Chapter 9 #2
“Yeah, there’s a hell of a lot more involved than just getting behind the wheel.
Some of the technical stuff fascinates me, and because I’m good friends with one of the engineers I know more about that part than some drivers.
But most of it is over my head. I mean, I tell them what I want the car to do, and they make tweaks either here at the facility or in the trailer at the track and the car is adjusted. It’s cool.”
She smiled. He was so cute when he was getting all nerdy about cars. Mentally she slapped herself. She couldn’t fall for him. They could never be friends. There was too much heat and too much baggage between the two of them for that to ever happen.
“So, you want your tea?” he asked after a few minutes.
“Yes,” she said as her phone pinged with a message. “My assistant is downstairs with my clothes.”
“Great. I’ll let the doorman know to let her up.”
“Him. It’s PJ.”
“Okay,” Inigo said and hit a button on his smartphone to let the doorman know that her assistant was okay to come up. He slid off the bench and stood there for a minute.
“I liked your piano playing. No matter why you learned, it’s part of you, and you shouldn’t deny it.”
Then he left to go back into the kitchen, and she could only watch him leave. And firmly remind herself this time their goodbye was for good.
Inigo wasn’t surprised when he got to the Moretti Motors testing facility to see that Dante was already behind his computer working away.
Matteo was running a circuit on the Melbourne track, and both of the bosses were observing from their conference room.
He’d heard that Malcolm had been invited out to the track so that when he went to place his bet those running the betting ring would think he had inside information.
Inigo rubbed the back of his neck. The dancing and the sex with Marielle had completely zoned him out. He was so chill right now that he wasn’t sure if he was going to be good behind the wheel or not. Normally he was tense and focused. But this chill feeling wasn’t that bad.
“Inigo, hop in the cockpit and let’s see if this setup is working for you.”
He walked over and started the process of buckling himself in.
He put on his helmet and then flexed his fingers, cracking his knuckles and gripping the steering wheel.
He heard everything his engineers were saying as they cued him up.
Then he waited for the green light and took off on the simulated track.
His instincts were more heightened then they had been the last time.
The car seemed an extension of him, and he moved through each turn and curve with ease.
He kept accelerating, and he knew he was having the drive of his life.
He didn’t question it—he just did the laps.
When he stopped, there was silence on the headset.
“Guys? How was it?”
“Good...damn good. We need to check a few things,” Dante said.
Inigo got out of the simulator and noticed that everyone was working at their monitors. Had his chill attitude made him drive like a rookie? Had that drive of his life really been a huge mistake?
“How’d it go last night?” Dante asked when Inigo walked over to him.
“Good, man, the best,” he said. “What’s up with my time?”
“We are still checking a few things. I’ve sent my data over—we should hear something in a minute,” Dante said, spinning around to face him. “So last night was good...guess you gave up the revenge thing?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I mean, it’s not like I’ll see her again. Last night...was goodbye.”
Dante just chuckled and shook his head. “If anyone else said that to me, I’d call them a liar, but I know you have ice in your veins when it comes to women.”
“I’m not cold,” Inigo said.
“Dude, you are. And that was envy you heard. I wish I could be more like you,” Dante said. “Relationships are messy, but you always skate right by them. And it’s not like the women you hook up with hate you later. They’re cool too.”
Inigo wasn’t sure he liked the way Dante was describing him. He couldn’t argue with his friend because his description was spot-on, but he didn’t know if that was the kind of man he wanted to be.
“Yeah, lucky me,” he said, feeling some tension seeping into his Zen attitude.
Marco came into the room with Keke behind him.
Both men had a look on their faces that Inigo hadn’t seen before.
He felt nervous. Hell, why had he slept with Marielle last night?
His celibacy during the racing season had sort of been his way of making sure he stayed in the right headspace to race.
Of course, last night he hadn’t been thinking about the season or his time.
It had all been Marielle.
Which had felt so damned good at the time, but now, in retrospect, he regretted it. Maybe it was because he knew she was forbidden fruit, or maybe it was just that he didn’t like to have anyone walk away from him. He was always the one who left, he thought, but with Marielle it had been different.
“Inigo, we want you to drive again. Your time was faster than Matteo’s and the best you’ve ever done,” Marco said, his Italian accent slightly more pronounced than usual.
“Whatever you did last time,” Keke said, clapping him on the shoulder, “do it again.”
“Yeah, okay. I can do that,” he said. But now he was worried he couldn’t, and he knew that was going to mess with his mind.
He stepped away from everyone, turned his back on the room and remembered the way Marielle had been when he’d left her this morning.
She’d still been sitting at the piano playing some classical song as she’d watched him leave.
Leaving had been hard; he’d wanted to go back and make love to her right there on the piano bench.
He felt that chill feeling sweep over him again.
He was getting back to that numb mind space where he was able to feel physically sated from the night before but with that tiny tinge of excitement that he could have her again tonight.
He didn’t bother to let doubt or anything other than that calm but edgy feeling fill him as he turned and walked over to the cockpit of the simulator.
Everyone stepped back and let him do his thing.
Even the engineers who helped strap him in didn’t speak to him.
They were used to drivers and their rituals.
Inigo flexed his fingers and cracked his knuckles as he always did and then put his hands on the wheel.
There was no room in his mind for doubt, and as they counted down to starting, he let go of everything that didn’t serve the course.
He became one with the car the way he always did, felt the road underneath the wheels even though it was just a simulation.
As he maneuvered around the track with ease, the car responded to him the way Marielle had last night.
Every touch was strategically placed to keep the car purring and doing exactly what he wanted it to do.
When he stopped and got out of the simulator, he looked over at Marco and Keke, who were standing at Dante’s station. Both men let out a whoop, and Inigo knew he’d done it again.
But it wasn’t just him...it had been Marielle. The woman he’d mentally and of course literally said goodbye to looked as if she were the key to him driving and posting the fastest time of his career.
Well, hell.