Going Hard
Steele Ridge Series
Kelsey Browning
Kicksass Creations LLC
Going HARD
A Steele Ridge Novel, Book 2
Slick sports agent Griffin Steele is living the high life in Los Angeles, far from the shadow of the North Carolina mountains where he grew up. But when his hometown falls on hard times and needs his help, Grif reluctantly agrees to commute between coasts. He never expects the lush scenery, in the form of pretty tomboy Carlie Beth Parrish, to be such a temptation.
After an impetuous one-night stand with Grif Steele fifteen years ago, hardworking blacksmith Carlie Beth has tried to make a living and raise her daughter in the hometown she loves. Then, too-sexy-for-his-Rolex Grif blows back into town like the perfect storm, making Carlie feel less like a thirty-something mom and more like an infatuated teenager.
When a stalker targets his hometown and Grif suspects Carlie Beth might be the next victim, he can’t help but step in to protect her. But once he discovers the fourteen-year-old secret she’s been keeping from him, will he embrace the truth or will he turn his back on Steele Ridge and Carlie Beth forever?
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Published by Kicksass Creations LLC
Steele Ridge Series
The BEGINNING, A Short Prequel, Book 1
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Going HARD, Book 2
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Living FAST, Book 3
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Loving DEEP, Book 4
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Coming in 2017
Breaking FREE
Roaming WILD
Stripping BARE
To my readers who enjoy a good small-town story. I hope you’ll find Steele Ridge has it all—quirky characters, a great setting, and a little deception…along with a handful of hot heroes and the sassy women they come to love.
1
If his phone buzzed inside his suit pocket one more time today, Grif would be happy to lob it into the Pacific and watch it float toward Hawaii.
“That damn thing ever stop ringing?” his brother Jonah asked as he unfolded his lean body from the car.
“Every third Sunday between two forty-eight and three oh-two.” After years of getting a complete surge of energy each time his smartphone rang, sometimes he now fantasized about grinding it to bits beneath his heel. But then he remembered it was his livelihood. Remembered it was a symbol of all he’d accomplished.
Remembered it was his pathetic security blanket. Even if that blanket was ragged at the edges and full of holes after what had happened last fall.
Thankfully the constant calls from reporters had finally stopped, which made resisting the urge to drown his phone a little easier.
Besides, that was impossible today since he was in North Carolina instead of California. Outside his hometown’s redbrick city hall, he shut the door of his blu passione Maserati, Louise, and gave Jonah a chin lift over the roof. “Gotta get this before we go inside.”
“Be my guest.”
He hit the accept button. “Steele here.”
“Grif, we got problems.” By the man’s panicked tone and flat Midwestern accent, the caller was clearly Dean Lindstrom, the Houston Hurricanes star forward.
“Well, that’s pretty clear since you never call me when things are all sunshine and daisies.” And Grif wasn’t known as the Steele Shark throughout the pro sports industry for nothing. “What’s up?”
“The team’s head trainer is pushing for me to have that ACL surgery, made it mandatory for me to see a surgeon before I can get back on the ice. And I’m afraid the general manager is actually listening to that crap.”
Grif doubted it, but he couldn’t be away from his clients for two days without some shit hitting the fan. Something he’d had to risk because he’d needed a break from it all so damn bad. He scanned Main Street, backdropped by the Smoky Mountains on one side and part of the Pisgah National Forest on the other, and inhaled a deep breath of western North Carolina air. “Look, I’m about to walk into another meeting, but this deal will take me all of ten minutes to close. After that, I’ll talk to the trainer.”
“I need this handled today.”
“Dean, do I tell you how to out-deke a goalie in a shootout?”
“Are you crazy?”
“Then get off my ice and go do your own job.”
“When will I hear—”
“You’ll hear back from me when I have something worth saying.” Grif hit the end button and pocketed his phone. Took a second to straighten his suit coat and shoot the cuffs of his Carroll & Co. shirt.
“Problems in paradise?” Jonah was lounging against a parking meter in his normal uniform of tennis shoes, jeans, and lewd T-shirt. This particular one boasted a picture of two pigs doing the deed and said Make bacon, not war.
“Sometimes being a sports agent is like having a daycare full of two-hundred-fifty–pound toddlers.”
“At least you don’t have to shove them in high chairs and feed them creamed spinach.”
At that image, an internal shudder worked its way through him. “I don’t really understand kids.”
“Have you forgotten you were one once?”
“Back then I didn’t have to feed myself or wipe my own ass.”
With a nod toward a young mother toting one kid on her hip and holding another by the hand, Jonah said, “I think kids are kinda cool.”
“Well, you hang around Canyon Ridge long enough and maybe you can score yourself a Suzy Homemaker.” He glanced around the small downtown area again. Not a lot shaking on a Friday afternoon. Nothing like Los Angeles, where some deal, some hustle, was always going down. One car drove past and an older lady in a faded pink cocktail suit crossed at the light and moseyed into Highland Bank & Trust. “Y’all can get to work on pumping out the next generations of Steeles.”
“I’ll keep that in mind after the mayor hands over the keys to the city.” Jonah headed for the door to City Hall and Grif followed.
Yeah, that was the reason Grif was back on this coast for a few days, to help his baby brother bail out a town that would otherwise sink under the weight of debt and bad decisions. Good thing Jonah had big buckets.
But Grif still thought the whole thing was a sucker’s deal.
A half hour later, as he signed the stack of papers in front of him, Mayor Gene Hackberry looked as if he’d recently eaten a mess of chili-cheese fries and desperately needed a handful of Maalox or a big-ass belch. The older man pushed the contract across his desk, and Grif reached for it.
Jonah blocked him with a strategic elbow. “Dude, leave it alone.”
“You don’t sign anything I haven’t read.” After all, that was his superpower, negotiating multimillion-dollar contracts and making sure his clients got the best—the very best—end of the deal. Jonah might not be on Grif’s roster, but he was family, and no one screwed over one of the Steele brothers.
Grif skewered Jonah with a glare that had made major-league team owners piss themselves, but he just barked out a laugh. “You’ve read this damn thing so many times you can probably recite it like a nursery rhyme. Get off your tuffet, Miss Muffet, and let’s get the fuck on with this.”
“You’re about to sign away a lot of money.”
Jonah turned a grin on him, the sly I’ve-got-it-all-under-control one that had made him very popular among the ladies in Seattle. “I’ve got it to burn.”
True. Since Grif had helped him with the sale of Steele Trap Entertainment, his mega-successful video gaming company, Jonah could bathe in a different stack of hundreds every day and never run out. “But do you really want to be the owner of
a small North Carolina town?”
Not to mention one that was flat-out belly-up.
“No, but I want to save our hometown,” he said. “And I count myself lucky to be able to do it.”
It was Grif’s job to steer guys with too much money and too little sense away from deals like this, and here he was, watching his brother hand over bags of cash. But Jonah was obviously bored, and a bored Jonah was a dangerous Jonah.
Frustrated with the whole thing, Grif shoved at his hair and leaned back in one of the mayor’s fake leather visitor chairs.
With his scratching scrawl, Jonah plowed through the pages in front of him, signing one after the other. When he finished, the mayor looked even more dyspeptic, but Jonah was grinning so wide Grif would swear on a stack of Mount Shiloh Baptist Church hymnals that he could see his brother’s wisdom teeth.
“We never should’ve built that damn sports complex.” The mayor pushed himself to his feet and held out a hand to Jonah. “Not sure what we would’ve done if you hadn’t approached the city council about helping out Canyon Ridge—”
“Not Canyon anymore.” Jonah stood as well, but he didn’t return the man’s gesture. “The contract says the town will be renamed. Steele Ridge.”
“Son, that name change is gonna take a little getting used to, so why don’t we just ease everyone into—”
“Sir, I’m not your son.” Jonah’s smile never wavered, but it took on an edge as he picked up his set of the contract papers and slid them into an envelope. “So why don’t you get the post office on that change right away? No use in dragging it out.”
“I see.” The mayor shifted his focus to Grif and tried the handshake thing again. Least Grif could do was follow through when his brother hadn’t. “Grif, it’ll be great to have you on board.”
On board? What did that mean? But Grif never let the other side see gaps in his prep work, so he just said, “Thank you.”
Jonah caught Grif by the suit coat sleeve and yanked. “Great doing business with you, but we have another meeting to get to.”
Oh, once they made it outside, little brother was gonna pay for that stunt. He damn well knew not to fuck with Grif’s wardrobe. Grif removed Jonah’s fingers from the fabric, smoothed his sleeve, and calmly walked out of the mayor’s office. But once they were through the lobby and outside on the steps, Grif rounded on Jonah. “Steele Ridge? We never talked about renaming the damn town.”
One of Jonah’s shoulders did a casual up and down. “I figure if I’m throwing down several million dollars, we should get something out of it.”
A nerve behind Grif’s right eyeball pulsed. “Jesus, you’re getting plenty out of it.” Plenty of pain in the ass as far as he was concerned. “You basically own a town of eight thousand people, twenty thousand acres of western Carolina land, and a belly-up sports complex.”
Yeah, that complex was what had done in the town. They’d gambled big on attracting folks to Canyon—hell, Steele—Ridge and lost when another facility had been built forty miles east in Asheville. Who was going to mosey out to Podunk when they could get their rock climbing and Zumba-ing on inside the city?
No. One.
Jonah wandered over to a nearby parking spot, checked out the sign in front of a boring midsized sedan. “This should do, don’t you think?”
“If you’re looking to buy a new car, you can do better than that.”
“Nah, man. I asked for a parking spot for Mom. Figured this one’s right in the middle of everything. Perfect.”
So this was the reason Jonah hadn’t been hot for Grif to read through the contract again. He’d slid in a few bullshit stipulations. Fine. If getting his way, having a little control, made him feel better, then Grif would let it slide. This time. “If you want my help in the future, don’t ever screw around with my contracts again.”
“You got it.” Jonah slung an arm around Grif’s shoulders. “But there’s no need to since I got everything I wanted this time.”
Grif’s gut roiled like it did when a team’s management was trying to lowball him during negotiations. Didn’t happen often anymore. But early on they’d tried because he’d been the youngest hot-shit sports agent in Los Angeles. “What else did you demand besides a parking spot and a new town name? And what the hell was Hackberry talking about when he said it would be great to have me on board?”
“Well,” Jonah drawled, his country accent coming out. “I got Mom that parking space. And you? Hey, I got you a new job as city manager.”
* * *
The temperature was only in the high fifties, normal for early April, but Carlie Beth was sweating like a hog being led to the butchering table. Wearing thick gloves, goggles, a full helmet, and dark coveralls, she was absorbing the heat, making the temperature inside her welding gear a good fifteen degrees hotter.
“Hold that pipe steady.” Her instructions to her apprentice Austin Burns were muffled by the plastic shield protecting her face, but he nodded his understanding and adjusted his grip on the length of black steel.
He shifted his weight, what there was of it on his lanky nineteen-year-old frame. “You heard about the new jam sessions over at Pisgah Brewing Company?”
Keeping up with stuff the neighboring town’s brewery hosted was outside her daily to-dos. She shook her head, and a trickle of sweat slipped its way from under her do-rag and down her temple. Twenty bucks. That’s what she’d give to wipe away the irritating distraction.
But doing that while holding a welding torch was an excellent way to become both blind and bald.
Like it would really matter all that much. It wasn’t as if her long strawberry-blond hair and brown eyes were reeling in eligible bachelors these days. Usually she didn’t care because men her age tended to have marriage on the mind, and she’d scratched that off her bucket list when the only man who’d asked had up and disappeared on her.
She seemed to have that effect on men.
So she’d reconciled herself to handling her responsibilities on her own, but a little discreet, mutually beneficial adult time wouldn’t hurt her feelings. But instead of giving that too much airtime in her head, she concentrated on the task before her, a patch job on a cattle guard she’d spot-welded a couple of times before.
“Thought I’d take my guitar”—Austin’s voice was muted behind his protective gear, too—“and sit in on some songs.”
“Bet you’ll have a great time and the girls’ll love it.” Other people were thinking of their weekend plans at four o’clock on a Friday afternoon, and here she was surrounded by cows and sweating over a cattle guard. Sexy on steroids.
Fixing cattle guards wasn’t flashy, but it paid the bills, unlike her artisan blacksmithing projects. If only she could make as much money for a hand-forged door knocker as she did mending fences and gates. Maybe if she kept selling well through the gallery here in town, she could approach others. And then—
Stop daydreaming about art and deal with what’s right in front of you.
But before she could bend over the joint again, Austin said, “I thought maybe you could…that you might want to—”
“Carlie Beth!”
She spotted someone in her peripheral vision and idled down the welding machine. It gave her the perfect excuse to lift her visor and attack that damn sweat. She wiped at her face and turned toward the cattle farmer she was doing the patch job for. “Hey, Dave.”
“You almost done there?” His ever-present baseball cap, embroidered with the Black Horn Ranch logo, bobbed when he nodded toward the cattle guard.
She squatted down and pointed out the joints where the cross pipes joined the frame. “I know you only mentioned this weak spot on the right-hand side, but I went ahead and checked everything. I don’t know who originally made this guard for you, but either the soldering was shoddy or your cows have been gaining weight.”
“I’ve run some heavy stuff over it lately.” The way Dave’s face bloomed with a dull pink made her wonder exactly what type of stuff he
was talking about. A commercial crane? A tank? A T-Rex?
Seemed like he was always having some issue with his fencing and pens.
“Well, another fifteen minutes and you should be in good shape.” She started to flip her visor down and return to her work, but Dave reached out. His fingertips came within a couple inches of her elbow, but never actually made contact.
“I…um…I was wondering if maybe you’d like to go out with me tonight. We could head over to Maggie Valley to that new sushi place. I’m not much for raw fish, but Yvonne mentioned you like it, so…”
Dammit it to Georgia and back. Here she’d just been bellyaching about her lack of social life and then this.
Thanks, God.
“Oh, that’s really nice of you to offer, but—”
“She’s going with me to listen to music.”
Carlie Beth did a quick double-take at Austin’s interruption, his presumption, and the way he squared his shoulders. His fists were clenching and releasing at his sides.
With an almost undetectable lip curl, Dave ignored the younger man and asked her, “You got more welding jobs after mine?”
“No, but I have to work tonight. I promised Randi I’d fill in at Triple B.” The locals joked that Blues, Brews, and Books was too long to remember, so they’d given the restaurant and bar a nickname.
Dave’s face lost all animation. “You know what men go to bars for.”
Carlie Beth’s mental eye roll did a swimmer’s turn in her head. One of Dave’s Black Angus meandered over and nibbled at the sleeve of her coveralls, and she scratched its broad forehead. Suppressing a smile, she said to Dave, “Beer?”
He huffed in disgust and yanked off his cap, giving Carlie Beth a glimpse of his receding hairline. Bouncing the hat against his thigh, he shot a quick glare at her apprentice. “No, they go looking for hookups.”
Going Hard: Steele Ridge Series Page 1