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Chapter Twenty-Three

Shantal

D espite the team’s best efforts, Diana is in perfect form for the next race, Jeddah weekend, and she takes the win at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. We can’t be too mad since Miguel ends up in second on podium, while Darien swings a P4, but I know he can’t be taking it too well; he knows he’s got to establish consistency to stay in the running for the Championship, especially with Miguel so close to him.

And that brings us to Melbourne, Australia. Albert Park appears to be one of the prettier races on the calendar and it’s Peter Albrecht’s home race, but the heat this year is especially brutal, and I’m not loving the idea of the drivers cooking faster than an egg on the street when they get on the track.

‘The inside of the cockpit might hit, what, one-twenty Fahrenheit once we get rolling?’ Darien is telling Celina as he exhales a heavy breath, raking back his curls. The sleeves of his Nomex fireproofs are rolled back, tattoos snaking out from under the hem of the fabric. One hundred and twenty degrees Fahrenheit is quite hot, but when I step towards the pit wall to grab a water bottle, it’s not the heat I’m trying to distract myself from.

Darien and Miguel qualified P3 and P4 respectively, which puts them both in a tough position for today. It’ll be a long two hours. I’ve begun to wish I’d brought a hand-fan.

‘BATH TIME!’ I hear Miguel proclaim from somewhere in the garage.

‘Hey, Shantal.’ Celina hurries up to me. ‘The kids want their baths, but Louie and I have got to head to the motorhome for a trainers’ meeting. Can I ask you a favour? Can you quickly grab those big bins from the back closet and start the baths in the physio room? I just need those at eight Celsius. I am so sorry, I’ll literally pay you—’

‘No need to pay me,’ I stop her with a laugh. The poor woman’s been running around all weekend getting Darien his cold vest, towels, drinks; everything to make sure his core temperatures don’t shoot straight up. ‘I’ll take care of it.’

‘Thank you.’ She presses her hands together and shoots me a look of desperate gratitude before nearly running down the hall towards the conference rooms.

Back closet. Okay .

It takes me a minute to orientate myself to the space, but I eventually weave past the drivers’ rooms to the closet, where the two tubs, big plastic things that look like they could hold kids’ toys, sit one inside the other, with two thermometers and rubber ducks – god, children, I tell you – in the top bin. I heft them out and set them up in the PT room. The massive ice chest in the room already holds the bags of ice, so I dump a healthy amount into each of the baths, set up the thermometers, and start filling them with cold water.

‘Did you find the ducks?’

The sudden introduction of a voice into my otherwise silent environment makes me jerk the hose so hard that water ends up all over the floor around the second tub I’m filling.

‘What in the name of …’ I turn around, ready to riot, but the words fizzle out the second I see who’s at the door.

Darien leans against the doorframe, and I honestly wish someone had issued some kind of warning, because he’s wearing nothing but a pair of navy-blue board shorts. And I’m here. And he’s here. Lord .

He’s got tattoos up both arms and over onto his chest. Doves, cursive words, flowers, stars. He has one on his right thigh, too – a falling Icarus. He hasn’t removed his jewellery yet, so his gold cross still hangs around his neck, small diamonds still in his ears. He’s absolutely built, absolutely beautiful. Darien: six feet of well-defined muscle and smarminess that have decided, for some reason, to focus on me. His eyes meet mine, and he’s evidently smirking, definitely poking fun. I feel my cheeks flush. Traitors .

‘Did you find ’em?’ he asks again, searching my face for an answer with a gaze that sends my stomach fluttering like I’ve just gone down the steep drop of a roller coaster. He tilts his head inquisitively, and a stray curl falls over his brow.

Mutely, I point to a side table where I isolated the ducks, each labelled with a number in permanent marker: 88 and 67.

Darien ambles over to the table and grabs his duck, grinning at me once he’s holding it up. ‘Can’t have a bath without your duck.’

I think I’m going to pass out. Concentrate, Shantal, concentrate, deep breath, deep breath.

He waves a hand in front of my face. ‘Yo. Shantal. Earth to Shantal.’

‘Yes! Yes.’ I’m not completely there yet, but if I make direct eye contact with Darien for another second, I fear I might not make it to race start. With a tight smile, I reach around him, avoiding any physical contact that could cause me to collapse on the spot, and turn off the valve for the hose, gesturing vaguely to the tub. ‘All set.’

‘Cool, thanks.’ Without so much as a moment’s pause, he steps straight into the tub with a little wince before sitting right down inside and coming up completely drenched, hair slicked back by the water. It is exceptionally hard not to watch the way the muscles of his back move, the lines of the tattoos moving with them, as he hoists himself to a comfortable position. The rubber duck, damn the thing, pops up and looks straight at me as Darien shoots me a happy little thumbs-up.

I feel like I’ve just had one too many glasses of wine, when I match his gesture. Miguel, who enters the room seconds later, gives me a look like, Oh, I see , and hops on into his own ice bath. Of course, Miguel is also easy on the eyes, but I don’t happen to be having heart palpitations around anyone other than Darien. Darien, who has already made my life difficult enough by being a pain in the ass and is apparently hell-bent on making it even worse.

I leave the room with the quickest not-so-subtle glance back, and even as the two of them exchange some talk about orchestrating a pit barbecue behind the crash fencing because it’s that hot and they get that hungry , I could swear that man manages to catch my gaze. I slam the door shut behind me with shaky hands, and for a moment, I can’t do anything but stand with my back to it, trying to regain my composure and my breath.