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Becca slammed the door.
Then she hopped down the steps, jumped into her car, and started the ignition.
But at the end of her block, she didn’t turn right, and she didn’t head for Quinn’s house.
She turned left and drove straight to Chris’s.
CHAPTER 18
When she pulled into the driveway, the garage door stood open. The Merrick brothers were outside, hauling bags out of the garage to load them on a flatbed trailer. It was hitched to a red pickup with their name and a landscaping logo on the side.
She tightened her grip on the steering wheel. This gave her absolutely no chance to reconsider what the hell she was doing here. She’d planned to talk to Chris privately, to mention what had happened to her house, to demand answers.
Confronting him in front of his entire family was not part of the plan.
Sunlight warmed the air as she climbed out of the car, though she was glad for her jacket when a breeze raced through the trees to whisper down her neck. The scents coming from the garage made her think of the garden center at Home Depot, something damp and woodsy and not entirely natural, like mulch and topsoil overlaid with a hint of Miracle-Gro. The open garage revealed a huge space that clearly doubled as storage for Michael’s landscaping business. Pallets were stacked along the walls, with bags of things like soil and white sand and red cedar chips. Tools hung everywhere, crammed into every space imaginable, though there had to be a method to the madness.
Michael was closest to her. He dropped a bag labeled LIMESTONES CREENINGS on the pile at the front of the flatbed. He wore a red tee shirt and jeans and his arms already sported a fine layer of dust. As usual, his voice wasn’t friendly. “You know it’s the twenty-first century?”
She had no idea what he was talking about. “What?”
He swiped his hands on his jeans and turned back to the garage. He called over his shoulder, “Ever hear of a phone?”
She straightened her back and stared after him. “Ever hear of manners?”
He was already heaving another bag onto his shoulder, his expression lost in the shadows. “You mean like driving up to someone’s house uninvited?”
What an ass**le. “Maybe if you weren’t—”
“Becca.” Chris was carrying a bag of the same stuff out of the garage. “Just ignore him.”
He flung the bag on top of the pile, then jumped off the trailer to come over to her. His tee shirt was black, and dust streaked across the front of his chest. Sweat had collected on his forehead, and he ducked his head to wipe it on his sleeve.
He seemed wary; that vague tension they’d shared last night still hung between them. “What’s up?”
“I just—” She faltered. One of the twins was carrying another bag to the flatbed. He barely gave her a nod. They looked tired—and those bags looked heavy.
They were busy.
All at once, she wanted to slink back to her car. Someone had just painted a star in a circle on her door. Tyler had a gun, and had demonstrated he wasn’t afraid to use it—would he really stoop to something like teenage pranks to intimidate her? Maybe it was just like her dad said, some stupid kid being stupid. It wasn’t as if pentagrams were unique to Elementals.
“You’re busy,” she backpedaled. “I shouldn’t have just shown up like this—”
“It’s all right.” Chris moved closer, until she caught his scent, like sunshine and limestone.
“Chris.” Michael had another bag, and he added it to the stack. “Less talk. More work.”
A spark of irritation lit Chris’s features, but he turned toward the garage. “Come on. Talk to me while I load. He’s just pissed because he’s already late.”
Becca followed him into the cool cavern of the garage. He picked up a bag from the stack and heaved it onto his shoulder.
This felt awkward. “Can I help you? Or—”
“Go ahead.” He flashed a smile. “Bring one out.”
She bent and slid her hands under the slick edges of the sack. It felt like a bag of sand, and it was marked 35KG. She could never remember if kilograms were more than pounds or the other way around, but she crouched and heaved and attempted to lift the sack of limestone.
Christ. It’s more. Kilograms are more. The bag had to weigh at least eighty pounds. She couldn’t even get it off the pallet.
