Legends and Lies by Katherine Garbera Page A

know that.

    THE NEXT FEW WEEKS flew by. Dave won in Fontana, but Tucker beat him in Las Vegas. Dave had just lost to Tucker last Sunday. And their rivalry was really getting hot. Annie didn’t know if it was only because of Jared that she seemed more aware of Tucker, but for the first time she wasn’t just paying attention to her brother.

    Annie had stayed in one of the hotels on the Vegas strip that was owned by a family friend. She’d had fun at the race, and gambling in Vegas.

    She’d gone home for two days to her house on Lake Windemere in Orlando, Florida. The house had seemed too empty and quiet when she was there, probably because she didn’t want to be there. Jared had invited her to join him at his home in Atlanta for their days off, but she’d declined. Not for any good reason except that she was afraid to be alone with him. Afraid to take the next logical step in their relationship and sleep with him.

    She wanted him. Had fallen to sleep almost every night in recent memory thinking of him, and had woken up to fevered dreams of making love with him. But she still wasn’t sure she wanted to take that final step.

    Once she did, there’d be no pretending that she wasn’t falling for him. She glanced at the bracelet on her wrist—the one that she only took off once a week when Jared added another charm to it. It was a sweet reminder of all the time they’d spent together. And she wondered sometimes if the bracelet would be all she had left at the end of this NASCAR season.

    Because no matter how close they were getting there was still a part of Jared that he kept private. The solid inner core of the man that he never allowed anyone to touch.

    At first she hadn’t noticed the distance, but over time she’d started to observe it. She thought it was only because they were still getting to know each other, but she had observed the distance between him and Tucker as well.

    Jared was careful to let people get only so close. With Tucker he did it by joking around with him and always using a kind of masculine bluster to keep from showing emotion. With her he fell back on the physical, to keep her from getting to close. He was always kissing or hugging her when she said something he didn’t want to respond to.

    Her extended family had taken to arriving early on Thursdays for every race. Every one of her male relatives had at some point over the past few weeks taken Jared aside and spoken to him. She wanted to die of embarrassment but Jared had said only that she should enjoy the fact that they loved her that much.

    The women in her family had all sided with Annie and were very supportive of Jared. The tension at Jenner Racing was reaching an all-time high. And if she hadn’t been falling for Jared, she would have called things off just to restore the peace.

    She’d never thought of her family in that light. But there had been a hint of longing in Jared’s voice, which had made her very aware of the fact that not everyone had what she did.

    Her father was recovering from his bypass surgery and would be attending the next race. She’d just gotten home from the airport and she wished…wished she’d gone to Atlanta with Jared.

    She booted up her computer to download the pictures she’d taken at the race the weekend before. A feeling of sadness swamped her as she realized she was playing at having a relationship with Jared, she thought to herself. She was keeping him carefully in the NASCAR world and not letting him see the other sides of her life.

    What bothered her the most was that he let her go. He wasn’t pushing to get into those corners she’d carefully kept him out of. It seemed to her that he had his own limitations on them, and her barriers just fit within his.

    She put the memory stick from her computer into the flash drive and waited for the photos to download. They started to flash across the screen. She watched the familiar images of cars and tracks come up, and then the pictures