Total Control

  PAMELA BRITTON

  total control

  This page is for Codi, my lovely little girl,

  who’s sitting next to me as I write this. I get teary eyed

  just knowing you’re old enough to read this now. Isn’t

  it cool to see your name in print? I know, I know…you

  want me to write a story about unicorns. I will one day. I

  promise (pinky promise!). In the meantime, know that I

  love you and that I often think of you while I’m working.

  But you need to share this page with Daddy because

  he’s gotten used to seeing his name here. (Spoiled man!

  But, shhh, don’t tell him.)

  Michael, I love you more and more each day.

  You truly make me understand the meaning of

  the words soul mate. When the days are long,

  and your subcontractors are driving you nuts, put on

  Rascal Flatts’s “Bless the Broken Road.” It says it all.

  Hugs and kisses to you both,

  Mama Bear

  CONTENTS

  RED FLAG

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  YELLOW FLAG

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  GREEN FLAG

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  BLACK FLAG

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  WHITE FLAG

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHECKERED FLAG

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  RED FLAG

  Love ’Em or Leave ’Em

  By Rick Stevenson, Sports Editor

  It’s no secret that there are some drivers in the NASCAR series whom everybody loves. Lance Cooper comes to mind. And lately, Adam Drake.

  Then there’s the opposite: Those drivers everyone loves to hate. Okay, one driver in particular.

  Todd Peters.

  Rarely do I see so many people boo as when Todd Peters is introduced. But then they cheer him, too—when he suffers some bad luck. At Dover this year when Todd wrecked on lap fifty-three, I honestly thought a favored driver had taken the lead until one of my journalist friends pointed out that it was actually the crowd shouting in delight that Todd Peters’s day was over.

  And all because he’s accidentally “bumped” someone off the same track last year. Of course, he ended up sending that driver to the Infield Care Center. And many a NASCAR aficionado will argue that the driver he punted ended up not making the Chase for the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup because of Todd’s little stunt, although with the revisions to the Chase system this year, maybe not.

  But, you know, all that aside, I have to wonder what all the fuss is about. In the past, drivers like Todd were revered for “bumping” and “nudging.” If someone was sent into the wall, so be it. Nine times out of ten the crowd cheered. They loved it. That’s racing, they used to say. What happened to those days?

  And I have to wonder: does Todd care? He certainly hasn’t done anything to change that unfavorable image. Should he?

  Do other “bad boys” worry about their public image? Does it matter to them that they might end up losing a sponsor because of their tarnished image?

  Todd Peters is poised to make the Chase. With one race left to go—Richmond—he might just find himself in the thick of things.

  How will fans react to that?

  I suppose time will tell.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “YOU ARE THE BIGGEST jerk that ever walked the earth.”

  Todd Peters froze, sunlight refracting off the water and momentarily blinding him.

  “It’s all I can do right now not to push you off the pier.”

  He squinted and turned, but it was hard to see with his eyes momentarily blinded by the sun. A woman. That much was clear. Blond haired. Skinny. And really, really angry.

  “With any luck you’d land in a pool of piranhas. Hopefully a whole school of them. Maybe they’d eat your pestilent flesh, nibble out your eyes, then snack on your pea-sized brain for dessert.”

  Todd pushed himself up. “Can I help you?” he asked.

  Out behind him a Jet Ski roared by. The wha-wha-wha of the engine popping in and out of the water made Todd long for the smooth surface of Lake Norman, too.

  “Yeah, you could help me. You could help me by showing up when you’re supposed to. By not blowing off my clients. By being kind and thoughtful and considerate instead of selfish and pigheaded and a self-centered ass.”

  Okay. That was harsh. “Do I know you?” he asked.

  “No, you don’t know me, but I know of you,” she said. “And what I know, I don’t particularly like.”

  She’d started to come into focus. The hair went from mouse-blond to platinum with reds and browns mixed in, the strands loose and well past her shoulders. The oval face suddenly had the cheekbones of a ferocious feline. The brown eyes weren’t just brown, they were a brilliant, nearly green-hazel—and they were furious.

  “How’d you get down here?” he asked, glancing back toward his house and at the French doors at the rear of his multileveled home. They were closed. He leaned forward, hoping to see past the lush foliage that surrounded his backyard. The side gate appeared closed. And locked.

  “I climbed over the fence,” she admitted.

  “You climbed over?” he asked, wondering if he needed to call the police.

  “I wanted to see you. And since neither you nor your assistant, Jennifer Scott, seem willing to call me back, a padlock gate wasn’t going to stand in my way.”

  Jennifer. She knew his PR rep. Maybe not a crazy woman after all. “I see,” he said. “What’d you need to see me about?” he asked.

  “I work for Miracles,” she pronounced, an expectant expression coming to her face at the mention of the charity group.

  “Who?”

  “Miracles,” she said again. “You know. Formerly known as the Wishing Tree Foundation.”

  Okay. That rang a bell.

  “I see. And what does Miracles want with me?” he asked, although he already knew. It wouldn’t be the first time the wish-fulfilling organization had asked him to grant a wish, although this was the first time one of their volunteers had ever accosted him in his home.

  “You mean you can’t guess?”

  “Why don’t you just fill me in instead.”

  She looked incredulous. Behind him, water splashed against the front of his boat. He braced himself for the inevitable rocking of the dock beneath his feet.

  “You’re unreal, you know that?” she said. “You show absolutely no remorse.”

  “Remorse? For what?” he asked.

  “Blowing off two meetings.”

  “I did?”

  “Are you denying it?”

  “I don’t manage my schedule,” he said, going back to his task of untying his boat. “So if I did blow you off, chances are I didn’t know it was you.”

  “How can that be?” she asked, following him from cleat to cleat.

  “I’m told where to go, and if I can’t make a meeting, I tell my reps to cancel it.” He untied another line. The Scarab was thirty-five feet long, sleek and heavy. It’d been a gift from one of his sponsors, its red, yellow and orange p
aint scheme seemingly luminescent. The minute he untied a line, the fiberglass hull started to drift away. He moved quickly to the next cleat.

  “You blew off two meetings with us. One last month and one this month.”

  “That’s unusual,” he said. “I don’t usually cancel meetings with charity organizations,” he added.

  That wasn’t exactly true. Over the past few months he’d canceled a lot of meetings—thanks to his relentless pursuit of Kristen, a woman who he’d hoped to have a future with, but who’d ditched him in favor of another man.

  “Yes, but what makes your behavior all the more deplorable about canceling this meeting is that these weren’t with us. They were with one of our clients—a terminally ill child named Benjamin Koch, who, for some misguided and totally incomprehensible reason, wants to meet you—his favorite race car driver—before he gets sicker than he already is, only you…” Red blotches of color stood out on her cheeks, the splash of crimson spreading all the way to her neck. “You stood him up.”

  He straightened, nylon rope forgotten. “I did?”

  “You did, and to be perfectly honest, I was hoping that after the second time he’d start rooting for, you know, Adam Drake. Alas, he’s still enamored of you—goodness knows why—and so this time I’m leaving nothing to chance. I want to set up another time for you to meet Benjamin, only this time I need to warn you that if you stand him up again, I’ll hire a hit man, have you boiled in tar, hung out on a rack, tortured and then dragged behind one of those race cars you drive, preferably one piloted by one of your arch enemies.”

  HE DIDN’T SEEM AMUSED. Or threatened. He didn’t look anything, Indi thought.

  “Wow,” he drawled, his accent making him sound like a Southern gentleman. But she knew for a fact he was no gentleman. “That’s harsh.”

  “That’s only the first part.”

  She thought he might have smiled, saw the very edges of his lips tip up, but then he frowned. “Like I said, sometimes I cancel meetings without even knowing who they’re with.”

  “Well, maybe you should take the time to unearth that little tidbit of information.”

  “Maybe I should,” he said, going back to work.

  “Will you meet with him then?”

  “Of course,” he said, peering up when he knelt down by another line.

  “When?”

  “I’m not certain.” He tossed the rope into the boat. “Like I said before, I don’t handle my own schedule.”

  “Well, if you don’t mind, I’d like to call whoever does manage your schedule and arrange for a meeting now.”

  “Sure,” he said. “But is it going to make a difference if we do it right this minute? Or in a couple hours?”

  “Well…I—”

  “’Cause if you don’t mind, I’d like to enjoy what’s left of the day.”

  Spoiled race car driver. They were all alike. “It’ll only take you two minutes to do it.”

  “Actually, it might take longer than that, depending on if I can get a hold of Jen or not.”

  “Please try.”

  He patted his pockets. “Don’t have my cell phone.”

  “Use mine,” she said.

  He glanced from the boat to the lake to the boat again, his body language telling her that he wasn’t happy to have to deal with this now. But to give him credit, he held out his hand.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said. “I have to go get it.”

  He stiffened. “What?”

  “The battery was low. The phone’s charging in my rental car.”

  “Fine,” he said, dismissing her with a wave of his fingers. “And go though my house,” he called out after her. “That’s all I need for you to do—break your neck on my fence.”

  Blah-blah-blah-blah, she silently mimicked. He could just sit there. It was the least the jerk could do. Whenever she thought of the way poor Benjamin’s face crumpled the second time Mr. Fancy Pants Race Car Driver had stood him up, well, it infuriated her all the more. She’d take her time, and Todd Peters would learn to like it, she thought, inhaling the sweet scent of lilies someone had planted along a winding pathway. The air was heavy with the exhalation of foliage: ferns, ivy and some kind of tree with thick, glossy leaves.

  “Whoa,” she said, the minute she pulled open a French door that, like about a half a dozen others, lined the rear of the house.

  The inside was huge. But of course she’d known it would be the moment she’d pulled up in front of the split-level mansion. She was in some sort of game room. There was a pool table, plasma TV and a pinball machine in the corner that she’d passed as she walked across a hardwood floor and toward the front of the house only to discover there was no exit, just stairs. She climbed those next. At the top she found a mammoth-size kitchen—complete with its own hearth—and one very large family room off the side of it. Windows stretched up ten feet high, allowing her a view of the dock. The egomaniac stood there, glanced at his watch, then at his boat that was still tethered by a single line to his private dock.

  You can just wait, she thought again.

  She didn’t deliberately take her time. All right. Maybe she did. But it was hard not to gawk at the main foyer that rose up three stories tall. Single-paned windows allowed light to filter onto the off-white marble floor. There was a fixture hanging from the middle of the ceiling some thirty feet above her head, one with bulbs that were made of blown glass and that were elongated and twisted in such a way that the fixture resembled a giant sun. She would bet with the lights on that’s exactly what it was supposed to look like. Unbelievable.

  She let herself out before she was tempted into doing something stupid, like turn on the switch. Her car was parked atop a brick driveway, one whose color complemented the rose-colored stucco of his home. The outside was landscaped just as beautifully as the back, lush crepe myrtles splashing color amongst a green lawn backdrop.

  “I’m back,” she called a few minutes later, almost out of breath. “My name’s Indi Wilcox, by the way.”

  “Indi?” he asked, black brows hiked up over impatient eyes.

  “I was born early while my mom and dad were driving through Indiana,” she said, weary of the explanation that inevitably followed her name.

  “Well, all right, Ms. Indi Wilcox,” he said. “Hop on in.”

  “Excuse me?” she asked, watching as he untied the last line, then climbed aboard the shiny ski…boat…thing. Strangest shaped boat she’d ever seen with its long, pelican-nose front end and bright color scheme.

  “If you want to schedule something,” Todd said. “You’ll have to come aboard. I’m heading out.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so.”

  “Okay, then,” he said, moving to the rear of the boat and pulling on a rope with a rubber thing on the end that she assumed kept the fiberglass hull from rubbing against the dock. “Call Jen at my office. Tell her that we met, and what happened. I’m sure she’ll make things right.”

  “I already have called Jennifer,” she said, following alongside the boat when he moved to the front, the dock beneath her feet hot. She could feel warmth ebbing through the rubber soles of her white tennis shoes. And she had to cover a lot of ground. The boat was at least thirty feet long. “That was the point of tracking you down. Jen isn’t calling me back.”

  “Really?” he said, pulling a canvas cover off the driver area, which was more to the rear of the vessel, the snaps giving a pop-pop-pop. “Tell her I told you to call.”

  “What if she doesn’t believe me?” she asked, having to lift a hand to shield her eyes against the glare of the sun. Did it ever cool off in North Carolina? “What if she doesn’t call me back again?”

  She heard a chu-chu-chu and stepped back quickly. He was trying to start the damn boat.

  “That’s the risk you take, Ms. Indi Wilcox,” he said, the engines flaring to life with a roar that made her lean back. Holy cripes. What did he have under there? A 747?

  “You either come with me now,” h
e called, slipping on a pair Ray-Ban sunglasses, “and I’ll give Jennifer a call while we’re out on the lake, or you go home and take your chances.”

  Hotel. Not home. She’d flown all the way out here on her own dime. And she wasn’t going to leave without getting him to set up a meeting.

  “Why can’t you call her now?” Indi asked, her irritation mounting. “I’ll dial her number for you.”

  “Go ahead,” he said. “Try. But she won’t answer. It’s after five.”

  Damn it.

  “Look, I only have two hours of freedom left,” he said, bending. He pulled out a dark blue baseball cap from somewhere, tucked it on his head. “After today it’s back to the grind. Press conferences, photo shoots, PR appearances. I want to enjoy what’s left of the day, and if I can’t get a hold of Jennifer right away, it might take me some time to track her down.”

  “Can’t you just leave her a message?”

  “Not if you want to resolve this thing tonight. I’ll have to call her house, her boyfriend, maybe her private line at the office. I’ll do it out there,” he said, nodding toward the water.

  “But—”

  “See ya,” he yelled, the engines changing pitch.

  “Wait,” she cried.

  He cut off the motor so abruptly she knew he’d been waiting for her to do exactly that. She felt her insides burn, and not in a good way, either. Drat the man. “Fine,” she said, walking to the back of the boat. “How do I get on this thing?”

  “Just step onto the back. I’ll help pull you aboard.”

  “No, thanks,” she said. “I can manage on my own.”

  She couldn’t believe he was forcing her to do this. She could dial his assistant’s number for him. She’d called the woman enough times. It’d take her two seconds to hand him the phone, and if the woman didn’t answer, he could leave her a message. Instead, she was waving carbon monoxide fumes away from her face.