Home At Last Chance (Last Chance #2)(31)
Author: Hope Ramsay

Doc leaned back in his chair. The man weighed in excess of 250 pounds, and every ounce was Georgia good ol’ boy. He crossed his hamlike arms over his chest, and his beer belly almost showed from beneath the hem of his pink shirt.

“Yeah, as a matter of fact. To be honest, Jim, I’ve wanted to break Kenny’s nose myself on occasion,” Doc replied.

Tulane had to stifle a groan. Someone needed to stop Doc before he got them all hanged. “Uh, Jim, can I—”

Jim turned on Tulane, his eyes hard. “You, be quiet. We’ll get to you in a minute.”

Tulane straightened in his chair and wondered when the world would ever give him a chance to be mature and grown-up.

Jim turned back toward Doc. “Are you telling me you have a problem with Ken?”

“Yeah, I do. He doesn’t know his butt from a hole in the ground.” Doc gave Tulane a glance of solidarity. Tulane was glad to have Doc taking his side, but, on the other hand, Doc was making a total hash out of things.

“Ken has a degree from University of—” Jim began.

“Don’t mean he knows squat about race car setups,” Doc said. “He doesn’t listen to what Tulane says. And if you want to know why we’re having trouble as a team, that’s pretty much the reason. Kenny has never respected Tulane’s experience, and Tulane deserves some respect. He’s been driving for a long time. He knows cars.”

Wow. Tulane had no idea Doc Jackson—one of the legendary crew chiefs in professional stock car racing—thought those things about him. For weeks now, Doc had been telling Tulane that he just needed to find some way to work with the engineer. It was the sort of thing Pete would have told him. And Tulane had been trying his best, letting Kenny win at pool week after week, and not arguing with the guy when he made some stupid adjustment to the car. The whole Kenny thing had been very frustrating.

But that’s not why he popped the guy in the face. And Doc needed to shut up now.

“Um, Jim, can I speak, please?”

Jim turned on Tulane again. “No. I’m not all that interested in your excuses. Picking fights is not a good way to solve problems on a race team. You would think with your experience and age, you’d know that by now.” Jim said the words real slow, like he was speaking to one of his many children.

“But—”

“Shut up and listen. I had to take a call this morning from National Brands. Deidre Montgomery wants me to fire you. She doesn’t think you’re a good spokesman for their brand image. And right now, I have to say, she’s got a good point.”

Tulane clamped down on the angry retort that rested on the tip of his tongue. He was not going to yell. He was going to be mature.

“Well?” Jim asked. “You wanted to say something?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Okay then, go ahead.”

“I hit Kenny all right. But not because of the stuff Doc said. I only hit him because he came after me. But see, he was drunk. He’d been drinking rum punch. And I was sober. So, all in all, I probably could have handled it better.”

Good, his voice came out real natural, without any emotions, but he’d confessed like a man. Pete would have been proud of him for simply taking the blame. He stared up at Jim directly, man to man, and waited to be told that Jim was letting him go. A huge knot formed in his throat, but he controlled his emotions.

Sam cleared his throat, but the team manager didn’t say anything out loud about how the rum punch had been made by his wife. Sam was going to protect his wife and Sarah, too. Both Doc and Sam were. Tulane understood and approved.

Jim turned to stare at Sam. “What?” the boss asked.

“Nothing.” Sam crossed his arms across his chest-too-and met Jim’s stare head-on.

“All right, what’s going on here?” Jim asked.

“Not a thing, Jim,” Sam said. “Kenny is an idiot, and Tulane didn’t start the fight, he just finished it. Simple as that.”

Jim turned and stared down at Tulane for a long, long moment. “You are an idiot, you know that? You’ve got a good thing going here, and you’re about to screw it up, son. You need to grow up.”

Tulane nodded. “Yes, sir, I understand. I’m trying real hard on that score.”

Jim shook his head and stared up at the ceiling for a moment. “Well, try harder. As of this moment, you are on probation, young man.” Jim turned and glared at the rest of them. “All ya’ll better grow up, too. Now get the hell out of my sight.”

The men piled out of the team hauler, and Sam clapped Tulane across the shoulders. “Don’t worry, kid. It’ll blow over. And thanks a bunch for protecting Lori; I’ve got your back.”

“Yeah,” Doc said. “And we’ll keep quiet about Sarah. You can count on it.”

Tulane nodded. The knot in his throat was so thick he couldn’t speak. Maybe Doc and Sam understood why he couldn’t simply stand there and let Kenny manhandle Sarah. Just thinking about the bruises that Kenny had put on her tore him up inside.

“Sure, great,” Tulane said, clamping down on his feelings and managing a phony smile for his bosses. He turned and walked with them back to the garages, determined to put Sarah and Kenny out of his head.

He just needed to win a race. If he could just win, everything would work itself out.

It didn’t take long for the bad news to make the rounds. Sarah was working with the caterer at the Dover Downs Hotel when one of the marketing people at headquarters texted her.

Kenny had given a self-serving statement to someone at Speed Channel, and as usual the press had jumped to all the wrong conclusions about Tulane Rhodes, bad-boy stock car driver.

The rumors were running wild that Jim Ferguson was about to fire Tulane because he’d gotten into a brawl with his team engineer. The various sports news feeds also said NASCAR was going to put Tulane on suspension. The general view seemed to be that Tulane was an immature hothead who had no business driving a Cup car. Maybe if he’d been winning races the critics might have been less hard on him. But, so far, Tulane’s record in the Sprint Cup series had been less than stellar.

Sarah read the news on her BlackBerry while a slow burn consumed her middle. Why hadn’t Tulane told Jim the truth?

Short answer: Tulane had protected her reputation.

At the expense of his own.

Tulane Rhodes was proving to be maddeningly chivalrous. Where the heck was the bad boy he was supposed to be?

Tulane was loyal to a fault, protected his family at all costs, took care of his friends when they made stupid mistakes, and was manly enough to cry when someone he loved died.

Well, if he could be mature about this, then she could be mature, too.

She wasn’t about to let Tulane take the fall for her mistake. She’d been letting him do that for a long time. She needed to rescue him.

She found a quiet corner of the hotel, took a deep, calming breath, and placed a phone call to Deidre.

“I was just about to call you, Sarah,” Deidre said without preamble. “What the hell is going on? Did Rhodes really break his engineer’s nose? Please don’t tell me he was drunk.”

“Tulane was sober as a judge when it happened. Kenny, not so much,” Sarah replied.

“Tulane attacked a drunken man? Oh boy.”

“Deidre, there are a few things you need to know about Tulane and what happened last night. Things I haven’t told you, and which he obviously didn’t tell Jim Ferguson.”

Silence beat on the phone for a moment. “You’ve been lying for him, haven’t you?”

“No,” she lied, hoping Deidre couldn’t see through her. She was not about to tell Deidre the secrets she had sworn never to reveal, even though telling Deidre the truth would have made everything easier. A promise was a promise.

“No?” Deidre sounded surprised.

“Uh, no, it’s actually the other way around. See, Tulane rescued me last night, and then he lied about it.”

She told Deidre the truth about Kenny Lewicki, and had to sit there for a solid ten minutes while her boss gave her an ear-blistering lecture about the stupidity of drinking on the job and getting involved with work colleagues.

Sarah fully expected the Dragon Lady to fire her on the spot, but for some reason Deidre decided to merely put her on probation, with the warning that any future slipups would end in her termination.

The next day, feeling suitably chastened, Sarah found herself in one of the luxury suites at Dover Downs, along with fifty handpicked executives from Value Mart and National Brands. A handful of Delaware’s political elite, including the governor, made this hospitality event the must-attend gathering at the races this weekend.

She was utterly exhausted. Last night’s swanky dinner at the hotel had gone off without a hitch. Tulane had shown up, wearing a tuxedo. He’d charmed the executives and the politicos. He’d made everyone laugh, cracking a couple of great jokes at his own expense.

He had also given her about as wide a berth as a man could give a person who was supposed to be handling his personal appearances. He was officially on probation with NASCAR and Ferguson Racing.

Now, eighteen hours later, Sarah watched the race through the big picture windows that provided an eagle’s-eye view of the front straightaway and pit row. Tulane was running a very good race today.

She stood near one of the windows, and despite the soundproofing, the combined rumble of the race cars compressed her chest every time they came around the track.

Tulane was in the middle of a pack of three side-by-side cars, going unbelievably fast, only inches apart. The cars screamed past, the pitch of their engines dropping from the Doppler shift, their bright colors blurring by as they headed toward turn one. For the last thirty laps, Tulane and Augie Tallon had been doing a dance with each other.

But the race was down to just a few laps left, and everyone was getting tense, including Sarah. If Tulane could keep his cool, he might finish in the top five. Heck, he might win. He and Augie had been trading the lead all day.

She kept her eye trained on Tulane’s pink car as he and Augie raced for the lead with just eight laps to go.

And then, as they headed into the turn, the very worst happened. Augie’s car came up on Tulane’s bumper, and bedlam broke out in the very next instant.

The back end of Tulane’s car bobbled and turned sideways. The car slipped up the track and slammed into the turn-four wall. Sarah could hear the sound of metal bending with sickening force. A plume of smoke bellowed from the back wheels, and everyone in the VIP suite gasped.

The Ford caromed off the wall, spinning 180 degrees and sliding backward down the track. Sarah lost sight of it in the smoke, but she heard the second impact as someone collided with it, shooting it forward into the grassy infield. The car kept coming like gangbusters. A wheel popped off, spinning high into the air. Behind it, a nutty demolition derby played out, but Sarah kept her horrified gaze fixed on the battered pink machine as its nose dug into the grass.

The speed propelling the car pushed it airborne, back end over front. It flipped three times, churning up the sod. Finally it skidded to a stop upside down, not far from the pit road entrance, fire flickering from what had been the right-rear wheel well.