Free Thunderstruck by Roxanne St. Claire Page A

taken with anyone in many, many years. But something in his gut told him that Shelby would understand and that it would give her some much-needed insight. “My father killed himself when I was a lad. He had one too many gambling debts.”
    “Oh. I’m sorry.”
    He slipped the card into his billfold. “I thought you’d appreciate the significance.”
    “Of your card or your father’s suicide?”
    He looked at her. “Both.”
    “I remember seeing pictures of your mother in your biography online. Did she ever remarry?”
    “No, she just raised all her kids the best she could.”
    “All?” Shelby frowned at him and he instantly knew he’d slipped. “I thought there were just two. I read you have a younger sister.”
    “Actually, I have a brother, too. Kip. Doesn’t get much press coverage.” At least not if Mick had anything to say about it.
    “What does he do?”
    “Bits and pieces of lots of things.” Mostly ruin his life and Mick’s.
    “Funny, I never read about him in all those articles, never saw him in the pictures of your family.”
    Not if his publicist was doing her job, she wouldn’t. “I didn’t tell you about my father to elicit sympathy or to let you know you don’t have the market cornered on miserable pasts,” he explained, wanting the subject off Kip. “But I thought it was ironic that we share a similar philosophy about quitting. Or not, as the case may be.”
    “Kind of hard to win a power struggle when neither one will quit,” she said, her lips lifting into the beginning of a smile.
    “This doesn’t have to be a power struggle, Shelby. Merely a business arrangement.”
    She shook her head. “Cutting into my business is a power struggle. And I don’t like to lose.”
    “Neither do I.” He raised his wineglass to hers. “So this should be quite interesting.”
    She tapped his glass but didn’t drink. Instead she leaned forward and whispered, “But you’re wrong about one thing, Mick.”
    He looked questioningly at her.
    “There was nothing miserable about my childhood. It was wonderful. It was unusual, I’ll give you that, but it was never miserable. Not for very long anyway.”
    “What was it like being raised in racing?”
    She lifted one delicate shoulder. “What you’d expect it to be. Dirty. Fun. Crazy. I was surrounded by men and machines, speed and noise, rubber, paint, oil, grease and a healthy dose of danger.” Her coppery eyes sparkled in the candlelight, and that sweet flush rose up from the V-neck of her sweater.
    “You know, Shelby, something’s been bothering me since I met you.”
    Her hand froze as she lifted a glass of wine. “What’s that?”
    “Why don’t you call Ernie ‘Grandpa’?”
    She looked half-relieved at the question, setting the drink down without taking a sip. “I get asked that a lot. Because everyone calls him Ernie. Since I was little, I never heard him called anything else and I guess I just wanted to fit in. I even refer to my dad as Thunder sometimes because everyone else did.” She shrugged. “What can I say? I’m one of the guys.”
    “Hardly.”
    “I appreciate the compliment, but what I’m saying is that I’m part of this…family. This…” She closed her fingers together as if she palmed an imaginary ball. “This little community.” She tapered her gaze to a hard stare. “You’d never understand.”
    But he did. He’d been on a team as long as he could remember. But making that point wasn’t important now. “I don’t want to take any of that away from you, Shelby. I want to make sure you get to keep it.”
    She closed her fingers over the stem of the wineglass. “You’ll change it.”
    “From what I understand, you’ll lose it if you don’t change.”
    “That’s not necessarily true. I’m doing exactly what we need to do to keep pace with the sport. Beyond that, I don’t want to change. I don’t want to run a megashop. I don’t want to be driven by sponsors and business and corporate