“Well, I’m not a telemarketer, so you can relax. It’s Evan, the moving guy from—”
“Vets on the Go!” Her voice warmed. “Hi. How are you?” she seemed to purr.
He thought he heard Will in the background.
“Fine. Um, I just wanted to ask a favor, but I don’t want to put you out or anything.”
“Oh, no problem, sweetie. What do you need?”
“Who the hell is that?” definitely came from Will.
Evan said, “Your friend, Kenzie.”
“You want the knife-wielder, not the African goddess, right?”
“Ah, yeah.” He coughed, feeling the laughter build. Something about her, Lila, and Kenzie made him want to smile. “I wanted to talk to her about Daniel. Nothing bad, but—”
Rachel rattled off a phone number so fast it took him a moment to jot it down.
“And in case you didn’t get that, I’ll text you her contact info. Okay? Uh-oh. Gotta go. Bye, Evan!”
She disconnected in a blink. But sure enough, Kenzie Sykes’s phone number popped up in a text.
Now unsure what to do with his victory, call her before he chickened out or put her number aside to think on it, Evan decided to go big. He took another deep breath, let it out, and called.
She answered on the third ring before he had to leave a message, thank God. He loathed voicemail.
“Hello?”
Just like her friend, she sounded untrusting.
“Hi, Kenzie. It’s Evan, the guy who helped Rachel move? You know, Daniel’s phone guy?”
“Oh, uh, hello.”
Great, now she sounded even more hesitant.
He put some energy into sounding nice, pleasant, but not boring. “Well, I was hoping I could take you up on that offer of coffee.”
Silence.
He waited a few more seconds then wondered if maybe she hadn’t heard him. “I—”
“Coffee is good. Nice, I mean. It’s good. I like coffee.” Her words came faster. “But I just got a new contract, and I’m super busy right now. Maybe I could get back to you?”
The brush-off. He swallowed a sigh. His own fault for not jumping on her invitation right away. “Oh, sure. Sorry to have bothered you but—”
“Greatgottagobye.” She hung up.
He swore. Talk about the perfect ending to his day.
As if being rejected by a woman he couldn’t stop thinking about wasn’t bad enough, the rest of his day had been awful. The Hillfords had a grown daughter who’d started hanging around to help them, and Smith had shoved Evan toward the chatty woman, hiding in the garage with the excuse of having to move the heavy stuff so their token lightweight could charm the customers.
So not cool. Especially since the woman had beentoo helpfulall damn afternoon.
The doorbell rang, and he left his phone in his mom’s reading room, despondent and needing to get past the feeling. Going out with Kenzie would probably have been a mistake anyway. He didn’t really need a woman in his life. With his accounting work, the moving business, and taking care of his mom, he’d been too busy to do more than fall into bed the moment he got home.
Now with the accounting aspect of his life slowing down, he had time to relax. But his mother still took precedence in his life. He loved her, and he’d care for her until he took his last breath—with or without the promise he’d made to his father on Evan Senior’s deathbed.
