“Take your hands off him, you cretin!” Ceci shouted.
Clarke turned around just in time to see the man’s fist fly toward him. He ducked.
Crisis averted.For now, he thought, seeing the enraged look on the man’s face. Exit stage left. Now.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Ceci raise her fist.
No, he was about to say, as he stepped in to stop her.
Her fist made contact. Not with the man’s face. But with his.
Later, Clarke would wince at the pain and wonder how a woman’s hand could pack that much of a punch. As for now, he didn’t feel much of anything when her fist landed smack in his eye, just before everything went black.
Chapter Six
Ceci
Ceci blinked when the impeccably groomed and perfectly coiffed Roxanne Windsor, Clarke’s PR agent, stormed into the men’s room.
“I held out the slightest hope, Ceci, that this was some kind of ridiculous joke on your part when you phoned me because it was too outrageous to be true.”
Leo Clarke, seven-time champion Formula 1 driver, coined the consummate gentleman by the press, was out cold and slumped on the floor of the men’s room at the Royal Horseguards Hotel.
Ceci wished she’d had the foresight to snap a photo.
Too late now.
Roxanne turned to her. “I can’t imagine what he could have said or done that could justify you doing this.”
“I didn’t do this.” Ceci paused. “Not on purpose.”
He might not have gotten knocked unconscious if he hadn’t hit the edge of the sink when he fell back from her punch. Even his collapse had been graceful. Instead of going down in one heap like a sack of potatoes, he swooped and swayed like a swallow descending to earth. He didn’t even land with a thud. One might almost think the bathroom tile was made of goose down feathers.
“This will not go outside these walls, Ceci.”
“I won’t say a thing.”
Much as I’m tempted to.
Clarke was Roxanne’s number one client. Ceci still held out hope shemight convince the PR woman to take on Anker as a client and help restore a bad boy image that was beginning to lose its charm. Sponsors were getting wary. And that made the owners nervous. But if Blue Jet Lightning wanted to win races and have a shot at the championship, they needed Anker. Besides, she had a soft spot for the asshole. She knew things about his past that others didn’t. He was twenty-four years old, and sometimes it felt like he was her kid brother and she had to look out for him.
Ceci ran her fingers over the birthmark on her wrist.
Maybe the kid brother I never had but should have had.
She would have to accommodate Roxanne. If the woman didn’t want this going public, Ceci would keep her mouth shut.
Although, Ceci wondered,wouldit really be so bad if it went public?
The elegant, all-too-perfect gentleman was too vanilla. A little controversy might do him some good. If Anker had become highly flammable, Clarke had become a wet blanket.
Roxanne bent down and tapped his cheeks. “Wake up!”
Nothing.
Ceci suddenly recalled what Aunt Delilah had said. She could practically see that Scarlet Shame–colored lip curl, hear her aunt purring,Here’s your opportunity. Take it! Prove once and for all he was the Man in the Iron Mask. Or not.
“I’ve got an idea.”
