was also calculating and underhanded. There was no reason to argue over it. “What’s done is done and I bet we’ll all be happier once everybody gets the hell over it.”

Evan could hear the women chatting in the kitchen behind him and he watched the kids romping around. He wanted this for himself someday, this domestic simplicity, a family of his own.

The pathetic thing was that he’d always wanted it with Kendall. When he’d lost her, he’d given up on that dream. Now he wanted it again, full force, with an ache that sat in him like a serious case of indigestion.

He knew he couldn’t have it. Not anytime soon, anyways. And that sucked.

“Uncle Evan, look at me!”

Elec’s stepdaughter Hunter, who Evan thought was seven or eight by now, was dangling upside down off of a trapeze swing on the play set, her pink poofy dress falling over her face, exposing her tights.

“Hey, that’s awesome,” Evan called back to her. “You’re like a little monkey. Without a head.”

Her laughter rang forth even from beneath all that fabric. “Headless monkey! Headless monkey!” she shrieked.

The kid made Evan laugh. She was random and full of adventure.

“Be careful getting down!” Elec called as Hunter started to flip her legs all the way over for a dismount.

She landed safely. On her knees.

“I saw that one coming,” Elec said, wincing as Hunter stood up, covered in mud from hip to ankles. “Tamara is going to kill me.”

“It’s an ugly dress,” Evan told him. “It looks like she’s a giant cupcake. No loss. And how is that your fault anyway? She’s the one who fell.”

“Tell that to her mother.”

“We can tell Tamara I pushed Hunter.”

Elec looked at him and they both started laughing.

“I just might do that.”

“Everyone else is already pissed at me. Might as well make it the whole family.”

“No one is pissed at you. Well, okay, Eve is. But the problem is, you don’t talk to anybody. You just do stuff, and then no one knows how to react. No one even knows what you really want, man.”

Evan scoffed. “Are you for real? I’m supposed to run around talking about my feelings? When did that ever become something any dude does?”

Besides, who would listen?

“I’m not talking like deep dark secrets. Hell, I don’t want to know those. But tell us what’s going on in your personal life. Explain what you want from your career, out of life.”

Draining the remains of his beer, Evan watched Hunter following her brother down the slide, not the least bit deterred by her mucked-up dress.

“What do I want? What do I really want? Damn, I don’t know, Elec. Sometimes I don’t even know why I drive.”

“I don’t always know why you drive either. Sometimes it seems to me like you do it because this career was put in front of you.”

“It was. Maybe I do.” Their summer weather had retreated and a biting breeze cut over him. “It’s what a Monroe does—we drive.”

“Only if you want to. Is there anything else you could see yourself doing?”

Evan pondered that for a second. “Hell, I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it. I wouldn’t mind being an owner someday. But I’m too young to do anything but drive, aren’t I?” The very idea of not being the one behind the wheel was strange in the extreme. But not all that unpleasant, actually. It would be nice to have a different challenge for a change.

“Not necessarily. I guess I question if you drive for the win, or because you love to drive.”