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“At least a foot.”
I groaned. “I miss green grass and blue water.”
“We have that here in the spring and summer. That’s the nice thing about the Beard—you get to experience it all.”
But you also had to be buried in a few feet of snow for months at a time.
I wasn’t going to argue with her because it was impossible to win an argument with Bess. Instead, I looked at the front page of this week’s edition again, wishing my parents and Uncle Pete could have read it. That was a strange wish, though, since it was only because they were all gone that I was doing this work.
I bought an overpriced but cold iced tea from the vending machine in the back room, put my headphones on, and got to work on my stack of paperwork. I’d had my face buried in the documents for more than half an hour when Bess nudged my shoulder.
“Hmm?” I slid my headphones off and looked over at her, and she nodded toward the front of my desk.
Grady stood there, his arms crossed and his expression unreadable. I stared up at him, unwilling to break the ice after the way he treated me yesterday. Seconds of silence ticked by.
“I came to say I’m sorry,” he finally said. “About yesterday.”
I waited to see if he was going to say more, but he just stared at me.
“Is that all?” I asked.
He moved his hands to his hips and huffed out a sigh. “I said I’m sorry. What more do you want?”
“I’m not sure what you mean. I didn’t ask you for anything.”
He shifted from one foot to the other, clearly inexperienced at apologizing. “What, do you want me to grovel?”
I took off my headphones and stood up, wanting to be closer to eye level with him than I was while sitting. His size threw me off course sometimes.
“Again, I didn’t ask you for anything,” I said sharply.
He looked at the front door, and I was sure he was about to turn and leave when he instead turned back to look at me.
“I was an asshole. I was out of line, and I apologize.”
Okay, that was better than his non-apology “for yesterday.”
“I appreciate that,” I said. “But I feel like it’s going to happen again when I piss you off by just trying to do my job.”
“Command One, status,” a voice said over the radio on Grady’s shoulder.
He pressed a button on the radio and said, “Command One is out at the Chronicle.”
“Ten-four.”
“Look, Rick was my high school football coach,” Grady said to me. “He meant a lot to me. I’d just…seen him when you got there yesterday, and I may have overreacted.”
“You may have?” I arched my brows.
“I did overreact,” he said, scowling. “I already felt like a horse’s ass and then I saw that article you wrote about Rick and I felt about ten inches tall. I came to apologize and…see if I can take you to lunch.”
My heart raced, but I kept my expression neutral. Grady and I ran hot and cold. We fought one minute and laughed over something the next. It wasn’t a good idea to fall further for him.
Not to mention that he’d really hurt my feelings yesterday, and I was still sore over it.
“I have a lot of work to do,” I said. “But thanks anyway.”
He sighed, aggravated. “Come on, Avon. You always go to Tipper’s between 1:00 and 1:30 on Mondays, so I know you haven’t had lunch.”
I put my palms on my desk, looking up at him in challenge. “I accepted your apology, okay? Buying me a burger isn’t going to mean it didn’t happen. Let’s just move on.”
“Why are you so damn stubborn?” he demanded.
“Why am I so stubborn?”
“Avon,” Bess said from her desk. “Can I speak to you in Pete’s office for a minute? Grady, you stay right where you are.”
Reluctantly, I got up and went to Pete’s office, where Bess closed the door behind us.
“Stop being such an ass and go have lunch with the man,” she said in a low tone.
“This has nothing to do with you. You don’t even know what happened yesterday.”
She threw her hands up. “Well, whatever it is, he said he’s sorry.”
I pressed my thumb and forefinger to the bridge of my nose. “Bess, this is between me and him, and it’s not just about yesterday.”
“He’s a good man,” she said firmly. “One of the best. Have you seen that black cat at City Hall?”
I lowered my brows and nodded, unsure what Radar had to do with this conversation.
“Grady found that cat on the side of the road after someone hit it with their car and left it for dead. He took it to animal control and they said it was too far gone and they were going to put it down. He wouldn’t have it. He took that cat to Dr. Renner’s office and paid the bill himself.”
