He expected a sense of relief, but it never came. Because the higher-ups were looking at something very different.
In the fading summer light, he worked off some tension by trimming the hedges around the back of the house and nailing down a few loose boards of his shed. He tossed the ball for the dogs before heading inside for a long, hot shower.
How was he going to figure this out? Travis seemed content to accuse him. Last night with Elizabeth and all the warm, comforting yearnings seemed an eternity ago.
“You’re crazy not to fall for him,” Tina said, setting up a couple of large garden salads in the service window.
“Why do I have to fall for him? For anyone?” Elizabeth clicked through the order screen, then retrieved a couple of frosted glasses for milkshakes. It’d been a busy day at Dorsey, and she’d hoped for a slow night at the diner. But they were slammed.
But the cherry on top of her day was Tina garnishing her evening with advice about love.
“Because at the end of the day, no one ever said, ‘I wish I’d spent more time at my desk.’”
Elizabeth dropped scoops of vanilla into the glasses from the carton in the lowboy. “You can do better than a cliché, Tina.”
“Not when the cliché is true.”
Okay, maybe no one said “I wish I’d spent more time at my desk” on their deathbed. But they probably did right out of college or grad school. Why was everyone so down on her chasing her dreams?
Still, the residue of last night—the pizza, the dance, the music, the sunset, the fire tower, falling through, and crying on Granny’s shoulder—left her distracted.
At Dorsey, she messed up her accounting. Printed the wrong reports. Emailed the wrong people. She ate her lunch at her desk, admonishing herself to “Focus.”
Which worked. She’d just about cleared the day’s tasks when she came across another expensive purchase from the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency for one hundred board feet of teak.
Ryder’s name was sprawled boldly on the bottom of the purchase order. She recognized his signature, made with a large R, from when he paid for the pizza.
She reached for the phone and called Grant Hansen again. “Would the WMA order teak?”
“Teak? No. Never.”
Elizabeth filled the chilled glasses with chocolate syrup, then slipped the first one under the milkshake spindle.
Should she talk to Tina about this? She didn’t want to sully Ryder’s name without evidence. If he hadn’t ordered the teak, why did the purchase order note it was for the fire tower refurbishment?
Grant assured her teak was good against weather and water for a boat, not a fire tower, then admitted he’d forgotten to check into the cherry purchase.
“It fell off my to-do list. I’ll check into these orders. See who fulfilled them.”
What was going on? Ryder was fixing up his house on the hill. But he didn’t seem like the cheating kind. And didn’t his parents have money? Could someone from Dorsey Furniture be involved?
Elizabeth finished the milkshakes and delivered them to the customers at the counter. “Enjoy.”
Heading back to the kitchen, she felt confident of one thing. There was no way the man who looked in her eyes last night was a fraud.
9
Sunday morning, Ryder found Elizabeth sitting by herself in the back of the church sanctuary. He slipped into the chair beside her and hooked his cane over the seat in front of him.
He’d gone without it for a few days, but when he pulled the carved boards from the fire tower yesterday and carted them to his little work shed, the knee revolted.
“You came to church again.”
Elizabeth grinned. “Granny accidentally woke me up.”
“There’s no turning down Granny D. So, are you working the diner this afternoon?”
“No, Tina insisted I have at least one day off a week from Ella’s and Dorsey. Granny and Pops are meeting old friends after church in Ashland City, so the family is on their own for lunch.” Elizabeth waved at an older couple. “They come in every Monday night for decaf coffee, pie, and ice cream. It’s a tradition they started their first year of marriage. They said they struggled a bit to find their rhythm, but if they went to the diner, ordered coffee, pie, and ice cream, they could only talk about things that happened during the last week that were good and what they loved about each other.”
