Worth Every Cent Read online

  “Ah.”

  “Yep.”

  “Well, nice to see you,” she said.

  Then she moved past me and headed towards the door.

  I reached out and grabbed her arm, feeling her body as it stopped. I looked at the profile of her face as she stared hard out the door, refusing to turn and make eye contact with me.

  “Could we go somewhere?” I asked. “To talk? Maybe have a bite to eat?”

  But before she could respond, I felt my body careening into the wall.

  My hand ripped away from Michelle’s smooth skin as my body barreled into the bar wall. People around me gasped and the bouncers were already making their way for the encounter. I looked over at Michelle and saw her eyes wide with terror as she stood there. The sore loser that had lost his money at the hands of his drunken pool game schemes had his arm against my neck while two of his buddies stood around us.

  “You were a piece of shit in high school, and you’re a piece of shit now.”

  “Pretty sore loser if you ask me,” I said.

  “I want my money back, or I’ll mess you up something good, MacDonald.”

  “It was just a game of pool. High school was years ago. People change, obviously,” I said.

  “Damn bullies like you and Andy never change.”

  Damn it. Even after leaving town for an entire month, they still had my name associated with his.

  “I’m nothing like that asshole,” I said.

  “And yet you pranced around with him in town a few weeks ago. Now give me my damn money or I’ll give you a taste of what you did to all of us in high school.”

  The bouncers were pushing their way through people as I shoved the man off me. I dug out my wallet and took out three one hundred dollar bills, then tossed them at him. I had billions underneath my belt. One hundred dollars wasn’t anything to get emotional about. Plus, I had more important things to deal with.

  “Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

  But before I could get away from him, he had a pool stick up to my neck.

  “Changed my mind,” the guy said. “I think it’s time we had a little fun with the Stillsville bully.”

  The pool stick pressed into my windpipe and I gasped for air. What the hell was taking those damn bouncers so long? I brought my hands up to the cue stick and gripped it as tightly as I could, then began to push. Just because I didn’t play football professionally any longer didn’t mean I’d let all my training go out the fucking window. I gritted my teeth and eyed the man in front of me as I began to pant for air. I shoved the asshole off me and charged him, then wrapped him in a chokehold and slammed him onto one of the tables nearby.

  Then, his buddies decided to get in on the action.

  Punches were thrown and blocked. Kicks were delivered and missed. The bouncers fought the two guys off as best as they could before I turned my sights back to the man getting up off the floor. He grabbed the money I’d tossed at him and jammed it into his pockets, then came at my legs and picked me up off my feet. I brought my fist down into the small of his back, crumbling him to his knees as people began to shout and scream.

  All of the aggression and anger, and all of the frustration I’d held inside since Anton’s death came pouring out. I grabbed the guy’s neck and delivered punch after punch, throwing people off as they came at me.

  “Take it outside!” the bartender yelled. “Now!”

  But I couldn’t hear her. The only thing I saw was red. The only thing I felt were bones cracking underneath my punches. I felt an arm come down around my neck and I threw my head back, crushing the person’s nose before another one of the guys took aim at my jaw.

  I was going to pound these assholes into the ground for ruining my shot at making things right with Michelle.

  Chapter 6

  Michelle

  I gawked as the all-out bar brawl began. The bouncers shoved me to the side as some guys slammed Grayson into the wall, and before I could yell out for him punches were being thrown. The guy was trying to choke Gray and I watched him with pure determination and raw strength take over the fight of his own volition. He blocked every punch and grabbed every kick, twisting legs around and slamming people into tables. I couldn’t believe how quickly my night had gone sideways.

  My night at work had been a slow-moving disaster, and then I saw Gray in the damn bar. Now, I was watching him pound people to a bloodied pulp for no other reason than they attacked him first. I didn’t even know him well enough to call him my ‘ex’, and now he was back in town and beating the shit out of people.

  I eyed the door as everyone yelled and cheered on the fight. This place was disgraceful. The bar. The town. The people in it. I had my chance to escape while Gray was distracted, but I couldn’t make myself move towards the door. Glasses broke and tables buckled, and my head swiveled around to see Gray’s fist in the air above a bloodied face and a guy with a broken nose.

  He was nothing, if not strong.

  “I’m calling the police!” the bartender exclaimed.

  Whipping my head over, I watched her pick up the phone. That was it. I couldn’t let Gray be arrested for something like that. Especially when he wasn’t the first one to do the attacking. In a small town like Stillsville, no one split hairs like that. Everyone got arrested and thrown into a holding tank before charges were brought. It didn’t matter who started it or who ended it. I pushed myself through the crowd and grabbed onto Gray’s arm, watching as he stood to his feet and rose his fist up.

  But the second he looked down into my eyes, his body softened.

  “Come on,” I said.

  I dragged him out the door and away from the patrons yelling all sorts of obscenities at him. Even though he kept turning around to see what all was going on, I managed to get him down the block and around the corner. Sirens sounded off in the distance as we stood there in a darkened alleyway, with nothing but our panting breaths filling the space between us.

  “If you can hear me, Grayson MacDonald, then go back to wherever you came from! You’re not welcome in this town!”

  I winced at the statement as Gray’s jaw clenched.

  His panting chest caught my gaze as my eyes trailed along his body. The shadows played sharply off his features as his eyes darted around the darkened alley I pulled us into. His arms were still swollen from the encounter and veins pulsed in his forearms. I closed my eyes and remembered how his body looked, naked and covered in sweat.

  Then, I remembered how quickly he had dropped me and left. Which caused me to take a step back from him.

  “Michelle,” he said.

  “Thanks for the enjoyable evening,” I said, sarcastically. “Now we’re even.”

  I went to move past him, but he reached out at lightning speed and caught my arm again.

  “Even for what?” he asked.

  I turned my gaze over to him and took in his determined blue stare.

  “You saved my ass when I needed a place to stay, so I saved your ass from jail. Now let me go,” I said.

  “We need to talk.”

  “I don’t think we have that much to talk about,” I said.

  “I disagree.”

  “Oh really? And on what grounds to you disagree, might I ask?”

  “I owe you an apology.”

  Oh, I had no response to that. Only a trickling curiosity that permeated my veins.

  “I shouldn’t have behaved the way I did. You have every right to hate me, but I hope you don’t,” Gray said. “The way I came at you and how defensive I got. I should’ve simply answered your questions instead of throwing them back in your face.”

  “Yes,” I said. “You should have. Because we could’ve had a civil discussion about it instead of arguing like we did.”

  “I don’t blame you for not coming back when I called after you.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “When you walked out of the house with your stuff. I stood on the porch and called after you. I was so angry at you for walk
ing off on me like that. Like everyone else that had left me high and dry. But I had no reason to be upset with you.”

  Wait. He had been calling after me?

  He had been asking me to come back?

  I was surprised by his apology, and floored by his admission. Gray didn’t seem like the type of man to give many apologies, and he definitely wasn’t the type to stand on a porch and call after someone to come back.

  “Thank you for your apology,” I said. “And for what it’s worth, my own reaction was less than favorable that day as well. I shouldn’t have backed you into a corner. I should’ve been willing to offer up my own backstory in exchange for yours. Your bank account wasn’t any of my business. But you need to know that I wasn’t asking for the reason you thought I was.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “I’m sure men of your stature are used to women cozying up to you to try and get to your money.”

  “I am,” he said with a wry smile.

  “I was honestly more concerned with who Maria was,” I said softly. “I thought maybe—”

  Gray’s stare penetrated mine as his hand softened around my arm.

  “I’m many things, but a cheat isn’t something I put on my resume,” he said.

  I felt myself soften towards him. Immediately I began to warm up to him again. As sirens rang out down the street, lights flashed around the corner. They flashed in his eyes as he stared down at me and they flashed along his sweating skin as the humidity of the night clung to his body. I didn’t know what to say or how to respond. But I knew one thing was for certain.

  It didn’t change the fact that he left. Nor did it change the fact that he wasn’t sticking around again.

  He was back for Anton’s estate, and nothing else.

  Running into me was simply a coincidence.

  “Stay here until the lights are gone,” I said.

  “Michelle.”

  He gripped my arm again, but I pulled away from his grasp. He wasn’t the settling down type. There was no reason for me to spend time around him to try and convince myself of anything different.

  No matter how much I wanted him to be.

  “Have a good night, Gray.”

  “Can I at least give you a ride somewhere? To wherever you’re staying?” he asked.

  “What part of ‘stay here until the lights die down’ don’t you understand?” I asked.

  “I’ll be fine. We’ll take the long way back to my car. Wherever you’re headed, I can’t let you walk there in the middle of the night.”

  I wanted to say no, but the idea of prolonging my encounter with him sounded wonderful. I was ashamed to admit it, but I couldn’t lie to myself. So instead of pushing him away again and heading back up the sidewalk, I nodded my head and watched him grin.

  Then he offered me his arm and I willingly took it.

  Chapter 7

  Grayson

  I felt myself filling with an excitement that was hard to contain. Michelle was talking with me, had accepted my apology, and was now walking arm-in-arm with me back to my car. She even let me give her the small gift of taking her wherever she needed to be taken, which meant I’d get a look at where she was so I could find her later. We walked around the block, our steps timed together as small talk passed between us.

  She must be working in town now and had apparently covered herself in sodas somehow.

  “Here we are,” I said.

  “You had an SUV last time,” Michelle said.

  “And I have a convertible this time. Get in and give me directions so I can get you back home.”

  Opening her door, I help her as she slipped in. I couldn’t help but take in how perfect she looked in the leather seat of my rental car. A convertible with its top down suited her, even if her hair was covered in soda and her clothes were stained a light brown. I slipped into the driver’s seat and pulled out of the parking space with everyone oblivious as to who we were. That was what happened when drunken brawls busted out in bars around here. Even the police on-call had thrown back a few too many to care about their surroundings.

  “Take a left right here,” she said.

  “I’m glad you solved your housing issue,” I said.

  She nodded her head but didn’t respond, and I figured I’d said the wrong thing again. I did that a lot with her. I was smooth with every other woman on the fucking planet except her. I gripped the steering wheel as she pointed her finger to the left, not even bothering to grace me with her voice any longer.

  I wondered if I could convince her to come stay with me at Anton’s again.

  Even if I wanted to, it wasn’t a good idea. I was supposed to be working on the place and cleaning it up so it could be sold. Not settling into it and playing house with a cute local. But still, the invite was on the tip of my tongue as she pointed me towards a rundown ranch-style home with what appeared to be two main doors.

  I tried not to crinkle my nose in disgust as I pulled up to the front of it.

  The house wasn’t even fit for a homeless man to live in. The roof was sunken in and the bricks of the foundation were crumbling away. It looked as if the house sat on a little tilt and the right-side door didn’t quite shut all the way. One of the windows was broken and the only thing settled over it to keep the elements out was a stained yellow sheet.

  Or maybe it had been white at one time.

  Who the hell even knew at that point?

  “Thanks for the ride,” Michelle said.

  I didn’t want to see her go, especially if I was relinquishing her to that rotted old house.

  “Any time,” I said.

  I backed my car out of the pathetic excuse for a driveway and sat across the street. I watched her dig through a potted plant of some sort on the left side of the house before she pulled out a key. Did she not even have a key to her own place? Was she living with someone again? I sat there and watched her, making sure she got inside okay. And the second her door closed, the one on the right opened.

  And to my shock, a very inebriated Andy Prentice came stumbling out.

  He slammed the door behind him and stumbled down the rickety brick steps. Every single muscle in my body locked up as I watched his drunk ass stumble over to his pickup truck. He slammed himself in and peeled out of the driveway, then drove off into the night swerving along the road.

  A frown overtook my face as I grimaced.

  Was Michelle back with Andy? And if she was, why the hell had they come out of separate doors? Was that house separated somehow into two spaces? It wouldn’t shock me in the slightest. Someone trying to scrape by enough money with an abandoned property inside the town’s limits. And even if they weren’t living together, why the hell would Michelle elect to live right next to her deadbeat good-for-nothing ex?

  I sped off in the opposite direction for Anton’s house, blowing off steam as the wind whipped around my ears.

  There was no point in me caring about what Michelle did with her free time. She wasn’t my girlfriend. She never had been. And I wasn’t sticking around the likes of Stillsville. I was here to sell Anton’s house, deal with his furniture, and restore that damn Chevy.

  I had to keep my sights focused on the Chevy.

  When I pulled into the driveway of Anton’s home, I slammed through the front door. I grabbed as many beers from the fridge as my hands could carry, then made my way back out to the garage. I popped one open and chugged it back, trying to rid myself of the night’s events and focus my remaining efforts and mental fortitude on the task at hand.

  Michelle had been a simple distraction. Nothing more.

  I tinkered with the Chevy all through the night, popping out dents and smoothing over the surface of the car. It needed a hell of a lot of work, and the superficial shit was the easiest to take care of. I worked on that damn car until almost four in the morning, then called it quits when the garage spun with my drunkenness. I stumbled into the house and fell asleep face-first, my body secretly looking out for a warm body to sl
ip in next to mine.

  But when the sun rose and streamed heavily through my window, I was the only one in my bed.

  I felt too hungover to cook breakfast, so I rolled out of bed and grabbed my sunglasses. I took deep breaths as I changed my clothes, then headed into town to find something to eat. I drove by empty restaurants and fast food joints that made my stomach curl. The only thing that sounded mildly appetizing was the town’s only diner.

  They’d have a nice greasy breakfast to help soak up the rest of the alcohol in my system.

  I walked into the diner and made a beeline for the back booth. I didn’t want to be bothered by anyone who came in, and the crook of the kitchen entrance shielded me from the main door. I flopped down into the booth and drew in a deep breath before I grabbed the menu on the table, and soon a very cheery woman with dark brown hair appeared at my side.

  “Well if it isn’t Grayson MacDonald.”

  Holy hell. I couldn’t escape anyone in this damn town.

  I looked up into the eyes of the young woman, but I had no idea who the hell she was. Probably someone else waiting to beat me to a bloody pulp for my antics in high school. But when my eyes fell to her nametag, it jogged my memory.

  Cecily Atkins.

  The bitch who stood me up at senior prom.

  “How in the world have you been?” she asked, as she slid into the booth in front of me.

  I felt her foot fall against mine as I peered at her from beyond my sunglasses.

  “Fine,” I said.

  “You look good,” she said, as her eyes dropped down my body.

  “You look nice yourself,” I said.

  “Oh thanks,” she said as her smile grew brighter. “Always the flirt.”

  “I wasn’t flirting.”

  She cleared her throat as her cheeks reddened.

  “I’d like a stack of pancakes and some bacon along with a very strong cup of coffee,” I said.

  “Want some buttered toast as well? We got the best in town,” she said.

  “Sure. I’ll take some.”