Free Dangerous Curves by Pamela Britton

that—nor why she’d missed her plane, hopped in a car and driven all the way out to the track on a race day, just to tell him face-to-face. She could have waited until after the race, or this evening when he went back to his hotel.
    “Yeah, well, I’m sorry, too,” he said, over the noise of the crowd. Driver introductions were almost over, boos and hisses mixing with wild applause, creating a cacophony of noise that was almost indescribable.
    “What are you going to do?” she asked.
    “Don’t know,” he answered.
    “You going to tell your driver?”
    “On race day? I may as well pull him from the race if I do that.”
    “So you’re going to race today, then.”
    “What do you think I should do?”
    Stupid, how gratified it made her feel to be asked her opinion. “I think you should be concerned.”
    He nodded, looking grim.
    “But I also think this is a different league, and thus not a target.” Busch racing wasn’t in the same echelon as the Cup tour, even if the cars did look the same. “It seems more likely that tomorrow’s race would be the target, not today’s. Besides, the note referred to the Cup car circuit, not this one.”
    “Lance is a Cup driver, too.”
    “Yeah, but not today.”
    “And what about tomorrow? What do I do then? We’re trying to win a championship. Hell, we’re trying to hold on to our sponsor. Star Oil doesn’t like that a no-name kid is driving their car. We need a win to soothe their ruffled feathers, and to battle the negative image of a dead driver being associated with their logo.”
    “Stupid,” Cece said.
    “But fact.”
    Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, Cece thought. “It’s a no-win situation.”
    He crossed his arms, tension lines bracketing his mouth. “Yeah, it is.”
    “Let Lance race,” Cece said on impulse, touching his arm, feeling the soft hairs that were in such contrast to his hard muscles. “I don’t see any reason to think Busch cars will come under attack, too. Tomorrow…well, tomorrow might be a different story.”
    “You think so?”
    “It’s a gut feeling, but it’s the best I can offer right now.”
    He stared into the distance for a moment, seeking answers to hard questions. When his eyes returned to Cece’s face he still didn’t say anything immediately. “All right. We’ll race.”
    She hoped she wouldn’t come to regret her words.
    “On one condition.”
    She wondered what that could be.
    “You stay.”
    “Stay?” she said in shock. “I can’t stay. I need to get back.”
    He looked out over the homestretch, at the thousands of fans that sat in the stadium, and his face filled with such an expression of uncertainty, she couldn’t look away.
    “Yeah, but I’d really like it if you hung around.”
    He glanced back at her, that handsome, chiseled face that she used to fantasize about right in front of her. But it wasn’t his nearness that caused her stomach to pitch, caused her to inhale a bit, to stare into blue, blue eyes. It was his words, and the sincerity she heard in them. She told herself not to be weak. Not to give in. So he wanted her around. It wasn’t personal.
    It sure felt personal.
    The crowd roared.
    To her right, another famous car owner nodded to Blain as he passed. A generator hummed. Cecelooked toward the sound, her eyes nearly blinded by the white big rig that housed the “brains” of a major network.
    He wanted her to stay.
    “Okay,” she said, but for one long moment, she wanted to be a race fan, not an FBI agent. Wanted to do this under different circumstances—not for the FBI, but for her own personal pleasure.
    “You don’t look all that enthusiastic,” Blain said.
    She opened her mouth, ready to feed him a pithy excuse; instead she found herself saying, “I wish I was here under different circumstances.”
    He straightened away from her, his eyes holding hers in one of those long, thoughtful glances that made her see things in his gaze she’d never seen before. Doubt.