Sweet Carolina

by Roz Lee

“Everything looks good here,” Dell said. “Let's race.” He pushed thoughts of Caro out of his head. His foot tapped the throttle. He couldn't think of a better place to work out his sexual frustrations than on the racetrack, pitting man and machine against each other for five hundred grueling miles. If he were lucky, he'd be too tired tonight to think about Caro, to dream of driving more than just her car.

  * * * *

  Dell pushed harder, squeezing every drop of power out of the car. Fifty laps to go and his car was held together by crash tape and a prayer. He threaded his way between two slower cars on the backstretch, dropped low on turn three and traded paint with another car to climb one step closer to the front of the pack. He cursed the cluster of cars in front of him and kissed the bumper of the one directly ahead.

  “Move over, asshole,” he said.

  “He's got nowhere to go, Dell,” Jeff said into his headset.

  “Then they've all got to go,” he said, referring to the cars three wide out of turn four, blocking his way.

  “Hang back. They'll break up on turn one,” Jeff said.

  A string of curse words flitted through Dell's mind, but he kept them to himself.

  “Go high in one, drop low in turn two and you should be able to sweep underneath the 15 car,” Jeff advised.

  Dell tried the strategy, edging underneath the 15 car, but the driver wasn't ready to give up his track position. Dell jerked the steering wheel to the right, sideswiping the 15. The other driver backed off immediately and Dell shot past him, one more position closer to the front of the pack.

  Two cars ahead of him ran side-by-side through the backstretch. Dell waited while they jockeyed for position through turns three and four. As the car on the outside tried to regain his position, Dell throttled up and squeezed in between the two cars.

  “Three wide,” Jeff said, as if it were news to Dell.

  Dell nudged the nose of his car ahead of the other two. Turn one loomed ahead. Neither of his adversaries was going to back down and let him go ahead. They couldn't go three wide through the turns. It was a high-speed game of chicken, and Dell wasn't going to be the first one to flinch. He throttled up when a prudent man would throttle back, but prudence was for stockbrokers, not stock car racers.

  Adrenaline rushed through his system. This was the thrill he craved, the headlong plunge into unknown waters. The do or die scenario. The fight or flight reaction. The choice was easy for him. Do. Fight. What would the other drivers choose?

  “Clear right,” Jeff said.

  Dell glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the car to his right drop back. He'd chickened out – chose flight. That left the car on his left. Dell matched his speed, hitting the throttle as much as he dared, edging ahead a little before his opponent matched him. They battled side-by-side for an entire lap.

  Back to turn one, still side-by-side. Someone tapped him on the left rear panel and he instinctively tightened his grip on the wheel. He throttled up, hoping to push past the car now plastered bumper-to-bumper down the left side of his car as it propelled them both up the track. The wall sped closer. The muffled, but unmistakable sound of metal scraping on concrete penetrated his helmet, and in the same instant his car bounced off the wall and elementary physics came into play. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. And in Dell's opinion, the opposite reaction was rarely good.

  Dell's car now became the one doing the pushing, maneuvering both cars back down the track toward the inside wall.

  Screeching tires. Grinding, crumpling metal. The acrid stench of burning brake pads and disintegrating engines.

  It took all of ten seconds, maybe less. Dell made a futile attempt to control his car as two, or was it three? others crashed into him, sending him careening one way, then another. The car tilted up on two wheels once, settled back, then spun a couple of dizzying three-hundred-sixty-degree turns before it mercifully came to a stop.

  Smoke filled the interior, blinding him. Dell mentally took stock. Alive. Breathing. Hurting, but not seriously. Nothing broken. Car demolished.

  “Dell?” Jeff's voice came through the headset.

  “I'm okay. All clear?” Dell asked, waiting for an affirmation before he unhooked the restraint system and lowered the net on the driver's side window.

  With his feet firmly on the ground, he removed his helmet, waved his hand over his head to indicate he was fine, and looked around. He counted half a dozen cars in varying stages of wreckage. Most wouldn't race again today, a few might make it back out for the last thirty laps. His wasn't one of them. But, damn, what a rush!

  Only a true adrenaline junkie understood the thrill of a violent crash – one you could walk away from virtually unscathed.

  * * * *

  Caro counted to ten, then one hundred, then ten again. She would not go ballistic in front of her entire pit crew, and God-only-knew-how many other people, press included. By the time she finished counting, she was alone on top of the war wagon, and reasonably calm, given her state of mind. Dell was trying to kill her, and her business. It was the only explanation for what he'd done, and she wasn't just thinking about earlier in the week when he'd taken her to heaven, or at least awfully close, before leaving her without so much as a. “Thank you, ma'am.”

  She spent the rest of the week avoiding him as if he carried a deadly disease – which he did. She didn't know what the scientific name was, but it was commonly referred to as too damned sexy for his own good, on top of a serious case of arrogance. It was the latter that kept her away for the last six days and the former that kept her body yearning to be exposed to him again. And again.

  Caro desperately wanted to get close to Dell, and sex had nothing to do with the reason why.

  She climbed down from the war wagon and smiled for the reporter waiting to ask her about the race. The delay coming down gave her a few precious minutes to find a smile to put on her face, and think of something to say besides the truth. The racing world was full of sharks, and the pool they all swam in was relatively small. Even a hint of weakness, and the others would sense blood in the water. Then it was all over. No caution flag to give you a chance to get your shit together. No restart on equal footing. The predator sharks would pick your crew off one at a time, and your creditors would show up on your doorstep, padlocks in hand.

  Caro smiled at the reporter, who smiled at the camera lens before she launched into the interview – leaving Caro no choice but to participate. Anything else would be interpreted as just what it was – weakness.

  “I'm here with Carolina Hawkins,” she said into the microphone, “owner of Hawkins Racing.” She turned to Caro. “Ms. Hawkins, what can you tell us about the wreck? Is Dell okay?”

  “I haven't heard the official word, but Dell indicated he was fine, just a little bunged up, which is to be expected. NASCAR does an excellent job of making sure the cars are safe.”

  “Given what happened to Caudell Senior, Dell's father, I'm sure this kind of thing must be especially difficult for Dell. How does he handle it?”

  Caro resisted the urge to laugh. Was she kidding? Dell drove like every race was a demolition derby – that's how he handled it. A sudden thought chilled her blood. Could it be deliberate? No. She'd mentioned it to him before. No. It wasn't possible. Stupid to think that.

  She pushed the thought away and gave the expected answer. “As you know, there have been many improvements in the safety systems within the cars since Caudell Wayne's accident. Dell knows better than most how dangerous stock car racing is. He takes every precaution, and follows every safety guideline – just as we all do at Hawkins Racing.”

  “Do you know what caused today's crash?” she asked.

  Arrogance. Stupidity. Suicidal tendencies? “Which one?” she asked instead of voicing her actual thoughts.

  The reporter laughed. “I guess that was a stupid question,” she said. She turned away to address the reporters in the booth, dismissing Caro.

  She couldn't get out fast enough. />
  She found Russell, told him she was leaving, and headed for the chopper pad. She needed to talk to Dell, but not until she took some time to consider what she would say. If what she was thinking were true, Hawkins Racing was in trouble, and Dell was in even worse trouble.

  * * * *

  Her head spun with the possibility that instead of hiring a driver who would help her save Hawkins Racing from bankruptcy, she'd hired one whose death wish would murder her company in the process. No matter how she looked at the bottom line, it didn't get any better. Debt and bad luck were sucking Hawkins dry faster than a vampire horde in a blood bank. If things didn't turn around soon, she'd be penning the bottom line in her own blood, unable to afford the red ink.

  Caro closed her eyes and willed the ugly truth to go away. One more crash like the one in Las Vegas, and Hawkins Racing was done for. She'd have to dip into the reserve fund – the tiny bank account on the side – to pay for the parts to build a new car. Thanks to Dell's recklessness, they were down to one – and in his own words, it wasn't a winner.

  She allowed herself a few minutes to absorb the grim reality of her situation. What seemed like a good idea a few weeks ago, now smacked of the worst decision of her life. If she'd kept Jeff… well… not a thing would have changed. Sure, she wouldn't be wondering how to pay for the parts they needed – but she'd still be wondering how long the company could hang on. Jeff wasn't ready to race at this level, perhaps he never would be. He wouldn't have won any races, but he didn't crash either. At least, she'd still have a car to put on the track.

  Then there was Dell, or more specifically, Dell. Being the pragmatic woman she was, she had to admit one of the reasons she'd gone to him in the first place – besides the fact he was about the only Cup driver without a ride in the middle of the season – was that she'd had a crush on him since she was a kid. One of the worst things about being sent away to school – worse than leaving her dad and the circuit behind – was leaving Dell. She wasn't idiot enough to believe he'd harbored any feelings for her. Not a man like Dell. He was everything a track bunny dreamed of, and lord, help them all when he put on a fire suit.

  Caro still remembered the first time she'd seen him in one. He was all of sixteen and full of excitement before his first Nationwide Series race. He won the race, and several more that year. She remembered the way the reporters talked about him. He was a phenomenon. He was bringing a new, smarter style of racing to the sport. They held him up as the driver of the future – one who would change racing from the “revenuers-on-my-ass” style, to a thinking man's sport.

  But Dell had changed, and Caro had allowed her hormones to have a voice in her business decisions. It was a rookie mistake, and one she had to correct – somehow. The more time she spent with him, the more troublesome those hormones became. All Dell had to do was look at her and she wanted more. Good heavens, she wanted more. More of the heat he stirred within her, more of his touch, more, more, more.

  The heavy outside door clanged shut, jolting Caro out of her erotic musings. She needed to keep, or more precisely, get her relationship with Dell back on a professional level. He was her employee, and it was her responsibility to set the tone for their association. No more touching him, and most importantly, no more letting him touch her.

  Footsteps and voices in the hallway announced the arrival of her crew. It was another race week, and there was work to do. Another car to build, parts to order and payroll to make. And, she still needed to talk to Dell – preferably before he put his butt in another one of her cars and tried to kill himself. As his employer, she had a responsibility to keep him alive – didn't she? At the very least, it was in her best interest.

  It was his day off and she debated whether to have the conversation with him or wait. As far as she could tell, Dell's suicide of choice was by automobile – on a racetrack – so perhaps the conversation could keep for at least one more day. And that would be one more day to convince herself to ignore her hormones. Besides, if Dell wanted to kill himself, he didn't need a racecar to do it. It was an unsettling thought, but one she quickly dismissed because deep down, she couldn't believe suicide was Dell's motive. That begged the question, “What was?”

  If he weren't trying to kill himself on the track, there had to be something else behind his reckless driving style.

  “Got a minute?” Russell leaned in her open doorway. The deep furrow between his eyebrows told Caro this wasn't a social call.

  “Sure,” she said. “You know I always have time for my crew chief.” Russell shuffled in, shutting the door behind him. Even though she was the one in the power position behind the desk, Caro's stomach flipped. It was going to take more than a few months to get used to being the one in charge. “Have a seat,” she said.

  Russell took the chair across from her, sat forward, his elbows resting on his knees. He let out a puff of air through pursed lips, as if reconciling himself to an unpleasant duty. Dread wrapped itself around Caro's somersaulting stomach and squeezed.

  “What is it, Russell?”

  “I dunno know how to say this, Carolina, so I'm gonna to come right out with it.”

  Russell paused. Caro's shoulders tightened, and she mentally chided herself for being ridiculous. What could Russell possibly say that could be worse than her own thoughts these days? Her black thoughts of a minute ago flashed through her head, and the band of dread gripping her stomach wrapped itself around her heart. “Is this about Dell?”

  “No…well…” he stammered.

  “Is he alright?”

  Russell's gaze snapped to hers. “Why wouldn't he be?”

  The bands around her insides loosened and her shoulders relaxed a fraction. “No reason,” she waved away her concerns. “Go on.”

  “I thought you should know… people are talkin'…sayin' things…”

  “Such as?”

  Every moment he hesitated, Caro imagined another possible horrific scenario. “Just spit it out, Russell. Whatever it is.”

  “Some of the guys went out for a drink after the race. They heard some people talkin' about you. And Dell.”

  Caro clenched her fists in her lap. Seriously? Was she going to have to get a pair of pliers and yank the story out of him? “What did they say?”

  “That you and Dell…were, you know…”

  “They think I'm sleeping with Dell.”

  “Yeah, that's the story goin' around.” Russell sat up, squaring his shoulders. “You're both adults, and what you do ain't none of our business, unless it reflects on Hawkins Racing. As long as you're runnin' the team, people are gonna to talk. Your daddy was right. This ain't any place for a woman.”

  His words stung, and Caro sat for a moment, unable to take it all in. She matched Russell's firm posture and looked him in the eye. “You're right about one thing, Russell. My personal life isn't anyone's business. As for this not being my place, well, I don't care what anyone thinks. I own Hawkins Racing, and I intend to run it.” Russell squirmed under her counter-attack. Caro continued. “If you or anyone else in the garage doesn't want to work for a woman, then you're free to go. Good luck finding another place in the middle of the season.”

  Her take-no-prisoners attitude took some air out of Russell's tires. “No, no.” He slapped his hands on his knees. “The crew ain't going anywhere. We all believe in Hawkins Racing.” Caro would have smiled at how fast he shifted into reverse if she hadn't been so angry.

  “Then why bring it up? What's this really about?”

  “I think you should sell.”

  “To who?” she asked.

  “I hear Renfro might make you a good offer. Your daddy was friends with Butch Renfro. He'd approve if you were to sell.”

  The band around her stomach tightened again. So, the old boys network was trying to force her out, and using her own crew to do it. “And how do you know this?” she asked.

  “Well, he told me.”

  “He told you,” Caro enunciated each word as she let the knowledge se
ttle in. “When?”

  “'Bout the time you took Dell on, I guess.”

  “So why did you wait until now, and more important, why didn't Butch come to me with the offer?”

  Russell squirmed again. Caro sighed. His body language answered for him. “He told you to wait, didn't he? He told you to wait, to see how we did. What was it? Owner points? Driver points? Wins?”

  “Owner points. Look, Carolina. Butch is only doin' what he knows your daddy wanted. This is no – “

  “Place for a woman. Yeah, I've heard it before.” Caro leaned back in her chair and tried to look calm while she seethed inside. “You can tell Butch Renfro Hawkins Racing isn't for sale, and I'm going to act like this conversation never took place.” Instead of falling apart like she wanted to, Caro sucked up all her courage and issued orders. There'd be plenty of time to hit the wall later.

  “We only have a few days to build a car for Darlington. Use the frame from the Bristol car and the short track engine we tested at Las Vegas. I have some changes I want to make to the engine and the trim. Get the crew started. I'll consult with the engineers about the changes while you get started on the teardown. Oh, and salvage what you can from the Las Vegas engine. We'll rebuild it and use it in Charlotte. We've got the All-Star week coming up. We'll need everything we've got to get through it.”

  As soon as Russell was out of her office, Caro crossed her arms on her desk and dropped her forehead on top. She took a couple of deep breaths and refused to give in to the panic threatening to take her under. Doubts crept in. Maybe she wasn't ready to run the business. Maybe her father had been right all along. Another deep breath. She sat up and looked around the office. Her office. Her business.

  So, things weren't going as smoothly as she hoped. As far as she was concerned, the race was far from being over, and as long as she kept a car on the track, there was a chance of a decent finish, if not a win.

  Pain throbbed behind her temples. Caro yanked the elastic band loose that was wrapped around her high ponytail. Her hair tumbled to her shoulders. She shook it out, smoothed it back and secured it at the neck. She found a couple of aspirin and washed them down with cold coffee.