by Dee J. Adams
Danger Zone
By Dee J. Adams
In her ten-year career as a stuntwoman, Ellie Morgan has experienced her share of thrills. None compares to the rush of being behind the wheel of a race car for her latest movie shoot. Certain she was born to race, Ellie’s ready to shift gears—but a secret from her past holds her back.
Quinn Reynolds is tired of being in the driver’s seat of his family’s company, Formula Racing Design. He’s ready to sell—if he can get his co-owner and brother, Mac, to agree. Quinn’s not sure what he wants to do with his future, but almost as soon as he meets Ellie, he knows he wants her to be part of it.
Though Ellie tries to resist her attraction to the charming businessman, she’s quickly in danger of losing her heart. But after narrowly escaping “accidents” both on and off the set, it becomes clear that getting involved with Quinn could be downright deadly…
114,000 words
Dear reader,
It’s not that I love winter, but I love some of the things that come with winter. Here in the States, February brings some of the coldest temperatures of the winter, but it also brings the promise of spring right around the corner. So I don’t mind hunkering down in my living room next to the fire with a blanket, a kid or a dog on my feet, and a mug of hot chocolate or hot tea (or even a hot toddy) beside me. And, of course, my digital reading device of choice in hand.
There’s something permissive about cold weather that makes it easy to laze away hours at a time reading a great book without feeling guilty, which makes February one of my favorite months. I know I can always indulge in plenty of guilt-free reading time!
This month, Carina Press offers a new selection of releases across the genres to aid you in your own reading-time indulgence. Romantic suspense favorite Marie Force is back with a new installment in her Fatal series, Fatal Flaw. Newlyweds Sam and Nick discover that they won’t get the normalcy they were looking for post-wedding…because someone has other plans for them. Also look for author Dee J. Adams to follow up her adrenaline-packed romantic suspense debut with her sophomore book, Danger Zone, which delivers thrills and action.
Two steampunk titles will get your gears whirling in February. Look for Prehistoric Clock by Robert Appleton and Under Her Brass Corset by Brenda Williamson to take you back to a time altered by steam and clockwork. Also in the science fiction and fantasy realm, author Nico Rosso offers up The Last Night, a post-apocalyptic tale of romance, while Kim Knox takes us into the future with her futuristic science fiction romance, Synthetic Dreams.
And for those of you with a yen for the paranormal, we have several authors joining us for their Carina Press debuts. Blood of the Pride by Sheryl Nantus and Pack and Coven by Jody Wallace hit the virtual shelves in mid-February.
Portia Da Costa will heat up your day with Intimate Exposure, a sexy and intense look into the world of BDSM.
Rounding out our amazing and genre-packed February lineup are books from Claire Robyns, Charlie Cochrane, Debra Kayn, Shelley Munro, Amie Denman, Crista McHugh and Susan Edwards, with everything from historical and contemporary romance to m/m romance to a fun romantic caper. February offers a little something for everyone’s reading pleasure.
We love to hear from readers, and you can email us your thoughts, comments and questions to www. [email protected]. You can also interact with Carina Press staff and authors on our blog, Twitter stream and Facebook fan page.
Happy reading!
~Angela James
Executive Editor, Carina Press
www.carinapress.com
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Dedication
To the two people who fill my life with such joy, Sean and Katelyn. Thanks for the jokes and the fun. But mostly, thanks for the love.
Acknowledgments
I’ve thanked them before, but I have to do it again. Without Kate Willoughby and Lynne Marshall, I wouldn’t be here. Thanks, gals, for all the great ideas and wonderful advice.
Thank you to the Los Angeles Romance Authors for all the support over the years. LARA is one of the most supportive groups I’ve ever had the privilege to be a part of. The same goes for the Carina Press authors. Those two groups contain the most helpful and encouraging people I’ve ever known.
Thank you to Bill Leaman for answering countless questions regarding stunt work. Your knowledge is greatly appreciated.
Thank you to Ric Swartzlander for responding to so many emails about classic Brittany-blue Mustangs.
Huge thanks to Malcolm Avner for your business expertise. (Not to mention the spare room when I visit. Love you much, brother.)
Thank you to Eileen Moore for always being there whenever I need you. Love you, Smileen.
Thank you to Thom and Carol Avner for so many years of constant support. You’ve always been in my corner and I love you both.
Again, I have to thank my editor Melissa Johnson for being smart, funny and usually very right.
Thank you to Max Bennett for answering so many questions about cars in general.
Special thanks—again—to Mike O’Gara for all your racing knowledge and patience in sharing it as I asked eight thousand questions.
Any mistakes are my own.
Contents
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Epilogue
About the Author
Chapter One
Adrenaline rushed through Ellie Morgan like water at Niagara Falls. The scream of the car’s engine roared in her ears. Vibration pounded against her back and through her body as the car zoomed past the grandstands. She gripped the wheel more firmly with both hands and took the corner of the oval track.
A blistering September sun sat in a cloudless blue sky, baking anyone who dared cross its path and sending the track temperature to a hundred and seventeen degrees.
Hot damn! Exhilaration raced in her every cell as the car ate up more black tar.
Sweat flowed from Ellie’s pores and soaked her flame-retardant bodysuit. The mask under her helmet itched with the intensity of poison ivy. Ah, yes, the glamour of show business. If people only knew. Blocking out the sensation, she concentrated on the road.
A couple of hundred extras dotted the grandstands of the racetrack as she sped by, waiting to play their part as horrified track fans witnessing a brutal accident. Ellie didn’t let all those eyes watching distract her from the job. She never did. But this job was different, life-changing. After only a week in this car, she felt as if she’d been born to race.
Apparently she wasn’t the only person who thought so. Mac Reynolds, former driver, current chief engineer for Grayling Racing and one of the technical advisors for this film, had said as much during Ellie’s weeklong flash-course—God forbid she use the word crash—into race-car driving. He’d arrived a week before his wife, the woman whose story the film was based on, to help acclimate Ellie to the car. She’d caught on faster than it took to go from zero to a hundred. E
ven though she hadn’t gotten the car up to its full speed, she’d learned the feel of it. Knew when to shift, when to push. How to adjust the tools at her fingertips and interpret information flashed on the steering wheel. She heard the engine noise as if the car spoke to her.
Negotiating life was always a challenge, and she always tread carefully, but many things came easily to her too, especially when it came to sports. But nothing matched the power of the car buzzing around her and Ellie had never been surer of anything in her life. She’d been born to drive.
“Elle, you’re moving too fast. Slow it down,” Mark Brown, the stunt coordinator of this particular gig, told her over the headset.
“Just trying to get a feel for it. We want it to look real, don’t we?”
“We also want you alive when the stunt is over,” he fired back dryly. “Keep it at the speed we discussed.”
“No worries. I’ll be right where I need to be.” Seventy miles an hour. It seemed a shame to go so slow when this car begged to move three times that speed.
She flew past the film crew on the infield in a sapphire-blue car built to exact specification and almost identical to Trace Bradshaw’s open-wheel Arrow car. You couldn’t really shoot an action/adventure/love story about the woman and not include the car that rocketed her to fame.
Ellie couldn’t keep the grin off her face as she circled the track at—she glanced at the speedometer—over a hundred and twenty miles per hour. Hello, big daddy! This is how to live!
This was the kind of job she wouldn’t mind doing on a regular basis. After ten years of stunt work, she’d grown tired of the constant damage to her body. It was time to find another career. Something not so hard on the bones, but still interesting enough to keep her mind and body occupied. A career change would be a monumental task, but if she played her cards right she might have a shot at it. Every turn around the oval had her itching to try.
“How you feeling, Elle? Ready to give it a go or do you want a couple more laps? You’ve got enough fuel if you want to take it.”
Ellie liked the offer. “One more lap is good. Make sure the cameras are ready because I don’t want to do this twice.”
Mark chuckled over the headset. “Cameras are running, watching you take the track. I’ve just been told that camera two’s been adjusted and it’s coming out now so you’ll have to decrease your speed or you’ll pass him.” Was that a ploy to slow her down? He really didn’t need to worry. She had no plans to do this stunt other than how they’d planned it. She wasn’t out to kill herself. “Tell me when and I’ll let God know it’s for real. And trust me, none of us want to do this twice,” he finished.
“God” was the director of this whole shebang. Gordon Wallace. Ellie had joked when Mark introduced them at her interview that with the loss of a few letters he could be God, not just Gordon. He’d liked her, and her idea, enough to give her the job. Luckily, he hadn’t taken the name to heart. He still grinned when she called him that.
Camera two perched on the back of the white-striped, red Chevy in front of her. Another “lipstick” camera sat over her shoulder, catching everything from the driver’s point of view. Other cameras were set at various places on the track, ready to capture the whole thing at every angle, including a jib with a high shot.
With eight cameras shooting this stunt, God had just about every angle covered. He was bound to get great coverage. Unless, of course, she really botched it. The preparation had been more detailed than any stunt Ellie had ever done. Granted, this was the toughest she’d ever tried to pull off. Toughest she would pull off.
“This is it, Mark. This is the lap. When I come around turn four, I’m going for it.”
“Roger that, Elle. Just like we talked about. Breathe easy, we’ve got your back. When you hit the wall, I’ll release the air jack and you’ll be airborne. We’ll be there when you come down.”
Ellie took a deep breath and adjusted her grip on the wheel. This stunt was going to do more than seal her name in the stunt community. Hopefully, it would catapult her out of it and into a whole new world.
The world of race-car driving.
A yellow cab dropped off Quinn Reynolds, and his luggage, at the entrance of the California Motor Speedway. He shouldn’t have been nervous, but his pulse spiked nevertheless. Anticipating his brother’s reaction had given him a headache and after a ten-hour flight from Heathrow, he was ready for some shut-eye. Quinn pushed the jet lag and cramps to the periphery as a man headed his way.
Nope, not a man. More like a college kid with an extra few pounds around his middle. “Mr. Reynolds?” he asked. At Quinn’s nod, the kid smiled. “My name’s Donny. I’m one of the production assistants. I’ll take you to your brother.” Quinn had half expected Mac to bar him from the movie set. Donny gestured to the golf cart twenty feet away as he reached for one of Quinn’s bags. “Your brother is great,” he went on. “The whole crew loves him.”
Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, Quinn gave a noncommittal snort. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.
Donny seemed to read the inference as he drove the cart through a tunnel under the track. “I hear ya. I hate my brother too,” he said.
It wasn’t that Quinn hated Mac… Well, lately, maybe he did. Part of him understood that Mac meant well, but another part of him wanted his big brother to leave him alone for the rest of time. Mac never seemed to listen to Quinn and after this many years, Quinn was tired of giving up the fight. This trip marked the beginning of Quinn’s life.
They emerged from the tunnel on the infield of the stadium. Heat made the track waver like a funny mirror at a carnival. Who knew California would be this kind of sweat-fest? A red Chevy sped by with an open-wheel race car screaming on its heels.
“What’s going on?” Quinn asked.
“We’re doing the first stunt of the movie where the car crashes into the wall.”
“Already?”
“Usually they do all the hairy stunts first. Just in case something goes wrong.”
Quinn knew the reality of things going wrong. He’d lived it six months ago in his own car accident. The last thing he wanted to see was someone crashing a car on purpose. He kept his gaze on the infield as they rolled past giant trailers and semis. All eyes seemed to be glued to the track but Quinn ignored everything except the thrill of being back in the States.
He’d missed the U.S. and wanted to come home permanently. If Quinn could convince Mac to sell their company, his wish would come true. He’d been living “life according to Mac” for so long he didn’t even know who he was anymore. He did know he wanted his life to change, and he wanted to make the choice instead of having it forced on him.
He and Mac had been raised in Indiana, but enough years separated them that they’d never been very close. When Quinn hit his midteens, their dad had taken his dream—designing and racing Formula One race cars—to Europe and left Mac in charge of Quinn in Indiana. It might not have been so bad if Mac had given him a little slack, but big brother didn’t understand the idea of giving an inch.
Some things never changed.
He spotted his big brother thirty yards away. Mac had been avoiding this conversation for almost two months. He’d been happy to talk business, but anytime Quinn uttered the phrase “sell the business,” Mac had changed the subject or ended the call. Now Mac had no choice but to face Quinn. He couldn’t run from the inevitable.
Quinn’s stomach growled as they passed a white tent that had three or four tables filled with food. The movie business didn’t seem so rough. Free food all day… What a life. It beat sitting behind a desk, figuring costs and running a giant company.
Donny stopped the cart at the blue tent where Mac and Trace watched the action through a series of video monitors. Black director’s chairs had the movie’s name, Dangerous Race, stenciled on the back in neon blue. A lot of people stood around with scripts or pages in their hands.
Quinn reached for his luggage, but Donny waved him off. “I
’ll put it in Ms. Bradshaw’s trailer,” the kid whispered. Apparently they now stood on sacred ground.
Someone yelled, “We’re rolling.”
Another guy yelled, “Speed.”
The director called, “Action!”
The whole place seemed to still in anticipation. Did they really plan to reenact his sister-in-law’s accident six years ago? Were they nuts?
Quinn couldn’t help but look. Though he and much of the world had seen the real accident, he still got a creepy feeling watching an actor toss a red balloon onto the track. In reality it had been filled with oil, but now it looked like water. The car reached the point where the balloon’s contents splattered and started to slide. It looked eerily like the actual event. Movie magic at its best or a good stunt driver?
Frozen in place, Quinn’s whole body tensed at the squeal of tires and he couldn’t help the whispered oath that erupted from his lips when the car hit the wall broadside. Like magic, it flipped up in the air and tumbled over and over and over. Car parts flew in every direction and the unmistakable sound of metal-meets-the-road grated on his nerves.
A tense Trace rose from her chair, wearing her usual baggy khakis and cropped top. Dressed in crisp dark jeans and a white T-shirt, Mac rested his hand on his wife’s nape. The evidence of their solid relationship was in every touch. And they constantly touched. Quinn couldn’t imagine finding something like that for himself. But then he couldn’t imagine waking up with the same woman every day for the rest of his life either.
The extras in the grandstand didn’t have to be acting to show their horror at the accident they watched. It didn’t matter that this was supposed to happen. It was damn terrifying to see.
Once the car finally stilled upside down, the director yelled, “Cut.”
A team of people ran to the car, carrying a range of items from fire extinguishers to medical equipment. An eerie silence settled over the track as people waited to see if the driver had survived. A man dressed in a race suit knelt next to the driver’s side of the car. After a minute, he reached in and pulled the driver out before giving a victorious fist in the air, signaling that he was healthy. A collective sigh and simultaneous cheer erupted as crew members and extras cheered and applauded.
