Overnight Wife(50)

Greg’s enormous arms are crossed, his brow lowered in the thunderous expression he gets when he doesn’t approve of something I’ve been doing. Of course, I’m his boss, so Greg can’t really protest too much when I do things like this. But that doesn’t mean he can’t allow his disapproval to show on his face.

I skid to a halt outside the engineer shelter, and climb from the car while several test engineers flood the area, bending to take measurements of the axels, the tires, and one popping the hood to study how the engine held up, as another inspects the fuel gauges.

“How about that turning radius, huh?” I shout over the clank and clatter of tools and measuring devices. I sidestep a pair of engineers to reach Greg, and he removes his own earpiece.

“You shut off your radio,” complains Greg, the voice in my ear, who has now become the constant voice in the back of my head. My conscience, one might even say. He’s constantly watching me, overseeing things, warning me to slow down, take it easy, be more careful. I know my father puts him up to half of these disapproving glares and lectures, but even so, it can wear on a man. Especially when I know what I’m doing.

You might say I have a lot of practice ignoring the conscience in the back of my head. “Your talking was distracting me,” I say. “It was a finicky turn.”

“Because you were driving at least twenty miles per hour faster than we’d run the car even in simulations,” Greg mutters.

“And look how well it turned out!” I clap my assistant on the back. “Now we can all skip a few of the intermediate stress tests and put this model straight into pre-production status.”

Greg rolls his eyes. “It was still an unnecessary risk—”

“But you say that about every risk,” I point out, jamming a single finger into Greg’s bicep. It barely makes a dent.

I take after my father’s side of the family—all lean, slim, sculpted muscle. We’re built for running. Descended from the first marathon runners of ancient Greece, Dad always claims. Me, I mention that a fair amount too, albeit for different reasons. I blame those ancestors for my need for speed. “My speed demon was inherited,” I always say. “Nothing I can do about it.”

But Greg, he’s a distant cousin, part of my dad’s grandmother’s vast clan. The line Greg comes from isn’t built like marathoners so much as like walls.

Greg narrows his eyes at me.

I smirk and stride toward the main building. “Come on, worry wart. Lunch is on me to make up for your stress-induced high cholesterol levels.”

“I would love to take you up on that, Jasper, but you have a lunch appointment.” Greg flips open his tablet and squints down at the screen, scrolling through it with a finger.

“With who?” I frown. I don’t remember any new clients planning to stop in and check out the factory today, and it’s far too early in the production schedule for any fellow manufacturers to be poking around. Maybe early buyers? Wholesalers we invited to view the pre-public models…?

“Your father,” Greg replies, and my stomach sinks. In an instant, the happy mood I manage to whip myself into on the test track evaporates, like a bubble popping in midair.

Not that my old man and I don’t get along. Quite to the contrary. I work for him, I spend every day helping build the family business—testing our latest models of cars, suggesting improvements or modifications to the designs, marketing and selling them on the front end… I have a hand in every part of our company, and Dad’s been grooming me to take over for him since I was about sixteen years old. I love this job, love my life, and I love my dad too. There’s nothing I’d change about my life right now.

Well. Except for one tiny thing…

Dad’s current mood. Because even without seeing his face, I can already guess what he’s going to be on about today. The same thing he’s been on about for the last several years. The same thing he railed at me over when I broke up with Karen, a friend-with-benefits who lasted a grand total of a month. The same thing he freaked out about again when I stopped seeing Meghan. Then Brooke. Then… who was that girl with the horses?

I can’t even remember her name, truth be told.

What can I say? I’ve never been the dating type. Or the relationship type. Or the anything more than casual sex type. And who cares? Certainly not the girls I hook up with—I make it clear up front that things will only ever be casual between us, and none of them have complained. Well, except Stacey, who smashed the taillights of my car when I broke things off. But, well, you can see why I had to break off our casual arrangement, given her temper and possessive streak.

No, that one anomaly aside, nobody cares that I’m not the settling down type… Nobody except my father.

And with our family reunion looming on the horizon, an enormous affair he hosts every five years, he has grandbabies on the mind worse than ever. This reunion will be the biggest of all, because at this reunion, Dad’s announcing his retirement. His retirement and the appointment of the new company CEO. The future heir apparent to Quint Motors. Me.

But with all the reflecting Dad has been doing on the company’s history, it just makes him more sentimental than ever about what’s still missing in his life. Namely, grandchildren.

“I’m suddenly feeling really dizzy,” I tell Greg. “Think I’m coming down with something. Head cold, maybe? Flu? Isn’t it still flu season?”