Two days of testing go by during which Faith painstakingly avoids encountering Daijiro Mori again. She concentrates on her team and tries to see some improvement. On the penultimate day of the tests, Tom Healey materialises next to her at the controls in the pit lane. She is so surprised that she hugs him. She does not recognise herself, really, feeling secure and taken care of in his arms. They are still holding each other when she at last manages to speak.

  “How good to see you! What brings you here?”

  He smiles and does not let go of her either. “I’m glad to see you, too. Mori has invited me. He wants to offer me a job.”

  “Oh.” She lets go of him and turns to her controls.

  “He has not told me what this is about, even though I’ve been talking to him for an hour already. So I thought I’d drop by and say hello.”

  Faith has found her smile again, but she has lost the immediate joy his visit had given her. She would have loved to pack up and disappear with him for the rest of the day. One might think she had missed him! That he is here because of Mori had turned her happiness sour, though. And as always with Tom, a normal, light-hearted conversation does not seem possible.

  He leans against the wall beside her. “He did not tell me what he wants. What he did was talk about you. He asked a lot of questions.” He pauses. She does not reply. “Faith, what did you do?”

  She throws him a quick glance. “I didn’t do anything. What should I have done?”

  Tom sighs. Before he can speak again, Mori walks up to them. Faith freezes. Mori says, in his curiously inflectionless manner, “Miss Casadoro, can you spare a minute? Tom, will you excuse us?”

  The question is not a question. Tom says, “I’ll do my round.” Then he crosses the pit lane and starts talking to Strathairn. Mori takes his place next to Faith.

  She switches her monitor to black.

  Mori clears his throat. “Miss Casadoro.”

  Faith shudders. She had feared this moment, unlikely as it had seemed.

  “I feel, more than I think, Miss Casadoro, since I’ve met you”, he says. “I am fifty-five years old, more than twice your age, I am aware of that. I usually make quick decisions, but not hasty ones. This is what I am like. I do not put things off that are necessary. I can, however, understand if you cannot give me an answer right away.”

  “Mr Mori, I…”

  “Please, let me finish.” He sounds strict and determined. Faith can feel herself getting smaller.

  “I would like to get to know you better. In fact, I hope that if you get to know me better, you will accept me as your husband.”

  He is not looking at her. Faith is screaming internally, but her reply is soft. “I am truly honoured by your – proposal. I do not feel that I deserve either your intention or your interest.”

  “Miss Casadoro, you yourself directed my interest towards yourself.”

  “Oh, that note! I wish I’d never written it!”

  “No, do not say that. You have done me a great favour. Without your acknowledgement, I might never have become aware of you. My life has become greatly enriched since then. I would like you to enrich it even more.”

  This whole thing is absurd. The note happened six days ago, and he is talking of enriching his life. And he is serious about it. And they are standing in the centre of the circus, being watched from every angle. She feels sorry for him, having somehow managed to mislead him in this way. This is cruelty on her part, for his intentions are genuine. The idea of marrying him is ridiculous, but Mori is not a ridiculous man. She owes him some respect at last.

  “Mr Mori, you must believe me that I am very much surprised and cannot say that I hold the same sentiment towards you. I am very sorry that you are in a state of disquiet because of me. I thank you for your kind words, but I do not deserve…”

  “Do not say now that you do not wish a connection with me”, he interrupts her, suddenly forceful. “Do not turn down my offer right away.”

  Faith is shocked by his outburst. “I cannot give you the answer you would have liked to hear.”

  “Then at least do not take away all hope. Do not give me an answer, but leave room for hope. I will be thinking of you.”

  Faith stares at his feet, helplessly. “Give me some time to – to adjust”, she pleads.

  Mori nods. “Thank you. I am going to leave you now.”

  He turns and walks away. Faith watches him go, and then she turns towards her garage, where nobody even pretends to be busy. They are staring at her, even Tom, who looks as if he has a lot of things to say to her. She turns away and switches her screen back on with shaking hands.

  When she leaves the race track in the afternoon, Tom is standing about chatting to some people. As soon as he sees her, he comes over.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Care about dinner somewhere?”, he asks.

  Faith is very grateful for his casual manner. Yes, she does care about dinner. He seems to be the only person she can talk to at the moment. “Love to”, she says.

  He suggests a restaurant. She asks him to send her the address.

  “Then I need your number.”

  “Haven’t you got it?”

  “No. Have you got mine?”

  “No.” She laughs and tells him her number. Seconds later he sends her the address.

  “At eight?”, he asks.

  “Sure.”

  “It’s really good to see you.”

  She walks away smiling.

  Two hours later, a shower and a quick nap have made her worries seem smaller. She feels well enough to put some effort into looking presentable, too. She has to remind herself that this is not a date, though.

  She talks to Nicholas before she leaves. He has been working from his hotel room, mostly, and is a bit out of the loop as far as the test results are concerned. It is not really his concern, but she appreciates that he takes an interest in these things.

  When she arrives at the restaurant, Tom is already sitting at the table. He comes towards her and hugs her again. And there it is once more, this warm and cozy feeling.

  “You look nice”, he says.

  “Thank you. You look better, too. How are you?”

  He shrugs. “Not too bad. I haven’t been doing much lately. It’s about time I start again.”

  She nods. “Well, I can’t complain. It’s all a bit much, to tell you the truth.”

  “You’ll be fine.”

  This is a bit too casual for her taste. She has not been expecting sympathy, but he might show a bit more enthusiasm, really.

  Faith enjoys her food. All the time she has been hiding from Mori in her room she has had nothing but sandwiches, and the pasta now is something she has been craving all along. She does not care that her appetite might not make her look like a lady. She even accepts Tom’s leftovers when he offers them to her, grinning. Everything is fine, she thinks when she leans back, satisfied. Would they be able to have such nice evenings together once he worked for her opponent? She looks at him across the rim of her wine glass. How is he really? Does he have a girlfriend? She does not dare to ask. Instead she says, “The best food and the best evening in ages.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. Or maybe not. Whichever you prefer.”

  She shrugs. “It is what it is.”

  He does not pick up. He hesitates and seems to be looking for the right words.

  “What is it?”

  He still seems quite unsure of what to say. Then he asks, “What did Mori want when he came to you in the pit lane?”

  She freezes at once. “What did it look like? You’ve been watching us, all of you.”

  “Well, it didn’t look as if you were talking about racing.”

  She remains silent, biting her lip. He insists, “Was it about racing?”

  She could just lie. “No, it wasn’t.” Why does she not lie? “He has asked me to marry him, Tom. I don’t get it. How can he come up with a thing like that? I don’t even know him! I…”

  “What did you do, Faith? I asked you this morning. You said you didn’t do abything. This cannot be true. Daijiro Mori does not propose marriage without a reason.”

  She swallows hard. But he speaks not impatiently, and out it must. “There was this meeting, and I tried to make a stir, and he helped me, because I was not unreasonable. Then I wrote him a note. It was stupid. It was nothing really, and how could I know how he would react? He…”

  “What did you write?”

  “Something about him being my hero.”

  Tom leans back and sighs. “This might have done it. This might have been enough to cause this chaos.”

  “I said it was stupid.”

  “But he proposed.”

  “And I declined. And I apologized.”

  “How did he react to that?”

  This was the really disconcerting part. She looks at her fingers, fiddling with the stem of her glass. “He asked me to consider. He wants to hope. He has given me time to think.”

  When Tom speaks next, his tone is dead serious. “You have toyed with the feelings of a man who does not know how to handle them. Everybody knows this about him. Mori knows only one direction, and that is forward. And he knows only the racing business, and the only thing he cares about is facts. He can analyse a mistake, and it will never happen again. God only knows how he is going to analyse what you have done to him. I’m not sure that he even knows what feelings are. And if he finds out now, thanks to your shenanigans, and you don’t want him even though he would probably buy you a planet, then things can turn really bad, I think. For him, for you, for everybody. He does not deserve this.”

  “Are you done?”, she asks, suddenly furious. Tom does not see her trouble at all. Instead, he makes her feel guilty. This is her reward for trusting him! How dare he speak to her like that! She fights back angry tears. “This is unacceptable.”

  They stare at each other across the table.

  “This is the last time we have ever discussed my personal matters”, she hisses.

  “But…”

  She has risen from her chair, looking down on him, eyes sparkling. “This was the last thing I was expecting from you. I don’t want to see you ever again.”

  On her way out, she pays for their meals at the bar. Outside, she runs along the dock for a few hundred metres, until her anger turns into despair. She sits down on a bench and cries.