Going Hard: Steele Ridge Series

by Kelsey Browning

  He shot Jonah, who at least had the good sense not to grin, a hard look. “We’ll talk about this more, later. But I’ll be reaching out to people here in town in the meantime, trying to instill a little confidence in the future of Steele Ridge.”

  “And you think that’s the answer to our problems?”

  “I think it’s a start.” Then Grif stood and followed his mom out of the room, ready to face a five-foot-two firing squad.

  14

  In the kitchen, his mom stared him down. “What did you mean by that crude comment? I’ve tried to understand and support your life in California, but now I find out you have a child out there?”

  “No.” He couldn’t lie to her because this whole thing was about to blow wide open. Whether or not he was ready. “I have one here.”

  “Wha…What? Who?” Her eyes immediately filled with something he wanted to turn away from. Confusion. Pain. Disappointment.

  Even at his age, talking with his mom about sex wasn’t the most comfortable thing in the world. But it had to be done. “Aubrey Parrish is my daughter.”

  “Oh my God. And you never told me—”

  “I didn’t know.” What he wanted to do was turn away and walk out the door. Instead, he wrapped his mom in a hug. “When you pointed out how she resembled Evie the other day, something clicked.”

  “I never knew you and Carlie Beth…”

  Thank God he was looking over his mom’s head and not directly into her eyes. “Just once. Right before I left for California.”

  “Why…” Her voice broke, breaking his heart in the process. “Why didn’t she ever say anything?”

  “I don’t know, but I have to assume she never planned for me to find out about Aubrey.”

  “But we’re her family. It doesn’t get much more simple than that. I should go over there and give Carlie Beth a piece of my mind.”

  He drew back and held his mom by the upper arms. “No. I need some time to handle all this.”

  “I have a grandbaby.”

  No, Aubrey wasn’t a baby anymore. The anger inside Grif kindled higher. Did Carlie Beth have any idea what she’d done? How she’d cheated the people around her? How she’d cheated her own daughter?

  “I want to get to know her. Better, I mean. Take her shopping and—”

  “I’m working on that.” Working on it? Hell, he’d bought and paid for it. But now that he’d thrown his weight around, he realized he didn’t know jackshit about teenage girls. Nothing more than how he’d felt about them when he was a teen himself. And that sure did nothing to ease his mind.

  Besides, when he’d confronted Carlie Beth, he’d done two things an expert negotiator should never do—become emotional and walk out. Now he was second-guessing everything, both his big-dick approach and what the hell to do with the so-called ticket into his daughter’s life he’d bought and paid for.

  “Mom, I’m staying in Steele Ridge for a little while, so I plan to rent a place in town.”

  “There’s plenty of space here.”

  “I know.” He pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead. “But I need to do this my way.”

  Rather than handling his messed-up personal life right away, Grif called a real estate agent, telling her he needed to rent a place with both an apartment and a dedicated work space. He’d be damned if he would set up shop in City Hall.

  The Realtor showed him the old Murchison building where the five-and-dime had been when he and his brothers were kids. He wasn’t crazy about the big windows across the front, preferring to work without people stopping by and ogling him, but it had an apartment upstairs and he didn’t have the time or energy to look for something else.

  So the next morning, he stood on the sidewalk in front of his new digs and stared at the white banquet table and a metal folding chair he’d had delivered. His assistant would laugh his ass off if he saw this setup. A steep step down from Grif’s Robert Brou Wave desk and Eames chair back in LA.

  As steep as a North Carolina ridge.

  Jesus.

  Unfortunately, a scan down Main Street confirmed the compact business area was as lethargic as ever. Shop owners like Yvonne Winters must’ve stockpiled some savings when things were going well to survive a drought like this.

  His phone buzzed and he drew it out of his pocket to find he’d missed half a dozen texts and three calls from his clients. Dammit, his wheelhouse was big-dollar contract negotiations, not small-town economic development. And yet, here he was, paying more attention to whether or not anyone was strolling into the Mad Batter Bakery than he was his own clients.

  He was muscling his crappy-ass furniture through the front door when a small voice said, “Mr. Steele…Grif…Da—”

  He swung around to face Aubrey, almost taking out the door trim in the process, and she cut herself off mid-word. God, he wasn’t ready for this. Didn’t know what to say. How to explain. How to damn well act.

  Which made him a complete chickenshit. Because Carlie Beth probably hadn’t been real ready when their daughter arrived in this world.

  But what the hell did Grif know about having a kid?

  Nothing, because Carlie Beth had never given him the opportunity to learn. Never given him the opportunity to know his daughter.

  And there was a dark, gnawing place inside Grif because of it. No one took away his choices.

  No. One.

  He understood what it was like to be one in a family of a half-dozen rowdy kids. Where he’d always been slightly lost in that crowd as neither the oldest nor the youngest. Where things had always been a little lean and he’d had to make his own way in this world.

  But having his own family was something entirely different.

  And he didn’t exactly come from father-of-the-year stock. His dad hadn’t been a model, emotionally disengaging from his family little by little over the years, then eventually leaving them physically. He hadn’t run far, just to some ramshackle cabin outside of town, but it might as well have been halfway around the world.

  But Grif did know enough to stop this mental shit and say something. “Hey, Aubrey.” Then he realized it was ten o’clock on a school day and he scowled. “What are you doing here?”

  Her eyes going wide, she took a step back. “I…uh…maybe this wasn’t a good idea.” She whirled around as if about to flee, and Grif said, “Wait.”

  She turned back slowly, as if she were facing a growling dog.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”

  He expected her head to droop in shame. Instead, her chin angled up and her shoulders squared. “I’m old enough to make that decision for myself.”

  “Actually, you’re not. Unless something’s changed radically in the past fifteen years, the state of North Carolina makes that decision for you.”

  “These are mitigating circumstances.”

  God, what teenage girl used a phrase like mitigating circumstances?

  A rush of pride burst inside him. One related to him.

  He checked his watch. “Fifteen minutes, and then I’m driving you back to school.”

  One quick glance at Louise, parked in a spot in front of his newly rented space, and Aubrey said, “In that?”

  “Her.”

  “What?”

  “My car isn’t a that.”

  “Your car is a woman?”

  “Yes, but we can discuss Louise inside if you’ll get that for me.” Grif nodded toward the building’s door, and Aubrey slid around him to hold it open it so he could get his load inside. Once he had the table and chair braced against a wall, he said, “My car is definitely female. Beautiful. Curvy. And occasionally temperamental.” With a couple of yanks, he unfolded the table’s legs, then swung it to its feet.

  Then he unfolded the chair and offered it to Aubrey with a little bow, which made her giggle. “So to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”

  Settling into the chair, she said, “That’s just a nicer way of asking what I’m doing here.”

  �
��Sometimes it’s not what you say but how you say it.” Rather than pace around the table as he was tempted to, Grif boosted himself up and sat.

  “I don’t know what to call you.”

  Her simple declaration pierced his heart. His own dad might’ve been, and still was, a flaky old bastard, but Grif had always known who he was. He’d never once had to question where he came from, who he belonged to. “What do you want to call me?”

  “I’ve never had a dad.”

  Pierce? She might as well have placed a shotgun against his chest and pulled the trigger. Blam! Part of him wanted to stay pissed at Carlie Beth. But he also understood, at least a little, why she’d made the decisions she had. Aubrey had been her first and only priority. And from what he’d seen, she’d done a damn good job raising her.

  “Sweetheart”—damn, he wanted to reach out and touch his daughter’s gorgeous red hair, but something held him back—“you’ve always had a dad. We just never got a chance to know one another.”

  “What about now? Are we going to get to know one another now? Mom said you never stay in town more than four days at a time.”

  And there’d been a reason for that. It was damn hard to make something of your family name, make something of your older brother’s sacrifices, when you were sitting on your thumb in your hometown.

  But in LA, he was somebody. Somebody? Hell, he’d been the fucking golden boy of sports agents until his face had been splashed all over the LA Times, ESPN, and the sports section of every major news blog in the US last fall.

  “Well, seeing as I’ve already been here longer than that, I’d say things have changed.”

  “I don’t want to be a burden.” This time, her head did lower. “I don’t want you to hate me.”

  Screw the fact that he didn’t know what the hell he was doing. He did know when someone was off balance and hurting. For years, he’d made a living putting people in that place, and then he’d been there himself.

  He slid off the table and took Aubrey’s hand. It felt slightly foreign in his, small and fragile. Had his dad felt this out of his depth with his own kids? Maybe that was the reason the old man had bolted, because Grif had never felt this raw, this unsure in his life. And that could make a man want to run—fast and far.

  When Aubrey looked up at him, the vulnerability and fear in her eyes twisted a place deep inside him. For as long as he lived, he wouldn’t forget the courage it had taken for her to come here and ask for what she wanted.

  So he needed to man up and find the balls to deal with this situation. Figure out how to act toward her. Who to be for her.

  He gently pulled her to her feet, slowly drew her into his arms in case she wasn’t comfortable with him touching her. But she came into his embrace like a magnet. Just click, as if they should’ve been hugging like this every day of her life. Her head tucked under his chin as she clung to him.

  “I could never hate you, Aubrey Parrish,” he said against her hair, which smelled of a girlie fruit—peaches or maybe mangos.

  “Then would you…do you…mind…if I call you Dad?”

  And for the first time in his life, Grif Steele fell helplessly in love.

  * * *

  Although Grif realized he would’ve been strangely happy to have Aubrey hang out with him all day, he drove her to school with the promise that they would see one another again soon. His kid was smart, funny, sweet. And although his heart pinged when she laughed or smiled, he needed some time to figure out where to go from here.

  So he returned to his makeshift workspace, the twelve-foot ceilings and worn hex-tile making his crappy furniture look foreign and completely lacking in style. By the time he’d bought a new Steele-Ridge-business-only laptop and a few office supplies and convinced an Asheville furniture store to deliver a king-size bed the next day, all he wanted was an ice-cold beer.

  Or six.

  But when he walked into the back alley to crank up Louise and head back to his mother’s house for the night, he took one look at his car and had the simultaneous impulse to bawl and brawl.

  He’d been not thirty feet away most of the day. How the hell had someone done this to his best girl?

  Okay, now that he’d spent time with his daughter, Louise might be his second-best girl.

  Then he remembered the feel of kissing Carlie Beth—excitement and comfort all rolled into one—and Louise slid down to third.

  And that thought just pissed him off.

  Grif circled the car to find both back tires flat to the fucking rim, but that wasn’t the worst of it. It looked as if her rear lights had been smashed with a crowbar. And the passenger side door had obviously been pried open. The metal around the lock bowed out obscenely and the paint was a mess of scratches and gouges.

  Whoever the son-of-a-bitch was, he’d thankfully left Louise’s hood intact. But one glance inside told Grif the bastard hadn’t stopped with the car’s exterior.

  Four words were carved into his seats, easily readable through the windshield. The passenger side read “Go back” and the driver’s completed the thought with “to LA.”

  Shit, that had been his plan two weeks ago. Now he was knee-deep in a completely different reality. He stroked a hand over the car’s hood. “Jesus, I’m sorry, Lou.” Then he dug out his phone. One call to Maggie and another to Jonah.

  Maggie was the first one on scene—collecting evidence, taking pictures, and asking questions. Afterward, Grif sweet-talked her into releasing Louise and letting him send her to the shop. The sooner she was fixed up, the sooner he could drive her again.

  By the time Jonah screeched into the alley in his Tesla Model X, the tow truck Grif had called was backing up to secure the Maserati. Jonah jumped out of his car. “What the hell?”

  “Apparently, not everyone here is as shit-fire excited to have me around as you are.”

  His brother strode over and peered through one of Louise’s windows. “That is sacrilege.”

  “You can see why I needed a ride.” Grif stuffed his hands into his pants pockets. “I’m having her taken to Charlotte. That’s the closest city with a garage I trust to touch her.”

  “Her seats are toast.”

  “Yeah.” His fingers curled, making fists inside his pockets. “It’ll take some time to set her right.”

  “If you need to borrow mine, I can—”

  “I’ve already talked with one of the car dealerships. They’ll drop off something in the morning.”

  “Rental?”

  “No, I bought a car I can keep here. Louise obviously belongs back in LA.”

  “I don’t think that message was for her, dude.”

  “I didn’t figure.”

  “Who the hell would do something like this?” Jonah turned in a circle as if he might find the culprit right there in the alley.

  “Maybe one of the old ladies who wasn’t too happy about having to reprint her return address stickers?”

  “Can you imagine Mrs. Van Dyke wielding a crowbar? Besides, why come after you? I’m the one who changed the town name.”

  “As Reid would say, you might want to watch your six.”

  “Believe me, I’ll be watching the sixes of everyone in this family.”

  15

  Google was absolutely not Carlie Beth’s friend.

  She’d clicked on so many links since Yvonne’s pity-filled warning about Grif that she was surprised her right pointer finger wasn’t broken. How could she have missed these articles? Surely people around here had talked about it.

  Something niggled at the back of her mind, someone at the Triple B making comments about one of those damn Steele brothers finally showing his true colors. But she’d turned away and busied herself clearing empties because she’d tried hard for years to stay detached from that family.

  And now she knew what all the brouhaha was about. At least she knew what had been smeared all over the news. And she had to talk with him about it.

  The drive out to Tupelo Hill felt like it took ten
hours instead of ten minutes, and when she knocked on the front door, Mrs. Steele answered. Her eyes were shadowed and her smile was brittle around the edges.

  She obviously knew the truth and it had hurt her. “Grif told you. About Aubrey.”

  “Someone had to.” His mom’s hand flew to her mouth as if to shove back the words. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m the one who should be sorry.” Carlie Beth’s heart ached with the pain she’d obviously caused. “You have to believe my decision had nothing to do with you.”

  “Why then?”

  “He didn’t deserve to have his future turned upside down. He was so young, and I knew, even then, that he was made for bigger things.”

  “What about you? Didn’t you have plans? Dreams?”

  “Plans and dreams change. I love my daughter and wouldn’t trade her for anything.” Not for a place in the National Ornamental Metal Museum.

  “Being a parent is the most important thing in the world.” Mrs. Steele's smile lost some of its sharpness and simply became sad. “And being the parent of an adult means I don’t get to butt in. It means I have to be invited in.”

  And that had to be heartbreaking as well. Carlie Beth was already headed down that path with Aubrey. How would it feel to someday be on the outside of her own daughter’s life?

  Gut-wrenching.

  “I promise to bring Aubrey by soon, but I really need to talk with Grif tonight.”

  “You’ll find him down at the sports complex.” She pointed in the direction of the road that ran in front of the property.

  But when Carlie Beth pushed through the door into the facility, only a few dim security lights filtered through the gloom.

  “Hello?” she called out. “Grif, you here?”

  He damn well better not be ignoring her. She knew Aubrey had gone missing from school earlier today and had a feeling he was the reason. When she’d pressed Aubrey about it, she’d clammed up, saying it was between her and her dad.