Rough Edge Read online

  Rough Edge

  Lauren Landish

  Edited by

  Valorie Clifton

  Edited by

  Staci Etheridge

  Contents

  Also by Lauren Landish

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Epilogue

  Preview: Beauty and the Billionaire

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2019 by Lauren Landish.

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design © 2020 by Eileen Carey.

  Photography by Wander Aguiar.

  Edited by Valorie Clifton & Staci Etheridge.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The following story contains mature themes, strong language and sexual situations. It is intended for mature readers.

  Also by Lauren Landish

  Bennett Boys Ranch:

  Buck Wild || Riding Hard || Racing Hearts

  The Tannen Boys:

  Rough Love || Rough Edge || Rough Country

  Standalones

  My Big Fat Fake Wedding || Filthy Riches || Scorpio

  Dirty Fairy Tales:

  Beauty and the Billionaire || Not So Prince Charming || Happily Never After

  Get Dirty:

  Dirty Talk || Dirty Laundry || Dirty Deeds || Dirty Secrets

  Irresistible Bachelors:

  Anaconda || Mr. Fiance || Heartstopper

  Stud Muffin || Mr. Fixit || Matchmaker

  Motorhead || Baby Daddy || Untamed

  Chapter 1

  Brody

  “Well, as I live and breathe. Is that you, Brody Tannen? I haven’t seen you in ages, boy!”

  Mrs. Perkinson squints her rheumy eyes at me and I do my best not to cringe. It’s not that she’s unkind, but she’s at least the fifth person to tell me the same thing this afternoon alone. You’d think I hide out on the ranch and never see the light of day in town. There might be some truth to it, but I don’t need people pointing it out left and right all damn day.

  “Good afternoon, ma’am.” It’s the bare minimum of words to not be accused of rudeness. I’d know because I’ve tested it over the years. My preference was a simple ‘hello’, one word and done, but apparently, that made me sound like a grunting ass and didn’t meet the requirements of respecting my elders. So the needlessly complicated ‘good fill-in-the-blank’ and ‘ma’am’ or ‘sir’ is what I’ve gone with.

  So far, so good. And I’m almost done with deliveries of my sister’s homemade, high-demand seasonal treats, not only for the day, but for the entire week. No more pies, no more jellies and jams, no more soaps, and best of all, no more people. I can’t wait to not have to people. Yes, that’s a verb, because again, it’s simpler to say ‘people’ than ‘I don’t prefer to socialize, thank you very much’ because who needs all those useless words when one will get the same message across just fine?

  “Get your hiney on into my kitchen and let me feed you. Skin and bones, you are!” Mrs. Perkinson’s bony finger juts out, poking at the thick slab of muscle on my chest.

  Great. She’s obviously gone blind as a bat if she thinks I’m skinny. Most people cross the street when they see me coming—too tall, too broad, too brooding, too asshole, with a reputation of kicking ass first and asking questions never. I’m too busy being busy to give a shit with consequences unless they affect my family.

  “As much as I’d like that, ma’am, Shayanne would have my hide,” I say with as much ‘aw shucks’ as I can muster, not a single fuck given that I’m throwing my sister under the bus, but I can’t help scratching at my lip with my thumb as the lie passes between them. “I’m on her schedule, you see.”

  She takes the jar of lemon curd from my hand, signaling the end of this conversation. Or at least I hope it does, but I’ve still got to say polite goodbyes and whatnot or she’ll be tattling on me to Shay for sure.

  “Well, that girl works her tailfeathers off, so I won’t begrudge her requiring the same of you lot. Only way to keep you hellions in check is a firm hand. Glad to hear she’s got one.” Sweet Mrs. Perkinson becomes a bitchy old biddy right before my eyes, and I’m no longer willing to uphold niceties when she’s insulting me and my brothers, even if she is one of Shay’s customers.

  Without so much as a goodbye, because I ain’t wasting words when I don’t have to, I turn and shuffle down the two steps of her porch. I climb into our old farm truck and peel out of her driveway. She probably thinks I just proved her point, that I’m a rude motherfucker with no proper manners despite my poor sister’s attempts to housebreak me, but I don’t care.

  If anything, I raised Shayanne, not the other way around. Little thing was just thirteen when Mom passed. She took over that role without a fuss, but she needed some guidance growing up, and that responsibility fell to me as the man of the house, because Dad sure as hell wasn’t.

  Not that I’m thinking of him.

  May the Devil himself be pissing on his soul down in hell.

  I hear Mom scolding me in my head and sigh heavily as the speedometer creeps up to sixty on the old country road. “Fine, Mom. I hope Dad’s resting comfortably in hell, does that work for you? Because we both know he ain’t up there with you. When you were here, maybe it could’ve gone that way. But you know how it was later, so don’t be rewriting history now because it’s rude to speak ill of the dead.”

  I turn the radio up to drown out the voices in my head. I don’t hear them very often anymore, not Mom’s sweet assurances that I’m doing okay and definitely not Dad’s harsh bites that I’m fucking everything up. Truth be told, they’re both right in some ways.

  But the growl of the old diesel engine drowns them both out easily, and they float away on the wind blowing through the open window. Along with any preconceived notions Mrs. Perkinson has.

  For a moment, I’m free.

  Wind in my hair, Johnny Cash on the radio, a thermos of diesel-strong black coffee in the seat beside me, and the blessedly open road before me. The speedometer cranks higher, and there are no responsibilities weighing on my shoulders like stones, no expectations gripping with tight fingers to hold me in place.

  I’m Brody Tannen. I’m myself, but also not.

  I’m nothing and no one. I’m free. And it’s bliss.

  Right up until the old truck jerks, slowing down even though I never let up on the pedal.

  “Shit, Bessie! What the fuck are you doing? At least hold it together until we get to town.” Okay, so I’m sweet-talking the truck like the girl I took to the senior homecoming game, and perhaps more relevant, the afterparty where she got drunk as a skunk and nearly puked in my truck
.

  Bessie—the truck, not the girl—sputters but rallies and keeps chugging along, down to twenty-five now. The ride is rough and jerky, but we’re so close to town, I can see signs rising high in the sky. I rub at the dash encouragingly instead of pulling over. “See . . . just up ahead, girl.”

  I scan, looking for a parking lot I can pull over into, not as familiar with the main drag on this side of the mountain. When Shayanne expanded the delivery radius of her homemade treat business to this side of the mountain, I’d told her to go for it, thinking it’d be our brothers, Brutal and Bobby, doing the deliveries, or hell, even Shayanne herself when she could. I didn’t give a shit. I didn’t plan on coming to the far side myself, and I definitely didn’t plan on getting stuck over here. But that was then, and here I am now.

  Like a beacon rising in the sky, I see a white sign ahead. Cole Automotive.

  Son of a bitch, must be my lucky day in some twisted sort of way. It’d be damn better if Bessie were running smooth as butter, but I’ll take a mechanic shop over parking in some pot-hole-riddled, abandoned lot of a closed dollar store. Anywhere better than that would probably call the police on me for abandoning a piece of shit like this.

  Sorry, Bessie, but you know it’s true.

  I jerk my way into the lot, cranking the engine off as soon as possible. “Fuck!” The bark of frustration is timed perfectly with the bang of my fist on the steering wheel. The sentiment is repeated as I slam the door.

  I turn toward the bay doors of the garage, thankful that they’re still open at least. The sun’s starting to move down in the sky, foretelling a hell of a sunset, but that’ll be a few hours away with the long spring days. It takes a second for my eyes to adjust to the dimmer light inside and my ears to adjust to the absolutely blaring heavy metal music.

  “Motherfucker.” The murmur isn’t silent, but no one would know that because of the music’s volume.

  I see a small coverall-clad figure standing on a stool, ass in the air and head buried in the engine compartment of a truck. “Hey, kid!”

  No response. Not even a flinch.

  “Hey! Kid!”

  I step to the side, reaching out to tap the kid on the shoulder. But instead of the ‘good afternoon, sir’ that manners and customer service require, according to Shay, I get greeted by a wrench swinging up in an arc from inside the vehicle to aim right at my head. My hand shoots out automatically, catching the kid’s wrist to stop the attack. “What the fuck?”

  The kid’s wrist twists in my hand, some looping motion that breaks it free, and at the same time, a steel-toed boot connects with my gut and pushes me back.

  Pushes me back, all two hundred pounds of don’t-fuck-with-me warning-labeled asshole actually moving from the kid’s shove.

  “Get your fucking hands off me, motherfucker.”

  The response is threatening and more of a lip reading, but the message is loud and clear. It also comes accompanied with a press of the wrench to my throat that keeps me off-balance after the not-quite kick.

  “Hey, hey . . . sorry . . . just trying to get your attention.” Every bit of my apology is yelled at volume eleven in an attempt to be heard over the music and drown out my own instincts to instantly fight back.

  And something suddenly becomes real fucking crystal clear. It’s not a kid in front of me. It’s a woman. A gorgeous one.

  She’s tiny, maybe five feet tall at most, and swallowed by her navy-blue coveralls, which are rolled up at the arms and the ankles.

  There’s a thick knot of dark hair piled on her head and a map’s worth of freckles across her nose and cheeks, along with a few smudges of black grease. Her dark chocolate-brown eyes are blasted through with gold, not like some pretty poetry shit but like she’s about to start shooting fire right at me.

  “Alexa, turn down the music.” The deafening music quiets, leaving only the ringing in my ears. “What did you say?”

  The urge to swallow against the wrench rides me hard, but I don’t dare, not willing to admit to her or myself that I’m at her mercy. “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you. Wanted to see if someone could look at my truck.”

  The wrench drops to her side. “Then you knock on the damn door like a normal fucking human being. You don’t touch me, or anyone, without permission or without their even knowing you’re fucking here.”

  I don’t know that I’ve ever met someone who curses as much as I do. And I curse a fucking lot, which is saying something considering I don’t speak much. I think I just fell in love a little bit with this wisp of a woman. Not seriously, of course, but that big mouth is kinda fun in a surprising way. A very small percentage of folks stand up to Brody Tannen, and an even smaller percentage of women ever gives me sass. Insults, yes, but smartass back-talk? This might be a first.

  “Hell of a way of getting customers—blasting metal, attacking people, and cussing them out when they’re just trying to hire you to do your damn job,” I deadpan, only half joking.

  She’s shit for customer service. I’m shit at being a customer. Match made in heaven, we are.

  “Waltzing in here like you own the place, putting hands on people, and somehow thinking you’re in the right.” She ticks off my shortcomings on her greasy fingers with the wrench and enough attitude that she should be ten feet tall and bulletproof. “Fuck off. We’re closed.” Somehow, the movement of dismissal she makes with the wrench feels like she just flipped me off. Makes no sense, but it’s the truth, and there’s talent in that, I suppose.

  Lil Bit—that’s what I’ve decided to call this pretty stick of dynamite because one, I think it’d piss her off and that sounds like twisted fun, and two, she seems full of sparks and danger—turns her back on me, spinning in place and stepping back onto her footstool, which puts her roughly at the same height as me.

  I’m stuck here with Bessie misbehaving the way she is and a woman who damned near took my head off with a Craftsman tool. Luckily, just my actual head, not my cock because it’s feeling some quick stirrings of ideas it wants to accomplish before I start pushing up daisies.

  “So can someone take a look at my truck or not?”

  “Nope. Shit outta luck, Cowboy.” The words echo in the engine compartment of the truck, but I can hear her victory in shutting me down.

  “How’d you know I’m a cowboy?” I curl the brim of my hat out of habit, not admitting that I’m double-checking myself that I don’t have my cowboy hat on, because it’d be just my luck to challenge her when I’m wearing something that makes it real obvious what I do for a living.

  With echoing words again, she says, “Dirty boots, dirty jeans, dirty shirt, dirty hands, and you smell like cow shit.”

  My lips quirk of their own volition. I barely notice that last one anymore. “Seems like you checked me out pretty good while you were sizing me up as a threat. No worries. I was checking you out too.”

  My flirting is rusty, like a tractor left to rot in a field for a few years’ worth of rain and snow, and comes out more threatening than complimentary. Lil Bit makes not a peep of noise under the hood.

  Something interesting occurs to me, and the question pops out before I can stop it. “How’dya know what cow shit smells like? As opposed to horse shit, dog shit, or people shit?”

  What the hell am I doing? Why am I talking about shit?

  Before she answers, or maybe she’s not planning to anyway because who wants to talk about shit, a door opens and my eyes are pulled away from her ass. I figured I could try to suss out what was under those coveralls without her noticing. Hadn’t planned on someone else catching me, though.

  Two guys come into the garage, also clad in navy blue coveralls, and I make the mental jump that they work here too. The first guy is tall, not like me, but compared to the short and stocky other guy, he seems to think he’s the hotshot here. The tall guy crosses his arms, trying to widen his rangy frame. Posting up to me ain’t a good move, man.

  Once upon a time, that challenge in his eyes is all it wou
ld’ve taken for me to start throwing haymakers. I’ve gotten better now, more stable, more thoughtful. Not because I’m getting soft in my old age, but I don’t have the same rage boiling in me like I used to when I was constantly dealing with Dad’s shit.

  The chest patch on the lucky bastard I’m not beating up says Reed. The other guy’s says Manuel.

  “What can we do you for?” Reed says. His narrow eyes measure my height, width, and the distance from me to Lil Bit’s ass. I don’t move.

  “Truck started acting up. Think it’s the transmission, thought someone might take a look at it.”

  I’m still talking to Lil Bit, even though she’s tits-deep under that hood, but Reed’s eyes light up when I say transmission. I don’t know much about trucks, but I know it’s an expensive repair, and a shop would have to be stupid to turn down a sure job with the vehicle sitting like a stone in the lot.

  “Yeah, sure,” Reed agrees easily.

  That echoey voice calls out again. “Touch that truck and you’re fired, Reed.”

  He licks his lips like it pains him to tell me, “Sorry, no can do, man.”

  I take a deep breath, hold it, and then exhale loudly, knowing I sound like I’m accepting defeat. I’m not. I get in one more dig. “Mind if I leave it in the lot overnight ’til I can get it towed somewhere else that wants to take my money?”