Make Me Over_ Getting Real - Leslie Kelly [10]
“I’m sorry, Tori, I don’t mean to. It’s…instinctual.” Then he clarified. “Habit.”
“I know what instinctual is,” she retorted. “I ain’t ignorant. It’s like the way tub-a-guts Bubba Freeman always sucks in his belly and sticks out his chest whenever a pretty girl walks into the garage, even though that boy not only fell outta the ugly tree, he got beat on by the whole forest.”
He supposed the analogy worked.
“Now, you were saying you’ve seen the world?” he asked.
She leaned back on the sofa, lifting her boot-clad feet to rest them on the coffee table. “Well, mosta the US of A below the Mason-Dixon line. I been ridin’ the southern circuit with my daddy and my brothers for nigh on twelve years now, since Mama died.”
“I’m sorry.”
This time, she didn’t question him. A brief nod acknowledged his expression of sympathy. “Daddy’s driven in a few national races, so I even been as far away as San Diego, California.”
“Races? Is your father a race-car driver?”
She nodded.
“And you…”
“I’m head of his pit crew. And a backup driver.”
His jaw dropped in surprise. This tiny, lovely looking woman was a mechanic and a race-car driver? “You’re serious?”
She giggled at his look of surprise.
“You drive small cars at high rates of speed on an enclosed track for hundreds of miles?” he asked, still trying to get his mind around it.
“Nope. NHRA.” When he simply stared, she explained, “Hot rods.” When he still didn’t understand, she sighed deeply. “Drag racing. Not long distances, it’s quarter mile. Get it?”
When he finally nodded, still speechless, she added, “Daddy’s one of the top funny car drivers in the country.”
Drag racing. So she drove even smaller cars, at even shorter distances…at even higher speeds. Somehow, that didn’t make him feel better. “And your father—is he the one who elicited your promise to come here?”
“If your askin’ did he use some chest pains to get me to agree to get some higher learnin’, yeah, he’d be the one all right.”
Higher learning. On the set of a reality-television show. He didn’t begin to have the time to evaluate that contradiction.
Though he didn’t ask, Tori must have seen the curiosity in his expression. Because she began explaining her sport to him, the history, the importance of air velocity and starting speed.
But all he could think about was her little body inside a tiny metal can hurtling at over two hundred miles per hour.
“Do your brothers work with your father, too?”
She snorted. “Not hardly what you’d call work. My oldest younger brother, Jimmy, he was backup driver, ’til he got hitched last year. His wife put her foot down about him bein’ gone so much, what with her ’n’ their three kids at home.”
He didn’t so much as bat an eye.
“My baby brother, Sammy, he works the crew, but he’s pretty green still. More interested in chasin’ the track hos than payin’ attention to the art of draggin’.”
Didn’t bat one at that, either. He just smiled inwardly, liking her voice, the way she softened her words with that Tennessee twang. He also liked what she revealed about herself—her life, how hard she worked, her enthusiasm for her job—with every word she spoke.
“As for Luther…” This time, her whole body grew tense. Her fingers curled into fists in her lap, and Drew suddenly wondered exactly what poor Luther had done to inspire such anger in his sister. But she didn’t elaborate. “Well, he’s about as useless as tits on a boar hog around cars.”
How…colorful. Still, a clear description. He began to understand her enmity toward her lazy brother Luther. “So you’re your daddy’s heir?”
She met his eye and nodded slowly. “I suppose.”
Hearing the slight hesitation in her voice, he had to ask, “How do you feel about that? Is it what you’d choose for yourself, if you had a choice?”
Her gaze returned to her lap, where her fingers remained tightly clenched. “Sure.”
She was lying. But he wasn’t going to be rude enough to call her on it. “You’re the oldest, with three younger brothers. No sisters?”
“Huh-uh. Jimmy’s one year younger than me, Luther one year younger than him, and Sammy one step