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CHAPTER ONE

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voraciouswood: Paragon is taking their sweet time with their driver lineup. Has any team taken this long to announce? Pre-season testing literally in three days. Are they going to put a reserve driver in the car to test it?

The contract stared up from the table like it was watching me. Everything was perfect. Negotiated within an inch of its life. As a rookie driver, it was the best deal I was going to get. And honestly? Better than I expected.

I savored the quiet in my small flat. Starting tomorrow, nothing would be quiet anymore, and moments like this would be rare.

Blowing out a shaky breath, I stood and walked to the balcony. It didn’t look out over much. A few trees and a glimpse of a bend in the river that wound its way through Britannia’s capital. Rain drizzled from the sky, as it did more often than not. I missed the sunshine from back home, but it wouldn’t be Britannia if it wasn’t raining on the biggest day of my life.

Like the universe heard my thoughts, a big, fat water drop landed square in the middle of my forehead from the leaky roof over the balcony.

Good riddance to this apartment. Flat. Whatever. Annika could remind me as much as she wanted, but I doubted I’d ever fully adapt to Britannian slang.

It was difficult to make money in racing until you reached this level. Now that it wouldn’t be a problem, I planned to move somewhere better—and safer—as soon as I could find a place. But this little flat had been good to me in the years I’d been here, and I loved it for what it had been.

Not enough for me to stick around, but enough.

The frenzied knock on the door had me smiling. I didn’t have to look through the peephole to know exactly what it was. Annika had never had a subtle moment in her entire life, and knocking was no different.

She shook out her umbrella, spraying me as soon as I opened the door. “Sorry I’m late. The tube was a nightmare. It’s like all the conductors are conspiring to make Annika’s day as difficult as possible.”

“You’re not late,” I said. “Grayson hasn’t called yet.”

“I’ll be a fly on the wall. Just taking pictures of the moment, you know?” The rain made her peach scent a bit stronger.

Laughing, I closed the door behind her and slipped the umbrella into the stand to dry. “You know I’d want you here anyway, even without your role as photographer.”

Annika was a native Britannian, and she’d been training me since I’d moved here. Two women in a field of mostly men? We’d become fast friends, and now I couldn’t imagine my career without her. Plus, her being a Beta made her a good balance to my Omega energy, even with her natural intensity. Sometimes I needed grounding, and there weren’t many people I could turn to for that.

“Still.” She shook out her ponytail. “The pictures are going to be everywhere. They’ve got to be good.”

I winced. “We’ll probably take more after the announcement to make it look like we were in the same room.”

“Woman,” she laughed. “Let me have my moment.”

“Fair enough.” From the other room, my laptop began to chime. “Here goes nothing.”

Annika practically skipped behind me. “Here goes everything .”

I answered the video call and found Grayson de Clare on the other side. A now-familiar sight, since this was the only way we’d been able to communicate face to face. The Paragon team wanted the surprise of announcing me as their driver to take the racing world by storm, so we’d taken extra lengths to make sure we did nothing to tip off the press.

“Hey, Grayson.”

“Hello, Vanessa.” He smiled, and I swallowed.

Grayson de Clare, Team Principal of the Paragon Formula 1 Team, was hot. Smoking hot. I was a professional and was going to act like it, but damn the man was attractive. The Alpha in him practically dripped through the screen. Not to mention he was dressed my favorite way. A crisp white team shirt with all the sponsor logos. But it wasn’t the shirt that made my mouth water. It was that he had the sleeves rolled up to his elbows showing off forearms that could have been in a watch ad. Or a perfume ad. Or porn.

“You ready to sign?”

I blinked, coming back from thinking far from appropriate thoughts about the man who was about to be my boss. “I am. Annika is here to take some photos.” She popped into the frame behind me and waved.

“Hello to you too, Annika.”

She saluted. “Mr. De Clare.”

He chuckled but gestured to me. “I’m ready when you are.”

His signature, and the team owner’s, were already on this. It had been delivered by a messenger this morning. Grayson owned part of the team too, and made most of the decisions, but he’d still gone to bat for me with the majority owner. Hiring me was a risk and we all knew it. Giving me a two-year contract when my hiring was going to be groundbreaking and unprecedented was even more of a risk. Something I had to live up to.

I picked up the pen and initialed in the places that were flagged, my eyes dragging over the familiar words like a habit. I’d read the contract so many times I practically had it memorized.

The moment I signed on the final blank line was so simple, and yet it was everything. Just a few motions of my hand and my life was different.

Permanently.

“There we go,” I said, blowing out a breath. “Signed.”

Grayson smiled. “Welcome to the team, Vanessa. I look forward to meeting you without a screen between us.”

Me too.

I was going to have to control myself when that happened.

“Are you ready for tomorrow?” He asked.

“Is it bad if I say I honestly don’t know? Yes, absolutely, because it’s everything I’ve wanted. But it’s going to be a lot.”

He chuckled. “It is. But you can handle it. We wouldn’t have signed you if we felt you couldn’t.”

“I appreciate that.”

“Though I do apologize for the way we’re going to have to get you into the building.”

Annika walked around the table and gave me a questioning look. I hadn’t told her about that part. A bit extra, maybe. Part of the amazing surprise? Definitely.

“Well,” I said, “I can safely say I’ve never been smuggled anywhere in the trunk of a car before, so there’s a first time for everything.”

I grinned when Annika’s jaw dropped.

“We’ll look forward to seeing you.”

“Grayson?” I’d tried to call him Mr. De Clare throughout the meetings and negotiations, but he refused. Much to my agent’s dismay. The fact that he couldn’t make this call because of another meeting bugged the hell out of him. He was protective, and I was grateful for it, but I wasn’t sure why he was so worried about a call that was essentially a formality.

“Yes?”

“I know it’s a surprise, but...” I took a breath. “I’d like to tell my grandfather. I just know that tomorrow is going to be busy, and I want to be the one to tell him. After everything, him finding out from a media storm?—”

“No,” he cut me off. “I understand that. And I don’t think your grandfather is going to spill the beans if you tell him not to.”

“Definitely not.”

Vance Lennon was still a name everyone knew in this world. He was one of the most decorated racers in the world, and I was named after him. Kind of. But most people were surprised when they made the connection. If only because I was a woman, and the fact that I raced at all surprised them.

Fuckers.

“Please do tell him,” Grayson said. “And from me, tell him that it’s an honor to have his granddaughter on our team.”

“I will.”

He nodded once. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I waved before the call cut short and blew out a long, slow breath.

“Bloody hell.” Annika flopped down into the chair beside me. “You did it.”

“Yeah.”

We let the silence linger for long moments before we both jumped out of our chairs and screamed, bouncing up and down and letting out every bit of ridiculous behavior we could never show the outside world.

Annika pulled me into a hug that squeezed the life out of me. “You’re a fucking Formula 1 driver, Nessa.”

“It doesn’t feel real.”

“But it is. Now call your grandfather and tell him the news. He’s going to lose his mind.”

It was hard to imagine my grandfather losing his mind about anything, given how even keeled he was. But I hoped—no, I knew he would be happy.

He’d come to every race before he got sick. Now he watched whatever he could because he couldn’t travel. The chemotherapy put him in too much pain, and he was too fragile. Though he’d tell anyone who said that to shut the hell up.

I grabbed my phone and stepped back out onto the balcony and the cold, damp winter air. He answered on the third ring. “If you’re calling to ask about the treatments, we haven’t even gotten that far, Ness.”

“Hello to you too.”

He sighed. “Hello.”

“Is someone grumpy today?”

“I’m grumpy every day. You try having people stick needles in you at all hours and see how you like it.”

I laughed. “I’m going to try to avoid that. Gotta keep my sunshiney personality.”

The sound that left my grandfather was somewhere between a scoff and a laugh. “Sunshine. Right.”

“I’m delightful and you know it.”

“If you’re not calling me to bug me about all the needles, then why are you calling?”

I couldn’t stop the smile on my face. “Grandpa, I have some news.”