[Nascar 40] - Teaming Up by Abby Gaines

Author:Abby Gaines [Gaines, Abby]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0373217935
Published: 2009-04-05T21:34:31+00:00

ISABEL HALF EXPECTED Clay wouldn’t show up at the hospital on Wednesday. But when she walked into the hospital reception, he was there. He must have come from his office, for he wore a suit, obviously expensive, charcoal-gray with a pinstripe over a white shirt and light gray tie. But the finery couldn’t disguise his fighter’s stance, the stubborn thrust of his chin.

Isabel hadn’t spoken to him since the race at Michigan. She told herself it was because he’d suggested the less she said the more effective she’d be…but that was a convenient excuse. She was too disturbed by their last conversation. Despite her anger over what he’d said about Hugo, she couldn’t stop thinking about the frankly sensual appraisal in his gaze.

Though right now, he looked merely businesslike, and she wondered if she could have imagined it.

She greeted Clay, ran through the morning’s agenda before he could start any kind of personal conversation. But it seemed he was all business today—in the lull before Justin arrived, his questions were confined to the sponsorship agreement. The phrase “roll in the hay” didn’t feature.

Justin breezed in a couple of minutes late. The hospital administrator who was managing his visit got excited almost to the point of losing her voice, but Justin’s charm soon had her relaxing.

They headed to the pediatric kidney ward, where Justin would visit a couple of dozen patients. It was draining work, but Isabel knew he gave his time willingly, and his natural sympathy always made him a favorite for this kind of thing.

Clay and Isabel hung back while Justin shook hands with each patient, talked to them about their condition, answered their questions about NASCAR—and was entirely gracious if they named some other driver as their favorite.

At one stage, as one little girl told Justin matter-offactly that if she didn’t get a transplant within six months, she would probably die, Isabel wiped a tear from her eye. And realized Clay was doing the same. It was a shock, to see such a tough-looking man affected by the little girl’s plight.

“Justin does a great job, doesn’t he?” she asked Clay.

Clay cleared his throat. “Yeah.”

“You can see that NASCAR gives a lot of people real hope—something to focus on when all around them life is descending into chaos or despair.” It did the same for her.

Clay didn’t say anything, and she resisted the temptation to go on and on.

But as the tour ended, she ventured the question that was burning a hole in her tongue. “Is this the kind of thing you meant, when you said you would need to see that your NASCAR sponsorship was doing good?”

Behind them, she could hear Justin saying goodbye to the staff. Clay held the swing door at the end of the ward open for her to step out into the elevator bay. “Yes…and no.”

“What does that mean?”

He thumbed the elevator button. “Justin’s doing good work here, but this isn’t where most of Turn-Rite’s money goes. If we have enough money for an

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