My eyebrows went up at the unsolicited sharing of a personal detail. “Have you been around cars all your life?”
He nodded curtly. I waited for him to elaborate, but he left me hanging. “Anyway, Mrs. Lawson, I can assure you that Rhett will be perfectly safe here with me and my team. You’re welcome to hang around for his first couple of visits, although my advice is to watch from a distance. Experience has taught us that the younger kids get very distracted if they witness their parent freaking out every time little Jonny spins his kart.”
He might as well have come right out with it and accused me of being a neurotic mother. I refused to take the bait. He could think what he liked. I’d kill him with kindness before he got a rise out of me.
I stood and fastened my jacket. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Palmer. You’ve allayed some of my fears, and I appreciate that. Rhett and I will see you soon.”
On this occasion, it was my turn to leave without giving him the chance to respond. I stopped by Adele’s desk and confirmed I’d like to accept Rhett’s place, then returned to my car. As I approached the parking lot, a prickling sensation dotted along the back of my neck. I glanced over my shoulder toward the main building and Nico’s office window, hoping to see him standing there, watching me.
He wasn’t.
God, disappointment sucked.
NICO
I stared at the closed door for a good ten seconds, then got to my feet and peered out the window of my office that overlooked the parking lot. A few seconds later, Everly Lawson appeared, her long, wavy, caramel-colored hair blowing in the breeze. She powered up the narrow path that led from the main building to the visitors’ parking area, and my dick twitched as my gaze fell to her swaying hips. She wasn’t putting it on in an overt kind of way. She wasn’t the obvious type. Rather, she walked with a kind of “I’m sexy and I haven’t got a fucking clue” manner that I found so attractive.
Christ, had she any idea what a turn-on I’d found it when she sparred with me across the desk, her eyes silently reprimanding me for probing too deeply?
Forget it, Nico. She’s off-limits.
I’d given up taking married women to bed months ago. In fact, I’d given up taking pretty much any woman to bed. After spectacularly going off the rails following my accident and subsequent diagnosis—a.k.a. a fucked-up future—I’d screwed enough strangers to last me a lifetime. Very little outside of this place turned me on these days.
Until now.
She stopped and glanced over her shoulder. I ducked behind the drapes like some creepy voyeur. When I dared to peek outside again, she was sitting inside her truck—held together by rust and prayers—with her head resting on the steering wheel. She stayed like that for a minute or so. Eventually, she sat up and leaned back, blowing out a breath through pursed lips. With a brief shake of her head, she reversed out of the space and drove off.
I strode into the main office.
“Adele, I need the Lawson file, now.”
Instead of her usual mad scramble whenever I asked for anything—the bloody woman was the most disorganized human I’d ever encountered—she immediately handed me a brown folder.
“Here you go.”
“Thanks,” I muttered, turning away to head back to my office.
“Don’t forget you’re giving a talk to the latest intake in forty minutes,” she reminded me.
I rolled my eyes and growled. “It’s my legs that are fucked up, Adele, not my memory.” Hobbling down the hallway, I slammed the door.
Adele wouldn’t take offense. She might’ve been Tate’s pick for this gig, but she and I had jelled pretty well these last few months since we opened the PFK Racing school. She was used to my sour moods and gloomy outlook. I’d make her a coffee later, maybe force a smile, and she’d forgive me for anything—even if I didn’t deserve it.
I sat behind my desk and opened the file. It was on the second page where Everly’s backstory started to get interesting. This was the section of the form where we asked them to justify why we should consider their child for a coveted space as opposed to the hundreds of other worthy cases vying for a spot? The depth of feeling in her words hit me squarely in the chest.
Jesus. Her husband just upped and left without saying a word? What a twat.
I clenched my fist around my pen. What possessed a man to walk out on his wife and child, and then simply disappear as if he’d never existed in the first place? That took a special kind of arsehole, and wherever he was, I hoped he’d gotten a bad case of the clap and his balls had shriveled to the size of olives.
Why am I so outraged over a woman I don’t even fucking know? Would I feel the same sense of fury over another woman cruelly abandoned, or was it only Everly Lawson who provoked such strong feelings?
Don’t be ridiculous. You barely know the woman.
I closed the file. Getting to my feet, I grabbed my phone and shoved it into my pocket.
“I’m gonna take an early dart,” I said, dropping the Lawson file on Adele’s desk.
“You can’t,” she said. “I told you before, you’ve got a briefing to do.”