Authors: Audra North
“Hey, that’s him! Ruthless Ranger! Mr. Colt, is it true that you now own Hart Racing?”
Kerri’s fingers dug even harder into Ranger’s arm.
Ruthless
Ranger? He was truly an awful enough person to have earned a nickname like that?
What had Grady done?
If it hadn’t been for the look on her brother’s face when she’d squared off against Ranger back in the pit, she never would have agreed to this. She would have hauled off and punched the guy in the balls, not the teeth, and
then
demanded an explanation right then and there. But she had caught a glimpse of Grady’s face out of the corner of her eye, and her stomach had dropped into her shoes. He’d looked like a drowning man. One who wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep struggling to come up for air, but who knew there was a chance that he could be saved—if only someone would throw him a line.
The reputation of Hart Racing.
Those words, delivered fast and low, from the sinful, delicious mouth of the man next to her.
Ranger had said those words. Grady had begged for a lifeline. She’d thought about how hard her dad had worked to make Hart Racing his legacy.
And she hadn’t been able to refuse.
“Mr. Colt, is it true that you plan to shut down Hart Racing?”
She thought she’d learned to protect herself against those kinds of questions, the ones often delivered in a shouting monotone that was supposed to make them feel less personal. But her defenses were down and the possibility …
Well, it was entirely
too
possible.
She gasped, the shock going deep. Shutting it down? After how hard she’d worked to get here?
Next to her, Ranger stiffened. Slowly, deliberately, he drew to a halt, laying his right hand over hers where it curled into his bicep.
“Ladies and gentlemen, today has clearly brought some unexpected developments. And since I understand that with that has come many questions that y’all will want answered, we will be holding a press conference in the main building in half an hour. Until then, hold your questions or I will cancel it and we will give no comment.”
That luscious mouth was drawn tight, his brows a black line in his forehead.
The reporters grumbled, but no one dared ask another question.
Ruthless Ranger.
The shock reached her toes, turned, and bubbled up again, and she leaned close to his ear, releasing the pressure of her fears in a hiss. “Why didn’t you just tell them that I’m not going to marry Earl and let me get back to work?”
He turned his face to hers, a smile playing at the corner of his lips. To an outside observer, he looked like a doting lover. What was his game?
“Because that would only invite more questions.” His voice was soft and tender, soothing over the space between them, and she had to close her eyes against a shudder of renewed arousal.
A flash of light registered through her eyelids, and she popped them open to find Ranger turning away, scowling. “Come on, we don’t have much time left.” She held on to his arm as he started to walk again, moving swiftly through the crowd of press and track officials. He stood nearly a head taller than her five-foot-three, but those eight or so inches made a big difference in the length of his stride. She almost had to run to keep up with his long legs as they headed toward the row of portables on the south side of the track.
Those fine dress shoes he wore with his perfectly cut black suit should have made him look foolish, as though he had just walked out of a photo shoot for
GQ
and decided to stop by the speedway on his way to a fancy dinner. But he walked in those clothes like he owned them. Really
owned
them. And the suit somehow offset the roughness of his face.
They finally cleared the crush around the stalls. Kerri turned to Grady, who was loping along next to them. “Do Mom and Lee know about this?”
Once again, Grady’s face practically assaulted her with its desperation. She felt anger expanding inside, her body tensing.
God damn this day with its roller coaster of emotions. God damn this day and these men and racing and—
“Take a deep breath, sugar. We’re gonna go shut ourselves up somewhere private and work this out ’til we’re all satisfied.” She could feel Ranger’s body vibrating where her forearm connected with his ribs.
Honey sex voice was back
“Don’t call me
sugar
. I’m only going along with this until we’re out of sight of the reporters,” she snapped, then whipped her head around to glare at Grady.
Grady shook his head. “I’ll call them right after the press conference.”
Good. Even if Mom would probably faint and Lee would kick a hole in the wall, they deserved to find out from Grady instead of this asshole stranger.
“What about Earl? May as well bring him in so I can give him a piece of my mind, too.”
Beneath her palm, Ranger’s muscles bunched.
Grady gestured out toward the track. “Can’t. Security already has him. The police are taking him into custody and he’s banned from even getting within five hundred feet of the speedway. But—” What Earl had done had been stupid and crazy and had caused a lot of problems, but Kerri at least wanted to turn him down to his face. He wasn’t a bad man, after all. Just … not right for her.
“I’ll handle Earl.” Ranger interrupted. “You’ve got a more important role to play right now.”
They reached the building where the pre-race meeting and post-race conference were usually held. Grady stepped up to one of the doors and yanked it open, ushering them into a small anteroom that led out into a larger auditorium-style space.
Once inside, Ranger immediately dropped Kerri’s arm and strode over to shut the connecting door between the rooms. The click of the latch was like a bullet, piercing the coil of tension she held inside and springing it loose with a vengeance.
She rounded on him. “All right. I’ve done as you asked and played the happy fool. Now it’s your turn to deliver. What the hell is going on? What are you trying to pull?”
“Doubting my motives, sugar?”
“Yes.” She almost shouted it. “And I told you not to call me that.”
“Alright, sweet pea.”
Her fingers balled into fists at her sides. She turned to Grady. “How could you do this? How could you sell out like this? Dad has been gone barely a year! And to
Colt
?”
She expected Ranger to respond to that, but he didn’t. Instead, he also stared at Grady, who ran a hand through his hair and wouldn’t look her in the eye.
“It wasn’t like that, Kerri. I tried to fix it without bringing them in.”
“How much did you give them?”
“Eighty percent.” That was Ranger, but she didn’t bother to look at him.
“
Shit
, Grady. How could you? How could you do that to us? Do you not—”
“I didn’t have a choice, Kerri!” Grady’s voice was so rough that she froze in alarm. Her older brother might dither too much, and be prone to screaming in panic, but he never sounded
rough
.
“We’re long overdue on everything. The bank is talking about taking over the facility. All the cars. Even the goddamn useless old equipment. If we didn’t do this deal, there would be nothing left to save.”
Holy shit.
All the pent-up frustration of the past few minutes seemed to whoosh right out of her. She felt like she’d been punched in the gut. Even the air around her felt deflated. She stared at Grady for a moment, the room strangely silent. After a minute, she lifted her hand toward him, but dropped it again, her shoulders slumping. “Does anyone else know?”
At that, he finally brought his head up and met her eyes. “Who else could I have told? Mom can barely stand it when she’s low on laundry detergent, much less millions of dollars. Lee’s still a kid. Bit had an idea that things weren’t going so great—I’d said a few things about it to him early on—but he’s got his hands more than full with the double duty he’s pulling in the garage and the pit.”
“You should have told
me
, Grady. How could you have gone for so long, trying to do this all by yourself? I could have helped.”
“How would you have helped? You have a GED and two community college classes to your name. You really think we would have been okay? You really think we would have landed on our feet?” Grady leaned his head back and stared up at the ceiling tiles as though praying for deliverance.
She tried not to wince at his words. Grady had a point. Racing was her whole life. Had been since she was a kid, and she hadn’t bothered with school since she was doing pretty well on the Indy circuit before moving over to stock car racing. There was always the option, of course—she could go back to school—but that would just mean more money and more time … and no racing.
Grady groaned. “Dang it, Kerri. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that.”
She shrugged, forcing herself not to care too much. “Don’t be sorry. It’s true. But you still should have told me.”
He brought his head back down to look her in the eye. “No, I shouldn’t have. I couldn’t risk it. Everything we have is riding on
you
. If I’d told you and you’d crashed and burned in the races, it wouldn’t matter if we somehow pulled off a miracle and saved the business.” He sighed heavily. “I thought I could handle it. I
was
handling it. In fact, when Colt approached me last year, right after Dad passed, they offered enough in sponsorship money that we could have steadied ourselves, at least gotten our feet back on the ground. But—”
Oh, God.
“But I turned them down,” Kerri finished for him.
Grady opened his mouth as if to respond, but before he could get a word out, Ranger spoke. “What do you mean, Colt approached you last year? Are you talking about me?”
Grady looked at Ranger like he was as crazy as Earl. “No, not you. Al Colt himself. Your dad, I’m guessing. He approached when he heard Kerri was planning to move into the stock circuit. He didn’t tell you?”
Ranger shook his head slowly, feeling like someone had just dropped a ton of bricks on it. Next to him, Kerri gave a wry laugh. “Well, hell. Looks like I’m not the only one who’s been left in the dark when it comes to this deal.”
* * *
Ranger seethed.
Fucking Al Colt. The old bastard. All that talk about going back to his roots, but at no point in that little speech had he said so much as a word to Ranger about the history with Hart Racing. What was he trying to pull?
Ranger forced himself to unclench his fists and relax them at his sides. “And this time? Did you approach him, or did he come to you again?”
Grady frowned. “Yeah. About six weeks ago, before the season started. Out of the blue, but it felt like a godsend, what with the timing.”
Six weeks ago. When Ranger had returned from a madly successful five-month project in Europe and had told Al that he wanted a bigger role in the company or he’d take a position somewhere else.
What had Al said then?
I don’t want you to leave Colt International, Ranger.
At the time, he hadn’t wanted to admit it, but the truth was that Ranger had liked hearing those words. It had felt like a small validation that maybe Al cared more about his son than he’d let on.
But now … something dark and angry shot up his spine.
Sounded more like Ranger was being pushed out on Al’s terms, not his own. “Why did you turn him down the first time?” Ranger growled. Grady went silent, and Ranger had to suppress a curse.
“Why?” he repeated, swinging his eyes to Kerri.
She snorted. “The initial offer was for a year of sponsorship if I agreed to present myself more attractively. Wear makeup, push-up bras, keep my jacket unzipped when I’m out of my car. That kind of thing. I said no fucking way. I don’t care how much you own of Hart Racing. You try to push that kind of shit on me and I walk.”
One thing Ranger knew for sure. Al might be a sonofabitch, but he wasn’t a fool. He wouldn’t have walked away from a promising deal over something like makeup and bras. Damn. Kerri didn’t even need that kind of stuff. She was already pure sex appeal.
But the shock of hearing that his father had dabbled with Hart Racing before and then balked at the smallest resistance … there had to have been something else that made him pull out that he hadn’t considered sharing with Ranger.
Which meant that, most likely, this whole venture was doomed. And so was Ranger’s promotion.
Fuck. It all made sense now. Sending an experienced guy like him to manage a project that was worth peanuts … a major retailer buying into a racing team instead of just sponsoring it … the short notice Al had given him about the project, then conveniently skipped town the next day … how antagonistic Kerri had been about all of this from the get-go.
Al was putting the prodigal son in his place by setting him up for a fall. Ranger
knew
it. Because a promotion—and Al’s stupid pride, or whatever the hell it was—was riding on the line, and he wanted to be sure Ranger wouldn’t gain any ground. This was a chance for Al to completely, thoroughly assert his superiority, once and for all.
Well.
Seemed that the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree. Ranger hadn’t earned his “Ruthless” epithet for nothing. There
had
to be a way to fix Hart Racing. Not only fix it—propel it to the top of every goddamn proverbial mountain. He was not going to let this little setback take him down. He was going to make Hart Racing successful despite the odds, and then Al Colt would choke on his spite.
Ranger rolled his shoulders, like he was loosening up before a championship bout.
He wasn’t going down without a fight.
He turned to Kerri, who was still bristling with indignation. Of course, this would never work if she was snarling at him all the time. But right now, they had to deal with the fallout from the actions of her crazy ex.
His hand went up, asking for patience. “We’ll talk about the lipstick thing later. In fact, we can go over all the terms of the deal tonight. But first things first. We’ve got a press conference in”—he checked his watch—“just over ten minutes. And because of your boyfriend’s little stunt, now we have to do some major damage control. If it had been just any old idiot with a death wish who’d run across the track, you’d be a hero for so skillfully avoiding him. But instead, he’s a man who risked life and limb for
love
… and you’re turning him down. Know what that’s going to look like in the press?”