Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Not sure if she’d stayed or left, he was almost reluctant to get out of bed.
But he had never been the sort of man who hid from anything, so he did.
He used the bathroom and then heard piano music downstairs.
The living room of his apartment had a baby grand piano because Bianca had said it would photograph well when Urban Living magazine did a spread on him.
He pulled on his Moretti Motors sweatpants and a T-shirt and went downstairs more quickly than he normally did, skipping his set of morning reps.
There she was, standing over the piano, her fingers nimbly picking out the melody of a classical piece that he struggled to identify. He was pretty sure it was Debussy, but his musical leanings were more toward rap.
“Morning,” he said.
She turned and smiled at him, backlit by the lights in the hallway that led to the kitchen.
Her long silvery-blond hair was loose and hung over her shoulders.
She wore one of his shirts, her long legs bare.
His gut clenched. He’d meant for last night to be the last time they were together.
Both of them were on the same page as far as that was concerned.
But this morning there was none of the awkwardness that had dominated their other morning after.
The music stopped, and she glanced over at him. Her eyes were sleepy, but she flashed him a smile. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“You didn’t,” he admitted. “I have a testing session I need to get to. I wasn’t sure you’d still be here.”
“I was going to leave but didn’t want to slink out. We didn’t say goodbye last time. And this time...well, I thought we needed that. To make sure it’s officially ended,” she said.
“Definitely,” he agreed. “Do you need some clothes?”
“My assistant is bringing some stuff over for me,” she said. “I don’t think I’d look as good in your sweats as you do.”
He smiled at the way she said it. She was keeping things light, and he would do the same. “Bianca keeps some clothes here.”
“I don’t want to wear your sister’s clothes.”
“Of course not.” Clearly, he needed coffee. That had been...the wrong thing to say.
“Coffee?” he asked her.
“Do you have green tea?”
“I think I might have some. I’ll go and check,” he said, moving farther into the living room, walking past her into the kitchen. As soon as he was in the kitchen, he let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.
He still wanted her.
How was that possible?
Last night should have cured him of the desire for her. But to be fair, what guy could resist Marielle wearing his T-shirt and playing the piano? It was so sexy and sensual, and it literally took everything in him to keep from walking back in there and seducing her on the piano bench.
He went to the big espresso machine he’d been gifted last year when he’d done an ad for the company and flicked on the button to start the warm-up process. Then he realized he had no idea where his housekeeper might store tea.
He started opening up cabinets and then stopped. She wasn’t playing anymore, and he knew his comment about Bianca had affected her. He didn’t need to do anything more than get her some tea—if he could f-ing find it—and then go to training.
He finally found the cupboard stash of tea. It was a mahogany case he’d been given when he’d done the fastest qualifying lap at the Singapore Grand Prix last year.
He walked back to the living room, where she was sitting at the piano but looking at her phone. Her shoulders were slumped, and to him it seemed like she’d gotten bad news.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yup. Jim dandy,” she said. “My dad always says that. No idea what it really means.”
“My dad says things that I really don’t get too,” Inigo said, coming over to her. “I found this. Any tea in here excite you?”
She took the case from him and set it on the bench beside her, finally opening it up and looking through the selection. She handed him a tea bag, and he took it, along with the case. “When did you learn to play the piano?”
“Starting when I was six. One of my brothers showed an aptitude, and my parents thought I might enjoy it too. I think they thought we’d be this famous classical duo for a while. But Leo lost interest when he hit puberty. Apparently, girls were more interesting than piano.”
Inigo smiled. “And you stopped?”
“I was the add-on child, so it seemed best,” she said.
“Add-on?”
“Sorry. I’m dealing with some family stuff and feeling like a total bitch about them,” she admitted.
“I’m sorry too. Want to talk about it? Or should I just go and get your tea?”
She looked over at him. “Why do you have to be a Velasquez?”
He sat down next to her, putting his arm around her shoulder and hugging her close for a minute. “I don’t know,” he said, then after a moment of silence, continued. “Tell me about this thing with your family,” he said. “It will make us both stop thinking about each other.”
“I don’t think it’s going to work that easily.”
He used his knuckles on the black keys to play the one thing he could, the riff on “The Knuckle Song.” And she smiled, as he hoped she would. “We won’t know if we don’t try.”
“Fair enough,” she said. “My dad had an affair two years before I was born. He was a prominent congressman, and the identity of the young aide he’d had the affair with was found out—it was a big scandal everywhere.
My dad realized he could be ‘that cliché mid-life crisis guy.’ That’s how he puts it.
Like that explains everything. Darian, my oldest brother, said that it changed Mom.
I’ve always been her consolation baby. I showed how my parents got back together and proved to the world that they were still solid. ”
She shouldn’t have brought up the circumstances of her birth.
Not to Inigo. But she was feeling down, and in this sort of mood she got destructive.
And it wasn’t like he was thinking of her as anything other than his booty call from last night.
Even if they wanted it to be more, there was no way.
He’d confirmed that when he’d sat down next to her on the piano bench.
Playing the piano had started her down this path—or maybe it was waking up next to him. She would deny it out loud, but she’d slept better in his arms than she had in a long time.
“That’s horrible. I’m sure that’s not true,” he said. “When you were a kid, it might have seemed that way to you, but your parents love you.”
She started laughing. “How would you even guess at that? Do you think you know them from articles and TV documentaries?”
“No. I’m just basing it on my own parents.
When I was a kid, I thought that they liked my twin brothers best because they always got the most attention.
It was only as I aged that I realized they needed the most attention.
The rest of us were pretty self-sufficient.
Diego has always been more at home with horses than people.
Bianca was into fashion and her own thing, and I had racing. ”
Marielle looked over at him. He was an odd contradiction—at times brutally honest and then sweet.
She wished she were wrong about her parents but she knew she wasn’t, given that her mom was still very reluctant to even invite her to events she was in charge of.
The thing was, 85 percent of the time Marielle didn’t care about what her parents thought.
She was busy doing her own thing, and so were they.
It was just when she needed something...
did they ever come through for her without giving her a hard time?
If she could just say screw it to her mom and not attend the events, it would be much easier.
“That’s nice, but I really am a reminder that he cheated and she wanted to leave.
But he talked her into staying. I was supposed to make things better between them.
..but my mom had a difficult pregnancy and birth.
She also didn’t like having a daughter as much as she thought, and everyone was surprised that my dad took an interest in me.
He hadn’t really spent a lot of time with the boys when they were babies.
..anyhow, that just made it worse with the two of them.
And they did a shit ton of press after my birth because Carlton—he’s Dad’s head of staff—thought it would help in the polls. ”
Inigo just stared at her, and she realized that she’d laid too much truth out there. But she got tired of lugging it around, and this morning her guard was down.
He didn’t say anything. He just pulled her into his arms and hugged her closely to him. “God, what a mess.”
She smiled.
He’d said just the right thing. Again.
Why couldn’t she have met him instead of Jose all those years ago?
But she hadn’t.
“It really is. You already know the worst side of me, so sharing it with you doesn’t seem so bad.”
“I’m glad. Despite everything else, I’m glad we had this night together.”
She nodded and looked away from him, back at the keyboard. “Yeah, me too.”
“Why were you thinking of them?”
She shook her head. She wasn’t going there. Not with Inigo and not this morning. They were essentially strangers with the hots for each other, and that was good enough. She decided she’d done enough soul baring for now.
“Who knows,” she said. “So...what exactly does a testing session entail?”
“I’m trying out different cockpit setups at the facility. My engineering team has made some adjustments from my last run in the simulator. We load up the different tracks and then the weather conditions and my placement to see how I react to different variables.”
She shifted on the bench, tucking one leg underneath her as she studied him. “That’s fascinating. When I worked for F1, I really never knew much of what the drivers did when they weren’t at the track.”