Excerpt of Race The Darkness by Carol Rose

With the screaming, earsplitting thunder of more than a fifteen hundred two-stroke horsepower racing to the finish, Kade knew he could win the race. All it took was one wrong action, one second of bad luck or bad riding on the other guy’s part, and the race was his.

Pushing forward, Kade poured on the speed, practically climbing the other guy’s ass.

Bucking under him, the cycle fishtailed in the corner. Holding it tight, he headed for the straight, the 250cc motor screaming furiously in his ears. Clearing the first corner with inches between him and the hay bale that edged this part of the track, Kade drove like the entire population of hell was on his tail.

Maybe it was.

The noise of the race engulfed him, pulsating into his bones. He could taste the dirt, his teeth clenched against the angry vibration. Gunning into the final corner, he poured on the speed, the rush of adrenalin in his head and the whine of the cycle’s engine in his ears.

Pushing this fast into a corner could mean death, but who gave a shit about that?

Here, his every nerve stretched, his every muscle strained to hold balance, he gasped in a breath and didn’t think of anything. Only the track under him, the dirt flying, and the revving, roaring noise filling his head.

With both bikes barreling toward the curve in the track, Kade couldn’t slow down. Taking the corner at full speed would be insanity, but he kept the throttle pushed forward—not yet, hold a little longer—the bend loomed ahead. Too late he felt the cycle’s rear wheel slide to the right. Touching his booted foot down for a flash, he used every ounce of his strength to muscle the Yamaha into the turn. Then, in a bid to stay ahead of him, the orange guy edged to the inside, only inches between them as they skidded into the turn. With an angry clash of metal, the two bikes came together.

Kade went down, the ground slamming into him as the world went black.

****

The crowd seemed to hold its breath, the medic crouched over the downed rider. After several long seconds, the figure that had been lying prone on the track sat up.

Applause broke out in the stands.

The injured rider, getting to his feet, raised a hand in acknowledgement…and the moment passed.

“Shit!” Billy spat out. “That man must want to die. He ain't stupid!”

“He seemed to be riding crazy,” Brooke responding, her voice feeling rusty as she watched the rider bend to pick up his dusty helmet.

“To ride like that, you got to just not care,” her brother-in-law said, shaking his head as he turned away from the track, headed back to his workshop trailer.

Still vibrating with the danger she’d witnessed, Brooke turned away from the track. These people were insane. Why was she standing here watching this? The racer was okay and she had to get back to her job at the concession stand, anyway.

Her lips quirked. That was her job now…serving soft drinks. Next to her, the pits filled with the rumbling of returning racers. A sight twenty yards away brought Brooke up short as she stepped away from the wall.

The racer who’d crashed—walking into the pits beside his motorcycle—was headed in her direction. She could see his face clearly.

Her steps faltering, she stopped, looking at him.

Rarely had she seen a man’s expression so intense, so nakedly open. Even from this distance, she saw the quickness of his breath, the fierce, powerful light in his eyes.

The man had just been inches from—had even pushed toward—death and yet there was no fear on his face, no sign of trembling.

Not even the giddy exuberance of a man living on adrenalin. That she would have expected.

Looking at this guy, though, Brooke couldn’t say what exactly he felt. She knew, however, in that moment that he felt a hell of a lot of something.

****

Half an hour later, Brooke stood working the concession window, the current motocross race sounding like a thousand demented bees. Stupid, demented bees from what she’d seen. Motorcycle racing, even on the less-dangerous dirt motocross track ranked high on the things testosterone did to kill adrenalin-hungry guys.

She wondered if she'd ever get used to this world. It was a far cry from the hush of the hospital. Even the E.R. didn't have this noise level.

Brooke stifled a sigh. She'd given up self-pity. It helped nothing and she needed to focus on getting her life back on track. Lots of people started over, but how many paid so big a price?

"That'll be three dollars and fifty cents," she told the woman on the other side of the order window.

The raised concession stand occupied a spot central to all three tracks on the "Dr. Danger Motocross-Supercross" property. In the short time Brooke had worked here, without even trying, she was beginning to know the difference between the faster flat asphalt motorcycle track, the motocross dirt bike track, and the Supercross track with the bigger jumps.

Tonight, the Supercross track races were running. Tomorrow, if she remembered right, the flat dirt track.

As far as she was concerned, they were all insane.

“Two large Dr. Peppers,” she repeated, passing an order along to Mikayla, her sixteen year-old niece, working the concession stand with her, “and one hot dog.”

Turning back to the window, Brooke told the woman customer, “Condiments are to the left of you.”

Brooke’s friend, Ashley, who managed the track office, sat on the cooler at the back of the concession stand, her long legs swinging.

“Didn’t your step-dad say something about his younger brother coming for a visit soon, Mikayla?” Ashley asked.

Flipping back her shoulder-length blond hair, Brooke’s niece handed her the drinks, before responding to the other woman’s question. “Yes. I don’t mind sharing a room with Brooke—I like it. But Billy’s crazy if he thinks he’s going to have his brother move in. We’ve never even met this 'Trey' guy. Like I want to stand in line for the bathroom for him?”

Ignoring the pang of guilt that came every time Brooke thought about having to impose on her sister, Mindy, and her family, she said, “Billy didn’t say his brother was moving in, did he?”

“No, but Dad doesn’t always say things. Sometimes he just does things.”

“One of the good things about Billy,” Brooke pointed out, “is that he generally does what he says. You want that in a husband and father.”

“You want that in any guy,” Ashley instructed the teenaged Mikayla. “Some people say that men in their twenties have matured to that point of being responsible, but my recent dates don’t seem to have heard about the maturing thing. Even the ones with kids! I hate men who blow off their parenting responsibilities!”

“Twenty sounds old,” Mikayla said, making a face as she went to take an order from a kid standing at the window.

“Now that you’re twenty-five,” Brooke told Ashley with a laugh, “maybe you ought to be dating guys in their thirties. Maybe the maturing thing kicks in later for men. We should check that out.”

“I'm beginning to think there are no mature men. My dad was certainly a jerk, probably still is. But you should let me know if you find some really hot guys in their thirties and maybe I'll give them a chance,” Ashley agreed with a grin.

“So, you’re handling this little piddly concession job pretty well. How’s the new waitressing job going?”

“Well, it’s very different from the medical field. I’ll say that for it.” Brooke made a face, pushing her short golden brown hair behind her ear. “I’m not fast enough yet and getting tips depends on speed. That and personality.”

“Well,” her friend said, “you’ve got plenty of personality. And being good-looking can’t hurt. You’ll get the waitress thing down. It just takes time.”

“I always thought I had a pretty good memory,” Brooke said with a wry smile. “But meds and blood pressure, heart rates and drawing blood—those things come easier to me than ‘pancakes and sausage with a side of hash browns’.”

Ashley played with a long strand of dark hair that had escaped from its band. “Waiting tables is only temporary, right? You’ll find another nursing job.”

Brooke glanced at the concession window, but it stood empty now. Refusing to show the sudden sadness and bitterness that gripped her, she said, “I can’t ever go back to nursing,…but I’m sure I’ll find a job I like.”

"Never?" Ashley echoed, her face stricken.

"Nope," Brooke confirmed, forcing a lopsided smile onto her lips. "They like nurses who do just what the doctor says. No matter what the situation. The nursing board wouldn't even think about giving back my license. Felons need not apply. So, I'll just have to win the lottery or something."

“Until then,” Mikayla said, throwing an affectionate arm around her shoulders, “you can work here with me. A lot of hot guys race here—not just the young ones. There are a lot of older racers that are hot—and sooner or later, they all need to eat.”

Determined to be positive, Brooke laughed, grabbing the girl into a hug. “I’m not looking for a guy. Besides, they may be hot, but they’re not real bright. What kind of idiot spends all his time and money putting his life in danger for a thrill? I mean, look at how they risk their lives! Particularly, the guys who race on the flat track. They’re only inches from the surface flying at—what? A hundred and twenty miles per hour?”

Mikayla shrugged, not interested in the technicalities of racing.

“They’re cocky jerks, too, most of the racers,” Ashley added from her perch on the cooler. “I’ve been working in the office at this track since I was eighteen--back when Mr. Evans only had the one track on the property—and all successful riders are assholes.”

“Even Davis?” Mikayla asked, a mischievous smile on her face.

“Especially Davis,” Ashley shot back with a shake of her head. “That guy’s into racing and whoring. He’s a man-whore if there ever was one.”

Mikayla giggled as Brooke turned back to the window. The race having come to an end, a line for refreshments formed and was lengthening quickly. The breaks between races were the busiest times of the evening. For a while, Brooke and Mikayla were slammed with customers. Business eventually slacked and Brooke got a chance to turn away from the window again.

“Hey, Brooke,” her brother-in-law, Billy, called to her as he came into the raised concession stand. “We need you to play nurse. I got Kade here. After that slide into the corner on the last race, he’s got a boo-boo that needs to be bandaged. You remember how to do that? Bandage a scrape?”

Brooke glanced over. Standing next to her brother-in-law was the racer who’d just scared the hell out of both Billy and her with his crazy riding. The same man she’d seen walking into the pits a half hour earlier.

His hair short and very dark, the dirt bike racer wasn’t particularly tall, but he was built like an athlete with broad shoulders filling out a t-shirt that was filthy from his crash. He stood holding a paper towel to one forearm where a cut appeared to bleed sluggishly.

“I don’t know. Bandaging can be pretty complicated.” she replied lightly, finishing wiping up a Coke spill from the counter by the window. "Besides, I let my malpractice insurance lapse."

“Its just a scrape,” Kade said, calmly, his rough, raspy voice, deep.

“Yeah,” Billy confirmed. “Minor stuff for you.”

“I might not have the know-how,” she said with a smile as she left the window. “Maybe you better take whatever the problem is to the official EMT. He tells me he’s got equipment, if you know what I mean.”

Billy snorted. “That nineteen year-old EMT wanna-be? He wouldn’t know how to use the equipment God gave him, even if he had a chance. You should see him right now. Right after he made sure Kade wasn’t dead from that spill, he runs off to check an ‘emergency’ in the stands. There’s some guy there who might be having a heart attack. Probably gas. The medical wanna-be says he’s monitoring. Looks like he’s standing next to the guy taking his pulse every thirty seconds. Anyway, he’s too busy to patch up a bleeding racer.”

Brooke came over to examine the racer’s wound.

Kade watched her negotiate her way around a small chest freezer and several shelves to get to where he waited. Standing just inside the concession stand door, he repositioned the paper towel to catch the blood seeping from the cut on his arm. He hadn’t even known the mechanic, Billy, had a sister-in-law who worked at the concession stand much less one who looked like this. Pint-sized, but well-packaged was the first thing he thought.

Careful not to drip blood on the floor, Kade looked at the woman, his male radar pinging like crazy. She was small, curvy and damned hot.

Still buzzing on the adrenalin of the race, his every sense stood alert. She smelled good, too, this smiling woman standing in front of him. Even in the middle of hot dogs and frying burgers, he caught a tease of clean, flowery something.

Not much more than five feet tall, she had short blondish-brown hair, hazel green eyes that smiled and really nice breasts. Apparently, she also had some medical training, not that he really needed it. The cut on his arm didn’t need much more than cleaning and maybe a butterfly bandage. He wanted to get back out on the track.

“Let me take a look at this,” she said, reaching out a hand.

“Kade, this is Brooke,” Billy said simply. “She used to be a nurse.”

“What was the matter? Had to retire from nursing,” Kade asked with a hint of a challenge, liking her smooth skin and the friendly smile on her face. “Get tired of doctors telling you what to do?”

“No,” she said, glancing up with a brief grin, “I just chose not to do what they told me one time.”

“Only once?” he asked as she dampened a clean cloth and began carefully wiping the dirt from his arm.

“Only once,” she concurred, “but it was a doozy.”