Barbara Dunlop - Overheated

She squeezed the delivery truck as close as she could get to the Cargill Motorsports garage and lined the back of the truck up with the bay door. Before shutting off the motor, she lowered both windows to give Rufus some fresh air.

He yawned and stretched, finding a more comfortable position on the seat, his ears flopping over the edge. She gave him a scratch on the head, and a sigh whooshed through his body.

“You have a dog,” came a familiar male voice through her open window.

She turned to find herself face-to-face with Larry, his eyes taking on a green tone in the bright sunlight.

Something lurched in her chest, and she went breathless. “I’m fostering him,” she managed.

“I’ve never had a dog,” said Larry.

“My first,” she admitted. Her parents always claimed to be too busy for a pet. The business came first. Running Softco Machine Works took sixteen-hour days, seven days a week.

Larry opened the truck door for her, and Crystal slipped off the seat, her running shoes coming down onto the roasting pavement.

“And here you are again,” she observed as they both headed down the length of the delivery truck.

“Surprised?” he asked.

“I’m surprised you’re in the garage twice in a row.”

“Yeah.” His expression sobered. “After the incident with Kent’s car-”

“Those animal-right activists?” Crystal had heard about the incident on the radio.

“I thought the family might need some moral support.”

She nodded, admiring his devotion to his family. It was nice of him to show up to lend a hand.

She flipped the latch and rolled up the door. “And here all I brought was an axle.”

“That’s important, too.” He gazed at the boxes in the depths of the truck. “Any chance you’ll let me carry the box?”

“You’re treating me like a girl again.”

“I know,” he agreed. There was a thickness in the inflection of his voice.

She looked up, and there it was. A wave of desire sizzled between them. She could almost smell the scorched heat. Although she supposed it could have been tire smoke.

“Can you get me a pit pass?” she asked, partly because she’d promised herself she would and partly because this feeling was very much worth investigating.

His eyes registered surprise. “Sure.”

“Good.” She lifted the long box. “Then go do that while I finish up here.”

His gaze flicked to the box, and she could see the war going on inside him.

“Don’t even think about it,” she warned.

“Is it more than ten pounds?”

“None of your business.” It was probably about forty. “I do this for a living, remember?”

“You write for a living,” he countered.

“If I only wrote for a living, I’d be residing in a cardboard box and be a whole lot thinner than I already am.”

He took in her figure beneath the khaki pants and plain T-shirt. He didn’t say a word, but his expression told her he liked what he saw.

She liked that he liked it, which was not her normal reaction.

“You going to let me stand here holding this box?” she asked.

He reflexively reached for it.

“I meant you should get out of my way.”

He stepped to one side to give her the room she needed. “Sorry.”

But she grinned. “Don’t be sorry. Please go get me a pit pass.”

Larry gave her a salute and a smile in return, as he turned to go.

“I’ll park Rufus in the shade,” she called after him. “And get him some water.”

Larry turned back and shot her a grimace. “His name is really Rufus?”

“I picked it myself. You got a problem with that?”

He held up his hands in surrender. “No problem here.”

She shifted her attention to the garage to find the Grosso team watching with bemused expressions on their faces.

“My new dog,” Crystal explained as she walked toward the workbench, pretending what she and Larry had going was nothing more than a budding acquaintance. And it wasn’t anything more than that-despite the flutters of anticipation gathering in her stomach.

THERE WAS TROUBLE ON THE track.

There was also trouble on pit road.

Out on Turn Three, race cars banged into each other like dominos. Metal clanged, tires screeched and smoke filled the early evening air. Near the Kent Grosso pit box, Crystal’s hand clamped down on Larry’s knee. The yellow caution flag came out, while the warning flags inside Larry’s head turned to red.

He nearly gasped out loud as sensation zapped up his thigh at the speed of light. Okay, it was more like the speed of his circulatory system, or more appropriately, the speed of synaptic transmission along his sympathetic nervous system.

Okay, forget the science.

Her hand was on his knee.

Then Steve’s voice filled his headset, warning Kent to go high. Larry’s mathematical mind automatically kicked in, calculating the spinning cars’ trajectory, and he knew his son’s advice was right.

Then suddenly, Justin Murphy shot to the outside. Steve’s frantic warning came too late, and Kent lost control.

Crystal’s delicate fingers squeezed tight. Since Larry knew the likely g-forces and the capability of the safety equipment, he wasn’t concerned about his nephew as the car spun into the infield, where it rolled once, landing upright.

The knowledge left him free to focus on Crystal’s squeeze. What did it mean? What should he do? More important, had anyone noticed?

He glanced at the team members around them, but everyone’s attention was on Kent’s car. The engine fired again, shooting smoke out the tailpipe, and the crew breathed a collective sigh of relief. Then Kent was pulling from the infield onto the track.

The crash was disappointing for his son, Steve, and the rest of the Maximus Motorsports team. But that was racing. There’d be another chance to climb in the standings next weekend.

Larry’s attention went back to Crystal. He gazed at her long, feminine fingers, then twisted his head to catch her profile, trying to figure out if she was even aware of the touch.

His family was having a hell of a day, but all he could think of was Crystal.

She smiled at him. “That was a relief,” she shouted over the throbbing noise of the pits. And her attention went back to the No. 427 car. She patted Larry’s knee twice before removing her hand.

“A relief,” he managed to force out.

If he’d been in a movie theatre-and ten years younger-he might have put an arm along the back of her chair. And she might have rested her head on his shoulder. He could have smelled her perfume, maybe taken her hand, maybe even kissed her there in the dark.

But he wasn’t ten years younger. And it sure wasn’t dark. Millions of watts of light beat down on the track, and thousands of cheering people surrounded them. Larry was personal friends with an astonishing number of those thousands of people; they were sure to ask what he thought he was doing, if he showed any kind of physical affection toward a women who looked closer to his son’s age than his own.

And then there was Elizabeth, Libby.

Larry hadn’t felt an attraction to any woman since his wife had died three years ago. He felt a little guilty. A few days ago he had placed flowers on her grave.

Libby was a warm glow inside his heart, and she’d always be there. But Crystal was…vibrant. And, Lord help him, he was ready to move on.

She applauded Kent’s signal to the fans that he was okay, pointing to her headset and nodding her approval to indicate she understood how frustrated Steve must be because he wasn’t able to stop Justin from knocking Kent out. She patted Larry’s shoulder, smiled and nodded. He thought she was saying he should be proud of his son’s contribution.