Chance, p.1
Chance, page 1
Chance
Steel Brothers: Book Twenty-Five
HELEN HARDT
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Continue reading the Steel Brothers Saga with Book Twenty-Six
Message from Helen Hardt
Acknowledgments
Also By Helen Hardt
For everyone who dares to take a chance.
Prologue
Ava
My mother and father got married on Thanksgiving twenty-five years ago.
Twenty-five years with the same person.
It’s unimaginable to me.
I’m a Steel by birth, but I’ve never felt like a Steel.
I don’t want my family’s money. I like being on my own. I opened my bakery and sandwich shop with my own money—money that I earned, not money from my gigantic trust fund, which, even though I gained control of it when I turned twenty-one three years ago, I’ve never touched.
I’ll never touch it if I can avoid it.
Don’t get me wrong.
I love my family. All of them, without condition.
I just don’t want their money.
I’m kind of the black sheep of the Steel family. Or rather, the pink sheep, if my hair color makes me who I am. So I like pink hair. Sue me. I can pull it off.
My little sister, Gina, thinks I’m crazy. She’s gorgeous, of course. Looks just like our father, Ryan Steel, who’s the pretty boy of the Steel family. Gina has his dark hair and light-brown eyes that are fringed with those ridiculously long lashes.
I look more like our mother, Ruby Lee Steel. I have her brown hair, lighter than Dad’s, but of course I color it. I also have her blue eyes. That’s where our similarities end, though. I’m not nearly as pretty as Mom is.
I’m just me.
Ava.
Simply Ava, who loves to bake, and who’s damned good at it, if I do say so myself.
I learned at an early age from my aunt Marjorie, who’s a trained chef. I’m supposed to be meeting with her now, as we’re planning Mom and Dad’s twenty-fifth anniversary party.
It will be huge and lavish and at the main house, where Uncle Talon and Aunt Jade live.
Just like all the Steel parties.
And man, we Steels love to give parties.
I’m running late, of course, because I got sucked into a tarot reading with some of my online pals.
Gina rolls her eyes at me whenever I pull out the tarot deck, but that’s fine. I don’t think of it as fortune-telling or witchcraft or anything. I simply use it to tap into my own intuition. Plus, I enjoy it.
I’m about ready to log off when my phone dings with a text.
Darth Morgen is alive.
Huh?
I wrinkle my forehead and check the number. I don’t recognize it.
Darth Morgen? Is this some kind of Star Wars reference?
Who is this?
No reply, until—
Darth Morgen is alive.
O…kay. Whoever sent this message probably mistyped a number. It’s not meant for me. Still, I’m curious, and I want some guidance.
I shuffle my deck and pull a single card.
The hierophant.
I jerk slightly.
Not because the hierophant represents anything that concerns me, but because in the ten years I’ve experimented with the tarot, I’ve never drawn this card in a reading for myself. Others, of course, but not myself, which always made sense. The hierophant can represent conformity and group identification.
That’s not me. Not Ava Steel.
I’m the Steel who didn’t use her sizable trust fund to open my bakery in town. I’m the Steel who colors her hair and wears a lip ring.
Definitely not a conformist.
But…a hierophant is also someone who interprets secret knowledge and seeks a deeper meaning.
Darth Morgen is alive.
Secret knowledge? A deeper meaning?
Was this message meant for me after all?
Chapter One
Ava
I’m still staring at the strange text when a new one comes in from Aunt Marjorie.
Where are you? Everything okay?
Right. Mom and Dad’s twenty-fifth anniversary party. A Steel grand occasion can be put on hold for nothing or no one—especially not some bizarre message that may not have been meant for me anyway.
I text back quickly.
On my way.
A half hour later, I arrive at Aunt Marj’s home.
Her husband, Uncle Bryce, is the chief financial officer for the family company. I don’t concern myself much with what goes on with our finances. It’s not that I don’t care, because I love my family. It’s just that it doesn’t really affect my life. I live by my own means, and I’m proud of it.
I give the door a quick knock, and I walk in, giving some head scratches to their black labs, Thad and Gary.
“Ava, is that you?” Aunt Marj calls from the kitchen.
“Yeah, it’s me.”
“Great. Come on back.”
I’m on my way through the foyer when Uncle Bryce, Uncle Joe, and my cousin Brock walk toward me, clearly having come from Uncle Bryce’s office. Brock is Uncle Joe in miniature—except Brock is hardly miniature. But for Uncle Joe’s graying temples, they could be twins with their strong builds, dark hair, and dark eyes. Uncle Bryce is silver-haired with bright-blue eyes and also nearly as tall as Brock and Uncle Joe.
“Hey, Ava,” Brock says. “What are you doing over here?”
“I’m helping Aunt Marj plan the big shindig for my mom and dad.”
“Right, the anniversary.” Brock nods. “Have fun.”
“What are you guys all doing here?”
“Just some business,” Uncle Bryce says. “Nothing to concern your pretty head about.” He smiles, and for a moment I think he’s going to tousle my hair.
Brock, Uncle Bryce’s son David, and I are all about the same age. Uncle Bryce used to tousle heads all the time, and he still does it on occasion, though he does it less often now that my hair is pink. He also still resorts to infantilizing and chauvinistic remarks—like my pretty head. I’ve learned to ignore it—it’s part of Uncle Bryce’s charm.
Uncle Bryce and Uncle Joe walk toward the front door and talk in low tones, leaving Brock and me standing in the foyer.
“By the way,” I say to Brock, “congratulations on your engagement to Rory.”
Brock smiles. “Thanks.”
“So when’s the wedding?”
“We’re not sure yet. Have you heard the news, though? Rory and Jesse and the band are going on tour. A huge international tour beginning in January.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Seriously?”
“Yeah. Two guys from Emerald Phoenix—”
I drop my jaw. “What? Emerald Phoenix? Jett Draconis?”
“Yeah. You heard it right. It’s incredible. Jett and the keyboardist, Zane Michaels, were at one of the band’s gigs last weekend, and they asked Dragonlock to open for them on their tour.”
Happiness for Rory and the band flows through me. I’ve been a huge fan of Jesse Pike and his band for as long as I can remember.
“That’s unbelievable. And great! So no wedding yet, I suppose.”
“Probably not until after the tour. Besides…there’s so much else going on…”
“Yeah.”
I’ve heard the talk about some things coming to light regarding our family, but honestly, I don’t know a lot about it. I try to stay in my own space. I’ll be there for my family if they need me, but unless they require baked goods, I’m not sure what I can do for them.
But I am curious.
“You okay, Brock?” I touch his hard shoulder. “For someone who just got engaged to the most beautiful woman in Snow Creek, you don’t look all that…happy.” I can’t help a chuckle. “I never saw you settling down. Not anytime soon, anyway.”
Brock sighs. “I’m ecstatic about Rory and me, cuz, but…there’s just some shit going down that’s…well…bothersome.”
Bothersome? Interesting word.
“Anything you want to talk about?”
“Ava?” Aunt Marj’s voice nags me from the kitchen.
“Maybe some other time.” I roll my eyes. “I’ve got a party to plan.”
Brock nods. “Everything’s okay. Or it will be, anyway.”
Uncle Bryce and Uncle Joe are still standing by the door, engaged in low conversation. Are they waiting for Brock?
Must be, because when he joins them, they head outside. The Steel Boys Club. I hate to say it, but it’s true. The Steel men are good men, manly men…but they can be a little hard to take sometimes. They’re overprotective to a fault.
I walk into the kitchen where Aunt Marj is seated at her large oak table, notes and cookbooks strewn in front of her.
I gaze around her perfect creative space. She’s a trained chef, and her kitchen shows it from her six-burner Viking gas stove to her marble countertops, which are perfect for kneading bread. I spent many days here when I was a kid, learning to bake. It became my passion, and I had marble counters installed in my kitchen at the bakery because I swear nothing works better for hand kneading. With the right amount of flour, your dough never sticks to the surface.
Aunt Marj’s stainless-steel refrigerator looms tall in the corner, and her Italian espresso and cappuccino machine is the centerpiece on the opposite wall. She designed the kitchen herself, right down to the artwork—all vintage advertisements that she found in old cooking magazines.
“So what are you thinking?” I ask.
“Thanksgiving theme, of course,” she says. “Since they were married on Thanksgiving.”
“But this year their anniversary falls on a Saturday evening.”
“Right, but that’s only two days after Thanksgiving, so the theme is still relevant.” She flips through a couple of pages of the cookbook in front of her. Another one is open to a full-color photo of a turkey next to a cornucopia of fall vegetables. “Plus, gratitude is always a good thing, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, of course it is. But I was wondering…”
“What?”
“What about a wine theme? Dad is retiring as master winemaker, and Mom loves his wines.”
“Wine isn’t really a theme, Ava.”
“Why can’t it be?” I take a seat at the table and grab one of the cookbooks. “It’s our party. We can make it however we want.”
“I suppose so.” She wrinkles her forehead. “Maybe a Greek theme. Celebrating Dionysus, the god of wine.”
“Dionysus was also the god of fertility and ritual madness,” I say dryly.
Aunt Marj laughs. “Sounds like a Steel party to me.”
“I do like the idea of a Greek theme,” I say. “My mom has always said she’s half Greek, but she says nothing about her father other than that.”
Aunt Marj drops her gaze.
Weird.
“Can you make Greek food?” I ask.
Aunt Marj makes a note on one of the recipes in front of her. “I can make any kind of food, Ava.”
I laugh. “Sorry, I forgot who I was talking to.”
“The real question is, can you make Greek food?”
“I can bake anything.”
“Have you ever baked pita?”
“Of course I have. I just don’t sell it in my bakery.”
“We’ll need lots of pita,” Aunt Marj says. “Maybe some Greek olive bread as well.”
“Easy enough. I make a really awesome kalamata olive loaf, as you know. I can just adjust a few things.”
“There’s also Greek Easter bread.”
“Aunt Marj, how many kinds of bread do we need?”
“I’m just thinking out loud. I think pita and Greek olive bread will be fine.”
“Good. So that’ll be my contribution. What else do you need from me?”
“I need you to help me plan the menu.”
“Of course.”
Aunt Marj rises, picking up the cookbooks that are spread out in front of her. She takes them to a cupboard, inserts them, and pulls out another—this one with kabobs and eggplant on the cover.
“Opa!” She brings the book to the table and opens it. “I haven’t used this Greek cookbook in a long time. It’ll be great to delve into it.”
“What about baklava for dessert?” I ask. “I’m experienced with that.”
“That’s a thought.”
“Of course, it wouldn’t be a Steel party without one of your cakes.”
“True enough.” Aunt Marjorie taps her cheek. “But I like the idea of baklava. Do your parents like it?”
“You know my parents. They’ll eat anything.”
“True. Let’s do both,” she says. “I’ll make one of my cakes, and you make baklava.”
“Good enough.”
“Now, invitations.”
“I’m no graphic designer,” I say.
“No, and neither am I. Jade can handle those.”
Aunt Jade is usually Aunt Marj’s second-in-command when it comes to all the Steel parties. I just provide the baked goods, except for the cakes. I make a darn good cake, but Aunt Marj’s cakes are legendary. I’ve tried to get her to work for me at the shop, to make some cakes, and I’d give her the profits. She always says no, that it would take the joy out of it for her. I don’t understand that, since I get all kinds of joy out of baking, and I make a living from it.
Aunt Marjorie leafs through the book. “We can go traditional, or we can go a little more modern.”
“Honestly? I like the idea of traditional. We don’t get to eat much Greek food here on the western slope.”
Aunt Marj laughs. “Somehow I don’t see your cousins—the male ones—getting excited about stuffed grape leaves.”
“So we’ll make sure there are lots of gyros. Beef gyros. Plus, I think Mom and Dad would love it. Dad can do the wine pairing. You know, come out of retirement and all.”
Aunt Marj taps her cheek again. “You know? You’re right. This party is for them, after all. They may like this Greek thing. Especially if we tie it into Dionysus with the wine.”
“Right,” I say, “and we can forget about the fertility and sex fest.”
“Well, we won’t mention it anyway.” Aunt Marj smiles.
I make a few notes on my phone. “How many pitas and olive loaves are you thinking?”
“Invitations haven’t gone out yet, but Steel parties are always very well attended.”
“True. Can we expect maybe a hundred guests?”
“I’m thinking close to two hundred. This is an anniversary party.”
“Okay. I’ll need to order my supplies and make sure I can get enough bread made in time along with all my Thanksgiving orders.”
“I know. We probably should’ve started planning a little earlier.”
“I shouldn’t have any problem getting supplies,” I say. “I get all my flour and other grains from a heritage supplier in Grand Junction. I’ll give them a call first thing tomorrow.”
“Okay. Let me know if you have any trouble. I have some contacts as well and can probably get you what you need.”
I nod. “So what else?”
“If we’re going to go traditional Greek, make a list of what you’d like to see.”
“Moussaka,” I say.
Aunt Marj closes her eyes. “Mmm. I love moussaka! It’s easy to make, too. Bryce hates eggplant, but like you said, we’ll have lots of gyros.”
“Although…” I rub my chin. “Maybe kabobs would be better. Gyros are usually made with chicken or pork. Sometimes lamb. Or a lamb and beef combo. Rarely beef by itself.”
Aunt Marj nods. “We do have beef in abundance here at Steel Acres.”
“Kabobs would be easier, too,” I say. “We’ll marinate the meat and veggies, and they can be grilled ahead of time and kept warm. Gyros require a rotisserie, and though it would be amazing to watch, it’s a lot of work.”
