This Time, Forever (11 page)

How could he mind after all she'd done? And as for the extravagance of a new cell phone, Ben figured he was already bleeding money from a thousand paper cuts. One more financial nick was pretty negligible.

While Susie headed into the bathroom to take the call, he finished up the toast and brought it to the table. And by the time she returned, his stomach had moved on from a growl straight to a roar.

“I'm sorry about the delay,” she said as she took her spot opposite him. “You should have started without me,” she added once she'd noted his sparkling clean white plate.

“That wouldn't have been very gentlemanly of me,” he replied, then served himself a mountain of fluffy eggs.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Interesting choice of location for a phone call,” he said as he poured her some juice.

“I'm sorry. I didn't want to distract you with my little bit of nonsense when you have to stay focused today.”

Ben smiled. “Not
that
focused. You said it was business?”

Susie nodded. “That was the owner of a chain of boutiques back home. We've been playing phone tag for a week, so I wanted to catch her while I could.”

“A chain of boutiques?” Ben gave a low whistle.

“Are you going to have time to keep up with all that knitting?”

She busied herself spooning out a minuscule portion of eggs and replied, “I'll work it out.”

Ben knew that at some point or another her knitting had become more than a hobby. How much more, he wasn't sure. Susie handled the household accounts and their business manager, in conjunction with Ben, everything else. Whatever she spent or brought in on knitting supplies fell within Susie's domain.

“Well, if you need a sounding board, you know I'm here, right?” he asked.

Susie nodded. “I know, but there's no reason to draw you in. It's nothing, really, when compared to everything you do. It's just enough to give me a little fun money.”

Ben was about to tell her that it didn't have to be about the money, except in his life, it did. The money and the points. He took a deep swallow of juice to fight back the tension working its way into his bones. Damn, but sometimes he wished he could knit.

S
USIE LOOKED AT HER REFLECTION
in the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door. She made it a habit to dress in Ben's colors on race day, and today's choice of navy linen pants and a gold top with a red-and-gold silk scarf at the neckline fit the bill. More classy than flashy.

“Not bad for sitting square on forty years old,” she murmured, smoothing the pants over her hips.

Despite the detour last night had taken, Susie was ready to head straight on into the day. The first order of business would be to share with Ben the plans she'd made for a two-day minivacation about one hundred miles south of the track, on Coronado Island. She'd found the most marvelous old hotel, replete with charm, a beautiful beach and even a ghost for Cammie, who was into that ghost/vampire/impossible romance thing.

After one last check of her makeup, she left the bathroom and joined her family in the main living area. It was tradition that they walked to the pit area together before the start of each race.

“Are we ready?” she asked.

“I'd be readier if I could have been in the horse show yesterday,” Cammie said from the sofa where she sat with her cell phone between her hands. Susie sometimes
wondered if it was going to become permanently affixed to her daughter.

Matt, who was wearing a smaller version of Ben's team shirt, wrinkled his nose at his sister. “Huh? That doesn't even make sense. If you were in the horse show, then—”

“Who cares what you think?” Cammie grumped.

“Andrea Holton won both the junior hunter and the equitation championships, and I know I could have beaten her.”

“Not from California,” Matt smugly replied.

“Well, duh!”

“You just miss Symphony. You're in
loooove
with your horsey,” Matt teased, then made a series of wet kissing noises that had Cammie looking like a thundercloud.

“Enough,” Susie said in a firm voice. “We need to get out to the track.”

“Before World War Three erupts,” Ben muttered under his breath.

They left the motor home not so much the crew Ben used to say they were, but more a small, warring nation.

“It's not fair,” Cammie said as she trailed three steps behind the rest of the family on their way to the pits. “I shouldn't have had to miss that show. You could have left me with one of the other families from the barn, or left me home alone. I'm responsible enough.”

Matt snickered. “Want me to tell Mom and Dad how you locked us out of the house last week, and I had to climb in the window?”

“Thanks,” Cammie snapped. “You just did.”

“You're welcome,” Matt replied. “Your horse is way smarter than you are and nobody lets him stay alone.”

“You are
such
a miserable brat! I don't want to travel with you ever again.”

Susie had been trying to be patient, but no reward seemed to be coming from it. Ignoring the people milling around them, she stopped dead in her tracks so that Cammie had to swerve to avoid her. When her daughter was within reach, Susie settled a hand on her arm.

“I'm going to say this once,” she said quietly. “Life is not always all about you. We are a family, and on this one weekend…this one day…it's about your father. He's given you every opportunity and every bit of support you could ever desire. Without him, there would be no Symphony to ride or custom boots to wear while riding. Dad deserves our support right now. He needs us. Can you understand that?”

Cammie nodded. “Sorry. I'll stop.”

She gave her daughter's arm a comforting squeeze. “Good girl.”

She had never said anything directly to the children about their dad's racing season, but she was well aware that others had been less sensitive.

“Now put on a smile, okay?”

Cammie's smile reminded Susie of the forced baring of teeth she'd produced when she'd first had her picture taken with Santa. That was good enough for Susie, though. She quickened her pace to join Ben, but once she'd matched her stride to his, she wished she hadn't. His jaw was set as though his back molars had locked together, and his narrowed gaze shot straight forward.

“Sunny and cool. It's a great day for a race,” she said.

Ben nodded, but said nothing. He tended to be in
tense before a race, but seldom to the point of coolness toward her.

Then it occurred to Susie:
He'd heard.

As quiet as she'd tried to be, he'd heard her talking about his need for support. Ben was a born leader, and as one, he always gave and expected nothing in return. Had she somehow made him feel diminished with her words? Susie could hardly fathom it, but she could also hardly fathom many other recent changes in her husband. All she wanted to do was make things better, but until she fully understood Ben's issues, how could she expect to do that?

Talk to me, please
, she thought. But this was what her marriage was becoming—a silent plea falling on deaf ears. Both she and Ben were to blame, really. And though she could do nothing about Ben, she could fix herself. Susie squared her shoulders and bolstered her grit. The time for subtleties had passed.

 

B
EN CLIMBED OUT
of the No. 515 car, pulled off his helmet and took the bottle of water offered to him by a crew member. Even though he wasn't much of a drinker, he knew he'd be wishing for something stronger by the time Sampson had finished with him.

Two hundred laps…four hundred miles…and Ben was right back to where he'd started—nowhere at all. Between damage from a piece of debris that had required a longer pit stop than usual, another just generally bad pit, and a couple of missed opportunities on his part, even though he'd started twelfth, he had finished twenty-third. The only good news was that fellow Double S driver Rafael O'Bryan took first, so for now, at least, Gil Sizemore would be occupied by more
pleasant things than giving Ben the list of his failings during this race.

While heading into his hauler's war room for the race postmortem, Ben kept his head down and avoided those few people from the media who even tried to approach him. If he couldn't deliver at least an uplifting message, he preferred to keep his mouth shut. And today he felt slogged down in a sea of bull. Uplifting was out of the question.

“What's your first impression?” Ben's crew chief asked before Ben had even closed the door to the cool and quiet wood-paneled war room. Neither had he even looked up from the clipboard in front of him.

Chris Sampson, unlike the Sampson of yore, did not have long, flowing locks, but close-clipped blond hair. Had it been otherwise, Ben would have found some way to shave his crew chief's head and get rid of a measure of the man's power.

“Mistakes were made,” Ben replied after he settled into a leather club chair a few down from where the crew chief was seated. “On my end and in other places.”

“Let's start with your end.”

“Okay. It's pretty clear that I could have blocked Kent Grosso and blew it. I also let Bart Branch push me up on the wall. My fault on both counts and I'm not denying it.”

“Good. Neither am I.”

For the first time in his racing career, Ben didn't feel at least an equal to his crew chief. With Steve, his former crew chief, life had been markedly different. Respect had flourished, and Steve had always been willing to admit when he'd screwed up. The same wasn't true with Chris. Not once this season had Sampson admitted to
a tactical error during a race. And while the guy was undeniably good, he was also human.

“How about you?” Ben asked. “What do you see from your end that could be tightened?”

“I'll address that with the rest of the team. I'm focusing on you at this moment. And my question is pretty simple—where is your head?”

Ben could think of numerous rude responses, but didn't voice any of them.

“Exactly where it should be,” he replied.

“Is it? Because I've got the feeling you're not into the game anymore.” Sampson finally set aside the clipboard, placing it on a low table to his right. “It's okay, you know. Not many drivers stay in the game as long as you have or achieve even a quarter of what you have, too. It's okay to get tired and want to move on.”

Ben tried to absorb what the man was saying. Was this about no longer being part of the Double S team, or was it something even more unthinkable?

“Are you talking about retirement?” he asked.

“Well…yeah. Are you going to tell me that the thought has never entered your mind?”

“Not in a good way, it hasn't.”

Thumbing through a magazine on the way out to California, Ben had read about a Japanese corporate business practice that had once existed. Executives a company no longer found useful were not forced out; they were simply put in a windowless room with others of their sort and no work to do. Ben knew there was no such office at Double S's headquarters, but he knew right down to the marrow of his bones how those execs had felt—empty.

“Retirement is neither good nor bad,” the crew chief
said. “It just
is
. One day, we all retire. It's something we need to accept.”

A pretty Zen-like notion, and easier to produce for a man in his thirties who likely had thirty more years in front of him in his chosen career. Ben knew he was looking at a handful of years at most.

“The good news is I don't need your permission or encouragement to retire. That's mine to choose to consider when and as I please,” he told Sampson. “But let me tell you what I do need. I do need you to be a crew chief, with all the job entails. Let's flip the mirror and ask you how you feel about your performance. Do you feel you've been a team builder? Are you happy with the condition of the car? Do you think you've had a positive impact on us this season?”

Ben stopped there, knowing that frustration and a measure of something damn dark like dread gripped him.

The younger man frowned. “That's not what we're here to discuss.”

“No, that's not what
you're
here to discuss. I raised it because we're equals, and I'm allowed to ask you those kinds of questions if you're allowed to grill me on retirement plans, don't you think?”

“I didn't grill you.”

Ben grinned though he wasn't feeling especially happy. “Then explain the burn marks you keep leaving on my ass.”

If Sampson had an answer to that, he didn't stick around to hear it.

Retirement? Ben never wanted to hear that word again.

 

S
USIE STOOD
in front of the motor home's open refrigerator and peered inside as though the answer to her husband's problems might be lurking behind the milk. It wasn't, though the milk would come in handy with Cammie and Matt, who were outside toasting marshmallows over the barbecue grill. Functioning on autopilot, she pulled the milk, set it on the counter, then found two plastic tumblers.

It had been a miserable race for Ben, and she was running short of ways to make him see that this was just a slump and not a death knell sounding. Earlier in the season, she'd gone as far as making a chart so that Ben could see in graphic color the number of times a mechanical failure, an accident caused by someone else or just plain old bad luck had hindered him. Ben had feigned interest, but she'd known it was just that—a game of Let's Humor Susie.

All she had left to pull out of her bag of tricks was some enforced relaxation. If she couldn't help him get his head on straight, maybe with some time away from Double S, he'd do it for himself.

Susie took the milk in one hand, the tumblers in the other and walked out the open door.

“You can't have s'mores without milk,” she said to her children. “That would be just flat out wrong.”

Cammie, who had finally managed to let go of the horse show drama, played along saying, “Like almost un-American.”

Susie set the milk and glasses next to the graham crackers and chocolate bars on the outdoor dining table that always traveled with them.

“You want me to make you one, Mom?” Matt asked.

Her taste buds would love it, but the fit of her clothes, not so much.

“Thanks for the offer, but not right now, sweetie,” she said.

Ben would be back soon. She wanted to have his usual postrace iced tea ready, along with a fluffy towel near the shower. The first several years he'd driven, he'd been too keyed up to sleep or even sit still the night after a race. Now he wanted a cool drink, a hot shower, a nap and a meal—in that precise order.

Just then she saw Ben approaching. Until the instant he'd noticed her watching, his expression had been grim. The effort he'd taken to look relaxed was something she could feel all these yards away.

“Want a s'more, Dad?” Matt asked when he was near enough.

“No thanks, buddy,” Ben replied. “It's time for me to go in and shower up.”

“Okay,” Matt said, then turned his attention back to his marshmallow.

Susie followed Ben inside, then closed the door as a hint to Cammie and Matt that the adults needed a little chat time.

“It's been one hell of a day,” Ben said.

Since just about all Susie could think to say in the way of encouragement was, “Well, at least twenty-third is nearly middle of the pack,” she chose to keep quiet.

In an echo of her earlier behavior, he opened the refrigerator door and stared silently inside. After several seconds of apparent deliberation, he came out with a beer.

“Really?” Susie asked, both because it was beer and because she had his tea waiting on the dining table.

“Absolutely,” he replied as he twisted off the bottle cap and set it on the counter. “It's been that bad.”

“It must be. I can't say I've ever seen you pass over sweet tea for beer immediately after a race.”

“It's not the race. It's dealing with Sampson,” Ben replied, then took a long swallow, after which he added, “Though the race was no big prize, either.”