Countdown: Grayson

by Boniface, Allie

  “Grayson?” Kara was waving her hand in front of his eyes.

  “Sorry.”

  “Maybe you want to take your dog back to your place? Take care of things at work?”

  “Good idea.” But as soon as he took Turk’s collar to guide him toward the door, the dog began to growl. “Turk, buddy, it’s me. Come on.” But the dog actually planted his feet and refused to move. Grayson was stunned. “In eight years, he’s never acted like this. I’ve had him since he was a puppy.”

  Turk was the only stable thing in Grayson’s life, the only thing that never judged him or left him. The two of them had survived a broken marriage, living in four different states, and sleeping in Grayson’s truck for days on end. But right then it was like Turk had turned into a different animal.

  He tried once more. “Turk, let’s go. Back to the house.”

  Turk growled and shook his head until Grayson had to let go of the collar. “I don’t know what the hell’s gotten into him. I’m sorry.”

  “Animals can be pretty sensitive,” Kara said. “Looks like he’s decided his new job is full-time babysitter.”

  “Well, I can’t leave him here.”

  “You might have to. I don’t mind taking him along for the ride.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  She looked at him with a puzzled expression. “I have had pets before, as well as children. Just because I don’t have any now doesn’t mean I don’t know how to handle them.”

  “I can’t ask you to do that.”

  But she was already standing and putting her purse on her shoulder. “You didn’t ask. I offered. It’s not a big deal, Really. It’s better than torturing that poor dog to death.”

  “I don’t think he’s going to die.”

  She gave Turk a couple of quick pats. “He won’t now.”

  Grayson rolled his eyes. That dog probably knew exactly what he was doing, ingratiating himself so he could spend the day with two women who looked and smelled a whole lot better than Grayson or Kit and Caboodle. He was about to head back to his place when he saw a small puddle of water on the floor near the kitchen sink.

  “Kara?”

  She was arranging Jade in the car seat. “Yes?”

  “You’ve got some water on the floor over there.” He grabbed a paper towel and kneeled to wipe it up.

  “Oh, thanks. You didn’t need to do that.” She shook her head. “I think I have a leak under the sink. It’s been happening the last week or so.”

  Grayson opened the cabinet door to take a look. Like the rest of the house and garage, the contents were meticulously lined up: cleaners and detergents, a box of sponges, a fire extinguisher, and two rolls of paper towels. Water dripped from the pipe onto the floor. “Yep, you’ve got a leak.”

  “Terrific. Know a plumber?”

  “You don’t need one. I can fix it in about ten minutes.”

  “Really?”

  Grayson didn’t bother answering, just gave a quick nod as he jogged out the front door and back to his place, where he collected a bucket, wrench, and a handful of washers. He might not be able to change a diaper, but he could fix a leaky pipe with his eyes closed and one hand tied behind his back. His hard-nosed father had made sure of that.

  “Grayson, you don’t have to—” Kara began as he knelt in front of the cabinet again.

  “And you don’t have to take Jade to the doctor or let my mentally disturbed dog go along for the ride.” He glanced up and let his gaze linger on that beautiful face of hers for a few more moments. “So how about we both do each other a favor?”

  “Sounds good to me.” She leaned against the counter and pushed her hair from her eyes. Something arced between them, a spark that was gone before he let himself acknowledge it.

  He was pretty sure her favor outweighed his by about a hundredfold, but if she was willing to pretend that fixing a leaky pipe equaled taking care of an abandoned child, he’d stay on his knees and let her throw that smile his way all day long.

  1:00 p.m.

  Grayson watched Kara drive down the road toward town. I should’ve gone with her. Jade had been left on his doorstep, not hers. He rubbed the back of his neck. Even his dog had done the right thing and jumped into the car. But Grayson didn’t know the first thing about babies. At least Kara had experience. And he couldn’t really do the searching around town that he wanted to unless he went alone. He’d frequented some pretty shady places in the last couple of years, and he’d rather she didn’t know about them. Something about her made him want to be a better man, a responsible man who did things like fix kitchen sinks and adopt stray animals on a regular basis.

  Dust rose into the air behind her, and he stood there until both the car and the dust faded. Then he walked over to his place, grabbed his bag and his wallet, and locked up. Time would get away from him the longer he stood there lost in thought.

  He swung his truck in a wide circle, leaving his cabin and the woods behind him. Fourth Road ran into Highway 14, which wound toward town in a twisty three miles that felt more like ten. The speed limit was posted as forty-five, and Grayson usually kept it there. Today, though, urgency pressed his toe to the accelerator, and he flew around the curves, pushing sixty. Only when a doe and twin fawns leapt in front of the truck did he slow down.

  Won’t do anyone any good if you’re dead on the side of the road.

  He slammed on the brakes, muttered a few choice words, and covered the rest of the distance at a slightly slower pace. At the bottom of the mountain, Highway 14 split. A left turn would take him east, toward the bigger town of Greenway. A right turn would take him west and into the heart of Yawketuck. Main Street was about a mile long, if you started measuring at the Red Flag convenience store and included all the storefronts, the bank, and the car wash at the other end.

  Hollister Training Centre was right off Main Street, a jog around the back side of town and near the entrance ramp for the interstate. He’d paid for a billboard with last year’s surprise profits, nothing big or fancy, just the name of his gym, the phone number and website, and his profile.

  He’d balked at including himself on the sign. “Why the hell do people need to see me?” he asked when the woman at the marketing firm suggested it.

  She slid her hand along his arm. “Because you’re the perfect advertisement,” she answered, her lashes low on her cheeks and the purr in her voice unmistakable.

  They’d ended up in bed, she’d given him a discount on the billboard, and he’d agreed to have a photographer come in and shoot some pictures the following week. He felt like an ass the whole time, and his employees had teased him nonstop, but when his client load multiplied by five in the next six months, he had to admit she was right.

  Now he didn’t even glance at the billboard as he drove into the lot and parked. It was situated on the edge of HTC’s property, more visible to cars on the interstate than anyone driving by in town. It wasn’t a place where locals dropped in to walk the treadmills or do sit-ups, though Grayson was trying to change that. He hoped boot camp would take hold and word of mouth would do the trick. He loved training young boxers, guys so hungry for a competitive fight, but he knew that wasn’t where his bread and butter lay.

  He didn’t bother locking his truck, just put his keys in his pocket and headed inside. The hallway was lined with framed prints of fighters: a couple of himself from a lifetime ago, a few iconic figures like Muhammad Ali and Floyd Mayweather, and the rest of his own clients, including the two who’d turned pro last year.

  Grayson slowed in front of the last ones. Damn, he was proud. He might not be any kind of father figure outside of these walls, but in here? He could shape bodies and train minds, proven by the success of those who’d moved on from HTC. He’d never say it out loud, but these guys had saved him. Even on the worst nights, when he ended up at the bottom of a bottle or in the bed of yet another woman he barely knew, the sun coming up in the morning reminded him to drag his sorry ass to work so he could get his client
s’ lives in order. If he couldn’t do it for himself, at least he could do it for them.

  “Hey, boss.” Will Connors, HTC’s front desk guy, part-time trainer, and part-time custodian, stuck his head around the corner. “You’re in early. First client’s at two, right?”

  Grayson pulled up a stool. Behind Will was the rest of the training center, with two boxing rings and various workout equipment around the room. Tall ceilings with exposed ductwork, just the way he’d wanted it. More framed prints hanging on the walls, mostly motivational quotes, and two locker rooms at the back.

  He pulled out the old-fashioned paper calendar he kept in a drawer, a backup to his electronic one, and ran a finger down the day. “One at two and one at four, actually. Think you can take care of ’em for me?”

  Will’s eyes widened. The kid was just nineteen, but he’d been working at HTC since he was in high school. He had dreams of being a pro fighter, but Grayson didn’t think he had the balls or the physique to make it big-time. Still, Grayson wasn’t a dream-killer. He’d let Will figure out for himself that his strength lay in customer relations, in working that winning smile and getting people who never normally set foot inside a gym to sign up for a year’s membership. The kid was kind, personable, and good-looking enough to be on a magazine cover, which was why Grayson paid him twice minimum wage and let him train for free. Today, though, he needed Will to do more than answer phones or schedule clients.

  “I’ve got some stuff that came up,” he said. “It’s Hal Folsom at two and Ken Keneally at four. I’ve got their workouts written up.” He reached for the laptop and pulled up the files to print them.

  “Seriously?” Will said.

  “Seriously. You’ll be fine. Those guys know you.”

  “Maybe, but they’re paying for you.”

  “Tell you what, I’ll text ’em both and let ’em know you’ll be filling in. If they want to cancel and reschedule, fine. Chances are they won’t.” Both guys wanted nothing more than to come in and spar, work on technique, and then lift for a while. Will could handle that just fine.

  Grayson slid off the stool and did his usual once-over of the place, checking the rings, the equipment, the locker rooms, the bathrooms. He paid a cleaning service, but it was his name and face on the billboard outside.

  His phone went off inside his pocket, and by the time he returned to the desk ten minutes later, he held out his phone so Will could see the two text messages.

  No prob, Hal had written. See u soon.

  Sounds good, Ken echoed.

  “There you go,” Grayson said. “The place is all yours today.”

  On impulse, he sent Kara a quick text. Everything OK? Even being inside these walls, his second home, he couldn’t get his mind off Jade. That face. The note. The way his heart had jumped upon finding her.

  She’s yours.

  She couldn’t be.

  And yet, of course, she could. Grayson’s behavior the last few years absolutely could’ve resulted in a baby he didn’t know about. Guilt and shame tasted gritty in the back of his mouth, and he swallowed. Ninety-six days and counting. He’d fucked up, sure, but he was on the other side of all that.

  We’re good, Kara texted back a few seconds later. In the waiting room. Turk’s in the car. Not happy.

  Grayson chuckled. He could only imagine.

  “Everything okay, boss?” Will rested both arms on the counter. His hair, long and streaked blond, fell into his eyes. Grayson teased him sometimes that he looked like he belonged on a California beach somewhere, not southern Virginia.

  “Yep. Will be.”

  “Let me know if you need to me to do anything else.”

  “Thanks.” Grayson was already on his way out the door. “Lock up when you’re done, will ya?”

  “You got it.”

  Then Grayson was out the door, back in his truck, and on the interstate. It wasn’t the most direct way to get to Greenway, or the prettiest, but it was the fastest. He needed to get to the convention center and do some scouting around. He had a hunch who might’ve left Jade on his doorstep, and if the woman was still in town, he knew where to find her.

  2:00 p.m.

  Dr. Sandie Park finished her examination of Jade, pulled off her gloves, and sat down. The room was painted in colorful tones of green and yellow, with pictures of elephants and giraffes hanging on the walls. “Well, she seems like she’s in perfect health. My guess is she’s right around four months old.” She paused. “But you have no idea where she came from?”

  “None,” Kara said. “My neighbor literally showed up with her on my doorstep this morning, looking like he’d seen a ghost. Said he saw a red car driving away from his house, and the next thing he knew, he opened his front door to find her.”

  “You’re still living up on the mountain?”

  Kara nodded.

  Sandie folded her hands around one knee. “I hate to say this, but why would someone deliberately drive all the way up Yawketuck Mountain, to the very last dead-end road they could find, unless they knew where they were going? It’s not like she was dropped on the steps of the police station, or even left at Helping Hands. If you or he hadn’t been home, she could’ve been left alone for hours. Wild animals could’ve gotten her, anything. Whoever left her knew where they were taking her.” She paused. “It seems pretty likely the baby is his, doesn’t it? I mean, there’s a note and everything.

  “I know. I’ve thought about all that.”

  “This is Grayson Hollister we’re talking about, right? The guy whose face and big ol’ tattooed arms are on the billboard I pass every time I take the interstate to work?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “From what I hear, he’s got a reputation a mile long.”

  “Believe me, I know.”

  Both women glanced at Jade, who seemed perfectly content to sit in her car seat and grab at her feet.

  Sandie gave her friend a sly smile. “Is the reputation deserved? Is he that good-looking in person?”

  “He’s pretty hot.” Kara blushed, which made her feel like she was sixteen again. Make that fourteen. At sixteen she was too jaded to blush; at fourteen, she’d still believed in crushes and romance and happily ever after. “Though I don’t know how true the reputation is.” She tried to think back. She didn’t often see cars on their road, or parked at Grayson’s place, though he could certainly bring women to his cabin and Kara would never be the wiser. She knew what people whispered around town, that he’d run out of room on his bedpost for all the notches marking one-night stands. And she’d heard about more than one jilted girlfriend who’d thrown a drink in his face or slashed his tires for revenge.

  But Grayson had seemed like a pretty down-to-earth guy that morning, even fixing her leaky sink without her asking. She’d felt his gaze on her backside once or twice, and she hadn’t minded the attention, but he’d been a gentleman the entire time. Hadn’t said or done anything she could’ve taken the least bit flirtatiously.

  “Would he take a paternity test, you think?” Sandie asked. “It’d be easy enough to find out whether he’s the father.”

  “I don’t know. We live next to each other, but you know how it is on the mountain. Being neighbors doesn’t mean we talk much.”

  Sandie was quiet for a minute. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

  They’d known each other almost five years, and occasionally met up for dinner or coffee, but Kara’s heart still skipped at the serious tone in Sandie’s voice. “Sure.”

  “With everything in your own past, are you sure you want to take this on?”

  The directness of the question caught her off guard. A chill passed over her, and she gripped the edges of the chair as sweat slipped down her back.

  “Please don’t take that the wrong way,” Sandie went on. “I wouldn’t ask if we weren’t friends. This is off the record. It’s just that being around a baby can trigger all kinds of reactions and emotions, especially for someone who’s been through the thing
s you have.”

  Kara pulled her hair from her neck and wound it around one hand. She’d confided in so few people over the years. Sometimes she forgot anyone else knew the pain of her past. “It’s been a very long time. I’m fine.”

  “Good. Because things like this can jar memories. And not in a good way.” She laid a hand on Kara’s knee. “I’m just making sure. As a friend.”

  For an instant, a dark, angry face flashed in front of Kara’s eyes. A raised hand. The smell of alcohol, and Harrison crying in his crib.

  “Shut that brat up.”

  “You shut up.”

  An open palm across her face. A shriek from Harrison. Silence from her. Kara had learned not to cry, not to react at all. It was the quickest, easiest way to get him to leave.

  She blinked, and the memory was gone. “I’m fine. Really. But thanks for asking.”

  “You’ll call me if that changes, right?”

  “I will. Promise.”

  Sandie got up from her chair. “Let’s do dinner sometime. It’s been too long. We get so caught up in everything we do at work that months go by and the only person I see on a regular basis outside of the clinic is the guy at the liquor store.”

  They both laughed.

  “Dinner would be great,” Kara agreed. “And I know what you mean. For me it’s the guy who bags my groceries each week, but still.”

  Sandie jotted something on the chart she’d started for Jade. “I can tell you what I have to do professionally when it comes to this little one.”

  “Report her to Social Services.”

  Sandie nodded.

  “Can you give me until tomorrow? Grayson seemed to think he might know who the mother is. He’s out looking for her now.” Kara looked at her hands. “If it’s someone who’s just a scared kid, maybe did it in a panic, and he can get her to come back around, I’d hate to get authorities involved.”