Page 2 of Dirt Driven

Because you’re a dick today.

“Because I feel like it. Now just do your job, stand there, smile, so I can do mine.” Was it him being a dick today, or was I exceptionally cranky? Maybe a little bit of both.

That conversation right there sounds like most marriages though, doesn’t it? Or maybe it was the marriage of two people who spent the majority of their time together on the road. Probably the second one.

Rager threw his arms up, kicking at the dirt and the flour marking the spot where he would be standing during introductions tonight. “Why are we doing this? It’s dumb. No one cares who we are.”

I haven’t told him that the spot where he would be standing tonight would also be lit on fire. Maybe I’d save that for later. I’d save it because he would be standing next to Casten with a lit flame at their feet. There was no telling what my brother would do.

I also wanted to laugh in Rager’s face that he thought nobody cared who he was. Actually, I did laugh. “You don’t think they care who you are?” I raised a bitchy eyebrow. “Okay. If you think that, go up in the stands tonight.Alone. And tell me they don’t care who the top ten drivers racing in the World of Outlaws are.”

I knew my husband well enough to know he was actually contemplating this. His sturdy glare swept from the stands where I was pointing, back to me. “I know they care, but why are we making such a big deal out of this prerace show? It’s not NASCAR. Why try to make it that way?”

“Listen, jerk.” Wow. He was really getting under my skin today. “Just do what I’m telling you to do and shut up.”

“Fine.” Defiantly, he crossed his arms over his chest. “But I’mnotsmiling.”

Always pushing my buttons. When I agreed to be the PR manager for JAR Racing, I should have considered its drivers. Ones like my husband, Rager Sweet, who insisted on giving me shit every day. It didn’t matter that I was his wife. If Rager didn’t want to do something, he let everyone know his disapproval of said task. Kinda like our nearly four-year-old son, Pace. By the way, I have three, three-year-olds at the moment. No, they’re not triplets, two are twins, but it might explain why I was so cranky these days. In fact, we have four kids under five. I absolutely loved being a mother, but some days, like today, I struggled with being nice to everyone. And the one who helped create all those kids, he took the brunt of my anger most days.

Reality crashed against Rager when he read the car numbers on the ground. Rager pointed at the X with the number 4 on it next to him. “There’s no fuckin’ way I’m standing next tohim.”

Damn it. He knew.

“Can you not be difficult for one afternoon and let me do my job? It’s the last night here in Vegas and I have a lot to get done today.”

“Where would the fun in that be,wife?” He smiled, walking toward me. With one smirk, he had his arms wrapped around my body and his mouth on my neck. With one sweep of his tongue against my overly heated skin, I melted. “Now, how about you show me how feisty you can be?”

“Can’t,” I whispered, trying like hell to ignore him and his wicked ways of getting me to do whatever he wanted. “I just put Hudson down for a nap on our bed.”

His arms tightened around me and he backed me up against the fence on the front stretch. The metal squeaked in protest when his body pressed into mine. “We don’t need a bed,” he grunted, his breath tickling my cheek, assaulting me with open-mouth kisses up the side of my neck. When he got to my jaw, he held my face is his hands, those beautiful blue eyes on mine. Flush against each other, I had forgotten what this was like. To be drunk on the scent of him and held still by the force of him.

He shut me up by slamming his lips on mine. Warm, salty, just right, as always. I couldn’t accurately describe what it was like to be kissed by this man, butthatkiss, it was everything he had become to me. Adrenaline. Addiction. Aggression. It was all there drawing out my deepest desires, desperate for more, and the weight of him pinning me to the fence.

I jerked my head to the side when something wet hit the side of my face and it wasn’t from Rager. I looked up to the sky thinking it was starting to rain, but cloudless turquoise shined down on us. “What was that?”

Rager turned his head, and then scowled immediately. “What the fuck, Tommy?”

“Thought you two should calm down.” Perched on a four-wheeler with Hudson on his lap, Tommy grinned and held up a squirt gun in his hand. “Or you could get lit. Whatever you prefer.”

Tommy Davis was my dad’s longtime best friend, and my older brother, Axel’s, crew chief. He’d lived his life around the Outlaw schedule for the past thirty years, and sometimes I think he drank racing fuel and it went to his brain. Wavy orange hair, brown eyes full of trouble, his blood was mostly vodka and he was up to no good most of the time. Never trust him.

Rager backed up, creating a foot of space between the two of us. He wiped his hand down his cheek and then smelled it. “Is that vodka in your squirt gun?”

At the same time my son Hudson took it from him and squirted his mouth. Tommy’s wide eyes met Rager’s. “Will you kill me if it is?”

Rager stepped toward them, his black T-shirt stretching perfectly around his biceps. “If my son is drinking vodka, yes.”

Tommy grinned. “Then it’s water.”

Rage took another step. “Bullshit.”

Straightening out my tank top, I kicked dirt from my white shoes I knew I shouldn’t be wearing at a dirt track. After collecting my phone, I wiped the vodka from my cheek and moved toward Rager.

Hudson looked at me, Rager, and then smiled at Tommy and tried to pry the squirt gun from his hands. Our almost two-year-old son, Hudson, was the definition of a bad kid. I said that with all the love a mother has for her children. I loved my baby boy, but he was an asshole. Plain and simple. We couldn’t even find a regular babysitter for him; he’sthatbad. And he only liked my dad. Everyone else he scowled at.

To prove my point, just wait. When Tommy didn’t give Hudson the squirt gun, he threw his head back in a tantrum and nailed Tommy right in the chin.

Rager shook his head when Tommy caved and handed him the squirt gun. “Here, ya little brat.”

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