Free Race to the Top: Book one in the Racing to Find Love series by KT Shears Page A

Erik.’
    ‘Erik! Where are you? Australia?’
    ‘Yes, Mama. I’m just back from practice.’
    ‘Hold on, I’ll get your father to pick up the phone
upstairs. ‘
    He heard his mother shouting to his father to hurry up and
pick up the phone, his celebrity son was on the line, and he smiled.
    ‘Erik?’
    ‘Hi, Dad.’
    ‘Erik was just about to tell us about practice,’ his mother
said, enthusiastically.
    ‘How’s the car?’ his dad asked.
    ‘It’s good,’ Erik said, as always finding these three-way
conversations far more complicated than he thought they should be. His mother
and father often ended up talking to each other instead of him, even though
they were in the same house. ‘I think it could be a winner this year.’
    ‘It better be,’ his father said, darkly. ‘I want to see that
grin wiped off that Devlin Carter’s face.’
    ‘Alfred…’ his mother said, chidingly. But Erik could tell
she thought the same.
    ‘I’ll do my best, Dad,’ Erik said, suddenly desperate to
make his parents proud.
    ‘You always do, kid,’ his father said, quietly.
    They were silent for a moment and then his mother piped up.
    ‘So, Erik. What else is new?’
    He knew she meant ‘have you got a girlfriend’ and sighed
down the phone.
    ‘Don’t sigh at me,’ she said, sternly, as his father
chuckled. ‘You need a good woman. And not like that awful Nikki person – one
who can string a sentence together and who’s read a book in their life.’
    Erik agreed with her. He did need a woman like that.
    ‘Erik needs to keep his head down and win the championship,’
Alfred said, laughing. ‘And perhaps he’ll find someone along the way.’
    Erik thought of Anna and wondered if maybe, just maybe, he
had.
    ***
    After he had hung up on his parents, promising his mother he
would call her the minute qualifying was over the next day, he lay back on the
bed. He wasn’t sure what to do next. It was too early to sleep, but he couldn’t
face going out for the customary drinks and dinner with a cast of thousands. He
wanted peace and quiet. And to stay away from Devlin Carter.
    He was surprised to hear a tentative knock at the door.
People rarely came by his room before a race and he eased himself off the bed
and went over to the door. He peered curiously through the peephole and was
surprised to see Anna standing there, clutching a laptop.
    He opened the door, and she smiled at him with an apologetic
look on her face.
    ‘I’m really sorry to bother you,’ she said. ‘But I don’t
really know anyone else here to ask. I’m trying to connect to the hotel wifi to
check my e-mails and things but I can’t get it to work. I don’t suppose you
know anything about computers, do you?’
    Erik felt slightly disappointed that she’d only sought him
out because she had computer problems, but he smiled at her and stood back,
inviting her into his suite.
    She entered, and Erik noticed she was clad in jogging
bottoms which clung very nicely around her bottom. He pondered for a moment how
this woman managed to look attractive in garments that should, by rights, be
quite unappealing.
    ‘Let me take a look,’ Erik said, taking the laptop from her.
He saw the way Anna was gazing around the plush apartment and felt embarrassed
again. He sat down on the edge of the bed and after a moment, Anna sat down
next to him. She was quite close, he thought, as he fiddled with the settings
on the laptop. Distractingly close. She smelled of soap and a faint hint of
perfume, and he felt like his breathing was becoming ragged. It had been a long
time since he was on a bed with a woman he was this attracted to, even if they
were just looking at a computer screen. He wondered if Anna was picking up on
any of his body language – he was sure he was being incredibly obvious – but if
she was, she wasn’t saying anything about it.
    ‘There,’ he said, handing the laptop back. Their hands
brushed as she went to take it from him, and Erik felt a jolt