The Chase (3 page)

“Didn’t you used to date Kendall?” Ryder asked casually, tossing his helmet in his hands.

Was nothing a goddamn secret in this town? Everyone was always in everyone else’s business, and Evan was tired of it. “For about a minute a hundred years ago.”

“You still have any feelings for her?”

Evan lost patience with the conversation. He did
not
have feelings for that woman, other than a lingering annoyance that she’d been such a total wimp about breaking up with him. The least she could have done was have the decency to tell him what he’d done wrong.

“What the hell is this,
Dr. Phil
? You get married and suddenly you want to talk about feelings? I don’t have any feelings.”

Ryder laughed. “For a guy who doesn’t have feelings you sound pretty riled up. Hey, I’m just offering an ear, man. And since I’m a guy who knows a thing or two about taking a second chance on a relationship, I figured I’d throw it out there that I’m around if you want to talk.”

What he was feeling was damned uncomfortable with the direction of this conversation. “Thanks, but I’m good. But I’ll call you if I need someone to go get a mani/pedi with.”

“Douche bag. Don’t be crying in your beer to me then.”

“I won’t.” He had nothing to cry over other than the sorry ass state of his career.

Which come to think of it, was bad enough to shed a tear or two.

Evan looked over and caught Kendall’s eye. She made a face and turned away.

Feeling the need to kick a tire, Evan spotted his sister Eve. Perfect. She was always willing to go a round with him, and he needed someone to fight with.

“Hey, Eve,” he called when she was within a few feet of him. “Were you planning to work today or just stare at your reflection in your BlackBerry screen?”

“Shut up or I will cut you,” Eve said as she halted in front of him, her eyes flashing right back at him.

His tepid comment hadn’t brought that on. Eve was primed to go a round herself.

Evan tensed his shoulders and glanced over at Ryder, who just shrugged his shoulders and moved out of firing range.

“What’s your problem? Besides lack of sex and a nose that could use plastic surgery.” It probably wasn’t wise to go at his sister when she was clearly in a mood, but it was a defense mechanism he’d perfected with her over the years. Insult first instead of waiting for the strike.

“My problem is that we’re in deep shit, Evan. No joking, no smiling, no blustering, or prancing around with a blonde on your arm is going to fix this.”

The irritation he’d been feeling all morning was suddenly replaced by the first niggle of fear. Eve was overdramatic, but this was a little much even for her. “What’s going on?” he asked cautiously.

“Your sponsor pulled out.”

For a second Evan’s vision went black, like it had when he’d hit the wall at 120 miles per hour and given himself a killer concussion.

He couldn’t have heard her right. That couldn’t be right.

Trying not to panic, he spit out, “What? What do you mean?”

Eve reached up to smooth back her ponytail, and he saw that her hands were shaking. “I mean you lost a major sponsor. Five hundred thousand a race, gone. We’re fucked.”

“Jesus Christ.” Evan stared at her in disbelief. It was unbelievable. Incomprehensible. A total fucking disastrous hideous awful nightmare.

His career was in the goddamn toilet.

With a growl, he stomped down the track to the exit before he actually did kick a tire and got fined on top of all the other problems he had.

Of course, he had to walk past Kendall Va-Jay-Jay Holbrook, who didn’t even spare him a glance.

His career was spiraling down with the speed of a felled plane, and hers was rising equally as fast.

And worst of all, he did still have feelings for her.

Ryder was right, he was a douche bag. A stupid, sponsorless, unlovable, easily dumped douche bag.

TUESDAY
was going on a date with Evan. Kendall stared at her friend and pondered exactly how she felt about that. Glancing over at Evan, she caught his eye. She couldn’t help but pull a face.

She knew that for the past ten years he’d been dating a revolving door of women. Blondes, brunettes, redheads—it didn’t seem to matter. As long as they were beautiful and dumb, with a substantial rack, they had been on his arm. She looked away, unable to deal with the intensity of his stare. It didn’t matter who he dated, and she was pathetic that she still let him get under her skin after all these years.

Hell, she should be grateful he had spent the last decade parading models around in front of the cameras. It only proved he was shallow and that he commodified women, which was why they hadn’t worked out.

She’d been over it almost from the beginning of the end. There were no feelings there other than disdain.

But that didn’t mean she wanted her best friend grabbing a beer with him.

“Why did you just ask Evan out?” She paused while a car went around the track behind them, drowning out any words she might have spoken. “I thought you said he would be lousy in bed.”

Tuesday shrugged. “Doesn’t mean I don’t want to find out for myself.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I’m like the girl that has to touch the fire even after I’ve been warned it’s hot.” Tuesday pushed up her sunglasses. “It’s a terrible personality flaw.”

“It sounds like a waste of time.”

“Besides, why would one date equate with sleeping with him?”

Because that’s what Kendall would do. Did. Only with Evan Monroe. It had been something about their chemistry together. One date and she’d been gone. Falling hard for him and naked.

Feeling the urge to sigh, she said, “You’re right, it doesn’t. But it still seems like a waste of time to me.”

“Some of us like to date,” Tuesday said pointedly. “Some of us like to go for a drink or to dinner or the movies with some male company. Some of us don’t think that going years with the only flirtation in our lives being romantic comedies from Netflix is acceptable.”

You know, Kendall had to say she resented that. “I’ve been building a career. There hasn’t been a whole lot of time to date. I travel all over the country.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“I date,” she insisted.

“When? When was the last time you dated?”

“Uh . . . like two years ago.” Damn. That was kind of a long time when she was forced to say it out loud. “But I could date if I wanted to. I just don’t want to.”

“But the real question is, do you want to date Evan Monroe?”

“What?” Caught totally off guard, Kendall felt her cheeks burning again. Twice in fifteen minutes. A new personal best, and not one she was proud of. “Why the hell would you ask that?”

“Because normally you don’t pay any attention to the other drivers. And normally you would never question my asking one of them out for a date.”

Was that true? Probably. “That does not mean I want to date Evan. Because I don’t.”

Now Tuesday stared hard at her, so intently Kendall had to break eye contact.

“What does it mean?”

Damn it. She was going to have to come clean. “I just don’t think you’re going to enjoy yourself with Evan, because the truth is, I dated him myself a long time ago, and it was miserable.”

Which wasn’t entirely true. Most of their relationship had been pure moony-eyed bliss, until they had crashed and burned. That had definitely been miserable.

“What?” Tuesday threw her hands up in the air. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me before? Great, I’m scum. I hit on my best friend’s ex-boyfriend.”

“One, you’re not scum. You didn’t know. Two, you didn’t know because I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know you were going to ask him out.” If any of that made any sense at all. “It’s no big deal. It was a long time ago.”

“Well, I’m going to have to cancel the date.” Tuesday looked around the track. “Where did he go? I’d better find him and cancel now since I don’t have his number.”

Kendall panicked, grabbing Tuesday’s arm. “No! You can’t cancel. If you cancel he’ll think it’s because we talked and I admitted to you that he and I used to date.”

Tuesday’s eyebrows shot up over the top of her sunglasses’ rim. “That
is
what just happened.”

“Yeah, but I don’t want him to know that because he’ll think that means I care that you’re going out with him, which I don’t. I totally don’t care. I mean, he and I, that was a hundred thousand years ago and totally irrelevant to now or to the future. If you want to date him and get married and have children, and think that makes any kind of sense given the kind of man he is, well, that’s your business and I support you.”

What she was doing was over-talking and incriminating herself.

At the end of her ridiculous speech Kendall sucked in a breath and tried not to wince.

There was a pause, then Tuesday said, “Fine. I won’t cancel the date because you don’t want me to, and I see the logic in the first part of what you were saying. The second half was just nuts. But there won’t be a second date. I don’t date my friend’s ex-boyfriends, under any circumstances.”

“It doesn’t matter—”

“If you say ‘it doesn’t matter, he meant nothing to me’ one more time, I’m going to write in my blog that you’re a hermaphrodite.”

Kendall felt all the blood drain out of her face. “You wouldn’t.”

“Of course I wouldn’t, but what the hell, Kendall, be honest with me. This was clearly more than a couple of dates ten years ago.”

Because she was superstitious and she was testing her car again the next day and didn’t want any slipups, Kendall crossed her fingers behind her back before she lied through her teeth. “That’s all it was. I swear.”

“Pinky swear?” Tuesday’s finger came out.

Damn it. “No.” Kendall gave up the good fight. “Okay, he sort of kind of broke my heart. But I was eighteen and naïve. Everyone gets their heart broken at eighteen.”

“Why? What happened?”

“Nothing. That’s what happened. One minute we were together, then we weren’t. It’s no big—”

“Deal. Yes, so you’ve said. Are you sure you don’t want me to cancel?”

“No! I really don’t.” The last thing in the world Kendall wanted was Evan thinking she was still carrying a torch for him. The very thought of how humiliating that would feel made her break out in a sweat under her driver’s jumpsuit.

Though she had to admit, she wasn’t thrilled with the idea of Evan flirting with her best friend. Not because she had feelings for him still. But because he was a jerk and Tuesday shouldn’t have to suffer through that. No other reason than that.

“Don’t worry, I won’t make out with him or anything, I promise.”

The feeling that rose up in Kendall was small and green, hot and tight, but she refused to acknowledge in any way that it might be jealousy. Swallowing hard, she managed to force out, “It doesn’t matter if you do.”

 

 

TUESDAY
stared at her best friend with a fair amount of speculation. In the five years she’d known Kendall, there had been only one serious boyfriend, and Kendall had been thoroughly calm and content in that relationship, and equally calm when they had broken up. Emotion was something Kendall reserved for driving, and even then that was off the track, not on. To see her normally determined and in control friend blushing and blustering and panicking was bizarre. Unnerving.

She knew that Kendall had some deep-seeded insecurities, but she always covered them with that steel determination. This wasn’t like her at all.

And it was something Tuesday was going to get to the bottom of. She’d go out on this date with Evan Monroe. And use her journalism skills to get a full confession of what had gone down between him and Kendall.

“I’m not going to make out with him,” she repeated. “I’ll just talk to him. It’s no big deal. It doesn’t matter.”

She intentionally echoed the words Kendall had been spouting repeatedly for the last ten minutes, to see if it would get a reaction. It did.

Kendall made a face. “I’m done for the day. Are you leaving, too?”

“Yep. Last chance to tell me to cancel or explain to me what really happened between the two of you.”

“There’s no story, Tuesday, so save your digging for something newsworthy.”

“Sure thing.” Tuesday glanced at her cell phone. Digging would commence at the wine bar at seven o’clock.

 

 

EVAN
should have canceled his date with Tuesday Jones. If he had her number, he would have. But he didn’t, and he wasn’t going to stand her up, so he was sitting in the wine bar waiting for her, halfway to drunk already.

His day sucked. His career sucked. His life sucked.

And how in the hell he was supposed to make small talk with a total stranger was beyond him.

This was all Kendall Holbrook’s fault. He wouldn’t even have agreed to meet with Tuesday if he hadn’t been pleased with the idea of annoying Kendall. Which he wouldn’t have been if she hadn’t dumped him on his ass all those years ago.

That might be screwed-up logic, but it was his, and he was going to back it. Sitting at the bar, Evan tugged at his shirtsleeve. He’d gone the striped button-up shirt with jeans route, and he felt underdressed in the chichi place. He was definitely a jeans and a beer kind of guy, and this place was trendy, the patrons were dressed expensive, and the wine list was about seventeen pages long.

He’d ordered a rum and coke instead of the beer he’d really wanted so he wouldn’t really stand out like a sore thumb, and now he was just feeling stupid sitting there by himself. The day had made him feel inadequate enough, he didn’t need some damn pretentious wine bar adding to his insecurities.

What the hell was he going to do about his career?

Eve had been freaking out, and rightly so. It was bad. Losing a sponsorship meant he was seen in the industry as a poor performer. It meant his fan base was dwindling. It meant his team owners were going to be scrutinizing him and wondering if he was worth their financial investment.