He thought about Ruby Jean’s idea that what Lauren needed was a little loosening up. And that she’d thought her older brother would be the perfect guy to do the loosening. If he hadn’t been enduring his sister’s attempts to match him up with any woman who dared linger long enough for Ruby Jean to discover she was single, he might have been offended by the implication. But Ruby Jean didn’t have a mean-spirited bone in her body. In fact, all she’d ever wanted, since the age of thirteen when she’d been very abruptly left with only a big brother to take care of her, was for everyone in her immediate orbit to be content and happy.
And, from the moment he’d hit thirty without a “prospect on the horizon” she’d begun searching in earnest, despite the fact that he’d done everything to assure her that he was perfectly content and happy to remain just as he was.
But, of course, RJ was having none of that. And now she was hell-bent on fixing her boss’s marital problems. Jake figured he should be thankful for the distraction, as it meant he’d be spared for the time being. Except now she was dragging him into it, likely hoping to kill two birds with one matrimonial stone.
“I’m really sorry.”
“What?” Jake looked over at her. She hadn’t spoken in so long, the sudden sound of her voice had caught him off guard. “Why?”
“Oh…no, you just—you sighed. And I was apologizing for being the reason you were dragged away from whatever it was you were doing to come and pick me up.”
“It wasn’t that. My thoughts were…elsewhere.” As yours seem to be, he wanted to say but didn’t. “It was probably just as well I stepped out when I did. Another ten minutes and I might have done more harm than good trying to fix that damn manifold regulator.”
She smiled. “What’s a damn manifold regulator?”
His lips curved, naturally, easily. It felt good. Shouldn’t have been so surprising. He’d always thought he was a pretty upbeat person, but just in the short time he’d been around her, he was realizing the smiles must have been a bit fewer and farther between of late than he’d realized. Ruby Jean had complained that he’d been too stressed out lately, but with everything currently on his plate, stress was unavoidable. Still, he hadn’t thought it had been getting to him as much as it apparently had. “It’s one of many engine parts that keeps my P-51 Mustang in the air.”
“Well, then it’s probably just as well you did step out. What kind of plane is a P-51? Crop duster or something?”
His smile turned wry. “Or something. They were flown in World War II. I race one.”
She turned to face him more fully. “Really. I didn’t know people raced airplanes.”
A quick glance over at her showed the color was coming back into her cheeks, making her freckles less stark. Her hair had started to dry, and he noticed she had a lot more of it than he’d realized. It hung to her shoulders, almost poker straight, but in a kind of thick, shiny, brown waterfall. He wondered if it felt as silky as it looked.
Flexing his grip on the steering wheel, he looked back to the road. Which was where his mind should be. And not on any part of Ms. Lauren Matthews. Even if he were to entertain any ideas about her, in any way, two things would stop him. One, his baby sister did not need even the slightest bit of encouragement. And, two, Lauren was Arlen’s stepdaughter. “Some folks do,” he said at length, realizing she was waiting for him to respond.
“Just antique planes, or others?”
“All kinds. Sort of like car racing, there are different types, different sports. It varies country to country. I only race the Mustang. It was a renowned fighter plane. In fact, the car was named after the plane.”
“I didn’t know that, either. Wow, that’s so wild. About the racing, I mean. So it’s an international thing?”
He nodded. “The first organized races started back in the twenties in Europe, different form, different planes, of course. Some races were ‘get from Point A to Point B the fastest’ kind of races and others were through a marked course.”
“Is that what you do? The course?” When he nodded, she added, “What kind of course? I mean, obviously it’s in the air; how is it marked?”
For someone who had spent the entire time lost in her own thoughts, her sudden interest and chattiness were surprising, but seemingly quite sincere. Perhaps they both could use a detour from their personal musings. And he never minded talking on this particular subject to anyone who was interested. Which wasn’t often, unless they were a fellow racer. Or one of his students. Most women of his acquaintance thought it was an interesting hobby, but glazed over if he actually started to get into specifics. He wondered how long it would take before Lauren did the same. “There are what amount to huge pylons that form gates that you actually fly between.”
“So, rather low to the ground, then?”
The curve of his smile deepened. “Low and fast.”
“Sounds pretty intense.”
“It is that. The division I fly in is called the unlimited class.”
“Which means?”
Now he grinned as he looked at her. “That we go really fast.”
Her gaze caught his and hung there, as if he’d snagged it. But her smile was bright enough to light up her eyes. “A need-for-speed guy.”
“Fair description.”
“Adrenaline junkie?”
“Plane junkie. Flying junkie. The adrenaline comes free of charge.”
She laughed. “How long have you been doing it? How did you get started?”
“My grandfather got me into it when I was little.”
Her eyes widened. “How little is little?”
“He raced and I watched. But I knew from very early on that I was going to get up in one myself.”
“Do you both race then? That’s pretty cool, actually.”
“We did. And it was. The best, actually. He died a little over twelve years ago.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry.”
“I am, too. We all were. Heart attack. He was healthy like an ox, so no one saw it coming. He ran a flight school—we ran it together at that point—and along with that, I inherited the Mustang. It took a long while before I could get her back up in the sky, but for the past five years, we’ve raced every September. So, I race her for us both. I think he’d be pretty happy with that.”
Which was another reason Jake was stressed. He’d finally gotten Betty Sue to be a contender, which would have made Patrick McKenna fiercely proud and more than a little smug, as he’d been handed defeat after defeat with a plane he knew could be a champion but simply couldn’t afford to fix it up the way he needed to.
But his grandchildren had come first in those days, about whom he was also fiercely proud. He’d taken good care of the two of them, all things considered, which was a lot, given his own wife had passed on only five years before his only son and daughter-in-law—Jake and Ruby Jean’s parent’s—were taken in a car accident on a snowy mountain pileup. He hadn’t the first clue what to do with a heartbroken seven-year-old girl and an angry fifteen-year-old boy. But, in the end, he’d done right by both of them. And it was because of him that, six years later, they’d known how to handle life when he was taken from them, too.
So, Jake would be damned if he lost out now because he couldn’t convince his sponsors that Betty Sue could be ready come race time. This was his year. Their year. He was going to bring the title home.
“I’m sure