Within Striking Distance (17 page)

“Won’t know until we can get back to testing. They told us we’d get some laps in before noon. How much longer you think they’ll be?”

“I’ve got no idea. It’s hard to believe how long it takes to snap a few pictures.”

The photographer pointed to a white gauze screen on a stand that was diffusing the sunlight. His assistant scurried around the car to pull the screen a few feet closer. Becky slipped out of the car window and was immediately surrounded by the makeup people. They took the windbreaker with them when they retreated, leaving her in a scoop-necked, bright blue T-shirt.

“How come you’re here, anyway, Jake?” Doug asked. “Have the Grossos got you spying for them?”

He laughed. “No, Doug. I’m with her,” he said, tipping his head toward Becky.

“The model? I didn’t know you had a daughter.”

Jake’s smile froze. He’d reminded himself of the age difference often enough. Nevertheless, Doug’s assumption had stung. “She’s not my daughter. She’s Becky Peters.” He paused. “We’re dating,” he added, giving the simplest explanation for his presence. It was the same thing he and Becky had told everyone else who had wondered. Besides, it was partly true.

Doug gaped at him, then jabbed a bony elbow into Jake’s ribs. “Good for you. Wish I had luck like that. She’s a good-looking woman.”

“That she is.”

“Wait. What did you say her name was again?”

“Becky Peters.” Jake watched Doug’s face, interested in his reaction. “Floyd Peters’s daughter. I was asking you about him last month.”

“So she’s Floyd’s kid? Was that why you were asking about him, because you wanted to date her?”

“Something like that.”

“Huh. Remember how I told you about Shillington’s daughter and Shanks?”

Jake nodded. One of the things Doug had recalled about the summer the Grossos’ baby had been abducted was how his team’s driver, Hank “Shanks” Brown, had eloped with Gerald Shillington’s daughter. “Yes, I do. Why?”

“There must have been more than ten years between them, only it was the other way around. She was the one who was older than him. I don’t remember Floyd being bothered by it.”

Had Doug brought this up as a way of making up for his previous gaffe? “That’s good to know.”

“Too bad Shanks quit racing after he got married. I can’t recall him even showing up at a track after, either. Guess he figured he didn’t need to work anymore.” Doug squinted at Becky. “It’s funny. Floyd’s kid doesn’t look like him, but she does remind me of someone.”

“You probably saw Becky’s face in an advertisement. A lot of people feel as if they know her.”

“Maybe.” Doug gave Jake another nudge with his elbow. “She looks good with that car, doesn’t she? Like she was born for life on a track.”

Jake returned his gaze to Becky as Doug wandered back into the garage. Zack Matheson, looking lean and dangerous in his racing uniform, joined the activity beside his car for the next series of shots. Becky seemed as much at ease with the vehicle as Zack did, and why shouldn’t she? She was a NASCAR fan, and she’d grown up attending races.

Was there such a thing as inherited memory? If there was, and if she did turn out to be Dean’s daughter, then her interest in the sport could have been in her genes. Heredity would explain the sense of recognition a lot of people mentioned when they saw her, too. Not that Becky had any specific features in common with either Dean or Patsy, but there could be a general family resemblance that people who knew them picked up on. Come to think of it, during all the time Jake had spent with Becky, the only people who had said she looked familiar had been directly involved with NASCAR.

The poses with Zack appeared to be the final ones. Once he left, the photographer and his assistants began gathering their gear. Becky had just finished a brief discussion with the pink-shirted art director when a man Jake didn’t recognize approached her. He was too well dressed to be one of the Matheson team, but he didn’t seem to belong to the crew who had been doing the modeling shoot, either.

Jake shoved away from the garage wall and moved as
quickly as he could toward Becky. She’d asked him to give her space to do her job, yet judging by her body language, she wasn’t happy with whatever this new arrival was saying. Jake wasn’t pleased with how close the man was standing, either. He had placed his fingers on her arm and was leaning forward, crowding her against the side of the car.

Becky had already maneuvered away from the car and was stepping back as Jake reached her side. She smiled and stretched to give him a quick kiss on the cheek, then wiped the spot with her fingertips. “Oops, sorry. I forgot about the lipstick,” she murmured. “They layered it on like icing.”

Jake wanted her to leave the lipstick smear right where it was as proof she’d put her mark on him. He also wanted to glare at the man who’d been touching her. Or to be more accurate, he wanted to pick up the guy by his designer collar and hurl him over the roof of Zack’s car. The urge surprised him. He wasn’t normally this possessive when he dated a woman. Then again, these weren’t normal circumstances. He was acting as Becky’s bodyguard. It was to be expected that he’d be more protective…

Ah, who was he fooling? His emotions were already so tangled up he was wasting his time trying to make excuses. He draped his free arm across Becky’s shoulders, staking his claim in terms any male should understand.

“Tony Winters,” the man said, thrusting his hand toward Jake. “And you are?”

Because of his cane, the only way Jake could accept Winters’s hand was to let go of Becky, a fact he was sure Winters had realized. He kept the handshake brief, but he did put enough force into his grip to elicit a wince. “Jake McMasters.”

“Tony is the team accountant for Matheson Racing,” Becky said.

Jake had guessed from the man’s soft palm that he didn’t work with anything much heavier than a pencil. “What’s an accountant doing at the track?”

Winters smiled, revealing a set of perfect, recently whitened teeth. “There’s more to this business than racing, pops. We’re going to push Zack Matheson merchandise for the rest of the season.” He turned his smile back to Becky. “Thanks to our hot cover girl, our ads are bound to catch everyone’s attention.”

Pops?
Jake was sorry now he had restrained himself from crushing the man’s hand. He ignored Winters and looked at Becky. “Are you done here?”

“Almost.” She retrieved her modeling bag and took out a paper form. “I still need to get my voucher signed by the client.”

“I can take care of that for you,” Winters said, moving forward to intercept her. He put the form on the hood of the car, scribbled his signature and returned it to Becky. “It’s been a pleasure. I look forward to seeing you again, Becky. I’ll have our P.R. rep call you. Perhaps we could discuss it over dinner.”

“Actually, he would have to call my agent. He handles all my bookings,” she said, ignoring his suggestion of dinner. She separated part of the form he’d just signed and handed it back to him. “Here’s your copy of the hours worked and the rate I agreed on. I’ll return this T-shirt to the wardrobe people.”

“Please, keep it, Becky, with our compliments,” Winters said, with an appreciative gleam in his eyes. He moved his gaze to her chest. “I can’t think of a better way to promote our clothing line.”

Jake eyed the height of the car roof, calculating how hard he’d need to fling Winters over it for him to land in the middle of the track.

If Becky noticed Winters’s blatant ogling, she gave no
sign of it. She politely said goodbye to him, waved to the rest of the crew, then looped her bag over her shoulder and hooked her hand in Jake’s elbow. He set a brisk pace as they left the track and headed for the parking lot, partly to get her away from her admirer and partly because he needed to work off some steam. Winters had some cheek, all but asking Becky on a date right in front of him. At least the guy hadn’t asked him if he was Becky’s father.

They were almost at his car before she spoke. “Thanks, Jake,” she said.

“You’re welcome, but why are you thanking me?”

“Because you let me handle the jerk my way.”

“Jerk? What jerk?”

“Tony Winters. The guy you were thinking about punching.”

“Me? Nah.”

“Be honest. I saw the look on your face. Your cheek was twitching. It’s a dead giveaway.”

“Okay, I got ticked off because the guy wasn’t behaving respectfully toward you. But I told you the truth—what I was thinking of doing didn’t involve punching him. His teeth are too pretty. He probably would have sued me.”

She laughed and released his arm so he could take his keys from his pocket. “Worse than that, he might have spread the word that I’m difficult to work with. At my age, I need all the jobs I can get.”

“
Your
age?”

“I think I told you about that. I don’t have many productive years left to build my savings.” She paused as he opened the passenger door for her. “Not that I’d be willing to put up with a client who made advances, but what Tony Winters did back there was really pretty mild.”

Jake waited until she slid inside the car, then closed her door and went around to the other side. He started the engine
and turned on the air-conditioning full blast before he twisted to look at her. Considering the age gap between them, it was bizarre that Becky would have any reason to worry about
her
age, but he did understand her concern. “Does that happen a lot? I mean guys coming on to you when you’re working.”

“Not as often as you might think. Most people in the fashion industry are only interested in getting the job over with. They’ve seen too many models to get impressed by appearances.”

“But you do get propositioned.”

“Sure. It’s an occupational hazard of making money with my looks. Some men assume that’s all there is to me.” She set her bag on the floor between her feet and rummaged around inside it. She came up with a pot of face cream and a bag of cotton pads. “I hope you don’t mind if I do this while we drive,” she said, applying the cream to her face. “It’s not good for my skin to leave on this much heavy makeup in warm weather, but I didn’t want to hang around the set any longer.”

“No problem,” he said, putting the car into gear. A few other vehicles, probably belonging to people from the fashion shoot, were already heading toward the parking lot exit. He waited for them to pass, then eased onto the road, accelerating slowly so he wouldn’t jar Becky while she continued her task.

He was pleased she felt comfortable enough around him to do something as personal as removing her makeup. Yet again, he marveled at how completely without vanity she was. She treated her appearance as matter-of-factly as he treated his surveillance gear. Both were necessary assets for their businesses. On the other hand, storing his camera in his equipment cabinet at the end of a stakeout wasn’t anywhere near as intimate as what Becky was doing. He inhaled slowly as the scent of her cream drifted toward him. “Gardenias.”

“Mmm?”

“I noticed that scent when we first met. It suits you.”

“Really?” Her voice was muffled as she dragged a cotton pad over her mouth, wiping away what was left of the layers of lipstick and gloss.

“It’s sweet. It makes me think of warm nights and soft skin.”

She rubbed cream over her forehead. “And that’s what you thought of when we first met?”

“Not exactly.” He looked at her as he slowed for an amber light. “That day in the park when you called my name I thought I knew you. I realized later it was because I’d seen your picture.”

She skimmed a pad with some kind of liquid over her face, shoved the paraphernalia back into her modeling bag, then pulled out a lacy elastic and fiddled with it between her fingers. “Tingles,” she said. “That’s what I felt when you touched my hand the first time.”

He smiled as he remembered. “For me, it was more like tickles. As if I was standing too close to a high-voltage wire.”

Her movements were slow as she gathered her hair off her neck and corralled it into a loose knot on the top of her head. “But I felt as if I knew you, too, Jake.” She hooked her knee on the seat and twisted to face him. “I felt as if we were connected somehow. What do you think that meant?”

The light was still red, so he lifted his hand from the wheel and stroked her cheek. Her freshly cleaned skin was like warm satin beneath his fingers. He tried to focus on the pleasure of touching her rather than think about her question, yet he knew the answer anyway. “You probably felt gratitude. You knew who I was, and you realized I could be your ticket to finding your birth family.”

“That’s what I told myself at first, but I’m not sure about it anymore. Maybe my gut recognized that you were some
one I was meant to be with. I enjoy the time we spend together, no matter what we’re doing.” She smiled and tilted her face toward his hand. “I think we might have been fated to meet, regardless of the circumstances. Otherwise, how do you explain those tickles you felt when you met me?”

He traced the edge of her jaw, the curve of her cheek, the thin skin at her temple, all so familiar to him now that he couldn’t imagine getting through a day without her. Could there have been more to the recognition he’d felt when they’d met? He’d never felt this close to a woman after such a short time. He’d known Heather since grade school and even before they’d reached their teens he’d decided they would get married someday. He’d thought they had been fated to be together…