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“Should she even be driving?” Harris asked, a little bemused by both his encounter with the little old lady and with this huge enigmatic-looking guy.
“Probably not. Our only traffic cop will pull her over later and escort her back to the retirement home. She comes out for a drive once a month—people usually know to stay out of her way.”
“Well, some of us aren’t familiar with your small-town quirks,” Harris snapped, abruptly annoyed with everyone and everything in this fucking place.
“Hmm? Well, maybe I’m just an ignorant country guy,” the big fellow said slowly, “but even I know not to walk straight into traffic. Anyone else but our quirky Mattie, and you’d be in the hospital.”
Fair point.
“I’m sorry—I was being an asshole,” Harris said, closing the distance between them and offering his hand. “Harrison Chapman.”
The man eyed his hand for a second before reaching out and giving Harris a firm handshake. None of the macho bullshit he sometimes got from big guys who squeezed that extra bit tighter to assert their dominance.
“Spencer Carlisle.”
Harris eyed the sign above the man’s head. “Ah. Of Carlisle Sporting Solutions, I presume?”
“Hmm.”
“Good to meet you.”
“Likewise.” He stepped back and folded his arms over his chest again.
“Well, see you around, I guess,” Harris said awkwardly, feeling dismissed. This town was full of truly weird people.
“You play football?”
What?
“A little,” Harris offered warily, and Spencer Carlisle nodded.
“Good. We need extra players. Be there on Saturday night, after seven. Sports field.” Concise. He didn’t waste words, this one. “Already told your brother.”
Of course, he knew Harris had a brother. People in this town seemed to know everything. He wondered what Greyson’s response to the invitation had been.
Spencer stepped back into his store without waiting for Harris’s answer. Which was great, because Harris wasn’t exactly sure what his reply would have been.
At least the encounter had managed to briefly take his mind off his problems with Tina. As he walked home, paying closer attention to his surroundings, he tried to figure out how to get her to trust him with her secrets.
Secrets he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
It wasn’t as bad as she’d been expecting. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t truly awful either. Bolstered by Daffodil Carlisle’s visit, Tina had finally managed to garner enough courage to look at her accounts.
She had staved off a mild panic attack when she had calculated how much Daff’s marketing strategy would cost to implement, but compared to the alternative, it was well worth the risk. She felt lighter: a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders, and she was hopeful for the first time since they’d opened.
God, had it really only been five days? It felt like forever ago. So much had happened between then and now. Not just with the restaurant, but with Harris.
Her phone beeped, and she checked it automatically. Another message from Smith. He had texted every day since Friday, and she hadn’t bothered to respond to him. Now, cloaking herself in the residual courage from her earlier decision to do her overdue accounting, she picked up the phone and called her brother.
He answered almost immediately.
“Tina?”
“Hi, Smith.”
“I wasn’t expecting you to call,” he said. Damn, why did it always have to be so awkward between them?
“Would you prefer me to hang up?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I was just expecting a text, that’s all.”
“I can do that if one-on-one communication makes you uncomfortable.”
“Jeez, why are you being so weird?” he grumbled. “I wanted to know how the restaurant business was treating you.”
“I had a crap opening weekend,” she said, her voice challenging. Waiting for him to launch into the usual passive-aggressive diatribe that always made her feel like a total failure.
“I-I’m sorry. If you need help or advice, please let me know. Okay?”
Her jaw dropped, practically all the way to the floor. Well, this was new. “Wait? No ‘Jesus, Tina. Why do you always go into these things half-cocked?’” She lowered her voice in a terrible imitation of his. “Or ‘God, Tina, do you ever do any market research?’ or—”
“Enough,” he interrupted, his voice strained. “It’s already been brought to my attention that I’ve been a shitty and unsupportive brother.”
“It has?” Who would have had the nerve to tell any member of her family that they were shitty? “Brought to your attention by whom?”
“Harris,” Smith admitted, the word sounding torn from him, as if it physically hurt him to say the name. “And he was right.”
“Harris?” she repeated blankly. “Why would Harris tell you that?”
“I think the real question is why should he have to tell me that? You’re my little sister. The only one I have. I should have been helping, supporting . . . instead I—all of us—made you feel small.”
“And useless. And stupid,” she felt compelled to add, and the silence on the other end of the line screamed for so long that for a second she thought the call had disconnected, until he cleared his throat.
