Race For Red Trophies
A/N: Thank you to all of those who have reviewed this story. I really appreciate your input and opinions. Now, onwards to Chapter three.
Chapter three: Complications
Jane stood at his floor to ceiling bay windows, studying the night time Sacramento skyline. It was half past one in the morning, and Jane couldn't sleep. a lack of sleep was nothing new on his part; he hadn't slept for the better part of ten years. Not since his wife had been killed in a tragic car accident. Jane blamed himself for that. If he hadn't yelled at her for something ridiculous and trivial, she wouldn't have been out driving when that truck had overturned, and she wouldn't have skidded in the spilt diesel on the road and accidentally wrapped the car around a tree. Jane fingered the gold ring on his finger and sighed.
The accidental passing of his wife was not on his mind, however. He was staring through the window, trying in vain to get the smiling face of Teresa Lisbon out of his mind. He shouldn't be thinking about her at one in the morning. It was decidedly inappropriate. He shook his head to clear it, and sipped his cooling tea. He had watched her race, and knew that she had more potential than most of the other men. But why wasn't he thinking about her racing potential? Why, instead, was he thinking about the way the dimple in her chin came out when she smiled? And why was he marvelling at the way the sunlight made her emerald eyes glint like sparkling gemstones?
He groaned and rested his forehead against the glass. Thinking about Teresa Lisbon in this way was definitely not good for his health, or his mental wellbeing. He turned away from the window and leant against it, slowly sliding down it until he was sitting on the floor. He rested his head on his knees and let out a frustrated groan. Trust him to be attracted to a woman whose entire livelihood was street racing.
He tried to clear his over-active mind by thinking of something inconsequential. Milk. That was something boring and unattractive. But Lisbon never had milk in her coffee… He tried something else. Books. Books were appealing to him, and he had seen several shelves of them in Lisbon's tiny apartment… Darkness. That was something he could work with. He started running through synonyms of dark, distracting his mind. Shady, dim, murky, night, gloom, black, ebony… he sat up abruptly and slammed the back of his head against the tempered glass. "Ow," he moaned, reaching back to rub the sore spot he had just created.
He stood up abruptly. This distraction was not working. He turned back to the skyline and spent the rest of the night fighting his thoughts.
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Sunrise found Lisbon hard at work in her repair shop. Several regular customers had brought their cars in for a service, and she was currently buried under the hood of an old Chevrolet. The engine was in excellent condition, all things considered, and it just need a few minor things done to it before it was running smoothly again. She closed the hood and turned to the other car. She started the engine, and grimaced at the wheezing sound it made. She left it quietly ticking over and popped the hood. She poked around before discovering the source of the sound. She jabbed at the offending component with the back of her spanner and smiled when the sound ceased. She tinkered around inside the engine block until she was satisfied with her work. She would wait until slightly later than six in the morning before phoning the customers.
She wiped her hands on a rag and climbed into her GTO. She just needed to feel the road beneath her wheels, and so she took the car for a morning drive. Her aimless meandering had taken her into the heart of Sacramento, and she pulled up to a red traffic light. She wasn't alone; a black convertible was stopped next to her, and the two male students inside it eyed her car appreciatively. She watched the driver shoot her a grin and rev his engine, and it was game on. She grinned to herself and looked pointedly over to him, then she revved back. His eyes opened wide, and the light turned green.
Lisbon floored it, and left the convertible in her dust. The last she saw of the two students, they were sitting in their convertible, mouths open in complete shock and awe. They hadn't even moved.
XxxxxxxxxxxX
Lisbon pulled into her repair shop, still smiling. Her joy was cut short when she saw the purple Mazda sitting in her driveway. She pulled herself from her GTO with some apprehension and strode over to where Matthew was standing. "Can I help you?" she asked.
Matthew looked down at her. "Firstly, I've come to apologise for last week. I didn't mean… I didn't think… I…"
Lisbon rolled her eyes. "Not the first time it's happened."
Matthew smiled slightly at her veiled acceptance of his apology. "Secondly," he gestured to his car. "She's not running as smooth as I would like. She seems to be skipping, but only occasionally."
Lisbon disappeared into the shop, and came out carrying a spanner. "Open her up. Let me take a look."
Matthew popped the hood, and Lisbon very quickly found the problem. An o-ring in one of the cylinders had perished, causing a loss of compression. The repair was relatively quick, and soon Matthew was ready to leave. "Thank you, Ms Lisbon," he said, climbing into his car.
Lisbon nodded, and watched as he pulled away from the shop. Lisbon turned and headed into her repair shop. She knew that she needed to do some extreme preparation before her race the following week. The Redding Cup was one of the most prominent race leagues in professional street racing, and Lisbon would have to be very well prepared in order to survive the knock-out rounds. She didn't want to let her sponsor down, because doing so would mean the end of her racing career for good.
Her thoughts turned to Jane. His easy acceptance of her choice in career was unusual. Most men baulked at the fact that she raced fast cars for a living, but not Patrick Jane. She was finding herself being drawn to him in ways that were inappropriate in a professional relationship. She shook the image of his blinding grin from her mind and focussed on her extensive research. But she could only focus on the clipboard of names in front of her for so long before her mind began to wander again. She found herself idly daydreaming about the way the sunlight shimmered off of Jane's soft curls, and what it would be like to run her fingers through those curls… "Teresa," she scolded herself out aloud. "Enough."
She had to work very hard to remain focussed, but managed to complete her mental preparation by the time five o'clock came around. She stood up and stretched. She knew that the next week was going to be a gruelling one, with her spending hours out on the racetrack, practicing and perfecting in time for the first race.
A/N2: So, I hope you've enjoyed this chapter. I apologise for any spelling errors, but it is nearly midnight where I live. Please review and tell me how I'm doing so far. Thanks.