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Jared grabbed Tucker’s arm and spun him away from Dave Jenner. To be honest “Gentleman Dave,” as he was known around the track, didn’t appear to be too gentlemanly. But Annie placed herself in front of her brother and put her hand on his shoulder.
“Dave, chill out.”
“Dammit, Annie.”
Donovan stood in the doorway leading to the waiting room talking loudly to another man. Jared knew he should get his butt over there and help provide a distraction in case any media reps had arrived and somehow managed to get into the waiting room. But he was more interested in watching the byplay between brother and sister.
As the only son of older parents, he’d never experienced anything like the relationship he saw now? though his parents and he had been very close. Dave calmed down and walked over to the corner with Annie.
“What are you staring at?” Tucker asked.
“Nothing,” he said, turning back to Tucker. Tucker had taken off his uniform and had on a pair of baggy pants and a T-shirt. “You okay?”
“I’m fine. How’s the car look?” Tucker asked.
“Not too bad. Billy said most of the damage is superficial. They’ll have it back in the rotation in no time. What happened?” Jared asked, trying to figure out how Tucker, who had a reputation for avoiding most accidents, had been involved in one less than five laps into the first big race of the season.
“I was trying to get Jenner loose so I could get around him,” Tucker said.
Getting close to the end of Tucker’s car like that would have taken the air off the spoiler and made the rear tires lose traction. Usually the other driver just moved out of the way and let the second driver pass. But sometimes, like today, accidents occurred.
“What can I say, someone forgot his manners,” Tucker announced.
“Someone should go back to the dirt tracks,” Dave Jenner responded loudly.
Tucker had started out racing on dirt tracks illegally when he was only sixteen. Jared counted Tucker as one of his best friends. They’d met in college when a ballsy Tucker had approached Jared about buying him a stock car. Most of his fraternity brothers were more subtle about asking him for money than Tucker had been. But there had been something in Tucker’s eyes that had told Jared that his money wouldn’t go to waste. And it hadn’t.
Investing in Tucker had turned out to be a solid decision. And when Tucker had started racing in the NASCAR NEXTEL Cup Series, Jared, whose fledgling coffeehouse had started taking off regionally, had gone with him as his car owner.
“Both of you should stop acting like boys and start behaving like the men you are,” Annie said, crossing the aisle between Dave’s curtained cubicle and Tucker’s.
“Are you okay, Tucker?” she asked once she was standing next to Tucker.
“Fine,” he said, turning away from Annie and sinking back down on the hospital bed that had been assigned to him.
“You okay?” Jared asked her. She still looked a little flushed. Her pale skin made her light eyes seem even bluer.
“Yes. Did I say thanks for your help earlier?” she asked.
“You did. I don’t think we’ve been introduced. I’m Jared MacNeil, by the way,” he said, offering his hand.
She took it. Her hand was small and cold, and her nails were painted a pretty deep red. “I know who you are. I’m Annie Jenner.”
“Everyone knows the Jenner family.”
“That’s right, everyone knows us and yet no one really does,” she said.
She blushed, putting her hand over her mouth and glancing around to see if anyone had heard her comment. No one appeared to have noticed the two of them but he drew her away from the crowd, liking the feel of her soft skin under his grasp.
“Please ignore that last part. I’m not myself today,” she said, a worried frown on her brow.
“I think that’s expected. You and Dave are close?”
“We’re twins. I know, not every set of twins are close, but we are. We’ve always been like a unit. When we were little we’d follow my dad through the garage tooling around the cars together.”
“You’d think someone who’d been around tracks all his life would know when to move over,” Tucker said, raising his voice so that Dave could hear it.
Annie glanced over at the other man. “Let it go, Tucker.”
“I can’t,” he said.
She shook her head and walked back over to her brother, leaving Jared alone with Tucker. Jared wanted to tell Tucker to cool down and stop acting like an ass. But he understood how important this year was to Tucker and to their race team.
“Where’s the doctor? I’m ready to get out of here,” Tucker said.
