Chapter Eight
BEN’S PHONErang early that Saturday morning. He squinted at the alarm clock. Oh. Not all that early, really, but he’d tossed and turned all night, restless and fretful, so hedeserveda bit of a lie-in. But he wasn’t going to get it, apparently.
He fumbled his phone off the bedside table, scowled at the call display, then answered the call and lifted the phone to his ear.“What?” he demanded. He’d wanted it to sound like a growl, but it came out more like a whine. Damn it.
“Morning, Sunshine,” Seth said cheerfully. When Tamara was a baby, Seth had been assigned the 5:00 a.m. feeding, and it seemed to have permanently transformed him into an early riser. It was really annoying. “What are you doing?”
“I wassleeping.”
“Oh. Sorry. But you don’t want to waste thewhole day, do you? It’s past nine. We should do something!”
“Are you about to suggest I come over and help you with outside chores?”
“I wasn’t, but I appreciate your offer and I gratefully accept! Wear long sleeves because we need to do something with those raspberry bushes.”
“Whydidyou call, then?”
“Oh, yeah. Because—okay, I honestly have no idea if I should even mention this. But I’m goingto.”
“Are you? Sometime soon, maybe?”
“Rissa called me, just now. I’m not working this weekend, but there was a weird situation, and she wanted you to be aware of it but she didn’t want to call you herself, so….”
Rissa was Seth’s co-owner at the garage. “The car’s worse than we thought? Shit, Seth, how much is this going to cost me?”
“Funny you should ask that, actually. Because—maybe nothing.”
“Maybe it’s going to cost me nothing? What? Like, it’s a write-off? If you’re trying to put a positive spin on my car being a write-off, you should stop trying. Damn it, what—”
“Not a write-off. But… possibly a concerned citizen has stepped forward and wants to pay for the repairs.”
“Possibly… a concerned citizen?”
“Not a citizen of North Falls, necessarily. At least, not anymore.”
“Liam wantsto pay for my car repairs?”
“Apparently he feels responsible for the accident.”
“Hewasresponsible for the accident!”
“Really? He was sitting beside you and he reached out and grabbed the wheel and made you run into Laura Doncaster? Because I’ve pictured this event a lot of times in my mind—and Dinah has pictured it a lot, too, and she isverygrateful to you for the amusement—but in noneof my imaginings was Liam actually in the car with you.”
“He wasn’t in the car, but—”
“But he jumped out in front of you, causing you to heroically swerve into Laura Doncaster’s Chariot of Authority.”
“He didn’t jump. But he has no damn business being in town, and he caught me by surprise.”
“And then you caught Laura Doncaster by surprise.”
“Could you please stop talking about Laura Doncaster?”
“But it’s okay if we keep talking about Liam?”
“God, better him than Laura!”
“Really. That’s a bit of a change, isn’t it? I mean—”
