Page 147 of Lemon Crush

She batted her eyelashes in that general direction. “Why, thank you. The judges had the same reaction yesterday.”

“If Granny Hudson is done showing off, it’s time to get serious,” Rick said from the sidelines.

She dropped her pose and rounded on him with an angry stare. “Call me Granny again. I dare you.”

He ignored her and looked at me instead. “You know what to do. Remember what we’ve talked about over the last few months.”

Bernie snorted. “Winning isn’t the point because you set depressingly low expectations for yourselves?”

“Fun is the point,” I repeated dutifully. “After survival. First survival, and then, if you survive? Fun.”

It was Rick’s turn to snort. “Don’t worry. You will survive.”

I giggled a little hysterically when his words hit the button on my mental jukebox and Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” started playing in my head.

“At first I was afraid. I was petrified.”

Yep. That tracked.

“She’ll be fine. We’ll make sure of it.” Lucy came out of the tent for the first time since the race started, still holding a radio in his hand. “The key for you is not to worry about your speed. There’s a group of ladies in their sixties driving a pink Cadillac out there right now. They’re regular racers, and none of them ever goover seventy miles per hour. And why is that? Because they’re only here to have fun. As long as you don’t drive like an asshole, you’ll do great.”

I pointed at Lucy and looked around, making direct eye contact with the rest of my so-called cheerleaders. “Thatmade me feel better. Someone should have led with that right away. The seventy-miles-per-hour-Mary-Kay-lady thing? I’m good now. Much better. Saint Lucy strikes again.”

He cocked his hip and beamed at me. “I do what I can.”

“Will you stop posing, man? We’re old enough for that to be embarrassing,” Rick muttered, but he said it with a grin.

“This is such an odd group of people.” Chick had a bemused expression on his face. “I don’t say this lightly, but it’s almost better than fiction.”

“High praise,” Kingston said behind him, causing Chick to stiffen.

“Gus?”

Wade took my hand and tugged me off to the side, away from the others at the same time that Jiminy entered the paddock in the distance.

Something was wrong. He looked upset.

“What’s going on? Is it your turn to get last-minute jitters?”

“No jitters. You’re a careful driver and you’ve been practicing. I know you’ll be fine.” He grimaced, his hand tightening on mine. “There was something important I wanted to tell you before we left the parking lot.”

A tickle of non-race-related worry crept into my mind. “It’s not about the car?”

“No.”

The loud cheer as Rick started unhooking and detaching Gene from Jiminy momentarily distracted me. Morgan really came down to greet him with a bucket of fried chicken and a cake?

“He deserves some excessive celebration,” I told Wade fondly. “Lucy said he made great time today.”

“Yeah, Gene did great. August, about earlier?—”

“August Retta, come on down,” Gene shouted like a game show host from beside the car, his bald head raining sweat, a smile bigger than I’d ever seen from him gracing his bright-red face.

I looked back and covered Wade’s hand with mine. “I really want to hear this, but is it an emergency, or something that can wait until I’m done with my turn? I don’t want to lose my nerve again and I feel like I’m about to.”

There was a slight hitch in his shoulders. “Yeah. Yes, of course. It can wait. Focus on the race.”

He dropped his hand and took a step back, putting more distance between us than I wanted. “I’ll see you when it’s over.”

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