8

“At least they feed us.”

Will looked up from stirring his coffee as Matteo approached the catering table and surveyed the options.

“No amount of shite food is worth this,” Will grumbled, tossing his stir stick in the trash. “I hate these things.”

Matteo was thirty, and probably staring down the twilight of his racing career, but he still carried himself with the confidence of a rock star. He gave a loose shrug as he plucked a handful of grapes from the fruit platter. “I don’t mind them so much.”

Maybe that was because Matteo was fielding nothing but softballs today, Will thought irritably.

He’d never loved pressers, but he used to be good at them. Just smile, just charm. It was second nature to him. But this round was different. He was eager to talk about the new car, about race strategy, about the Lennox team … but that’s not what they wanted Will Hawley to talk about. They wanted to talk about his fall from grace and his surprising shot at redemption. Simone and Violet had warned him that the redeemed bad boy narrative was like catnip to the press, but just the same, it left him feeling attacked and defensive. By the time they’d taken a break, he was snapping answers and knew he wasn’t coming across as well as he needed to.

“I just hate the personal questions,” he griped.

Matteo tossed a grape up in the air and caught it in his teeth. Show-off. Clapping Will on the shoulder, he grinned. “Just stay positive and smile,” he said before heading back to his chair under the floodlights.

“Easy for you to say,” Will muttered to himself. For Matteo, they kept the personal questions to polite inquiries about his two adorable little kids. He was the mature center of the Lennox racing team, the dependable pro, and that’s how they treated him. Lennox’s respected elder statesman. Will was the wild card, the hotheaded bad boy, the flashy angle they’d use to sell their stories. It didn’t matter that he could talk about the new car’s technological improvements until he was blue in the face, because nobody asked.

As he returned to the hot seat, he could see Violet prepping the next reporter. This one was a woman, bright red suit, lots of makeup, very blond.

Behind them, he caught sight of Mira, hovering outside the glare of the studio lights bathing the drivers. She’d set herself up answering emails on her tablet, but he noticed her eyes on him far more than on the screen. Which wasn’t so bad. If he was reading her right, after that car ride, it felt like she might be warming to him a bit. Like maybe he wasn’t quite the fuckup she’d assumed. And now he had the strangest urge to prove that to her.

His expression must have been thunderous, because she grinned widely, pointed to her mouth, and then mouthed Smile . Right. As pissed off as these interviews made him, he had a job to do. There was so much on the line, for both him and the team. He couldn’t afford to let them down. And he didn’t want to let Mira down.

By the time Violet ushered the Glamazon reporter over, he’d schooled his face into a polite smile.

“Will, this is Pippa Hollywell.”

Of course it was. He reached out to shake her hand and gave her his best winning smile. Pippa’s eyes lit up.

“Great meeting you, Will.” She flashed him her own flirtatious smile. Okay, fine, if flirtation would get him through this interview looking halfway respectable, then he’d do it.

He gave her a small, intimate smile. “Nice meeting you, too, Miss Hollywell.”

“Please … call me Pippa.”

He smiled again as she settled into her chair and crossed her long legs. Her skirt rode halfway up her thighs. She didn’t make a move to tug it back down. So that’s how she was going to play this. Will settled back in his chair.

“Okay, Pippa .”

“Let’s get started, shall we?”

“Let’s,” he agreed. Oh, yes, let’s.

“So you’re back in Formula One after two seasons in Formula E and Indy Car before that.”

What a brilliant observation, Pippa. Absolutely no one’s noted that yet, even though it’s on my Wikipedia page. “That’s correct,” he replied evenly. He deserved a fucking medal for not laughing.

“Are you glad to be back?”

That was like asking “Are you glad to still be breathing?” No one in their right mind would answer with anything other than a resounding yes.

“Delighted.” See how well he could behave?

“And you’re back with a new team.” Would this woman’s brilliant observations never cease?

“Yes, that’s true.”

“How are you liking being part of the Lennox Motorsport organization?”

“It’s great. I think Lennox is a really good fit for me as a driver. Our goals are very aligned.” Simone had drilled that statement into his head during his media-training session. He could say it in his sleep now.

“Has the organization been welcoming to you?”

Now his eyes did slide over to look at Mira, and he couldn’t help keeping his gaze pointedly on her when he said, “Very welcoming. I’ve been embraced by everyone at Lennox.” A tiny smile tugged at the corners of her mouth, too, despite how hard she was fighting it. The satisfaction of cracking that frosty reserve of hers distracted him enough that Pippa’s next question sailed right past his defenses.

“Do you think they’re worried that you’ll fall apart midseason like you did three years ago?”

“Pardon?”

Pippa shrugged as though to say, Oops, I don’t know where that question came from either , recrossing her legs, once again leaving her skirt up around her thighs. If she thought a nice pair of legs and the tease of a crotch shot would distract him, she had grossly underestimated him. His eyes stayed firmly on her face.

“Well, you did have a rather well-documented public meltdown—”

“I think meltdown is overstating things a bit—”

“—that led to your abrupt dismissal from Hansbach three years ago. Have you tamed your demons?”

How the fuck was he supposed to respond to that? As he took a moment to process, Pippa flipped her sleek blond hair over her shoulder and smiled, leaning forward enough to give him a good view of her cleavage, if he were inclined to look. He wasn’t. Staring her down, he replied through clenched teeth. “I think my driving speaks for me. It certainly convinced Paul Wentworth.”

Pippa chuckled softly. “Yes, he was rather enamored, wasn’t he?”

“He was impressed ,” Will snapped. His knee began to bounce involuntarily.

“Of course he was,” Pippa cooed. “Enough to take an enormous risk and bring you aboard the team.”

“Paul trusts in my abilities.”

“I’m sure he does,” Pippa said with a tiny pout and a false expression of understanding. “But does he trust you to control your more self-destructive tendencies?”

Will shifted forward in his seat. “Look, I might have made a few questionable choices in the past, but now I’m here to race.”

“Hmm,” Pippa said, fishing something out of her notebook. “And perhaps get loaded at a party or two?”

She held out a photograph, but Will refused to take it. He could already see it and he recognized the moment. It was from this past New Year’s Eve. One night. He’d gone out for drinks exactly one bloody night in all the weeks he’d been at Lennox. Just pints with a couple of guys from the team to toast the New Year. He’d stopped at one and ended up driving Omar and Ian home when they’d both gotten hammered. Partway through the evening, he’d been recognized by a couple of inebriated female racing fans. They’d begged for a photo. How could he say no? He’d been a bit surprised when one dropped herself into his lap. Maybe a bit startled when the other kissed his cheek as she angled her phone at the three of them. They’d giggled their thanks and stumbled away, off to some other pub. All totally forgettable.

But there he was in that photo, squinting into the flash, looking half-wasted, one girl draped across his lap and the other hugging him around the neck and kissing his cheek. It looked awful, like those horrible paparazzi shots of him three years ago that cropped up every time he went out.

“Where the fuck did you—”

“ Okay , we are all out of time!” Violet called in a high, forced singsong, stepping between him and Pippa. With one quick turn of her body, she bumped her hip into Pippa’s hand, sending the photo falling to the floor. “Oops, let me just get that for you.”

She scooped up the photo before Pippa could even reach for it, and it disappeared, secreted into Violet’s pocket or her clipboard or somewhere. Pippa scowled. “If I could just—”

“We’re on a very tight schedule today. I’m sure you understand.” Violet slipped a hand under Pippa’s arm, not-so-gently lifting her out of her chair.

Will didn’t wait around to hear the rest of Pippa’s protests as Violet steered her away. He was out of his chair, ripping off his mic, and storming across the studio in the opposite direction, toward his dressing room.

When he reached it, he slammed the door behind him. “Fuck! Bloody buggering fucking hell!” His voice bounced off the walls of the small space, echoing in the stillness. In two minutes, that witch had laid waste to everything he’d spent three years repairing. He might as well have been fresh off his dismissal from Hansbach, washed up at twenty-two and a fucking pariah.

“Will?”

“Can’t anyone give me a moment of goddamned peace?” He spun around to find Mira standing just inside his dressing room.