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The blunt statement stopped her mid-stroke and she straightened. “Not even the regulation one in a wallet all guys are supposed to carry?”
“It’s actually not a good idea. They can deteriorate quite quickly.”
Leaning back in the seat, she watched him tuck himself into his shorts. “I suppose you wouldn’t want to take any risks.”
“Would you?”
Bonnie thought about the risks she’d read about with pregnancy for diabetics. “No, I wouldn’t dare.” She indicated his erection. “I could still deal with your not so little problem.”
His smile was almost a grimace. “The rain’s been stopped for a while. We should probably pack up. Don’t we have more stops to make before closing time?”
“I guess.” There was an odd ache in her chest. Disappointment?
He reached for his jeans, pushing his hands into the pockets. “Dry enough.”
Party over.
*
The trip downthe muddy track took longer. Xander took it steady over the slippery rocks and sloppy puddles. There was no sign of Briar at the sheds, though he recognised Mildred Appleton’s distinctive old Kingswood parked near the house.
Bonnie leaned forward. “I wonder what she’s doing here. I thought she and Briar didn’t get along?”
“She always comes to him if she wants to see him. Doesn’t want people to see his old truck parked outside her place, I’m guessing.”
The woman was all about appearances and Briar was as unconventional as you could get in a small country town. “Did she come up when Charity Appleton was alive?”
“I remember seeing her occasionally. Probably trying to nag her sister into submission. I remember the car. One of the guys living here had a thing about classic cars and the Kingswood was in immaculate condition. Still is.”
“Only driven to church on Sundays by a little old lady.”
He snorted. “Pretty much.”
The other stops in town were done quickly under Bonnie’s guidance. Xander recognised one of the men behind the counter at the butcher as an old classmate from high school and it gave him a funny feeling in his chest at the pleasure Rory showed at the meeting. He didn’t hang around chatting, making the excuse of having to get the food home and unpacked. It had nothing to do with the familiarity of Rory’s greeting to Bonnie or her beaming response. Of course, she’d know him well if she was in the habit of stopping by to pick up meat for the inn.
He could tell she expected him to vanish when they arrived home, avoiding the mundane task of putting away the groceries. No way was he going to live down to those expectations. He had something to prove.
He started with the cold stuff—milk and dairy—because they were easy and he didn’t have to ask where they belonged. Bonnie started sorting things on the workbench with a brisk efficiency that told of her long experience in kitchens. There was a kind of satisfaction in working together he hadn’t expected.
He thought about bumping into his classmate. “You’ve settled back into town okay since you got home?”
Bonnie looked up from labelling meat for the freezer. “It wasn’t hard. I wasn’t gone long enough to be entirely forgotten. There are new people, but most of the people I deal with for the inn are long-term locals.”
“What about friends?”
“I never lost touch with most of them. A few left town. The ones my age mostly. They went to university and started careers elsewhere.”
“How do you know Trudie?”
“Through Moira. Trudie went out with her brother Connor a couple of times, but it didn’t stick.”
“And the friendship with Moira did?”
“Kind of. Moira’s been away in the army for years and Trudie used to hang around with Cat and Marina and that group.”
“I can’t imagine her fitting in with them.”
Bonnie shrugged and stacked another pack of steak in the basket ready for the freezer. “It’s not a big town. You don’t have a big pool of people to choose from. Cat’s lovely, and a bit different, so maybe that gave them something in common. Anyway, it didn’t last. Once Moira moves home for good I imagine they’ll hang around together.”
