The Chase (Fast Track #4)(44)
Author: Erin McCarthy

She folded her arms over her chest belligerently. “I do what I consider is best for you and your career. Dating Kendall isn’t best for you.”

“That’s not for you to decide!” Evan stared at his sister in disbelief. “Look, you’re my sister. I love you, most of the time. But I’m going to kill you if I have to keep working with you.”

“Dad will freak out when he finds out.”

“I can handle it. I’m not doing this anymore.” Evan pulled his keys out of his pocket. “You’re fired. That’s final. And I think you need to evaluate your true motives.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“You reek of bitterness and I get it. It’s not my fault that I was born a boy and you were born a girl. It’s not my fault I get to drive and you don’t. Nor should it be a strike against Kendall that she beat the odds and made it to the series as a woman. Those are your issues, not ours.”

His sister picked up a throw pillow and threw it at him. “Fuck you. I’m grateful I wasn’t born a man. I just wish I didn’t have to be surrounded by them all the time. And you just saved me seventy-five percent of my stress by getting out of my life.”

He dodged the paltry missile. “Glad I could be of help.”

“I just bet you are. Now get out of my apartment and good luck running your career without me. You’ll be up shit creek in a week.” Eve smirked. “Oh, wait. You already are.”

Evan’s first response to Eve was always to give as good as he got. But for some reason, today he felt her palpable unhappiness, and it made his anger deflate. “Being with Kendall makes me happy. I hope someday you can be happy, too.”

If he was hoping for a Hallmark moment, she didn’t give it to him.

“Thanks, I’ll put that on my calendar. Be happy on Thursday.”

Holy shit.

Stunned, Evan realized that his sister sounded exactly like he had for the last ten years.

And a way he never wanted to sound again.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“I thought we were going to lunch,” Evan said as he sat down in the Adirondack chair next to Kendall on her patio.

Kendall was trying to relax, trying to enjoy the sweep of early spring they were getting in North Carolina, but she stared out across the green space behind her condo development and fretted. “I can’t stop thinking about what Carl said to me this morning.”

“It’s not a big deal.” Evan seemed to have no problem relaxing, stretching his legs out in front of him, kicking away a pile of leaves that had clung to the furniture legs all winter. “God, it’s gorgeous outside. It must be eighty degrees.”

Kendall didn’t get his total nonchalance. “Carl is pissed, Evan. He said the commercial shoot was ‘not the direction he intended for us to take’ and that we should be aiming for funny, for a sense of camaraderie between teammates, not a sex fest campaign.”

“We didn’t write that commercial. It’s not our fault.” Evan sat forward and peeled his T-shirt off, before leaning back in the chair and closing his eyes, the midday sun caressing him.

He was gorgeous without his shirt on, all hard muscle and tapered waist, and Kendall felt a physical reaction to him at the same time she wanted to grab his shirt out of his hands and jam it back over his head so she wouldn’t be distracted from the real issue at hand. “I don’t think you’re understanding the severity of this situation.”

One eye popped open. “Apparently I’m not.”

“He told me that you and I dating is bad for my career. That to come out of the gate with the image of sex symbol will be establishing a pattern and reputation that will follow me for the whole of my career. I don’t want that.”

“How does dating me establish you as a sex symbol?”

“The commercial, the paparazzi shots . . . the fact that we give off pheromones whenever we’re around each other.” She didn’t understand what he wasn’t understanding about this.

Evan grinned. “That’s true. We do look like we’re about to tear each other’s clothes off most of the time. So, okay, what are we supposed to do about it? I can cut down on PDA, not that we’ve really done any of that so far. We haven’t even had a chance to go out on a real date, let alone make out in public.”

Kendall bit her lip. He wasn’t going to like this. She didn’t like this. But given his conversation with the team owner, and hers, it was in both of their best interests to proceed with caution. “I think we should either stop seeing each other for now or do it very, very discreetly.”

“What?” Evan sat straight up. “Hell no. We just started seeing each other, I’m not about to pull the plug already.”

Part of her wondered if she had thrown that out there as a test, to see how he would react. Because even as she was saying that they shouldn’t see each other, Kendall knew she was falling harder and harder for Evan. It was old feelings blending with new and taking her out at the knees.

She wanted to be with him desperately.

But she wanted her career, too.

And she trusted that if she gave it her all, her career would last.

With Evan, she wasn’t so sure. It hadn’t lasted the first time around.

“I just think it’s dangerous . . . me in my rookie season, you in a transitional phase . . . we need to be careful.”

“Transitional phase. That’s a nice way to put that I suck.” Evan winked at her. “But okay, I get what you’re saying. I respect it. But come on, Kendall, we can’t sacrifice spending time together, having fun with each other, on the whim of a team owner.”

Frustrated, Kendall stood up and leaned over the wrought iron fence that contained her patio. “It’s not a whim. These are our careers. The rest of our lives if you want to get overly dramatic.”

“Apparently you’re going to get dramatic enough for both of us.”

That was enough to send her opening the gate and strolling out across the grass, leaving him on her patio asking in surprise, “Where the hell are you going?”

“On a walk.” To figure out why nothing could ever be easy, and why when she was given some kind of happiness, it had to be taken away.

Was she destined to be a career woman only? Sacrificing love for the sake of getting ahead? Was that the irony of the glass ceiling for women? You shattered it, but then you sat at the top alone?

That didn’t seem fair. She wanted to drive, she wanted to be the best in her field, she wanted to win The Chase someday. But she also wanted love. Marriage. Maybe even kids.