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Sasha blinked at the grudging respect in Luke’s voice.
‘How does the car feel?’
‘Er...great. It feels great.’
‘Good. Come in and we’ll take a look at the lap times together.’
She drove back into the garage and parked. Keeping her focus on Luke as he approached her, she got out and set her helmet aside.
He showed her the printout. ‘We can’t compare it with the performance of the DSII, but from these figures things are looking very good for Spa in three weeks’ time.’
Reading through the data, Sasha felt a buzz of excitement. ‘The DSII is great at slow corners, so I should be able to go even faster.’
Luke grinned. ‘When you have the world’s best aerodynamicist as your boss, you have a starting advantage. We’ll have a battle on the straight sections, but if you keep up this performance we should cope well enough to keep ourselves ahead.’
Again she caught the changed note in his voice.
Although she’d tried not to dwell on it, throughout the day, and over the following days during testing, Sasha slowly felt the changing attitude of her small team. They spoke to her with less condescension; some even bothered to engage her in conversation before and after her practice sessions.
And the first time Luke asked her opinion on how to avoid the under steering problem that had cropped up, Sasha forced herself to blink back the stupid tears that threatened.
* * *
Marco heard the car drive away as he came down the stairs. He curbed the strong urge to yank the door open and forced himself to wait. When he reached the bottom step he sat down and rested his elbows on his knees, his BlackBerry dangling from his fingers.
Light footsteps sounded seconds before the front door opened.
Sasha stood silhouetted against the lights flooding the outer courtyard, the outline of her body in tight dark trousers and top making sparks of desire shoot through his belly.
Clenching his teeth against the intensity of it, he forced himself to remain seated, knowing she hadn’t yet spotted him in the darkened hallway. Her light wrap slipped as she turned to shut the door, and he caught a glimpse of one smooth shoulder and arm. Her dark silky hair was tied in a careless knot on top of her head, giving her neck a long, smooth, elegant line that he couldn’t help but follow.
He found himself tracing the lines of her body, wondering how he’d ever thought her boyish. She was tall, her figure lithe, but there were curves he hadn’t noticed before—right down to the shapely denim-clad legs.
Shutting the door, she tugged off her boots and kicked them into a corner.
She turned and stumbled to a halt, her breath squeaking out in alarm. ‘Marco! Damn it, you really need to stop skulking in dark hallways. You nearly scared me to death!’
‘I wasn’t skulking.’ He heard the irritation in his voice and forced himself to calm down. ‘Where have you been? I called you several times.’
She pulled the wrap tighter around her shoulders, her chin tilting up in silent challenge. ‘I went for a drink with the team. They’re all flying out tomorrow morning and I wanted to say goodbye. I know that wasn’t part of the deal—me socialising with the team—but they kept asking and it would have been surly to refuse.’
Annoyance rattled through him. The last thing he wanted to discuss was his team, or the deal he’d made with Sasha Fleming. Dios, he wasn’t even sure why he’d come back here. He should be by his brother’s bedside—even if the doctors intended to keep him in his induced coma until the swelling on his brain reduced.
‘And you were having such a great time you decided not to answer your phone?’
‘I think it’s died.’
‘You think?’
‘You’re annoyed with me. Why?’
Sasha asked the question in that direct way he’d come to expect from her. No one in his vast global organisation would dare to speak to him that way. And yet...he found he liked it.
Rising, he walked towards her. A few steps away, the scent of her perfume hit his nostrils. Marco found himself craving more of it, wanting to draw even closer. ‘Why bother with a phone if you can’t ensure it works?’
‘Because no one calls me.’
Her words stopped him in his tracks. For a man who commanded his multi-billion-euro empire using his BlackBerry, Marco found her remark astonishing in the extreme. ‘No one calls you?’
‘My phone never rings. I think you were the last person to call me. I get the occasional text from Tom, or Charlie, my physio, but other than that...zilch.’
Marco’s puzzlement grew. ‘You don’t have any friends?’
‘Obviously none who care enough to call. And, before you go feeling sorry for me, I’m fine with it.’
