Betting on Grace by Nicole Edwards Read Free Book Online

to come to terms with in, oh, say, less than three minutes.
    Looking at the three empty bottles sitting on the
table beside his recliner, he wasn’t sure how good of an idea that really was.
Especially since he had to work in the morning. But shit, he deserved it, and
up to this point, he was still trying to achieve that ever-elusive buzz that
was just out of reach.
    After he had escaped his father’s tirade that morning,
he’d had to endure endless phone calls and texts from the man throughout the
day. Grant never answered the phone and finally tossed the damn thing in his
truck just to avoid it, but then he’d been met with forty-two texts and
seventeen voice messages. They all said about the same thing, letting him know
what a worthless piece of shit he was for turning his back on his father in his
time of need. Yadda, yadda, yadda.
    Nothing Grant hadn’t heard before on numerous
occasions.
    It still irritated the fuck out of him to hear it.
Irritation was all he would cop to, though, which was why he’d resorted to
drinking from the second he’d stepped through his front door. He damn sure
wasn’t going to admit that the words actually hurt him.
    Downing what was left of his beer, Grant tried to
focus on the television. See that, Dad, I’ve still got a television!
    Oh, for crying out loud.
    For the better part of the last half hour, he’d been
alternating between clicking the remote and replaying in his mind all of the
hateful bullshit his father had left on his voice mail. As much as he had
tried, clicking through channels, searching for something to watch wasn’t
enough to drown out the angry voice of his father still reverberating in his
head.
    Considering he didn’t give a shit about watching
television in the first place, it was no wonder he hadn’t found anything that
caught his attention. His thoughts were all over the map, so focusing on the
screen was hard enough.
    A sudden knock on the front door jolted Grant from his
thoughts, but he didn’t bother to get up.
    “It’s open!” he hollered, willing whomever it was to
go away.
    Not happening, apparently.
    The door pushed inward, and in walked Lane in all of
his handsome glory. Even after twelve hours of work, Lane looked good enough to
eat. He was covered in a fine layer of dust, his straw hat crushed on one side,
one of his pant legs tucked into his boot, the other covering his other boot.
He looked like he’d tussled with the livestock for the better part of the day.
    Yet he still looked so damn good.
    “Hidin’ out, are ya?” Lane asked, a hint of
exasperation in his tone as he shut the front door behind him, effectively
sealing them off from the rest of the world.
    Grant knew he shouldn’t be quite so happy about that,
bearing in mind his current mood. No one had to tell him that he was acting
like a hothead and had been for most of the day.
    “Tryin’,” Grant answered, meeting Lane’s gaze. “What
do you want?”
    “You, but that’s beside the point,” Lane responded
smoothly, his original weariness absent from his tone.
    Why did that make him feel so damn good?
    Grant tried to brush off the response, keeping in mind
Lane’s good-ol’-boy answer to everything. If he let him, Lane would strip Grant
of all his frustration within seconds, and that would leave him … tired.
    But he could think of something else Lane could strip
off him.
    That might make him feel a little better.
    Speaking of stripping… Holy mother of God.
    “ What are you doing?” Grant asked as he sat fascinated
by the sight of Lane standing in front of him, tossing his tattered hat on the
table that currently held the empty beer bottles and then pulling his T-shirt
over his head.
    Oh, fuck.
    Grant was spellbound from the first sight of the dark
hair that disappeared into the waistband of Lane’s jeans. He then let his eyes
graze upward, following the dark blue cotton as it skimmed higher, admiring the
sexy definition of Lane’s abs, the smattering of dark