“Someone hurt you, and he’s on that list, Frankie,” Nick says, and it’s like a lead bowling ball being hurled at my chest.
“What? When?” I ask but Nick and Frankie are in some silent fighting match, glaring at each other. “Hello. What the hell is he talking about, Frankie?”
She snatches the bag of sushi out of my hands. “Thanks. Bye.”
She starts to try and close the door. I jam my foot in it, and Nick’s massive, strong hand clamps down on my shoulder. Frankie’s pretty eyes widen, and she re-opens the door. “A big part of me wants to watch you two fight like school girls in this hallway right now. And I don’t even know who I want to win at this point.”
She sighs and runs a hand through her hair, which is loose and messy around the shoulders of the hotel bathrobe she’s wearing. “You can come inside for ten minutes. No more. Do you understand?”
“Perfectly.” I also understand that she is going to break that time limit willingly.
Nick makes a growling noise but doesn’t object, and he stomps over to his room next door.
There’s a big, long hallway with a powder room at the end, and then it banks left and opens up into a huge living room with a bar and floor to ceiling windows. Frankie has left the curtains open so the city below twinkles and glimmers spectacularly in front of us. She pushes past me and walks over and puts the sushi down on the mirrored glass coffee table next to the pink velvet couch before making a point of closing the double doors that lead to the bedroom. I smirk. “Not sure what that is supposed to stop. We haven’t needed a bed yet.”
She blushes but remains cold. “What do you want, Billy?”
“To make it clear, again, that I would never date you to secure my spot on this team,” I tell her, and she strides past me and sits on the couch.
She starts to cross her legs, but it makes the robe slip at the bottom, exposing her smooth tanned legs to halfway up her thigh. So she uncrosses them and tugs the robe closed again. I almost groan like a child who just had their candy taken away.
“You keep saying that. I keep finding reasons not to believe you,” she counters. “And if what you told me in San Sebastian about your mom is true, then why would she even suggest such a thing?”
“Because she’s heavily medicated and mixes it with booze,” I blurt out before I even realize what I’m admitting. “She has bad judgement and a heightened ability to avoid reality. She doesn’t talk about what my father did or admit it in public. No one but Clara and me know the full extent of the secrets.”
“Clara, huh?” Frankie leans forward and starts to open the bag of sushi. “There’s another thing. You keep denying you’re close to her, but now you’re telling me she knows your family’s deepest, darkest secrets. You trust her with that, but you aren’t into her? Hard sell.”
“I never said I wasn’t close to her. We’re very, very close, emotionally. I said I wasn’t sexually involved with her, and that’s the God’s honest truth. I would never touch her,” I reply as she pulls out the sushi.
“I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t be banging her.”
“Because I didn’t tell her my family secrets.” I can’t believe I’m about to share this but yet, I am. “She is one. The biggest one.”
That’s got her attention. She’s stopped fussing with her dinner and is staring up at me with an intense, unwavering stare. I swallow. “Clara is my sister.”
“What?”
“Tommy is also Clara’s dad,” I go on. “Her mom worked in Montreal, she was part of the local company that worked the races there. Shiloh Ravenhart was a marketing minion, according to Clara. Very low position, but somehow she was assigned to escort Billy to press conferences while he was there, and he flirted with her. Shiloh was enamored. She willingly had a fling with him. Well, she thought it was a fling, but he kept in contact. Even had secret little trips to see her and flew her to wherever he was when she could get time off, and my mum was distracted in Australia with me. He demanded she be his only handler the next race in Montreal the following year. They were madly in love by then, and that’s when Clara was conceived.”
“Oh my God. Are you serious?” Frankie is blinking rapidly and her perfect mouth is hanging open.
I rake a hand into my hair and close my eyes. “This would be a bit much to make up, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes. Of course. I didn’t mean…” Frankie pauses, and when I open my eyes, she’s standing in front of me. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry that my father was a two-timing manwhore?” I chuckle because she looks horrified by my bluntness. “I’m not really all that sorry Tommy did it, to be honest. Clara is great. The sibling I never knew I wanted. But I do want her in my life. She’s been amazing. My mum, on the other hand, refuses to acknowledge her place in the family. Won’t let us talk about it publicly. Threatens to try and off herself again if we tell people.”
“Billy… that’s horrible.”
I nod and avert my eyes from her sympathetic gaze. I appreciate it, but I also hate it. I stare out at the twinkling cityscape in front of me. “The first time she tried it was when we found out about Clara. Her mother, Shiloh, had climbed her way up through the PR firm that managed the Montreal circuit. In part, it was because of my dad. People did what Tommy James wanted, but she was also skilled and good at her job. Of course, people liked to focus on the other stuff. When Clara was born, no one had proof she was Tommy’s, but people judged Shiloh harshly anyway. And when Tommy died, she was fired within a week. That and his death cut off all her financial avenues.”
“Tommy had been providing for them?” Frankie asks, slightly incredulous.
“Oh yeah he was dad of the year for Clara and partner of the year for Shiloh,” I explain and move to the window. “He bought them a house Shiloh couldn’t afford to keep without his help and her job. Had Clara in a fancy private school Shiloh couldn’t afford to pay for without him. And no one in the sport wanted to hire Tommy James’ side tail.”
“Fuck.”
“So, Shiloh contacted the lawyers. She wanted financial help. Give her child support or she would go to all the tabloids. Sure enough, when I found out about all this and dug deeper while Mum was in the psychiatric hospital, I did find emails from Tommy to his lawyer talking about putting Clara in his will. He wanted everything split equally between Clara and me, but it just didn’t get written up before the crash, so it wasn’t legally binding,” I explain and sigh. “I made sure it happened anyway. Mum is still not happy about it.”
