Driven by Ambition, page 1
Driven By Ambition
Also by Renee Dahlia
BeST
Count Me In
Strum Me Hard
Cricket Slam
Captain's Knock
Desiring The Dexingtons
Love Wasn't Built In A Day
The Secret Life of Spinsters
The Widow's Modiste
Gamble Racing
Driven To Distraction
Driven By Passion
Driven By Ambition
Great War
Her Lady's Melody
Her Lady's Fortune
His Lord's Soldier
Kapow
Out of Her League
His Buxom Beauty
Craving His Spotlight
Her Pregnant Rival
Seraph's Burlesque Club
Show Up
Show Off
Show Queen
Show Time
Show Dance
Standalone
The Shipwrecked Earl's Bride
Watch for more at Renee Dahlia’s site.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Also By Renee Dahlia
Driven By Ambition (Gamble Racing, #3)
About the author
Foreword
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Author Notes
All Books by Renée Dahlia
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Also By Renee Dahlia
Driven By Ambition
Renée Dahlia
Two men in the spotlight with too much chemistry...
Media personality and retired driver Freddy Hiptonstall knows one thing. Getting involved with someone in the S1 paddock only leads to disaster, so why can’t he stay away from Gamble Racing’s new Team Principal?
Suddenly promoted to Team Principal, Jaxxon Loharani-Jones has a lot to prove. He’s always been ambitious, but now he needs to step up and run Gamble Racing as the second youngest Team Principal in S1 history. The last thing he needs is a distraction.
The chemistry between them results in kisses, but will the intimate nature of their work be too much for their burgeoning relationship with all the pressures of their jobs?
About the author
An avid reader, Renée Dahlia writes contemporary and historical queer romance. Renée is a bisexual cis woman who is fascinated by people and loves to explore human relationships, with a side of humour, through her writing. Renée has a degree in physics and mathematics, using this to write data-based magazine articles for the horse racing industry. Her love of horses often shines through in her fiction, and she loves a good intrigue and to escape the real world in the pages of a book. When she isn’t reading or writing, Renée spends her time with her four children, usually watching them play cricket.
Foreword
Welcome to DRIVEN BY AMBITION, the third book in the Gamble Racing series.
If you love gay sports romance with a rivals to lovers theme, workplace tension, and a little mystery thrown in, Driven by Passion is the book for you. This series contains a few mystery plots that continue between each book; however, I have tried to make each book a standalone read.
Please note this book contains a car crash causing disability, alcoholism, medical debt, stalking.
This book is written in Australian English and some spelling and phrases may be unfamiliar to American readers.
If you are keen to keep up to date on new releases and, more importantly, sales, I recommend you sign up to my newsletter, or follow me on social media.
Social Media Links
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I hope you enjoy reading this book!
Renée
Chapter 1
“Fucking boring.” Freddy closed his eyes and leaned back with his hands behind his head. The big boss, Mr Inoue, whose company Inoue Media owned the broadcasting rights for Series One—the pinnacle of motorsport—had personally requested he write this detailed introduction to Gamble Racing’s surprise new Team Principal. Freddy wanted it to be good, interesting, for his own pride in his work—he didn’t need this job but he loved everything about it—and therefore he wasn’t going to submit the tedious piece of junk writing that he’d produced so far. He rubbed his temples. With his education and background, a feature article like this should be easy. He’d certainly done plenty of interviews in this style on television and his producer Carol Wisterman said he was good at it. He breathed out roughly. He shouldn’t need the fucking validation from anyone. He had this.
“Okay. Gamble Racing’s announcement of a new Team Principal, Jaxxon Loharani-Jones, is a surprise—” Freddy groaned as he read aloud. “Surprise is an understatement.” Team Principal’s tended to have a lot more years under their belts and more actual engineering experience. Freddy rubbed his eyes and deleted the last three words. Maybe he should ring Socrates again. Why wasn’t the owner of Gamble Racing answering his phone? Mike, Socrates’ husband, wasn’t answering either.
There was something going on at Gamble, and Freddy couldn’t help but wonder if it didn’t have to do with the recent sabotage drama. He’d flown to Gamble Racing after a desperate phone call from Socrates during the off-season and had been the first one to break the scandal a month ago. The story had made Mr Inoue notice him, and now bloody Socrates wasn’t answering his calls.
“Damn it.” Fucking everyone already knew that Jaxxon had been appointed Team Principal. Nothing spread as fast as exciting, verified, gossip in S1; someone had once described S1 as Gossip Girls on Wheels, and the love of chatter was always described rather favourably as politics. This article wasn’t news, it was a profile. He deleted everything.
If there was one constant in S1, it was that Socrates Drayton would always be Team Principal for Gamble Racing, the team he founded and co-owned with his husband Mike Patel. Everyone, it seems, was wrong. Gamble Racing have done the unthinkable and appointed Jaxxon...
Freddy paused. He couldn’t imply that Jaxxon was an unthinkable choice, although picking a race engineer for the role, and someone relatively young, was a bold choice. He deleted a few words and had another crack.
...Gamble Racing have done the unexpected and appointed a new Team Principal—Jaxxon Loharani-Jones. Who is the surprise He deleted surprise. Too repetitive. Who is Loharani-Jones?
Freddy re-read the text so far. It was a little casual in tone, but much less boring. He wasn’t quite sure what to write next. Who was Jaxxon? People already knew him, or thought they did, since he was Ondrej D’Grieg’s race engineer and sat on the pit wall for every race. It was Jaxxon’s voice that people heard when they broadcasted the radio calls with D’Grieg. Jaxxon was an imposing presence on the pit wall too, a tall Black Englishman with a swoony voice, who was athletic in the same way that baseball players were. He carried a good amount of bulk and it added to his presence and his general attractiveness. Imagine being pressed against a wall by Jaxxon with that voice whispering desires in his ear...
Okay, Freddy couldn’t really write that. The man was irresistibly competent and utterly gorgeous... The man had such gravitas, like a damned sun with everyone pulled towards him, that it made sense—if not on paper—to promote him into Socrates’ role. Freddy found Jaxxon distracting, and so he had spent most of the last four seasons keeping his distance, easily achieved as he didn’t have to interview the race engineers very often. It would be much more difficult now. Every race weekend, he tried to interview all ten Team Principals, so he would need to figure out how to focus on the work, and not stare at Jaxxon’s dark brown eyes, or his broad shoulders and wonder what it would be like to have Jaxxon’s weight on him. He swallowed.
Freddy stood up and paced around his apartment for a while, then stared out at the view across London. He loved this apartment and was thankful there was only one other apartment on the same level as him. It was nice and private. His PA, Georgie, had had it decorated by D&Y Designs, whose owner, Elle, was a friend of his only neighbour on this level, Reiko Inoue, daughter of Mr Inoue, his big boss. Small world. He sat down at his laptop again and wrote the last sentence of his piece.
Socrates Drayton was not available for comment.
And why not? Socrates was a huge personality and always available to the media. The change in Team Principal had to be connected to the off-season dramas. For years, Gamble Racing’s Chief Engineer had been Reggie Whitehall, who’d been the engine designer and technical lead when Socrates had been the World Champion driver back in the day. But over the last few seasons, Whitehall’s designs had become increasingly slower, and when rookie driver, Paul
Freddy leaned against the glass, the coolness against his forehead, for a while mulling it all over. Okay. Back to work. He rolled his head on his shoulders and sat down to type.
Gamble Racing has a track record of unexpected picks, having promoted Victor Tsui from an assistant Technical Engineering position in S3 directly into their Chief Engineer role last season, with spectacular results. Tsui’s design propelled Gamble Racing from the rear of the grid into the mid-field, and they had been battling for fourth place in the constructor’s title during the majority of last season when a spate of reliability issues impacted the end of their season. The reason behind those reliability problems has been well-documented.
They could add links to his other articles here. This was an article about Jaxxon, not the whole team. What was he going to write about Jaxxon that was palatable and yet still interesting?
Loharani-Jones has worked for Gamble Racing for—Freddy looked down at his notes—four years as a race engineer, most recently for Ondrej D’Grieg.
With the successful appointment of Tsui, perhaps the promotion of Loharani-Jones aligns with the way that Drayton and Patel run Gamble Racing. Drayton took brave risks as a driver, with skills that propelled him into World Championship victories in 1988 and 1989. If it were not for his accident, and the resulting partial loss of vision, many racing aficionados believe Drayton would’ve gained at least another Championship. Drayton’s boldness is written all over the appointment of Loharani-Jones into such a key role at Gamble Racing.
Not much is known about the early life of Loharani-Jones. He was born in Liverpool, England, and gained a scholarship to the prestigious Oxford University where he took a double degree in mechanical engineering and commerce.
Loharani-Jones, an ambitious man No, he couldn’t write that. It smacked of jealousy. The problem was that he didn’t know Jaxxon very well at all and it was a deliberate choice. Jaxxon was exactly the type of man Freddy thirsted over; highly intelligent, big, and confident without ego or arrogance. Actually, he didn’t know if the latter was true, he only assumed because he’d listened to all his radio comms with D’Grieg over the past couple of years. Freddy could have anyone in the world—and had indeed had many—and his favourite type of lover was someone who knew their own worth on an equitable basis with him. He didn’t have much of a preference for physical type, the variety of humanity fascinated him. He rubbed his eyes. A little inconvenient lust for Jaxxon couldn’t get in the way of his work.
Immediately on graduation, Loharani-Jones gained a position with automotive company Subaru in their World Rally Championship division, initially on the engine design team, and then working as a team strategist. After ten years with the WRC team, Loharani-Jones spent a year working as part of the Research and Development Engineering team for a potential shift by Subaru into S1, but when this didn’t come to fruition, Loharani-Jones accepted a job with Gamble Racing as one of their race engineers. He has been with Gamble Racing for four seasons now, and for the last two seasons, he has been the race engineer for Gamble Racing’s Ondrej D’Grieg. D’Grieg thrived last season with Tsui’s new car design and many believe that a similar season this year will propel Gamble Racing into the top three teams on the grid.
Freddy nodded as he read it back to himself. It was still a little boring, but not too bad, and filled with the bare facts. The leaps in Jaxxon’s career were unusual and Freddy knew there must be more to the story than this. With one exception, people didn’t become Team Principals when they were so young—Jaxxon was only thirty-eight—and they were usually lead engineers and designers, not race engineers. He needed to know more. But mostly he needed to know why Socrates wasn’t answering his phone.
Fuck it. He flicked through the contacts on his phone.
Freddy: Ondrej, do a fellow driver a favour and send me Jaxxon’s number.
Ondrej: I was wondering when I’d hear from you
Freddy typed out a question about Socrates, then deleted it. Getting Jaxxon’s contact details was a better long-term option to resolve his curiosity. He could kill two birds with one stone or whatever by getting a quote from Jaxxon and finding out why Socrates wasn’t answering his calls.
Freddy: I need a quote from him for Inoue Media
Ondrej sent him a thumbs up emoji and Jaxxon’s number.
Freddy: Appreciate that. I’ll buy you a drink at pre-season testing
Ondrej: I’ll hold you to that
Freddy chuckled. No one actually spent money on buying drinks during pre-season testing or on race weekends, as each team supplied enough hospitality for all their staff and the media who dropped by to spread any gossip a team wanted out in the media. Freddy hadn’t bought himself a drink for years, not in the paddock, anyway. Freddy added Jaxxon’s contacts to his phone and called him, making sure he was recording the call for notes later.
“Hello?”
“Jaxxon. It’s Freddy Hiptonstall. Congratulations on the promotion.”
“Thanks.”
“Is now a good time to have a quick chat?”
“Of course.” Damn, that voice rumbling in his ear was delicious and he sank into the shiver that travelled down his spine.
“How many people have asked you if you are too young for this role?”
Jaxxon chuckled. “No one has been so blunt yet, Freddy. I’m hardly the youngest person to be promoted to Team Principal in S1.” No, there had been one person younger than Jaxxon. One.
“No, but you also aren’t a retired driver or have family money.” Unlike himself, but as much as he loved his sport, he didn’t want the pressure of being a Team Principal. The stress of that job aged people quickly. He’d carried enough stress when he’d been a driver; young and invincible; and now he had the best job, getting to be involved at every race, talking to all the drivers and Team Principals. Being involved, knowing all the gossip, travelling with everyone. It was the ideal life. He loved S1 more than anything else.
“The job of a Team Principal is to run the team, not drive the cars, or bring financial connections into the team.” If Jaxxon believed that, he was going to have a difficult time of it. The entire point of being Team Principal was to make sure they had enough money.
“In that case, what do you bring to the role?” Freddy didn’t have to ask why Jaxxon was different from any other Team Principal, that much was implied in his question.
“Motorsport can be an orgy of elitism, and S1 is the most expensive, most high profile of all motorsports. As many people say, it’s the pinnacle of engineering and speed and consequently, it takes a lot of money to run a team.”
Freddy loved that quote—an orgy of elitism—brilliant. “Yes?”
“There are very few people who have come from a middle class, or poorer, background with only a passion for motorsport to then succeed in this sport. It is no secret that connections and money open doors here. I didn’t have—” Jaxxon paused. “I don’t have either connections or money, and this gives me a different perspective, and one that Gamble Racing believe will be advantageous for the team’s performance.”
“Are you implying that you had to work harder than anyone else to get where you are because you lack the advantages others in your role have?” Freddy wished this interview was face-to-face, because he really wanted to see Jaxxon’s reaction to his question.
“Yes and no. Everyone who succeeds in this sport, in any role, has to work incredibly hard. I would never suggest that I have worked harder; only that I don’t have some of the advantages that many of the colleagues bring to their team and their role.”
“It is hard to avoid the implication though.”
“There are, quite literally, thousands of people who have money and connections and are vying for only ten Team Principal jobs. People also need talent and hard work to succeed. By asking about my workload, you miss my point.”
