Charles' gaze dropped to Fia's mouth and lingered there. "Satisfied?"
She felt the electricity sparking between them again. "You'll never satisfy me, Leclerc."
****
Six months out of university, living on her best friend's sofa in a dingy flat share...
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Livid. That was how Fia suspected Silvia felt about the testing scandal. It was a PR nightmare. And the worst part was that it smacked of incompetence – how had a data engineer successfully fitted extra sensors to the car without the team principal's knowledge? Adam thought it was a cover-up story to save Binotto's hide with plausible deniability, but Claudia rightly pointed out that it still made him look bad, just in a different way. They all agreed it was a shit show and that they were, to put it mildly, royally fucked.
After the comms team meeting, which involved a whole hour of Silvia's barely-contained rage and palpable disappointment, Fia was relegated to the Ferrari motorhome, where she was tasked with answering phone calls and emails to the press office about the scandal. It was a thankless job – everyone had questions, and she had to wheel out the same boilerplate response to each of them. The data engineer has been dealt with...Ferrari cooperated with the investigation fully...etc., etc...
The phone had been ringing off the hook. Adam was supposed to supervise Fia since she was an intern, but he had gone for lunch about two hours ago and showed no sign of returning with food for her. After her lacklustre breakfast, she was starving. It was like all the meals she'd skipped over the last twelve hours while she was sick were coming back to haunt her with a vengeance. Whenever she thought about running to the nearest vending machine, the phone started ringing again.
"Hello, this is Scuderia Ferrari Press Office. Fia speaking," she answered, trying not to sound completely dead inside.
"Fia Holliday? Is that you?"
She recognised the voice on the other end of the line immediately. "Mr Sandwell?"
"Call me Mark, please. Sadie told me you were working at Ferrari now. Congratulations, that's really excellent news."
"Well, it's just an internship for now," she said, blushing.
Fia had always liked Sadie's dad, unlike her mum, who she thought was a bit of a snob. He was unpretentious and unfailingly kind – that was what she remembered most about him from the times she had visited Sadie's family home. He was a tall, lanky man with a Lancashire accent and crow's feet at the corners of his eyes from smiling so much. He always wore checked shirts and wax jackets like he'd just rocked up to a farmer's convention, even when he was reporting live on F1 for the BBC.
"I'm sure it'll turn into a permanent position," he said. "They'd be stupid not to want you on their team. And Silvia certainly isn't stupid."
"No, but what she is is furious." Fia paused, her eyes widening. "Oh crap, I wasn't supposed to say that. Can you take that off the record?"
She could hear the smile in Mark's voice. "My lips are sealed. I hear Sadie is flying to the Australian GP to see you."
While Fia was sick, Adam had bought Sadie a ticket and procured a VIP pass at a very discounted rate. Fia had been initially worried because she hadn't run the idea past Sadie yet, but after a quick phone call earlier that morning, she seemed thrilled.
