On Her Side

by Beth Andrews

  “While I’m sure that’s excellent advice—and comes from your own personal experience—I don’t need it. It’s not illegal to have a conversation with someone. Unless, of course, you know something about the law I don’t?” she asked in a sweet, condescending tone that grated on his last nerve.

  He raised his eyebrows. “You always have that ego, or did it come with the law degree?”

  “It’s not ego. I just meant—”

  “I know what you meant.” She wanted to prove how smart she was—so much smarter than him because she went to some fancy college while he was lucky to finish high school. So much better than him by virtue of her last name. “And I don’t care what the cops do with you. Arrest you for trespassing, cite you for loitering or give you a ticket for being a pain-in-the-ass. Doesn’t matter to me as long as they get you out of my hair and out of my garage.”

  Biting her lower lip, she regarded him warily as if trying to figure out if he was serious. “Okay,” she said with a decisive nod, “if that’s the way you want it—”

  “It is,” he assured her, mimicking her somber tone.

  “Fine.” Her sigh was very much that of a poor, put-upon female forced to deal with a brainless, tactless male. “We’ll do things your way. But for the record,” she said, wagging her finger at him like some librarian to a naughty schoolboy—never one of his favorite fantasies, “let me just say I’m not happy about this. Not one bit.”

  “Life’s tough that way. Best get used to it.”

  “Thank you for those words of wisdom,” she said so solemnly he didn’t doubt she was messing with him. “I will endeavor to keep them in mind.”

  Endeavor. Jesus. Who talked like that?

  She strode away, her back rigid, her arms swinging like one of those women he saw power-walking in Hanley Park each morning.

  Except, she didn’t march her irritating self out the door. She brushed past him, crossed to the long shelf behind the lift and stared at the tools there as if trying to figure out which one went best with her outfit.

  A prickle of trepidation formed between his shoulder blades. What was she up to?

  Finally she grabbed a small crowbar and held it up as she walked toward him. “I’m borrowing this.”

  His muscles tensed, and the prickle morphed into an itch of warning. Not of physical violence—though he didn’t doubt this piece of fluff was capable of it. Everyone was. But that whatever she planned on doing with that crowbar was going to piss him off but good.

  “You plan on beating me over the head for not talking to you?” he asked mildly, his hands at his sides, his weight on the balls of his feet in case he had to defend himself.

  “Of course not,” she said, passing him by without taking so much as a swing. “That would be a little overkill, don’t you think?”

  She walked into the sunshine and he figured his skull was safe—for now. Unable to resist, he followed her, stopping to lean against the door frame as she marched up to her car, raised the bar over her shoulder like a batter ready for a grand slam—and swung hard. Her headlight exploded in a spray of glass. Pieces clung to her dress, sparkling against the dark material. More rained down onto the pavement.

  And people thought he was dangerous.

  “Lady,” he said, straightening, “you’ve got a sparkplug loose up in that head of yours.”

  She strolled over to the other headlight and took it out as well. Cocking one hip, she studied her handiwork for a moment then started whaling away at the grill, the clang of metal on metal setting his teeth on edge.

  She didn’t have the strength to do much damage to the grill, though she gave it her best shot—no pun intended. But what she lacked in muscle, she made up for in enthusiasm. She grunted with exertion, her hips swaying in time with her swings, the hem of her dress lifting to show a few more inches of her thighs.

  He might have enjoyed the sight if he didn’t want to wring her pretty neck.

  Griffin glanced behind him. He could go back inside, close the door and pretend this whole bat-shit crazy episode had never happened. He was tempted, sorely tempted to do just that. But he had customers scheduled to arrive soon and traffic was picking up along Willard Avenue. It was only a matter of time before someone noticed what the psycho blonde was doing.

  And wonder what he’d done to drive her to it.

  He stormed over and grabbed the bar on one of her upswings, plucking it from her hand. “Knock it off,” he growled, frustration eating at him, making him think about taking a few swings at the vehicle himself. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”

  “I’m done anyway,” she said, breathing hard. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright—with temper? Or insanity? “Now, let’s go inside so we can discuss how you can help me track down your father.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  GOOD LORD, but Griffin York was beautiful.

  His hair, a rich shade of chocolate-brown, fell past the collar of his T-shirt in tousled waves and yet did nothing to soften the sharp line of his jaw, the harsh slash of his cheekbones. His brows were thick and drawn together as he studied her warily, his green eyes flecked with gold. He had a slight dimple in his chin, broad shoulders, a flat stomach and muscular arms.

  Beautiful and, she realized, pissed off.

  What a crying shame. Someone that pretty shouldn’t scowl so much.

  “You,” he bit out, “are a crazy person.”

  Nora’s hands stung from the reverberations of hitting the car with the crowbar, her heart raced from her exertion. “Not crazy. Just determined.”

  Although, she thought with a glance at her poor car, she might plead temporary insanity. But it had felt surprisingly good—in a therapeutic way—to hit something after all the trauma and drama of the past few weeks. After the frustration of realizing the local police couldn’t, or wouldn’t be able to bring Dale York to justice.

  “You keep telling yourself that,” Griffin said in his gravelly voice.

  She hooked her pinkie under a strand of hair stuck to her temple, narrowed her eyes at him. Okay, she was trying to be fair here. She didn’t know enough about Griffin to judge him, to dislike him as her sisters did. To mistrust or fear him because he had a less than stellar reputation.

  Yes, she was trying to be fair and he wasn’t making it easy.

  “You said that unless I had a problem with my car, there was nothing for us to talk about.” She gestured to her car. “Well, I have a car problem now.”

  His gaze went from her to her car and back again. “What’s to stop me from kicking you out of here anyway?”

  “Oh, let’s see. How about integrity? A latent sense of decency? Or maybe everyone is right about you. Maybe you are just like your father.”

  His jaw worked, his mouth a thin line, and for a moment, she regretted the low blow. But a good attorney knew not only which questions to ask, but which argument to make to get the win.

  And there was no win she wanted more than to see Dale York spend the rest of his life behind bars for her mother’s murder. But first, she had to find him.

  “You want to talk,” Griffin said tightly. “You’ll have to do it while I work.” Then he turned and walked back into the garage.

  The man put a new spin on the word stubborn.

  Luckily so did she. And so far, she was ahead of the game since he’d stopped threatening to call the cops on her. Not that the police would really arrest her. But they would send someone out to check what was going on, which meant Layne would find out Nora was there.

  And she wanted to keep that little tidbit of information to hersel
f for…oh…forever. Or longer.

  Inhaling deeply, she shook the glass fragments from her dress. Looked at her car once more. She winced. She’d only had it a few months. It’d been a gift—an extravagant, thoughtful gift—from her aunt and uncle upon her graduation from law school. Maybe her family was right. Maybe she was a bit impulsive from time to time.

  But at least she got the job done. And that was all that mattered.

  Not seeing Griffin in the garage, she headed toward the direction he’d come from when she’d first arrived. She found him in a cramped office searching through the piles of paper on a metal desk. She scratched her elbow. Great. She was probably breaking out in hives from this mess. How did he get any work done?

  “Nice office,” she lied, crossing to check out a yellowed calendar on the wall. Pursing her lips, she studied the photo of a brunette with huge, curly hair, melon-size breasts and a teeny, tiny black bikini, sprawled across the hood of a white Lamborghini. “May 1987, huh? I take it a memorable event happened that month you like to be reminded of?”

  He straightened, resentment and anger rolling off of him like waves crashing onto shore. “Knock it off.”

  “Knock what off?” she asked with a smile as she tucked her hands behind her back. God only knew what sort of flesh-eating disease lingered on these surfaces.

  He waved a hand in the air. “Your whole Little Miss Sunshine routine.”

  “Routine?”

  “Yeah, your act where you pretend there’s some sort of holy light shining down on your head while you shoot rainbows from your ass. Knock it off because I’m not buying it.”

  Bristling, she ground her teeth together behind her grin. “It’s not an act. It’s called being pleasant. Friendly.”

  He swept up a black bandana from the desk. “We’re not friends.”

  “No kidding,” she muttered. Which was fine with her. She had more than enough friends already. She certainly didn’t need to add one bitter, antagonistic, angry, rude man to the list. And if he couldn’t be bothered with social niceties, then he could kiss her rainbow-shooting ass.

  Jerk.

  “Where’s your father?” she asked, no longer caring if she sounded haughty or demanding.

  Setting his foot on the seat of the chair behind the desk, he laid the bandana on his jean-covered thigh and quickly folded it into a strip. “As I’ve already told Chief Taylor, and your sister, I have no idea.”

  “You must have heard from him at some point during the past eighteen years.”

  “Not even once.”

  What could she say to that? They’d never heard from their mother and had never thought anything other than she hadn’t cared enough to contact them. Of course, now they knew she’d been dead all those years, but before the truth had come out, no one had questioned Valerie’s lack of communication with her family. Did Nora have any right to doubt Griffin now?

  “Let’s back up a bit here,” she said, digging a small notebook out of her purse. She tucked it under her arm and searched for a pen. “We’ll start at the—”

  “I’m not sure how much clearer I can be. I don’t know where he is.”

  Damn it, why was it she could never find a pen when she needed one? Giving up she gingerly picked up a pen from his desk, held it between the tips of her fingers. “I believe you.”

  He shook his hair back and put the bandana on, tied it behind his head. “You have no idea what that means to me.”

  Not much if the sardonic lift of his mouth was anything to go by. So much for her thinking he’d be more receptive to helping her if he thought she was on his side.

  “Whether or not you are aware of your father’s current whereabouts is irrelevant,” she said, “because I’ve hired a private investigator to track him down.” But instead of sounding certain and resolute, she came across as smug and, she hated to admit it, slightly obsessive.

  “Industrious little thing, aren’t you?” he murmured. She didn’t take it as a compliment. “What does your family think of that?”

  “They’re all for it.”

  He set his hands on his hips, the faded material of his green T-shirt pulling tight across his muscular chest. “You’ll give lawyers a bad reputation lying that way, angel.”

  Angel. Well, it was better than Nancy. Even if he did say angel the same way normal people said tapeworm. Still, the only reason he refused to call her by her given name was to prove he couldn’t be bothered to remember it.

  That it bugged her was her own damn fault.

  And what was up with him reading her so easily? How could he possibly know her family had no idea she’d hired a P.I. from Boston? Not that she planned on keeping that information from them indefinitely. She had every intention of telling them. After Dale was found and arrested for her mother’s murder.

  “The more background information the P.I. has,” she said, ignoring her unease, her guilt at keeping a secret from her family, “the easier it will be for him to do his job.” Swinging her purse onto her shoulder, she took the notebook in one hand, held the pen poised over the paper. “Does your father have any living relatives? Anyone he may have sought out after leaving Mystic Point?”

  The dark fabric of the bandana made his eyes seem lighter. Colder. “I get what you’re after, and I guess I can even understand where you’re coming from—”

  “Hooray,” she said, her tone all sorts of wry.

  “But I can’t help you.”

  “You mean you won’t.”

  He scratched under his jaw. “Either way, the end result’s the same.”

  “If you’re uncomfortable discussing this with me, you can talk to the P.I. directly.” Her words were rushed. Desperate. “Just give him five, ten minutes of your time, answer a few quick—”

  “No.”

  She shook her head. “But you can help us. It’s the right thing to do.”

  And that meant everything to her. Doing what was right. What was best for others.

  It was one of the many things that proved she was the exact opposite of her mother.

  “I’m not interested in doing what’s right,” he said so simply, she had no choice but to believe him. To resent him for it.

  “If you won’t help, maybe your mother would be willing to give me some answers.”

  He edged closer to her, his expression hard, his eyes glittering. Wishing she still had the crowbar—just in case—she stepped back, held the notebook over her furiously pounding heart. “You stay away from my mother.”

  She didn’t mistake his quiet words for a request or even an order. They were a warning, a challenge as subtle and soft as the summer breeze.

  Pulling her shoulders back, she forgot her nerves, her momentary fear of him. She never backed down from a challenge. “But you and your mom may be able to help find Dale. Isn’t that what you want?”

  “It’s not really a question of what I want,” he said, watching her carefully. “This—you being here, hiring some Sherlock Holmes wannabe to waste his time and your money searching for the old man—it’s all about what you want.”

  “He needs to pay for what he did to my mother,” she said through her teeth.

  Surely even someone as cocky, as solitary as Griffin could see why he should help her. How important it was.

  “Even if you do find him, there’s no guarantee he’ll be convicted of anything. Trust me, the best thing that could happen for everyone is for Dale to remain missing. Leave the past alone.” He glanced at the clock on the wall. “Now, I have work to do. Which means we’re done.”

  She gaped at his back as he walked away. “Have you suffered a recent brain injury?” she called, but he kept going.

  She didn’t move. Couldn’t, not with her thoughts spinning, panic strangling her. He meant it. He wasn’t going to help her. And she wasn
’t going to be able to persuade him otherwise. He was too cynical to charm. Too sharp for her to outwit.

  She bit the inside of her cheek. It wasn’t supposed to go this way. She never failed. Never. Had never gotten anything less than an A in any subject, had reached every goal she’d ever set for herself, from getting the lead in her sixth grade’s production of Our Town, to making the varsity softball squad as a high school freshman, to graduating law school at the top of her class.

  But Griffin refused to be swayed in his position by her passion for truth, justice and the American way, her sense of morality or sparkling personality.

  It was as if she’d stepped into some weird dimension where she didn’t get her own way.

  She couldn’t say she liked it here much.

  She drummed her fingers against a bare corner of Griffin’s desk. She had two choices: she could stay and keep bashing her head against the wall that was Griffin York’s stubbornness.

  Or she could cut her losses and get the hell out of there before any damage was done. She thought of her car, her stomach turning with nausea and regret. Make that before any serious, irreparable damage was done. She’d back off, regroup and strengthen her case before trying again.

  And when she came back—and she would—Griffin wouldn’t know what hit him.

  Out in the garage, Griffin stood under the car on the lift, his back to her. He reached up and did something under the car, the muscles in his upper back contracting under his taut shirt. Warmth suffused her, settled in her lower stomach. She ignored it.

  “I have to get to work,” she said as oil ran into the funnel and dripped into the plastic jug. “Why don’t we continue this conversation at a more convenient time? How about dinner tonight? My treat,” she added quickly in case he thought she was angling for him to pay.