In the Fast Lane (2 page)

He may have grown up in the heart of racing country, but he’d only officially been in the business for a day and he already knew that much about her. Who in hell would want to marry that—

Wait a sec.

He paused, one foot hanging over the edge of the stall roof. “Grady!”

Grady whipped around and pulled the mic of the headset away from his mouth. “What is it, Colt?”

“What’s your sister’s answer gonna be?”

Fuck.
Seeing that man—Kerri’s ex-boyfriend, from what he’d gleaned from the news he’d read—dart out on the track … watching that fast, heavy car whirl like a child’s toy over the asphalt … had brought Ranger’s accent back. Years of working on ridding himself of his slow-drawling, Tennessee backwoods accent kept his voice clipped and neutral even in the most intense boardroom discussions, but a drop of the
wrong
kind
of adrenaline had him reverting.

“About what?”

Lord, deliver him from imbeciles. Ranger glared at Grady.

“Oh, you mean that thing just now with Earl? No way would she marry him. In fact—” Grady cocked his head to one side, listening to whatever was coming through his headset. After a second, he nodded at Grady. “Kerri says she’d rather eat a flaming pile of—”

Ranger didn’t bother to stick around to hear the end. Instead, he shot down the ladder into the pit, his Italian designer shoes scraping and clanging on the metal rungs as he descended.

Fuck this Godforsaken assignment.
Why Al had decided to do a deal like this still baffled him. On Colt’s corporate jet from Harrisburg to Talladega, Ranger had studied the Hart Racing portfolio that his assistant had put together, trying to understand what would drive a multi
billionaire
like Al Colt to throw a pitiful three million dollars and his most ruthless VP at a project like this.

This deal was personal. Ranger Colt versus Al Colt.

Nothing like being the boss’s son, even if Al had never done a damned thing to deserve to be called “Dad.” Hell, a man who abandoned his wife and infant son to poverty while he ran an empire didn’t deserve to be called human, much less “Dad.”

Ranger’s feet hit the asphalt and he paused for a moment. Al’s voice echoed in his head, that rumbling baritone so much like his own.
You want to move forward, you have to go back first. Get back to your roots.
Making this project “a raging success” had been the condition that Al had given him for promotion to executive vice president, second in line to the top.

It felt like a punishment.

Besides—race cars? That was taking his “roots” a bit far. He and Mom had been too poor to care about much more than getting their next meal, much less a sport that took a whole lotta money to buy into.

Fuck this stupid sport.
Ranger strode to the edge of the pit.
Not even a sport, just a bunch of fools going in circles, and now I have to deal with this bullshit.

His job at Hart Racing—Team Colt, now—was to do what he always did with ailing organizations: evaluate the business problems, figure out what it would take to fix them, then either go ahead and shape it up or shut it down. Just from the cursory glance he’d given to Hart’s financials, Ranger knew that Colt could at least recoup its investment by selling off the assets. They might make a nominal profit, even.

But that wouldn’t be the
raging success
that Al had requested. That kind of success required risk.

Something Ranger excelled at.

He took a deep breath. Walked forward.

The entire crew was lined up along the low concrete barrier, looking across the track where the blue and green of the Hart Racing car was still sitting where Kerri had brought it to a screeching halt. A group of emergency first responders surrounded the car while Kerri stood next to it. Even from this distance, he could see her gesticulating wildly, making it look like she was throwing a tantrum.

Shit. This was exactly why he’d told her to stay in the car. For all he knew, she could be out there singing hymns and saving puppies, but without any other information to go on, it definitely
looked
bad.

“What the hell is going on out there?”

Six pairs of eyes swung around to stare at him.

Shit and goddamn.

He’d only met these guys for the first time thirty minutes ago. Shouting within the first twenty-four hours of being introduced to a new team was not his usual m.o.

But then again, neither was being late, and he’d managed to achieve that today, too. After meeting with Grady at the hotel last night, he’d gone to his room and stayed up even later than usual going over the Hart Racing portfolio. Today, he’d intended to arrive early enough to meet the crew
and
Kerri, but by the time he’d actually shown up and navigated his way to the stall, she was already out on the track.

Fuck Al Colt. Old bastard ruined everything.

Ranger’s murderous thoughts must have shown on his face, because the youngest mechanic—Danny—blurted, “It looks worse than it is. The emergency crew is only a precaution. She’ll drive it in as soon as they give her the clear, we’ll check it over and make the adjustments she needs, and it’ll be like this never happened. It’s really not a big deal.”

No big deal?

Scratch what he’d thought before. He wasn’t the insane one. Everyone else here was.

Ranger simply nodded, which Danny seemed to take as encouragement, because the mechanic pointed down pit road. The handful of other cars that had been on the track with Kerri during the practice session were waiting, some being worked on by crews. “A couple of these guys have had far worse happen to their cars. During practice time, qualifying, a race—it doesn’t matter. They drive it in, get it fixed, and get back out. Takes nerves of steel and a whole lotta hard-riding determination to be a race car driver.”

Ranger didn’t miss the way Danny’s chest puffed with pride.

Yeah. Or just a whole lotta plain ol’ stupidity.

Goddamnit. Even the voice in his head had an accent now.

He shook himself. Time to get focused and start treating this like any other project he took on. Put out the fires first, then tackle the cracks in the foundation. Given Kerri’s famous temper, he didn’t want her calling even more attention to herself by—well, he wasn’t sure what, but he was fairly certain it would only exacerbate the situation.

She might get a lot of positive coverage because she was a woman, but she also got judged much more harshly for that same reason. Her famous temper usually landed her on the wrong side of public opinion, and news reports over the years made her out to be a fickle, cruel, hard-ass woman when it came to love. They’d done everything to ruin her reputation in anything related to romantic relationships, just short of outright calling her a slut.

Maybe all the reports were true, maybe they weren’t. But what mattered was that sponsors seemed to believe them, and most companies didn’t like giving money to drivers with low public-approval ratings.

And now she’d just announced on her public channel that she’d rather eat shit than marry this guy. The odds against her securing a big sponsorship had just gotten stacked a lot higher.

The second Ranger had seen her name on the sign that idiot had unfurled across the track, he’d known that managing the media shitstorm around this was going to take a much bigger effort than a ten-minute press conference.

The news crews had arrived yesterday and were already all over the track. A few of them even did live feeds throughout the entire weekend. No doubt today’s events were already all over the internet by now.

Hart Racing already had a cash problem, an image problem, and a management problem, and now this proposal fiasco could irrevocably harm the public view—and potential endorsement deals—of their star driver.

Kerri Hart.

“She’s comin’ in!” The pit crew coach, a grizzled older man who’d introduced himself earlier as “Bit,” called their attention back to the opposite side of the track, where Kerri had gotten back into the car, turned it around, and was heading toward the pit.

Ranger lost sight of it for a second as it entered the curve on the track just before pit road. But seconds later, there it was, zooming toward them, big white lucky number thirteen painted on the side.

He could hear that strong feminine voice in his mind.
My channel. My car. My team.
His pulse jumped. There had been passion in that voice.

The car kept coming up fast. Too fast, it seemed.
What the hell? Was she going to stop?
He cast a furtive glance up at the faces of the pit crew. None of them seemed fazed. In the next second, Danny and Kyle jumped out onto the road, directly in the path of the incoming car as it whipped into the space, stopping on a dime with a jolt.

Another example of crazy becoming normal.

“What are they doing?”

Bit shrugged. “They’re gonna swap out the tires and gas it up. She was talking about some changes before the spinout, but now she’ll want to do a few more laps and see if there’s anything else before we get to work.”

“Wait a second. You mean she’s not going to get out of the car?”

“I thought you didn’t want her to get out.” Grady’s voice sounded right behind him, and Ranger turned.

“I
meant
when she was still on the track. But that’s already shot to hell. Now that she’s back here, we need to talk—immediately. Before she talks to anyone else.” He frowned at Grady. “She was surprised just now by the news. You didn’t tell me you hadn’t filled her in about Colt’s involvement in Hart Racing.”

Grady’s face flushed. “If I’d told her, she would have thrown all her energy behind trying to fix the business end of things. We need Kerri focused on racing, not a rescue mission.”

Ranger had to admit Grady had a point. At the moment, Kerri was their only chance for whatever success in this sport entailed. Still, it didn’t sit right with Ranger that no one had told Kerri about the buyout. Given Hart Racing’s financial straits, they’d sold almost everything to Colt.

And no one had told their star driver about it.

God
damn
it. Ranger certainly hadn’t planned to deliver the news of Colt International’s investment in Hart Racing to Kerri over a headset while she was in the middle of a spinout. But something about her had stirred him up and made him throw his carefully planned speech out the window.

That had never happened to him. Ever.

He needed to get this whole thing back under control, and fast. But right now, they had an even more pressing issue: damage control.

He turned to Bit. “No tires. No gas.”

Beyond Bit’s shoulder, through the netting that served as the car’s window covering, he could see the silhouette of a helmet. Gloved hands. Waiting.

Bit’s eyes cut to Grady’s face, looking for approval, and Ranger cursed.

He stepped over the wall, ignoring the silent power struggle behind him, and sauntered up to the car. Her face wasn’t visible through her helmet, but when she turned her head jerked back fast, as if she’d been electrocuted.

By the time he was standing right next to the driver’s side, she’d recovered. The netting came down. The visor came up. Big hazel eyes in a band of smooth skin stared at him in frank appraisal.

He’d known she was pretty.

But none of her photos had captured the feeling he got from actually seeing her, of being caught in the path of that fiery gaze. The full force of it nearly knocked him back. This woman was one hundred percent
passion
. Damn. He couldn’t be thinking about that kind of thing right now. The quicker they got this under control, the better, and letting desire rule the day wasn’t a good—

Wait.

That was it. That was the answer. Desire. Romance. What better way to salvage today’s disaster
and
repair Kerri’s reputation in the media than for him and her to pretend to be a couple? He was stuck with her for the next few months, after all. May as well kill a few birds with one stone.

Besides, you’ll get to kiss her …

Heat, low and burning, snaked its way down his body and pooled in his groin. He tried to ignore it, but the unexpected desire only fueled his need to regain control. He didn’t bother with introductions, just jerked his thumb toward the pit and growled, “Get out of the car.”

Chapter Two

What. The. Fuck.

Kerri stared at the big, snarling,
impossibly sexy
jerkoff standing just outside her window. This had to be the man behind the voice on the channel just now, the one who’d been stroking her ears and making her feel all kind of things that she had no business feeling in the middle of controlling a potential crash.

Earl had damned near killed himself. Grady had panicked himself into uselessness. Now this man was ordering her around? She was surrounded by men almost twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and sometimes she really hated them.

“Well?” The jerkoff did something weird with his neck, tightening it or something, that made his head snap forward and his brown eyes spark. It should have made him look grotesque, but somehow the tension only accentuated the broad set of his shoulders, the dark thickness of his hair despite its military-style buzz cut, and a jutting chin that balanced his otherwise too-big nose.

She wanted to grab him, throw him in the car, and ride away like a highway bandit, drunk off the spoils of a wild, moonlit robbery.

Don’t be a fool. He’s from Colt. You hate Colt. Remember?

How could she forget?

As soon as that voice had gone off the line, she’d taken a moment to assure Grady that she had zero plans to marry Earl, and then Grady had gone and shocked her with the news that he’d sold a majority share of Hart Racing to Colt International. Not just accepted their ridiculous sponsorship.

Sold
.

It had taken every ounce of control not to get out of the car and walk right off the track for good.

Grady had made his usual terrible failure of an attempt at trying to make things better.
Settle down, Kerri. Look, I’m sorry, okay? It’s not like he actually owns
everything
. Just some of the equipment. And the cars. We’ll figure it out.