“Champagne?” she mutters, eyes locked on the bottle.
“Why not?” I shrug, popping the cork and filling the flute halfway. Leaning down, I pass her the glass and she thanks me. “Continue,” I say as I twist the cap of my bottle and fill my own glass.
“Erm.” She drops her eyes to her notes, her lips moving silently as she reads. “Oh, yes.” She takes a sip of her champagne.
Why is she so cute? Everything she does raises the sensation, it’s like I am besotted with her.
“What’s the point of practice?” She stares at me, waiting, pen hovered over her paper.
“It’s a crucial point of the weekend, actually. We can see how the car feels, fine tune if we need to, and check how the car is performing. We need our cars to be the best of the best and having practice helps that. If we need to make changes we can, but once the car goes into qualifying, or parc fermé, we cannot touch it.”
She furrows her brow.
“If we had an accident in qualifying and we damaged the nose of the car, we can change it, but we can’t physically touch or upgrade the car once we’ve passed that point.” I knit my brows.
I watch her with intent as she scribbles the notes down, repeating my words. Glass of champagne in one hand, her fingers curl around the pen in a way I have never seen. The pen slides between her middle and ring finger, hand clasped around and her wrist twisted towards her as she writes.
“Okay, got it.” She takes a large sip. “Then qualifying,” she mutters, tapping her pen on the paper and just as I go to speak, she continues. “Nope, I have all that, made all my notes today.”
I could just sit here and watch her, she fascinates me. Once she gets into her book, I cannot wait to see the way her mind works. My lips twitch as I take a mouthful of my drink.
“Racing.” She jiggles in her seat, like she’s doing a little happy dance. She is cute as fuck.
“Hit me,” I mumble, eyes locked on her as I watch every inch of her.
“Is each race the same number of laps?” Her gaze hits mine.
Tossing my head from side to side, I answer, “No, it depends on length of track. This weekend’s race is fifty-eight laps.”
“Wow.” Her lips turn down as she jots down her notes. “So, you just keep going round and
round.” Her head moves in a small circle which makes me laugh.
“Basically, yes. But we have pit stops in between. And of course, if there are any red flags, or a safety car, things change slightly.”
“Aha.” Her eyes are fixed down on the notepad.
I want to tell her everything, but I also want to spend time getting to know her before the next few weeks really set in with work.
“Would you mind if we check back after the race tomorrow for notes?” I ask and her face tips up, her eyes wide, lips parted.
“Er, yeah of course, sorry… I didn’t even think.” She taps her palm off her forehead. “You’re tired, you have your race tomorrow.” She places her flute down on the side table before pushing to her feet.
Panic claws at my throat as I stand, stepping closer to her just as she grabs her bits. “No, no,” I rush the words out as if they’ve burned my tongue. “That’s not what I meant.”
We stand toe to toe, she’s small up against me. I’m not overly tall, but I seem to tower over her. She blinks up at me, neck craned as my eyes dart between hers.
“I don’t want you to leave,” I whisper, my fingers burning with the need to touch her, if only just once.
“Oh.” Her lips form a perfect ‘O’,and I have to stop my mind from diving into the gutter.
“I just didn’t want to talk about work.” My voice is low, a soft laugh catching at the back of my throat.
“Oh,” she repeats again, her vice like grip loosening on the notepad that is clutched against her chest.
“Yeah.” My smile deepens. “I just thought we could take the next couple of hours getting to know each other a little more. We have spent most days together and we’re still strangers.”
She nods, slowly dropping her arms, fingers clutching her notepad still.
