Page 58 of Spin Control

“Don’t threaten me with a good time, Grant.”

Four hours later, my parents and Elizabeth are chatting away in the backseat of the SUV I hired to take us to the airport.

I gave them even less of a heads up about Elizabeth than I gave her about them. When she walked into their handsome red-brick home in Mid-Cambridge, there was stunned silence—a completely understandable reaction upon seeing her for the first time, to be honest. After offers of iced mint tea and fresh banana bread, my parents ushered Elizabeth into the tidy living room and proceeded to pepper her with questions about her life and job.

I felt slightly guilty about needing to pack for the race and leaving Elizabeth alone with them, so I rushed to get everything in my suitcase. But I didn’t need to. When I came back downstairs, my mom was sitting next to Elizabeth on the navy couch they recently reupholstered, showing her childhood photos of me. The sight felt as if someone had punched me in the solar plexus.

“That’s a hell of a woman,” my dad said, coming to stand next to me.

“Believe me, I know,” I told him. “Has she told Mom that she’s her biggest fan yet?”

“I don’t think Elizabeth has had time to get a word in edge-wise,” he said, smiling. “It seems the feeling is mutual.”

I headed over to the bookshelf filled with my mom’s books, and located the Ladies of Larkspur Lane series. “Elizabeth, this is the one you said rewired your brain, right?” Her eyes nearly popped out of her head, but my mom gasped in delight and, just as I predicted, insisted on signing and personalizing a copy of each book in the series for Elizabeth to take with her.

As the afternoon went on, my parents and Elizabeth continued to chat about everything from her impressions of the world of motorsports to a TV show about Victorian-era assassins, which gave me ample time to upgrade Elizabeth’s economy seat to business class, post a couple photos from Cape Cod on social media, and have a whole text conversation with Lu about my favorite Montréal bagel place.

Once we’ve checked in to our flight and made it through both security and immigration, Elizabeth pulls me aside while my parents continue on to the lounge. “I’m guessing you’re the reason I suddenly have a business-class ticket?”

I shrug. “I have more points than I know what to do with.”

“You should have told me. I thought it was a mistake.”

“Please don’t tell me that you actually tried to correct an upgraded airplane seat, Jacobs. Why were you in economy, anyway?”

She shoots me a frosty look. “Martine only books me in business class if the flight is longer than five hours.”

“Christ, really?”

“Not all of their employees are pampered drivers.”

I grit my teeth and shake off that barb. “It behooves them for the pampered drivers to be well-rested at the track.”

“My point is that my surprise at being handed a business-class ticket makes sense considering I know the policy.”

“Well then, I’m very sorry for surprising you with something nice,” I snark, and a storm flashes in her eyes.

“Don’t be a brat, Grant.”

There’s a specific note in her voice, something edgy and knowing. Suddenly that term takes on a completely different meaning. “Oh. Am I—?”

“We’re not having this conversation.”

“Here? Or at all?”

She gives me a long look. “At all.”

Well, damn. “Why not?”

“Because we work together, Wes. We can’t.”

This shouldn’t surprise me. It’s the exact reason she didn’t want anyone to think she was my date in Monaco. But still—I thought something had shifted between us. I thought D.C. proved she’s as drawn to me as I am to her. I thought last night meant something.

But maybe not. Maybe I was just a convenient outlet.

“In any case,” Elizabeth says coolly. “Thank you for the upgrade. You didn’t need to do that.”

“It’s no big deal,” I say easily, unwilling to let her see how affected I am by her casual rebuff of me, of what we’ve shared, of last night. “What are colleagues for, right?”