34. Ridge
RIDGE
I was sitting on the couch, working a small piece of wood I’d been carving, the shavings falling onto the coffee table where Audrey had lain naked just a half hour before, when Graham returned from Audrey’s room.
“She okay?” Holden asked from one of the chairs near the fire where he was nursing another beer.
Graham nodded, walked to the cabinet against one wall, and pulled out the whiskey.
That’s how I knew it was bad: Graham only drank whiskey when he had something on his mind.
“I’ll take one of those,” I said.
We were both going to need it for the conversation that was coming.
He poured an inch of amber liquid in two glasses, capped the bottle, and handed me one of the glasses.
I set it on the coffee table and shaved another piece from the block of tupelo I’d been working. “There a reason you didn’t participate?”
“No reason,” Graham said.
Holden snorted. “Bullshit.”
Graham scowled. “Taking my time, that’s all.”
“You’re not usually one to take your time,” I said.
He shrugged and drank from his glass.
“You missed out,” Holden said, seemingly oblivious to the tension in the room. “I fucking love an older woman. Although I guess she’s younger to you.”
I didn’t say anything. Already Audrey Sterling was more to me than just another woman.
“Plenty of time,” Graham said.
“She scare you?” I asked, my eyes on the piece of wood in my hand.
Graham knew the question was meant for him.
“Why would a woman scare me?” he asked.
“You tell me,” I said.
But I knew.
Knew Graham’s history, knew why Graham never brought women back to the ranch.
I just wasn’t sure Graham knew.
“Fuck off,” he said.
Maybe he did know. Maybe he was more in touch with his feelings than I’d thought.
“Just saying.”
“Well, don’t.”
“I feel like I’m missing something.” Holden had pulled out his lighter. Click… click… flare. “Am I missing something?”
“Graham doesn’t want to get too close.” I spelled it out for him because sometimes you needed to spell things out for Holden.
Not because he was stupid — the guy could take apart any piece of machinery and put it back together better than before — but because his mind was always racing ahead, looking for the next thing to get into.
“Too bad for Graham,” Holden said, staring into the flame of his lighter. “Getting close to the doc is the best thing that’s happened to me in a long time.”
Graham downed half his whiskey in one gulp. “Can we stop talking about fucking her? We’ve got bigger things to discuss.”
“Like what?” Holden asked.
Click… click… flare.
“Like how I’m going to shove that lighter up your ass if you don’t knock it off,” Graham growled.
Holden closed the cap on the Zippo and lifted his ass to slide it into the pocket of his jeans.
I set the piece of wood aside. “I take it this is about Aloha.”
Graham nodded, his shoulders more relaxed now that we were off the subject of his feelings about Audrey. “We have a decision to make.”
“I’m listening,” I said.
“Aloha turned up some shit, shit that requires further investigation, if that’s where we’re going with this thing,” Graham said. “So my question is, is that where we’re going with this thing?”
He wasn’t just asking about the shit Dean Ashcroft was into. He was asking about Audrey. Because getting into Dean’s business meant that Audrey was more than just a Hunt girl.
It meant we were invested, that we were sticking our necks out to nose around in Dean’s shit.
That we were risking scrutiny, exposure.
We only did that for family.
“If you’re asking whether I’m in on handling Dean Ashcroft for Audrey,” Holden said, “the answer is fuck yes.”
“No one said anything about handling,” Graham said, trying to get in front of Holden’s tendency to jump feet first into any mess. “But we can dig a little, put together what Aloha found with what Audrey knows, see if we can give her something to work with.”
“Guy’s a fucking asshole.” Audrey and Ella deserved so much more. “I’m all for it. The question is, are you?”
Graham thought about it. “I can separate business from pleasure.”
I picked up the piece of wood and continued working.
Graham sounded so sure. I wondered if he knew yet that he was fooling himself.
That by making Audrey his business, he’d already crossed the point of no return.