Page 36 of Full Throttle

He disappeared through the door.

Over the next week, Juliette forced herself to turn into every corner early. Her lap times improved by a half second. Frederick began leaving her alone after practice, and although Dominic never said anything, she suspected he had something to do with it. Sometimes, for a crazy moment, she thought she felt his eyes lingering on her after practice, but whenever she turned, he was looking at something else.

She told herself that she must have imagined it.

Chapter 13

Switching Gears

Now

Juliette stepped into the gym.

A cool blast of air conditioning struck her. The scents of antiseptic and cucumber water hung in the air, along with sweat. It could have been any gym in the world, except for the eerie silence: no whir of treadmills or clang of weights. Just tinny music drifting out from a speaker. Dominic must have booked out the gym.

And speaking of which.

He stood by a water cooler, dressed in shorts and a backward baseball cap, scrolling through his phone. He stuffed it into his pocket as she approached.

“Marchmont. You’re early.”

Juliette nodded at his pocket. “Texting someone?” Probably the Swiss model with the cheese factory.

“Reading the news.” He knelt to pick up a tennis ball. “You made a lucky escape.”

Yes. She had. Her PR team had sent across an email that morning with the major headlines. And sure, there had been a reel of her crashing into the barriers doing the rounds on social media, but was that really so bad? She’d got off lightly. The largest British newspaper had buried the article on page ten, like a comedian too frightened of scaring off their audience with a controversial joke. It seemed that the sole benefit of being the only woman on track, she thought wryly, was that nobody wanted to criticize her in case they came off as sexist. So, you know. Small mercies.

Still.

The grace period would last only so long. And she had her place on the team to worry about.

Juliette scanned the gym. “What do you want to start with? Weights?”

“Tennis balls.”

Juliette stiffened. “My reflexes are fine.” She was all for going back to the basics, but come on. Tennis balls?

Dominic held out his hands. “Prove it.”

“It’ll be pointless.”

He held her gaze. “Humor me.”

Well, if he wanted a demonstration…She held out her hands. This was a familiar dance; someone dropped a tennis ball, and you caught it before it hit the floor. Some drivers preferred fancier methods of reflex training, like hitting flashing lights, but they’d never had the equipment. It had just been her and Cap, standing in a back garden, occasionally standing on garden furniture to keep the tennis balls away from their dogs.

Dominic dropped the ball. Her hand shot out.

“Good,” Dominic said approvingly. “You’re better.”

Did he mean that genuinely? Or was he being condescending? Either way, he’d succeeded in annoying her. “For the record, I know what you’re doing.”

“Enlighten me.”

She caught a ball. “You’re trying to turn on the Dominic Hastings charm and make me forget that you’re a raging arsehole.”

His smile grew. “You think I’m charming?”

“You missed the raging arsehole bit.”