On Her Side

“Why not?” Tanner asked, catching up to him.

“Because I’m running a business here, kid. Not a charity.”

“I could pay for it,” Tanner said after a moment. He slid in front of Griffin, walked backward. “For the parts and stuff. And your labor.”

“You can’t afford it.”

Though even he wasn’t that big of an asshole to charge his teenage brother for working on the kid’s car. But Tanner didn’t know that.

“I could pay you back a little at a time,” he insisted quietly. “Like a loan. Or I could work here and you could take it out of my wages.”

“And have you around all the time? No thanks.”

The kid’s face fell. Shit. Griffin tipped his head side to side until his neck popped. He wanted to apologize, to tell Tanner he hadn’t meant it. But the kid was smart enough to recognize a lie when he heard it.

“You and your dad can work on it,” Griffin said brushing past him. “I’ll tell the tow driver to take it over to your place.”

“You can’t,” he blurted, looking guilty as hell.

“Why not?”

“You just can’t.”

“Not good enough.”

He walked away but couldn’t miss the sound of Tanner’s loud sigh. “I sort of already told Mom and Dad you’d agreed to help me fix it,” he admitted.

“And why would you sort of tell them that?” Griffin asked, not sure he wanted to hear the answer.

“I had to. They didn’t want me to buy a car at all so I had to convince them it wouldn’t be that much to get a junker and fix it up…” Tanner lifted his shoulder again in that careless shrug. “But they didn’t get on board until after they found out you were all for it.”

“Except I’m not.”

“Mom’s really excited,” Tanner told him solemnly. “She keeps talking about what a great experience this will be, for the two of us to do this together.”

Griffin grabbed the back of his neck. Wished he could seize Tanner by the throat instead, maybe give him a few shakes. But that was too reminiscent of how his old man would’ve reacted.

Besides, Griffin didn’t want to hurt the kid. Just make him pay for putting Griffin in this situation. Their mom was probably doing backflips at the idea of her sons bonding over carburetors and exhaust fans.

He could walk away. All he had to do was tell Jimmy, who watched their little family drama with no small amount of interest, to take the car over to the Johnstons’ house. Or, better yet, back to Boston. It would serve Tanner right if he lost out on the tow truck fee.

Yeah, he thought, exhaling heavily. He could do that. Sure, his mother would be disappointed, but she was used to that from him. It was how they worked. She continually pushed him for more than he was willing to give, and in return he made it clear she wasn’t getting it. No sense changing the dynamics between them now.

But if he walked, Tanner would have to admit the truth to his parents. Hey, if you broke the rules, you had to be prepared to face the consequences. And knowing his mom and stepfather—having been punished by them many, many times during his own teen years—those consequences would be major. At least to a seventeen-year-old.

Nothing less than the kid deserved for lying.

But he was watching Griffin with such freaking hope in his eyes, saying no to him would’ve been like kicking a newborn kitten in the head.

“How much did you shell out for it?” Griffin asked, nodding toward the Firebird.

“One thousand.”

“You were screwed,” he said flatly. “It’s not worth more than a couple hundred. Hope you have some cash left for the restoration.”

For the past three summers, Tanner had worked down on the docks with his father. It wasn’t an easy job and he didn’t get to hang out at the beach all day like his friends, but it did pay well.

“Mom and Dad said I could use a total of five thousand on the car,” Tanner said. “The rest of my wages are being saved for college.”

Four thousand dollars wasn’t nearly enough to get the job done, but it’d make a good start.

“Here’s the deal,” Griffin said, unable to believe he was actually agreeing to this. Pissed that the kid had backed him into a corner this way. “We work on it Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights and Sunday afternoons. I’m not putting any time in on it on my own. If you’re not here, the work doesn’t get done. In exchange,” he continued when Tanner opened his mouth, “you’ll clean up the garage and do anything else I need done around here. You can pick your own hours but you’d better put in at least twenty a week or the deal’s off. You hear me?”

Tanner nodded like a bobblehead doll. “Yeah, yeah. I hear you. It’s a deal.”

And then he grinned, slow and easy, like he’d won the lottery and a night with the hottest cheerleader in his school.

“Enjoy this moment,” Griffin told him. “Because that was for working on the car. The deal for me not ratting you out to your parents is going to cost you even more.”

“You’d blackmail your own brother?” he asked, sounding merely curious.

“Don’t think of it as blackmail. Think of it as me kicking your butt for dragging me into this in the first place. The way I see it, you have a choice. You can take my punishment. Or we can tell Mom and Roger you lied and tricked them. Your choice.”

Griffin imagined Tanner was having visions of himself spending the rest of the summer grounded. Or worse, completely losing his driving privileges.

“What do I have to do?” Tanner asked.

“You are now in charge of all yard work and exterior maintenance at my house for exactly one year.”

“Huh?”

“You’ll mow the grass, do the trim work. In the fall you can rake leaves—”

“You never rake your leaves.”

“Well, they’ll get raked this year, won’t they? You can also clean the gutters. In the winter I’ll expect my walk and driveway cleared each and every morning before I go to work.”

Tanner gave him a long look. “That’s fair.”

It wasn’t. It was overboard and Griffin had the feeling Tanner knew it. Or maybe he knew Griffin had been trying to get him to back out of their deal, which would then let Griffin off the hook.

Now he was stuck, for the second time that day, with a deal he didn’t particularly want and that his instincts told him would somehow come back to bite him on the ass.

* * *

“THERE’S A GENTLEMAN here to see you,” Jodi told Nora over the office phone. “He won’t give his name.”

Jodi’s tone was disapproving, either at the audacity of the man showing up five minutes before the office was to close or because he hadn’t shared his name or the reason for wanting to see Nora.