“WHAT’S WALTER’S NIECE like?” Beth Wagner asked, as they drove from the airport to the racetrack Thursday night. A storm had delayed their arrival, so Aidan’s daughter and Mace’s wife and sons were getting in much later than planned. “Mace hasn’t said much about her.”
Aidan’s first impulse was to say sexy, followed by beautiful, intelligent, stuck-up and insecure. But his mind didn’t seem to want to go past the first word.
“Not much like him,” he said.
“I miss Uncle Walter,” Annie said from the backseat, where she was securely belted in between ten-year-old Kevin and twelve-year-old Lief. The boys’ heads were bobbing to their iPod music.
“We all do, honey,” Aidan replied, “but he’s still here in spirit. All you have to do is picture him and there he is.”
“I do, but sometimes I forget what he looks like. Like I forget what Mommy looks like.”
“That’s all right, sweetheart,” Beth said, reaching back and patting the girl’s knee. “People’s looks change, but their love never does.”
Annie nodded and continued gazing out the window. The infield was packed with vehicles and RVs of every variety. People were milling around. Music was being pumped from stereos, and the scents of food being cooked on grills permeated the air.
“Are we going to meet Ellie tonight?” Annie asked a minute later.
“Not tonight, but in the morning.”
It was already after nine locally, well past Annie’s bedtime.
“I invited her to stop by and meet you in the morning at eight. She’s using Uncle Walter’s RV.”
ELLIE SHIFTED the cell phone from one ear to the other as she told her mother about Aidan’s offer to buy their interests but with the stipulation that full payment be delayed a year.
“I was hoping you’d be able to settle this ridiculous matter quickly,” Estelle complained.
Ellie didn’t tell her about Mitch Fulton’s offer to top it or any other offer by a million dollars, payable immediately. It was a no-brainer, yet she hesitated. This was a business deal, and that meant accepting the high bid and getting out.
She should have stayed in California and handled it from a distance. The decision would have been easy then. Now she was faced with Aidan O’Keefe, and he was hard to ignore. Time to change the subject.
“When was the last time you saw Uncle Walter?” Ellie asked her mother.
Silence on the other end.
“Mother? Are you still there?”
“Just thinking, dear.”
“Could it have been last January? Aboard a ship in the Caribbean?”
The sound on the line had an uncanny resemblance to a muffled gasp.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me you were seeing him?”
“I wasn’t seeing him,” Estelle objected. “We just happened to be on the same cruise.”
“Every year?” Ellie laughed. “I’ll say this for you, Mother. You’ve been discreet. Why didn’t you ever bring him home, let me meet him?”
“He wasn’t suitable, Ellie. For one thing, he was my brother-in-law. Your father—” there was that pause again “—your father was refined, educated, sophisticated. An achiever. Walter… Well, Walter was the wild one, the renegade—”
“The bad boy,” Ellie supplied.
Estelle sighed. “Exactly.”
And bad boys can be very attractive, even seductive, Ellie reflected. Of course, a lot depended on how you defined good and bad.
“He didn’t do too shabby, though,” Ellie reminded her mother. “He got to own a multimillion-dollar NASCAR racing team.”
Estelle didn’t respond. Instead she asked, “What’s this Aidan O’Keefe person like?”
Sexy, Ellie almost blurted out. Dangerous. “An experienced driver and an astute businessman, as well as a dedicated family man.”
“Family man? I didn’t know—”
“He has a six-year-old daughter. I haven’t met her yet, but I will tomorrow.”
“And his wife?”
“Died two or three years ago.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. And he’s bringing his daughter up all by himself? Can’t be easy.”
Her mother’s comment took Ellie a bit by surprise. Estelle didn’t usually dwell on other people’s lives, except as they impacted her own, but having been a single parent, she could appreciate the challenges a widower faced.
Ellie knew her mother’s self-absorption was largely a defense mechanism. She suspected the young Estelle, who’d married the handsome air force captain, had been a different person from the mature woman she’d developed into. John Satterfield’s sudden and tragic death had traumatized Estelle and made her afraid to get too close to people, at times, even to Ellie. Still, Ellie never had any doubt she was loved.
What, then, of Estelle’s relationship with Walter? Ellie wouldn’t be surprised if it had gone beyond a once-a-year assignation, but this wasn’t the time to probe deeper.
What she had to do now was figure out how she was going to handle the sale of Satterfield Racing. More particularly, how she was going to deal with Aidan O’Keefe.
EARLY THE NEXT MORNING Ellie tried, not wholly successfully, to prepare coffee in the galley of her late uncle’s motor coach, which, she had to admit, blew her away. This wasn’t your weekend camper but a home away from home.
Among the things she’d found in inventorying the coach the day before, after flying in from Charlotte, was a doll. Very different from the dolls Ellie had grown up with, the kind dressed in finery and lace, wearing wide-brimmed hats and a myriad of crinolines. This doll wore denim, clunky shoes and a long-sleeved shirt displaying Satterfield Racing colors. Only the length of the yellow hair and painted fingernails identified it as a girl.
Was this doll commonly available at the many souvenir booths that lined the parking lots and roadways to the huge racing stadium? Since it was not in a box, and there were no labels on it or any of its garments, Ellie suspected it was a handcrafted one-of-a-kind. For Annie? From what Mace had told her, Walter had been very close to Aidan and his daughter, virtually a member of the family.
She could hear the whispered roar coming from outside of engines being gunned and tuned. A few days ago she would have frowned at the noise, but this morning it called out like rock music at a concert. There was something about speeding along at a hundred and eighty miles an hour, feeling the grumbling vibrations of engine and road shivering through her flesh that excited her soul as well as her body.
The air was charged as she exited the coach and walked toward Aidan’s RV. This was the last race of the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup season. The people she encountered along the way, men—and a few women—in team uniforms, family members—mostly women and children—all displayed the same kind of nervous energy she felt, that jittery anticipation of an important event.
She mounted the steps of Aidan’s coach and was about to knock when the door opened and he was facing her.
Unexpected exhilaration swept through her. She wasn’t supposed to have this kind of response to the mere sight of a man, but he was so close.
“Good morning.”
Returning his smile was easy, unconscious, uncontrollable. “Good morning.”
“Come on in.” He widened the door and stepped back.
Waiting to greet her were a woman and a girl. Ellie focused instantly on the six-year-old. She had straw-blond hair, brushed straight back off her shoulders, and her father’s mountain-lake blue eyes. A lovely child with smooth, flawless skin and pleasant features, but Ellie’s experienced eye immediately discerned bone structure and a sensuous mouth that would one day make her a beauty.
“This is my daughter, Annie,” Aidan said with obvious pride, “and Mace’s wife, Beth. She helps with Annie’s homeschooling.”
Ellie greeted Annie first, extending her hand. The girl was understandably reserved but not bashful. She took Ellie’s hand firmly and said hello in a strong voice.
Reaching up, Ellie shook Beth’s hand, as well. She was an attractive woman in her late thirties with short dark hair and intelligent brown eyes. Her greeting, though pleasant, was more wary.
“Can I get you some coffee?” she asked.
“Oh, please,” Ellie responded gratefully. “I tried fixing some in Walter’s RV, but what came out…you could have read the fine print of a sales contract through it.”
Beth laughed. “Well, you can’t read anything through the mud this guy concocts, I promise.”
“I like my coffee strong,” Aidan declared in self-defense.
“First, though,” Ellie said, “I have something for Annie. I found this in the coach. I think Uncle Walter was going to give it to you for Christmas, but that’s more than a month away, and I thought you might like to have it today.”
She removed the doll from the bag.
Annie peered at it for a moment before her eyes lit up.
“Oh, isn’t that nice!” Beth exclaimed.
Shyly now, Annie took it, as if it were a sacred object.
Ellie caught the smile on Aidan’s face and realized he wasn’t studying the doll but his daughter. The love in his eyes almost brought tears to her own. What would it have been like, she wondered, to have had a dad who looked at her that way?
“What are you going to call her?” he asked Annie.
“We can play with names today until we find the right one,” Beth said.
“Can we call her Walter?” Annie asked.
“That’s pretty much a boy’s name,” Aidan told her.
“How about—” Ellie stroked her chin “—how about Waltera? You could shorten it to Tera.”
Annie gazed up at her and a new grin brightened her face. “Tera! That’s a nice name. Isn’t it, Daddy?”
“I think it’s a perfect name.” He glanced over at Ellie and the warmth of his smile this time threatened to melt every bone in her body. Her heart skipped a beat.
Aidan checked his watch. “I’ve got to run.” He bent down and planted a kiss on top of his daughter’s head while he clasped her small shoulders. “Have a good time with your new doll.”
“Daddy, I know you’re going to win the pole today.”
He stroked her cheek. “Keep those positive thoughts, kid. I can’t promise I’ll win, but I can promise I’ll do my best.”
“That’s what really counts,” she replied, proud of her wisdom.
She walked him to the door and stood on the raised platform to bid him farewell and good luck.
Ellie stared at the retreating figure, at the wide set of his broad shoulders, at the way the jumpsuit hugged his narrow hips. She was probably imagining rather than seeing the play of leg muscles as he dodged around people.
“Shall we finish our coffee?”
Ellie jerked sharply to her right at the sound of Beth’s voice, only then realizing she’d been so mesmerized by the man running away from her, she’d forgotten about everybody else.
“I think you should kiss my daddy,” the six-year-old declared.
After a moment of shock, Ellie asked, “You do? Why?”
“’Cause he likes you.”
“He does, huh? Did he tell you that?”
“Yep. He said it’s hard not to like someone who’s so in love with herself.”
Ellie decided she should have quit while she was ahead.
Beth chuckled.