Chapter Nine
Imola, Italy
TWELVE DAYS LATER, at the Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari, Taz inspected the track with his drivers, debriefed the race engineers and strategists, and held a video conference with his research team in the UK.
By mid-afternoon, he’d put in more than a full day’s work.
Yet his temper simmered as he fielded endless questions from his employees, colleagues and the press about Millie’s whereabouts.
Before he’d had a chance to suggest that they meet up in London during the break, Millie told him she’d see him in Italy, and he hadn’t seen her since.
As she’d done during the Shanghai race, Millie slid into his thoughts far too often and usually at inopportune moments.
His thoughts often went to what Millie was doing, thinking, eating for God’s sake!
For the first time in his life, being apart from his lover annoyed him.
That he missed her irritated him even more.
Exchanging work emails and brief PR-related calls didn’t cut it.
For the first time he could remember, the only time, work had competition for his attention.
Taz rubbed the back of his neck. Millie’d arrived in Italy six hours ago; she should’ve been at the track for hours now, but he’d yet to lay eyes on her.
Where was she? They might be lovers, but he knew Millie well enough to know that her pride wouldn’t let her slack off on the job.
And her job meant being at his side or, at the very least, within earshot.
Had some PR disaster occurred he wasn’t yet aware of? Was she putting out PR fires? Or was she ill? She’d been working long, long hours in a high stress environment. He was a demanding boss and expected results. Was she finding the work—him—overwhelming?
Taz checked his watch, shook his head and clenched his jaw.
He wouldn’t find the answers to his questions here.
He had a few free hours before the sponsor dinner, enough time to track Millie down and ask her directly.
He barked a command at an intern, instructing him to organise a courtesy car to be waiting for him at the turnstiles.
Sliding his aviator shades onto his face, he raked a hand through his hair and strode through the exit.
The roar of the gathered fans was deafening, the flashes from cameras cutting through the overcast sky.
Hopefully his sunglasses masked his anxiety.
He wasn’t used to worrying about anyone, ever, and he was exasperated Millie could make him feel this way.
But the world didn’t need to know any of that.
As he stepped into the parking lot, his eyebrows rose. Parked a yard away was a sleek, limited-edition Ferrari, a beast of a machine. This was his courtesy car? Nice. Not enough to lift his mood, but nice.
He took the fob the olive-skinned brunette held out to him and ignored her sexy smile.
He slid behind the wheel and ran his hands over the leather steering wheel. The interior was immaculate, the idling engine a low-throated growl as he tapped the start button. He punched the accelerator, the roar of the car rolling over the crowd. His fans bellowed their approval.
Precision and power. He might have to buy one of these for himself.
Ten minutes later, Taz pulled up in front of the boutique hotel where he and Millie were staying while in Italy. Killing the engine, he stepped out and pushed his sunglasses into his hair.
Striding up the stone steps to the small but luxurious lobby, he spotted the hotel manager. With a flick of his wrist, he slapped the key fob into the man’s hand.
‘Move this for me, will you?’
The man looked from Taz to the Ferrari parked under his portico, his eyes sparkling with appreciation. ‘Sì, signore. It will be my pleasure.’
‘I understand that Ms James has checked in. Where is she?’ he demanded, hooking the arm of his sunglasses into the V of his shirt.
‘I believe she is on the back patio.’
Taz nodded. If someone had told him, a few weeks back, that he, the team owner and its principal driver, the most essential component of De Rossi, would be chasing down one of his employees, he would’ve rolled his eyes.
He’d would’ve snapped terse explanation: he was paying her salary and would demand to know why she wasn’t at the racetrack, doing her job.
Work always came first. Vesuvius could erupt, an asteroid could strike, but his team and the De Rossi brand were everyone’s number one priority.
But he knew Millie well enough, and trusted her just enough, to know she’d have a damn good reason for not being at the track. Something was wrong. He knew it like he knew his own signature.
Taz stepped onto the back patio, his eyes immediately sweeping over the space.
Thick, ancient vines tossed shade over the area, shielding it from the summer sun.
It was a peaceful retreat, a world away from the chaos of the racetrack.
In the far corner sat a low-slung comfortable two-seater couch, paired with a sleek coffee table.
Millie was curled up in the corner, her legs tucked beneath her, a laptop open on her knees.
She was absorbed, her brows drawn together in concentration, fingers poised above the keyboard.
She was dressed in a pair of form-fitting hot pink tailored shorts and an oversize button-down shirt, sleeves rolled up.
Her hair caught the soft light filtering through the vines, and he experienced a punch of lust and a now-familiar hit of need.
He leaned against the door-frame for a moment, watching her, feeling the heat of his anxiety wrestle with something else entirely—a pull he didn’t want to acknowledge.
He ignored the profound whisper of There she is.
No, this wasn’t the time for fanciful bullshit.
He needed a reset, immediately. This was about work, and her being AWOL today.
When she finally noticed him, Millie would have to justify why she’d skipped work and disappeared when she was most needed.
‘Where have you been? And why aren’t you answering your phone?’
Millie’s head shot up, and her eyes widened. ‘Taz…’
He walked over to her, telling himself he had to treat her like he would any other employee. ‘Your PR position requires you to be trackside, with me. I don’t recall a clause stating that you can hang out at the hotel!’
Millie looked away and lifted her hand to her forehead, covering her eyes.
He frowned. There was no avoiding it: he was definitely missing something.
He couldn’t remember Millie ever taking a day off and slacking on the job before.
She routinely worked long hours and didn’t complain. ‘Are you sick? Do you have a migraine?’
She shook her head but kept her eyes on her screen, her bottom lip between her teeth. Concern replaced the last vestiges of irritation. ‘Millie, look at me,’ he softly commanded.
It took her a while to obey his order, and she couldn’t meet his eyes, looking at the base of his throat instead. He skimmed his eyes over her face, taking in her red, swollen eyes and her pink nose. She was either having an allergic reaction or…
‘Have you been crying?’ he asked.
Her small shrug answered that question. Taz silently cursed and rocked on his feet.
He didn’t engage with people emotionally and rarely had personal conversations.
He didn’t have the faintest idea how to ask her why she’d cried hard enough to leave traces of tears on her face.
Her bottom lip was still wobbling, for God’s sake!
‘What’s wrong? Why the tears?’ he demanded, wincing at his too-harsh tone. He prayed she didn’t start crying again. He wasn’t a fan of emotions and didn’t know how to handle a crying woman. Normally he walked away and either left them to get on with it or…
Truthfully, there wasn’t an or. He never bothered to engage.
Taz looked at the door leading into the hotel and calculated he could be inside in three seconds and back at the car in five, at Imola in fifteen minutes. He knew what he was doing there.
Here?
Not a bit.
But this was Millie, and because she was hurting, the heart he didn’t know he possessed ached a little too. Walking away was not an option so he’d have to man up. If he could dice death on a racetrack at three hundred miles per hour, he could do this too.
Maybe.
He rubbed the back of his neck and walked to stand between the coffee table and the couch. Closing her laptop, he pushed it to the side and shoved the table back, making room for his long legs. Sitting on the table he faced her, and up close he could see her road-map red eyes.
‘Talk to me, Millie.’
Millie unfolded her legs and rested her forearms on her knees. ‘We both know that you’d much rather be anywhere else but here, Taz,’ she said with all the charm of a snapping turtle.
She was looking to pick a fight, and he didn’t blame her. It was so much easier to be angry than vulnerable. ‘Why the tears, Millie?’ he quietly asked. ‘And I’m not moving until I get an answer.’
‘Ben…’
Ben? What about him? Her shoulders slumped, and her head dropped, and she played with the silver charm on her bracelet. The charm that Ben always tied to the shoelaces of his racing boot. The charm Ben had been wearing when he crashed at…
Taz swallowed his harsh curse. Ben had died at Imola. His car had spun out and he was dead before the medics could get to him.
But because he was selfish and self-absorbed, and incredibly busy and highly stressed, he’d forgotten.
God, of course Millie would find it difficult to go back to the place where Ben died, to be able to pinpoint the spot where his life ended.
Taz rubbed his hands over his face, embarrassed at his lack of awareness.
Confused by his need to comfort and protect.
And maybe it was time for him to admit that the real reason he’d left the track, and his responsibilities, was because he needed to be with Millie and was desperate to connect with her.
That he’d missed her, and not only in his bed.
He’d missed her steadying influence, her wry humour and the way she kept his feet firmly on the ground.
But this wasn’t about him and what he needed from her. Faced with visiting the site where Ben had lost his life, the person she’d loved the most, Millie was in a world of hurt. And that was an acid-tipped knife in his soul.
She used the ball of her hand to blot away her tears. ‘I thought I’d be fine, but I couldn’t make myself go to the track today. I mean, I know I need to, it’s my job. I also want to lay flowers where he died. But I couldn’t muster the courage today.’
He could throw himself into the tightest of corners at three hundred miles an hour and make split-second decisions that risked a car worth several fortunes and the livelihoods of two thousand employees across his racing and technology divisions.
But when faced with Millie’s tear-streaked cheeks and eyes saturated with pain, Taz felt utterly out of his depth.
She lifted those shattered eyes to his. ‘I feel like such a coward, Taz.’ Her voice cracked, and he winced. Her raw honesty drilled into him, through him.
His hands itched to comfort her, to stroke her hair, to tuck the damp strands clinging to her face behind her ears.
But he held back. There were different kinds of bravery, and Taz knew—deep in the darkest, most hidden part of himself—that hers eclipsed his.
He could charm his way into any woman’s bed, play polo and golf at near-professional levels and speed-read a contract while dissecting a complicated financial statement.
But showing someone your wounds, revealing the bruises on your soul, took strength he didn’t possess.
Facing the past, wrestling with its jagged edges instead of locking it away in an unreachable vault, took a fortitude he could only admire from a distance.
When it came to emotions, he was broken.
Stunted. Incapable of anything more profound than surface-level banter.
They said you learned how to love from the environment you grew up in, and while he’d witnessed the love his father bestowed on Alex, there’d been none left over for him.
He’d received so little affection and love, he had no concept of how the process worked.
To understand meant acknowledging he was unloved, and for most of his life that was too hard to do.
He’d fallen into the self-protecting habit of dismissing it as being inconsequential and unneeded.
As a result, feelings terrified him, and this woman, with her tears and her unbearable vulnerability, utterly dismantled him.
He tried to form words—words to tell her she was remarkable, that her courage left him in awe—but they stuck in his throat.
They were too big, too tangled, too dangerous.
They wouldn’t come out. So he did the only thing he knew how to do: He retreated.
He pulled back, slammed down his emotional shutters and wrapped himself in the cold, impenetrable roll cage that had always protected him.
But because he needed to say something, anything, he retreated to where he felt comfortable.
‘You should focus on work,’ he said, wincing at his too-flat voice.
‘You’re great at what you do, and it’s a good place to…
’ How to say this without revealing too much? ‘…lose yourself.’
She tipped her head, her eyes huge in her face. ‘Is that what you do, Tazio?’
He couldn’t admit that, couldn’t widen that crack in his psyche.
Not even with her, the woman who’d burrowed deeper under his skin than anyone else.
He had to keep some distance, stay emotionally safe.
Keep those feelings controlled and contained.
‘We have so much to do, and little time to do it in. Let’s get back to work. ’
When hurt flickered in her eyes, he knew she’d been expecting a hug, some affection, maybe even for him to tell her that he was happy to see her.
But he couldn’t touch her, not now. If he did, his control would shatter and he’d expose how much he’d missed her, that he wanted her, would show her every inch of his emotional underbelly. Vulnerability was never acceptable.
Disappointment, stark and cutting, slashed through her eyes and across her face, a hot blade through butter.
They said he was an insensitive bastard. Cold. Unfeeling. Selfish. He hated labels and fought against being shoved into a box. But as he stood there, watching the light in her eyes dim, he knew the press, and the world, had him pegged.