The Chase (28 page)

She had been afraid that’s what Carl would say, and the last thing in the universe she wanted was for her proposal of marriage to damage Evan’s career. He was her husband and she wanted to support him, not hinder him. He didn’t even know she was at the office. He had gone home to pack some bags and handle some business and had been intending to just give Carl a call.

“Marriage is enough of a risk, Carl, don’t put added pressure on him. What Evan is doing on the track has nothing to do with our relationship.”

“Look, I’m not some old codger down on love.”

She wanted to ask how old Carl actually was. She was thinking he was really only in his mid-forties, but she wasn’t sure given the silver in his hair.

“But racing is big money, you know that. I can’t afford to lose and neither can your husband.”

“Then don’t make it harder for him by giving him threats instead of congratulations.” She was well aware she was treading on thin ice here, but it was the right thing to do for her husband, her marriage.

Kendall braced herself for a reprimand but Carl just grinned. “I’ll see what I can do, Mrs. Monroe. Congrats. And bust some ass on that track, you hear me?”

She let her shoulders relax. Smiling back, she was tempted to salute him, but restrained herself. “Thanks. You can count on it.”

Feeling much lighter, she said good-bye and left, wondering if she could talk her brand-new husband into a nooner.

 

 

“WHAT’S
married life like?” a reporter asked Evan on Sunday as he strolled from pit road to the platform for drivers’ introductions.

Evan grinned. “So far, so good. Best six days of my life.”

The reporter, a guy named Ed, who had been around stock car racing for the majority of Evan’s career, grinned. “Never thought we’d see the day. You guys are all falling like dominoes.”

“I guess we’re smart enough to know a good thing when we see it.”

“Can I get a quick interview with you and your wife?”

“If you can find her.” Evan glanced around and didn’t see Kendall. She liked to be alone before a race, and the last he’d seen her, she was in a quiet corner in the garage. It wasn’t his style, but he respected hers.

It had been a hell of a week. A fantastic, bliss-filled whirlwind. The press conference had gone well. Carl had chewed him out privately, but had smiled publicly, and Untamed Deodorant was going gaga, in a good way, over the news.

As Tuesday had blogged on Monday, it was a stock car racing first. Husband and wife both driving in the cup series. Never been done before.

Evan didn’t care about being first, he just cared that he’d won the ultimate race of all—the one for love. It was corny and sappy and had him eating all the words he’d ever spoken in disdain to his buddies, but he’d gladly swallow them down if it meant feeling like this.

“Hey, here she is.” Evan couldn’t stop the grin from spreading across his face when his wife came into view. Wife. It felt even better than he ever could have imagined.

“Kendall, congratulations,” Ed told her.

“Thanks.” She smiled at the reporter then raised her eyebrows at Evan. “Are you talking trash, Monroe?”

“I’m just telling Ed you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“Smooth.” Ed nodded in approval.

A female reporter had noticed the two of them and joined in. “Can I see your ring, Kendall?”

“It’s locked up. Didn’t think it was smart to wear it driving. But trust me, it’s beautiful.”

“Practically vintage,” Evan told her.

“Practically? How is a ring ‘practically’ vintage?”

“He bought it for me ten years ago,” Kendall said, surprising Evan. He hadn’t thought she’d be willing to share that. “Only we broke up before he could offer it to me.”

“Sometimes you’re in the chase longer than you expected,” Evan said, knowing he sounded like a complete dork. He kissed Kendall on the top of her head in a move he was sure would embarrass her, but he didn’t care. “But the win is worth the wait.”

The female reporter actually put her hand over her heart. “Oh, my God, that was so sweet.”

Ed rolled his eyes. “You’re ruining it for us, man. First McCordle pops the question on live TV, then Jefferson remarries his ex-wife, and now you’ve gone all Air Supply lyrics on us? Bachelors everywhere are weeping.”

“Don’t let him fool you. He’s a real jerk at home.” Kendall smiled and leaned over and kissed his cheek. “See you in five. Love you.”

Evan grinned as he watched her walk away. “She’s hot and funny. Damn, I’m a lucky man.”

He hadn’t turned his cell phone off yet and it buzzed in his pocket. Pulling it out, he saw it was another text from Sara. Frowning, he wondered if she’d seen the news about his marriage yet. Surely that would dissuade the girl.

 

I really, really need to talk to u. Now.

 

Was she nuts? He had a race starting in an hour. And what the hell was there to talk about?

He had barely hit send before he got another text from her.

 

I’m pregnant. Ur the father.

Evan stopped walking. All the blood rushed out of his head and he felt like he’d had the wind punched out of him. Like he might pass out. Like the entire world around him had started to tilt and spin.

Oh. My. God.

It couldn’t be true. There was no way. It had been months and months since he had stupidly slept with Sara, and if she were pregnant, wouldn’t she have said something sooner?

“Jesus,” he whispered, his face burning, mouth pooling with nervous saliva, stomach churning like a whirlpool of acid.

He deleted the noxious message, unable to even look at it.

 

How far along?

 

Maybe if she was lying, that would trip her up.

But her response was immediate.

 

Nineteen weeks. It’s a girl.

 

Evan thought back to the camping trip he’d taken with the guys, when the women had crashed. That had been before Thanksgiving, early, maybe mid-November. He wasn’t exactly sure. But it was almost the middle of April, which meant five months, which meant about twenty weeks . . . “Oh, my God.”

For a horrible second, he thought he was going to hurl, but he drew a few deep breaths and managed to control it.

“Hey, you okay?” Ed asked him, clapping him on the shoulder. “You look a little green.”

“My breakfast isn’t sitting right,” he said, forcing the words. “I’m okay though, thanks.”

“I think they’re about to call your name.”

Evan looked at the stage, feeling a little frantic. Damn, he had to pull it together. If Sara was pregnant, it was possible he wasn’t the father. They had only spent one night together, and hell, that had really only been about thirty minutes, not a
night
. Maybe she wasn’t even pregnant. Maybe it was just a ploy to get his attention since he had politely turned down her advances in the months since.

Or maybe she was pregnant and he was the father.

A baby.

With a woman who wasn’t his wife. His brand-new, only-been-hitched-for-six-days wife.

Oh. My. God.

 

 

“I
don’t know, Kendall, I think you’re a bad luck bride,” Jim teased her over the radio. “Your new hubby is awfully distracted out there today.”

“What’s he doing?” Kendall frowned as she took turn two on lap fifty-seven, wishing she had an additional blocking strip on her visor, since the sun was brutal on the track in Phoenix. Evan had seemed fine before the race. Downright relaxed.

“He’s all over the place. Skittish. But don’t you worry about him, you’ve got your own problems given how tight you’re running.”

“Then quit teasing me about my husband,” she told him, still getting a thrill over the use of that word.

“Come on, I have to, it’s too damn good not to.”

She laughed. “Fair enough.”

There were only a few seconds of dead air between them before Jim was back on. “Caution. Evan just spun out into the infield.”

Even as she reacted automatically to the information, keeping her car under control and assessing what was going on around her, Kendall’s heart plummeted in her chest. “He okay?”

“Yep. He’s heading to the garage with a message for you to kick some ass.”

She grinned inside her helmet. “Tell him I’m on it.”

“If I have to start relaying love messages back and forth I’m going to puke in my mouth” was Jim’s opinion.

So just to screw with him Kendall made kiss-kiss sounds.

He laughed.

“Now leave me alone, I’m working here.”

With extreme effort, she forced Evan out of her mind and her focus back to the task at hand.

 

 

“WHAT
the hell?”

Evan glanced over at his sister. “I don’t have time, Eve. I’m trying to get back out there.” His crew was pounding away on his car, trying to repair the damage he’d done when he’d spun out into the infield.

But Eve touched his arm. “Are you okay? For real? That was a weird accident, Evan. It’s like you just forgot to pay attention for a second.”

“You guys are doing awesome. Give me five,” he told his crew and walked Eve to the other side of the garage, where no one could hear. “Look, if I tell you this, promise not to yell at me. Just help me figure out what the fuck I’m supposed to do, okay?”

Her eyes widened. “Okay. What’s going on?”

“You remember Nikki Strickland, Jonas’s wife?”

“No one can forget her. She has the intelligence of a sock puppet.”

“Well, she has a friend, Sara.” Evan pulled off his glove, suddenly feeling the need to gnaw on his fingernail. “And she’s just like Nikki, only maybe a little angrier, a little smarter.”

“Yeah? What about her? I see her with Nikki all the time. Who’s she dating, by the way, because she’s clearly pregnant.”

Evan spit out the nail he’d just ripped off of his finger. So much for his hopes that she wasn’t really pregnant. “How do you know she’s pregnant?”

“She weighs like seventy-three pounds. A pregnant belly is totally obvious on a woman built like that . . . Oh, my Lord in heaven.” Eve’s hand went up to her mouth. “You aren’t saying . . .”

He was. Evan felt the need to puke again. “They came up when we were camping last fall at Lake Norman. I’d been drinking, she’d really been drinking. I tried to say no, but then she was relentless, and it had been a long time since I’d had sex . . .”

God, it sounded even worse out loud than it did in his head. He went at his nail again.

Eve grabbed his hand and shoved it to his side. “You’re making yourself bleed, get ahold of yourself. So she’s pregnant. You slept with her. What makes you think you’re the father?”

“Because she said I am. Today. She’s been sending me text messages, but I told her I wasn’t interested in seeing her again. Then . . . bam. Today she says she’s pregnant.”

“Why would she wait like five months to tell you?”

“I don’t know!”

“Well, I’m going to go find her and ask her. I saw her in the boxes with Nikki not ten minutes ago.”

“What is she doing in Phoenix? We’re two thousand miles from Charlotte.”

“How the hell should I know? But I imagine she came with Nikki.”

“You’re going to talk to her? Shouldn’t I talk to her? Are pregnant women even supposed to fly?”

“I think they can. I mean, obviously she did. But yes, I’m going to talk to her. I’m going to arrange for the two of you to meet somewhere completely private where no one will see you. We’re keeping this totally quiet until that baby is born and we can do a DNA test.”

His sister’s face had gone mulish. “I don’t want to be an asshole, Eve . . . she’s pregnant.” She’d already gone through half the pregnancy alone, he couldn’t see giving her the cold shoulder until some test proved it was his. Unless she’d slept with another guy a week before or after him, it was looking highly likely this kid was his, and even if it wasn’t, he had to give her the benefit of the doubt and some support. It just seemed like the right thing to do.

He had been there in that tent that night, too. He’d been as irresponsible as she had.

“No one says you have to be an asshole. But for the love of God, do not sign
anything
without me and our lawyer.”

“What would I be signing?” His own death certificate, when Kendall found out what a goddamn idiot he was? “What am I going to say to my wife?”

There was a pause, then Eve rushed to his defense, which he had to say he totally appreciated. “What can she say? This happened long before the two of you were back together. Accidents happen. Sex happens. It’s awkward and awful and not exactly a great newlywed discovery, but what are you going to do? It will all work out.”

“You’re right. We’ll just deal with it. Okay. I’m going back out there to finish this race for whatever points I can get. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Eve gave him a smile, even if it looked somewhat maniacal. “We’ll figure it out.”

 

 

KENDALL
zoomed past the checkered flag, less than two seconds behind Jack Daniel Davidson, in an unbelievable second-place finish. She yelled into her radio as she could hear her crew all giving shouts and whoops of excitement. When she flew into pit road, they were jumping up and down and fist pumping, which is exactly how she felt. As soon as she could, she was out of the car and jumping up and down with them, joy making her feel like she might burst.

When she got her helmet out, her crew chief put his hands on the back of her head and shook her around a little. “Damn, girl, being a bride done you good!”

She laughed, a sweaty strand of hair escaping her ponytail and sticking to her cheek. Swiping at it, she gave high fives to each of the guys on her team and gratefully accepted a bottle of water.