Chapter 3
Ava
I’m making a huge mistake.
I know good and well that I shouldn’t be buddying up with Zaid Yousef, but my god, I could practically feel the anxiety rolling off him. How was I supposed to throw him back to the wolves?
All right, yeah, he’s a grown man who can handle himself, whatever.
But he’s been through the wringer already and I owe him, no matter what he tries to say.
Is inviting him out for bourbon and fries going to solve whatever’s going on with him?
Probably not. But maybe it’ll lift some of the melancholy draped around his shoulders. Potatoes usually have that effect.
Besides, he’s not the only one who needs to get out of here.
I feared that leaving the party with Zaid would be a challenge, but we’ve made it out a back exit and into the alley behind the building without much fuss.
The problem now is how I get this incredibly recognizable man to a second location without blowing our cover.
I shared a car with Edith coming here and planned to grab a taxi home, but that’s out of the question unless we want to face all the photographers out front.
And even though the pub I have in mind isn’t too far to walk to, I can’t manage it in heels, and having a devastatingly handsome man in a tuxedo walking with me would immediately draw attention.
But before I can ask Zaid for ideas, a hulking man steps out of an SUV idling at the curb and opens the back door for us.
‘I planned to sneak out at some point, just not this early,’ Zaid explains without a hint of shame when he sees my surprise. ‘And this is private property, so the photographers can’t come back here.’
I’m both impressed by his planning and upset that he has to so carefully consider how to avoid being chased by paparazzi. But I guess that’s just the life of a celebrity.
Ever the gentleman, Zaid lets me climb in first. He waits until I’ve bundled myself and my gown inside, then slides onto the seat beside me, our knees bumping momentarily before he pulls away, and I pointedly ignore the electricity that zings up and down my leg at the contact.
The driver closes the door behind him and then climbs behind the wheel, glancing in the rear-view mirror with eyebrows slightly raised.
I take that as my cue to tell him where we’re headed, appreciating that he doesn’t question me or Zaid on it – or the fact that we’re here together.
I watch through the tinted windows as we maneuver through the narrow alley and ease out to the street. The sounds of the city are faint through thick glass and steel, and the quiet in the car is heavy once we’re in the flow of traffic, as if we’ve both just realized what we’re doing.
Yep, definitely a huge mistake.
I’m struggling to find a topic to restart the conversation when Zaid asks, ‘Who was your date that ditched you?’
My shoulders relax at his question, even more so at the slightly disgruntled note in his voice. ‘Oh, it wasn’t like an actual date or anything,’ I clarify. ‘I was here as my best friend’s plus-one. She’s Thomas Maxwell-Brown’s older sister, actually.’
I can’t make out every detail of his expression in the low light, especially since he’s staring straight ahead instead of at me, but I swear the tension in his strong jaw eases. ‘I see,’ he murmurs, pausing again to consider his words before adding on, ‘I didn’t expect you to be here tonight.’
Him and everyone else, it seems. I didn’t think my presence was going to cause any sort of ripple.
Hell, I didn’t think anyone was even going to notice me.
There have been so many scandals since mine and Zaid’s – like Dev’s fake STD or Thomas’s video ranting about Lorenzo Castellucci, among ten thousand other things.
I was convinced everyone had moved on, but apparently the crash and Zaid’s triumphant return to the sport have the spotlight beaming even brighter on him. It also shines on anyone who’s ever gotten close to him, whether they want it to or not.
‘I thought it would be nice to see everyone,’ I explain, thinking of Axel in his borrowed bow tie, my father’s ramblingly poetic speech, and all the no-nonsense women I banded together with over the years when I worked in the paddock. ‘I wanted to be back in this world for a while, you know?’
‘Not really,’ Zaid confesses, and I want to interrogate that answer, but he pushes on before I can. ‘No one gave you any trouble, did they?’
He’s returned to being put out on my behalf, and I press my lips together to keep from smiling. ‘No, nothing like that,’ I reassure him. ‘Just a few weird looks.’
Zaid grunts and that seems to be the end of our conversation. I’m itching to keep things going, but we can’t exactly have a private chat with someone else in the car, and I don’t know how comfortable he is with being overheard, so I keep my mouth shut and take a moment to drink him in.
In this lighting, his eyes are such a deep brown that they’re nearly black, a little less warm and a little more guarded than what I’ve noticed in years past. There’s an exhaustion in the set of his broad shoulders too, and I don’t miss his nearly imperceptible wince when he sweeps his fingers through his thick, dark hair, pushing the wayward strands off his forehead.
He’s certainly just as attractive as the last time I saw him, and I can’t imagine there will come a time in the next few decades when he doesn’t make People’s list of sexiest men, but there’s been a shift in him, and I have to force my gaze back to the window before I catalog everything that’s changed.
It’s a long twenty minutes of crawling through Central London traffic before the driver calls out, ‘We’re here.’
I throw open my door and clamber back out, but Zaid hesitates as he stares at the dingy-windowed pub in front of us.
‘No one comes here except lost tourists and American expats,’ I promise, heading off any protest. ‘There’s a downstairs bar with a bunch of private booths, and the only sport people care about is American football. You’ll be fine.’
Zaid’s narrowed eyes say he doesn’t quite believe me, but he steps out of the SUV nonetheless, surreptitiously glancing up and down the street before striding to the door and hauling it open.
He motions for me to go first, and I duck inside before he changes his mind, hoping what he’s about to see won’t make him run right back out.
‘What the fuck is this place?’
‘Hell on earth,’ I announce over the country song blasting from the jukebox, simultaneously sweeping a low-hanging American flag out of my face. ‘Follow me. It’s better downstairs.’
I’m not sure if better is the right word, considering there are more flags in every shape, size, and form everywhere – including a life-size Paddington Bear statue painted in the stars and stripes – but it’s quieter than the upstairs section.
I hike myself up on one of the barstools, then wait for Zaid to take the seat next to mine.
‘See?’ I say brightly, spreading an arm to highlight the mural of a screaming bald eagle on the wall. There are US president-themed booths behind us that we can retreat to if we need more privacy, but other than the bartender, we’re the only ones down here. ‘Told you I knew the perfect place.’
The mild horror on his face nearly makes me laugh. ‘How did you even find it?’
‘Buck Decker used to have his annual Fourth of July party here before the event got too big,’ I tell him, invoking the name of Argonaut Racing’s Texas billionaire owner.
‘I crashed it one year and then kept coming back here because they had all the food I missed from home.’ The number of Philly cheesesteaks I ate that summer . . . truly obscene.
The bartender comes over, not even batting an eye at Zaid in a tuxedo or me in a gown, and I take the liberty of ordering for us both – two bourbon rocks, two baskets of fries, and one Chicago-style hot dog to see if I can get another horrified reaction out of Zaid.
Once she sets our drinks down and leaves to put our order in with the kitchen, the tense silence returns as Stevie Nicks sings about white-winged doves.
I sip my drink and then drag my bottom lip between my teeth to keep from uttering something uncouth to fill the quiet, like What made you agree to drink cheap whiskey with me? or Why do you seem like you’re on the verge of having a breakdown?
‘So,’ I say. ‘How’ve you been?’
It’s a simple yet accidentally loaded question, especially since the last time we were together he was crying quietly in my arms, struck down by grief. Since then, there have been the crash and the broken wrists and the loud doubts about his return to the sport.
Zaid grunts and throws back half of his drink. ‘Fine,’ he answers after swallowing, the word gruff and . . . all right, yeah, incredibly sexy.
I’ve had a no-dating-drivers rule since I was old enough to have a crush.
It started with my parents warning me away from the IndyCar boys, and the rule carried on when I started working in Formula 1.
I know to steer clear of drivers, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t done my fair share of admiring from a distance.
And almost all of it has been of Zaid Yousef.
Honestly, who could blame me? The man is like a fine wine, only getting better with age, which should be impossible considering he’s been handsome for as long as I’ve known him.
I was eighteen when he made his splashy F1 debut as a driver for Deschamp.
Dad was new in his role as team principal of Specter Energy in those days, which meant I was in the paddock during university breaks since I had nowhere else to go.
It also meant I had the opportunity to stare a little too hard – and a little too often – at the hotshot twenty-three-year-old driver with a crooked smile. Zaid being the bane of my father’s existence just made him even more alluring.