“Sure. You want to go to the infield cafeteria or drive into Daytona to find something to eat?” she asked.
“Neither. I asked our chef to prepare a special lunch for us that we can enjoy in my motor home.”
It was the first time he’d invited her there and he hoped she’d see as him opening up a little more.
“Okay.”
All of the team owners and drivers had motor homes in the designated lot for the different race tracks.
She followed him through the rows of motor homes to a cream-colored Prevost Vantare with black-and-gray striping on it. He unlocked the door and held it open for her.
“Welcome to my home away from home,” he said.
She climbed up into the recreational vehicle. A large plasma television dominated the front of the coach. There were a pair of long couches, tables and two large chairs that looked comfortable in the main sitting area.
She took a seat on one of the leather couches. “Where do you consider home, Jared? I know you own a lot of houses and have places all over the country, but do you have one place that you can always relax at?”
He didn’t. Places had never been that important to him. His family owned a lot of properties around the world and he’d grown up used to a very transient way of life. Similar, he thought, to Annie’s childhood, when she traveled with her dad each weekend as he raced.
“Not really,” he said, easily admitting to the emptiness in his life.
“Why not?”
“Most of the houses I own have been in my family for generations and when I go there I…” God, was he really going to tell her?
“What, Jared?” she asked, pushing to her feet and coming over to him.
“I realize how alone I really am. My family isn’t large like yours. I have a few third cousins somewhere but we’re not close.”
“You miss your parents,” she said.
More than he wanted her to know. They’d died when he’d been just trying to figure out how to stand on his own, how to get out of the large shadow his dad cast, and their deaths had left a void.
“Yeah, but I didn’t invite you to lunch to talk about them.”
“Why did you invite me to lunch then?”
“Something you said the other day about building a real relationship…at the track we’re both careful to stick to our own drivers’ areas, but we can’t keep our lives apart.”
“NASCAR is a part of both of our lives,” she said.
NASCAR was the closest thing he had to a family. Tucker was like a brother to him. “Yes, it is. And your family is a huge part of NASCAR.”
“Is that a problem?” she asked.
“Well, it’d be a lot easier on me if the men in your family would back off.”
“Don’t let them scare you off, Jared.”
“I won’t.”
“Promise?” she asked. “Ah, forget I said that. What’s for lunch?”
“I’m not forgetting that. I do promise that your family won’t scare me off.”
She tipped her head to the side, studying him.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
She shook her head.
“No more secrets, remember? You want me to bare my soul then you have to step up, too.”
She stepped back to the couch. “One of the things that broke up my marriage was that we lived separate lives so far apart from my family. I had no support network….”
“I don’t want that for us,” he said. “I’m not promising smooth sailing, but I want this lunch today to be the start of something new.”
She smiled up at him and all of the emotional confession stuff was worth it. He only hoped that he could keep doing it, because he was sweating and he didn’t like the way he felt at this moment. Didn’t want to give her the chance to realize how much she was coming to mean to him.
FOR AS LONG AS Annie could remember she’d always been excited about coming to Daytona. She glanced up at the clear blue sky. It was hot today. Sweat dripped down the back of her neck. She swept her hair up, hoping for a cool breeze but there wasn’t one.
She was in Turn Two, which was one of her favorite spots. She liked to be in the curve snapping pictures of the race.
Annie thought back to her lunch with Jared. He had admitted to being on his own and wanting a family. And that was one of her fears?being wanted for her family and not for herself. But she didn’t see Jared as wanting her for her famous family name…she thought it was more that he wanted her in spite of her family.
So she was hiding again, behind the safety of the lens of her Nikon camera. Standing in the middle of the world that both she and Jared were a part of and hoping to be invisible.