AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Sorry, pal. It hasn’t been that long since breakfast, and we don’t have any food in here. We’ll grab some lunch later.”
“If we can’t eat, can we go swimming?”
Preston didn’t answer. He wanted Emma to walk through the door, and he wanted her to do it now. Enough was enough. He wasn’t good with kids, not since his son’s death.
Crossing to the room’s only phone, Preston called his cell again, but it went straight to voice mail.
“I’ll give you a million bucks if you’ll take me swimming.” Max gazed up at him with round, pleading eyes that reminded Preston of a puppy’s.
“You don’t have a million bucks.” Preston hung up and redialed.
“My mom will pay you when she gets back.”
Preston thought of the kind of remuneration he’d like to receive from Emma and experienced an immediate physical reaction. “If she felt excited about paying up, I just might do it,” he muttered.
“I’ll tell her to write you a check.”
His call went to voice mail again. Why wasn’t she answering?
“Pul-leeze?” Max persisted.
With a frustrated sigh, Preston hung up. There was no help for it. This poor kid was going stir-crazy; he needed to get out. “Okay, I’ll tell you what. Let me make one more call, then we’ll hit the pool.”
“Really?”
“Really,” Preston said, and called the front desk.
“Do you know anything about the cell coverage in this town?” he asked when the operator answered.
“Excuse me?”
“I’ve used my cell a time or two, so I know it works here in Ely, but—”
“Oh, you’re talking about cell phones,” she said. “I’m afraid the coverage is pretty spotty. From what I hear, some networks do better than others, so whether it works or not depends on your service.”
That explained it. “Thanks,” he said. For good measure, he tried Emma again but couldn’t get through to her. And when Max started running around the room, jumping from bed to bed, chanting, “We’re going swimming, we’re going swimming,” Preston decided to give up. He left Emma a note, in case she missed seeing them out front when she returned. Then he took Max and his laptop to the pool.
CHAPTER TEN
ONCE INSIDE Garnet Mercantile, Emma quickly flipped through several blouses on the clearance rack. She typically wore a size four, but there weren’t a lot of smaller sizes.
“Can I help you?”
A heavyset, fiftyish woman smiled when Emma glanced up. Her badge read “Ruby.”
“Yes, please. I need a short-sleeved shirt to go with these khaki shorts.” Emma held up the shorts she’d already found on sale for fifteen dollars. Fortunately, most of the summer clothes had been discounted to make room for fall merchandise. She’d been able to find Max three pairs of shorts and matching T-shirts for about ten bucks each.
Ruby frowned. “Aren’t those shorts you’ve got made by Bayside?”
Previously, Emma hadn’t looked at anything but the size and the price, but she checked now. “Yeah. Bayside.”
“Have you tried them on?”
She shook her head and kept digging, her thoughts distilling into a brief mantra: Shirts and shorts. Pay and go. She’d been gone more than an hour already. Max had to have lunch soon.
“You might want to do that,” Ruby said.
In her worry, Emma had lost the thread of the conversation. “Do what?”
“Try on those shorts. They run small. Generally, I can squeeze into a sixteen. But not in those babies.”
Given this information, Emma decided to play it safe. What good would it do her to purchase a pair of shorts that didn’t fit? “Then could you help me find a six?”
“There is no six. That’s the last pair we’ve got. Actually, those were a return. Someone bought them without knowing the line runs small. That’s why they’re marked down.”
“I see.” Quickly weighing the time she’d need to find another pair against the time it’d take to try on the shorts she already held, Emma opted for the dressing room because it was empty and close by.
“Don’t you want to find a shirt before you go in there?” Ruby called after her.
“Grab me something,” she called back.
“My, my, aren’t we in a hurry,” she heard Ruby mutter. Then, louder, “How about something in bright orange? If that doesn’t say ‘look at me’ I don’t know what does.”
Emma grimaced. Orange was her least favorite color—and she certainly didn’t want to draw attention to herself. “I was thinking something understated, maybe in white. Or black, if you have it. Black would match my sandals.”
“Conservative. I see how it is.”
Ruby said conservative as though it meant boring. Emma might have chuckled, except she was growing too frantic to react to anything unrelated to her goal. The minutes were ticking away. Steadily. Inexorably. At this rate, she’d have to jog back to the motel.
Pulling the shorts on over her swimsuit, she quickly zipped and buttoned, then breathed a sigh of relief. She’d lost weight lately. A little too much. But at least they fit.
She was about to take them off when Ruby stuck her head through the curtain that was supposed to provide a modicum of privacy. “What about this?”
Emma stared at the white, sleeveless sweater tank top Ruby shoved at her, surprised that Ruby had come up with something she liked.
“It isn’t marked down,” Emma said, checking the price.
“Honey, there’s nothing on that sale rack you’re gonna like. Conservative stuff don’t generally go on sale around here. Neither does western wear, but don’t get me going on how badly this town needs a fashion makeover.”
The shirt was thirty-five dollars, much more than Emma wanted to spend. But at the moment, she was too frantic to be concerned with price. “I’ll take it.”
“Well, try it on first,” Ruby said as if talking to an errant child.
The salesclerk started to leave, but Emma caught her arm. She was about to say she didn’t need to try it on. She wanted to give Ruby her purchases so Ruby could ring them up. But a voice she’d hoped never to hear again reached her ears at the same moment, making the words catch in her throat.
“Excuse me, have you seen this woman?”
It was Manuel. Emma was sure of it. And he wasn’t far away.
