That was the time to pounce. So that’s what Anker did. What she did. She wouldn’t be doing her job if she didn’t.
Before she’d come to Formula 1 she’d been a successful Formula 3 driver, having won the trophy three times. There had been talk about her moving up to Formula 2 and one day perhaps even Formula 1. So, it had been a surprise to most people when she’d stepped out of the cockpit and joined Blue Jet Lightning as a race engineer. Once she did, it didn’t take long for her to rise through the ranks, finally reaching the top position of team principal. Not only was she the only female team principal in Formula 1, at twenty-eight, she was the youngest.
“Don’t you ever have regrets?” he asked. “For what you’ve done?”
“I’d rather regret what I do than what I don’t,” she said testily.
Like not driving.
There’s no possible remedy for that kind of regret.
Nothing for me to hold onto. Not even gravity. I’ll never know what might have been.
“You mean like accepting an invitation from those guys and finding out you regret it rather than saying no and not knowing?”
“Those three guys?” she scoffed. “No, I mean stuff that matters. They’re just to annoy my father. And I have good reason for running away from them. Do you know what whoopie pie, dirt cake, and sticky toffee pudding are?”
“I know what sticky toffee pudding is.”
Ceci exhaled. “A whoopie pie is a marshmallow filling stuffed between two soft cookies. A whole lot of mush surrounded by soppy sponge. Dirt cake is chocolate pudding, crumbled cookies, and gummy worms. A big old mess. And sticky toffee pudding might taste good while you’re eating it, but afterwards, there’s all that gummy, gluey goo that just won’t leave. You get my point?”
He cleared his throat.
Was he suppressing a laugh?
“Do you reduce all men to desserts?”
She shrugged. “Men do it all the time. Cake, pudding, jelly bag, honeypot.” She leaned forward and ran her tongue over her lips. “Cherry-red lips.”
She watched his Adam’s apple rise and fall as he swallowed.
He doesn’t have a mask to hide that.
“I don’t,” he said.
She blinked, suddenly surprised to hear him speak after staring at his throat. “What’s that?”
“You said men reduce women to desserts, and I’m telling you that I don’t.”
Enough.
“Take off your mask.”
He flinched, taking a step back.
“Don’t you want to kiss me?” she said in a voice that was hardly above a whisper and forced him to lean forward.
There it is again. That swallow.
She watched as he lifted his hands.
Okay, now I’ll get my answer.
And if it is Sir Stick?
Would she still kiss him?
I’ll give him hell. That’s for sure. But I might kiss him first. Just to see what it’s like.
