Warwicke Honeybun heard them long before he saw them. A man’s voice spoke in angry tones and a woman’s voice…shrill with emotion…responded. The voices were coming from the other side of a trailer rig, one of several that were parked in the lot around the Speedway. He was about to turn around and take another route, giving them their privacy, when he heard the sound of flesh hitting flesh and the woman crying out. Warwicke broke into a run and rounded the back of the trailer.

The sight that met him when he came around the rig made his blood boil. “Hey!”

The woman was on the ground. The man had a hand on one of her shoulders and his fingers curled into a cocked fist in front of her face. She’d covered her face with both hands and was waiting for him to hit her.

He straightened away from her and let go of her shoulder when Warwicke called out. Warwicke strode toward him, recognizing him as, Casio Lautaro, a high-point Indy car driver.

The man’s dark eyes flashed and he clenched both fists, taking an aggressive stance as Warwicke approached.

Still, he wasn’t expecting Warwicke’s initial response to his obvious abuse of the woman on the ground.

Warwicke didn’t even slow down as he reached Lautaro. His fist struck the man’s face and he grabbed the front of his shirt, “What are you doing, man? You don’t hit a woman. What’s wrong with you?”

Lautaro rubbed his jaw and glared at Warwicke. “Stay out of this, Honeybun. You don’t know what you’re sticking your nose into.”

“I know exactly what I saw here. And I’d better never see it again. Or I’ll make sure you never set foot on an American track again.”

Warwicke shoved the guy away from him and Lautaro stumbled backward several steps before regaining his balance. He glared at the woman on the ground one last time before walking away, still rubbing his jaw.

Warwicke turned to the woman and found her pushing herself to her feet. He put a helping hand under one slender arm and she jerked it away, turning to him with fire in her dark eyes.

Warwicke lifted both hands and stepped back. “Only trying to help, Fabiana.”

She pushed mahogany brown hair, like the finest silk, away from a creamy caramel cheek that had a suspicious shadow on it. Warwicke’s fists clenched in anger. She’d be sporting an ugly bruise by morning. The woman straightened and glared at him. “I don’t want you to tell anyone about this.”

Warwicke studied her for a long moment. The light from a distant lamp touched her lithe form and softly highlighted her angular features. She was a beautiful woman, known by all the men around the track as Fabiana the frosty. Finally he said, “You should tell security so they can walk you to your car at night.”

She was shaking her head in the negative before he finished the sentence. “I can handle this. I don’t want anyone else to know. Promise me!”

Warwicke was reluctant to make her that promise, but something in the way she held herself so stiff and straight…something in the defiant tilt of her head…warned him that she would engage her legendary determination in his direction if he didn’t agree, so he nodded.

Deflating like a helium balloon at the North Pole, she jammed her hands into the pockets of her jeans.

“Would you like me to walk you to your car?”

Fabiana shook her head and turned. She walked a few steps away from him and then stopped but didn’t turn back. Staring off into the dimly lit parking lot she said, “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. I won’t either.”

She bobbed her head once and started off.

Warwicke watched until she climbed into her car and drove away. He wondered what was behind the scene he’d interrupted. He doubted Fabiana and Casio Lautaro had a relationship. Although Lautaro seemed to do well with the ladies, he wasn’t exactly known for his kindness and respect for them. Warwicke couldn’t see Fabiana, with her fiery pride and fierce independence, taking Lautaro’s crap. She’d survived as one of very few women in the racing world by being tough and determined. It hadn’t won her a lot of friends, but it had won her reluctant respect and a spot on the track for most races. In fact, she’d ended the previous season with stats that were very close to his.

Warwicke shook his head, knowing that logic rarely entered into human relationships.

Especially the romantic kind.

He headed toward his Ferrari Enzo. It had been a long day of practice and strategy meetings and when he got home, he needed to put in the usual hour with the machines and weights. He sighed wearily. Some days it seemed like a good idea to quit racing and just go bag groceries somewhere.