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Two of the other crew members, having just sipped their beers, sprayed the table.
Mack cried, “Liz, no—”
She ignored him. “I also know about that little button on the dash that sends a signal to a big computer somewhere to make it fair for everybody to start their cars at the same time.”
“Oh, man.” Benny reached for his water glass, still coughing and choking.
The others reached for their beer, struggling with the hilarity of it all.
Mack grabbed Liz’s wrist. “Hey, you’re just clowning around, right? You don’t really believe all that?”
Making her eyes wide with innocence, Liz replied, “Why, of course I do. I had a very good teacher.”
Mack looked accusingly at Rick, who had been listening stone-faced and silent. “Did you tell her all that crap? I heard about the tires. Jeez, Rick…”
Liz had wasted no time once she got to her motel room unpacking the books she had bought on racing. Scolding herself for not finding the time to do so earlier, she had located information on the construction of race cars and devoured every word.
She relished the astonished look that came over Rick’s face with each word she spoke. “The typical Winston Cup car weighs thirty-four hundred pounds and has a seven- to seven-hundred-fifty-horsepower engine that drives the rear wheels through a four-speed transmission. Top speed is 220 miles an hour. The roll cage inside the car is made of 150 feet of steel tubing to protect the driver. There are no doors, no passenger seat, and no speedometer. The tires have an extra layer of rubber to try to guard against a flat. They’re fortified by a belt network that was designed to keep their shape under extreme stress.”
She paused to sip her wine, reveling in the moment, then continued. “There are two eleven-gallon rubber gas tanks encased in steel for safety, but fuel economy would be a nightmare for the ordinary street car. Race cars only get five miles to the gallon, and, of course, they use a special kind of fuel that is much more expensive than regular gas.”
A hush had fallen over the table.
Rick was the first to break it, not about to let her get the best of him, merely because she’d managed to speed-read some technical stuff before dinner. “Well, now, Liz, that’s real impressive. Maybe with all that information to share, you can keep the bigwigs out of my way.”
“I intend to. But I’m sure they’d like to hear about the toilet facilities. I thought maybe you could explain that to them.”
Mack shook his head. “What in heck did you tell her, Rick?”
The waiter appeared with stuffed shrimp appetizers for everyone. Rick helped himself before flippantly responding. “She can’t take a joke. Or maybe she doesn’t know enough about what’s going on to realize it’s a joke. She asked about that hole in the seat. I made up a story about how it’s the way drivers use the bathroom during a race.”
“When actually,” Liz corrected, “it’s where the driver’s shoulder harness connects. You were just teasing, I know.” She flashed her sweetest smile at Rick, but her eyes were cold. “But enough funny stuff. From now on I would appreciate it if you would tell me the truth when I ask you a technical question, okay?”
Rick gave a curt nod of assent and bristled to think how she might have won the lap but would never finish the race.
Not if he could help it.
Mack breezed into the motel’s coffee shop and went to where Liz was waiting in a booth.
“Is Rick coming?” she asked. She had scheduled a breakfast meeting to go over a few things, and, since the night before, she had arranged for Rick to be a guest on a popular local talk show for that evening.
Mack signaled the waitress for coffee. “He’s taking a shower. He said he’d skip breakfast and head to the track. He wants to get started checking the car out before the races today.”
“Well, I need to tell him about a radio show I’ve got him scheduled to be on tonight.”
Mack’s eyes widened. “The one called Pit Stop?”
She nodded.
“Oh, man, that’s great. During Speed Weeks, it’s broadcast from one of the hottest nightclubs on the beach. He’ll get a lot of exposure.”
“I know. So will you please call him on a house phone and tell him I need to meet with him now?”
Mack frowned. “Liz, he said he’d rather me deal with you, so I’ll tell him about it when I get to the track. I’m sorry, but that’s just how he is.”
“Well, it’s not how I am, and he’s got plenty of time. It’s only seven o’clock. He can be at the track by eight. Now if you don’t want to call him, Mack, I will.”
She started to get up, but Mack waved her to stay seated. “I’ll do it. But I can’t understand why you and I can’t handle everything and leave him out of it.”
“That’s just the point. He is everything. He is the focus of my job. I’ve also arranged an interview for him with an Atlanta journalist. Big Boy’s has sixteen restaurants in the Atlanta area. They’ll be thrilled to see a story about Rick in the paper. I need to tell him what time to meet the writer and where.
“Your job, Mack,” she politely reminded, “is to take care of the car. I plan to ease a lot of your burdens over managing the team to give you more time to do that. Now please get Rick down here so we can discuss all this and get it over with so you can do your job, and I can do mine. Okay?”
Mack made the call and returned to say Rick was on his way. “He’s grumbling, but he’ll be okay.”
Liz couldn’t care less.
About ten minutes later, Rick all but threw himself into the other side of the booth next to Mack. “All right, what’s so important it can’t wait?”
Liz handed him a schedule for the week that she had prepared. “I just wanted a quiet moment to go over all this with the two of you.”
Mack, reading over Rick’s shoulder, said, “This is all PR stuff—appearances at the mall to sign autographs, stuff like that. What has it got to do with me?”
She explained how she needed Mack to know Rick’s schedule so he wouldn’t have him practicing or working on the car at those times. “I’ve checked the track schedule, and I’ve made sure there won’t be any conflicts as far as what he needs to do there. I want you to coordinate with me.”
“Great. No problem.” Mack looked up to see Benny waving from the door. “Gotta go. See you guys later.”
“We’ll have dinner again later in the week,” Liz said.
“Afraid not. My wife’s driving in from Charlotte today and bringing the kids. We’ve got an efficiency, so she’ll be doing some cooking.”
“Well, maybe she can join us,” Liz said. “I’d like to meet her. In fact, I’d like to meet the families of the entire crew. I want us to be like a family, all working together to win and make Rick a star.”
Mack gave her a little salute and left them.
Rick reached for the coffee Mack hadn’t had time to drink. “I knew he was going to duck out and leave me with all this.”
“All what?” Liz said, troubled that he continued to resent her at every turn. “I just want to make sure you understand about the show tonight, what time you need to be there, and—”
“The show,” he scoffed, staring down at the schedule. “Now I know some drivers who aren’t rookies that haven’t been able to get on there. Pit Stop features the biggies, not the little guys like me. But—” he paused to give his most mocking grin “—I guess that’s an advantage to having a female PR person, right?”
“Wrong.” Liz was fast getting her dander up. She knew what he was implying and didn’t like it.
“Then how did you arrange it? Tell me. I’d like to hear. Exactly how did you manage within twenty-four hours of arriving in Daytona to get me on that show tonight?”
“I met Jimmy Barnes, the host, at a party last night.”
“A party. After you left us at the restaurant, you went to a party.”
“That’s right. The invitation was in my press package. I was introduced to Jimmy, and I told him about you and the new sponsorship, and he said great, he’d like to have you on his show tonight. Simple as that.”
Rick knew it wasn’t that simple at all. Jimmy Barnes had been turned on by Liz like any normal man would be, and he’d let her wheedle him into putting him on the show. Maybe some drivers would consider that an advantage—having a sexy female pave the way for them—but not Rick.
Still, he knew better than to gripe about it. He did need the exposure. And he wanted it badly. That’s how other sponsors became interested in a driver.
“Well, that’s nice, Liz. I’ll look forward to it.”
Something in his voice raised suspicion that he wasn’t all that pleased, but not about the show. He probably thought she had flirted with Jimmy Barnes to get him on there. But she hadn’t.
One of the things Liz adhered to was her personal rule that she would not use womanly guile to open doors. Yes, she would try to dress nicely, but she would be all business. If anyone got any ideas, she set them straight. And that was how she intended to conduct herself in the racing world.
Liz ordered breakfast, even though she wasn’t hungry. In fact, she never ate breakfast, just grabbed a quick cup of coffee on the run.
She told herself the only reason she was eating this morning was because it was going to be a long day. She needed her energy. She would not even remotely consider it was to prolong her time with Rick because he was being friendly. Still distant. Still reserved. But it was an improvement over his previous demeanor.
He was wearing a T-shirt again. It reminded her of Clint Eastwood in Bridges of Madison County. The man might be pushing seventy, but in a T-shirt he was a sex symbol nonpareil.
Liz munched on a piece of toast she didn’t want and wondered what size shirt Rick wore. She seized on an excuse to ask. “I should be receiving the new T-shirts today that Big Boy’s had made up to sell at the concession stands. I’ll take out a few for you guys. What size do you wear?”
“Extra-large.”
She should have known.
“And how big are you?”
“Thirty-four, C cup,” she blurted without thinking and wanted to die then and there. What was wrong with her? She gulped and corrected, “I meant medium.”
“I can’t believe you’re blushing.”
“Am I?” She took a big swallow of orange juice, hoping it would cool her cheeks.
“Yeah, you are. And that’s kind of nice. I didn’t know women blushed anymore.”
“I just got too much sun yesterday.” Maybe it had been a big mistake to prolong the meeting. But she had dared to think she had her emotions under control. Last night she had lain awake for hours lecturing herself that she was a fool to be even remotely attracted to him.
The waitress brought the check. Liz reached for it, but Rick got it first.
She protested, “I’m on an expense account.”
He leaned across the table so those around would not hear. “Then next time make arrangements to pay the tab before it’s put on the table.”
“What difference does that make?”
“I don’t know where you come from, Liz, or how they do things there. But I hail from a small town in Georgia, which makes me, I guess, a country boy, with old-fashioned ways, and one of them happens to be the man pays the bill when he’s dining with a lady.”
“I paid it last night.”
“It wasn’t just the two of us.”
She argued, “I’m not paying for it. The sponsor is.”
He countered, “Others don’t know that.”
“I don’t see why we should care what others think.”
“Hey, aren’t you the one who was giving me a lecture on public relations just yesterday? Well, we’re in public, and we’re having relations—social, anyway. So that means I have to be aware of what others think. Am I right?”
“You’re stretching it a bit,” she said stiffly.
“Oh, don’t worry about it. It’s not a big deal. And I don’t have time to debate the issue, anyway. I need to get to the track. I’ll let you know tomorrow how the show went tonight. Or maybe you’ll listen to it.”
He rose, and so did she to quickly inform him, “Not only will I listen, I will be there. In fact, I’d like for us to drive together, if you don’t mind. It will look good for you to walk in with your PR rep.”
Rick did not like that picture, at all. After the dream he’d had last night, he wanted to avoid Liz like the plague. He hadn’t had a dream like that since high school, for crying out loud, which only reminded him all the more how long it had been since he’d slept with a woman. And he needed one badly. But not Liz.
She fell into step beside him. “I’m going to the track, too. In case you do really well in the qualifying races, I’ll need to be around to put a spin on it.”
She had been up since dawn, doing more studying and now understood the twin qualifying races. At other tracks on the circuit, drivers just went out individually for time trials. The starting lineup was set according to the average speed they ran for two laps. It was different at Daytona, where two 125-mile races were held, and the way drivers finished was how they would start the race on Sunday.
Liz realized Rick had stopped walking and had come to an abrupt halt. She whirled around to see that he was staring at her as if she’d lost her mind. “What?”
“This isn’t politics.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t have to hang around me putting a spin on things.”
She felt totally frustrated. Was everything that came out of her mouth that day going to sound all wrong? “What I meant was—I’ll be around to drum up as much coverage from the media as I can. Brag about how you did and point them in your direction.”
“I guess that’s okay.” He started walking again.
As he caught up with her, his bare arm brushed against hers, and he cursed himself for the rush. She was wearing slacks. Tight white slacks. And a pale green blouse of some kind of cool, clingy material that emphasized her nice breasts.
No doubt about it, he thought on a sigh. He had to make her want to quit…and fast.
Liz heard Rick sigh and mistook it for annoyance at the trio of girls standing in the lobby.
“Rick Castles, it’s really you,” one of them squealed. She was poured into her jeans, which cut below her navel. Her braless bosom was about to tumble out of her halter top as she bounced up and down on the toes of her platform slides.
“Can we have your autograph?” asked another girl, dressed almost identically, as she rushed up to Rick.
“Yeah, sure,” Rick said pleasantly. He suspected Liz thought it was for her benefit that he was being so nice about it, but the truth was he didn’t mind when the girls weren’t at the track. “Got a pen?” he asked Liz.
“Who’s she?” one of the girls asked, scowling jealously at Liz.
“My PR rep.” He took the pen Liz handed him and signed the piece of paper the girl thrust at him.
He did the same for another, but the third girl, who had been hanging back, moved in and said, “I want something else autographed.” She indicated her arm.
